huey buffs

[pinny]

if anyone here is interested in the Bell UH-1 Huey and Vietnam (or even if you're not) I can highly recommend reading CHICKENHAWK by Robert Mason. I can't put it down...

[Captain Sand Dune]

oh dear.............:rolleyes:

[FatBaldChief]

Does it have some sort of sticky cover?

fatbaldandfestive :8

[MightyGem]

Sorry Pinny, you're about 20 years too late.

[Mikehegland]

BUT, Pinny may only be 13 yrs old and has just discovered what has become known as the helicopters pilots bible.

[Maple 01]

Give the guy a break! We haven't all been around since the foundation of the RFC. It's a great book. BTW he did a follow-up about what happened after he came home - quite sad

Welcome to the forum mate!

[pinny]

should've known....

[Hueymeister]

One of the best books re helo flying that I ever read...especially during training!

[Captain Sand Dune]

Like Top Gun is a good training film for fast jet pilots....:yuk:

[polyglory]

pinny,

Thanks for that, missed that one in my travels.I have just ordered it from Amazon:D

[pinny]

just finished it today....10/10

Sand Dune: You are entitled to your opinion, but may I say that I am left scratching my head as to how you could compare this masterpiece to a piece of hollywood bullsh*t. Guess you are on a different wavelength to everyone else who has replied to this thread...

[18greens]

'Hollywood B****T'. Whats wrong with Top Gun, how dare you mock this documentary? all flying is like that ..... isn't it?

[Spur Lash]

Pinny

For what it's worth, I'm now on my second copy, having bought my first copy in the eighties.

I was as impressed as you are.

[Captain Sand Dune]

Sand Dune: You are entitled to your opinion

Certainly am, big boy! Based on actually having flown Hueys matey!:}

[Hueymeister]

Me too..still do..I think it's a good book for the newbies to read how it was done in days gone by....and also for those of us a little further down the line to remind us we still don't know it all. The ending was a shock though.

[orionsbelt]

You might want to try the following:-

My Secret War
by Richard S Drury
ISBN 0-312-90503-3

1 year flying a Skyraider in Laos and Vietnam in 66-67


Thud Ridge
Jack Broughton
ISBN 0-553-25189-9

F105 flying in action.

and for those on the ground.

Once a Warrior King
David Donovan
ISBN 0-552-13273-x

[antipodean alligator]

The best book I've ever read on combat flying is without a doubt "TERROR IN THE STARBOARD SEAT".

Written by Dave McIntosh, a Canuk Mossie Alligator who joined up solely because he was flunking Uni and saw that you'd be credited with 3rd year if you took the shilling. He ended up being crewed with an Jewish American driver who would make every effort humany possible to kill every German he came across, whilst Mcintosh used the thickest grease pencil he could find duiring planning in the hope that he could make 2 threat rings meet up so that there was no gap in the middle to tempt his crazy driver!

An excellent read from a truly brave and honest bloke flying the F-111 of the 40's. Here's a link:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0825300258/qid=1103676491/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-6846637-2709712?v=glance&s=books

Another superb read is by Peter Dornan entitled "Nicky Barr- an Australian Air Ace.

Another great read, this time about a young Aussie Pilot flying in the Western Desert in WW II

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/186508624X/qid%3D1103677224/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F1/102-6846637-2709712

[SASless]

Absolutely agree....Terror in the Starboard Seat ...has to be the best book I have read.....funny...and definitely written by someone that had been there!

Ranks right up there with Gann and Bach (the writer)!

[StopStart]

Have read Chickenhawk several times and agree it is a superb book.
Never flown a Huey though so it might be rubbish :rolleyes:

[pinny]

If anybody here who has flown a huey can validate the content of Chickenhawk it would be nice to hear, especially someone who flew it in 'Nam.

So, Sand Dune tell me what makes Chickenhawk such a load of bollocks (as you imply)...Is it the fact that Mason actually had to do things in war that you wouldn't even contemplate doing during peace time? Gee, I wonder if it had anything to do with the fact that he normally had no other option..After all, you are the resident expert here. I await your reply with bated breath.

Silberfuchs: Thanks for providing some detail to clarify the contentious issue! Us lesser beings who have not flown the huey (all worship Sand Dune now please...) have benefited from your post.

Cheers :ok:

[antipodean alligator]

Young Pinny.......

Congratulations on the acquisition of your shiny new squashed moth.

I assume that we'll have to wait until the end of the reduced activity period and the sobering experience of fronting up on your new front-line squadron before your chest upon which it was pinned begins to deflate.

Please try to be a tad less obno towards fellow your fellow Ppruners .............
remember lad, most of them have a significantly larger numbers of years up than yourself, and even more of them speak with banter-driven forked tongues!:\

[pinny]

perhaps my last post was a little obno...Sand Dune: sorry for getting on your case mate, I just thought it was a really good read, that's all. Next time I won't get personal about it.

Alligator: Thanks for the check. ;)

[SASless]

Pinny,

I did two tours in Vietnam...I know Mason...whats more I know all about Mason from people who sat in the same cockpit with him. He finally admitted some of the tales were not his....I assure you the parts after training definitely contained others accounts and from what I hear from guys who served in the same unit with him....very few of his own if any.

Before you take others to task...you should know who and what they are....every July 4th holiday, the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association has a convention. Drop by the bar and meet some real life honest to goodness Vietnam Combat Pilots and ask them to tell you about their experiences, if they will. We are getting old, fat, bald, and deaf....but we enjoy getting together and remembering when. I can assure you, when I look around at that group of men....I am honored to have been allowed to be one of them. We did things in those years that cannot be believed and did them as a matter of course. To look at the guys now and know what they have done in their past ....one just would never guess by looking at them today.

There are several good books out about helicopter flying in Vietnam...and some I rate as being far better than Mason's books.

[Captain Sand Dune]

Exactly, SASless!

"Chickenhawk" is a good read, but it's a STORY, not an SOP on how to fly Iroquois.

Happy X-Mas y'all!:cool:

[offshoreigor]

Pinny,

Shame on you! I felt ashamed that I waited so long to read it when I was while flying UH-1H's! That was substantially after the fact! LOL!

Cheers,

:ok: OffshoreIgor :ok:

[Wiley]

If you want to read a good book that, although not a flying book per se, touches heavily in Huey flying in Vietnam, try “We Were Soldiers Once.. and Young” by Hal Moore and ?? Galloway.

Although about the first major US Army / NVA ground clash of the ‘American’ war (in the Au Shau Valley in November ’65), it deals in detail with the helicopter operations that took place during that action. To anyone who flew Hueys, what those US Army pilots did in support of Moore’s Air Cav troops was astounding – those pilots had titanium balls.

I’ve been told that Mason of ‘Chicken Hawk’ fame took part in that particular action, but in what capacity, I don’t know.

People were asking about the flying details in ‘Chicken Hawk’. In any book like that, you have to allow the author some licence – he’s trying to sell a book, not give a totally true and honest account of his war, so it’s only to be expected that he’d dredge up every tale of derring-do he heard in the bar or the crew room and include it in his narrative. (I understand that David Niven did exactly the same thing in his excellent ‘The Moon’s a Balloon’ – took every bar tale he’d ever heard and put his own name to it.) What I can say without fear of contradiction is that the author of ‘Chicken Hawk’ certainly flew Hueys. The flying part of the book was entertaining, but I have to say I found the non flying stuff at the end of the book rather disappointing.

Back to “We Were Soldiers Once.. and Young”, it’s a damn fine read, and the Mel Gibson movie stuck closer to the book than Hollywood usually does when it gets its hands on a story like that. However, what the movie didn’t touch on was the battle that took place three days later only a few miles away from the original battle site, where the troops that marched in to relieve Moore’s unit went very close to being wiped out to a man in what went very close to being a repetition of the complete destruction of the French Groupe Mobile 100 by the Viet Mink in 1953.

There's a Brit angle to the book too. One of the US officers in Moore's battalion, Cyril 'Rick' Rescaro (sp?), who outdid John Wayne in his actions in the 1965 battle (and I mean that with absolutely no disrespect) was a Brit who was killed in the Sept 11th attacks in New York.

[Wiley]

Just stumbled on another good 'Huey read' - "Where They Lay" by Earl Swift, ISBN 0593 049470.

The book deals with a 2003 human remains recovery mission in the highlands of Laos, looking to locate the remains of a four man UH-1H crew who were lost there in March 1971. I was surprised how interesting the author has managed to make what would at first glance seem to be pretty dry fare - digging up tons of soil in what amounts to an archaeological 'dig'.

Unfortunatelly, he doesn't get some of the technical details right, (the Huey AC in the left seat and the cyclic controlling the rotor pitch are two examples that I noticed). However, he does manage very effectively to go back and trace the lives of the four missing men, as well as recreating the mission and the days leading up to it with a few 'warts and all' details that would not have been made public had the book been written some years earlier.

I haven’t finished the book yet, but what I’ve read so far is very good, especially the details of the flying and the incredibly heavy ground fire the US Huey crews experienced during the ill-fated 1971 invasion of Laos.

I can quite vividly remember listening in to one such mission during a training flight in D442 (any Ozmate ex-chopper driver will recognise where that is) when atmospherics (ioniospheric 'bounce') caused our FM tac freq to be overridden by some very excited American voices who didn't sound like they needed any extra grief like having us cluttering up their frequency. We shut up and listened and I for one was very thankful I was hearing what I was hearing form a very long way away. This book gives a very good insight into what they were encountering.

[Axel-Flo]

Ah........many a new pilot on the 72nd vertical persuit squadron took that book to heart and with a "Hurrah it's me!" attitude, 400lbs of fuel(pick some up at G40 for the trip back)-and helililly or gobbler underslung backed up and made a dash down the well or towards the eastern fence saying "trust me on this I read about how to do it last night....some chaps in Nam...(not Odinam) used to do it all the time!

Personally I think there is an awful lot of invaluable gen out there and moreso now we have the net. Read it all or as much as you can, an e-crewroom is one of the few ways of assimilating knowledge since time spent chatting (or more listening) to older and generally wiser heads is so reduced. No time spent in the crewroom, experience levels falling and flying hours for training cut beyond the point of a joke. (we did have it better for learning in the mid 80s) But it's not all true and at the end of the day YOU will be at the controls so fly within your own limits and don't become a statistic of overconfidence (not a dig or a rant....honest:)

[the wizard of auz]

I never flew one, but I saw one once. read both books several times (one of which I was meant to forward to someone with an elusive addy). never had any effect on my training, but a good read all the same.

[polyglory]

This link was sent to me by a mate, some good photo's in the gallery, Mason's own site.

Here (http://www.robertcmason.com/)

[eoincarey]

Hey

Read Chickenhawk about 2 years back, absolutely cracking!
Anybody know if there are any hueys flying in the UK?

Eoin