A Vietnam Retrospective
PART 7
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The task of the responsible pilot on any given aircraft was to see that all scheduled maintenance was taking place and plead with maintenance to keep it mission ready. The only real job in that responsibility was to be the crewchiefs "gopher," as I saw it. The title of "Pilot" meant exactly that to the crewchiefs: "Pick that shit up and Pilot over here!" When you weren't flying, your responsibility was to spend time learning about your aircraft. It made for acquiring a lot of knowledge in a hurry if you had a good crewchief, and Bud Vann was one of the best. We hit it off immediately as he considered me an FNG, but his motivation was to groom me into a better pilot, rather than to belittle.
 
My sometime C/E and all-time friend SP4 Budd Vann.
A "high stung" Patriot and he'll never admit it.
I liked that and I believe I treated him with equal respect due to his personality and his seniority in the unit--and in the "guns" in particular. He introduced me to maintenance guys that not only kept our aircraft afloat (so to speak), but as a hobby, produced a rusty looking liquid in ammo cans that had caused guys to go temporarily blind.
They gave us Shark 161 as a replacement for 555, and he and I brainstormed briefly about a title for the aircraft. We were yakking in my room in the Shark Hootch, and while fingering through an issue of "Surfer" magazine, an envelope for a subscription fell from the pages. It had a silhouette design of a surfer riding a surfboard, on a wave, with a large sun in the background.
Bud picked it up and said: "How about something like this, but have the guy standing on a shark rather than a surfboard?" I thought it sounded cool, but who could paint something like that? "Never you mind!" he said, and quickly departed. I had already begun painting the white teeth over the red mouth that maintenance personnel had applied prior to releasing the aircraft to us.
I was attempting to duplicate the style of the teeth
that had graced Shark 045, "Easy Rider." That aircraft was the finest Charlie-model in the whole
damn country. It was the epitome of what a Shark gunship should look like and fly like. Painfully,
it had been brought down in the Rice Bowl, just days before, on a night mission. Greg Manuel and
Bob Hackett were uninjured in the crash, but the gunner had broken his arm when the aircraft rolled
onto its left side after the crash.
Above photo of Shark 045 a few days before it's crash. I took the photo from my Co-pilot seat of the wing aircraft. We were checking out a suspicious corner of this ville. Upon focusing in on the aircraft I picked out the clothes line with VC black pajamas hanging from it (see just below the skids). It turned out the bad guys were no where to be found. Go figure.
 
 
Above four photos are the aftermath of the crash of “The Cadillac” (“Easy Rider” UH-1C 66-15045). Both pilots 1LT Bob Hackett and CW2 Greg Manuel were relatively uninjured!
It was oh-so-tragic to see that aircraft in its final state. The thing had looked "killer" and it rode like a big 'ol Cadillac. It was like viewing what once had been a cherry'd out '57 Chevy after it had been run over by a truck.
It was also within this same week that WO Bob Chipley and his crew had ridden an H-model Dolphin down through some triple canopy jungle after an engine failure, out west, and survived. The shutterbugs were kept busy that week, with all the trashed remains of aircraft littering up the taxiways, waiting to get hauled away.
I was only a little over half way done with painting the teeth on 161 when we were scrambled for a day's work up out of Quang Ngai. Sugar Bear managed to get some 8mm film of 161 prior to the completion of my painting. From one side it looked like sharks teeth but from the other, it looked like BIG RED LIPS! Within days, Bud came and fetched me to show me what he had done. He had commissioned a guy from avionics into painting the side panels and had them mounted on the aircraft. Like the envelope, the panels were of a surfer with a bright orange sun in the background, standing on a gray shark. I loved it, but Shark 6 (Captain Ackerman) hated it. He didn't demand it be changed, I think only out of respect for Bud Vann, but he sure didn't sugar coat his feelings about it not looking traditional military. Yet, over time, I guess it kinda grew on folks. It WAS different.
 
 
The above 4 photos are “Surfer” UH-1C 66-15161
When I came to the Sharks, most all of the 174th pilots had secondary duties. The commissioned officers were platoon section leaders or assistant section leaders. The warrants had all kinds of different gigs like mail officer or water appropriations officer. It was kinda like being the hall monitor or pencil dispenser in elementary school. Being new to the platoon, I inherited Sugar Bear's old job of re-armament officer. Sugar Bear is another one of those guys you could write a book about. (The stuff he got decorated for is pure Shark legend!)
He'd ordered a bunch of tracer rounds for his .45 sidearm. He still had a few when I arrived and he shared them with me. Anyway, this additional duty put me in charge of the re-arm point near POL, and it was my responsibility to make sure there were adequate amounts of aerial flares, rockets, doorgun and mini-gun ammo available at all times.
It was like an outdoor warehouse of totally explosive shit!
The Guru of this death trap was Timothy Jerome "The Shadow" Spencer. He was a little firecracker himself, from "Philly" (as he referred to the place). He was one of the hardest workers and the proudest guys I ever saw wear the Shark patch. The only reason he ever wore a shirt was to have a proper place to hang his Shark patch.
His sole job was to tear open crates containing 2.75 Folding Fin Aerial Rockets, assemble the warheads, and stack them neatly in their conex's (don't know what conex stands for literally, but they're large steel shipping and storage containers). He reminded me of a black Ensign Pulver. He was barely 18 and probably weighed 120 pounds. On occasion, he'd fly as a gunner with us and he was all business. His other duty was riding shotgun on the fuel truck, but he was always within eyesight of HIS re-arm point. I merely signed requisitions for him and stayed out of his way.
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End of Part 7 of 20 Parts.
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