Hi, I'm Matthew Burchette, and this is a
special Huey edition of Behind the Wings. Oh yeah! So this is going to be one of my favorite
episodes, because who doesn't love the Huey? If you know anything about the
Vietnam War, you have seen thousands of pictures of these guys all over the
country, doing all sorts of crazy things. But guess what? This is even a cooler
episode, because we've got two Vietnam helicopter Huey pilots that are with us
today. This is going to be awesome. But before we get to them, let's go check out some of the salient features of this aircraft. So what got this thing moving?
This baby right here. A Lycooming L-13 1,400 horsepower jet turbine engine. That
is awesome, but even more awesome is it swung those 47-foot blades at
6,600 revolutions per minute. Now what you didn't know is this is a "Mike" model. An M
model, which was made specifically as a gunship, which means it's got a kind of
an interesting rotor head. It's a 540-rotor head, which gives the the blades
way more play on the left, right, front and back. That's because these guys
carried a ton of ammunition, and you needed to be as maneuverable as possible,
because 1,400 horsepower sounds like a lot, but, when you're carrying rockets and
machine gun ammo and a bunch of people, that's not a lot of power. Plus, you got the humidity of Vietnam that's not good for lift either. Alright people, this is the good stuff.
I am here with a real live helicopter pilot, who was in Vietnam. And you did how many tours? Three.
Three tours. This is Colonel Bill Macpherson. Thank
you so much for being with us here today. This is a huge honor, because, I hate to
say it, but I consider you a friend of mine. We'll think about that. Okay. Now, going back to the history of this thing, this guy actually flew in Vietnam. It was built in 1967 by Bell Helicopter in
Fort Worth, Texas. So it went directly to Vietnam in 1967
and was issued and assigned to the 1st Battalion, 9th Air Cavalry Regiment, 1st Air Cavalry Division. Air Calvary Division. So no horses, just helicopter. That's right. That's right, and it served for three years combat. It has 21 bullet holes to
verify its combat time. It was used extensively as support for ground troops
who needed gun support. It escorted troop-carrying aircraft. It escorted
medical evacuation aircraft. And was extremely busy for three years, which
takes a toll on the mechanics, the turbine, the rotor systems. So at the end
of three years, it was shipped back to Bell Helicopter for rebuild in Amarillo,
Texas. The war was winding down at that time, it was 1971 then. And, as the war was winding down, they decided not to send it back to Vietnam, but issue it to the
National Guard. So it was issued to the Nebraska Army National Guard in 1971,
and it flew with the National Guard for many, many years and was maintained quite well.
And it was in 1996 that it was directed to fly to White Sands to become part of
this target drone program. And, as the program was cancelled a few years later,
it sat there on the airfield until I was able to retrieve it. Well, tell you what.
Do you want to do a little quick walk around and we can actually take a look at some of these places where it was shot. Alright, so we discussed earlier this
is a Mike model, which means it was purpose-built to be a gunship, and well
you can see, it's loaded for bear. Down here are two M60 flexmount machine guns.
That's a 7.62 millimeter machine gun. And they were actually on a mount, two on
each side that allowed them to move left and right and up and down. Not a lot, but
just enough that you didn't have to really aim the helicopter as much as you
would, if they were a fixed mount. Now, inboard of the machine guns is something
even scarier. Seven shot rocket pod with 2.75 inch folding fin aerial rockets.
These guys were monsters. They could carry a high-explosive warhead, white
phosphorus or, even scarier, this guy: 2,200 in each rocket of a flechette.
Think of it as a tiny steel arrow. This would just denude the countryside of any
vegetation and anybody in it. Super scary. But what's this bad boy right here? It's
just a door mounted M60. And the M60 is the same thing that this guy was. This is
in the infantry configuration, so, if these guys went down, you could literally
dismount this weapon and use it to defend yourself from the bad guys. So how much ammunition could these guys actually carry? Well, for example, this box
right here will carry 500 belted 7.62 rounds. A lot of guys would carry 80 to
90 of these boxes to feed these behemoths down here. That's a lot of
ammunition. But you got to keep in mind you can't just load yourself down with
ammo, because you got to keep fuel in mind, and, if you got a long mission, you
got to have more fuel and less ammo. But, if you got a short mission, you can
really load up on this and stay on station for quite a bit longer. We are here with Lieutenant Colonel Ken
Overturf. Thank you so much for being with us, sir. I'm going to take this thing
off my head. It's very cool, though. You flew H models, and you flew for Project Left Bank. That's correct. And that was looking for radio signals and... Locating the enemy via radio intercepts. And where were you doing that? At that time, the 1st Cavalry Division, the unit that I flew with was headquartered in Phước Vĩnh, Vietnam. In War Zone C right about the middle of
South Vietnam. What was it like to fly this thing? Do you miss it? Absolutely do. The feeling of power being able to maneuver a 4,000 pound object in
the air and being able to maneuver in ways that fixed-wing aircraft could never do. Oh, yeah. So for our viewers, and especially me, can you take us
through kind of what it's like, some tips and tricks on how to fly the Huey? Let's do a brief helicopter flying 101. Excellent. There are three maneuver controls on this helicopter. We'll go through them one at a time. Starting with the first one is the cyclic. The stick, if you will, right between your
legs. This cyclic provides the horizontal movement in the helicopter. And how it
does that is when the rotor head is spinning at its operational rpm of 6,600
revolutions per minute, it becomes like a giant dinner
plate, and you can envision this giant dinner plate. Now, with this cyclic,
what you're doing is balancing that giant dinner plate. Tip the cyclic
forward, the dinner plate tips forward, and the aircraft moves forward, left, right.
Next control is the collective. This control gives the vertical movement
capability. When you're ready to go up, pull the collective up, and it puts pitch
in the blades of that spinning plate. Then we go to the third control, which
are the anti-torque pedals. The torque, the power torque, caused by the power when you're putting the pitch in the blades moves us into Newton's Third
Law of Motion. For every action, the rotor head spinning counterclockwise, an equal
and opposite reaction, the fuselage would tend to turn clockwise. So to fly this
helicopter, all you have to do is balance the dinner plate. Manage your vertical
and accent, decent. And keep the nose straight with the pedals all the time. Oh, well that's not hard. Holy cow. Are you going to shake my hand or not? Well, I thought about it. In fuller... You heard it. You heard it. He'll never
say a nice thing about me again. I told you this was going to be my favorite
episode. Who doesn't love the Huey? And I love this old girl. And, frankly, I love
you guys too. Our pleasure. Colonel Bill, Colonel Ken. Thank you guys so much.
And thank you for tuning into Behind the Wings. And, as
always, if you've got questions or comments, hit us up on our YouTube
channel or our Facebook page. And we'll get back to you. Stay tuned.
We've got way more cool stuff coming.
I love the concept of this series, but the host talks to the audience like they're 3 years old.
@5:42 would love to see flechette rockets in DCS although if it simulated all 2200 darts, it would probably destroy the frame rate.