and I reached the door we saw LJ surrounded with pieces of torn open cardboard boxes and wrapping paper, shirts and pants were laying all over the floor. He had one leg in a pair of grey uniform pants and one arm in a matching shirt and was dancing on one leg in a circle trying to put his other arm and leg in. He was shouting and spitting mad with a red face mouthing an unending stream of vile curses in horrible French and mumbling something about “the dirty SOB Chinaman sewed my GD shirts sleeves and pants shut.”
This was Woo’s revenge- every pair or pants, all the shirts and coats were sewn shut- even the pockets were stitched closed. They did however have lovely red silk linings. I did my best not to laugh- but I had to drop the bags and get downstairs to do it.
We were in Bangkok for about four weeks. We memorized every system on the Porter, PT6A and Twin beach, C-45, as we would be assigned to one of them when we got to Saigon.
We were about twenty feet’ over the river descending into the river bank when Jake put the 550 HP turboprop into full reverse and begin puling the long porter nose through the horizon to about twenty degrees nose up. We were rapidly settling into the reeds as the lift was sucked from the wing by the massive application of full reverse power. Jake had the stick pulled full aft with his toes pressing the brakes when we hit the bank with a five hundred foot a minute rate of descent. I was scared shitless. The aircraft, blowing dust and reeds everywhere, rolled about two hundred feet into the reeds before stopping. We were alive.
Jake taxied forward a few hundred feet, turned the beast around facing the river and applied full Take off power. We accelerated back down the path of flattened reeds, reaching about forty five knots and bumped into the air just over the river. The tires didn’t touch the water, but it was close. Jake was laughing and said, “OK, now that’s how you do it.”
I flew the Porter around with Jake and other instructors for a couple of weeks before they turned me loose. The porter was a one trick aircraft; it took off and landed short. Real short, a STOL aircraft, “Short Take Off and Landing.
So, how do you fly a single engine aircraft all over Vietnam where the bad guys might skin you alive if they got their hands on you? The Turbomecca engine was not the most dependable power plant. It had a couple of internal design flaws that made it even more questionable. The first six months it was just luck that I survived- I made every mistake in the book. The first thing I learned was that in a single engine aircraft the most important lesson to remember is that there is no substitute for altitude- the higher you are, the further you can glide And the longer you live when the engine quits.
The Turbomecca engine does quit -mine quit twice. One failure was caused by a ruptured seal causing all the engine oil to blow out in about ten seconds. The oil pressure went to zero, temps climbed and the windshield was covered with oil. I had visibility out the sides but very limited forward. I was climbing through eight thousand feet when the seal let loose- I had the engine secured and the prop feathered in seconds. Interestingly, the prop did feather……
The Porter was silent, only the sounds of the slipstream as we settled toward the ground at something like three hundred feet per minute. I headed toward some cumulous clouds hoping to generate lift and remain airborne (and alive) a little longer. I called the company frequency for help- a very calm (too calm) Chinese voice from our communications center in Saigon, said, “Captain Flurth, pleas you stop saying help and say where you are.”
Because I spent so much time climbing I was close enough to my departure airport that I actually was able to fly a few patterns before landing. I was losing about 1000’ each time around so, when it looked right, I extended the flaps and dead-sticked it into the field, rolling off in the yellow gravel parking area. There were two passengers in the back who hadn’t said a word the whole time- I had forgotten all about them.
By the final circuit I had overhead a few fast movers (jet fighters,) two helicopter gun ships and a company Helio courier. The Helio landed behind me, I jumped in and we headed back to Saigon with the two passengers.
Later that day, a company chopper trying to sling my Porter under a helicopter back to the maintenance base dropped it from two thousand feet and it wound up a ball of smashed aluminum. Scratch that one you think? But, no, the company sent the data plate to Taiwan where an exact copy of the aircraft was fabricated. This, of course, enraged Pilatus, the manufacturer, who tried suing and all manner of expressing displeasure at this blatant disregard of their patent rights.
One of his lessons was about trying to blend into the local population which was the obvious secret of the Viet Cong. Of course, this didn’t work well for us- we were all a hundred pounds heaver and a foot taller than the average Dink.
When we were given an opportunity to see if we could hide from Army trackers for practice, Immediately, I understood that the Viet Cong idea of hiding among the local locals was a great concept. All my pals went tearing ass out into local swamp to hide while I ran around them far to the east and spent two lovely days “hiding out” in the Aussie BOQ, swilling Fosters, laying on the beach and chowing down at their mess. All I had to learn was how to say was “G’day mate, how’s the warts on y’r bum?”
At the appointed hour, I wandered up to the rest of them, dry, tan, well- fed and wearing an Australian army Tee-shirt a boonie hat and sunglasses. My pals were mosquito bitten, dirty and hungry. All had been caught and spent a day being screamed at while tied up undergoing fake interrogation.
The trainers were pissed at me as were the flea bitten pilots. ‘OK, WHERE YOU HAVE BEEN!” screamed the chief trainer. “Escaping and evading, sir” I said. “just what you told us to do. I was blending in with the locals and learning to say “good on yr, mate, have another Fosters.”
