Fireworks at Flanders

The thing that actually fires a 2.75-inch aerial rocket is an electrical charge.  After loading the rocket into the tube, an electrical contact is locked into place at the back end of the rocket motor.  When it’s shootin’ time, the pilot presses the firing button and a charge is sent to the rocket, igniting it and sending it on its way.  On the pedestal between the pilots was a device called an intervalometer.  It contained two arrays of seven contacts, one for each rocket.  Each time the pilot fired a rocket, the intervalometer would rotate to the next contact and send a charge to that rocket.  Rockets could be fired individually, in pairs, or salvoed all at once (what a thrill that was!).

One of the gunships had developed a problem - the rockets weren’t firing from one set of tubes.  Captain Vern Meyer was assigned as the armament officer so his job was to find the problem and fix it.  The aircraft was parked in a revetment at Flanders Heliport and all the rockets had been removed because he needed to apply power to the helicopter and check the operation of the intervalometer.  After working the problem for some time, he began to get frustrated because even though the intervalometer rotated and made contact, the electrical charge wasn’t getting to the rocket contact.  The one thing he had discovered however, was when he selected “pairs” the intervalometer made an unusual clicking noise.

Across the hover lane, Joe Baggett and I had just completed a maintenance run-up on another aircraft.  Barry Keene had stopped by the helicopter and was standing on the step at the left door.  I shut the engine down and the blades were slowly rotating to a halt and since I needed to go over to operations, Keene said he would tie the blades after they stopped.  I grabbed my helmet and headed-out across the heliport.  Enroute I passed Vern Meyer walking toward the aircraft I had just shut down, obviously lost in thought.  He climbed into the seat I had just vacated, turned on the battery switch, armed the rocket system and selected “pairs”.  Then he focused on the intervalometer while he pressed the firing button to find out if this helicopter made the same unusual noise.

Needless to say, it made an unusual noise, albeit, not exactly the one he was listening for.  The noise he got was a pair of 2.75 inch rockets being launched because unlike the aircraft he had been working on, this helicopter was fully armed and ready to go.  The left-hand rocket left the tube and as the fins unfolded, they cut the slack on the back of Barry Keene’s fatigue pants.  It hit the revetment and broke in half; the rocket motor stayed while the warhead headed for parts unknown.  The right-hand rocket fired straight into the corner of the revetment and lodged itself there.  Both rocket motors continued to burn.

Hearing all the commotion, I turned around and began running back to the aircraft.  Joe had already dismounted and was trying to roll one of the big fire extinguishers over to the pad to put out the fire.  Unfortunately, after expending all that energy, he found out that the extinguisher he had selected was one that he had “borrowed” some parts from to complete one of his interesting projects, and the thing wouldn’t work.  Keene tried the aircraft extinguisher on one of the motors, but those rockets used solid fuel that had its own oxidizer and they didn’t respond to efforts to extinguish the flame.

The outcome of this event was a bunch of Army guys running around an aircraft with little effect.  The rocket motors burned themselves out.  There was no explosion because the warheads had not traveled far enough to be armed, at least the right rocket hadn’t.  The left warhead had disappeared when the rocket broke and we couldn’t find it anywhere near the revetment.  As we were looking around, one of the enlisted guys came walking up the hover lane carrying it.  He had found it about 100 yards away.  Hmmmm!  Had it gone far enough to arm??  We stopped him where he was and had him put the warhead on the ground – GENTLY!  EOD was called and they took it out to the perimeter and blew it up.

Trying to blow yourself up on the ramp was just one of many unique and interesting ways to kill yourself in Vietnam.  There were lots of others, but none nearly so colorful as the fireworks at Flanders.

Sidekick 3 - out