Exploring a Battle Tested Huey of the Vietnam War | History Traveler Episode 161

[Music] well on this channel i try to cover as many different eras in history as i possibly can and one era that i've really not gone into much depth on is that of the the vietnam war now i i do plan on visiting vietnam sunday but until then we'll have to tell a little bit of the story of vietnam through the lens of one of the most iconic aircraft of the vietnam war the huey helicopter [Music] all right so what we are looking at here is the bell uh-1 huey helicopter this was the this was the workhorse for the army assault units in vietnam and this particular helicopter was manufactured in 1968 and actually saw action in vietnam from 1969 to 1971 and it is so cool to be up close to one of these and uh to learn a little bit more about them now there were about seven thousand of these that were used during the vietnam war uh they're they're small they're light they can fly at low altitudes land in small spaces really easy to maneuver and this was going to completely change uh the way that uh the united states military performed combat all right now this particular huey uh in vietnam was a part of the 191st helicopter assault company and is is maintained by the army aviation heritage foundation which which is a great group that is kind of keeping aviation history alive now i don't know a whole lot about huey helicopters so i try and surround myself with people who do uh this is this is john uh he is with the gateway chapter of the army aviation heritage foundation and uh he's gonna kind of walk me through a little bit how this helicopter works [Music] all right so the hue the huey um uh-1h this this model is is a two-bladed rotor system commonly known as a semi-rigid it has a lycoming t-53l 13 engine with 1400 shaft horsepower it was the first uh the huey that was developed with the first turbine engine in a helicopter for the military configured for vietnam they would have crew chief gunner and on the other side a gunner and then pilot co-pilot or commander and what they used to call peter pilot and we have it configured for for 10 passengers two pilots and a kerchief um the huey was a workhorse in vietnam as everybody knows it's one of the classic sounds of the vietnam war you have gentlemen working on it right now um you can see inside there's a left hand the seats don't have the armor armor uh plating here to protect them during vietnam on both sides which which added to the weight of the aircraft plus they used to wear what's called chicken plate or armor so they're pretty heavy getting out of here and they only carry six or seven guys or 67 troops with full packs on because of the humidity and the high density altitude we can carry 10 as passengers [Music] all right now here's something kind of cool on on this huey now this would have not been standard issue during the vietnam war you would not have a tesla battery powering the electrical system but it's kind of cool that they have it now so the controls on a huey or or any helicopter are usually the same on both sides and in the next to the pilot is called the collective and on the collective is the throttle the throttle controls the um just like a motorcycle throttle you put it you roll it all the way up to where you need it and usually it's a hundred percent for this aircraft and when you pull up on the collective it puts pitch into the rotor system which creates lift so that's your up and down or your power you push it down you take pitch out of the rotor system it takes power on the road system slows you down in the center some people call it the stick and the official word for it is cyclic and it is directional control whichever way i move the cyclic the helicopter will follow hanging off the rotor system and just follow along at my feet are the anti-torque pedals and they counter torque of the aircraft for every action as an opposite reaction so the rotor system is doing this and those want to go that way to keep the nose straight we have to have left pedal when we have power and right pedal when we reduce power and it flies the tail rotor how's that okay so in uh so in dumb guy language this is up and down up and down forward backwards sideways which is directional and that the pedals keep you from spinning out of control yes all right that's true cool yeah pretty simple it's pretty simple and like in a in a in this aircraft the pic sits on the right side in an airplane they sit in your side on the left seat we put it over here because it's easier to you can set the collective and work your radios at the same time okay and and pic is pilot and company command second in command okay vietnam was the commander aircraft commander you normally said on that side there's more visibility and then the new guy would sit on this side okay and they would train him up and let him do the flying yeah cool that's what i've read at least so what we're looking at here is uh instrument panel and just a whole bunch of stuff that i don't understand and uh in the middle between the pilot and the co-pilot seat look at all of this this just kind of demonstrates how well trained the pilots of this aircraft have to be these are all com so you have like navigation comms there here you have different ways to communicate within the helicopter i know i'm speaking in dumb guy language here and there's a reason and then right here this this one is the most important one that's where you play fortunate sun over the radio [Music] so the crew here was nice enough to set up this gun mount for me so that i could show how this was set up on one of these hueys this is a gun carriage for an m60 machine gun fired a 7.62 nato round of course this is a gas operated air cooled fully automatic machine gun could fire about 500 to 650 rounds per minute and of course you would have your your pilot and your co-pilot the crew chief would double as a door gunner and then on the opposite side you would also have a door gunner operating one of these m60s [Music] pretty cool [Music] all kinds of little things that i keep seeing on this like a little smoke grenade here where you can pop smoke get uh indication of wind direction or use it as a communication tool yeah interesting all right so uh been learning quite a bit about the huey helicopter and i've just spent quite a bit of time talking to a gentleman who probably knows more than anybody here this is roger solzer he was a test pilot in the late 1950s for the huey and did two tours in vietnam and has all kinds of fascinating information about this aircraft [Music] my name is roger salser i'm a retired regular army lieutenant colonel i had i was a test pilot on the yh-40 back in 58 and 59 of the last century and we had numerous issues with the aircraft at that time with sink rates and auto rotation with fuel control issues and several other problems that we procured before the aircraft became issued to the army and as a general utility helicopter the uh-1b which to my mind the uh-1b was the most uh smoothest flying heli of any model that i had the opportunity to fly and i flew everything from in the huey series from the uh yh40 to the uh-1h which i flew on my second tour in vietnam i had two tours in vietnam as previously stated first time was during the johnson buildup in 1965 and 66. we arrived in vietnam in about september of 1965. you're going to do that and we spent a year there flying combat assault primarily out of the fuloi area which is north west of saigon at the bottom of the iron triangle doing numerous general support of combat assaults for the first air cav uh not for the first year cav for the air 18th airborne and for the first infantry division was general support and many vietnam divisions that we supported in the area our group made the first combat assault in the kuchi area which turned out to be the hobo woods and the coochie tunnels we had a very busy day that day with several aircraft being shot up pretty well and we had many many interesting uh experiences during that first tour i think i'll let it go at that but it was war and it was tough and people were getting hurt but we stuck with it and we were very proud that we were able to show what air mobility could do for the infantry soldier because we took those young men out there under orders but when it came time to go get them we went after every mother's son we could find and it sort of was amazing how fast they could run to a helicopter when uh when there was action going on they could bend over and we'd be shooting on top of their heads and over their heads and they could they could get into that helicopter sometimes before even hit the ground that was what was necessary but most of the pickups we did uh were not that not too wild most of the the fighting that when we dropped them off they were successful in their mission and it was an easy pickup but uh on more than one occasion we had to go in and get them i used to be so young [Music] i know what i should do now know if for a long [Music] well that was pretty dang cool uh was not expecting to be able to uh sit and talk to somebody like like roger today but to hear from somebody who has really been there from the beginning through the entire life of the huey helicopter uh pretty amazing and ah lord have mercy uh i guess that tomorrow we are going to experience this thing firsthand and go up in it so should be pretty exciting [Music] [Music] struggle with destiny and i get through no wonder i feel blue [Music] you

Channel: The History Underground

Views: 53,190

Rating: 4.9683795 out of 5

Keywords: history, history travel, travel, history traveler, vietnam, vietnam war, military vehicles, vietnam war documentary, bell huey, vietnam helicopters, helicopter, war stories, vietnam vet, vietnam veteran, history underground, missouri, st louis

Id: 0mXjuS0LhJ0

Length: 14min 49sec (889 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 01 2021