# Kiowa pilot earns rare second Broken Wing award



## big bad john (31 Aug 2006)

http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-2071846.php

Kiowa pilot earns rare second Broken Wing award

By Melanie Crownover
The (Alexandria, La.) Town Talk 


LEESVILLE, La. — Eighteen years ago, a 38-year-old pilot training in Germany on what is now the Czech Republic border spun out of control in his OH-58D Kiowa helicopter when its hydraulics failed. After a shaky 35-minute flight to the closest airfield in Germany, he slid the whole length of the 700 foot runway on skids with locked up controls — saving the chopper, his passenger and himself.

The pilot was given a U.S. Army Aviation Broken Wing Award, a rare honor given to pilots who bring an aircraft back safely that should have crashed and killed all aboard.

  
Now, Chief Warrant Officer Edwin Steven Coleman, a helicopter instructor pilot at Fort Polk, is set to receive his second Army Aviation Broken Wing Award at a Fort Riley, Kan., ceremony later this year.

“It was hard enough getting the guys to fly with me with one (Army Aviation Broken Wing Award), but now, it’ll be even worse,” said Coleman, who was 15 when he learned to fly from his father who was a crop duster. “They either think I’m really lucky or really unlucky.”

Either way, Coleman brought an OH-58C with a fuel-control malfunction down 400 feet to safety during a routine training rotation on May 18 in which he was providing observer-controller coverage.

“The last thing I said to my co-pilot was, ‘This is going to hurt,’ because I thought we were going into the trees,” Coleman said.

Only 15 seconds passed between the engine failure and the touch down.

Coleman managed a perfect autorotation while standing the chopper on its tail to land in a small clearing in the woods in that time.

The Apache pilots he was training circled overhead, finishing his Mayday calls to the air traffic control tower. Coleman’s colonel was pushing through the woods in his Humvee within five minutes to make sure the two men were all right.

To everyone’s surprise, the pilots and the chopper escaped practically unscathed.

Before a demonstration flight and re-enactment of the landing Tuesday, Coleman said the scare has not shaken his determination to do his duty. “My son was killed in Iraq two years ago by an (improvised explosive device), so no one wants to train these soldiers more than I do,” he said.


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