Foreign Fliers - Major Potty Break

Bright Angel Trail, Grand Canyon - photo by JoAnn Sturman

by Steven R. Oberst

As Fort Wolters was being drawn down in the 1970s and eventually closed in 1974, the TH-55 trainers there were being gradually moved to Fort Rucker. The Army planned to move all of the helicopter training there once Fort Wolters closed. All of the Army’s flight training would be done at one location instead of two. In order to accommodate the basic helicopter training program of the TH-55, the Army had to create a number of remote landing areas that students could use during training. Because Alabama was much more heavily vegetated then the prairie around Mineral Wells, TX, the Army created landing areas by clearing vegetation from a circle of land large enough to allow for helicopter landings. Some of these new landing areas were on the tops of small hills that are common in that area of Alabama.

Students, accompanied by an instructor, would practice remote site landings using these landing areas. In order to learn basic navigation skills, students in the TH-55 were also sent on solo training navigation flights. Solo landings and takeoffs were to be done only at the stagefields. Students were not allowed to land by themselves in a remote landing area.

One spring day Lieutenant Tango Delta from the country of Viceroy was flying a solo navigation mission in a TH-55. Feeling the need to take an immediate potty break, Lt Delta made a split second decision to land at a remote hilltop landing area to accomplish his number two task.

Fortunately, he had made several landings to this hilltop just a couple of days ago with his instructor, so he had no problems executing a perfect approach and landing to the middle of the area. Unfortunately, Lt Delta, in his hurry to exit the aircraft, forgot to throttle back the engine and lock down the collective. Intent on his mission, he exited to the right of the aircraft and went a ways down the hill to complete his job. Since the collective not be locked down, ground resonance began to occur and the helicopter started jumping off the ground. With each bounce it got a little higher until finally it went airborne, made a sharp left turn, and crashed halfway down the hill, exploding in a ball of flame.

Meanwhile, a TH-55 was flying overhead. The instructor, an Army Major, and the student, a Warrant Officer Candidate, both saw the helicopter crash. A radio call was made, but the Major was unable to contact anyone. Immediately the Major landed the aircraft in the clearing on the hilltop. The engine was throttled back and the collective locked down. Grabbing the fire bottle in the aircraft, the Major and the student exited the helicopter and went down the hill to investigate the crash.

Oblivious to all of this, and with his task completed, Lt Delta came up the other side of the hill. He got into the Major’s helicopter, throttled up the engine and took off. (Imagine the look on the Major’s face when he looked up and saw his aircraft taking off.) Lt Delta dutifully completed his navigation mission and returned to his stagefield. Since this was a Friday, he left with his buddies for a weekend in Enterprise, where they probably took turns posing for pictures in front of the boll weevil statue.

A couple of hours went by before the maintenance supervisor at Lt Delta’s stagefield was scratching his head about having the right number of aircraft, but having one with the wrong tail number. At about the same time the operations officer, a Chief Warrant Officer at the Major’s stagefield, realized he had a helicopter with the Major and his student on it that was long overdue. Just as he was about to initiate search operations for the missing aircraft, the telephone rang. It was the Major. He and the student had walked a couple of miles to a farmhouse. “You are not going to believe this.” he said. “We saw a helicopter crash, went down to investigate, and someone stole ours.”

“No shit!” the Chief replied.