Cork, Wood and Rivets

This is a picture of a Cobra AH-1G on display at Ft. Rucker, Alabama, where all the training for Army aviation is now.

Starting with the first armed helicopters in the Army there has always been an attitude that flying armed helicopters was the ultimate thing to do. This “Top gun” attitude probably goes back to when the first guy decided to arm himself. Among those that are armed there is an attitude of superiority. It came on strong with the Army’s first attack helicopter, the AH-1G, the Cobra.

Here is what the AH-1G means: A – attack, H – helicopter, 1 – the first one, G – the model. There were some test models before the G but it was the G that was actually put into production and purchased by the Army. The first Cobra helicopters were contracted in 1966 and deliveries started in 1967.

An attitude of superiority soon developed among the Cobra pilots. Some times other considered the Cobra pilots arrogant, obnoxious, over bearing prima donnas. I do agree that a real Cobra pilot has to be a little different breed and most were very good pilots.

I think Cobra pilots came in three groups. The first group didn’t want to be attack pilots. Some of them were very good pilots but weren’t really into the shooting and battle thing. Their way of deployment of the Cobra showed their lack of wanting to be in a battle. The second group was the cold-blooded killers. Like the gunfighters of the old west who notched their guns for each person they killed, these guys were counting to see who was the “baddest”. They got their thrill out of killing people. I have always wondered if they were able to come back to the real world and live with themselves after what they had done. There have been some of these folks in every war. The third group was the brave young men that were there for a cause. They were there to protect American lives, stop the brutality of Communism, defend property and liberty, and just wanted to do what was right. They had the heart of a true warrior on a just cause. They did not delight in battle but knew there were times they must defend the sacred things in life even if it meant looking through the sights and pulling the trigger on a fellow human being. They were some of the noblest people I have ever known.

One of the ways that Cobra pilots demonstrated their superiority was in their knowledge of the aircraft they flew. Cobra pilots were expected to know everything about their aircraft, how it flew, why it didn’t fly, how to employ their aircraft, and some information that nobody in the world knows what to do with.

By the time I went to the Cobra transition and instructor pilot’s course I had accumulated 2,300 hours of flight time, with 1,100 of it being instructor pilot time and having been an instructor pilot in two different kinds of helicopters. I had also flown quite a few hours in Cobras and was somewhat familiar with the aircraft. The Cobra instructor pilot course proved to be a little bit of a surprise for me.

I was headed back to Vietnam for a second tour and took the Cobra transition and instructor pilot course on the way there. Flying the Cobra went pretty easy for me. Learning what to say as an instructor pilot was also pretty easy. The only struggle I had was memorizing some of the things I didn’t understand.

Before pilots flew an aircraft they looked it over to ensure that everything appeared to be in proper order. For most Army aircraft this took about twenty minutes. The pilots looked at the engine to ensure there weren’t any oil leaks and that all the parts appeared to be there. They looked at the rest of the aircraft the same way. If it looked good it must have been okay.

Cobra pilots weren’t like that. The pre-flight could last forty-five minutes to an hour. Everything was checked and talked about. Cobra pilots knew what every part was, what every switch and wire was for, what every pressure should be in a line, what happened inside every thing on the aircraft. I was even okay with that stuff.

When we went to the aircraft my instructor would play “what’s it” with us. There were two students assigned to each instructor pilot. After about fifteen minutes my stick buddy, the other student, would start saying he didn’t know what this or that was or what it did. I knew he knew the answers to many of the items so one day I asked him what was up. He said he was tired of playing games and just wanted to go flying.

I continued playing the game until we got to the cork, the wood and the rivets. Here were some little known facts. There were two pieces if cork in a Cobra. There were four pieces of wood. There were six non-structural rivets and I can’t remember how many hundred thousand rivets there were in a standard G model cobra.

For the life of me I couldn’t figure out what good knowing how many and where the cork, wood and rivets were. Knowing this information didn’t make a bit of difference in flying the aircraft. We didn’t really check to ensure that someone had stolen our cork, wood or rivets. What was this information for? There was nothing in the world this information was good for except to say I knew something about the aircraft that somebody else didn’t.

One day when my instructor pilot asked me about the cork, wood, and rivets I told him what I planned to do. I was headed for Vietnam and would be there in just a few weeks. My instructor was shocked when I told him that if I was shot down and captured in Vietnam I was going to tell my captors where the cork, wood and rivets were in the Cobra. I told him I was going to tell them before they had a chance to torture me by pulling out my fingernails or break any of my bones. As soon as the interrogation started I was going to confess the little known information about the goofy things he had been teaching me. I told him I had no idea what that information was for and perhaps it would confuse the communist as much as it did me. He thought I was treating this little known information lightly. No! My only fear was that the Viet Cong might think that information was of as much value as I thought it was.

In case you are wondering: The two pieces of cork were on the handgrip, which was also the throttle, or the collective (control in the left hand). The four pieces of wood were used to clamp the hydraulic accumulator (a metal bottle holding fluid pressure in case the hydraulic systems fail) in place. The six “nonstructural” rivets were placed in the tail boom showing the correct position the synchronized elevator should be in for the different positions of the cyclic (the control in the right hand) or flight modes (hover, forward flight and high speed flight). The total number of rivets was in the hundreds of thousands but I can’t remember just what that ridiculous number was. I never counted to ensure that they were all there!

The old saying that knowledge is power is only true if the knowledge is of some value. Probably all of us know a lot about nothing of value. Only knowledge of value will help us. And feeling superior to others because we have some knowledge is a dangerous thing. Individuals, groups of people, and entire nations can easily get puffed up with pride when they start feeling they know more than others or are smarter than others. Another true statement is: pride comes before the fall. History is littered with sad tales of great people, groups, and nations that have fallen because of their pride. Cobra pilots and all of the rest of us need to remember that. I like John W. Gardner’s saying: "The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water".