Letters From War: Lucky Dollar

By Don Harward.

Sometimes, we do things that make us wonder why we ever did them in the first place. Sometimes, we keep doing them for a long time—maybe even a lifetime. One such thing is the way I’ve been tucking the same old folded dollar in my wallet just behind my FAA pilot licence for many years. I know you can’t see it, but trust me, it’s there. I first put it there at around 13:00 hours Central Standard Time, on 17 December 1989. Why is my memory of that time so precise, you ask? Read on…

It had been snowing and was as cold as the dickens when our giant C-5 took off from Fort Campbell, Kentucky. It was very different when we were greeted by a blast of hot tropical air on our arrival at Howard Air Force Base in the Republic of Panama at around 23:00; man, what a difference from just a few hours earlier.

In the belly of our C-5 were two disassembled MH-47 Chinooks, all sorts of maintenance stuff and a couple Chevy trucks along with about 70 soldiers. As the nose ramp lowered and settled on the tarmac, which was hopping busy with all sorts of activity, John, our group aviation life support equipment guy, walked up the ramp and shook my hand. “Don, good to see you…better get some sleep; you’re first up in the morning. ‘H-hour’ is set for 00:45.”

“Whoa, John; hold on there, big buddy. What ‘H-hour’?”

“You didn’t get the word en route? The invasion is on and the thing goes down in an hour and forty-five minutes!”

His words settled in my thoughts as my eyes strayed from his face and over the surreal scene around us. All over the bustling ramp, crews were loading ammo, programming black boxes, preflighting and doing a hundred other things. Guys were lying on the ground, on the top of Blackhawk helicopters and all over the grass. I remember how the six-barrelled mini guns looked, silhouetted by the harsh floodlights positioned all over the ramp; “potential energy”, I thought. In just two hours, those silent guns would be glowing red from firing many thousands of 7.62 mm rounds.

“Yo, Don; grab your bags and follow me. We’ll find you a cot.” Like a robot, I did so and soon found myself inside a sprawling hangar with around 1,600 other Special Operations types. I found a cot and claimed my few square feet of Panamanian paradise before going outside to help.

Crews made their final preparations amid the noise of APUs running, and main engines of Chinooks, Blackhawks and MH-6 “Little Birds” starting up. One by one, the various flights departed, variously laden with weapons, troops, gas and everything else imaginable—including the kitchen sink!

As I stood outside the darkened hangar as H-hour approached, someone in our small crowd counted down: “Five, four, three, two, one.” At that exact second, as I looked towards the Panamanian military headquarters, I heard a “crump, crump,” as two rockets slammed into the building; it was quite a show. One by one, everything opened up in a splendid light show. The neatest and most recognisable sound was the AC-130’s six-barrelled, twenty-millimetre Vulcan. The AC-130 was hammering everything with its Vulcan, 40 mm “pom-pom” guns and deadly 105.

It was quite unreal having a “front row seat” to the start of a war! After a few minutes, an officer came out and told us to get inside in case an over-zealous sniper appeared. I walked in and stood behind our S-2 (an intelligence officer), who was wearing a set of headphones. He was listening to the flight crews on the command frequencies as they got into the quickly developing battle. He was typing on the keyboard as fast as he could, and some other pilots and I read over his shoulder.

“Little Bird confirmed hit at grid…” was the first entry I noticed. Holy smokes, that was one of my friends, and we just took a hit. He paused and typed again: “Blackhawk confirmed hit in main transmission, making emergency landing, grid…” Within a minute, we’d lost a second one. Then almost immediately another entry: “Little bird confirmed shot down, grid…” No, way! This wasn’t going well at all. Two minutes and two or possibly three aircraft hit already? The next entry was, “FARP (forward area refuel point) under fire; holding.” The FARP was actually a Chinook helicopter full of gas, which had landed and was dispensing fuel to the combatants. Tomorrow morning was really only about four hours away—it was going to be busy.

At around 06:00, my first mission, along with another Chinook, was to extract wounded Army Rangers from Tocummen International Airport. After a short flight, we landed near the smashed and broken main terminal building of the thoroughly blasted airport. Outside my cockpit, clearly visible through the chin bubble, was a corpse. In front of me was a Dodge Dart with four bodies hanging out, riddled with what looked like hundreds of bullet holes. Nearby, several prisoners stood zip-tied together awaiting transport.

While we were loading the injured, we got an urgent call for reinforcements over at Albrook Army Airfield; the PDF (Panama Defence Force) was making a play for the US base housing area there. As quickly as we could, we had to unload the injured and stuff our two Chinooks—and an Air Force MH-53J Pave Low—with as many Rangers as we could fit.

As we took off, we told the Air Force tactical controllers that we were departing as a flight of three to the north. Although they advised us there was some kind of heavy weapon over there; for some reason, this did not seem to register. We pulled pitch and climbed out over the airfield fence, staying low and building speed. We were still accelerating when I saw it at twelve o’clock—a jeep-mounted fifty-calibre machine gun pointed right at my nose—or so it seemed. Everything was wrong; we were too slow, too low—maybe only 50 feet—and there was high ground to our right and left. Damn if he didn’t have us dead to rights!

Out of ideas and with nowhere to go, we just pushed straight through it. To this day, I can’t remember who was flying—but someone was. I just screamed a command: “Manny—fifty-cal just off the nose. Shoot him, shoot him!” Manny, the left door gunner, who had the best angle, responded immediately at the same time as the fifty opened up on us. We were so close to it that the concussion of its muzzle blast thumped against my chest. I held my breath and waited for the rounds to tear us apart. I heard a single “thump” from Manny’s weapon and then nothing—no more firing from our own weapons, and the fifty went silent. Manny’s gun had jammed, but incredibly—by some unknown fortune—that fifty had somehow missed us.

Then I heard a second “thump” and immediately smelled the burned powder. One of the Rangers in the back had accidentally discharged his weapon inside the helicopter! We must have had forty or fifty guys in the back but—miraculously—the bullet hadn’t hit any of them!

Then came the moment. I looked down at my kneeboard where I had been busy scratching notes, copying stuff and figuring fuel. In one of those “Holy Crap” moments we sometimes have, my eyes focused on the dollar bill I had tucked under the clip. I think I might have clipped it there after it had fallen out of my pocket earlier; I’m not sure. However it happened, there it now sat in all its “out-of-place” glory. I immediately recognised that folded dollar bill as my personal “good luck charm”. While the dollar bill didn’t account for what had happened, at least it represented the events that had just taken place. As soon as that flight was over, I placed that dollar bill back into my wallet and have never flown so much as a kite without it!

If you think the story is over, think again! Fast-forward a year and a few weeks to the early morning on the 17th of January 1991—the opening hour of Desert Storm. I found myself in the jump seat of the darkened cockpit of an MH-47—call sign “Python Five-zero”—this time, racing north towards Iraq. We were moving into position to cover the strike on Tallil, a large Iraqi Air Force base. We were the CSAR (combat search and rescue) aircraft and we were pre-positioning to pick up any US Air Force guys who might not fare so well over the target. I was riding with Russ, our standardisation pilot, and Dan, a younger pilot who just arrived in country. Russ and I were supposed to have been the mission crew, but Dan needed some night desert flying experience, so we agreed to let him fly until we got into the target area.

A maintenance delay meant we had been late getting out of the chocks and by 03:45, we were nowhere near where we needed to be. The strikes had barely begun when the radio went into overdrive. The news we were receiving on the SATCOM (satellite communications set) wasn’t good. “Python Five-zero, this is Shadow, over.”

“Shadow, Python Five-zero, go.”

“Python, we have a MiG north of you heading south. We are vectoring F-14s to engage; standby, over.”

OK; that wasn’t good news! All around us, the terrain looked like a pool table, with nowhere to hide. If the MiG was just north of us, my money said the pilot was probably pretty pissed off because his base had just been smoked by a bunch of our bombers. I didn’t need to say anything to the crew because they had all heard the radio transmission, but I told them to keep their heads up, as we had a MiG headed our way.

A couple of uneasy minutes passed before the right gunner said, “Sir, I have a high performance aircraft passing right overhead.” I glanced down at my kneeboard. There was my “lucky” dollar bill, folded and tucked under the clip—just as it had been a year earlier. I said a short prayer just as the crewman said, “Sir, that jet is turning, looks like he is turning into us, sir…sirrr!”

His rising voice told me everything I needed to know. We were dead; that was the MiG and he had us, plain and simple. It was all going to end right there! The aft gunner picked him up an instant later and started yelling: “He’s coming right up our tail pipe. Do some pilot s**t!” (Hey, I like to keep the articles G-rated, but that’s exactly what he said).

Just then, there was a bright flash and someone yelled, “Missile, missile, break right, break right, NOW!” Russ, an expert pilot, slammed the cyclic right. At the same time, there was a second bright flash as our aircraft discharged a bunch of flares. I don’t know whether the crew or the automatic countermeasures equipment punched the flares; didn’t know, didn’t care—all I knew was that I got one more breath.

Then almost immediately there was another flash and a second missile launched toward us. I’m not making this up, folks—it was just about like that. Everyone was yelling, and I was leaning forwards from the jump seat punching out flares and watching the scene. My mind was in hyper-drive; it was as if I could see everything at the same time! When the second missile also missed, I began to think we just might live to fly another day, until I started thinking this guy was going to get us—no matter what!

We were running flat out when we saw yet another flash. This one was different—not nearly as bright—so I knew it had been fired from some distance. Russ was doing all he could, but I had an idea; I yelled, “Climb, climb. Aft stick, aft stick!” As Russ complied, I fired a series of flares.

“OK,” I said, “take the power out, roll this thing over and dive…Now, NOW!” As he did, I fired another volley of flares at the top of the turn. My idea was to decoy the missile up the path of hot flares, then “go cold” and turn and dive. I hoped it would work, but I didn’t know.

Thankfully, while it worked and the missile missed, what happened next was the bad part. I yelled for Russ to land. I thought the MiG was determined to kill us and we should get out of the aircraft. Our dive was too steep and although Russ tried to pull a rabbit out of the hat, we hit with a heavy “whump.” The aircraft started to break up, shedding parts all over. We left sheet metal, landing gear, antennas, fuel, oil and all manner of other debris scattered all over that desert!

Thinking we were now about to die from the crash, I had what some describe as “the clear”—a moment when everything makes sense and one sees what is really happening. I yelled, “Cimb! Get out of here!” Russ did, and—incredibly—that Chinook hauled itself back into the air—badly broken, but still flying. Boeing, if I’ve never said it before, I’ll say it publicly now: your Chinook is one outstanding aircraft!

And what about that “MiG”? Apparently, there never had been one! Imagine my surprise when I heard that the first time. What there had been was a US F-15 that made a diving identification pass over us. Unfortunately, it had attracted so much attention that ground forces had fired three missiles at him (or us). Not that it really matters who the missiles were aimed at—the F-15 bugged out and we were left to deal with those deadly little shoulder-fired killers all by ourselves!

As quickly as we had started to crash, it was over and we were once again airborne—albeit in an aircraft that was losing systems faster than a high school girl loses her prom dress after the dance. The master caution panel was lighting up like a Christmas tree: utility hydraulics, right boost pump, generator #1, generator #2, AFCS, and on and on.

We started running emergency procedures and while it wasn’t pretty, we saved both flight boost hydraulic systems, one generator and one advanced flight control system (AFCS). We were having to cross feed the right engine from the left side, but all the important moving parts were still moving—and all of us were still breathing. We flew a short distance to a hide site we had established earlier and made what some would call a “landing”. This was pretty tricky, since three of our original four landing gear legs were missing, but Russ, who was still on the controls, did an OK job of it.

The forward rotor blades skipped off the tarmac as the rotors coasted to a stop and it finally became silent. For a long moment, no one moved and I thought about everything that had just happened. My stuff had been scattered all over the flight deck, but when I found my knee board, that folded dollar was still right there on that banged up aluminium knee board where I had left it.

I have read of brave B-17 crews flying missions over Nazi Germany wearing paper clips or rubber bands or girl’s scarves or whatever. I wonder what puts notions in people’s minds that there are such things as good luck charms; regardless, it doesn’t really matter because they surely calm the thoughts sometimes. Maybe having a picture of the kids taped next to the altimeter or wearing a girlfriend’s scarf instead of an issue item imparts some keenness of mind or eye—I don’t pretend to know. I’m not going to question or debate it; there is just too much history there. Can call me old fashioned or superstitious if you like, but my quickly devaluing little dollar bill will stay in my wallet for many, many flights to come.