Aviation Mishap Story Time 7
More Stuff Top Gun Never Mentions
[Ed. note: Prior pieces in this series can be found at AMST Intro, AMST 1, AMST 2, AMST 3, AMST 4, AMST 5, AMST 6, and Helicopter Parenting.]
PostScript to a Crash
After “the crash” - as I like to think of it - the squadron performed several miracles of the mechanical and financial variety. First, they got our aircraft off of that hilltop, amidst some very inhospitable terrain, which was no mean feat of engineering and persistence. Second, they managed to get those thousands-of-parts-in-close-formation back to the airfield, so that they could perform the most amazing miracle of all: re-assembling and rebuilding a completely wrecked aircraft and thereby reclassifying our mishap from a (clear and obvious) Class “A” mishap - think of it as the felony of mishaps - into a Class “C” mishap, something more akin to the speeding ticket of mishaps. This is no small matter; a Class A is something that both Bill and I would have carried with us - a reportable offense, as it were - for the entirety of our careers. As far as I’m concerned, Col. Richard E. “Saint” St. Pierre, USMC, should have the same status for my progeny as JFK does for the South Boston Irish: his picture in their homes on the wall, alongside the Crucifix and the blessed mother.1
In a perfect world, Bill and I would have flown AH-1W BUNO 160815 triumphantly out of the EAF at 29 Palms, California, at the end of CAX 10 directly into the setting southwest sun bound for MCAS Yuma, with the “Top Gun” credit music playing triumphantly… but alas, the CO thought it best if I go home to my wife and two kids with the main body of the squadron. Bill, however, did get to fly good ol’ “06” down to Yuma by himself. The squadron loaned that aircraft and a few others to the WTI course that was set to begin in Yuma later that month.
I got to experience something that most of the pilots in my squadron had at one time or another over the course of their careers, with one or more of their kids - I know this because when I told this story to Bill, he chuckled knowingly and told me that the same thing had happened with his oldest daughter when she was around the same age. It goes like this…
I’ve been away for something like 8 weeks, 56 days. The oldest daughter is 10 years and our newest is now 18 months old. She was 16 months old when I left. It’s in the middle of the day and Oldest is at school. My wife, after hugging me, runs to our daughter’s room, brings her down the hall, her little shoes echoing on the hard, laminate floors, and my wife says, “Look, B_______, Daddy’s home!! It’s Daddy!!” And when my daughter sees me, it’s not long, but it’s unmistakable - my daughter doesn’t recognize me. Her face crinkles and she starts crying. She darts behind her mother’s leg, afraid of me. My heart breaks into a million pieces and the tears run down my face unbidden.
I am a stranger to my own child.
It didn’t take her very long to warm back up to me, but no one had prepared me for that. As I noted above, when I told Bill about this, he kinda laughed, slapped me on the thigh, and got up from his seat in the Ready Room. “Yeah, heh heh,” he chuckled knowingly. “Barney, my friend…” he looked me right in the eyes and put his hand on my shoulder, “welcome to the Club.”
We all rationalize putting our kids through this - my kids through this - a millions ways. You can cloak it in all kinds of moral, patriotic, nationalistic, necessity, and even historical or heroic terms - “Bro, your distant Viking ancestors went on conquests and raids for years at a time…”
But no warrior I’ve ever known or respected who went through it doesn’t have moments - in times alone with nothing but silence and darkness - who doesn’t have deep misgivings, who doesn’t wish that moment would not have happened. Well, except for one guy…
In Which a Pilot Tells the Funniest, and Most Revealing, Story About a Mishap in Aviation History
Not too long after the squadron returned, a group of us were “chopped” - detached from our home squadron, the Gunrunners of HML/A-269 - and sent to form a composite squadron, part of a complete aviation package that would spend the next six months training to go on a 6-month long deployment to the Mediterranean Sea and surrounding areas. This is life in an HML/A squadron: one detachment is always gone, one has just returned, and there’s another group at home training new guys for the next Det coming up. Add in two CAXes and two WTI courses per year and it’s no easy job to make it all work.
In practical terms, leaving our home squadron and attaching to the HMM-263 Thunder Eagles meant that we took our record books and other essentials about 100 yards to the other end of the giant hangar that housed 269 at the far end, and then 167, and then 263 (I think). It didn’t really make that much of a physical change in our environment, but we left behind our squadronmates and had to integrate ourselves into a CH-46E squadron - someone else’s spaces - along with a det of Harriers from Cherry Point, 4 CH-53Es from the next hangar over, aviation support dets from the supply and logistics squadrons, people who set up forward airfields, ordnancemen, refuelers, you name it - super-squadron that in 6 months of training together would have to pass our Special Operations Capable Exercise (SOCEX), so that we could join the Navy’s Carrier Battle Group to become a complete Amphibious Task Force… and travel around the Med looking for someone to give us an excuse to unleash Hell and Fury upon them.
During our 6 months of “workups,” we continued to advance our individual qualifications, while also spending more time flying with other aircraft types in larger formations and operations of increasing complexity in different environments - at sea, ship-to-shore, and then ashore after coming from ship, etc. We would occasionally drop by our home squadron (269) just to see how things were going or say hi to friends.
The Setup…
When shooting practice autorotations in Fleet aircraft, about the time you begin the “flare” - the last 200’ or so - you slowly roll the throttles back on and then complete the autorotation - the “pull” - with the power back up to full, thus ensuring that you don’t smack the ground and risk bending the skids on a perfectly good aircraft. In other words, while we learned to do full “power off” - i.e. real - autos to the ground in Bell 206s, Fleet aircraft are much heavier and easier to bend, so you don’t do full autos in the Fleet unless, well, it’s the real McCoy like ours the year prior.
The normal runway in use is 05/23 because of winds off the water, but on days when that pattern is “clogged” (busy) with a bunch of aircraft, and/or when winds are amenable, you can use a short pattern on 01/19 and stay clear of 05/23. If you’re using 01/19, you make a right hand turn and the downwind leg of the pattern takes you right over officer base housing. Where we lived, on the corner of Longstaff Street, was perhaps 150 yards from the compass rose at the southernmost end of the airfield. At the edge of officer housing, there was a playground where moms would frequently take the young kids to frolic on the swings and slide and they could watch the helicopters taking off and landing and buzzing around the pattern. Among the first things the moms would teach their children was how to distinguish between the various helos - skinny-skid Cobras, chubby-skid Hueys, mammoth 53Es, and the twin top-rotors of the venerable CH-46E - so the kids would know “Daddy’s” aircraft.
Just a few weeks before our scheduled departure, we were back home for some “block leave” where we were basically given liberal time off to spend with our families prior to leaving them for the next six months. Our scheduled fly date was our younger daughter’s 2nd birthday - March 23, 1995. (Yes, the one who ran away from me when I had returned 6 months prior).
I don’t remember if I was flying, if I saw it happen live, or if I heard it, but a Huey from our sister squadron - HML/A-167 - was shooting autorotations to runway 01/19 - the north/south runway at MCAS New River and he mushed through the flare, didn’t get the throttles back up in time, smacked the tale, causing the aircraft to smack the ground, tumble and break up a good bit. No one was seriously injured, but the aircraft was pretty busted up.
… and the Punchline
I went into 269 the next day to see some folks before our departure, say goodbye, and see if I could catch some scuttlebutt on who had crashed the Huey. Dennis J. Kiely was the son of a Marine Corps F-4 pilot who served in Vietnam. Deej Kiely was, and probably still is, a walking hurricane of humanity. A big Irishman who liked to drink and fight and used to openly admit that - hell, sometimes he introduced himself that way. By Dennis’ account, “The Great Santini and my old man would’ve got on fine.” Deej got his commission from the Virginia Military institute when they could still really haze frosh. He was a mid-grade Captain - a Huey pilot - when I first got to HML/A-269 and one funny sonuvabitch.
Dennis and his wife Meg and their kids, lived just a skip down the road in base housing, right near the small park and jungle gym in front of base housing. As I walked into the Ready Room and said my hellos, I was certain Dennis would know who balled up the Huey the day prior. Of course Dennis did, a pilot whose call sign was, unironically, “Lucky” - but after telling me what he had heard, he had an even better story to tell…
“So Meg and Deej Junior were out at the park out behind our house, you know, the one fronting the field?” I nodded.
“Well, Lucky’s up there in the pattern shooting autos and Deej is pointing at the Huey going, ‘daddy, daddy, daddy’s plane’ and Meg’s all proud of him, ‘Yes, Buddy! Yes, that’s Daddy!’…”
“Oh no,” I said, my hand coming to my mouth.
“Oh, yeahh. So right after Meg’s like, ‘Look, look, Daddy’ - of course I was on duty yesterday so I’m not even fuckin’ flying, but she’s tryna get the lil man to get his aircraft recognition skills up - and the very next moment, Lucky mushes through the auto and smashes to bits and Deej, watching horrified, bursts into tears, ‘NOOOO!!! DADDY!!! NOOOO!!!!!’” and Meg’s trying to now explain to a 3 year-old that that wasn’t me specifically but just my aircraft and I didn’t just die in that mishap.”
We’re all sitting around laughing hysterically as Dennis imitates his son’s horrified visage, his wife trying to calm their son down, and then Dennis gets up flippantly and says, “Yeah, so I’ve gotta start saving for that fucking therapy session 20 years from now” and we are all in absolute stitches laughing at what had to be one of the most traumatic incidents any child could possibly experience - maybe more laughing at Dennis’ cavalier re-telling of the whole thing - but the whole incident for me pretty well summarizes the gallows humor that pervaded being a helicopter pilot.
So I offer this as a bookend to my own experience with my daughter not knowing me. In some ways, all of Life’s tragedies can be viewed as Comedy through the right lens. Raising a glass of Irish whiskey - Catholic whiskey, Deej, not that Protestant swill! - to Dennis Kiely, and Deej Junior, wherever they may be.
A nod and sign of the cross upon passing would be appreciated, but not mandatory. Saint himself was a devoted Canadian-french catholic and would likely not appreciate the heretical humor.