Copter Crews Flying High After Reuniting With Their Birds

The pilots looked awkward and bereft in the early-morning gloom, on foot, stripped of their beloved Black Hawk helicopters. It was 5 a.m., and they were cranky.

It was bad enough that they had to ride a mode of transport as pedestrian as a bus. It got worse when one of two scheduled buses broke down, and they all had to squeeze aboard the other, standing in the aisles, heavy with gear.

The pilots and crew chiefs of Bravo Company were on their way to this sprawling port outside Kuwait City to retrieve their Black Hawks. They had been separated from their helicopters for weeks, because the crews left Ft. Campbell, Ky., on commercial airliners and the choppers were loaded onto ships.

Now, at this Kuwaiti port, they were getting their helicopters back, and they were eager to get into the air.

Chief Warrant Officer Jeff Gregg had been up since 4 a.m. He had gulped a cup of coffee, then climbed onto the bus, squeezed beside pilots and crew chiefs wolfing down Oreos and Milky Ways.

Gregg, a sandy-haired Louisianian, is a senior pilot instructor. He trains other pilots how to fly the UH-60 Black Hawks in the uniquely challenging and hazardous conditions of Kuwait, where the coarse sand chews up rotor blades and grinds down engines. On this morning, he was also in charge of briefing fellow pilots and crew chiefs on how to run checks on their freshly arrived aircraft and on the route they would fly to their desert camps in northern Kuwait.

A dull orange sun sliced through the smog as the bus chugged up to the port. The pilots craned their necks to get a look at the Black Hawks, lined up in neat rows, black and slick in the morning dew. Some of the crew chiefs tried to make out the tail numbers, searching for their own birds.

Jimmy D. Williams, a chief warrant officer, assembled the crews next to a row of portable toilets and briefed them on what to expect. He warned them to check the gear they had stowed aboard the helicopters, because thieves had infiltrated the port in Jacksonville, Fla., while the Black Hawks were being readied for ships. The crews snapped to attention as Gregg began reeling off flight vectors and radio frequencies and runway numbers. They pulled out their flight maps and scribbled notes in their flight books.

Gregg wanted no mishaps on their first day back in the air.

“It’s crowded out here,” he told the crews, “so ya’ll will need a lot of separation going in.”

Then the crews were off, scrambling across the runway to find their helicopters. Some of the men patted the birds and talked to them, as if they were greeting old comrades. The Black Hawks were so clean and pristine, they seemed like gifts on Christmas morning.

Gregg strolled over to a sleek Black Hawk, tail No. 26872, a 2000 model and the newest in theater. The last time he’d seen his bird was Feb. 8, when he flew 26872 from Ft. Campbell to Jacksonville. Gregg checked his gear. It was all there, including the precious toolbox, still safely padlocked. The crews’ personal “tuff boxes,” sturdy little hard-shell cases, were still locked tight. There was nothing untoward except Gregg’s Camelback water carrier, which had mildewed in the Florida humidity.

It was good to see the bird again. Gregg had spent his time in the Kuwaiti desert teaching pilot classes and training to use his chemical-biological protective gear.

“Everybody’s chomping at the bit,” he said. “We need to get back up in the air.”

Gregg’s crew chief, Spc. Gerald Brown, was pleased to discover that the two guitars he had stowed aboard their Black Hawk were still intact. Brown, a rangy country music singer from Texas, set about checking the helicopter. Mechanics had already torn the shipping plastic off the Black Hawks and unfolded the rotors.

Brown still had to install the delicate “disco ball,” formally known as ASE, or aircraft survivability equipment. The device, coated with mirrors, sits atop the fuselage and detects enemy radar signatures. It uses heat and reflected light to disorient incoming infrared missiles.

Brown and the co-pilot, Warrant Officer Nigel Huebscher, crawled up and inside the helicopter, checking fittings and connections and systems. It took about two hours of tinkering and tightening before they declared the bird ready to fly. Their Black Hawk would be the lead bird, the first to take off from the port. It was one of six Black Hawks parked in the first row of aircraft just above the turquoise waters of the Persian Gulf. Behind them were the other Black Hawks assigned to Bravo Company, part of an air assault battalion of the Army’s 101st Airborne Division.

Gregg settled into the pilot’s seat, looking relaxed. He worked his way through the controls, hands flicking across the panel. Huebscher climbed into the co-pilot’s seat and ran through his own checklist. Outside, Brown talked to Gregg and Huebscher by radio as the pilots cranked the auxiliary power unit, which kicked the main engines to life.

The big machine shuddered and rocked as the heavy propeller spun slowly and then faster, beating the crisp morning air. Even on the runway, so near the ocean, brown clouds of rough sand rose up in twisting columns.

Brown kicked out the wooden blocks from the wheels and jumped into the gunner’s seat. There was no gun. The two M-60 machine guns normally mounted in the Black Hawk’s doors were shipped separately and had not yet arrived.

On the radio, Gregg cued the other five pilots in the first row. Then his bird was up off the runway, hovering for an instant before swinging up and out over the calm blue sea.

Huebscher was staring intently at the control panel, but Gregg was grinning behind his goggles. He looked behind him. There, in a beautiful arc, were the other five Black Hawks, like a trail of starlings, bound north toward Iraq.