Latest / The Flyboy Podcast / The Flyboy Podcast: Guest Chris Kilgore

Transcript

The Flyboy Podcast: Guest Chris Kilgore · The Flyboy Podcast

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Flyboy Podcast, where we bring you just one thing: cool flying stories.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, David Moore, and today I'll be talking with Chris Kilgore.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Chris is a combat aviation pilot who flew in Vietnam.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: He has more than a thousand hours of combat time and 6,000 total flight hours, flying both with the Army and the Coast Guard.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: After his time in service, he became an aviation lawyer, and then just recently, he has become the municipal judge in Rowlett, Texas.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Chris, welcome to the podcast.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Nice to be here.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, Chris, I'd like you to take us to Vietnam.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: I was in an infantry brigade, the 199th Light Infantry Brigade.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: I was in the aviation section that was organic to the brigade.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: We had Hueys and OH6s, commonly known as the Loach.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: I flew mostly the Loach.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: As a matter of fact, the Loach is the love of my life.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: And the Loach and I have a 26-year history that began when I first heard about it when I was still in flight school.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: It was brand new.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: It broke 26 world's records, and that's like a sports car of helicopters.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what I want to fly.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: And as luck would have it, I got into the 199th in the aviation section shortly after I got there.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: Got one of the early loaches in the country, and that's what I flew, mostly.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: And with some UH1 timed as well.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: The Army in Vietnam is the best job I ever had.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: I have a very low boredom threshold.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm an Army brat, born at an Army Hospital at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: Started elementary school in Germany, started junior high school in Alabama, started high school in Korea, and graduated from high school in Pennsylvania.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: So flying over there was just great because every day was an adventure.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: Keeping a little context here, I went into the Army and the high school to flight school program.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I went right out of high school into the Army.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: I was young, and the idea that I could get hurt never occurred to me, even after I did get hit and wounded.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: It still didn't occur to me that it was dangerous.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: It was an exciting adventure.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I enjoyed it every minute of it.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I loved the variety in the unit I was in.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: We flew a lot of different missions.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Primary mission in the OH-6 was we were an observation helicopter and we went looking for the bad guys.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: The Cav used that in what they called hunter killer teams.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: The Loach was the low bird, and we worked about 50 feet off the ground at the speed of a brisk walk, trying to find tracks, trails.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: I was down in the Delta, so you find uh footprints.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: If there's muddy water in the footprints, they're recent.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's how close you are.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: If there's clear water in the footprints, they're old.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: But you track those footprints down and see where they lead you.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes uh you get surprised.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: The calves teams, the Cobra worked overhead.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: We did not have organic guns, but I usually worked with a calve team or would have a Huey.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we did mostly.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: In the loaches, we did a little supply of work.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: We did a little bit of everything.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's the variety was kind of nice.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Chris, uh in the book Mended Wings, there's a description of one of your combat sorties in particular.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Would you be willing to share a little bit about that mission with us?
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'm guessing it's the one where I got shot down.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: Well, actually I was shot down a couple of times.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: So one of our infantry units had engaged some, as it turned out, NVA.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: This is outside of Saigon, on the west side of Saigon.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: We were not used to you running into anything but Viet Cong.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Occasional, you know, part-time farmer, part-time VC.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: They'd come out at night, unpack their AK-47 from under the floor of their hooch and go out and cause whatever trouble they could and then disappear during the day.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: This unit, one of our units, had run into a regular North Vietnamese unit west of Saigon in an area where we did not see North Vietnamese troops normally.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: This was the lead up to TET II.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: They were infiltrating, getting ready to make a big assault on Saigon, is what was happening, and our unit ran into them.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: They took some casualties, they pulled back, and they left five people behind.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: And kind of the general thing is you don't leave people behind.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a fairly good-sized unit of ours that had run into whatever it was.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: I got a call and flew out there, and they briefed me when I got there, and they said what happened was we had contact, we fell back, and we had five people missing, but one has wandered back into the perimeters.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: There's four out there, but they don't they didn't know where they were or what had happened to them, and would I mind go looking?
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: At this point, again, from the context of an 18-year-old seeking or 19-year-old seeking adventure, yeah, sure, I'll go.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'll go take a look.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: Anyone with a little bit of thought, forethought, would start to process this thing.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: Let's say, wait a minute, you had a company of infantry that got overwhelmed and you had to pull back, and I'm going to go out there alone.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: So now initially I didn't.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: They cut a calf team out there, and so I had another cobra and another loach with me.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: And we went looking.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: And we hadn't been out too terribly long, and the calf team, which had been up in another area, had to break for fuel.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: Again, common sense would tell you, okay, it's you take a break too, although I didn't need fuel at that particular time.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: But I did, and I said, go ahead, I'll be here when you get back.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'll keep on looking.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I did.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm out there by myself in an area where an infantry company had to pull back because of heavy contact.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: There's everything about this is just wrong, wrong, wrong.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: But again, from the perspective of a 19-year-old, I didn't process all that.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just, I'll just go look.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm hovering along uh a dike line and I find I find the bodies, the four bodies that they were missing.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I hover by them, and I'm going along the dike line and I I see some spider holes, which are what the the Viet Cong traveled in during the day, you know, the tunnel system.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: They lead to a tunnel system.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: And this was near a canal, and so would probably lead down to the canal.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I report on the radio.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: I've got some signs.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: I found the bodies, and I have there's some spider holes in the area, and I suspect there's probably some folks around here.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: At about that same time, I was transmitting on the radio when all hell broke loose.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: A Chinese machine gun opened up from my left rear.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: It sounded like rain on a tin roof.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the low as is most helicopters had armored seats, but it it had what I today as a later as a product liability lawyer, it had a product defect, a gap in the armor plating.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: And if the the rounds came in from just exactly the particular angle they could get between the two armor plates.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: And they did, that they were coming in from that angle, and again it was heavy fire because it was a machine gun.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I got hit on the left side, and I didn't I I did not realize I was hit, to tell you the truth.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: But in any event, the engine quit because the helicopter was just totally, totally destroyed in almost in flight.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: And it's amazing what happens in those circumstances.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: Everything instantly goes, as soon as that machine gun opened, those rounds started hitting the aircraft, your mind goes into slow motion.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's like everything is crystal clear, and everything I did from that point forward was it's like, like I said, in slow motion.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: I had plenty of time that I processed everything, has a very strong sense of what was happening and how it was happening and what I needed to do.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: And the on the engine quit, I'm out in an open paddy, nothing between me and that machine gun.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: There's a paddy dike in front of me.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: I need to get over that dike.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm at a hover.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm only about five feet off the ground, very slow airspeed.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I've got maybe enough rotor RPM to do it, and maybe not.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: But everything just became so crystal clear, like I said, moved in slow motion, and I managed the collective to get over that dike with a little bit of inertia left in the rotor system.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: Just enough.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: The body of the helicopter came down on the other side of the dike.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: The tail boom hit the dike and broke off.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's how close it was.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: But it's just everything was just magically slow and uh complete control of everything, and everything was crystal clear what I had to do and how I had to do it.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: Hit the dike, tail boom broke off, but I had the protection, I had the dike between me and the machine gun.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I could hear bullets flying by the helicopter outside my door.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I stayed in the helicopter.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't about to jump out because it was dangerous out there.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: I could hear the bullets also hitting the back of my armored seat.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I had some protection there, plus the body of the helicopter and the engine and all the rest of it.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: So it was kind of semi-protected.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I grabbed my car 15 and I was just sitting there like, okay, not sure what's going to happen next.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: And about that time, one of our brigade Hueys saw me go down and he started heading my way.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: I and I'm talking about move everything moving in slow motion, and you're real clear about what's happening.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: As soon as I hit that dike or got over the dike and hit, immediately secured the power, because you don't want any power going as you don't have to, because you've got fire possibilities and things like that.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I retuned all of the radios.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: So if they captured the helicopter, they would not know what frequencies we were working that day.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: Because we changed the frequencies every day.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: It just was all crystal clear.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: I did everything right out of the book without even thinking about it.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I see our Huey coming for me, and I need, uh-oh, I've got to warn him.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm busy trying to get the thing fired back up, get the radios warmed up, get the frequencies changed back, and I realized I'm not, I'm not going to be able to get the word out in time.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: I was really worried.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: But as soon as he got on short final, all the gunfire stopped, machine guns stopped firing.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I suspect that the VC decided that if things were going to get go from bad to worse from them, it was time for them to get out of town.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because they knew from experience that helicopter would be just the first of many, and there'd be troops on the ground, and there'd be probably fighter bombers dropping bombs where they were and that sort of stuff.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: So they decided to disengage.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: Just as the Huey was getting on short file next to me.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: I jumped out of the helicopter, uh, bounded across the paddy, and dove headfirst into the helicopter.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm so frantic, and this is so quick, the crew chief had to grab me to keep me from sliding out the other side of the helicopter.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because I dove and was very pleased to see that I was still in the helicopter.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: And he looked at me and says, Oh my God, he says, You've been hit.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the first time I realized I had been hit.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: My whole left side was bloody.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I had multiple, mostly fragment wounds, mostly from uh shrapnel wounds, mostly from aircraft fragments.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: A couple of bullet pieces and one round that after going through the helicopter and through the uh my chicken plate wrapping and straps and all of that sort of stuff, it hadn't penetrated very far.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: It was only an inch or so in.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: Only an inch or so.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: Only an inch or so.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: But I had no idea.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it was uh that's like, oh my goodness, entire left side was covered in plug.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: And they took me immediately to the uh metavactomy to a hospital, and they had to go in and pull out some shrapnel, you know, some fairly minor surgery.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: I had mostly just minor stuff along the left side.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: There might still be a piece in there.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't had any x-rays lately, but it as of a few years ago, there was one piece still there that was embedded so deep that it wasn't worth going after.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: But I told them, I said, Man, I need to get out of here.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: I gotta I gotta get back out there.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: And they said, You aren't going anywhere, you are not, you are grounded.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: I wound up being grounded for a couple of weeks until they removed all of the metal from me and the wounds healed a little bit.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: That was probably one of the more exciting missions.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's the second time I got shot down.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: That was the second time you got shot down?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: Only twice.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Only twice.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: Flying the Loaches getting shot down was kind of a hazard.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: If you look at the statistics, we lost more OH-6 airframes than any other airframe in Vietnam by a long shot.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: As a matter of fact, I think it's as many as all the others combined.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: But on the upside, it is the most crash-worthy aircraft ever built.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: Everything about that aircraft was designed to be crashed.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: I guess I feel better.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so we it had one of the lowest casualty rates.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: Shot down a lot, but the pilots weren't killed unless they were killed by the bullets because the aircraft, the way it's designed, it has a lot of crushable area that absorbs the energy forces, the tail boomer break off.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um the best example is we had a pilot in our AO for one of the calf troops who was low leveling, when really didn't need to be low leveling, and he hooked a skid on a water buffalo, and he was going about a hundred knots or so, and the aircraft just went end over end over end, and it just tumbled for a long distance.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: He walked away from that.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, it should have been a non-survivable crash given the airspeed.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: But everything about the aircraft was designed as collapsible material below the seats to absorb the G forces, the way the airframe is designed, it just was very, very crashworthy.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: So, Chris, uh, you flew both with the Army and with the Coast Guard.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: How did the flying differ in those two services?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: The Coast Guard, well, they were both I guess they differed in the fact that the Coast Guard flying is all multipilot.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's very little single there is some single piloting, but not a whole lot.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Usually you're flying with a co-pilot, at least if it's anything interesting.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: Much more organized.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if that's the right word or not, but it it's a little bit less turning you loose.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: And in the Army, just out there on my own, kind of doing my own thing and sometimes not so wisely.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: In the Coast Guard, it's it's much more controlled.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: Now, having said that, I later learned in the Coast Guard the the operations officer, uh, when the weather conditions were a certain level of bad weather for night flying.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: If you were the duty crew, we had someone on duty 24 hours a day.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: And if you had the watch, you had to have the approval of the ops officer before you could launch if the weather was really bad.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: And he had a list, and I was one of the two pilots in the unit, uh, did not require his approval to launch, no matter what.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I attribute that mostly to good headwork because I would know when not to go and when to turn around.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: But also he knew that if things got really bad, I could handle it.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: So, Chris, when did you first know you wanted to be a pilot?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's an interesting question.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: I never wanted to be a pilot.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: I had no interest in flying.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: I it just nothing ever occurred to me.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: I graduated from high school with a wheelbarrow full of scholarships, several of them full ride, almost all in engineering, schools all over the country.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: I had tentatively decided I would probably go to Tulane, and the Army started advertising the high school to flight school program.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: And in context, I come from a military family.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: My dad served in World War II in the Korean War.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I was quite frankly afraid, because listening to all the political rhetoric at the time, this was my war, my generation's war.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I was afraid they were going to end that war before I could get to it.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so I decided that was more important.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: When they started, when I saw heard about the high school to flight school program, I said, that's what I want to do.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: And much to my mother's dismay, I chunked those scholarships and I joined the Army.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, Chris, let me ask you this.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: What's your favorite flying memory?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I would have to say it's the Burma Agate Mimosa accident.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: Off the Galveston Seaboo, the um Burma Agate was a tanker, was out there just leaving Anchorage, getting ready to go into the Port of Houston.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: And the Mimosa was a freighter that had unloaded in Port of Houston and was leaving.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: There was a breakdown in the watch on Mimosa, and they literally ran into T-bone the Burma agate.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: There was a huge explosion.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: Both ships caught on fire.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: There was a big gash in the bow of uh Mimosa that was filled with crude from Burma Agate.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: It caught on fire, it went off in a different direction, and there were explosions up and down the uh Burma agate.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: At the end of the day, only two people survived on the Burma agate.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: There were there were, I think, 26 fatalities that day.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: There were a couple of fatalities on uh Mimosa, but by and large, Mimosa caught on fire, but you know, we we got them all off before.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: I was on the watch that night.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: Sartel, that's the SAR telephone, New Orleans, controlled us.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: That was the rescue coordination center.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: We could hear on the Sartel they called us.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: Did SAR stand for search and rescue?
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it's uh comes on a speaker in the wardroom.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: We were sleeping, JC Cobb and I, and you could tell from the tone of what the uh controller was telling us that there was a problem.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: This was serious.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: This was no ordinary SAR.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: We jumped up, we were, they were still, New Orleans was still telling us, and JC ran to the ops to talk to him on the phone to get some details.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: I went out into the hangar to get into the helicopter to get it ready.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: They were already pushing it out the door.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: They pushed it out just till the tail rotor was cleared, unhooked it.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody and his brother in that hangar knew this was different.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: And when JC got out of there, already had the the uh the thing started, he jumped in and we we were off.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: Time from notification from New Orleans, from Rescue Coordination Center, and launch was 10 minutes.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: It was a record.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: It was just again, you have this sense.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know something, this is different.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: This is no ordinary SAR.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: And when we lifted off from Houston, Air Station Houston, you could see way out, and it's a long way, 20-something miles to the scene of the the accident, you could see the glow on the horizon.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: At the end of the day, out of 20-something people on Burma agate, only two survived.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: We approached it and we were starting seeing the waters were aflank all around the Burma Agate, and it's clearly not survivable.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: We were seeing bodies in the water as we were getting up, and we're flying alongside, and there is an explosion in one of the forward holes, is a, is another hole that exploded.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: And the crewman at that point says, There are two people standing on the air castle.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's the covered deck on the aft side of the tanker where people can walk around the main structure of the ship.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: And we looked over there and there were two guys standing on the rail.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: So we went over and it was so quick, uh, it was so well coordinated.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: We just nobody had to say anything.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: Everything happened again in slow motion.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's just like when I got shot down.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody did what they needed to do.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: We have all of these standard things that we go through to do a hoist, uh Coast Guard protocol, and there's process and all of that happened automatically.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: And Tommy Wynne was a crewman.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: We got over, and the way it was so quick, we just swung the basket over.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: We stopped, the basket swung out a little bit.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: The two guys jumped off the rail into the basket, and we pulled away as fast as we could, with them still hanging on into the basket, and pulled them up.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: Later, they gave a statement when they were in the hospital.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: They were two best friends.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: And when they had the collision and the ship started burning and the holes were exploding, everybody jumped overboard.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: None of them survived because the whole water around the ship was on fire.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: There was it was not survivable.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: One of these two best friends could not swim and he wouldn't jump.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: He couldn't jump.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: He was just too he knew that that would that was he would die just from being in the water.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: So his friend said, I'll stay with you.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: And the deck got so hot, they got up on the rail because it was wooden.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: And they were standing on the that's when they were standing on the wooden rail to avoid the heat of the deck.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: It was that bad.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: And just as we were approaching, that forward hold exploded, they looked at each other and said, We can't stay here.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: We got we gotta go, you know, even if it's to our death.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: And to them, uh as the statement, as they gave the statement, it was like a miracle.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: There was a rush of wind, a blinding white light, and the basket appeared right in front of them.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: And they jumped right in it.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so we saved them.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's probably the most dramatic rescue I ever did in the Coast Guard.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: We saved almost everybody on the Mimosa because the fire there was burning slow and working its way from the forward area where the crude oil had collected back towards the uh superstructure.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: But only these two guys survived on uh Burmaagate.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: Chris, we know that flying can be dangerous.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: Have you lost any friends along the way?
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: And is there anyone he wants to remember today?
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: Charlie Plummer, we were all at the club, and we got a call that the general wanted somebody to come out there and pick up something or another, and we all looked at each other and said, Bullshit.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: A night flight, we've all been to club drinking, and and Charlie was a maintenance officer.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: He said, I'll I'll do it.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: He said, I haven't had but one or so.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Because General ain't gonna be happy if we say no.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: And the aviation officer was the only thing the aviation officer knew how to say was yes, sir.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: He had no no other words in his vocabulary.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: So Charlie he saved all of our bus.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: He said, I'll go do it.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: They went out, he went out to the forward area and they were coming back to the the main heliport, and they had a mid-air with a Huey.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: And Charlie was killed.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: Huey didn't see him, he was descending for an approach into a big helipad out there at two field forces and didn't see our loach and just descended on top of it.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: Huey lost its skids, but nobody on the Huey was was hurt.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, Charlie and the passenger were both killed.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, Chris, my last question for you today.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: When you talk to young people who tell you they're interested in becoming pilots, what advice do you give them?
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: I warn them flying is not a vocation, it's a disease.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: And once you start flying, you will find it hard.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: You won't want to do anything else.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: For many years I knew that I was not making much money.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: I was moving all the time, having to go to different places to find, you know, to keep making enough money, at least the type of flying I was doing.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: It can be dangerous.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's there's some hazards.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: You're gone a lot, but you love every minute of it.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: And the thought of doing an ordinary nine to five job just I couldn't do it.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: When I finally got off active duty and went back to law school, I was become an aviation lawyer, kind of marry the two professions.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: I tell them it's it's the best job in the world, but beware.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like I said, it's a disease, not a vocation.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: Once you start flying, you'll suffer financially for it, but you won't want to do anything else.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Judge Kilgore, thank you so much for being on the podcast today.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, my pleasure.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: You've been listening to the Flyboy Podcast.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: This podcast is brought to you by our parent organization, the Flyboy Lab.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: The mission of the Flyboy Lab is to elevate awareness and appreciation of aviators, their service, sacrifices, and contributions, and hopefully we've fulfilled that mission today.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: New episodes of the podcast drop every Thursday morning, and you can find previous episodes on our website, theflyboypodcast.com.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: Until our next sortie, push the mock, use the vertical, and fly safe.