Going Dutch

By ANDREW MCGINN
a.mcginn@beeherald.com

Forty-eight years ago, the Jefferson Community High School Class of ’69 named Bill Smith “the most likely to help a foreign air force establish a new helicopter program.”

OK, no. They didn’t.

The fact that there’s now a CH-47 Chinook of the Royal Netherlands Air Force flying around Gilze-Rijen Air Base with the words “W.D. ‘Bill’ Smith” painted on the side is proof it’s impossible to predict where a Jefferson kid might wind up.

For a guy who’s never quite been able to shed the name “Billy,” the path to working alongside the Royal Netherlands Air Force as a representative of Boeing, the world’s largest aerospace company, has been anything but conventional.

“I was a little late developing what I wanted,” Smith, now 66, confessed recently, back briefly in the U.S. after his retirement from Boeing’s $30 billion Defense, Space and Security division. “But I found it.”

Smith last week passed through Jefferson to reminisce in the wake of retirement. Accompanied by his Italian wife, they’ll soon make their home in the famed Dolomites of Italy, renowned for its skiing.

He’s technically still on Boeing’s payroll until May 19, he said.

Simply put, Smith’s career — which took him all over the world assisting nations that wanted to add Boeing’s iconic Chinook helicopter to their armed forces — should give parents of late-bloomers reason to rest easy.

Just when it seems they’re content to merely hover above the airfield of life, they pitch the nose down and zoom away.

“I was pretty much a ski bum,” Smith recalled.

Drawn to Colorado not long after high school, Smith was working part-time in a grocery store, when he wasn’t skiing or hiking, when he finally decided to pay the Army recruiter a visit.

It was 1978.

By that point, he was nearly 10 years removed from the halls of JCHS.

“I always wanted to explore the world,” he said. “I probably should’ve done it a little earlier.”

Before long, though, he was on the front lines of the Cold War, co-piloting the Army’s OH-58 Kiowa and the formidable Huey Cobra on lookout missions along the border of East Germany and Czechoslovakia.

Smith had been flying since the age of 16, when he earned his pilot’s licence in a Cessna 150 at the Jefferson airport.

But with less-than-perfect eyesight, Smith knew early on he would have to give up his dream of being a military aviator.
That is, until the Army recruiter informed Smith he might just be able to get a waiver to fly.

“They’ll do anything to sign you up,” he joked.

Smith became a helicopter crew chief and an aerial observer.

“I finally found what I wanted,” he said.

In short order, he was getting a bachelor’s degree in aviation maintenance management at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., and was going to work for Boeing, having plucked the names of two vice presidents out of the book “Who’s Who in Aviation.”

“I picked out a couple of VP names and put together a nice cover letter and talked myself up,” Smith said, acknowledging that in today’s corporate work environment, he never would have been hired that way.

It was indeed a different era when he reported to work in 1983 in the Chinook program’s in-house service engineering department in Philadelphia.

“Even had a secretary pool,” he said.

The fax machines are now mostly obsolete, but the Chinook itself was engineered to last.

In fact, Boeing delivered the first Chinook to the U.S. Army on Aug. 16, 1962, and the heavy-lifting helicopter with tandem rotors has seen action in every conflict from Vietnam onward.

“It’s the best in the world,” Smith said. “There’s nothing comparable to the Chinook. Being able to fly hot and heavy and high is very important.”

“It’s going to be flying another 50 years,” he added.

In its first 50 years, Boeing delivered more than 1,200 Chinooks to 18 operators around the world.

And unlike buying a new car, when you shell out $38.5 million for a Chinook, the service engineer comes along with the purchase.

For 22 years, the Dutch air force could count on Smith to troubleshoot problems with their 17 Chinooks and provide technical advice.

There are service manuals, too — two or three shelves’ worth — but Smith was never more than a call away, and his Dutch is conversational to boot.

“I certainly know a lot more than the average person about this,” he said, “but it’s very humbling. Something new can come up every day.”

In the process, Smith became such an integral part of the Royal Netherlands Air Force that they recently honored him on his last day of work, naming one of their newer, F-model Chinooks in his honor, along with the words “Going Dutch” to represent his embrace of the culture.

“What an honor,” Smith said.

The squadron commander that day also summoned Smith to sign the squadron’s history book.

“I feel like I’m part of their legacy there,” he said.

It all began in 1995, when the first Chinooks, all built in Philly, sailed into port in Rotterdam.

“It’s a very exciting moment for everyone,” Smith said.

No, there’s no “new helicopter smell.”

“They look new, though,” he said. “There’s not too much oil and grease slung all over yet.”

Most field service representatives typically serve five-year assignments.

For Smith, the assignment to the Netherlands started out as a two-year one, having already been to Taiwan, Spain, Italy (where he met his wife, Miriam, working for TWA) and Greece.

He even spent six months in the Bering Sea, providing technical support to oil companies using Chinooks in exploration work.

“I found it was a very good place to raise kids,” Smith said of the Netherlands. “Two years went to five. And here we are, 22 years later.”

His eldest daughter, 25, speaks three languages fluently.

His youngest daughter, 21, speaks five languages.

For Smith, it was a good fit — one mostly free of international politics.

Smith recalls arriving in Taiwan in the mid-’80s, when the U.S. State Department refused to allow Boeing’s sale of three CH-47 Chinooks to the East Asian state in order to appease China.

To this day, arms sales to Taiwan almost always stoke China’s ire.

“They got around that by selling them the commercial version (the Model 234),” Smith said.

In Taiwan, the language barrier was the greatest obstacle to being able to answer technical questions.

“You really have to have a lot of patience,” Smith said.
Millions in future sales are potentially hanging in the balance.

“I’m the sole guy out there responsible for keeping these guys happy,” Smith said.

The Dutch — who lost two of their Chinooks in Afghanistan to pilot error — have placed orders for 16 brand new helicopters by 2020, Smith said.

Boeing had wanted Smith to continue working, hoping he’d accept another assignment to Italy, where the Italian army is getting new F-model Chinooks.

A guy who admittedly found his niche late in life, Smith nevertheless knows when to quit.

“I had a good run,” he said.