Thursday, December 5, 2024
“So, son, you graduate in a couple of weeks. What are your plans?”
18-year-old Dennis McIntire recalled the moment his father confronted him in his room in San Antonio just weeks before his high school graduation in 1976.
McIntire pushed his long hair away from his eyes, and uncertainty edged his voice as he answered, “I thought I’d just kind of hang out, kind of figure it out.”
His father, a former Army soldier, was having none of it. “Not here, you won’t,” he insisted.
McIntire initially aspired to become a diesel mechanic but lacked the means to fund his education. “The Army that you don’t love, like I do, would pay for your training,” his father said.
Inspired, McIntire spoke with a recruiter and discovered he could train as a helicopter mechanic.
He didn’t plan to join the military at all. He had always said he would never do it, but he joined the Army. “I guess I’m an E-2,” McIntire said, pinning on his “mosquito wing,” which was just a one-bar rank — the start of an incredible military career.
STATIONED ON THE ‘ROCK’
His journey took him to the “Rock,” the affectionate name for Hawaii, where he worked as a helicopter mechanic at Schofield Barracks. He bought a motorcycle and often rode to the beach after work to surf and have “a blast.”
Young McIntire thought Army life was great, but he quickly noticed the duplicity of many people in the all-volunteer Army. He noted, “So many people had just a horrible attitude. I mean, you’d have thought they were drafted.”
McIntire explains that despite their berating of the Army, “Most of these folks were hypocrites because after they ended their four years, they re-enlisted.
“I hung out with the wrong people and had a bad attitude, like many kids do.” Then he realized, “Why do I feel so horrible?” At 19, McIntire learned a valuable lesson: “Attitudes are contagious, and I’m going to eject myself from this group of people.”
He decided to straighten up, follow the rules, cut his hair, polish his boots, and focus on his job. His hard work paid off. “I did very well as a mechanic,” McIntire recalls and consequently was selected to become a crew chief.
Soon, he was in charge of the VIP aircraft for the commanding general of the 25th Infantry Division. Watching new pilots take to the skies sparked his desire to fly.
SKYWARD
At 21, McIntire’s dream came true when he started flight school on Valentine’s Day in 1980. He showed a natural talent for flying and graduated with honors that December; shortly afterward, he was flying Hueys.
He was a young pilot eager to learn. “Helicopter pilots have to be addicted to adrenaline,” McIntire said, and he was. He loved flying.
He recalled, “Sometimes they say flying is hours and hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.” This comment would soon prove prophetic as McIntire faced challenges that would test his skills and courage.
TREE LESSONS WITH JOE
His time in the cockpit taught him important lessons, especially from veteran pilots with tough attitudes. “Post-Vietnam was not good to them,” he noted.
McIntire was a warrant officer, or WO1, with only a few hundred hours in a helicopter, flying with Joe, a Vietnam-era pilot known for his bad attitude. They were on a training mission in Florida when Joe said, ‘Take-off check.’
“I did the take-off check, and Joe pulled up on the collective, lurching the helicopter up and then straight toward the pine trees.
“Joe, we’re going to hit these trees!” I said.
“He says, ‘Ah, shut up.’ And we lopped off the top seven feet of the pine trees on each side of us. The treetops just vaporized.”
McIntire anticipated significant damage to the Huey. He thought Joe was acting recklessly and was concerned they would return to find gouges under the blades, which he had seen before from hitting trees.
Joe got out and told McIntire to shut the aircraft down. During the shutdown, McIntire waited as the blades came to a stop — expecting to see significant damage.
He was stunned — there was no damage to the rotor blades. It was clear where the trees had knocked dust and dirt off the blades, but the blades were unharmed. McIntire wanted to ask questions, but a WO1 wasn’t supposed to, and Joe’s terrible attitude didn’t help.
“A few days later, we were off duty,” McIntire revealed. “Joe was at the bar. He was getting drunk. You know, a lot of Vietnam War guys had a lot of stuff, a lot of baggage.
“I said, ‘Hey, Joe, let me ask you. That day that we hit those trees, how did you do that without damaging the blades?’”
“He says, ‘It all has to do with the angle you hit them with. You’ve got to hit them straight on or from the top of the blades and never underneath; otherwise, you’ll damage the blades.’
“I was like, ‘Oh,’ so I cataloged that,” McIntire said.
DEAD. DEAD. DEAD.
A couple of years later, McIntire was a chief warrant officer, or CW2, pilot-in-command of his own aircraft in the medevac unit, flying with a young WO1 co-pilot.
They arrived at a site in Fort Benning where a heat casualty was in critical condition in 100-degree heat. The situation was dire, and they needed to act quickly.
The landing zone was too small to accommodate McIntire’s helicopter because a long pine branch was hanging over it. McIntire knew he couldn’t land directly on top of the branch without damaging the rotor system.
Recalling his training from Joe, he hovered at the edge of the landing zone, dove under the branch, and then pulled up on the collective to chop it off.
“So, I landed, picked up the guy, flew him to Fort Benning Army Hospital, and the guy lived. And guess what? No damage to the rotor system!”
He recounts numerous close calls that could have ended in tragedy. “In 28 years as a pilot, I can tell you, no kidding — five times that I should have been dead,” he states candidly. “I mean dead, dead, dead — inches or seconds made the difference.
“How I survived is by the grace of God.”
BLACK HAWK ON THE MOUNTAIN
Despite the risks inherent in his job, McIntire’s passion for flying and serving his country never waned. His tales of near disasters and successful missions attest to his skill as a pilot and his unwavering commitment to the Army and the people he served alongside. “It’s all about the mission,” he says.
He recounted a near disaster on a mountain in Alaska when he lost both engines due to a phenomenon called rotor droop, a flaw in the early Black Hawk helicopters. “… causing me to auto-rotate from 125 feet. It all happened in a matter of seconds while landing,” he explained.
“We were falling out of the sky,” he explains, “when I saw the treetops …”
He pulled up on the collective, managing to execute what he called the “luckiest hovering auto” onto the mountaintop. His passengers, five pathfinders exiting his helicopter, were probably thinking, ‘That was the coolest landing ever.’
“The truth was we just basically crashed on top of this mountain,” McIntire admits.
HYPOTHERMIA AND WIND SHEER
While flying medevac for the Rangers in Dahlonega, Georgia, CW2 McIntire and his crew encountered an unprecedented cold front, unlike anything he had seen before. Oak trees were being blown 10 to 15 degrees — it was horrendous. He knew they couldn’t even start the helicopter.
“We had 60, 70 mph winds,” McIntire recalls. He informed the Ranger camp commander that his crew was grounded and unable to fly.
However, at 2 a.m., they received a call about a Ranger student with hypothermia who was in critical condition. It was a life-or-death situation, so McIntire and his crew made their way to the helicopter. Despite the raging winds, they knew they had to try at least.
Recalling another lesson learned from a Vietnam-era pilot while a crew chief in Hawaii trapped at the top of a windy mountain in Mauna Loa with 45 mph winds, he prepared to start the helicopter despite the storm.
Knowing the Huey has a 30-knot wind limitation for starting with a 15-knot gust spread, McIntire had his short medic stand on sandbags to hold one of the blades. “I cranked the engine up to 40%, had him release the blade, and we were good to go.”
He had to battle a 70-mph headwind to reach the patient, struggling to maintain speed and control. “It took forever with a 20-knot groundspeed,” he said. But on the way back, flying at 90 knots with a tailwind, he had a ground speed of 160 knots. “I remember thinking, ‘Wow! We are moving!”
Suddenly, he hit a wind shear and lost his tailwind, causing his airspeed to rocket up to 160 knots. “The max speed on a Huey is 124 knots on a good day,” McIntire explains. “And the last number on the airspeed indicator is 140, with two marks after that, probably indicating 150. But on this flight, the indicator was pegged at the twelve o’clock position past the 150 mark.”
A ‘retreating blade stall’ — a rare occurrence — caused the nose of the helicopter to pitch up violently. McIntire saw stars through his night vision goggles. His co-pilot, Don Law, cursed in frustration as he watched the medics perform CPR on the patient in the back.
McIntire held his cyclic position, waiting for something worse to happen when the aircraft shook forcefully. Finally, the nose returned to level flight with no catastrophic control system failure.
“I dropped the Ranger off at the hospital. He’s alive, and hopefully still today. I don’t know.”
POWELL AND CHENEY
McIntire’s career as a pilot took him to many places and involved various missions. From 1984 to 1988, he was an instructor pilot at Fort Rucker, Alabama. “My students performed better because I worked so hard to produce a great Army product,” he said proudly.
Despite his success as a flight instructor, he was still happily surprised to find his name on the CW3 promotion list. “I love the Army, so in everything I did, I wanted to make sure it was better,” he noted.
He understood that reaching CW4 was tough. “That’s where the rubber meets the road, and as a CW4, you were about equivalent to a major. But a CW5 — with the respect of a colonel — was as rare as a unicorn; you never saw many of them.”
Then he was stationed in Alaska with the 6th Infantry Division, flying Hueys and then Black Hawks as an instructor pilot for four years.
In Alaska, McIntire was the go-to person for VIP demonstrations. “I was directing every flight — the Hueys, the Chinooks — working with the Air Force, the A-10s, and the F-16s,” he explained. He coordinated Army operations with the Air Force and managed timing and artillery for the Chinooks.
“Whenever there was a mission like that, they always called on me to plan it. I had a great reputation,” McIntire said with pride. He remembered flying Colin Powell and Dick Cheney during two separate VIP missions.
INSTRUCTING WITH EXCELLENCE
After Alaska, he was stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, with the 1st Infantry Division. He was promoted to CW4, which was a shock to him as he didn’t have a college degree yet.
Then he was stationed in Savannah, Georgia, with the 3rd infantry Division, still flying Black Hawks.
CHASING BAD GUYS
During this time, he participated in drug interdiction missions in the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos, known as OPBAT.
He worked with the DEA and Bahamian drug enforcement to intercept boats smuggling drugs from Jamaica. “We would take these Black Hawks and fly 100 miles out to sea with the latest night vision goggles,” he explained. They would intercept fast boats called GO-FASTS, which could go 60 knots.
“That’s fast for a boat, but practically hovering in a Black Hawk,” McIntire said. “You’re behind them doing 60 knots and throw your lights on them. And the strike force team has got their guns, and they’re ready to shoot the engines out as the drug smugglers throw their arms up. I had such a blast doing that mission.”
He was tasked with reconnaissance on another operation but discovered the target was already on the island. As they approached, the smugglers jumped into their boats to escape. McIntire maneuvered the Black Hawk beside them, creating intense waves that pushed the boat back to shore. “They all threw their hands up,” he recalled. “I landed on the beach, and the Bahamian authorities arrested them.”
UNICORN SIGHTING
After Savannah, McIntire was stationed at Camp Humphreys in Korea for a year and found a new favorite food; “I love Korean food. I love Bulgogi, which is beef,” he said. “You have to be careful because there’s Pagogi, which is chicken. Then there’s Kagogi, which is a dog, so you have to be careful. But Bulgogi — I love that.”
Upon returning to the States, he was a CW4 and thought he had no chance of making CW5. “It’s a very tight cut, with only about 200 CW5s in the whole Army,” he noted. So, when he checked the promotion list, he was shocked to see his name on it. “I couldn’t believe it!”
Following Korea, McIntire was stationed back to Fort Rucker; this time, he was responsible for 400 instructor pilots and 1,500 flight students each year. “Here’s a guy with no college degree,” he said, reflecting on his unexpected achievement of CW5. “I’m still waiting for the Army to say they made a mistake!”
McIntire’s love for the Army resonates through every story. His journey, one that began reluctantly, blossomed into a fulfilling and impactful career lasting nearly three decades.
THE ESSENTIAL STRONG MILITARY
Despite his extensive experience, McIntire remains humble. “And even though I know I’m the least traveled, least decorated helicopter pilot you’ll ever meet, I had a blessed career.”
Reflecting on his time in the service and the values he still holds, “… there’s what makes you a man, what makes you a man of integrity. I’m old school — a handshake, a man of my word. And I will always have your six if you are a fellow warrior.”
He emphasized the importance of military service, saying, “It’s absolutely essential that we have a strong military because without that, evil will try to take advantage.”
REMEMBERING THE LOST
McIntire sums up his military experience in three words: “Blessed, exciting, and the third, you know, it would be at times unbelievable,” adding, “I did love it.”
Veterans Day is tough for him because he has lost many friends. “If you’ve watched “Black Hawk Down,” it was my stick buddy, Cliff Walcott, who was killed in the first helicopter that was shot down. I helped him through instruments in flight school, and we were lifelong friends.”
McIntire continued, “I’m not the guy who wears a hat that says ‘retired Army’ or anything like that. I don’t mind if someone else does, but I feel like many people do it just to get that ‘thank you for your service’ comment … I don’t want that. I want to — in my own way — be.”
“I have a deep love for other military service members,” he states. “We joke around. There’s always that, but you know what? Those jabs about other services are all fake. We love each other. We absolutely love each other. We are all brothers and sisters in arms.”
