The Army trained 142 Marine helo pilots from July 68 to July 71. The first 6 to graduate (2nd Lts) were awarded Army wings. (Marines and Helicopters 1963-1973, p143).

That number seems a bit low. Eighteen of us from my Basic School class August 1968 were sent to Fort Wolters, and Hunter Army Air Field for flight training. My class had 8 Marines and 140 Army officers. We started on Sept. 1, 1968 and graduated on May 20, 1969. At Hunter there was always about 40+ Marines in some stage of training, and a class graduated every 2 weeks. All 8 of us got orders to HML-267 Camp Pendleton, CA where we got 40 to 50 more flight hours to go with the 250 we got in Army Flight School. By the end of 1969 we were all in Vietnam. When we got our orders to Vietnam they gave us our Naval Aviator Wings.

After my class graduated they started keeping Marines that were going to fly AH-1's at Hunter to go through the Army Cobra program. By 1970 in Vietnam most of the pilots in both HML-167, and HML-367 were Army trained aviators. There were also Army trained pilots flying CH-46's and CH-53's.

I had heard that between 1967 and 1971 about 200 Marines went to Army Flight School each year. The only reason for sending us was the Marine Corps needed helo pilots, and Training Command could not fill the demand.

Army Trained Helo Pilots

1. Regarding wearing of Army Pilot Insignia, once the piolt earned or was awarded Naval Aviators Wings, the Army Insignia could no longer be worn. It was the same with those of us in Recon, once we earned the NavMC Jump Wings, we were no longer authorized to wear the silver Army wings.

2. Does anyone remember the period in 1969 that an Army CH-47 unit was at Phu Bai and HMH-462 pilots were tasked with teaching the Army pilots how to navigate on istruments? I was still enlisted and flying as a door gunner and we would lift off in flights of two, noe CH-53 and one CH-47, and then resupply mostly Army units in and around the Ashau, during the monsoons when the weather was so bad. The Marine pilots would have the Army guys, (mostly WO's but a few LT's and Capt's), on our squadron freq and teach them how to fly through the weather to resupply thier troops!

Some of the Army crew members told me that those Army pilots received Bronze Star Medals and DFC's for that while, as far as I know, none of our Marine pilots received anything other than a "Thank You"!

Semper Fi - Duke Dearing
HMH-462, 1968-69

Army Training

We had Army trained pilots w/ Army wings at HMM 264 / New River in 1969.

In order to get Naval Aviator Wings, they were supposed to earn their FAA instrument rating through training with the squadron.

To be blunt, that training was less than what would have been received at Pensacola. At the time, squadrons like HMT 204 did not exist.

Army Wings and Instrument Training

I was one of the Army Trained Marine pilots that went through Ft Wolters and Hunter between June 68 and Feb 69. We were awarded US Army Aviator wings upon graduation and were authorized to wear them until we qualified for and were awarded our Navy Wings.

We received 50 hours of instrument training (in H-13's outfitted with full instrument cockpits) but the Army didn't have the capacity to provide an FAA flight check (not enough Army aviators had standard or special instrument tickets).

I was assigned after flight school to VMO-1 at New River and my training there consisted of two fam rides in the UH-1E - one fam and one checkride (we had more than 200 Huey hours from advanced helos at Hunter - and had done all manner of actual autorotations - no power recoveries like we were required to do with the Marines). We then went through a 15 flight syllabus of instrument training culminating with a standard instrument checkride.

Once that was complete (around April 69) I was promoted to First Lieutenant and awarded Navy Wings (on the same day) and given a set of orders to Hunter AAF to attend one month of Cobra transition TAD enroute to MMAF and VMO-2.

Shortly after arriving at VMO-2 they stopped assigning cobra transitioned lieutenants to VMO and put them in HML-167. I think it was an airframe shipping glitch (they were retrofitting airconditioning or something?).

I believe Lynn McCall and I were the last two assigned for a few weeks or months (?) because two classmates - Bob Dobbin and Jim Clark spent a month or two in HML before finally joining us in VMO - just in time to become HML-367 after the first of the year 70'