THREE CHOPPERS DOWN

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Gen. Colin Powell fixed his gaze on the 21-year old warrant officer.
It was 1971 in Vietnam. Powell wanted to learn first-hand about the Huey helicopter that had been shot down a few days before.
“The report says you were shot down in Laos,” Powell said.
“Yes, sir,” replied Warrant Officer Les Rasset.
“We’re not fighting a war in Laos,” said the general who would one day be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and then Secretary of State.
“Oh, yes, sir,” replied Rasset and began to tell him about the covert missions, the involvement of the CIA, and other details of the Laos missions.
“Stop,” interrupted Powell. “I don’t want to hear another word.” He sent the young Minnesotan back to his unit.
Lester Rasset grew up in Maple Lake on a dairy farm. “From the time I was six years old, I was with my dad all the time. I was his right-hand man.
I thought it was wonderful. I had good parents, a loving family and I grew up in a great community.”
He graduated from Maple Lake High School in 1968, and went to the University of Minnesota. He made it into his second year before he dropped out and volunteered for the draft. It probably wouldn’t have taken very long for Uncle Sam to grab him anyway, since his draft lottery number was 61 out of 366.
“I thought I’d get in, do my two years, and get out.”
In January, 1970, he was sent to basic training at Fort Bragg. “But then we had an orientation on helicopters, and I decided I wanted to be a helicopter pilot.” He filled out the appropriate paperwork and took a physical.
He had already been assigned to Fort Sill to become a forward artillery spotter when he got his orders to helicopter flight school. He was told to report to Fort Walters in Texas.
Rasset’s prior experience in flying was limited to a neighbor taking him for flights in a little plane. He had never been in a helicopter.
“That’s the great thing about the Army,” Rasset said.
“Who else can spend a half-million dollars to train somebody to fly a helicopter? I thought it was great.”
The training was intense and challenging and included six to eight hours of classroom study each day combined with time on the flight line and the other duties of a soldier.
Rasset said he was fortunate enough to have the fundamental skills of a pilot including a good math background, and good hand-eye coordination and depth perception.
Training was in the small Hughes T-55 Osage helicopter, a flying machine that consisted of an engine, a rotor, a bubble where the pilot and trainee sat, a tail and a tail rotor.
“When it crashed, you could pick everything up and put it in the back of a pick-up truck.”
His first journey into the air was with a pilot who had just completed two tours in Vietnam. “He lifted the helicopter about five feet off the ground and just held it there.
It looked like he wasn’t even moving his hands. I thought, ‘This is so easy.’”
During an orientation flight, though, the trainer told Rasset, “Okay, you have the aircraft now.”
The next few minutes were not pretty. “You read about this stuff, the power and the pedals and everything, but I got the helicopter into a pendulum, swinging side to side. I was over-reacting to everything. It was a humbling experience. But you get better at it. I thought it was fun.”
After about 10 or 12 hours with the instructor, the trainees get to solo. “You’ve got to take off and land and do all this other stuff. I was sweating bullets. And then you have to listen to the instructor’s critiques. I remember he told me I should be watching my airspeed, and I told him I was so busy flying, I wasn’t watching anything.” He said, ‘Well, you should be.’” Rasset recalled one exercise where the new pilots were sent off in their Hughes 55s to find a series of check points, re-fuel after two hours, and find their way home. He and another trainee were cruising over the West Texas countryside and they saw a group of other Army training helicopters in front of them.
“We laughed. All we had to do was follow the other aircraft. It was so easy. But then we heard over the radio that the lead helicopter had reached the check point. The people on the ground radioed back wondering why they thought they were at the check point. They said they could see the water tower. The ground people replied there was no water tower at that check point. You should have seen all the little helicopters heading off in every direction. They finally had to look at their maps. Just when you think you’ve got it mastered, you find out how pathetic you are.”
After four months at Fort Walters, it was on to Fort Rucker in Alabama for training in the Army’s primary workhorse helicopter, the Bell UH-1 Iroquois, usually called the Huey.
One foggy morning, he was to go up with a veteran trainer. “It was rainy and cloudy and foggy. I was sure they would cancel, but the pilot said, ‘Let’s go up for a little weather check.’ He told me, ‘When you get to Vietnam, it won’t be up to you. You gotta go.’”
More information appears in this week's Messenger.

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