The Huey

Like a lot of kids, I’ve loved aircraft since I was little. I can remember checking out the “Jane’s Aircraft” book from the school library three or four times in a row. I built models and balsa wood gliders. But I have always been fascinated with helicopters. The Huey is the quintessential helicopter. It is one of most common helicopters in the world. If someone says “helicopter”, chances are good that it’s an image of a Huey that pops into your mind. It was designed to be multi-role and is a true ‘jeep’ of the skies.

As I got older and learned about the functions of aircraft and their different roles, I liked the Huey because of its multiple roles. It really is the ‘jack of all trades, master of none’. This fit well with my personality. The Huey is good for a lot of missions. There is often another aircraft that can do a particular mission better. Cobras can carry better/more ordnance, Phrogs and Shitters can carry more troops or more weight. Most of the other aircraft in the US Military can fly faster. But none of them can perform the variety of roles the Huey can. The USMC proclaims there are six functions of Marine Aviation. The Huey can do all six.

I was always enamored with the way it looks and still think it is a sexy aircraft. That is not common among my era of Marines. Older Marines, particularly Vietnam veterans, all love the Huey because it meant help was on the way. Whether it was medevac, more troops, more ammo or maybe even just hot chow or mail, the sound of the Huey means things are going to get better. My era of Marines usually think the Cobra or the F/A-18 are sexy aircraft. Of the 25 or so “want to be aviators” in my OCS class, I was the only one who openly stated, “I want to fly Hueys”. Everyone else said “F/A-18s”.

The Hueys I flew were UH-1Ns (N model). The data plates on them had ‘born on dates’ from 1973-1977. The funny thing is, they were all rebuilds. Most of them had started life as a B or C model (Vietnam era). Every aircraft has a record book. Everything done to it, everywhere it has been, every squadron it has been assigned to is recorded in that book. When the book gets too thick to be manageable, the oldest stuff gets moved to another binder. In a Marine Squadron, you can go into the admin section of the Maintenance Department and peruse the old record books. That’s where you find out that the aircraft was actually built in 1965 or 1968. It was rebuilt into a new version of aircraft in 1973 or whatever and a new data plate was affixed to the door frame. You can find repair logs like “repaired bullet hole in left aft avionics door”. Then you walk out to the aircraft and look at the left aft avionics door and see a small rectangle of metal riveted on top of the door skin. Yup, these baby’s saw some action. Some of them were older than I was.

In flight school and just about anywhere in aviation circles, jets are revered for their speed. I like going fast, but going mach 2 at 30,000 feet doesn’t give me the same speed thrill as doing 90 knots at 15 feet from the tree tops. It also feels like a closer connection with the Marines. You can drop them off in a tight zone as close to their objective as possible, you can bring them more ammo and extract their wounded. You can pull them out if things have gone sideways and of course you can bring some steel rain from the skies if they need it.

The old Huey is a little bit tricky to fly. There are no computer stabilization systems, very little rate dampening, and no digital electronics. You average out the bouncing of the needles to figure out what the gauges say. The control inputs are twitchy to say the least. Almost impossible to taxi without wagging the tail. If you curl your toe in your boot, the tail moves, it is that sensitive. It hovers left, rear low so a good landing really is a three pointer. You place left aft skid down, right aft skid, then the fronts together. But you have to do all that smoothly and quickly before it starts to slide. When you grease one on just right, you are always looking up and down the flight line to see if someone saw it.

Every control input requires additional inputs to the other controls. If you push the cyclic (the stick in your right hand between your knees) forward to move forward or increase your speed, the power vector of the main rotor tilts forward. You will begin to settle or lose altitude. So you add a little power with the collective (the stick in your left hand). That changes the the counter rotation tendency of the fuselage and the tail will try to come around. You have to add just a touch of left pedal just at the right time to keep the nose straight and the tail behind you. By then you have achieved the speed you are after and it is time to make another input requiring all the counter inputs. It is a little bit like learning the clutch on a car you are unfamiliar with, where does it start to engage, where does it really grab and then when is it fully engaged. Except you are doing this with all your hands and feet.

There are very few ‘safe envelope’ protections. If you yank on the collective, you can easily over torque the aircraft and damage the rotorhead, the transmission or the gearboxes. If you push the cyclic over to do a dive and cause more than 1 negative G, you will cause mast bumping and separate the main rotor from the aircraft. These are the things that end your flight really quickly.

Being old and basic means that you hear and feel a lot about what the aircraft is doing. It’s loud and bouncy, it’s touchy and quirky. But when you learn the quirks, master the twitchy-ness, and hear and feel what the aircraft is telling you, it is a blast to fly! It responds instantly, the thrumming in the seat tells you what your rotor speed is before the gauge even reads it. You know when the tail is out to the left a little by the wind coming in the side window. You can hear your speed by the pitch of the wind whistle. It begs to go booming down the river, below the tree tops, matching every twist and turn the river has. It wants to pop up just clearing the treetops, flaring the nose back to scrub off speed (and reduce the throttles a little so you don’t over speed the rotor) then push the nose back over level just in time to grease it onto the grass into a tiny clearing barely as big as the aircraft. That is what a Huey wants to do and the stuff that gives me such a thrill flying them. It is a very visceral flight.

I’m not even going into shooting rockets, mini-guns at 4000 rounds per minute or 50 cals. Going to the range is just pure fun.

The functions and the capabilities of the Huey changed in 2010 when the Marine Corps adopted the latest version of the Huey, the UH-1Y. It is significantly faster, and can carry more weight and has better electronics onboard. It also has the capability to carry and fire precision guided munitions similar to the hellfire missile. It is now a 4 bladed rotor system and a lot more capable. It is a better aircraft but something just isn’t right. It just doesn’t seem like a Huey anymore. They are smooth and stable in flight and they no longer make that classic “whop whop” Huey sound. 

chopped from Radioman: Twenty Five Years in the Marine Corps in an early edit