The helicopter was shaking quite a bit now in the unsteady air, and Tom fought it to get the parameters set right. He pulled slightly on the collective to slow his descent, and eased back on the cyclic to set 40 miles per hour forward speed. His feet were playing the rudder pedals constantly to keep him pointed straight at the cow. He cross-checked speed and altitude, and spoke aloud the words he or Luke would say.
“Houston, Bulldog, 500 feet, down at”—he checked his vertical speed again—“15.” He released slightly on the collective to descend and eased forward on the cyclic, eyes now fixed on the cow, 2,000 feet ahead.
There was a sudden, surprisingly violent jolt of turbulence, like he’d hit an air pocket, and Tom felt the helicopter rapidly fall. “Damn!” This was messing up his approach—there wouldn’t be any downdrafts on the Moon. He pushed forward aggressively on the cyclic to hold forward speed.
It was the instinctive move of a high-time jet pilot, but entirely the wrong thing to do in a helicopter, a rookie mistake.
The linkage that connected Tom’s right hand to the spinning rotor blade was complicated. The cyclic stick was attached to a series of hinges and pushrods, running down under his feet, up behind his back and out through the top of the fishbowl. It connected above the motor to a horn that protruded from the spinning main drive shaft, which was attached, via pitch control rods, up to the rotors. As Tom pushed on the cyclic, it pushed up on the horn, tipping the base mechanism to change the angle of the rotors.
But what Tom thought was turbulence had actually been a pitch rod holding nut, improperly tightened, working itself loose. The vibration and centrifugal forces had combined to undo the nut faster and faster, until it had come off completely, instantaneously disconnecting the pitch rod from that blade. With no more control, the rotor blade had gone flat, suddenly dropping the amount of lift it was providing to zero.
Tom’s helicopter was now held aloft by just one of the spinning blades.
As Tom pushed forward hard on the cyclic and pulled on the collective, the remaining blade dug in hard, creating bone-shaking vibration, but also far too much force on the airframe. The torque brought the nose down faster than the big blades could follow as the long tail boom pivoted rapidly up. In an instant, the whirling blades struck the tail, their tips going 650 feet per second, slamming into the drive shaft of the tail rotor. It couldn’t stand the impact and sheared off.
Tom felt the helicopter start to spin. The little Franklin engine kept churning out full horsepower as Tom maxed the throttle, torquing against the still-turning blades, spinning the fuselage up faster and faster. But the Bell 47G suddenly had no lift, and no directional control. It fell from 500 feet like a whirling one-ton stone. Tom’s hands were still on the controls, demanding more lift, his feet on the pedals trying to counter the spin, as the broken remains of his helicopter slammed into the empty, hard pastureland. At impact, it was going 200 miles per hour, straight down.
He’d been flying for only 11 minutes, and the helicopter’s two bulbous gas tanks were near full. The crash broke them free of their mounts, spraying the 80/87 aviation fuel over the hot motor in a mist. The mist instantly caught fire, and it spread to the ruptured tanks.
Tom was still strapped into his seat, his body already badly broken by the force of the impact, when the helicopter exploded into flame.
13
Ellington Field
Luke was the first to see the plume of heavy black smoke rising from the direction Tom had flown. But by the time he got on the radio to report it, the senior tower controller was already on the phone with the Ellington crash response team, and his deputy was calling Harris County Fire.
The rural crash site made access difficult. The base’s responders drove to the eastern end of the airfield, unlocked a large gate and bumped cross-country towards the smoke. The Harris County fire trucks, sirens wailing, tacked towards the crash along graveled oil well access routes. Both teams had to cut barbed-wire cattle fences to get close. The Ellington crew arrived first, but it had taken them 14 minutes. By then the fuel had mostly burned off and the cattle had scattered to the field’s edge, where they stood aligned, looking on, puzzled and alarmed.
Tom’s helicopter had hit the ground upright, but the force of the impact had collapsed the landing skid on one side, so the aircraft was tipped on an angle. The rotors had broken at their central shaft, and now lay in a big inverted V across the wreckage. The tail boom was a twisted mess, like an electricity tower that had crumpled and fallen over.
Orange flame still licked around the charred central block of the engine and transmission. The heat had torched the surrounding grassland, and the Ellington firefighters sprayed the site with water from their truck, then crept closer. One of the Ellington crew jumped out to use a portable extinguisher on the remaining flames, and then the fire crew chief and his senior medic approached the cockpit.