Captain Crash

It was a time after the Vietnam War but before Operation Eagle Claw, a failed attempt by Delta Force to end the Iran hostage crisis. The years 1974 through 1978 when the average American thought the wars were over, but wars are never over. It was a time that at an undisclosed, seemingly insignificant spot in Washington I was trained to fly high risk helicopter missions and was considered by the US Government to have a license to kill. And though, some 40 years later I can now talk about it, it still haunts me of the death and destruction I caused.

Ok, I was a crop duster, but it sounds cooler to say it the other way.

And really, it is the truth. Every time I went out, thousands of aphids would die not to mention caterpillars, horse flies, crane flies, mosquitoes and sometimes bees and that was just insecticides. I also sprayed herbicides wiping out acres of Tansy Ragwort and various nuisance weeds trying to choke out pea and corn crops. High up on mountain clear cuts I would decimate Alders who were trying to rob freshly planted evergreens of sunlight. Then I would fly back to the helipad to reload with fungicides to stop mold from destroying strawberry and raspberry crops and I did it all under the moniker of “Captain Crash.”

We all had nicknames. Captain Crash was given to me by an extremely overweight airplane pilot I nicknamed “One Wing Low”. Try as he might, he could not get his airplane to fly level.

Mind you, I did not restrict myself to spraying only pests. I accidentally sprayed a vintage car which had just returned from a new paint job. I chased my field man around a pea field and sprayed him but that was after I had watched the movie “North by Northwest” starring Cary Grant. The whole concept of chasing someone with an aircraft seemed like fun.

I was flying one morning past my brother-in-law’s house. They had gone up on the roof with flour and spelled “Marty Mitchell is a Moon Monkey”. I sprayed the house. I would dive over barns, over poplar trees, over power lines, under power lines, and twice…through power lines. Crowds would pull over in their cars just to watch my show.

We had two bases: one at Bellingham Airport and the other in Burlington. At the end of the day when the fields in one area were sprayed, I would fly the 25 miles to the other base to spray fields in that area the next day. It turns out, the straight line between the two bases was to follow the shoreline down Chuckanut Bay.

Generally, I didn’t fly higher than 500’ above the ground. You see, my theory was that if the main rotors flew off at 500’ I still might survive a crash. If they flew off at 1000’, well I might as well forget it. On the Chuckanut run I generally flew at 300 feet or lower because of Teddy Bear Cove. This was the beach where the local University students and Faculty would go to sunbathe in the nude.

The tactic I used was called “Misdirection and Confusion” and if you do not live in the area of Bellingham and don’t know the landmarks, I will try to describe it. Bellingham sits on a half moon bay. Up from the bay is a high hill which is the location of expensive homes and Western Washington University. The shoreline of Bellingham Bay (going south) winds in and out of coves and around a large point of rock before heading back into a cove which is called Teddy Bear. Beyond that to the south is the straight rocky shoreline of Chuckanut.

My stealth maneuver worked every time. On the hot sunny days when the cove was full of bathers, I would fly south over the city at 500 feet. Then, ducking around the back side of the university I would descend to three hundred feet and follow the freeway for one mile. At this point Teddy Bear Cove came into my sights.

The whop, whop, whop sound of rotor blades makes a helicopter easy to identify, but when you fly low enough at treetop level, the noise in the cove comes from all directions. The sunbathers would stand up trying to get sight of the helicopter. Some would look straight up, some north and some south and then over the trees tops I would fly. Bathers would be grabbing towels and clothes which were now taking flight from the rotor wash. Lastly, I would slow to a hover and wave a mere 100 feet away. They were a friendly bunch because it seemed like they all waved back…at least I thought they were waving. As I look back at that prank some 40 years ago, I keep asking myself, “What was I thinking?” If I had made my approach from the west the sun would have been in their eyes and they never would have seen the marking numbers on the helicopter.

At the end of my crop-dusting career I was well known to both the Department of Agriculture and the FAA. I think that both believed me to be a menace, so before I got myself arrested, I gave up being a crop duster and went on to other things like building railroad tracks and making aluminum.

Being responsible and mature is boring. Each day of each year is the same. Sometimes I long for the days of the Peter Pan mentality so I secretly keep my alter ego covering my chest. Then, when I hear the cry for help or see the need for a practical joke, I tear off my outer shirt, assume the proper stance and shout, “This looks like a job for Captain Crash!”

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