Alright, this is going to be a little long winded but I'm going to tell you my story. I'll do my best to make it as short as I can.
When I first began my training in1968, it was in an army Hughes TH55 helicopter. I'M 6'3" and that sucker was too small for someone the size of my golden retriever. My knees were up in my chin and my helmet was damn near cracking the greenhouse Plexiglas above me. I could not get anywhere near comfortable. After several hours of patient instruction, if you call getting whacked on the helmet with a clipboard every fifteen seconds patient and two instructor changes I just could not find the hover button. Every time my instructor would say "OK, one more time. You've got it" I would start slamming the controls all over the cockpit to the point that I would bruise the insides of his thighs with the cyclic. And because I was so cramped, my feet would dance on the pedals like Fred Astair. In the meantime, all of my classmates had their solo wings on their caps.
Finally they decided that I should ride with the flight commander and let him decide if I should be given a little more time or eliminated from the program. The night before I was to sit before the only god I worshiped who wore a nomex flight suit like mine but had two bars of a captain on his collar as opposed to my none, I called my then to be wife from the barracks and told her that I'd probably be on the next flight out of Dallas because there was no way I'd be allowed past the pearly gates of solo flight.
The bus ride to the flight line the next morning was the most miserable ride of my eighteen year long life. Captain John Delumba and I walked out to the aircraft, helmets in hand and I did the walk around. We finally strapped in and without saying a word he started up, took off and flew us out to the stage field where we practiced hovering. He looked very hung over and I could swear that he must have had a real knock down drag out with his wife or kid the night before because every time I said something he would just scowl at me and grunt without keying his mike over the intercom. I felt like I'd been arrested, convicted and sentenced and all that was left was to get where we were going to be executed.
We finally got to the stage field and he approached to a three foot hover. For the first time he keyed his mike and without looking at me he snarled, "Awright damnit, you got it. Better not kill me." I grabbed the controls and like no previous instructor had had the guts to do before, he took his hands completely off the controls, reached into his sleeve pocket and pulled out a pack of Marlboros and a lighter with a 1st Cav emblem on it. I began to do my usual sweep of the cockpit with the controls and how he managed to light a cigarette with the helicopter's wild gyrations I'll never know. This was the first time that anybody had the gonads to sit there for more than a few seconds before yanking the controls back away from me. After about a minute of my nearly killing us on no less than three occasions before some miracle swept us up away from the murderous earth, he finally grabbed the controls and with the cigarette dangling from his mouth screamed over the intercom, "goddamit I got it." He hovered us over to the ramp and set it down on the skids. He rolled the throttle to Idle, looked at me and sighed. I thought, "Here it comes." After about thirty seconds staring a hole right through me he said, "Take off your boots."
This requires that I explain something here. All during preflight ground school, we were constantly drilled on the proper way to wear the uniform for flight. The nomex sleeves on our flight suit were to be rolled down and Velcro at the cuffs fastened, our leather and nomex gloves pulled up over the cuffs of the shirt. Our helmet was to be on our head with the chin strap securely fastened, AND OUR BOOTS WOULD BE COMPLETELY LACED UP. Needless to say, I was in a real quandary as to how to respond so I said what is probably the dumbest thing I've ever said since. I looked at him and said, "Huh?"
He yelled, "I said take off your boots. Don’t you understand English?”
Then it hit me. He needs a reason other than the fact that I'll never be able to fly to eliminate me from training. Must be some legal thing. He needs me to blatantly flaunt a regulation like, "you always wear your boots when you fly" in order to erase me from flight training for all eternity. So I said the second dumbest thing of the last four decades, "Sir?"
"I said take off you're f---king boots goddamit."
I reached down, like I said, my feet were not that far away in the tiny cockpit, unlaced my boots and pulled them off. Before I could ask, "what now?" he grabbed my spit shinned works of art and tossed them about twenty yards across the ramp. He stuck his cigarette back in his mouth, rolled on the throttle and hovered us back to the practice area.
"You got it." he said in a soft, reassuring voice the likes of which I hadn't heard since before I began basic training six months earlier. I grabbed the cyclic in my right hand, wrapped my fingers around the throttle on the collective with my left, and slid my stocking feet up over the pedals. Something wasn't right. I didn't have a death grip on the cyclic grip so tight that you could read the imprint of the grip part number on the palm of my hands after I’d take off my gloves. My left fingers soothingly caressed the cork grip of the throttle. And for the first time, my feet glided lightly over the pedals that before I could not even remember feeling under the soles of my combat boots. Captain Delumba took his hands from the controls took a drag on his cigarette and began a relaxed gaze at the rolling Texas hills covered with scrub oak. And you know what, that Hughes did not move. It hovered as on a string. I was doing it!!! I found the hover button!!!
"Give me a ninety degree pedal turn to the left. Don't forget to roll on a few rpms to counter the torque." this from the good Captain.
I did. Without really moving them, I relaxed the pressure on my right foot and ever so slightly crushed my left sock against the aluminum pedal. We did a perfect pirouette to the left.
"Good, now set her down and pick her back up to three feet." I did as instructed.
"OK. I gotta piss; take me over to the ready room." I hovered over to the parking area, set the Hughes on her skids and rolled the throttle to idle. He got out, tossed away his cigarette and began to fasten his now unused seat belt and shoulder harness as I looked on puzzled. When he finished he said, "Three times around the pattern." He turned on his heels before I could say anything and trudged off toward the latrine.
Other than the births of my children, that was the most miraculous day of my life. I never again had a problem as we went from solo to emergencies to cross country navigation, pinnacle landings and confined areas. I really excelled in instrument flying and never again have I been left behind in a group of aviators. When they were handing out our wings ten months later, I was tied for second in my class of 58 students.
I’ve now flown professionally for nearly four decades and in more than sixteen thousand hours in the air I’ve visited fifty one countries, six continents and all fifty states. You just hang in there and make it happen.
Postscript. I now have a lined paper pencil etching that is framed and hung on the wall of my home office. I made it in 1995 and the lead scribbled outline reads, "John H Delumba". I traced it from panel 28 on the Veitnam Memorial in our nation’s capital. The captain was killed when the medivac helicopter he was flying was shot down by a rocket propelled grenade near Cu Chi, South Vietnam in June of 1971. It was his third tour in country. His wife was presented with a silver star for gallantry posthumously.