Plains' Helterline served country in Air Force

By CHUCK BANDEL

Valley Press

For most of his nine plus decades, Dave Helterline has been a fixture on the Plains and Sanders County scene.

Except for four years.

During that time away from his beloved Montana, Helterline served four years as a mechanic/engineer with the fledgling U.S. Air Force at a time when the Korean War was raging and the nation found itself fighting again in far off places.

Fresh off its success as a powerful factor in Allied victories in Europe and the Pacific during World War II, the newly formed USAF proved to be a strong enough lure for Helterline and a host of young Montanans eager to serve.

“I enlisted with a friend from Plains,” he said of his 1951 entry into the Air Force. “We figured we’d rather do four years in the Air Force than two years in the Army during Korea.”

Having grown up on a farm just outside Plains, Helterline, now in his mid-90s, attended basic training in San Antonio. His first assignment after basic training was Aircraft and Engineering school, but he didn’t have to go far.

“That school was right across the street from where I did basics,” he recalled. “The whole time I was in San Antonio I never really got off the base.”

He and his buddy chose to enlist, along with a group of approximately 70 others from Montana, rather than be drafted. One of the airmen in his group still wore the brown uniform jackets that were issued to members of the Army Air Corps during WWII. The Air Corps was the predecessor of the modern day USAF.

“My friend and I were the next two on the list to be drafted and we figured we should just go ahead and sign up,” he said. “It was the group of us and two guys from Louisiana who were all together at that time.”

Upon completion of school in San Antonio, he was transferred to Wichita Falls, Texas for more training. It was there he got his first breaks from duty on an Air Force base.

“When we got to Wichita Falls we had some weekends off and would go to Dallas, that was our big adventure in those days,” he said.

From Wichita Falls, Helterline was sent to Rapid City Air Force Base, an installation that would become Ellsworth AFB in the years ahead. There he learned more about aircraft and engineering before being sent to his next assignment at an air base in Maine. He soon found that Montana was not the only place in the country with cold winters.

“We had large hangars there to work on all kinds of aircraft, many being used in Korea and in need of service and repairs,” he said. “Only one of the hangars was big enough to get many of the planes all the way inside, leaving the tail outside and the huge hangar doors mostly open.”

In the winter months, he said, sub-zero temperatures and howling winds made standing on the metal skin of an aircraft a less than pleasant thing to do.

“I thought it got cold in Montana but that base in Maine near the Canadian border seemed a lot colder,” he said.

It was also in stark contrast to a base he was stationed at in Puerto Rico where working atop the wings in the tropical heat was “hotter than blazes.”

During the course of his time served, Helterline became an Airman First Class and was selected as a crew chief servicing the various Air Force planes that landed and departed from the base.

He was scheduled to be sent to England at one point, but that was cancelled due to an accident involving the base commander.

“The commander was on a plane that was practicing infiltrating eastern air defenses,” he said, referring to probing flights seeking information about getting through communist block countries’ air defense capabilities in the event of all out war.

"On one mission the plane he was in hit a mountain and he was killed. That put a halt to a lot of things.”

Helterline was eventually discharged in early December 1954, after the Korean War had ended. He said he was eager to get home and back to the mountains of Montana.

“Looking back on it I liked being in the Air Force and at the same time I was ready to get out after four years,” he said. “It was cool to see the rest of the country, but it I was sure glad to be home.”

In his post-military life, Helterline continued working on the farm and other area farms owned by members of his family. He also worked for a time with the Sanders County road department before he spent 39 years working in area sawmills. He retired several years ago.

“It was good to see and learn what I did,” he said. “But I never really had an interest in pursuing aircraft mechanic work after getting out. I just wanted to be around the mountains of Montana.”