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#41
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"Gord Beaman" wrote in message ... "Kevin Brooks" wrote: What he *did* do, at least sometime during his tour, was position his trusty S&W .38 special revolver (which he prefered to the .45, for reasons soon to be obvious) in its holster between his legs, both to keep it from hindering his operation of the cyclic and to give some (at least psychological) protection for his most favorite personal area... Did he mention the conundrum of whether to pull the cartridges so as to remove the stress of having all those potential little bombs cosied up to 'Big Jim and the twins' with the attendant inconvenience of not having them in place if needed later --- vice the stress caused by picturing them so near those unmangled personal items for now so that they'll be available later if needed? LOL! No, I never asked him that one. Being as they were sort of used to having some pretty nasty stuff flung in their direction with *intent* to do bodily harm, I doubt he'd have gone that far. I do know he never considered it worth much--used to joke it would beat dirt as a thrown weapon if there were no rocks lyin' around. He much preferred the longer weapons, and he was a pretty good shot. He ditched the M-3 because he did not like its awful accuracy (see below), then he dumped the shotgun because it had a hair-trigger and he preferred having a round in the chamber (which may answer your query), and he figured the usual gyrations and vibrations of his Huey were not complimentary to that particular combination. He was happy with the CAR-15. The M-3 was deleted from his personal use after an event that occured during a test flight. He was the maintenance test pilot for his outfit (571st Dustoff), even though he was not "school trained". So he and his crew take this Huey out for a test flight after it had been worked on, and ended up cruising around (IIRC, don't quote me on the location) the A Shau Valley (which had seen some pretty heavy fighting earlier in the war). The crew chief spies this big honking lizard sunning itself on a rock, and they decide they want to shoot this lizard (don't ask why--probably for the same reason they used to fly low over the ocean off Danang and shoot at sharks). Safety regs be danged, he clambers back into the passenger compartment while his copilot keeps them over this lizard. He hangs out the door with his trusty M-3 and proceeds to blast away a full clip in about three bursts. Lizard just lays there and looks at them. He borrowed his crew chief's M16 and puts a single round through it, killing it deader than a doornail. They then decided hey, what can we do with a dead lizard? They land (more safety regs, etc., being danged) and the crew chief and he run over and grab the lizard and load it on a stretcher. Humped it back to the aircraft and took off for home. Called the hospital up on the radio and said they had incoming critical wounded. They covered the lizard up on the stretcher with a poncho, and he brings the aircraft into the hospital helipad like he is in a serious hurry. They settle down and the orderlies grab the stretcher and sart out towards the hospital entrance, but the rotor wash tosses the poncho off--resulting in one quickly abandoned stretcher (very quickly, the way he described it). After the orderlies calmed down, they decided to take the critter on into the surgical area, so they load it back up, recover it, and the whole scene gets repeated when the nurse jerks the poncho off in the OR. Bedlam ensued. Irate doctor type hollering about getting that &**^%$ lizard out of his hospital. Aircrew shrugs shoulders and says, hey, its YOUR lizard now. Vietnamese cleaning lady steps in, grabs lizard, and takes it out the door--dinner that night at her hooch presumably had more protein than usual. Brooks -- -Gord. |
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#43
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snip Death of Liz story
Hysterical, Brooks! Sounds like rotorhead humor to me. v/r Gordon ====(A+C==== USN SAR Donate your memories - write a note on the back and send your old photos to a reputable museum, don't take them with you when you're gone. |
#44
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"Krztalizer" wrote in message ... snip Death of Liz story Hysterical, Brooks! Sounds like rotorhead humor to me. Yeah. I wish he was still around; he had plenty of those kind of stories. He was always the cut-up type, barely made it through highschool, did not score high enough on the screening test his first go around, which landed him in a Nike Hercules unit at FT Lewis. Signed up for community college classes, studies his butt off, had a BN CO who encouraged him, retook the test, and went off to Rucker. The stories he told me (I was the doting baby brother, about thirteen years his junior) were usually the funny ones--the lizard story, the time he bought a little sunfish sailboat from a DEROSing USAF type, and then transported it back to Danang by sliding it into a Huey, bow hangin out one side and stern out of the other (he always wondered what any NVA troopie who happened to see them fly over thought about *that* sight), the resulting "Regatta" they held back at Danang, where the local USAF engineering outfit wanted to attend (mainly because the Dustoff guys had better access to the nurses) and turned a big drop tank into a half-assed outrigger (and sank it offshore, resulting in the party being interrupted by an actual rescue flight to hoist the waterlogged "crew" out of the ocean), the jeep races on the beach (they once wrecked one and just walked away and left it there). He only talked about actually seeing the bad guys on one occasion (saw lots of their weapons fire coming his way, but not the shooters themselves)--they were on another test flight and were at altitude when they saw this guy with a rifle scurry into a clump of brush. They orbited over head (way overhead), and his crew chief drops a grenade out the door, which of course goes "bang" waaay up above this poor guy (no danger to him). The guy bolts from cover and heads to another clump of brush. They do it again...and again. Each time this poor guy bolts to new cover. I asked him why he did not drop lower and just shoot the guy (typical small kid reaction, I guess). He just laughed and said that would have brought them into *his* effective range as well. It was many years later, after I had already gone into the service myself, that he told me the full story of the evening when he and his crew were shot down. I believe it was during Lam Son 719, when the ARVN went into Laos. They responded to a medevac call from a hot LZ, and as he was pulling out of the LZ after making his pick-up they got rocked by a NVA 12.7mm, trashing their transmission. So he was low and slow, and with no power--bad combination in a helo. Ended up dumping it on his side (he was the AC, so that would have been the right side in a Huey). For many years that was all I had known. But a few years before he died he told me that as he was going in, he saw two ARVN's hunkered down below the on the edge of a crater, eating their dinner. His Huey landed right on top of them--not a darned thing he could do about it. It still kind of bothered him those many years later. Maybe that's why he concentrated on telling me the funny stories as I grew up. Brooks v/r Gordon ====(A+C==== USN SAR Donate your memories - write a note on the back and send your old photos to a reputable museum, don't take them with you when you're gone. |
#45
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Well, let's put it this way, as Judge Judy says "You lie to me once and I'll doubt every word you say after that". Both Brooks and George Z caught Art lying. No doubt about it. What's your take on that?. I know what mine is. -- -Gord. Why are you still reading everything I write? Arthur Kramer Just trying to provide a little balance in this lop-sided dialogue Art. Don't want the world to get too complacent and trusting you know. -- -Gord. |
#46
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#47
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"Kevin Brooks" wrote:
cleaning lady steps in, grabs lizard, and takes it out the door--dinner that night at her hooch presumably had more protein than usual. Brooks Good one...it's now esconed in my collection of same. -- -Gord. |
#48
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ArtKramr wrote: Still reading every word huh? Arthur Kramer Art, If only you would stop responding like a petulant teenager; that alone would improve your credibility. I enjoy your stories, and would like to believe that they have some basis in fact; but your attitude to any doubters has an unpleasant smell to it. Dave |
#49
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Mike Marron wrote:
"Gord Beaman" ) wrote: It puts you in the same boat as Marron and Henriques and likely many others. I realize this is stinkbait, but I'm happy to admit when I'm wrong -- but I do gotta' be wrong first. Of course...I would expect nothing less either. So, why didn't you admit it when you were wrong about the Crusader then?, many very credible posters agreed with me against you... -- -Gord. |
#50
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