"NO PUBLICITY"

One night while home at Koyuk Street on Eielson AFB, 22 miles out of Fairbanks Alaska I received a call from our NCOIC CMSgt Billy W. Bryant. He stated that we had a rescue mission. He had chosen me for the mission. I called my assistant crew chief and we met at the hangar where my helicopter was housed, an H-21B model. A huge hangar with heated floor where I have seen a U-2 aircraft at times. It was in the dead of winter, and that made it essential that our helicopters were kept in the hangar.

We pulled the helicopter out to the ramp, I got in the left seat, strapped in, and my assistant stood fireguard; while I fired up the engine, got clearance, engaged the rotors, and brought them up to speed. Pretty soon the pilot showed up, climbed into the right seat, strapped in, and we proceeded to take off to the south.

A T-39 aircraft was proceeding in front of us showing the way. We flew south for some time and finally came to a runway/clearing in the tundra, white with snow; which was fairly deep. A man was standing there about midway down the runway with a lantern in his left hand. We understood this was the location from the T-39, so we landed past him about 50 yards.

I got out while the pilot kept the helicopter running with the rotors engaged, and walked back to the man with the lantern. I then saw he was wearing a winter flight suit. He said, "I am General Moore", and I said, "Well, I think you should go and talk to your pilot", indicating to the general skyward, "he is circling overhead". I walked back to the helicopter with him, got a headset, put him in the left front seat, plugged in his headset, and showed him the mike-button. He keyed it; I then learned what we had in store, as he told his pilot in the T-39, "we have a man in pretty bad shape"; this man also a pilot, had crashed somewhere nearby with the general.

Of course in the dead of winter in Alaska it is dark most of the day. Being dark, the white snow helped us see, but I never saw the aircraft, in which they had crashed. We proceeded down this small trail, deep in snow carrying the rescue basket. About a quarter mile down this trail we came to this well weathered cabin, inside in a bed a man lay moaning, face a mess with clotted blood, blood matted hair, and unconscious. We loaded him in the basket and proceeded back down the trail to the helicopter.

With the deep snow and all the obstacles along the way we occasionally stumbled quite badly, and had to stop to rest a few times after a tumble in the snow. We finally got him to the helicopter and flew him to Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks.

When I opened the cabin door there were several Army officers waiting. The general came to the door and said, "NO PUBLICITY!" There was no doubt in anyone’s mind he meant what he said. We then transferred our unconscious pilot to the Army medical crew.

The pilot and I went into the ops building, got everything squared away, went back to the helicopter, fired it up, and flew back to Eielson Air Force Base.

The next day’s Fairbanks paper had a small paragraph about three pages from the front, in small print, about a bush pilot named Chapin (essentially saying; crashed his aircraft and was injured).

The general was Thomas E. Moore the Alaskan Air Command Commander.
(Bill Lyster)