From the WNIN Public Media Center in Downtown Evansville.

I'm David James and this is Two Main Street.

Well, we've all seen the news footage of the Marine One helicopter landing and then lifting off from the White House lawn, ferrying the Commander-in-Chief to Camp David to Joint Base Andrews or wherever.

I watched President George W. Bush board Marine One after attending a press conference at the White House.

President Bush saluted the uniform guard as he was welcomed aboard with his entourage of staffers and military brass.

There was a quick wave to a small crowd of supporters and a gaggle of reporters and then the down walked from the main rotor, 62ft in diameter, as Marine One slowly ascends and then disappears over the D.C.

skyline.

A powerful memory of what's routine for the Marine One crew known as the Nighthawks.

‘Marine One’ is the call sign of any Marine Corps aircraft carrying the U.S.

President.

And helicopters have been transporting Presidents since 1957, when Dwight Eisenhower traveled on a bill.

UAH 13J.

Su to reach his summer home in Pennsylvania.

There have been a number of new models, manufacturers, and upgrades over the years.

So who are the select few assigned to fly the leader of the free world?

My guess is one of the elite pilots, a Marine One and Evansville native who has flown three U.S.

Presidents after flying combat missions over the jungles of Vietnam.

Jack W. Winternheimer is a retired U.S.

Marine Corps lieutenant colonel and author of a new memoir, ‘From Combat to Command of Marine One: Twenty Years a Marine’ So, Colonel Jack, welcome to Two Main Street.

Good to have you here.

I understand you just got back from an adventure riding your motorcycle.

Where'd you go?

Yeah.

Well, thank you for having me.

Yes, I ride a Honda Goldwing motorcycle, and I usually take a long trip, during the summer.

And this summer, I want to Yosemite National Park.

And on the way out there, I stopped at the, Petrified Forest and, Painted Desert, then, rode to Yosemite.

Stayed three days there.

And when I left here, Sam and I went out the east side of the assembly and south and rode through Death Valley.

And then I came back to Evansville.

So it was about a 5000 mile or 5000 mile trip.

Did you go with a group?

No, I ride by myself.

Really?

Yeah.

Ride alone.

It's easier that way.

I don't have to, worry about, you know.

Where are we going to stop for the for the night.

Where are we going to eat?

What time are we going to leave in the morning?

What time?

We are going to end at night.

And so it's just easier to ride by myself.

So I've ridden many, long trips.

Easy rider.

Easy rider.

Okay.

Well, that's amazing.

Now, there is a great picture on the cover of the book, from Combat to Commander Marine One, showing you in the, I guess you call it the cockpit, right?

Yes.

Okay.

Shaking hands with President Ronald Reagan.

He's on the airport tarmac.

Tell me about that moment, Jack.

When and where?

Well, that was that.

That was the last time I flew President Reagan, and, we were on a trip to Colorado Springs.

He went to visit the Air Force Academy out there and since, Colorado Springs is about 6000ft, in elevation, any time we would go to, high elevation, like that, we would use the VH one in, which is basically a Huey helicopter that is configured for a VIP.

And, so we used the VA at one end there in Colorado Springs, and that happened to be the last time I flew him.

I was getting ready to leave the squadron.

And so the commanding officer of the squadron said, Jack, you go ahead and take that trip.

And so that was the last time I flew him, and he came up into the cockpit there and shook my hand and, you know, said, thanks for all your help and everything.

And so that was that was a nice picture.

But that was the last time.

That was the last time I flew him.

Now, who are the two other presidents?

Well, I flew Carter.

President Carter for one year and then Reagan for four years.

And it's kind of misleading on the back of the book that the publisher said, I flew three presidents.

Well, I flew president Vice President Bush.

You know, he was the vice president for Reagan.

So I flew him a lot.

And, one of the things I do when you become a command pilot is, you fly the vice president a lot so that you get the routine down, and you and you prove to everybody that you're capable of handling the president if you get selected to be command pilot.

So.

So I flew Bush a lot.

Was there a call sign for the vice president?

Marine Two.

That's just Marine Two.

Marine Two.

All right.

Yeah.

Now, there's a dedication in the book to your niece for Monica.

Tell me about Monica.

Well, but, four years ago, Monica is my niece.

She's the oldest daughter of my sister.

And, I swore her in to the Navy as a Navy nurse, and I used to always call her my favorite nurse niece.

I was kind of like our little call sign.

And, she knew I was in the Marine Corps, and she knew that I'd flown the president, but she really didn't know.

You know what?

What else I did in the Marine Corps.

So she asked me about four years ago if I would write, like, a history of my career in the Marine Corps.

And I told her I would, and I thought it would be like, ten, 15 pages.

And I just kept writing and writing, and it ended up being about 110 pages.

So I put it together in a manuscript and sent it to her.

And, she really loved it.

She always said, you know, I wish there were pictures with it because I didn't put any pictures with it.

So from her, urging and my friend Sharon here urging to, get the book published with pictures.

That's how it came about.

So that's how the 20 Years of Marine came about as a published book.

Well, I will and say it is a great read.

It, it flows.

And, yeah, there was no, there was no downtime on that book.

Definitely.

Now let's go back to wind young Jack Winternheimer was deciding what to do with his life.

So let's start, youth in Evansville, right?

Right.

Born and raised.

What street in Evansville?

Garvin Street, 1402 North Garland Street.

So, where'd you go to school?

I went to Delaware Elementary School and went North High School.

Okay.

And then, you did you go to college, then went, two years to Evansville College.

I had I had wanted to go into the Marine Corps when I graduated from high school.

And everybody my high school counselors, my parents, my sister and brother in law all said, you need to go to college and make something of yourself.

So I, bent to their wishes.

And I went to Evansville College as, mechanical engineering student.

And I did that for two years.

I was very unhappy.

I was carrying a huge, load of classes, wasn't doing well.

And I just finally decided that the summer between what would have been my sophomore and junior year.

I was living with my sister and brother in law and my niece, Monica, up in Indianapolis and working at a naval avionics facility that my brother in law had got me the job as an engineering intern type of thing.

And, so that summer, I was just extremely unhappy, and I decided, you know, it's time.

So I went down and enlisted in the Marine Corps in Indianapolis and then, yes, in Indianapolis.

So I was 19 years old when I enlisted.

Okay.

Now.

And there was a group of of you guys, the Hoosier platoon, whose?

Hoosier platoon.

I enlisted in August, late August, 67.

And, I didn't go to boot camp until October 30th because, they were they were gathering a whole bunch of, guys from Indiana, and they formed the Hoosier Platoon, which was about 60, 60 men.

So, on, October the 30th, we were sworn in at the, soldiers and sailors Monument in Indianapolis.

And then we got on the busses, went to San Diego, started boot camp.

That was the beginning of my Marine Corps career.

So what was boot camp like?

Was that, Camp Pendleton?

No, it was that, McCord Marine Corps Recruit Depot in, San Diego.

So there's two there's two boot camps the Marine Corps has where, you know that Parris Island, there's one.

I knew that one.

Yeah.

And then San Diego was the other.

So the guys that go to San Diego are referred to as Hollywood Marines.

Because they, they think the San Diego is not as rough as Paris.

Okay.

You know, so boot camp was, difficult.

Not, you know, not extremely difficult.

A lot of a lot of physical, conditioning and, learning how to shoot the rifle.

That was a big deal, because every marine is considered a rifleman, so they spend a lot of time, teaching in person how to shoot the rifle and qualify with the rifle.

So when you say even the cooks.

Well, yeah.

Everybody.

Everybody, regardless of what your MOS, which is your military occupational specialty.

So whether your, cook, tank driver or an infantry guy, you all have to go through the same qualification, right?

With the rifle.

Okay.

Now, so, most of your unit, heads to Vietnam, but you head off to OCS officer candidate School, right?

How'd that happen?

Well, we were we were pretty much all slated to go to Vietnam after we graduated from boot camp.

Everybody goes to the next training, which is infantry training regiment at Camp Pendleton.

And then after that, you either go to Vietnam or you go to whatever specialty you, had been selected for.

So, the last stages of boot camp, they came to me and asked me if I wanted to apply for OCS, and I said, sure, why not?

And so you had to take the Clep test, which is a five part test college level entrance program, I think is what it stands for.

You had to take the Clep test.

So I took all five tests that I did well on all five tests.

So that was the first step.

And then I had to be interviewed by, I don't know, 6 or 7 different officers.

And eventually I got approved to go to OCS.

So while the rest of my platoon or the majority of them went to Vietnam, they sent me to Quantico, Virginia, to wait for a class to open up.

So they sent me like in, I think it was February, 68.

And they put me in the Presidential Helicopter Squadron because they didn't have any any other place to put me.

So I was like a gofer, you know, washed and waxed the president's helicopter, swept the floors, did office work until a class opened up and OCS and, so I went to LC as in June.

Got commissioned a second lieutenant in August, and then, went to Basic School, which is six months long.

And then after basic school, I went to flight school.

Yeah, I understand I was reading in your book, you move on to flight school.

That's in Pensacola, I believe.

Right.

And you trained to fly fixed wing aircraft, right.

The, the Navy trains, all of the pilots for the Navy and the Marine Corps, the Coast Guard and their flight.

The Navy's philosophy is, is cheaper to train a pilot to fly a fixed wing aircraft first, because fixed wing aircraft are a lot easier to maintain than helicopters.

So they put everybody through, fixed wing training program first.

And, and by doing that, they can kind of weed out the people that are not really suited to be pilots because flying is, you kind of develop a air sense when you fly, whether you fly a fixed wing or helicopter.

So by flying fixed wing, first you get that air sense developed.

And then after you have, graduated from basic flight training, then you go into one of three pipelines, you go into the helicopter pipeline, multi-engine pipeline or jet pipeline.

And I wanted to fly helicopters from the very beginning.

So I went into the helicopter pipeline and flew helicopters.

Had you had any experience at all flying?

No, I had none.

I had zero experience.

And when I got orders to flight school, I went out here to, Evansville Airport.

At that time there, there was a coupon and different magazines that, I think I think it was like 10 or $20.

You pay 10 or $20, and they'll take you up in a Cessna 150 and fly around for a half hour.

So I thought, maybe I better do that, you know, see whether I'm actually going to enjoy flying.

And so I did.

And so that was my first experience in an aircraft.

Was that flight.

So, that transition from fixed wing to helicopters.

Did it go well?

Yes, yes.

I don't know.

It's kind of funny.

When I was in college, Evansville College and, knew that I wanted to do something else.

They sent me to, a, like, a career planner, counselor type thing.

And he gave me a bunch of tests to determine where my aptitudes and desires, lay.

And so I took that test and all of the things, you know, like doctor, lawyer, dentist, farmer, truck driver, I scored, you know, average on those.

And the one category that I scored in the 90 90th percentile was pilot.

Know.

So maybe it was predestined that I was going to be a pilot.

I don't know.

Oh, I think it worked.

It worked.

It worked.

I took one of those tests and it said I'd be.

I would be best suited as a welder.

And so, I don't think so.

Yeah, that didn't work out.

My guest is retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel Jack Winton Heimer, author of a new memoir about his 20 year career, From Combat to Command and Marine One.

So we've talked about your flight training from fixed wing aircraft to helicopters.

And now it's 1970.

There's a hot war, of course, going on in Vietnam.

You get your orders to go to California for more training before receiving your orders to go to Vietnam.

Tell me about the C-H 46 Jack.

Okay.

C-H 46 is classified as a medium helicopter in the Vietnam or in the Marine Corps, and by classifying it as a medium helicopter, it can do pretty much everything that the Marine Corps does.

It does, resupply it does light external loads, like carrying a 105 howitzer, troop inserts and extracts.

So, it does a lot of different missions.

So that's the aircraft that I transitioned into once I got out of flight school.

So I went to California about three months, transitioned into that, and then I went to actually I went to Okinawa, got assigned to Okinawa, and when I got to Okinawa, they said, well, you're just going to stay right here on the island.

You're not going to go to Vietnam.

And and I really wanted to go to Vietnam.

So luckily, there was, another second lieutenant there that, had been, just gotten married.

His wife was pregnant with a child, and he was not anxious to go to Vietnam.

So we swapped orders.

And so he stayed in Okinawa, and I went to Vietnam.

So where did you go in Vietnam?

First?

Well, I was, based at a little airfield called Marble Mountain, which was just southeast of the Big Air Force base, that Danang.

And that's that's where I stayed the whole time that I was in Vietnam.

Was that a vulnerable base?

Yeah.

It, we got, rocketed it, a few times.

Not a whole lot.

By 1970 and 71, the war in Vietnam was starting to wind down.

So, you know, like I said, we got rocketed, twice that I remember, during the night and, but we never had any, incursions that came into the base, that I was aware of.

Anyway, you know, now, you said, flying these, missions in Vietnam kept you close to the grunts on the ground.

Tell me about that.

Well, one of the reason I wanted to fly helicopters was I had my initial intent was joining the Marine Corps was to be a grunt, was to be an infantry man, on the ground, and experience what combat was like.

And so when I went through flight school and became a helicopter pilot, that's what I wanted to do.

I wanted to stay as close to the ground troops as I could, and.

And that was to fly the 46, because the 46 was the one that puts all the troops into the zones and picks them up and picks them up when they get wounded and that kind of thing.

So tell me about these landing zones.

Can they can vary can't they?

Oh my gosh.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They, vary from anything to a wide open field that's, you know, 300 yards by 300 yards to a mountaintop where the only, space that you have is to put your rear wheels, the 46 has a tricycle type landing gear, so it's got two main mounts in the rear of the aircraft and, one nose mount in the front of the aircraft.

So many of the zones that we landed on, in the mountains, weren't big enough to put the whole aircraft down.

So we land, put the main mounts down and leave the nose mount out here in space and basically just fly the aircraft while the troops were loading or offloading out the back.

So the whole idea, I guess, is to get in and get out fast, right?

Right.

Yeah.

The the standard, the standard approach in Vietnam that we used and I'm not sure whether it's still used today or not, was you come across the zone at 2500ft.

It was considered pretty safe to be out out of range of small arms fire.

So you come across the zone at 2500ft, you make one big 360 degree turn.

Descending really rapidly so that you don't get shot at a lot and then come down into the zone, land discharge your troops or pick them up, take off and get out of the zone.

So did you take much fire?

Took a lot of fire.

One of the things I talked about in the book was every time we did a mission, we would have to come back and fill out an after action report on, you know, where we went, what we did, you know, which unit did we put into the zone and that type of thing.

And we had to indicate whether we took fire or not or return fire.

And so every time we took fire, our return fire, we got one point for that.

And then of course, they kept those records.

And when I left Vietnam, well, let me back up for 20 points.

You were awarded an Air Medal.

So 20 times you got shot at, you got an air medal.

And so when I left Vietnam, I had 43 Air Medals.

So if you do the math, that's 860 times that I got shot at.

Luckily, I never got hit.

The aircraft got hit a lot, but I never got hit.

Tell me about your crew.

How many people be on the crew?

We had a pilot and copilot and we had a crew chief, and then we had two gunners.

We had a 50 caliber machine gun on each side of the aircraft.

So we had a crew of five okay, on the aircraft.

And how many people could you pick up?

We could pick up 23 combat loaded troops.

So that was 23 Marines.

Was their packs and their helmets and their rifles and all that, 23 people.

That's quite a load.

Yeah.

Well, now you understand.

You have, armor plated seats on these choppers, right?

The has has a big armor plated seat that has, you know, probably an inch thick steel, underneath the seat on the sides of the seat and up along your head, to where, theoretically, the only way you could get shot was if the bullet came straight through the cockpit.

Straight through the windshield.

But other than that, if it came from the side or came from underneath, it should protect you.

Well, that gave you some comfort, didn't it?

A little bit, yeah, okay, a little bit.

Okay.

You had some downtime in Vietnam.

You write about going to a Bob Hope show, a USO show Christmas of 1970.

Tell me about that.

Well, that would be exciting.

Kind of.

It was kind of neat, you know, because Bob Hope is famous, since World War II, he had put on these USO shows.

So when he came through Vietnam, it was a big deal.

And, you know, I don't know how many thousands of people attended the show that day, but, you know, he had a whole troupe of performers, and Neil Armstrong was one of his guests.

So Neil Armstrong was there, and it was it was really a good, good show.

And to be part of that and to be part of that continuum from World War II, to Korea, to Vietnam is pretty well understood-- the history of that, historical moment there.

Right.

Okay.

The Vietnam War, you said, is winding down.

Eventually you go on to Hawaii, then you go aboard the USS Juneau, and the Amchitka, island?

Is that-- Amchitka Island.

All right.

That's an interesting story about an underground nuclear test.

Right.

And, I can't remember the date now, but anyway, the, three years that I was in Hawaii, one of the missions we got tasked to do was to get on the Juneau, which was an LPD, type, Navy vessel.

What's that?

It's called landing platform deck.

That's what LPD stands for.

We have a landing ship tank here.

Yeah.

The LST.

And so the LPD held two aircraft, and so we put the two aircraft on the LPD and left Hawaii and drove up to Amchitka Island, which is, one of the last islands in the Aleutian chain, right next to Russia.

And, they were conducting an underground nuclear test on the island of Amchitka-- Uninhabited?

No, it was inhabited.

Oh, we.

Yeah.

People on the island.

I had people on the island.

Not a whole lot, but they had a lot of scientists and technicians and all that kind of stuff on the island.

And their concern was that when they set off that nuclear test, it might cause a tsunami.

And of course, the tsunami would wash over the island and, you know, drown the people.

So what they wanted us there for was if that happened, we would go in and rescue the people and bring them off the island.

Luckily, the day of the test, it was horrific weather.

I mean, rain, sleet, heavy overcast, the ocean was, 20 to 30ft waves.

So luckily we didn't have to launch that day.

But that was the Amchitka nuclear test.

How many helicopters were on the ship then?

Two.

Just two.

Just two.

That would have been a harrowing, adventure.

Definitely, yes.

Okay, then, you have all kinds of assignments here.

Become a flight instructor.

You go back to Okinawa.

Well, I left, we left Hawaii, and then I went to Pensacola and became a flight instructor.

Okay, okay.

You moved around a lot.

Oh, yeah.

You know, in the Marine Corps, you move, move around a lot.

So I was a flight instructor for three years, and, Pensacola, as I instructed, in the Advanced Helicopter Training Squadron, which was the last squadron that, the young pilots would come to before they got designated as a naval aviator or marine aviator.

And and that was one of my most, rewarding, jobs in the Marine Corps was being an instructor.

We touched a lot of lives and.

Right.

Definitely.

So then you end up in Okinawa, in South Korea.

Well, after after Pensacola, went to, a mid-level school called Amphibious Warfare School back in Quantico, Virginia.

And that was for nine months.

And then I was went back over to Okinawa for one year unaccompanied.

I was married at the time, and I went back to Okinawa unaccompanied.

And that's when I went, to Korea.

You know, we'd spent three months.

I was base in Okinawa, but we we sent a detachment of Marines up to Korea for three months to work with, Korean Marine Corps.

Yeah.

Of course, you know, that's still a hot zone.

North and South Korea, right.

And still could go at any time.

Okay.

Now I understand you went to, Japan.

I know you're an adventurer.

You've already established that to to take these solo motorcycle trips.

Right.

You I went to Mount Fuji.

Mount Fuji.

One of the things I wanted to do while I was in Okinawa was, climb Mount Fuji.

The Japanese consider Mount Fuji a sacred mountain.

Thee sacred mountain.

And, they, I think they expect their people at some time during their life to walk up mount Fuji.

And it's not a it's not a difficult climb.

It's, you know, it's a 45 degree angle, and there's well-marked trails, on the mountain.

And the idea is to climb it at night.

So you're right on top, so you can see the sunrise in the morning.

And so we did it.

We climbed it at night.

Myself and, crew chief, my copilot didn't want to go.

So it was myself and the crew chief that went.

And we climbed Mount Fuji at night so we could see the sunrise in the morning.

Was it worth it?

Yes, very much so.

But it was very much a great memory.

Yeah.

Okay.

19.

Let's see here.

I'm getting lost here.

Okay.

You go back, to you make the next big move in your career.

You go back to the States, Quantico, and then Marine Helicopter Squadron one.

Had you lobbied for that assignment?

Yes.

I had I had three goals when I went in the Marine Corps.

I wanted to go to Vietnam.

I wanted to fly in combat.

I wanted to be a flight instructor.

So I accomplished those two.

And then the last goal, I wanted to go back to HMX one, which is the Presidential Helicopter squadron, where you swept floors.

So again, that's what you swept floors.

And yes, were a gopher, right.

And I wanted to go back to that squadron and, fly the president.

And so, so I was lucky enough.

You have to you have to kind of be in the right place at the right time and know the right people to get into the squadron.

So, you have to have an excellent career.

You have to have a lot of experience as a pilot.

At the time that I was wanting to go there, they wanted you to have combat experience.

So I had all of those.

And then the last ingredient was you needed to know somebody, and.

And the way they work.

That squadron is, people that have been in the squadron are eligible to come back as the commanding officer at some time in the future.

So they picked the commanding officer of the squadron, and he comes back as the executive officer for two years, and then he moves up to the commanding officer slot for two years.

So the incoming commanding officer of the squadron was a lieutenant colonel by the name of.

His nickname was Whitey Maytag.

And he was the senior marine at, Pensacola.

When I was an instructor.

So he knew me.

He knew my reputation.

And when he was putting his team together, to go into HMX one, I told him that I'd really like to get an assignment there.

And so he.

He was the last ingredient, and he was the one that got me into the squad.

Wow.

Okay.

This is, 1979, I believe, right.

What was the Marine Corps?

What was Marine One the aircraft like back then?

Well, it's.

This actually is the same aircraft today that it was in 1979.

It's, it's called a VH, VH three D and it's a actually a Navy helicopter.

It's a Navy anti-submarine helicopter that's designed to land in the water.

If it has to, you can see the big pontoons on it, and that makes it, capable of landing in the water.

So that's the standard Navy helicopter that's been reconfigured to be Marine one has all the communication gear that Air Force One has.

And, it's a very special helicopter.

And, you know, it's beautiful inside.

And so that's what we flew.

What's the flight range?

Well, it, it has about two hours worth of fuel on it, so, you know, a couple hundred miles, right?

What about armament?

No armament.

Everybody.

That's been a standard question.

And people have asked me over the years.

Well, is is it an offensive aircraft?

Right.

No.

Has no has no offensive capability.

Has no armor plating on it.

The only thing that, that we put on it while I was in the squadron was, defensive mechanism where they established or they installed underneath the belly of the aircraft a, a, carrier, flares that, would automatically disperse if it detected an incoming heat seeking missile.

So, so we as a pilot, didn't have to execute anything.

It was an automatic type thing to wear off.

Heat seeking missile was coming towards the aircraft.

Those flares would dispense, and, hopefully the heat seeking missile would go towards the flare, which is really hot.

Burns really hot.

And go towards the flare instead of the engine, exhaust.

So that was the concept.

So you had no offensive weapons?

No.

Did you have any support aircraft protecting you?

No.

Well, none whatsoever.

That's, And another thing, people always think that, Marine One has a decoy aircraft with it, and that's that's really not true either.

Anytime Marine One flies, there's always two aircraft.

But the second aircraft is to carry, press people or any other people.

It won't fit in Marine One.

And it's there to be a backup to Marine One.

So if something happened to Marine One, like a generator generator failure or some other problem that the aircraft had to land, then the backup could come in discharges.

Passengers pick up the president and continue on with the rest mission, but but there was no decoy aircraft.

No.

The Nighthawks.

And that's, I guess you guys were called Nighthawk is the callsign that we used any time that the president was not on board.

So when the president was not on board, we each had our own callsign.

So I was like, Nighthawk five five.

The the commanding officer of the squadron was Nighthawk one.

Okay.

And so that would be the call sign.

And then when president stepped on board, it automatically became Marine One.

Now, where would you house close to the white House.

The the squadron itself is based at Quantico, Virginia.

So that's where the majority of the aircraft are based.

The Executive Alert facility is just right down the Anacostia River from the White House.

And they keep three aircraft there.

Three VH-3Ds on duty, 24/7, 365 days a year.

So that if the President needed to be evacuated, for whatever reason, natural emergency.

Or, you know, war time or whatever, those aircraft would go pick him up and take him wherever he needed to be taken.

What was your first, flight with a U.S.

President?

My first flight was with President Carter, and I was still a copilot at that point.

And, we and I was the second aircraft.

I was not in Marine One.

I was in the second aircraft, but I was on the presidential mission.

And so we picked the President up.

The White House or Marine One picked him up the White House, and we flew up to Camp David.

And that particular day was, really marginal weather day.

And, we were flying VFR, which means visual flight rules.

So we were basically following the road up to Camp David and, as the second aircraft, we were right behind Marine One, really close because it was foggy and rainy and we didn't want to lose sight, didn't want to lose sight of him.

So, I'm the copilot.

The pod, the aircraft commander sitting to my right.

And we're leaning so far forward in the cockpit trying to keep in sight.

Marine one, that we fog up the windshields.

And so I'm sitting there wiping the windshield down on both sides so that we can keep sight of Marine One and get up to Camp David and everybody got there just fine.

That's good.

Now, you write about this famous visit to China by President Reagan.

Marine One is flown on a cargo plane, I guess, to China.

Right.

And were you a pilot then?

Yes.

I was a command pilot by that point.

Okay.

And, when we went to China, we, we went to three cities.

We got to Beijing, Shi on, and Shanghai.

And the, Chinese wanted President Reagan to go to the Great Wall.

That was one of the things that they wanted him to see and be a great photo opportunity.

And so they advanced trip, which I was on.

Well, you we met with all the Chinese counterparts, huge group of people and the White House position was, we're going to Beijing, we're going to bring Marine One into China, and President Reagan's going to fly on Marine One out to the Great Wall.

And the president of China is going to fly with him.

Chinese position said, oh, no, no, you can't do that.

We don't want we don't want American helicopters in China.

President Reagan and President of China will fly on Chinese aircraft, to the Great Wall.

And so it went back and forth like that for 2 or 3 days.

And eventually the White House advanced, officer that was in charge of the team basically told the Chinese that if you don't allow Marine One helicopters into China, President Reagan's not coming, and they didn't want to do that.

So the compromise was, okay, you can bring Marine One and helicopters into China at both three cities.

But when President Reagan goes to the Great Wall, they'll motorcade, to the Great Wall.

Marine one, our Nighthawk one, will be based in Beijing when they're halfway to the wall, he'll take off, fly to the Great Wall land, wait for the president and the Chinese president.

Tour the Great Wall.

They get back in the motorcade, they drive back to Beijing.

When they're halfway back, Marine One takes off and flies over the motorcade and goes back to Beijing.

So that was the compromise.

So they didn't like the optics of, Marine One landing exactly next to the ground?

Exactly.

Okay.

So I understand that.

So apparently, I think it's still the case that I'm the only, American or only marine that's ever landed a American helicopter at the Great Wall.

Wow.

Okay.

And what do you talk about?

Oh, that's a great story.

You also talk about this, state dinner you attend, and, they bring out, Peking duck.

And then there's a very special presentation with duck brains.

Right.

Well, I was on the advanced trip for the for the president's visit, as well as being the command pilot.

So on the advance trip, one of the purposes of the advance team is to see and do everything the Chinese want President Reagan to do.

So we went to a fabulous dinner, Peking duck dinner.

And so the first part of the dinner was, you know, we were sitting around a huge table.

There were probably 30 people at the table.

And so the Chinese brought the duck, the roasted duck out on a silver platter, paraded around and, paraded around the table so everybody could see it, went back in the kitchen, sliced it all up, and then they came back.

And one of the things that they wanted the guest of honor, which is President Reagan to have or experience, was they took the head of the duck, sliced it long ways down, laid both pieces on the silver platter, and that was going to be placed in front of President Reagan with the expectation that he would eat some of the brains of the duck that was considered a delicacy here in China.

And, the advance team leader politely told them that you can just delete this from the program.

President Reagan is not going to partake of that part of the ceremony.

I love this diplomacy.

Yeah.

It's incredible.

Incredible.

Okay, you, And you, I know you fly, the President to his, ranch near Santa Barbara.

That was, I guess a kind of a routine when it.

Right.

I think I made 12 or 13 trips to Santa Barbara, flying him.

He would land.

He would usually land at Point Mugu Naval Air Station.

And, so we would pick him up there and then fly him up to his ranch in Santa Barbara with Nancy.

Go with him.

Oh yes.

Nancy would be with him.

I think every trip that I was on, she was with him.

And we would fly him to his ranch the first.

The first time I flew him, right after he, became president, none of the facilities at his ranch had been built for the helicopter, though there was no landing pad.

There was no hangar.

There was no, quarters for the marine crew.

And so we just landed in a big pasture, and, and landed Marine One there.

And the crew stayed in the RVs that they had parked that, landing zone.

Okay.

And also, you were on duty when President Reagan was shot?

Yes.

I was flying that day.

I was at Anacostia, the executive alert facility.

And and the procedure when you're at the executive facility is you take, there's three aircraft there.

So all three aircraft at some point during the day would take off and fly for an hour just to exercise the aircraft and make sure everything was working and all that kind of stuff.

So I happened to be airborne that day when President Reagan was shot.

And so we listened to a lot of radios.

We probably have 4 or 5 different radios that were listening to, when we're flying.

So I heard all the commotion on the Secret Service radio of what was transpiring.

And for for a couple of seconds there they, the Secret Service and the military aid were debating because I knew I was airborne and they were debating should we bring the helicopter in and put President Reagan on the helicopter and fly him to a hospital?

And luckily the had Secret Service agent made the decision that no he has to go now.

And so they put him in the limo and they drove him to the hospital.

And that probably saved his life because if they had called us in they would have had to find a landing zone for us.

There would have been some delay in getting us there, getting him on the aircraft.

So by putting him in the limo and taking him direct to the hospital, they probably saved his life.

But he split.

Second decision on the side of them, you know.

Now, there have been some recent concerns about the military air traffic in Washington DC.

Of course, we had that deadly accident between the Army helicopter and a passenger plane.

Was there any air traffic problems when you were flying in DC?

Well, there's always, you know, DC is, has a lot of air traffic.

You know, it got Reagan National Airport, which is right there in the middle of today's DC on the Potomac River.

So and there's a lot of helicopter traffic in and around DC.

There's a restricted area around the white House, but everything else in DC has low level, altitude helicopter routes.

And they give every pilot.

They give every pilot a map that shows you the routes that you're supposed to fly, what altitude you're supposed to be at certain points.

But at the top of that map, in big, bold letters is something that says see and avoid all aircraft.

In other words, regardless of what the route says or what the checkpoint says, if you see an aircraft and you're going to, you know, be in conflict with it, then get out of the way.

So that accident that happened, in my opinion, it was purely pilot error that they weren't didn't have their heads out of the cockpit enough to see that aircraft.

And, and so they collided and all those people were lost.

But, the, the whole area there in DC is just filled with helicopter traffic.

So you got to be very alert, very learned.

Okay.

My guest is retired Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Jack Winton Heimer and Evansville native and author of From Combat to Command of Marine 120 years, a marine.

Now, after being named a command pilot, you were a squadron training officer, officer in charge of the Executive Alert Facility and director of the White House Liaison Office.

Let's tackle that last one.

White House liaison office.

What's that all about?

White House liaison office is, the office that is responsible for setting up all the presidential trips that require helicopter, transportation.

So any time, President Reagan was going to go someplace where a helicopter was going to be used, somebody from my office, either myself or one of the people that worked for me would would go on the advance team of that, presidential trip and decide, you know, where the helicopter was going to land, where they were going to get fuel, where they were going to put be put in a hangar and that type of thing.

So logistics logistics is exactly right.

You have a worst case scenario is to, well, what do you mean by worst case?

Well, I just something happened.

What would you do?

Where would you go?

Alternative landing sites.

Oh, yeah.

Sure.

We always had those as, as a backup of what would happen, you know, where would we take the president if something happened?

So we would always have those and all those, particularly in DC, all those sites are classified as far as where we would take him in the case of a natural disaster or manmade disaster, we would pick him up at the white House and either fly him to Andrews where he'd get on Air Force One, or we would fly him someplace else outside of walking to one of the classified sites.

Now, you retired as lieutenant colonel in November of 1987.

Was that a bittersweet moment for you?

I was ready, I was ready to retire.

You know, I had accomplished everything that I wanted to accomplish in the Marine Corps.

And I knew that if I had stayed in longer than 20 years, that I would do more and more of the type things that I didn't like doing, like staff jobs and flying a desk.

And sure, I was lucky enough.

I was lucky enough that I spent pretty much 17 years of my career in the cockpit.

And the last three years I worked at the Pentagon and Marine headquarters, and I really hated that job.

And so I was, I was ready to retire.

Right.

And, you're back in civilian life and, you couldn't just sit around.

You got a job flying to oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.

I flew for ten years in the oil, business off the coast of Texas, in Louisiana.

And, I flew for a company called, Air Logistics, and I was contracted out to Phillips Petroleum.

And so I flew for them for the whole ten years.

And I was an offshore aircraft, which meant that I would, I would take off on Thursday morning at sunrise and fly at, the Phillips platforms, which were 133 miles offshore.

And that's where I would stay for the two weeks that I was working.

I'd work two weeks on, two weeks off.

So the only time I would come back to the beach would be on a crew change day when, the crew out there was going to be swapped out for the new crew.

So I'd come back, bring them back, take the new crew out, or somebody got hurt.

Then I would bring them to the beach.

But the rest of the time I stayed on the platform offshore.

Was that, boring?

No, it was exciting.

Oh, okay.

Good.

I love I loved the job flying offshore because one, I was my own boss, once I left the little town of Grand Cheniere, which is where, took off from.

Then that I was the sole person responsible for that aircraft.

I had a mechanic that stayed offshore with me, and, so I would determine, you know, when we would fly, if the weather was too bad to fly, then we wouldn't fly.

We needed to do maintenance on the aircraft.

I'd tell the operator on the platform, you know, we have to do maintenance.

You're the boss then, right?

You were the boss of that helicopter, right?

What kind of helicopter was that?

It was, Bell helicopters.

And I flew about 3 or 4 different versions of, Bell 206.

Started out as the 206 b B-3, which was a small Jet Ranger type looking aircraft, only held four people.

And then eventually the Phillips bought, a Bell 407 which still looked like a Jet Ranger, but it held a lot more people, was a lot faster.

It could carry more weight.

And, so the 407 was a really nice aircraft.

What about hurricanes?

Hurricanes?

Anytime there was a hurricane, coming into the Gulf, we would have to evacuate the platforms.

So that was, you know, hopefully they would do it, like, two days in advance.

Sometimes the hurricane would form or the tropical depression would form right in the Gulf, and everybody had to scramble to get them off the platforms.

So many, many times I was picking people up, off the platforms, with 40, 50, 60 knots with, wind and getting them off the platform before the hurricane came.

The next step, for flying for LifeFlight helicopter.

I love Evansville, flew for LifeFlight, Saint Mary's LifeFlight here in Evansville for, 15 years.

That was a great job, too.

Enjoyed flying with, the flight nurses and the medics.

It was, it was a challenging career, a challenging, flying job.

We'd fly in all kinds of weather and land in different cornfields, soybean fields, woods, anyplace where we had to pick up somebody that got injured, you know?

Well, so.

And each flight would be different.

Each flight was different.

All right.

Never knew where you're going to land.

Right now.

Also, you are volunteering at the Heart Hospice Center in Evansville, heart to Heart Hospice here in Evansville.

That's one of the things I do now as a volunteer.

I sit with people that, you know, we're in the last stages of their life, and sometimes I'm, caregiver relief, you know, or the wife or the caregiver needs to go grocery shopping or get her hair done or whatever.

So I'll sit with, the patient, while she's doing that.

Or sometimes, you know, they just want to talk, you know, they just want to talk.

Or maybe we'll watch TV together, that type of thing.

I know you have an adventure.

Lust, I just got back from that long motorcycle trip.

You also have sailing adventures aboard the Ithaca.

Ithaca or Ithaca.

Like the like the city.

Ithaca.

Okay.

And you sailed the great loop.

What's the great loop?

Great loop is a boat trip that you can take that is, circumnavigation of the eastern half of North America.

So you can start it anyplace.

It's a loop, so you can start at any place.

Most people start it in Florida.

You go up the east coast of Florida into New York Harbor, up the Hudson River, into the canal systems of Canada and the United States, go across Lake Ontario and the Lake Huron along the northern coast of Lake Huron and the Lake Michigan down Lake Michigan, the Chicago down the river systems into mobile, Alabama, along the coast of, Florida to Apalachicola, and then most people go from Apalachicola to Clearwater, which is straight across the Gulf, 170 miles, and then around the peninsula of Florida.

Back to your starting point.

Well, how long would it take?

Took a year and a week.

Oh my gosh, 53 weeks.

Were you sailing by yourself?

No, I had a good friend and a fiance at that time.

Sarah was with me and we did the Great Loop and had a great time.

And, it was a great trip.

Any other adventures on your bucket list, Jack?

Well, like I say, I take a long motorcycle trip every year, so, I've done several of those.

One of which was to ride to the four corners of the United States.

And, and the challenge was that you had to do it within 21 days.

So I rode from Evansville to Blaine, Washington, which is the northwest corner of Washington down to San Isidro, California, which is right next to Tijuana, across the country to key West, and then up the east coast to Madawaska, Maine, and back to Evansville.

And I did that in 14 days.

So, so I beat the 21 day record.

Oh my gosh, how about you were on that bike?

How many hours a day?

Probably ten, ten hours a day.

500 miles a day.

Oh my goodness.

Jack winter Heimer.

A white, a wife, a life well lived and more miles to go before you sleep, I'm sure.

Hopefully.

Thanks for being my guest.

And thanks for sharing your 20 years as a marine.

From combat to command and Marine One.

A great conversation.

Thanks a lot, Jack.

Thank you for having me.

I'm David James and this is two Main Street.