Info Sheet/Biography - Fate "Jim" Hutchins Jr.
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This photo is a couple years old and is actually taken in my front yard. I normally put on my uniform to celebrate Memorial Day and Veterans Day. This is taken in front of my flags which I fly to honor my country and the US Army.
I had gotten out of the Army after Nam and was working for a local company. While with them I saw the writing on the way and decided that I needed to get a degree if I was going to go where I wanted to in life. At the time I was in charge of production planning for four textile plants and had a number of college graduates working for me. The company like to have had heart failure when I told them that I was resigning my position to go to work in one of the plants so I could attend college full time.
I had joined the National Guard after coming off active duty. Well, summer camp just happened to run right up to the time I had to sign up for my college classes. I asked my unit commander if I could leave summer camp two days early so I wouldn’t miss the opportunity to sign up for the classes I needed. He refused the request, so I went to the State Adjutant General and explained what I needed to do and the fact that I had been in the State National Guard for the past three years. He approved my request and told me I could take my truck to summer camp so I would have transportation home. Needless to say, my little captain wasn’t happy, but there wasn’t anything he could say or do. I had also been attending Officer Candidate while in the Guard and had to drop out when my parents started divorce proceedings because I couldn’t keep up with school, work, and the stress of their emotions playing on me.
After a year of working every evening and going to school all day, I asked myself why didn’t I just go back into the Army and let Uncle Sam pay for my degree. I contacted the local recruiter and told him that I had taken the flight aptitude test while on active duty and wanted to enlist for Warrant Officer Flight School. I had to retake all of the tests and a flight physical. I passed everything with flying colors and was sworn in and put back on the army’s payroll.
I went to Fort Jackson, SC to be processed in and to go before the flight school review board. Would you believe that Col Jerry M Sage was sitting as President of the review board. Everybody that had go before me had come out talking about how stressful the board had been and all of the questions they had been asked. Well, Col Sage asked how things had been going since I had let the SF Group and what my goals were. When I finished my response, he looked at the other board members and asked if anybody had any questions for one of his troops. Of course no one did and I was ready to head out to flight school.
I was sent to Fort Polk, LA to await orders for flight school. I was a sergeant and didn’t have any duties for the forty days while I waited for my class date and orders to go to Fort Wolters, TX. Oh, I had a Volkswagen Carmen Giah that I had a luggage rack on the engine deck and an aluminum foot locker painted to match the car that I used to put all my gear into. So I was traveling by POV between all my duty stations. When my orders came in, I loaded the car and headed to Ft Wolters. I arrived there early and signed in as continued my casual status. That allowed me to get all my uniforms in to perfect shape and to put all my civilian clothes in the hidden space behind the back seat because we weren’t allowed to have civilian clothes while in flight school. Prior to going to a flight company we had to write an autobiography which included my time with the 82nd Airborne and the 10th SF Group.
Flight school was a riot. My tactical officer had been in OCS also and had to drop out for personal reasons also. Therefore he told me that I knew the ropes and it was my responsibility to ensure “our flight” (platoon) was the best that had ever gone through Ft Walters. After the preflight classroom courses which lasted for eight weeks the school commander came to perform an end of phase inspection to see if we were “up to par” prior to advancement. Now you must understand, we were not to have any past badges or rank on any of our uniforms while candidates. The general walks up to my locker and sticks both hands between two uniforms and spreads them apart. Of the dozen uniforms that I had dress right dress in my locker he had found the one uniform that I hadn’t removed my jump wings from. I was selected as the top candidate of the unit.
No sooner than the inspection was over, my tact officer and I were summoned to our unit commander’s office. I went in and reported, “Sir, Warrant Officer Candidate Hutchins reporting as ordered, Sir.” He proceeded to start chewing my ass out about lying about my previous assignments and that I could be kicked out of flight school for an honor violation. That really pissed me off. Now understand, he was fresh out of OCS, a tour of Nam where he made 1st Louie and back to basic infantry course, promoted to Captain and made CO of a flight school company. I looked down at him sitting behind that desk and said: “Sir, I was going through flight school while you were still in high school and if you had bothered to look at the autobiography that I was required to write and turn in so my officer staff would understand where I needed the most additional training you wouldn’t be sitting there looking like an asshole.” He turned beet red and through me and my tact officer out of his office and never spoke to me again. After that I was my candidate commander and remained at that rank until I left Ft Walters.
We had to have a social event prior to our graduation of the initial phase of flight training and our transfer to Fr Rucker, AL to complete flight school. Since our class would be the last to graduate before the school closed for Christmas we decided to have a Christmas dance. We all had to have dates for the dance so I went to Denton, TX to the women’s university and talked to the class president and told her that we would like to invite 368 of her classmates to attend our dance and because the WOC’s couldn’t leave the post we would provide army buses to pick them up and return them to the university at the end of the evening. (I’ve always said that you could take a pickup truck full of corn and drive through the university and half of the women would follow you home.) Anyway, we made a pot at five bucks each, that the WOC that had the ugliest date would win. That was over $1500 so there was a lot of competition for the ugliest date. The other thing that happened at the dance was we had put up black lights and all the holly berries in the Christmas decorations has peace symbols painted on them that didn’t show until the lights went out and the black lights brought them out. Boy, did I get an ass chewing over that, but it was worth it.
Next it was on to Ft Rucker to finish of flight school. During the Christmas break I got married to my first wife, Suzanne Szabo. She didn’t come to Ft Rucker immediately because she was at Clemson and needed to finish the semester. She did come down in April and we moved into a trailer in Enterprise, AL. I knew that I would be going to Viet Nam upon graduation so very day was lived to the fullest. I ended up as honor graduate and got to select a follow on transition as a gift. I wanted to fly CH-47’s but our class didn’t get that option. I could select either a Cobra or an OH-58. I selected the OH-58.
After the OH-58 transition, I was given another follow on course at Ft. Knox, KY as an aerial observer. When I arrived there and went to sign in at the school a new butter bar kept trying to sir me. I had to tell him that he out ranked me, to which he replied: “Yes Sir.” I went back to Anderson SC for a couple weeks to be with Suzanne and then on to Viet Nam.
When I got to Nam I knew they had a GS15 at Headquarters that was authorized an OH-58 with pilot and I tried to get that position but there was such a shortage of pilots in country I was sent to the 12th AVN Gp and on to the 4th Calvary as a UH-1 pilot. I was one of the older pilots in our unit because of my prior service and my break in service. Since I didn’t drink, at night I always volunteered for the “fire-fly” missions to fly around our compound to watch out for Charlie trying to sneak into the compound. That was in addition to my daily missions in support of our infantry platoon.
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Shortly after that they started the draw down and we were getting new pilots every day. We finally got enough pilots that guys were actually begging to get flight time. Since I had the hand receipt for the HQ bird I was assured of all the flight time I wanted. Since I had picked up a wheeled vehicle mechanics MOS while at 10th Group I had taken over as the motor officer. Our operational ready (OR) rate had dropped to 28 percent. I was constantly flying down to the supply depot at Saigon looking for repair parts. They had plenty of parts but couldn’t identify them because of the sun and rain. Within 30 days I had our OR rate up to above 80 percent. I was pulling all kind of tricks to get there. Since we had to truck in all of our water I was constantly pulling the beds off of 2 ½ ton trucks and swapping them with tanker beds, but I was gaining on the Operational Readiness rate.
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When I got back to the states I was told that they were going to process me out of the Army. I told that 1st Lt. that I had been in contact with my branch in DA and I was to contact them for my orders back to Germany. I finally got him convinced and when he got the Warrant Officer Branch on the phone they gave him orders for me to report to the 2nd Bde 3rd Armored Division in Gelnhausen, FRG. After the Louie hung up the phone he told me that he had never had anyone to get their orders changed from separation to a new unit of assignment.
Well, I went home to Suzanne and told her that I was going to Germany like she wanted to do. I packed all my uniforms and she got together what she wanted to go into hold baggage and I was off to Germany again. I had to get housing before she could come over.
When I arrived in Frankfurt, I met another Warrant Officer headed to the same unit. When his sponsor showed to pick him up there was two of us. He took it in stride and managed to get us both in his vehicle and headed toward 2nd Bde. Well, the brigade is in Gelnhausen, but the airfield is in Hanau, about twenty-five miles from the brigade. Since neither of us had vehicles our sponsor got us put into temporary quarters at the airfield. We had a couple of rooms in the attic of some family quarters. Bob Schimke’s sponsor was a ground maintenance warrant within the brigade so that was the last we saw of him for a while. The brigade flight detachment consisted of a captain and three warrant officers and the enlisted maintenance personnel. Needless to say they were short handed. They had been depending on the pilots stationed in the brigade in other positions to help fill in with the flying.
The captain that was assigned to the detachment was a pussy hound that ran around in a Porsche. He wasn’t happy when I told him I was there with my ID card and a copy of orders. All the rest of my records had been in a CONEX container heading north when I left Viet Nam. I had an answer for him of course. All he had to do was call the aviation center at Ft Rucker and they would be glad to verify my qualifications and then they would send a copy of my flight records current to within a month of departure from Viet Nam. I went to the flight surgeon and got a health clearance, drew flight gear from quartermaster and they got in country check rides and was good to go. I had flown so many of the courier missions when we were at Tolz I already felt at home. I was summer time when Bob and I got there that there was only about two hours of darkness each night.
The unit had just gone through a safety inspection prior to my arrival and had flunked badly. Would you believe that I wanted safety to be my primary functional area. I went to work. I gathered technical manuals, field manuals, technical orders and safety publications from units all over Europe. Those that I couldn’t beg I ordered from the Army Publications and the Safety Center at Ft Rucker. I got survival equipment in and on order for all the brigade’s assigned pilots. I got all of the unit’s tool boxes properly identified so you could look at a box and see that every assigned tool was in its place prior to signing off on repairs. We didn’t want any foreign object damage to the helicopters. When we were re-inspected the unit passed with flying colors. I got involved with safety and became renown in Europe for my safety program.
One of the things I got enacted into regulation was crew rest restrictions for flight crews. When I became a pilot there was no Army Regulation that told how much rest a flight crew must have per day. I kept working on commanders until one day I was flying the Brigade Commander back from a field exercise when I said: “Sir, get on the controls with me. You’ve wanted to get some stick time and now is a good time.” He said; “Hutch, I’m just too tired to even try now.” I looked at him and said, “Sir, I was with you every morning for breakfast, I flew with you all day long, we then at supper and then I would go close my flight plan, pull maintenance on the aircraft, then get ready for bed. The next morning I would be up, pre flight the aircraft, file a flight plan and be there to have breakfast with you. So, if you are tired I guess I have every right to be also. He didn’t get on the controls, but he talked with me all the way home and he asked about the draft that I had proposed to AR 95-1. With his help I got it passed as a division rule, and then as a European Supplement to the Army Regulation. Within two years I had my draft included in AR95-1.
While all of the above was going on I went to the head of the line for housing because all of the time I was in Viet Nam counted toward my wait for housing. Suzanne was over within a month and then enrolled in school for her master’s degree. I had used the old one hand washes another hand with the furniture folks and got my entire quarters furnished with newly reconditioned or new furniture. When Suzanne got about half her masters finished she got a got at one of the kasernes about 90 kilometers away as a psych counselor and rode the Germany train from Gelnhausen to Bad Abling each day. She finished her masters and I got an associate degree from the U of NY and a bachelor of science degree from the U of Maryland while on this tour. I had a Fiat wagon that I used to pick up the guys that lived in the barracks each morning and I would return them in the evening. I even talked several of them to take college courses in the evening and they would ride with me to school and back. I extended my tour for a year to enable myself to complete my BS degree.
When I was getting close to the end of my tour I told the Bde Cmdr that I needed to take three courses during my last two months in order to graduate. He told me that I had been the driving force behind the troops getting to and from work and that I had been instrumental in them going to night classes. He told me to go to work each day and sit at my desk and do my class-work and to take a noon course and two evening courses to complete my degree. He then told
me that I didn’t have to worry about transportation when I shipped my car. He said a sedan would pick me up in the morning and I would have use of it until the end of my class in the evening. I thought that was a great repayment for my service to the brigade.
I was selected to go to the Warrant Officer Advance Course at Ft Rucker when I left Germany with a follow on course at the Safety Center to become an Aviation Safety Officer. I aced both courses and after fourteen months of school I was reassigned to the 18th Corp, 263 Aviation BN, 129th Aviation Company at Ft Bragg NC. After being there for awhile everyone on post knew of me. I discovered that the 82nd Airborne Div had survival equipment stored in CONEX containers for contingency use in case they were deployed anywhere in the world. In the summer all the paraffin candles would melt and run all over the inside of the cold weather kits, in the winter the canned water would freeze and burst and destroy the hot weather kits and the over water kits had never had the floatation devices checked. All kits had expired first aid kits. I designed a two part kit that took all of the common items and placed them in one side of the kit and I used the other side for the terrain specific items. When they needed to be used you issued the general kit and the terrain specific kit and they zipped together to make one kit. My company commander recommended me for the James H McCellean Award for contributions to aviation safety. I was the first warrant officer selected for this honor and I made the Aviation Museum at Ft Rucker in 1977 without having to die.
While at Bragg I became the CG’s pilot and the G-4 became my bridge partner. A lot of evenings I would get a call and he would say grab your gear and throw it in the car and let’s go play bridge. I would say, I can’t I’m on call in case the CG needs to go somewhere. He’d laugh and say they’ve got to call me for authorization before they can call you.
We picked up the aviation unit from the corps artillery and from division artillery and rolled their mission into our unit’s mission. When we got our first tasking to support the Corp Arty I picked up the mission because I knew the Brigadier in command of the arty would find fault with the support no matter what happened. I flew into his pad about ten minutes early and idled for about 15 minutes before shutting down. I sat there for four hours. I would update my flight plan each hour and continued to wait. When the Brigadier finally did come out, I looked at him and said: “Sir, I am as much of an officer and a gentleman as you are. I am one of the senior pilots in our unit and I volunteered for this mission because I knew you had lost your aviation assets and I wanted to show you that the quality of your support would not decline, but would actually improve. If you had seen you were going to be delayed you could have sent a private or a specialist to advise me of the situation so I could get out of this 100+ degree heat and get a drink of water. Now, where do you want to go to?” He told me that his guys would carry him out to a field and he would get a jeep to pick him up and carry him to his command post. I looked at him and asked for the coordinates for his command post. I landed him about three hundred feet from his CP on a dirt trail down between pine trees. When I got back to the flight line my unit commander was on the flight line and he wanted to know what I had done. I was kind of lost, so I asked what was the problem. He told me that he had received a call from the BG and was told that he was to award me an impact army commendation metal for actions above and beyond the call of duty. I laughed and then told him that I had just chewed his ass out, then provided the best aviation service he had had since assuming command of the Arty Bde.
Because we were growing out of our space at Simmons AAF we shed part of our battalion to the 82nd and moved the rest to Pope AFB which was adjacent to Ft Bragg. The 82nd commander called me one day and told me he didn’t want me to come over to the division as part of the adjustment. I told him he didn’t have to worry because the Corps CG had already told me that I wasn’t going anywhere. I was supporting a 15 ship mission one day for the 82nd and the guys were just plain slow in getting off of the birds. I told the CG to give me a few machine guns and I would show him how to get them off. He didn’t like that at all. He came up with the idea of using two cargo straps, one on each side to strap 5 troops per side. I called Ft Rucker Safety Center and told them the 82nd Commander was wanting to use a TURD (troop untested restraining device) to hold his troops in the UH-1 on insertion missions. Needless to say that was one unhappy general. I didn’t care because he was an asshole.
I had setup training for night insertion missions and had our guys flying on a reverse cycle. They would come to work at dusk and preflight the aircraft and then go to our ready room which was red lighted for the mission briefing. They would have a route to fly and either go into a 1, 2, 3 or 5 ship landing zone. The last ship in was to pick up the marker beacon. We had gotten so good that the CG of the Army Safety Center sent his XO up to fly one of the night missions with us. He flew in a jump seat behind and between my copilot and me. When we got back in he said; “You guys don’t need night vision goggles. You have proven that training trumps every time. Oh, we had over 15,000 accident free hours at this time.
One day while we were getting ready for an IG inspection my platoon leader came into the briefing room emptying trash cans. My office was just off of the briefing room and I heard him say, “If you don’t have anything to do you can always help empty trash cans.” In one of my calmest voices I replied: “When everyone in this unit below my grade is working come back and let me know.” I heard the trash can get set down and then he left and closed the door behind him.
My unit commander was setting up for a 15 ship mission one day to support the 82nd. We had low ceilings and a forecast for icing conditions. The UH-1 was not rated to fly into known or forecasted icing. I fought the commander over the launch for about an hour and when he insisted on a launch I told him that I would fly lead. He looked at me and asked why. I told him that a safety officer was there to advise on the safest way to perform a mission and when he choose to go anyway then as an experienced pilot I was there to lead my junior officers. We had not been flying for more than 15 minutes when I got a call from the formation that they were going inadvertently IFR (instrument flight rules). I called for formation break up and everyone had an assigned heading and an altitude to go to. I squawked emergency on the transponder and notified the FAA that I had 15 ships that were inadvertently IFR and needed routing back to Pope AFB for recovery. They got us all back on the ground and I looked at the commander and said: “No, I am not going to help you fill out all the paperwork for the FAA.”
I had a farm south of the post and I had a day sailor that I kept at the coast and was always on it when I was on call or working. One day the commander came out to my house and he was just bawling his eyes out. I asked him what was wrong. He told me to never tell him again who was the most subject to an accident. One of our young hot rods had gone out and performed a maneuver that snapped the rotor blades off the mask and killed him and his buddy. I was the safety officer on the accident board and I also had to fly everyone in the unit to show them how close they always came to the same situation.
I had also worked out the MOS for aviation life support personnel and had the grade progression from SGT to MSG while I was at Ft Bragg. Suzanne had enrolled at UNC while working on her doctorate so I sold the farm and moved into an apartment in Raleigh, NC. I figured it would be safer for me to drive than to have her on the road.
I figured that it was time for me to go back to school while she was involved. I requested the Warrant Officer Senior Course and fixed wing flight training. I also requested an oxygen course at the Naval Training Center at Lakehurst NJ. Then I requested transfer to Korea. I got everything that I had requested. I went to the Warrant Officer Senior Course, fixed wing training, then to the OV-1 Mohawk training at FT Huachuca AZ, then to Oxygen training at Lakehurst NJ. I was the only Warrant in the Senior Course that had a BS degree. While at Rucker the Intelligent Command Commander called me and told me that the reason I had gotten what I asked for was because he needed some help with the Mohawk unit in Korea and that he has asked for me to be assigned there to correct deficiencies within the unit.
Well before I left for Korea, I stopped back at the apartment and out of the blue asked Suzanne where was her stash. She answered me before she realized what I had asked. I told her that I had been vetted to fly for the NSA and her actions could kill my career. Then I left for Korea.
When I got to Korea and the 173rd MI BN the commander told me that I was to be his assistant S-3 for training. I told him that the INSCOM Commander had told me that he wanted me in the safety position and had told me the specific problems that he wanted corrected. I was then told that unit training was in a miserable position and he was making my assignment in accordance with the unit’s needs. Yes Sir, three bags full.
Three months later the INSCOM CG comes into the unit and asks me how was the safety program coming? Remember, we were flying real time missions for the National Security Agency. I had two ID cards, one for the army and one for INSCOM. I looked at him and said, “I am the assistant S-3 for training, but I can assure you that every aircraft in this command could be red X’ed right now. He said, ”I’ll be back to you in a while.” He relieved the commander and came back to me and said: “How soon can you get these aircraft in a flyable status?” I told him I needed to fly to Osan AFB to get an emergency requisition filled and that would allow me to stay ahead of the power curve on getting all the red X’s lifted.
I became a unit instructor pilot in the OV-1 and my instrument instructor was my student in the OC-1. We looked like Mutt and Jeff. Tom was about six-six and I was five-seven. One of the things a person has to find out is where they start to red out and then black out. The shorter you are the more G forces you can withstand. Well, Tom was always an ass, so the first thing he said was: “I can take anything you can.” When we got airborne I asked him again if he wanted me to demonstrate a slow increase in G forces. When he started to mouth off I just pulled it back with a snap and watched him pass out. When he came to I asked him if he was ready for training. He became a very compliant student.
The other thing I would do is to fly the first few missions with the technical observers because I could operate their equipment and fly the airplane. I would always start my briefing this way, “I am Mr. Hutchins and I am your pilot for tonight. We can enter the restricted airspace along the North Korean border right side up or right side down.” They would always say right side up of course. I would then continue, “Then we will leave upside down. If we have an in flight emergency I will tell you to eject, if you do not then you will become the pilot in command and must make your own decision. ” I did that one night with a young TO and at the end of the mission I called Seoul Approach Control and told them that I was leaving the restricted airspace and wished to go to Osan Approach Control. I would then switch frequencies and call Osan and request descent to recovery altitude. They always approved the request and I would call out of 25 for 5. I would roll over on its back and leave 25000 feet for 5000 feet. I heard this little voice on the intercom, “I think I wet my pants.” He had and we both had a good laugh when I got him back on the ground.