Midnight Flight of Wooley Booger, by J. Ogles
Upon graduation from military Flight School in 1967, I was assigned to the 2/17th Cav (101st Airborne Division) at Ft Campbell, Kentucky, enroute to the Republic of Vietnam. My orders were amended in 1968. I was assigned to the CH-37B transition course at Ft. Rucker enroute to Korea. The Pueblo Crew would need a heavy-lift aircraft to transport them from Panmunjom in event of their release. That may have weighed heavily upon the decision to divert me to Korea.
The Sikorsky CH-37B was a monster of an aircraft with twin R-2800 Pratt & Whitney engines each consisting of 18 cylinders. It roared like a B-29 on startup, and, at my young age, I was thrilled to pilot that huge aircraft (31,000 pounds gross). It came off production line in the mid-fifties, but had an advanced control augmentation (ASE) which enabled the pilot to fly over large distances without touching the controls. It could carry 18 fully equipped combat troops or sedans, howitzers, jeeps, etc.
Each of the CH-37’s had a nickname written on the nose. My favorite of all was ‘Wooley Booger.’
I was privileged to fly some of the last CH-37’s from Korea to Tokyo , Japan, for shipment back to the USA when the Army determined them to be obsolete. I also was honored to be the last CH-37 pilot to leave Korea.
Can you imagine the excitement of a young officer, just out of school, to be able to fly such a wonderful aircraft! It was the height of my beginning forty-year career in military aviation.
Most of the other CH-37 pilots in Korea were at retirement age and highly experienced aviators. I learned much about flying in diverse weather conditions over land and sea from those able aviators. We flew in support of the ROK Marines on the east coast of Korea when a band of 128 guerilla troops from North Korea landed there. We also conducted numerous operations over the Yellow Sea. My most unnerving mission was flying to Bangyeon-do Island (just off the coast of North Korea) to recover an ill Army civilian.
Bangyeon-do is well above the 38th parallel and in clear sight of the North Korean coast on a clear day. But my flight originated at the midnight hour in heavy thunderstorms over the Yellow Sea. The flight was approximately two hours over the sea. Our primitive navigation instruments fluctuated excessively with the lightning and turbulence. I at first feared being detected by North Korea radar and possible shot down by an interceptor fighter but soon abandoned that fear as I realized no common-sense North Korea pilot would have taken off in such weather.
The mission was a success and the gentleman with the illness (heart attack) was flown back to a MASH unit where he recovered.
I learned a lot about overcoming fear of the unknown on that one flight – even more than taking ground fire from enemy gunners earlier on the east coast. I learned to trust the instruments implicitly since my life, and the life of our crew, depended upon it. Our physical sensations will deceive us when deprived of outside references. We may feel we are turning left when we are actually turning right. Without instrument references in zero visibility conditions, no pilot can fly without crashing. I had learned instrument flying under the gentle weather condition of the military flight training program back in the States but had never flown under such conditions as that one flight to Baengyeon-do. I learned that truth is not always what it appears to be – to trust the instruments and not our sense of spatial orientation. A silently uttered prayer is also helpful beyond measure.
Flying under instrument conditions is like living one’s life in the guidance of the Holy Spirit. What our flesh feels and desires is not usually the correct manner of living. We must place our trust in the Holy Spirit as a pilot places his trust in the instruments.
Wooley. Booger saw me through many other learning experiences – things I probably would never have learned without that experience with Wooley Booger. I love that aircraft to this day (even though I have since flown many different models of helicopters and fixed wing aircraft). But even though it is now deteriorating on the Bone Yard (storage yard for obsolete military aircraft) in Arizona, I still consider it my greatest flying machine.
It is saddening to know that no other young person will ever have the experience I had in flying that amazing but noisy aircraft, or to be subject to those episodes of intense learning and confidence-building which I had been gifted just out of flight school.
