Remembering AST 5 British Guiana and Brazil
Jim Kinter & Bob Oberst
Bob Says:
Someday I should sit down and write a book about AST 5. That was a real fun place -- 86 different types of snakes, things that went "Bump" in the night in the woods across from our barracks etc. We used to rake the sand in front of the door to the barracks when we had early stations the next morning. At 3AM, we`d get a light out to see what went by in the sand before anyone stepped in it. We had big cats, large snakes and various other woods critters out there. All in all we sent about 3 people to the nut house doing all that. We had one C-130 crew chief that did early preflights while carrying a 12 gage pump -- loaded.
Jimbo Says:
I only spent 1 week at Atkinson. During that week though, a couple of us took a walk down one of the trails the Black Watch had cut through the jungle. We were fine till someone looked up in a tree and saw a 30 foot anaconda!! We hightailed it down to the Club and had a few Heinekens to recuperate:). Another time we were going from the barracks to the field in a 2 1/2 Ton, and I felt the truck swerve. We looked to see what it was, and a VERY large tarantula was crawling across the road. The driver was lucky enuf to hit it, and I swore I felt a bump as we ran over it.
I remember how bad the food was there, and we had to PAY for it!!! I was very glad to get to Belem, BR, cause then we had great food most of the time, and cheap. A Filet Mignon dinner complete with dessert and a couple drinks was about 1400 cruzieros(about $3.00 US). I couldn't believe how cheap you could live down there.
Later, when we moved to Teresina, they had to fly our one heli back to Belem to pull a ground station. We had 2 crews and 2 choppers, but one was out of commission for parts. They could not carry all of us on one chopper, so they left my buddy Jonesy and me in Teresina. We were short on cash, so the crews gave us what money they had, as we didn't know when we would get paid. We decided to charge everything we could to our hotel bill, and save the cash for partying. My bill at the end of the month came to about $50 bucks!!! That was room, 3 meals a day, beer, cigarettes, laundry, and even haircuts.ClickHEREfor picture
CH-21 Engine Change, AST 5
Bob Oberst-RB-50 Mechanic One of the helicopters blew and engine out in the "boonies". They flew in a good engine, gave the mechanics lots of local money and they had to haul it out, over rivers and who knows what else to the downed aircraft, change the engine in the field and return to Atkinson Field. I wasn`t involved in all this, but heard about it. The story was, they had to rent Ox carts, rafts etc.to get there, then had to build a tripod to change the engine. CH-21 Engine Change, AST 5 Update
Greg Etzel-CH-21B Copilot Some more info in the story for the engine change on Marajo Island (Ilha do Marajo), Brazil, in the mouth of the Amazon River. The flight was from Macapa to Belem. Jim Oliver was the pilot and I was the copilot.
The planned flight was in the order of 2 ½ hours but took about two weeks. When the engine failed, Jim put the collective down smartly and there was a lot of dust flying and shakin’ goin’ on. The landing was uneventful onto a very large flat field. A quick inspection of the engine sump showed a handful of broken metal pieces. We got on the HF radio and finally contacted an airborne B-50 who after several hours after the landing flew over and dropped a red survival sled. Halajulia! Mukluks and arctic goodies.
Some locals had seen the big airplane flying around and saw “someone” parachute out (the red sled). We were invited to go back to the ranch house that was several miles away. Transportation was pretty basic. The local ranch hands were very hospitable. Dinner one evening was a stew of big hunks of white meat from the tail of a jacare, a south and central american crocodile. Tasty. As I recollect we spent several days back going and forth to the chopper, partly to start the engine removal and to build a fence around it to prevent the range cattle (Brahma) from using it for a back scratcher. On several occasions one would run past us and we noticed their back ends were bloody. Guess it was rocky mountain oyster harvest time.
We hung out for several days and got “rescued” by a Brazilian C-45 and taken to Belem and the lovely King Hotel.
The poop from group was that the replacement engine was located at Scott AFB, IL. It was eventually delivered to Atkinson and placed on a drip pan with sandbags in Willie Orth’s C-47. GI ingenuity got it to the helicopter and the replacement was as I remember. Jim Oliver flew the test hop and we left the skillful and inventive ground crew behind. I do not recollect any “authorities” looking for us so I guess they all made it back to the ranch house and Willie made another short field landing successfully. How did the writeup of mud in the engine cylinder cooling fins get cleared?(See following) Edit. CH-21 Engine Change, AST 5 Update Chuck Presley-CH-21B Mechanic I read the story above by Bob Oberst about a helicopter engine failure in Brazil. I was part of the crew that changed the engine. I'll tell you a little about it as best I can remember. I'm not sure of the names of who all were involved except one. I know Charlie Duer was the engine man. I remember him due to the tobacco incident. I think SGT Mcguire and SGT Ainsley were there also but it has been too long for a small brain like mine. We loaded an engine and all the tools onto the old Gooney Bird and left from Belem. The helicopter had landed on a large cattle ranch and the main headquarters had a small grass strip where we landed and off loaded the spare engine. We backed an ox cart up against the airplane and man handled the engine from there. There is something to be said for those round engines, they roll easy. We spent the first night there at the main house. The next day we mounted up on horses about the size of shetland ponies and headed out. We had two carts pulled by four oxen each with tools and the engine and about ten or more riders on horses counting all the ranch hands that went with us. They had never seen an operation like this and truthfully, neither had we. It was about eight or ten miles to the helicopter and after a while our butts were beginning to go numb. After we arrived at the helicopter, Ainsly and McGuire cut the poles for the tripod so we would be ready to change the engine the next day. Charlie had already started disconnecting things. The rest of us began to secure things for the night because rain was always a sure bet. We spent the night at another farm house about two miles away which meant another bone jarring pony ride. In fact, we spent two nights there. We were fed like royalty and even went fishing after dinner. We were taken to a bunk house to spend the night in hammocks, but we were glad to be inside because it rained most of the night. The next day we started to change the engine. We lowered the old engine out of the helicopter onto the ground using the bomb hoist. We used the log tripod to raise the new engine up off the ox cart and then pulled the cart out from under it. We thought we could move the helicopter forward away from the old engine and then pull it back over the new one and hoist it up in place. The ranch hands hooked the oxen to the tow-bar and begin to pull. (Wish I had a camera for that) Nothing happened. The helicopter had been setting in the same spot for close to a week and with all the rain it had it settled into the mud just enough that the oxen and our pry poles couldn't move it. Plan "B" was in order. We rolled the old engine out from under the chopper and rolled the new one into place. Did I mention they roll easy? The problem was making sure the carburetor was on the top when we got it under there but with pry poles, bomb hoist and a new vocabulary, we managed. We had to clean about ten pounds of mud out of the fins before hoisting it up. That evening it was back to the farm house for the night. Before we could run the engine and do any kind of test flight we had to dig the landing gear out of the mud to prevent a roll over on lift off. The test flight was successful, no rips, ravels or frays at the elbow so everyone except Duer and I loaded up and left in the helicopter. We were elected to take the old engine and tools back to the main ranch and catch the Gooney Bird the next day. We ran out of cigarettes on the way back to the ranch and Charlie was wanting a smoke real bad. He talked to one of the ranch hands and with sign language, broken English and our pitiful excuse for Portuguese, he was able to trade a can of ration peaches for some tobacco. I know that ranch hand went out behind the barn and pulled some leaves off of lord knows what and put them in a bag and brought them back to the house. So we rolled a couple of smokes and lit up like it was R. J. Reynolds premium. The C-47 showed up the next day and we loaded the engine and all the equipment and headed back to Belem and the King Hotel. But that's another story. CH-21 In-Flight Refueling
Jim Kinter Sr. CH-21B Heli Maint.
I was involved with an incident at AST 5, Belem, BR, 1962. Seems the CH-21B was going in to resupply a HIRAN ground station, and when the ground station crew had initially cleared the trees from the LZ, they left one of the stumps a little high. The pilot neglected seeing the stump, and hit it with the right main gear, snapping it off(the gear, not the stump:). They unloaded the supplies while in hover, and headed back to Belem. One problem: They had to stop halfway, and refuel. As far as we knew, this was the first in-flight refueling of a chopper(It was written up as such in the Air Force Magazine). They hovered just off the ground while fuel was pumped in by hand from 55 gal drums. When they got back to Belem, the ground crew was waiting with empty drums with large wooden planks on top, and a large A-Frame crane close by. The pilot set the bad side gently down on the Barrels/planks, but before he did that, here's the sticky part. A mechanic crawled on top of the chopper(blades spinning about 2 feet above him) to install a large eye bolt to hook the crane to after the rotors stopped. They set it down on the Barrels/planks, and waited with fingers, toes, etc. crossed, till the blades stopped. They quickly brought the crane over the eye bolt, hooked it up, and then everyone could breathe again. See, an H-21 is kinda top heavy with all 3 gear intact, so...............ClickHERE for picture I got to Belem a few days later and helped tear the chopper apart to ship it back to Turner on a C-124. Of course our REAL job was to inspect the 300 gal main fuel tank, and make sure it contained as many cases of 86 proof as we could pack into it, then resecure the inspection panel with the 72 pan head screws and safety wire. We made a lot of 76ers back at Turner happy(of course they sent down the money to buy the booze with):)
