80 Percent - 1968
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WHADDAYA MEAN YOU CANT' GET 80 PERCENT!!!
In the spring of 1969 bureaucracy began to rear it's ugly head. The Army has standards for everything including aircraft availability. Generally it was around 74 to 76 percent. At one point Division came down with a directive that from now on it would be 80 percent. Groans, especially from the maintenance types, who ran a 24 hour shop, and usually had between 73 and 75 percent every day, were very loud. When you consider that we were putting up six scout teams, three gun teams and frequent lifts and resupply runs every day as well as putting birds down for scheduled maintenance and then take care of unscheduled bullet holes and other combat damage, getting 80 percent was going to be hard.
Bill Laird was the troop commander at the time and he had me run interference for the maintenance crew. Several times a week I was "summoned" to the Division Aviation Officers office and grilled as to why we couldn't get 80 percent. We always had good data showing why. He alluded it to being" OK" to say we had 80 percent even if we didn't. I wasn't going to go there. What percentage of aircraft we had available for missions was what we were going to report. He couldn't do anything to us as our next higher was Squadron and we were not in his chain of command. However, the pressure was on.
Then one day I was summoned to the office of the division Chief of Staff. Uh Oh!!! Making sure I had every fact and figure available possible (we were at 72%), I went to see COL Robert Fair. It wasn't pretty. I'm a captain, he's a colonel (and not even an aviator) I was read the riot act in about three different ways but I would not budge off reporting the 72%. Finally he looked at me and said "If I alerted the Centaurs to get every flyable bird in the air, you would get 72% flying , RIGHT!!!" "Right" I said. He then told me to go back to the troop and "Stand by."
Oh jeez, I hoped the figures were still good and I broke the land speed record getting back to the Corral. Going in to operations and laid it all out. Crews were ready, aircraft preflighted and we waited for the phone call... It never came. Instead the call went to the Aviation Bn and the best they could get up was 50 percent even though they were reporting 80 percent. We never heard another word about 80%
There is a post script to this story. Years later, as I commanded an Attack Helicopter Troop in the First Cav at Fort Hood, we were tasked to provide support to the 2d Armored Division commanded by now MG Robert Fair. So I went to the Second Panzer briefing room with my operations officer. As we walked into the conference room with our black Stetson's and BIG Cavalry belt buckles we did attract a modicum of attention to say the least. As we were introduced to the CG he turned, looked at me and asked what my aircraft availability rate was. "A good honest 74% general." He chuckled, I grinned and the rest of the staff was left to wonder at the exchange.