All across America and around the world, this is Veterans Radio.
And now, your host for today's program, Dale Throneberry.
And welcome to Veterans Radio.
My name is Dale Throneberry, a CW-2 helicopter pilot in Vietnam.
Welcome to Veterans Radio.
Today we've got kind of a special best of Veterans Radio, one of our rotor head segments.
We're going to be talking to two helicopter pilots.
We've got Kate Meltzer, who is an AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopter pilot, and Phil
Marshall, who was a Medevac pilot in Vietnam.
So those are going to be the people that we're going to be listening to.
But what we need to talk to you about today is our upcoming fundraiser.
That's right.
We're going to be talking about the River Time again here at Veterans Radio.
And Radio in the River is coming up on Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, September 22nd.
And it's going to be at a really great personal private home on the Huron River here in Ann
Arbor.
It's going to be running from 2 to 5 p.m.
And our guests are going to be Doug Bradley.
And Doug Bradley is an Army veteran.
He served as a combat correspondent in Vietnam in 1970.
Since then he returned home to Wisconsin and he helped establish the Vets House, a storefront
community-based service center for Vietnam era veterans.
But he is also just a fanatic on the music of Vietnam.
And he has written a couple of books.
One is called We Got to Get Out of This Place, you know, a theme song for everybody everywhere,
it seemed like.
And so he's written that book and he wrote another one that's called Who'll Stop the
Rain about Creedence Clairrata Revival.
He's lectures on the music of Vietnam and he talks about the culture of the music in
Vietnam.
So I think it's going to be a great guest.
I think you'll really enjoy him if you get to come out to our fundraiser.
Our other guest is John Bernstein.
And John is the curator of the Arms and Armor Collection at the National Museum of the
Marine Corps.
John is also a helicopter pilot.
He is a post 9-11 Army helicopter pilot.
And so we're going to be talking pilot type stuff.
And also the museum and the music and the storytelling, which is what we do here at
Veterans Radios.
We're trying to collect as many stories as we can from our veteran community.
And so we're asking for you to help us out, you know, to make a donation.
If you can't come to the fundraiser, donations are always accepted.
You can go to our website, veteransradio.org, and you can click on the picture of the radio
on the river.
If you don't want to go through that process, you can click on the little donate button
at the top of the website.
So we encourage you to come on out.
I think it's going to be really fun.
We've got all kinds of auction gifts.
We've got giveaways.
We've got veterans radio swag, as they call sweatshirts, hats, all kinds of things that
you could purchase at the event.
And I think it's going to be a good time.
We're hoping for good weather.
And yeah, so hopefully go to veteransradio.org.
I think that you'll really check it out.
I think you're going to find that there's many, many things that you could, the stories
that you would find very interesting, the characters and people that we have talked
to over the last 20 years.
We need your help.
So hopefully you can spare a dime, well more than a dime.
But anyway, so I'd like you to do that if you can.
So remember that Sunday, September 22nd, here in Ann Arbor, Michigan, radio on the river,
our third annual radio on the river.
So more about that a little bit later on too.
Speaking of sponsors, we have been doing this program for 20 years now.
And we couldn't do it without our sponsors.
We've got some great ones.
So let me tell you who we've got out there.
So number one is legal help for veterans.
Legal help for veterans specializes in veteran disability claims, give legal help for veterans
a call at 800-69-3-4800 or go to their website, legalhelpforveterans.com.
The National Veterans Business Development Council, better known as NVBDC, is the nation's
leading third party authority for certification of veteran-owned businesses.
For more information, you can go to their website, NVBDC.org, or give them a call at 888-237-8433.
By the way, if you are a small veteran-owned business and you want to do business with
the federal government or with many corporations that want to do business with veteran-owned
businesses, you need to get certified.
And these are the folks that can help you do that.
So again, that's NVBDC.org.
Charles S. Kettles, VA Medical Center here in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
For more information, go to va.gov.
We like to think that we have one of the best, if not the best, VA Medical Center in the
country.
Vietnam Veterans of America.
Never again will one generation of veterans abandon another.
For more information, go to their website, vva.org.
Locally, it's the Irwin Prescor and American Legion Post-46 and the Charles S. Kettles,
Vietnam Veterans of America, Chapter 310, both of Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Both of them have been supporting us since 2003.
If you'd like to support Veterans Radio, as I mentioned before, please go to our website,
veteransradio.org.
Click on the donation button.
Thank you in advance.
Speaking of NVBDC, each month we'd like to highlight one of their members.
And this month we're going to highlight Todd McCracken.
And Todd is the President and CEO of the National Small Business Association.
Jim Falsone, my partner, recorded his interview with Todd a couple of weeks ago.
So we're going to play that right now.
So Jim, here you go.
Hi, I'm Jim Falsone and welcome.
This is Veterans Radio's spotlight on the National Veteran Business Development Council.
Better down is NVBDC.org.
Veterans Radio America has a partnership with NVBDC where we talk and put some spotlight
on the value of being a certified veteran-owned business.
NVBDC is the nation's leading third-party authority for certification of veteran-owned
businesses of all sizes.
It's a 501c3 nonprofit established in 2013.
It addresses the growing need to identify and certify both service-debilled and veteran-owned
businesses in the government and commercial marketplace.
It administers a rigorous certification process designed to withstand the scrutiny of governmental
and corporate entities seeking to utilize certified companies.
We want to welcome to Veterans Radio Todd McCracken.
He is the President and CEO of the National Small Business Association.
He directs all their advocacy and program-orientated operations.
He's been there for, as he just told me, about forever.
Todd, welcome.
Welcome to Veterans Radio.
Thank you, Jim.
It's great to be here.
Well, we're going to talk about the National Small Business Association and some of its
veterans activities, its network.
But before we start there, you were recently at an NVBDC program where you got to speak
last month.
Tell us a little bit about why you think it's important for veteran-owned businesses to
get certified.
Well, we're lucky enough that we're at a period of time where big corporations really see
it as important to engage more deeply with, well, small businesses generally, but especially
with veteran-owned small companies.
And they're reaching out in a way they hadn't for a long time.
And NVBDC really is the place to go to get certified and to become one of those businesses
that can do business with those much larger companies.
And they do just a great job.
As you said, they have not been around that long, a little over a decade now.
But they've really developed a really strong network, great relationships with some of
the biggest companies in the country, and really run the only viable and really rigorous
certification program for veterans.
And it's something that opens all kinds of doors for the veterans who've gotten certified
through them.
And I just can't say enough good stuff about their work.
Well, certainly some of your members at the National Small Business Association are probably
certified by NVBDC.
You got the opportunity to attend one of the kind of premier functions of NVBDC.
After you get certified, they don't leave you alone.
They help you in the business world.
And as you know, as a National Association, that networking is all important.
Tell us what you observed and your impressions out of the NVBDC networking event held in
Detroit in August of 2024.
Yeah, I was just there last month.
It was a great event.
I was able to speak to the folks that were going on in Washington, DC, that affect small
companies and about our veterans network.
But they were also able to hear from a number of big companies on how they do procurement,
how they work with small businesses, how they get involved with them from sort of an overview
perspective.
But then all the veterans that were there were then able to sort of sit down and at
the end of the network, not just for each other, but with representatives from all those
companies and figure out what they're looking for, how to get contracts, how to develop their
businesses.
And boy, the range of veteran businesses that were there was really impressive.
A lot of folks from all kinds of sectors of the economy doing all kinds of interesting
things, super diverse crowd.
And I think they got a lot out of networking with each other as well and learning from
each other about what has worked, what hasn't worked, how they've been able to advance their
businesses.
And all of course, sharing this veteran service background that I think really brings them
together as well in this sort of atmosphere of trust and camaraderie.
It's really great of that.
Well, we certainly want to encourage people, business owners out there who are veteran-owned
to look into NVBDC.org, see if certification might be right for them.
And maybe it'll help boost their business.
It's only a door opener.
You still have to be able to perform.
All right, let's get into today's program.
As I mentioned, we're going to be talking about helicopter pilots and some of the training
that we all went through.
So our guests are, as I mentioned, Kate Melcher, an AH-64 Apache longhorn attack pilot, and
Phil Marshall is a Medevac pilot.
The other thing about Kate and Phil is that Kate is also the executive director of Fisher
House Michigan.
And for those of you not familiar with that, she'll talk about it a little bit in the program,
but Fisher House is sort of like a Ronald McDonald House for the VA hospitals.
And so if you're a patient at the VA hospital and you need some place for your family to
stay, Fisher House is what they do.
So she's been doing that for a long time now.
And Phil Marshall is an author, speaker, and a member of American Huey 369 down in Indiana
where they refurbished Huey's and other aircraft.
I think they have a Cobra now too.
And they'll take those out to various functions and provide rides for people who want to ride
in those things.
And he's written a whole bunch of books called Helicopter Rescues in Vietnam.
The true stories of daring helicopter rescues is told by the men who flew them.
So I think this is going to be cool.
So I'm looking forward to talking with them and I get to go back in time here.
So we're going back to April of 2021.
So stay tuned.
I'm going to have a little intro music and then we'll get right into our interview.
Thanks for listening.
He blesses the boy as they stand in line, the smell of gun grease and their bayonets
they shine.
He's there to help them, all that he can, to make them feel wanted.
He's a good holy man.
Sky pilots.
How high can you fly?
You never are.
Reach the sky.
He smiles at the young soldiers, tells them it's all right.
He knows of their fear in the forthcoming fight.
Soon there'll be blood and many will die.
Mothers and fathers back home, they will cry.
Sky pilots.
So welcome fellow rotor heads to veterans radio again.
Yes.
Hello again.
Great to be here.
It's always fun to talk about helicopters.
It is.
And so what I wanted to start off with was how did you get into flying helicopters?
That's the question of the day.
So since Kate outranks all of us.
She is a real live officer.
Yeah.
Okay.
Kate, how did you get involved in flying helicopters?
Believe it or not, it started when I was working in Washington.
I was not one of those kids that went to air shows and looked up and said, I want to do that one day.
You know, I, I hear a lot of my aviation colleagues came to aviation that way from a sheer fascination.
And for me, it was different.
I was actually working in the US Senate when September 11th happened.
And when Afghanistan kicked off and then Iraq kicked off.
I was drafting letters to gold star mothers.
And that was a terrible way I thought for me to spend the war.
So I started talking with colleagues who had been in the service before and, you know, I had a mentor in the Senate.
He was a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel named Bill Suity.
And he said, the best place to learn leadership, the best place to make a change in the lives of others and to have impact is to be a company commander in the Army or in the Marine Corps.
And at the time, women were not allowed in combat.
I know very well that women experience combat throughout the Afghanistan Iraq conflicts, but legally they weren't allowed in combat.
They weren't allowed in combat arms, MOS is, but we were allowed an aviation.
And I figured if, if I'm ever going to war, I want guns.
I want to be able to shoot back. I want to be able to defend our guys on the ground.
I'm actually wearing my regimental crest from when I was in the first of the 104th and it reads above the best.
That was our mission to fly above our nation's best and to provide close air support and to protect them on convoy ops.
That's what I wanted to do.
And so it was sort of a curvy path to get me into aviation, but you know, eventually I enlisted was a commissioned officer went to flight school at Fort Rucker and I became rated a H64 D longbow helicopter pilot.
Awesome. You could blow stuff up.
Phil, so, Phil Marshall, how'd you get involved?
I went to college right out of high school and I was no more no more ready for college than the man on the moon. I was more interested where the parties were and I've been arrested enough where the library was.
So, without having degrees to go back to Ohio State University, you know, they told me perhaps I should pursue another career.
And in the late 60s, if you were not a full time four year student or if you weren't married with at least one child you were draft eligible.
So I decided to go to each branch of the service whoever offered me the best deal I was going to enlist.
And when the army said that I told him I was interested in in flying but as a crewman I didn't have my degree.
And the recruiter says well we got this here warned officer flight school will make a helicopter pilot and I said I don't have a degree.
He says you don't need one. So, at the time you could go into war and also flight school right out of high school and graduate high school at 18 a year later you graduate flight school at 19 you're flying helicopters in Vietnam.
I was two years of college I was 21 when I got to Vietnam but like Kate I wanted to be a gunship pilot are you kidding me I'm going to go in guns blazing I'm going to defend myself and come home.
And the army had different ideas for me before I graduated from flight school they told 24 of us are going to Medivac school at Fort Sam Houston.
And I wound up flying dust off helicopters in Vietnam on arm Huey's. And I was devastated but as it turned out it was the best thing that happened to me it was incredibly rewarding.
As aircraft commander I've got one aircraft I've got a crew I've got a mission, and it's all up to me everything that happens once.
When we get the alarm that we've got wounded it's all on my shoulders and talk about command decision and authority. It was it was just absolutely incredible to be able to do that at 21.
And some of my best friends in our unit again 19 years old aircraft commanders in complete charge of the mission and coordinating everything so it was. Yeah it was an amazing time and no regrets it was the best thing that happened to me.
Well I can kind of I agree with you entirely Phil I was also not an exemplary college student myself.
So I did the same thing I went left school.
As Phil pointed out we were eligible for the draft almost immediately because I got mine. I got the letter six weeks later.
Yeah I did well. Yeah, come on down so I ran down to the recruiters and no offense to those in the infantry at the time I didn't know what your jobs was in the infantry.
I just knew that it wasn't a good idea for me and talking to the Air Force and the Navy they each had six month waiting periods to get in and I said that's no good.
And the Marines that I could go that afternoon.
And I could be a lieutenant.
Because they have those really cool uniforms.
And I said well let me check I have a date tonight I'll go.
You know it goes on.
And then I went down to the army recruiter and as Phil mentioned he says well you know I see you have some college.
And I like sort of.
And I said and he said, oh you know they look into the war and officer flight program.
And so I fly fly what and he said helicopters and I'm going I've seen a couple.
Obviously I was tuned out of whatever was going on in the war in the world even and so took the aptitude test past the aptitude test.
Next thing you know I'm off my on my way over to Fort Polk Louisiana.
And you know first everybody had to go through that.
And our advanced training was most of us ended up at Fort Walters, Texas.
And so I did want to talk a little bit about our experiences of the first time that we actually got into a helicopter.
So I'm going to fill out start with you this time.
So tell me all right first time and tell the the aircraft that you flew and kind of describe it to our eyes because we do have a lot of army people, you know military people out there but we also have civilians that would that are not familiar with the different types of aircraft that we flew.
Well we had three types of training aircraft as our primary helicopters but I was fortunate or unfortunate enough to be chosen to buy the th 55 which was what we call the Mattel Messerschmitt a little two place aircraft piston engine manual throttle and it was a huge.
Guys I forget to 269 was a civilian version, but very, very tiny, not very forgiving.
And the first day I learned that the state of Texas was not big enough to learn to hover one of those things.
That was the first criteria was to learn to hover if you, if you couldn't hover or if you couldn't solo you were set back for two weeks and if you still couldn't do it you were, you were history.
You were a lot of pressure, but very challenging and and once you accomplished each stage.
It was just, you know you just got a little stronger morally and confidence and so on until they finally nine months later you're flying Huey so it was.
It was a great experience that's for sure and and of course the instructor pilots were very forgiving. My favorite phrase from my first instructor pilot was a wrap over the head on the helmet and you ain't got the guy the brains God gave a constipated eight.
So yeah they were very patient with this and very forgiving.
Yeah, every day you could get one of those terrible terrible pink slips.
Oh yeah yeah two pink slips and you were in trouble. Big trouble.
This was at Fort Walters, Texas, which is about what was that that was west of Fort Worth Dallas area, about an hour's drive west but got very very few passes and during that training never did make it to Fort Worth I think we made it to mineral wells
perhaps lovingly referred to as miserable Gulch, but the the the training and the aircraft. Well, let me let me put it this way.
Every two weeks the army started a new class and the classes consisted of about 250 worn officer candidates, about 150 officer students and about 50 Vietnamese students so every two weeks the army is training starting
on 450 new helicopter pilots.
Virtually all the Vietnamese graduated regardless of how good they were. Same thing for the officers.
But the warrant officers I think about 175 of the original 250 might a class graduated.
We had a rather high washout rate because we were getting officer development at the same time they're teaching us to fly and a lot of guys just were not cut out to be officers, not the right attitude or the right attitude or attitude whatever.
But yeah there was a rather high washout for the worn officer candidate class but even still the army was training 250 300 or more pilots every two weeks.
That's it was very busy time that's that's for darn sure because we had to go through that four weeks of snowbird training, where we learned how to become officers.
He didn't even see an aircraft.
No, no, and you did the square meals. You know you had to sell it to your chair and you know try to get food in your mouth without looking at a type of thing.
And we had people wash out of that part is as Phil just mentioned because they just couldn't put up with the, the, the officer development also known as for
officer development because we many of us were not officer material in that case.
So, Kate what about what about you when did you, where did you start your training and what kind of aircraft were you in.
I started and completed my training at Fort Rucker.
So, the interesting thing talking with Vietnam era pilots is that I hear all of the reasons that our flight training happened the way that it did.
So, for us, all of those requirements were front loaded. It was months and months and months before we were allowed to see a helicopter, let alone touch one.
So, you would not even report to Fort Rucker for flight training unless you had completed walk school war and officer candidate school, or West Point or ROTC or whatever your source of commission was you had to be a fully formed officer before you were allowed to even start the ground
portion of flight school. Then we would go on and we would do aeromedical training, which was all book learning and PowerPoints and, you know, you, you learn all of the things that can happen to your body when you're in flight, all the medical issues that you can
have and how it affects your flight performance.
And then we all had to go through the dunker course, which was one of my favorite days in all of the entire army. You know, we don't often fly feet wet or over water, but they wanted to make sure that we could survive a situation in which not only were we flying over water, but we stopped
flying while over water. So, you know, they, they put us in our flight suits and they threw us in a pool and just kept dunking us throughout the day there's a, there's a mock helicopter cockpit down there that will actually spin underwater.
They'll turn out the lights and you'll have darked out goggles in case you had a nighttime catastrophic event.
And a lot of guys even washed out at that part, you know, their spatial orientation was, was changed enough that they couldn't figure out how to egress from a downed helicopter underwater.
So the academics of aeromed guys washed out, dunker guys wash out, Sear school, survive evade resist escape.
Because of the environment that we're in now.
All army aviators have to go through the same level of Sear training that special forces soldiers do.
It's not just survivor school any longer.
There, there are actually portions of the school in which you learn resist and escape from a POW type environment.
And there's open source information that'll tell you a little bit more about that, but it is a classified school for obvious reasons, but we would have guys that that couldn't take the mental or physical stress of Sear school and they would wash out.
And so the washouts that you were talking about that were happening during flight training, the army decided they didn't want to waste the money, you know, putting these guys in an aircraft and spending the flight hours which were so precious by the time I went through.
They did all of the washing out up front so by the time you actually got through your systems course and were allowed to go to Karen's army airfield and see a helicopter.
You saw a lot of guys on your right and left that weren't there anymore.
I'm sorry.
Go ahead, Phil.
I was going to make a comment about your your dunking training.
We had none of that.
And when we got to Vietnam we were issued a pair of water wings that we draped over the back of our seat.
And as dust off we often took our wounded out to the hospital ship so we could fly miles out over the South China Sea.
I never even tried on my water rings. I don't even know if they worked.
But yeah, we had none of that training. They, you know, you guys learned the hard way, you know, from our mistakes.
But I just found it interesting that you know, here we are flying single engine aircraft single single aircraft period out over open water a day and night.
And yeah, it was, I guess we were taking a risk.
I know it's me. The only thing they taught me was that if you if you had to do an auto rotation or anything into water is that just before you got to the water you were supposed to flip the aircraft on its side.
Yeah. Otherwise the blades were going to beat you up.
And yeah, wait till the blade stop and then get out.
Yes. Yeah.
And that was the extent of my water training.
Kate, I want to come back to you. What type of aircraft did you learn to hover?
We started on the TH 67. It's called the creek in the army and it actually was just retired out of the army fleet a couple of months ago.
But for those who aren't familiar with what that aircraft is, it looks similar to say a news or traffic helicopter that you might see in the civilian world.
It's a small single engine aircraft with skins and it's a great agile aircraft to learn to hover.
You know, we are the greatest pastime was watching other people hover because you oh my gosh they look like idiots I'm going to do so much better than that they look like they're at their wrestling school.
This is ridiculous.
You know, and the ITs are always right there just to make sure that you know you don't crash and burn hovering 10 feet off the ground.
But everybody thinks that they're going to do it better and they're like oh my gosh, well, this guy has two left feet, you know, there's of course he's, he's hovering hovering like that, you know, but I can do better.
And without fail, all of us go out there and we look the exact same way just complete idiots and it usually takes, I don't know, five to seven days of just scrambled eggs out there trying to figure out what in the world you're doing.
And one day you show up and you just know how to hover. We call that finding your hover button.
What was the feeling that that.
Well, first of all, there was a little bit of surprise because it's days of frustration because you just can't quite get it and it's always because you're trying to over control the helicopter.
Always. You know you don't realize, you know, the type of control touch it actually takes to fly into to hover. And so it takes a while for you to just calm all of that down.
And realize that you've got to figure out how to fly with the helicopter. And the day that you actually get it. It's, you know, surprise for about a split second, and then it's total confidence.
Oh, I got this. Look at me.
Yeah.
But once you find that hover button, it doesn't go away and I cannot tell you nobody can tell you the difference between wrestling squirrels and hovering. It just happens. It just clicks for whatever reason. Nobody can tell you why it just happened.
It does. It just happens. And we have described it as when you're watching all these other people out there trying to hover and they're spinning around and the aircraft is going way up high and it bounces off the ground and
and so forth and then suddenly it stops. And it's not a perfect cover. Now two things either happened. You found that hover button or the instructor took over.
Usually the instructor took over.
I have the controls. Get out.
Yeah.
And every day you were tested on something. You had to meet certain criteria. And if you didn't do that, you would get what we call a pink slip for that day. And if you've got more than one pink slip, you would get a test ride.
And that would be with a usually a senior instructor would take you out and say this is useless. Go on home to wherever you're from or okay, we're going to try it again or you are recycled, which was the kiss of death for many people because you didn't want to leave your classmates.
And I was thinking when you were talking about that is how the people would be sitting in the latrine with two plungers and they'd have a plunger stuck to the wall behind them and they'd have one on the floor and they'd be doing people can't see me doing this but you know
practicing your practicing.
Yeah, of course you've got your two left, you know, your two left feet are out there also trying to control thing and maybe a real quick lesson to our to our audience of people that aren't familiar how a helicopter actually works is there are four main controls.
And you've got the cyclic which controls your sideward forward backward movement. And you got your collective what they call the collective which is your power, and that controls your up and down movement. And then they have two pedals that you would control because the main blade is
going around the body of the aircraft has a tendency to want to go in the opposite direction. And so you would, you know the little tail rotor that you see on a helicopter is controlled by these two pedals and every time you made a change in any one of the controls, you had to make an adjustment for the
tail rotor or you would spin around. And, you know, it's funny the guys who fly fixed wings, you know they they don't understand how a helicopter works and they say what do you just beat the air into submission.
Exactly. We went through a whole aerodynamics course so we we learned aerodynamically how the helicopter operates. You know it was all an important part of, you know, if you're in an emergency situation, you can more easily recover from an emergency situation if you understand the
physics behind how your aircraft operates.
And Dale one thing looking back that I've always realized was that in flight school I learned to work the controls of a helicopter. In combat I learned to fly the aircraft.
Right. Yes, absolutely. We need to take another real quick break here. And so we're talking right now with Kate Meltzer and Phil Marshall, and we're talking about helicopters and what it was like to fly them and I think when we come back we might tell a couple of little
stories to our audience and also we want to really want to pay tribute to our crews because without our crews we never would have gotten off the ground and stayed off the ground, which is always a good point there.
So you're listening to Veterans Radio. We'll be right back.
If you have a VA claim denied by the Board of Veterans Appeals, contact Legal Help for Veterans at 1-800-693-4800. They're experts in handling cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. Their number again, 1-800-693-4800.
As a flight leader, Freeman supported a heavily engaged American infantry battalion in the Eitrang Valley in the Republic of Vietnam. The unit was almost out of ammunition after taking some of the heaviest casualties of the war, fighting off a relentless attack from a highly motivated, heavily armed enemy force.
When the infantry commander closed the helicopter landing zone due to intense direct enemy fire, Freeman risked his own life by flying his unarmed helicopter through a gauntlet of enemy fire time after time, delivering critically needed ammunition, water, and medical supplies to the besieged battalion.
His flights had a direct impact on the battle's outcome by providing the engaged units with timely supplies of ammunition critical to their survival. After medical evacuation helicopters refused to fly into the area due to intense enemy fire, Captain Freeman flew 14 separate rescue missions, providing life-saving evacuation of an estimated 30 seriously wounded soldiers, some of whom would not have survived had he not acted.
All flights were made into a small emergency landing zone within 100 to 200 yards of the defensive perimeter, where heavily committed units were perilously holding off the attacking elements.
The Medal of Honor series is a production of Veterans Radio.
8255, a message from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
We're back here on Veterans Radio and we're talking helicopters today. Our owner head radio is what we're trying to do. I guess I've included Kate Meltzer and Phil Marshall, both helicopter pilots and of course myself.
I couldn't imagine that I would ever do anything like that. I can remember my instructor, and his name was Berger. We did our warm-ups, I guess you could say, for the day, and everything seemed to go really well.
We went back to the stage field, he landed and he got out and I said, where are you going? He said, just take it around, take it around three times. I said, who? Oh, that's me. Okay, we can do this.
So now you're talking to the tower and all this other stuff and off you go and you get up over a thing and you're going, holy moly, look at this. This is just awesome.
So how did you feel, Phil, about soloing? Yeah, the same thing as Kate. It was just a sense of accomplishment. And my first thought was, hey, maybe I really can do this.
And, you know, it was testing your metal and your abilities and everything. And it was just one challenge after another. You know, you first you learn to hover and then you soloed and then you start doing cross-countries and then you're flying two students or whatever.
And it was just one challenge after another and after you passed each challenge, it's again, hey, maybe I really can do this.
And of course, everybody knew they were going to Vietnam. There was no question about that. And even though you were getting closer and closer to that fate and you knew that one out of ten pilots were probably going to be killed and two more out of ten were going to be wounded,
you still couldn't wait to get there because you knew when you got there that you had proved that, yeah, you really were a combat helicopter pilot.
But like I say, you learn to fly the aircraft when you got in country with an experienced pilot, that's for sure.
So our solo was a little different because at that point in time, the TH-67s were experiencing what is called a cyclic hard over, which is an uncommanded input, which means as a human, we didn't make that maneuver and the aircraft did it on its own and it would basically turn on its side in flight.
Or on the ground. So this, it was an incredibly dangerous situation. And so we always had an instructor pilot with us.
We actually, there was an aircrew that was lost because of this cyclic hard over phenomenon and Fort Rocker didn't want to risk any more flight crews. So there was a seasoned instructor pilot with us every single flight, no matter what.
On solo day, that instructor pilot turned off his ICS, which is the radio inside the cockpit and sat on his hands.
So he was there in case there was an absolute emergency, but he wasn't talking to you. He wasn't talking to tower. He was just physically there in case of emergency.
But you still have that same or that similar sensation. Oh my God, I got to figure out. So I'm pretty good. I know how to fly at this point, but you want me to fly and talk on the radio and not sound like an idiot.
I'm going to sound like an idiot. Okay.
You know, just remembering that you, this is me and here I am. Here's where I want to go. You know, just the real basic stuff and you want to sound like John Wayne on the radio, you know, you want to sound like, yeah, you know, you just want to sound cool, and you don't.
So, you know, trying to fumble through the radio calls takes you down a couple of pegs. But for me, my, you know, bigger than life day was the day that I finished the Apache course.
And, you know, you may be getting to that deal but when you talked about how soloing was the best day.
My best day came a little bit later.
I think my best day was when I when I survived an auto rotation the first time.
You're turning off what?
Yeah.
You may need to explain that to the to the non-rotor heads and to the civilians. Good.
An auto rotation is a helicopter has some unusual aerodynamics. Let's put it that way. But when the engine stops, which is not a good thing, but when it does stop, you can land it safely.
And so what what you do, as soon as the engine quits is that you lower the collective so you take all of the pressure off of the rotor blade so they keep spinning, sort of like a clutch on an old English bike.
You know, you want to just keep that that rotor going. And as you fall to the earth at about 1500 feet per second, it turned the aircraft into the wind.
And as you get closer to the ground, you kind of pull back on the cyclic which raises the nose of the aircraft and you pull in the collective as fast as you can.
We call it pop the collective. And so you pop it. The idea is that the aircraft will stop for a second and it will hopefully then lower itself onto the ground nice and smoothly.
And so we had to practice these. I don't know how many hundreds and hundreds of these things we did.
Sometimes out of hover, sometimes during a turn, sometimes I take off all these different emergency procedures that we had to learn.
And I just loves the ability that I finally developed after thinking I was just going to go plow right into the ground that I could do this pretty much anytime.
There are cartoons and things up there of helicopter pilots that maybe we'll put up on the Veterans Radio website to give you an idea of some of these things of that helicopter pilot.
Helicopter pilots seem to have two or three arms. Their head is on a swivel. It's like an owl. Their head can go all the way around because your head has to be on a swivel because you're constantly looking for places to land if something happens.
And even on a combat assault, when you're going into the LZ, you're looking off to the right or to the left to see if there's another open field somewhere if this thing quits on us.
So actually my instructor pilot at Fort Walters when I soloed first in the 23, gave me a little card that says I was an official Army hover bug because I'd been able to stand motionless in flights somehow.
I have to get that out for you.
Yeah, so once we did all of us did this training, we were able to then go off and do whatever our missions were around the world.
And I think as Phil pointed out, I was ready to go. I felt confident. Of course, also I'm in my, you know, I'm 21, 22 years old.
So, you know, my frontal lobe hasn't fully developed yet anyway.
Mine still hasn't.
Yeah, I know that's a problem with a lot of us. Yeah, is that I, you know, I thought that I could do this.
So, I know, I know Kate that you never got to go down range, which was really frustrating to you. But where did you go after flight school?
I ended up going to the 185 tab, which the, which is the theater aviation brigade based in the Mississippi National Guard.
And I ended up as a staff officer there. So I learned a tremendous amount about flight planning operations planning all those sorts of things. And it was a frustrating place for me to be because I was planning missions for other guys to fly.
But one of the things that I learned throughout all of flight training and as a staff officer is that this is one of those missions, one of those jobs in the military that is high risk, regardless of environment.
And the reason why I'm really flying combat flight is the highest risk, but every single time you pull pitch, even in a training environment, flying helicopters is risky business.
And the guys who do it, you know, Dale was talking about having your head on a swivel and using all of your appendages to fly. You are truly task saturated every moment that you're in the helicopter, especially when you're flying gunships.
If you're distracted in flight, that's a problem. If you've got stuff going on at home with your wife or with your kids, that's a problem.
It's a dangerous mission that requires focus. And I just remind everybody about this because when I think about my instructor pilot, two of my four instructor pilots are no longer with because of a aviation accident.
The month of April is a tough month for me because this is a month where we memorialize the anniversaries of two different air crews, one from one of my units and one was my instructor pilot and his student.
And so in the middle month, there are anniversaries like that, some are from combat, some are from training, but what we do is serious business and we like to joke and give each other a hard time about my aircraft is better than yours, but it's a brotherhood like no other.
And I think you hear that just the three of us talking today.
Absolutely couldn't agree more.
That's true. And when I came back, I was an instructor pilot, which was a lot more heavier responsibility than I had anticipated being. But then of course, you know, you remember back instrument training when we were flying in those the trainer the link trainer and inside the link
training, which is like a like a coffin almost near supposed to fly these timed routes and everything like that. And I got done with my mission that particular day got out and guy was in there. They traced your route on a piece of paper big giant like Joe these hopefully perfectly oblong circles that you're flying.
And mine went right off the edge of the paper.
You blew you blew off the edge of the earth. I did. I did. Wow. What was it like. Oh my gosh. Pretty awesome because I am there are many more stories that that were where we want to share with our audiences about helicopters and so forth.
Many more missions. Let me have our guests tell you about what they're doing today. Let's do it that way. So Phil, what are you up to today. This is 50 years later for you.
Yeah, lucked into. I wanted to honor the 15 men in my unit in Vietnam that didn't make a home to their families and I knew that we had some incredible rescue missions so in 2012 I put together a book describing 20 of those missions and honoring the men who didn't
get back and it was so well received I did a second book and that was well received and just last week I finished my 16th book documenting the helicopter rescue missions that we flew in Vietnam it's called helicopter rescues Vietnam and it's available on Amazon and then even before that about 15 years ago I got involved with
the American Huey 369 we're out of Peru, Indiana. We are doing the annual inspections we have three Vietnam Hueys that we have restored back to flight. Kate has had the pleasure of flying one of those, and proud to have been able to be part of that, but
and then also we are building the only Huey Museum in the world here across the road from Grissom. We're a 501 C3 charitable organization. We're still soliciting funds to build the Huey Museum like I say we are starting on it.
But we need help from veterans, civilians who want to honor veterans with a donation you get your name on a plaque and we have a brick walkway with with the names of the 58,000 men and women who died in Vietnam.
And but it's just been an incredible experience for me to not only have been Huey pilot a helicopter pilot but here I am in my early 70s and I'm still flying Vietnam Huey helicopters and I'm getting to share that with people like Kate I'm getting to share it with people that go for a flight in the aircraft and
become members of the organization and and I'm helping build this only Huey Museum in the world. So, in a nutshell that's that's what I've done since Vietnam other than having my own business the Army gave me the confidence to start my own business it was successful and sold it retired and here I am today.
Good. Thanks so Kate I know tell us about Fisher House. So Fisher House I think for those of you that aren't familiar. The easiest analogy is people compare us to Ronald McDonald House.
So while we're not affiliated with Ronald McDonald House our mission is really similar but instead of building houses near children's hospitals, Fisher houses are built near VA and military hospitals.
So if you have a military or veteran loved one who needs to be hospitalized.
You can go and stay next door.
It's a Fisher houses have been built all over the world since 1990 and Michigan opened its very first Fisher House during the pandemic of all things.
June 1, 2020 was the first night that we hosted a family and since then the house which has 16 private family suites has been as full as public health laws would will allow us.
So we've served over 1000 families in Ann Arbor since June of 2020 and Fisher House Michigan, our 501 C3, we are raising funds to support that house, and we are raising capital funds to build a second Michigan House.
This time to support the Detroit VA.
To date, we've raised about 9 million of our $20 million goal, and we have match periods throughout the year where generous corporate donors will will double your donation.
So stay tuned for the Memorial Day match at Fisher House Michigan.org where you can double your money.
And it goes for a great cause supporting our military and veteran families.
I hope you enjoy today's best of veterans radio program from April 2021. You can listen to the most of our programs from the last 20 years at veterans radio.org.
All you got to go is go to the website, click on the archives are up a little search button at the top, you can just type in the topic of the subject, the person and they'll come up.
So this is what we do.
And we need your support. So please go to veterans radio.org click on the radio on the river picture.
And we hope to see you there was on Sunday, the 22nd. If you're not in the local area and you can't make it out, please, you know, take that time, make a small donation, large donation, whatever you can spare to help keep us keep veterans radio on the on the air.
I think it'd be great. So this week, we're going to be going out on David Bray's version of God bless America. As I mentioned before, I like playing God bless America.
I think it's a very, not only a patriotic song, but it's very important for all of us to realize what a great, great place we are fortunate enough to live in.
And even, you know, even including all of the hoopla and everything else that's going on out there, you know, everybody still wants to come here.
And so I sometimes I play these songs to remind us what a great place that we live and the opportunities that we have and the freedoms that we have.
So this is David Bray. I hope you enjoy it. So until next week, this is Dale Throneberry for all of us here at Veterans Radio. You are dismissed.
Through the night with your life from above
From the mountains to the prairies
To the oceans, white and full
God bless America
My home, sweet home
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
God bless America
It's love that I love
It's the messiah
Please guide her through the night with your life from above
From the mountains to the prairies
To the oceans, white and full
God bless America
My home, sweet home
Sweet home.