Category: The Green Machine
The inside of a CH47D Chinook helicopter on fire is the very embodiment of chaos.
Photo: Public domain
You’ll never really know until you get there. We imagine how we might perform when we’re finally facing that really bright light, but we can’t ever be sure. The fine line between selfless valor and rank cowardice is often a diaphanous, ethereal thing. CW4 Ron Bender, however, was the real deal — a true American hero.
The CH-47D Chinook helicopter was flying from Fort Hood, Texas, back to Fort Sill, Okla., with a load of soldiers on board. It was a routine mission, one I have flown myself many times. A tripped chip detector latch on the Number 2 (right-hand) engine transmission was the first indication something was amiss.
A Chinook sports five transmissions and three hydraulic systems. There is a transmission for each rotor system, another for each engine, and a combining transmission to mix everything together. The chip detector consists of a pair of magnetized electrodes across which flows the circulating transmission fluid. If enough ferrous material builds up on the electrodes, the latch trips to inform the flight engineer the transmission requires urgent inspection.
Helicopters being helicopters, the crew found a handy field and set down. The two crewmembers pulled the chip detector, cleaned it off and reinstalled it. They ran up the aircraft and all was well. In accordance with regulations, they could fly the aircraft legally, but they’d need to take a more detailed look once they got home. As they approached the nearby small town of Chico, Texas, at their cruising altitude, the engine transmission disintegrated.
The CH47D Chinook is an amazingly complex aircraft. There’s quite a lot to go wrong in such a complicated machine. Photo: Public domain
Something Truly Horrible
The affected engine ingested the pulverized transmission and exploded. Turbine wheels spinning at astronomical speeds broke loose and scythed through the aft end of the aircraft, severing hydraulic and fuel lines along the way. The combination of atomized hydraulic fluid and several thousand pounds of jet fuel created a fearsome blaze. The whole rear end of the aircraft was now on fire.
The airflow in a Chinook is from the tail to the nose. This curious phenomenon is the result of Bernoulli’s Effect and the aerodynamic design of the machine. That means smoke and fumes originating anywhere in the aircraft end up in the cockpit. In short order, the accumulated passengers could no longer breathe. Being human, they unfastened and moved toward the front of the aircraft in search of breathable air and a part of the aircraft not on fire.
The First Sergeant for the Chinook unit was along for the ride. He was fit and an impressive specimen. Realizing nothing good could come from having a dozen or so terrified people crammed up into the cockpit while the pilots struggled to maintain control of the burning aircraft, he posted himself in the small passageway leading to the pilots’ station. The 1SG locked his arms on the sides of the passage and was promptly pushed over onto his back. He ended up on the floor with his head on the center console. From this vantage, he had a clear view of both pilots.
The aircraft was in an emergency descent and on fire, yet he reported that the pilots were calm and professional throughout, maneuvering the aircraft to avoid nearby populated areas. The cockpit filled with thick, acrid smoke as the aircraft neared the ground. At that point, everybody on board was a passenger. The massive aircraft slammed into the ground at an estimated 130 knots. That’s roughly 150 miles per hour.
The aircraft bounced up and sideways and then rolled. The cockpit broke free at the forward transmission, spewing gyrating helicopter components liberally across the countryside. The 1SG was unceremoniously ejected at some point, remaining inexplicably intact as he flew through the disintegrating aircraft parts. In one of those quirky little miracles, the man landed on his hands and knees and bounced his head against the ground hard enough to crack the visor cover on his helmet. He was otherwise unhurt.
The Pilot-in-Command, CW4 Bender, was also ejected from the aircraft. The First Sergeant and a few locals reached the dying man still strapped in his seat. His last words were, “Did I miss the little town?” If ever you wondered what a true hero looked like, that was it.
With all that energy bound up within those moving parts, helicopter crashes are seldom pretty. Photo: DoD
Denouement
Eighteen souls were onboard tail number 86-01643 that fateful afternoon outside of Chico, Texas. Ten of them perished. The post-crash accident investigation fully exonerated the flight crew. In the face of literally unimaginable horror, they all performed magnificently.
Many folks expire peacefully in some facility someplace. Others meet eternity in a more chaotic fashion. On February 25, 1988, CW4 Ron Bender and his crew gave their lives to save a small Texas town. I am simply in awe of such men as these.
Luck. Now that’s a difficult concept to get your head around. Even this deep into the Information Age when most modern folks worship at the exalted altar of science, you can still find people who refuse to walk under a ladder, won’t open an umbrella indoors, or say “Bless you” when someone nearby sneezes. We humans are pretty darn strange.
However, what do you expect? Random chance is indeed a fickle mistress. In the superb book Bravo Two Zero by Andy McNab, two SAS operators are sitting side by side in a stolen car stopped at a roadblock on a black rainy night in the Iraqi desert during the First Gulf War. The two men are oriented shoulder-to-shoulder, and the car is stopped in a long line of vehicles rendered immobile by an Iraqi checkpoint.
When discovery was inevitable the two men bailed out of the car, one on the left and the other on the right. One man escaped to freedom, while the other was killed. They began in the same spot, yet each man’s ultimate fate was driven by the side of the car he exited. It’s hard not to get a little weirded out over stuff like that.
Personally, I attribute such stuff to Divine Providence. My faith that an all-powerful God loves and watches over me is a source of great comfort when life is going pear-shaped. God and I have gotten through some remarkable scrapes together. However, in the case of SSG Alan Magee, we find a tale that strains credulity. His story would be impossible to believe had it not been reliably verified.
The Man
Alan Eugene Magee was born on January 13, 1919, the youngest of six children. He grew up in Plainfield, New Jersey. When the war broke out Magee enlisted in the US Army Air Corps and trained to be a gunner on a heavy bomber. The heavies—the B17 Flying Fortress and the B24 Liberator—promised to revolutionize warfare. Through these expensive strategic assets, the Allies hoped to break the will of the German people to fight. Victory, however, would come at a terrible cost.
SSG Magee’s mount, a B17F christened “Snap! Crackle Pop!,” carried a crew of ten. WW2-era fliers had a good deal more latitude to personalize their aircraft than we did when I flew for Uncle Sam. Part of that was because so many of these old planes were destroyed so quickly. Tactical aircraft fighting in WW2 frequently did not survive very long in combat. By contrast, our mounts operating without anybody actively shooting at us were expected to last essentially indefinitely.
For a time I flew an entirely different Boeing product. In my day the flight engineer and crew chief owned the airplane. It was their names that rightfully got stenciled on the sides. The pilots just borrowed them from time to time. We typically drew specific tail numbers for specific missions at the whim of the maintenance officers. When we deployed to some austere spaces we’d typically personalize our aircraft with chalk intending to wash it off when we got home.
One of my flight engineers returned from a desert deployment with something quite risqué scrawled on the belly of his aircraft. I never crawled underneath them, so I had no idea it was there. Apparently his pornographic expression was intended to entertain the infantry guys with whom we operated. That was all fine until we got back to home station and did a demo for the local press. The belly of his airplane replete with graphic anatomical references made the front page of the local newspaper. Steve, I bet you thought I had forgotten that. Those were some epically great times.
The Plane
The B17G was the definitive late-war Fortress. The G-model included such upgrades as a motorized chin turret up front to help dissuade attacking enemy fighters from trying nose-on attacks. SSG Magee’s B17F lacked this particular system in favor of a brace of free fifties in ball mounts in the front Plexiglas.
“Snap! Crackle! Pop!” was one of 12,726 of the heavy bombers that rolled out of two plants during World War 2. These planes were powered by four Wright R-1820-97 Cyclone supercharged radial engines each producing 1,200 horsepower. The Wright Cyclone was an iconic design also used in the P36 Hawk, the Douglas DC-3, the SBD Dauntless dive bomber, the Sikorsky H34 helicopter, and, in slightly modified form, certain variants of the M4 Sherman tank.
The B17’s bomb load ranged from 4,500 to 8,000 pounds depending upon the required range and environmental conditions. The maximum takeoff weight was a whopping 65,500 pounds, and the plane cruised at 158 knots or 182 miles per hour. The B17’s service ceiling was 35,600 feet.
SSG Magee’s B17F packed eleven AN/M2 .50-caliber machineguns in a variety of handheld and powered mountings. These weapons and mounts were meticulously designed to provide optimal coverage all around the plane, particularly when flown as part of an extensive and coordinated formation with multiple aircraft. SSG Magee was a relatively short man, so he got tagged for the ball turret.
The Sperry Ball Turret
Sperry and Emerson Electric both developed examples of powered ball turrets for use in ventral mounts on combat aircraft during World War 2. The Sperry design was deemed superior and placed into mass production. While the mounts were radically different, both the B17 and the B24 used the same gun turret.
The tricycle landing gear design of the B24 necessitated a retractable mount for the ball turret. Were it not for the retractable mount the turret would strike the ground when the pilot rotated the aircraft for takeoff. By contrast, the conventional landing gear layout of the B17 allowed the ball turret to remain in place through all modes of flight.
The ball turret was unimaginably cramped. As a result, this position was typically relegated to the smallest member of the crew. To enter the turret the guns were swiveled straight down, and the gunner entered through a small metal hatch in the back. Once in place, the gunner sat in the fetal position flanked on each side by the ample breaches of his twin Browning fifty-caliber machineguns. There was an electronic reflex sight mounted between the gunner’s feet. Charging these weapons and clearing stoppages were incredible chores within the cramped confines of the ball turret. Ammunition fed from the belly of the plane through a pair of articulated feed chutes.
Because of the dearth of usable space, ball turret gunners flew without parachutes. Their chutes were stowed in the crew compartment nearby. However, to bail out, the ball turret gunner had to swivel the guns straight down, unlock and open the access panel, crawl backward out of the turret, attach the parachute, and exit the aircraft. As you might imagine, in a plane that might be gyrating wildly or on fire this could be quite the impressive feat.
The Event
On January 3, 1943, SSG Magee strapped into “Snap! Crackle! Pop!” for his seventh combat mission while assigned to the 350th Bomb Squadron of the 303d Bomb Group. Their objective this fateful day was a daylight run over Saint-Nazaire, France. The submarines that sortied out of Saint-Nazaire caused no end of frustration to trans-Atlantic convoys. As a result, Allied planners invested tremendous effort in trying to take out the sub pens that housed and serviced them.
Once near the target, SSG Magee’s aircraft encountered murderously thick flak. A nearby shell burst from a high-velocity 88mm flak gun disabled his ball turret and liberally ventilated both the fuselage of the airplane as well as SSG Magee. SSG Magee clambered out of the turret with difficulty only to find that his parachute had been shredded by the flak hit. As he tried to get his head around that revelation a second shell tore off part of the right-wing. Now uncontrollable, “Snap! Crackle! Pop!” entered a vicious spin.
SSG Magee’s plane was at cruising altitude, and his quick egress from the ball turret left him without access to the plane’s oxygen supply. He somehow made it to the radio compartment before losing consciousness due to hypoxia. Soon thereafter his B17 disintegrated.
SSG Magee was miraculously thrown free of the crippled airplane and fell some four miles toward the French ground below. He ultimately ended up crashing through the glass roof of the Saint-Nazaire train station. Passersby found him unconscious but alive on the floor of the terminal.
SSG Magee had 28 different shrapnel wounds from the original flak attack. In addition, he suffered multiple broken bones, severe facial trauma, and damage to both his lungs and kidneys. His right arm was also nearly severed from tearing through the glass of the train station. However, he was inexplicably still alive.
The Rest of the Story
Terminal velocity for a limp human is about 120 miles per hour. Nothing about SSG Magee’s ordeal should have been survivable. However, he was taken prisoner by the Germans and eventually recovered after some decent medical care. He spent more than two years in a German POW camp before being liberated in May of 1945. Once he was repatriated he was awarded the Air Medal along with a well-deserved Purple Heart.
After the war, Alan Magee earned his pilot’s license and worked in the airline industry. He retired in 1979 and moved to New Mexico. SSG Magee died in January of 2003 of a stroke and kidney failure at the ripe age of 84, arguably the luckiest man alive.
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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine revealed the fading power of America’s military deterrent, a fact that too few of our leaders seem willing to admit in public. So it is encouraging to hear a senior flag officer acknowledge the danger in a way that we hope is the start of a campaign to educate the American public.
OPINION: FREE EXPRESSION
“This Ukraine crisis that we’re in right now, this is just the warmup,” Navy Admiral Charles Richard, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, said this week at a conference. “The big one is coming. And it isn’t going to be very long before we’re going to get tested in ways that we haven’t been tested” for “a long time.”
How bad is it? Well, the admiral said, “As I assess our level of deterrence against China, the ship is slowly sinking. It is sinking slowly, but it is sinking, as fundamentally they are putting capability in the field faster than we are.” Sinking slowly is hardly a consolation. As “those curves keep going,” it won’t matter “how good our commanders are, or how good our horses are—we’re not going to have enough of them. And that is a very near-term problem.”
Note that modifier “near-term.” This is a more urgent vulnerability than most of the political class cares to recognize.
Adm. Richard noted that America retains an advantage in submarines—“maybe the only true asymmetric advantage we still have”—but even that may erode unless America picks up the pace “getting our maintenance problems fixed, getting new construction going.” Building three Virginia-class fast-attack submarines a year would be a good place to start.
The news last year that China tested a hypersonic missile that flew around the world and landed at home should have raised more alarms than it did. It means China can put any U.S. city or facility at risk and perhaps without being detected. The fact that the test took the U.S. by surprise and that it surpassed America’s hypersonic capabilities makes it worse. How we lost the hypersonic race to China and Russia deserves hearings in Congress.
“We used to know how to move fast, and we have lost the art of that,” the admiral added. The military talks “about how we are going to mitigate our assumed eventual failure” to field new ballistic submarines, bombers or long-range weapons, instead of flipping the question to ask: “What’s it going to take? Is it money? Is it people? Do you need authorities?” That’s “how we got to the Moon by 1969.”
Educating the public about U.S. military weaknesses runs the risk of encouraging adversaries to exploit them. But the greater risk today is slouching ahead in blind complacency until China invades Taiwan or takes some other action that damages U.S. interests or allies because Bejiing thinks the U.S. can do nothing about it.
A U.S. Navy walks on the deck of aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan where F-18 fighter jets are parked during a goodwill visit in Manila, Philippines, Oct. 14.PHOTO: ELOISA LOPEZ/REUTERS
Appeared in the November 5, 2022, print edition as ‘‘The Big One Is Coming’’.
The deadliest and most violent war in human history led to the production of millions and millions of guns.
Guns like the much revered M1 Garand and M1911 ended up as surplus weapons, distributed through the Civilian Marksmanship program or, like the Garand and M1 Carbine, were sold out of barrels at the local sporting goods and gun stores for hunting.
But some guns ended up as trophies in the homes of the soldiers, sailors, and airmen who fought in the war after being carried home in a duffle bag or foot locker — “the bring back gun.”
War Souvenirs
Napoleon promoted taking war trophies. Today, Ukrainian farmers tow away Russian tanks. The Hague Convention of 1907 put limitations on war trophies including municipal property, religious articles, arts and science related articles, and state property. World War II British Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery discouraged the practice but that didn’t stop his men from doing it.
War trophies could be a patch, a coat, a helmet, a dagger, or, alas, more grisly stuff. Firearms are the focus here — the exotic weapon of a foreign military taken off a soldier, found in a factory, or simply rooting around. Not all of these bring back guns are created equal.
While many were non-descript Luger, Nambu, or Walther pistols or rifles like the Gewehr 41, Karabiner 98k, or Type 38, some rose above. They were special — or infamous — guns due to a historical connection.
WW2 war Trophies
Several Japanese World War 2 era pistols are available in the June 22-24 Sporting and Collectors Auction but one rises above them. More than 400,000 Nambu Type 14 pistols were made for World War 2. A Type 14 surrendered by a general at Ie Shima, off the coast of Okinawa, accompanied by bring back paperwork is expected to draw more interest than the other Japanese pistols in the auction.
In RIAC’s May Premier Auction a pair of engraved presentation Walther PPs that had personal engraving done at the request of GIs at the firearms factory that included soldiers’ names and the 90th Infantry Division’s “Tough Ombre” logo. One was one serial number away from a similar Walther PP given to Gen. George Patton. They sold for $41,125 and $47,000 respectively.
Compare those to Walther pistols connected to Nazi leaders that sold well into the six figures. A Walther PPK carried by Herman Goering at the time of his surrender sold for $230,000 at a Premier Auction in September 2018, but was topped by a chrome-plated and engraved Walther PP attributed to SS Chief Heinrich Himmler that sold for $356,500 at RIAC’s May 2019 Premier Auction.
While many soldiers were simply looking for a memento of their service in the war, be it a pistol, a rifle, a patch, or helmet, some discovered souvenirs with significant history attached to them that can launch a bring back gun into a rarefied class of weapon.
Cold War Trophies
By the end of the Korean War, the U.S. military frowned on war trophies to avoid looking like looters. In recent conflicts the goal is to appear as liberators and not conquerors. Certain items were still allowed but required the approval of a superior officer and a completed DD Form 603-1 to present at customs.
The military also prohibited returning weapons to the United States that were prohibited under the National Firearms Act of 1934. These included items like full-auto machine guns and silencers. That didn’t stop AK-47s and SKS rifles from getting into the United States as contraband during the Vietnam War. However, a person caught with this contraband could face criminal charges. One lot in the upcoming Sporting and Collector Auction includes Chinese semi-automatic rifles brought back from Vietnam.
Prohibited weapons were only part of the concern of war trophies. Items that a soldier might see as a trophy, like a claymore mine or grenade are dangerous to ship, as this U.S. Army fact sheet from January 1968 lays out the dangers of war trophies. One scenario puts soldiers headed home on a Boeing 707 troop flight, and one turns to the soldier sitting next to him and says he’s got an RPG round in his bag as a souvenir.
The fact sheet states: “A Fairy Tale? Not on your life! That’s a scene which has been repeated for real more than once. Customs and postal officials have actually found, among other dangerous items, C4 plastic explosives, claymore mines with arming mechanisms, TNT, rifle grenades, flares, fireworks, and M72 rockets complete with launchers! These things and countless others have been in baggage or mail being flown to the U.S. aboard returning planes carrying 165 happy — and unsuspecting — soldiers home from a year of dodging VC bullets.”
A 1968 amnesty allowed veterans to register NFA items they brought back.
In 1991, the United States rules for engagement during Desert Storm stated “The taking of war trophies (is) prohibited.” During the later Iraq and Afghanistan wars, souvenirs had to go in front of a reviewing officer. Among firearms sold by Rock Island Auction from the Iraq war included a CIA-seized Ruger M77 bolt action Mannlicher rifle of Saddam Hussein and gold-plated pistols attributed to Saddam Hussein and Uday Hussein.
In 2005, a Minnesota National Guardsman was charged with shipping home two AK-47s from Iraq. In 2006, A U.S. Marine was also charged for possessing an illegal AK.
Permissible firearms are still allowed but require proper paperwork, including a receipt showing the date, place, and source of purchase, and the importer’s identity. War trophy firearms that are permitted can’t be mailed or shipped but must be personally transported to the United States.
Martini-Henry Rifles
Gone are the days of the Luger, Walther, or Nambu bring back gun, but that doesn’t mean they no longer exist. It just means they are of a different type. In Rock Island Auction Company’s June Sporting and Collector Auction, numerous lots include bring back guns. Some are World War 2 trophies while a number are antique British rifles acquired in Afghanistan with bring back papers from Bagram Air Force Base.
They aren’t AKs or heavily engraved Walther pistols coming back from Afghanistan, but instead are single-shot Martini-Henry rifles and muzzle loading Enfield rifles. The 19th century guns date back to when the British Empire ruled the region. Most are considered in fair condition and came through Bagram Air Base in 2016.
War trophies are as old as war itself, but as war has changed so has the attitude and ability to take home souvenirs of combat. Fighting isn’t close in like it once was in the jungles of Vietnam or the hedgerows of Europe and countries don’t want to be seen as conquerors that can take whatever they please. Collecting militaria will always exist, but what will be collectible won’t likely be a gun taken from a factory assembly line in Germany, the pistol of a world leader, or the helmet of a fallen foe, making the war souvenirs of World War II and military actions on into the 21st century even more scarce and valuable. Check out the bring back guns in the June 22-24 Sporting and Collector Auction.
Sources
Will New Regulations limit the future of the Hobby, by Peter Suciu
I have seen this puppies used at the NTC and they are just awesome! It is just a pity that the tanks of Large Tank battles is fading from the battle Fields!
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