FlightLine: The Army Pilots of Vietnam

[Music] Roger all Li birds get get more altitude get more altitude let's make it a steep approach in here Jesus Christ [Music] all the altitud [Music] [Music] you Roger let's get your guns back out here on [Music] station during this program you will meet some of the bravest combat aviators who've ever flown the army helicopter Pilots of Vietnam Indiana Farm boys Urban tough guys from the boy next door to the sons of immigrants soft spoken Southerners brisk Yankees all volunteered to fly helicopters in a burgeoning jungle war on the other side of the world the war had started before many of these Pilots were born when Vietnam was restored to French colonial rule at the end of World War II those Vietnamese who had fought the Japanese Invaders then fought the French finally driving them out of the country after the fall of Deen benu in 1954 the country was then partitioned into North and South Vietnam the helicopter War started in 1961 when two US Army helicopter units equipped with verol h 21s arrived to airlift South Vietnamese soldiers into battles against the Insurgent Viet Kong in 1962 the brand new turban powered Bell hu1 immediately nicknamed the Huey was used for gunship support of the h21 operations used in World War II and Korea to save lives helicopters had never before been used in direct combat Army Pilots soon learned that their thin skinned and underpowered helicopters were very vulnerable to enemy fire in 1962 seven helicopters and five aviators were lost to enemy fire in one day at abbach this led to the development of new air Mobility tactics and improvements in aircraft the dramatic buildup in American forces began in 1965 when the first completely air mobile combat division the first air Cavalry was sent to en this 15,000 man unit brought with it more than 400 helicopters and 10,000 combat Troopers the war was now an American war and into the breach of battle began flowing thousands of brand new Army aviators volunteers from all across America and they would keep coming for nearly 10 more years this then is the firsthand account of The Men Who Lived breathed and died in Vietnam as army helicopter Pilots most of the army helicopter pilots who flew in Vietnam had never seen the cockpit of an airplane much less a helicopter before they got to flight school um there was the Army had a um an ad that used to run in in the uh magazines uh I think they were mostly in car magazines like Road track and things like that and would say you can be a pilot in the army with a high school diploma and had this young guy holding a helmet standing in front of a cobra we said that sounds cool let's go fly cobras in the Army so we literally went down and uh signed up the next day I entered the Army uh with a draft board on my tail I had uh gone through a you know tragedy in my life of uh a wife and son being killed in a car accident uh right while I was in college and uh college Years and uh and ended up not having a student deferment and a family and so uh enlisted in the Army to uh to uh to do something uh as opposed to uh to being an infantryman as a drafty um I got I grew up in Nork Virginia and uh a friend of mine and and I were in some trouble down at Virginia Beach uh after I graduated from college and The Good Old Judge down there gave me a few options but being the military would be one of those so I enlisted in the Army as a private and uh went to basic training Advanced individual training in the Army and then uh immediately after that offer's candidate school I came back to a training center at Fort Jackson South Carolina and I worked longer hours in that training center than I ever worked in my life and I was sitting in my my orderly room one day in my office and I thought I got to get out of here so I called over the testing center and I spoke to sergeant said could I come over and take the flight school test he said we need to study I said I don't want to study I'll take my chances I have nothing to lose by taking it right now so I drove over there took the test at night at whatever it was like at 7 o' at night about 3 days later I called him he said you passed that test I was at an officer candidate school at Fort Sill and shortly before graduation I'm not sure the time frame they they actually gave us a piece of paper to look at that basically had all the schools at the army that we could go to when we got out of OCS so not really being really worried about what I was going to do and I just checked every block and one started right at the top Special Forces Airborne Ranger flight School a few had learned to fly small planes at grass strips and little airports around the country I sold it on my 16th birthday I got my private pilot's license when I was 17 uh flew with crop dusters for a while uh when I graduated from high school I went straight into a junior college in a town nearby uh continued to fly worked at an airport uh so my my whole interest was in aviation this recruiter grabbed me and said hey if you want to fly he says you can get in war officer Flight Training uh and fly helicopters and I didn't know really what a helicopter was at the time and said uh terrific I wanted to be an aviator and the Army was offering a very good program whereby they would train you and make you an officer and then send you to Vietnam I was actually in college and uh doing not a whole lot and I decided that I should go in the service and and try it so I went down to the recruiter and I was standing in the hallway waiting for the Air Force recruiter to get there and the Army recruiter showed up and he goes what are you doing here son and I said well I'm going to go fly Jets and he goes you're not going to fly Jets you know do you have a college degree and I went no he you're not going to fly Jets you're going to be a jet mechanic you want to do that I went no he goes you want to fly helicopters I said well you mean like on TV like the whirly birds and he goes yeah that's it he goes we'll have you flying in six weeks and I went really okay that sounds neat so I signed up and and away I went I had uh I'd had this infatuation with h with things of the air before I even came in the Army I was an electrical lineman for Southern California Edison and I really wanted to learn to fly so I poked some money away in the bank and went down to Santa Monica Airport and took flying lessons so before I even enlisted in the Army I had about 30 hours of flying I had a slight problem with my vision though and I didn't think I had never be able to fly once I got in the Army until one day after I got through OCS and was an artillery Lieutenant at Fort Carson I got a physical back that had 2020 Vision And I Ran that down to the flight surgeon's office and he said okay we we'll put in the application I get flight SCH before they could wear Army Aviator Wings they would first have to get through the US Army primary helicopter school at Fort Walters Texas when I drove through the gates to Fort Walters and I saw those two uh m mounted helicopters the the H2 23 and the th55 both of which were training aircraft used at Walters uh my thought was nothing other than I'm going to get one of those the sky was just covered with little traine pilots and little bitty helicopters o 13s I mean o23s and I was just amazed at how many there were and how organized they were and disorganized at the same time when we first got to Fort Walters Texas uh I wondered if I'd done the right thing because when our buses pulled up out front there were all these guys standing around the different company areas laughing waving us off saying go back go back and uh they had us all uh sitting on the bus listening to a brief brief speech about you know welcome to Fort Walters this is the home of the army primary helicopter training center you have 30 seconds to get off my bus and we all fell out and fell into formation on the hot Texas son when I signed up um for the war officer program I had not flown anything i' had never been on an airplane um um my first flight was actually at Fort Walters I was in a th55 a which was the smallest of the of the three trainers they were using at that time um and the pilot the the student pilot sat in the right seat and instructor was in the left seat and uh we weren't in the air very long with the doors off and he said take the cyclic and give me a uh rightand turn so I grabbed the cyclic and we've been cautioned about how sensitive so I just you know I remembered what they told me I just barely leaned the cycl to the right and helicopter started GLE Bank and as I was coming around to the right he proceeded to light up this Tampa nugget cigar and if you think about how people light cigars he didn't just light it but he was really drawing on that thing to make sure it was lit well and just fill the cockpit up with smoke I'm sweating like a pig in in hot Texas sun and I'm in this turn and I'm going and I'm starting to get green and go oh boy this is a mistake so he gets a cigar lit puts it in his mouth grabs a cylic slams it over to the right and you know I'm hanging by the straps Over Texas and uh you know I said oh crap what am I doing here and I'll never forget he level the helicopter up and he waited until he made o eye contact with me and he said this fun ain't it and I said yeah it's it's a damn blast the Skies over Fort Walters were crammed with Hiller h23 and Hughes th55 a trainers civilian flight instructors from Southern Airways taught basic helicopter maneuvers the students learned how to hover to take off and land hovering actually is probably the most difficult part about flying the aircraft uh you have to you've got various forces and controls working against each other and with each other and for each other your your anti-torque pedals which you control with your feet your uh Collective which controls the power and the pitch of the rotor blades and then the cyclic which controls the direction that the rotor blades tilt so you put all this together and and uh it's it's like rubbing your stomach and walking downstairs and juggling at the same time except that would be easier it was like magic uh the IP had the controls he pulled the collective and it came off the ground and it sat there just like a Magic Carpet off the ground and he turned to me and he said you're an experienced pilot just take this thing and and hover it it was no more than about 2/10 of 1 second before aircraft was totally out of control and the instructor had to take the controls back because the Army taught its Pilots to assume that their engine could fail or be shot out at any moment they learned Auto rotations the tricky maneuver of safely Landing an unpowered helicopter if a student did not solo by his 15th hour of instruction he was usually washed out of Flight Training I soloed I think within about eight hours of flying you know you never think you're ready to solo and we landed at this little Airfield he gets out he's St to unbuckle and getting out I said where you going he goes you you solo you're gonna die and I went what and that was it so I would you know took off and I sell it it was great I was kind of a slow learner I may have been in the last eight or nine people in my class that actually soloed uh I tend to be that kind of person one once I learn it I got it I never crashed one uh you know because it was my fault finally said said to my uh instructor pilot let me Solo or I'm going to go over the end and won't be able to do it he says okay so it's that little teeny th55 a little bubble and I remember you know when you take off you're supposed to fly down the Airfield straight I think I flew around the entire Airfield sideways all the way back around you know and came in and put it down and after I did that I was golden after that soloing a high point in a student's career was traditionally celebrated by throwing the C at into a pond in the Texas Countryside or later into the swimming pool under the crossed rotor blades at the Holiday Inn in Mineral Wells at the end of primary training the student Pilots were sent to Fort Rucker Alabama or Fort Stewart Georgia for Advanced Training tactical use of the helicopter in combat conditions was stressed in Advanced Training the candidates were introduced to heavy more complex helicopters including the sakori h19 and Bell uh1 huy formation flying simulated air assaults overloaded conditions Advanced navigation techniques and tactical instrument flying were taught until by their 200th hour of flight time the candidates became if they passed their final check rides Army aviators and were awarded their wings and I was so happy and excited and uh I just don't have words I knew I was about to go to Vietnam within 30 days of receiving my wings but I didn't care let's go I had my wings you couldn't hurt me most of the pilots would be headed straight for the jungles of Southeast Asia to fly in a war they knew little about some had Grand send offs from families who'd seen past Generations go off to war some Slipped Away in the middle of the night so little ones left behind would be spared tearful goodbyes I was you know painfully aware of there were no guarantees about coming back alive in fact one of my roommates from college had died already died in Vietnam as a as a helicopter pilot so I knew that there wasn't any guarantee that I'd ever see him again and it was one of the most difficult uh parts of that departure was certainly saying goodbye to my wife but looking down at a three-month-old son and wondering whether I'd ever see him again I was 21 years old absolutely apolitical uh I was an army officer and this is what I was trained to do and quite frankly I was excited to go my father being a 22-year uh Army veteran uh he thought it was important that we get to the airport in time and uh you know if there's ever a flight that you can afford to miss would be the one that's going to take you to to a war I was at my mom and dad's place my sister was still living home at the time and I had a brother my next older brother uh darald was uh working at home at that time and uh he was going to take my car and uh I can't remember the the what we were do doing that night I remember eating dinner with them it was pretty quiet uh mom my mother was uh she was probably more emotional than I was at the time uh she knew what the risk were uh dad never said much um I just remember going out the door he just told me to keep my head down you know don't do anything stupid that was the last thing he said when I walked out the door the next morning uh my sister uh I remember I I hugged her and she kissed me on the cheek and she just said make sure you come back I said I will and I walked out the door I was crying and I think back at those moments then I know that could have been the last time I saw anybody in my family they traveled by ship and by plane some on Freighters with the Hu they would fly cocooned in plastic on the decks all wondered what they would see when they got to Vietnam we went over on a carrier that they had it wasn't a carrier it was a a transport that they had made into a helicopter carrier the USS cro probably the slowest uh ship in the Navy at that particular time and we were part of the first element that uh left and as we were on the ocean uh another boat that took that left a week after we did passed us so consequently we called it the low the slow boat to China we landed in Hawaii and I said well let's go to the bar and we'll get a drink and we go in the bar and sit down there was about five of us and three or four of the guys never drank before so I said what what are we going to get to drink zombies and we got these huge zombies they were about this big we must have drank about 10 of them in about an hour and we we were just plastered just plastered went back on the airplane and the the there was a colonel in charge of all the people going over and he was you know yelling at us and stuff and you know we said well what are you going to do send us to Vietnam we're already going you know so half the people were sick all the way there you know I got there with this rip roaring headache about midnight and landed there and they opened the door and it was like stepping into a sauna was just boom this humid stench hit you right in the face and with that terrific hango where I'm going oh my this is not the way I wanted this to start arriving in country they were assailed by heat and humidity unrivaled by anything they had known before sights smells and sounds were indelibly impressed on their minds I think the thing that I remember the most was the smell a lot of people don't realize this but in Viet Vietnam when we were over there uh we had no sewage so we had to how do I say this we had to um burn our sewage and we had these big tanks or half they were like 55 gallon drums that were cut about this tall and we'd pour jet fuel on it and every night through the whole country every unit was burning their sewage with jet fuel and it's a strange smell the jet fuel mixed with the sewage uh and the whole country smells like that and that was the first thing that struck me was that smell when we first got to Vietnam um I was a little bit concerned they put us on a bus to take us from the airport to the long bin replacement Center and we file onto the bus and I look and there's heavy chain link or mesh over the uh windows and that's so people can't throw grenades onto your bus with the open windows and uh I thought my that's interesting from the replacement depos the newbies were assigned wherever Pilots were needed casualties meant there were empty cockpit seats all over Vietnam and the Army could not afford empty seats a pilot was a pilot sometimes men who had trained in gunships were sent to units flying troop transports and transport Pilots might be sent to fly gunships so I get to Vietnam and I thought I was going to fly cobras and I wanted to be in the 101st and they were going to try to put me into some unit down in saon I didn't want to be down there so I just got all my stuff and got on a bus it says 101st and I show up at the 101st and they said you don't have orders here I said I know I just want to be in 101st well you could do do almost anything in those days I mean short of being illegal IM maral or whatever and so I signed in 101st and I 101st so I said they going to send me to a a slick unit oh hu I I don't fly Hues I'm a cobra guy you're going to hu son living conditions for the pilots in Vietnam varied greatly depending on what year they were there and where they were assigned air Cavalry Pilots often found themselves camped in tents next to the Infantry troops they were there to support many units had makeshift huts called hooches for the pilots these crude shelters were home away from home and were passed down from veteran to newbie as one left and the other arrived we had just little individual pup tins initially it's where how troops I'm talking about the officer Pilots this is how they stayed and where they lived we eventually dug out areas put up uh barriers this type thing and we we lived for our entire year there we lived in what you call General purpose tents which is a tent that housed anywhere from 9 to 12 people depending on how many you put in there the base camp that we had which was part of the the entire base camp we had our own little separate area was made up of what I would call you know permanent structures they were uh hooches that were fashioned out of some cases rocket boxes and plywood and and uh and shingles and and and sandbags so it was it was not a field environment in the sense that some units had where they actually lived out of tents we lived out of really pretty good accommodations in some respects each generation of Pilots would beg borrow or steal whatever they could to make their living conditions more comfortable I actually had my father sent an air conditioner over a small one for my room and um uh and I had him put it in a box and Mark Bibles and send it to the tonsen Operation Center for Reverend Glenn because I and I didn't tell anybody because I you know cuz they call it's I never forget the first sergeant said who the hell is Reverend Glenn and I said iot dog the air conditioners here what we moved into might have been somebody's idea of home but it wasn't our idea of home so we uh we went around scaming and uh we made off with some Lumber and on the lumber we wrote FB T and that meant filched by transient officers Hooch and that way we identified our lumber and uh so we're making repairs and accommodations inside the building and we notice that our lumber is getting kind of spare you know uh you know it's missing so we walk into the company area and lo and behold their Lumber is branded FB to newbies were the new guys at the officer Club from practical jokes to Flaming shots of liquor they were put to the the test by the oldtimers when you're the FNG you know new guy you're like you know you're crap I mean you're really crap and they treat you like crap too and they harass you I got there and I they said well it was the evening when I got there and they offered me a beer I said do you want a beer and I went sure and they handed me a hot Millers in the can I'm like what are you nuts I don't drink hot beer I gave it back to them they all went [ __ ] right the next day I went out flying we got shot at came back I had a hot Millers it was pretty good actually you couldn't wear the company patch unless you drank blue flames and blue flames was a shot of whiskey on fire and you had to drink it down while it was still burning uh which was a after a while you learned how to do it but you get it all over your face and that somebody was always standing with a wet towel to put your face out from fire and you know guys's mustaches were have burned off and it but it was fun and and it was all part of the indoctrination into the company and to get you into the group and so forth helicopter Pilots were divided into five major categories by the missions they flew guns Scouts slicks dust off and heavy lift each job made distinct demands on the pilot and his skills Scout Pilots riding their small helicopters like trackers on horses crept at Treetop level and lower searching for the enemy hidden in the jungles and swamps success in this game of hide and seek usually meant they were shot at this reconnaissance by fire precisely located the enemy you're just flying along trying to get somebody to shoot at you so that the gunships can jump on them and blow them up and then call back to wherever and get a battalion of infantry and drop it in on them the guns were there to protect the troops with brutal Firepower a Gunship pilot had to be aggressive and willing to fight the enemy toe-to-toe to protect their fellow soldiers and Pilots regardless of their own personal safety guns had to be willing to kill to save American lives you know I I never hated the Vietnamese people never hated the Viet Kong never hated the North Vietnamese but you know they were trying to kill me um and that and I accepted that but I was trying to kill them too and I'm pretty sure they accepted that and it was the mission they had their mission I had my mission perhaps the pilots most often associ iated with Vietnam were the Slick Pilots the troop transport Pilots armed only with Door Guns manned by their crew chief and Gunner these men flew troops into battle they flew Precision formations to lift as many troops as possible into the tight LZ even as enemy fire riddled the thin aluminum Skin of Their Hues you had responsibility of all of the people that were behind you that was very important and whatever you did normally they would do and you couldn't [ __ ] regardless of whether you saw someone in LZ shooting at you or not you had to continue if you aboid it then you've got 15 ships behind you that are going to AB board also and that's not what your mission was Jeeps trucks howitzers crates of ammunition and even other helicopters were flown all over the country by the heavy lifters you could be for a few hours picking up uh ammunition uh fuel water and delivering it to this Firebase from this support area and then you go to another support area that's basically what our missions were we were constantly resupplying fire bases among the bravest most self-sacrificing of all Army Vietnam helicopter Pilots were the medac Flyers known as dustoff dustoff Crews flew completely unarmed Hues into often very hot lzs to rescue wounded and dying Troopers the uh dust off mission was very very satisfying regardless of your politics because you were always saving someone's life one in five army helicopter Pilots was a casualty in Vietnam even the most experienced Pilots were killed or wounded simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time missions that looked simple at the briefing often escalated into a harrowing series of near misses with death we had a team that we had inserted I believe it was in Lao so very close to the Le ocean border and we went back to retrieve them because they had got into a little bit of trouble I'm hovering into the trees I'm kind of sinking down a bit so that actually the rotor blades were very close to hitting the tops of the branches and what I remember most clearly was that after the ropes were dropped they got Tangled Up in the trees so my crew chief and door gunner they were frantically trying to untangle the ropes and get them straight drop them further down where they could be reached but the tree line outside was full of Viet Kong and NVA and they were laying down very heavy fire at us and I remember seeing these branches because I had no door and they were bullet the rounds were hitting the branches and it just I could see ping Ting bing bing and bark was flying hitting me in the face and just filling my lap with uh pieces of bark we had uh Cobra gunships they were laying down suppressive fire and there were some Air Force fighter jets that were laying down some Napal uh in order to suppress the fire and give us some cover but still uh they clocked us we hovered there for 8 minutes over 8 minutes before we were able to get the ropes untangled to get the men connected and hooked up and pull them straight up and get out of there and one man got hit in the leg as we came up but uh our aircraft didn't take any rounds that I can recall and how they were hitting these trees I guess they were coming from this direction and that direction but I didn't get hit none of my crew members were hit just the trees were hit I'd only been in country not even a week um when we landed um they have L-shaped revetments and revetments are they're about four or 5T tall and um they protect the helicopters and when there's a rocket attack when the helicopter in front of me um was was tur into Park he stuck his tail rotor into the revetment when a tail rotor hit the revetment it pitched the nose of the helicopter down and the main rotor blade struck the ground when the uh rotor blade broke hit the ground they broke came apart and it broke the transmission um in the transmission well loose and the transmission fell forward into the helicopter and the stabilizer bar came through and chewed through the top of the [ __ ] pit and hit the pilot in the right seat in the back of the helmet I jumped out and was one of the first two or three people to get up to the helicopter and the Medics were there with their sirines and everything um very quick and uh the medic pushed us out of the way um he took the helmet off the pilot and um soon as he did he saw a little trickle of blood coming out of the the Pilot's ear and I'll never forget he just took the helmet and slung it down and went well he's dead I hadn't even got my in country check ride I hadn't heard a a round go off um and here was a pilot who had less than he happened to have less than two weeks left in country and he killed himself at a three-foot hover we were scrambled because an American unit from the first of the first Cal first of the first Cavalry was in heavy contact and it called for air support I thought I spotted a fighting position because the North Vietnamese used to dig these distinctive kinds of dnut hole positions for their heavy caliber machine guns you know their 51 caliber machine guns we started making passes at that position and uh we were getting reports from the ground that that was in fact where the enemy fire had been coming from well low and behold it turned out that it was really a classic uh setup a classic what they called air Ambush where the North Vietnamese would would use one or two heavy calber machine guns as the bait and then they'd set up a third or a fourth or how many other heavy machine guns that they had for flanking engagement of the helicopters so that they had a had more to shoot at and on about the second or third pass we were nailed from the side as if the Jolly Green Giant had reached up and just hit the aircraft to lick I mean you just really felt a big shudder and almost immediately the wingman started yelling on the radio that we were trailing uh trailing smoke and Flames so we immediately lined up for a a rice dke on the way down when I looked out to the side I could see uh Vietnamese soldiers up and moving towards our position you know they're going to try to uh either kill us or capture us it was obvious and we spent a little bit of time on the ground while they set up the uh Huey that always flew with us for just this type of circumstance to make a path pass in and try to pick us up and they eventually did that and within probably 5 minutes of us being on the ground uh the huie did make a quick touchdown and Bob and I uh ran off jumped in and flew off and were taken back to chulai where we picked up another Cobra and came back out to try it again all the missions were important in some way to the Troops on the ground and every Mission could be deadly this was literally one of these hey launch guys and we'll give you further instructions on the radio got radio call to proceed to Benet by the time we got to Benet that whole Camp had been overrun by NVA infantry there were five Soviet built tanks in the wire at Benet we were asked to escort a uh1 into Benet uh to drop off an emergency resupply of ammunition to include anti-tank ammo to these besieged guys on the ground they were just about out of ammunition and had no more anti-tank ammunition and and were in dire need of a resupply because of the anti-aircraft threat because of the weather uh we we elected to go in right at Treetop uh so we came screaming in right at Treetop into manatt uh going right for the uh the bunker complex we had the Huey and the lead I was lead gun my wingman was back here as we went in we were shooting Rockets uh my front Cedar was shooting the turret the minigun and the 40 mm grenade launcher which was called a chunker shooting the chunker the huie got in the Huey dropped off his load of ammunition kicked it off for these guys he kicked his pedal around and came out as he was coming out we turn to provide supporting fire for him and just as I got through most of that turn from just about my 4:00 position I started taking fire uh from what appeared to be about a a uh 12.7 51 caliber type of weapon shot me and then I began getting engaged from another weapon of about that same caliber and started taking hits I was not a stranger to taken hits in an aircraft i' taken hits many times most of the times my Cor correlation to Small Arms hits is if you imagine a Jiffy Pop Popcorn going one of those old aluminum things and you hear the popcorn hitting that tin foil that was a lot what it sounded like uh this fire that I was receiving this day was more like someone was on a scaffold outside the aircraft with a jackhammer starting at the back of the aircraft going just working right up that aircraft uh the first thing to go was my directional control the tail rotor was was tail rotor control was gone and I don't know what components I lost back there rounds started coming up through the engine compartment I lost the engine uh we uh were burning and rounds came through the cockpit I was wounded in the ankle my front seater uh took wounds also the aircraft at this point was spinning and burning and RPM was dropping off dramatically and I entered auto rotation trying to salvage whatever we could and affect the landing that we could survive the aircraft was spinning violently hit nose low on the left side bounced up spun another turn and a half and then settled in uh the Flames were immediately all around the cockpit uh I called to my front seater uh and to paraphrase I would say uh something along the lines of let's get out of this thing somehow I got out of the helicopter I had broken my back in the crash I had taken a smack on the head uh I was I was hurt badly but I got out of there I don't know exactly how my front catar also somehow got out of the aircraft but never did get together on the ground I wandered to the right he wandered to the left I made it for three days uh of escape and evasion without uh without being able to get recovered and eventually getting captured the pilots seldom knew what lay beneath the dense Triple Canopy of the Vietnam jungles and every flight could be their last and we were working in area just Southwest of Saigon I was you know fairly new at at being a scout I only been a scout for a couple months and probably a full-fledged Scout for maybe 45 days and I was following tennis shoe tracks you can actually see the the tennis shoe Treads and I'm hovering along and we were probably about 8 or 10 ft above the ground and I'm talking to the Cobra saying yeah we got some tennis Shue tracks down here and it looks like they're dragging something and I was looking down not looking up and out of the corner of my eye I see a figure stand up this guy pops up was amazing I mean it no more than 20 ft pointed this a when I looked at him it was pointing directly at me and you could see the muzzle flashes fired a full clip AK-47 right at us never touched us I don't know how we got a mission to fly an emergency mission to support some South Vietnamese soldiers that had been in contact and had taken a lot of wounded they were no longer in contact with the Enemy uh but they had been in contact with the Enemy a short time before that so I decided to do one of my usual dust off approaches Dove down and was making what I would call my final right hand turn just above the Treetops uh to sweep into a Final Approach into this LZ just as fast as I could go and it was while I was in that turn and I was really honked up it was it was close as you could get to about a 0° bank I mean I'd really torqu this thing over so my the whole right side of my body was laying kind of parallel to the ground and she said everything just just opened up on us I mean we must have be flying right over the top of the bad guys and I mean just all kinds of shooting I mean just getting hit over and over and over again it was happening very quickly uh I immediately aborted the the landing and uh put the aircraft into a climb and as I was climbing I realized I was hit and uh I turned to my co-pilot young gentleman by the name of Denny Derber and uh I said to Denny I said Denny I'm hit and he said uh yeah I'm hit too boss oh jeez so if he's hit then I got to keep flying but I know I'm not doing a real good job flying and then a second later he said no I'm okay and so he took the helicopter and uh I reached down and I grabbed my right arm and I remember picking it up like this and looking down and about an inch and a half below my elbow was a hole that I could see daylight through and I thought ooh I really don't like looking at this and I laid it back down in my lap and it turns out I don't know how true this is but it was told to me that that we had taken 39 hits in the helicopter just about everybody on board had some kind of shrap wound but I was the only one that took a a direct hit um I didn't understand what happened to Denny well it turned out what happened to Denny is is that bullet passed in to said the aircraft it came through the right door went through my arm up across my chest without hitting me and over the top of Denny's shoulder but blew part of the bone out of my body into his shoulder so the pain he felt was not a bullet but it was actually bone from my arm and I flew over this little village and one of my crew chiefs said you know I thought I think I saw a weapon leaning on the door one of The Observers so I came back around and uh sure enough there was a rifle Le and on the door so I just we just immediately and this this the way we operated we just immediately pulled out and put gunships on it and the gunships you know fired the made one pass shooting rockets and and uh Minun into it and then we went back there was a guy laying on the ground right outside the hooch and uh I just flew over him wasn't very high and wasn't going terribly slow but wasn't going going really fast and this guy just rolled over on his back and laced us we were maybe 20 ft above him well he he got all three of us and uh my foot was actually knocked off the pedal it's hard to explain but there's a little small center console in' 086 my right foot was knocked off the pedal and up on top of the console so we were going so slow that when I you know my foot came off the pedal my left foot pushed the left pedal and the aircraft started spin it well my crew chief had been hit in the arm but he put his feet on the pedals just immediately and you know stopped it so we could fly it and the guy in the back had been shot too and so we flew over to a uh the little Firebase where the Infantry was and you know hey guys we found them and uh they metac us and I was just shot through the foot nice clean hole in my foot and some shrapnel in my leg so I was flying again in three weeks but but uh you know dead guys aren't always dead the AK-47 has 20 round magazine and we had 18 holes in the bottom of our aircraft there was a landing Zone loo that we uh went into that particular approach um was probably the most scared I'd ever been uh the whole time that I was in Vietnam and uh I went in as fast as I could I got into the LZ the time time space continuum slowed down it was almost like I could count the rotor blades and uh the aircraft was rocking from side to side and I'm thinking it's okay it's okay it's the Arvin jumping out and they're changing the center of gravity in the ship's rocking well it wasn't it was because we were taking hits in hard points in the aircraft as uh soon as the crew chief gave me a heads up that everybody was out of the aircraft I uh pulled power until I cleared the tree line my co-pilot I I I don't know if words were coming out of his mouth or not but I could I could see him pointing and I knew he was pointing at the uh instrument panel because I was pulling power when you're flying uh Huey by the seat of your pants uh when you get close to 50 pounds of torque when you pull power the aircraft starts to talk to you there's a a cyclical groan that you can hear as all the components are stressed against each other I held the power until I cleared the trees when I cleared the trees I nosed over and uh took a little power out and that's when I first looked inside the aircraft at the instrument panel everything was good except for the transmission oil pressure that needle was fluctuating wildly I broke left to head for home when we came back to Quan when I lowered the collective to initiate my Approach the transmission oil pressure dropped to zero when I got it to the ground after we shut it down we looked at the what was left of the aircraft and there was a tremendous amount of damage um we'd taken several bursts the last burst put a hole in the transmission just about big enough for you to stick your fist into and that's where we lost all the fluid that uh caused our press pressure to fluctuate when the troops needed helicopters Pilots were famous for going regardless of weather conditions firefights or in some cases against orders to do so during the monsoon uh you would have rain and low clouds and low visibility for weeks and weeks and weeks without a good weather day before you could go take off and go fly and these people they were on tops of mountains and these firebases and they would really get in a bad position after a couple weeks without being resupplied with food or ammo or to take the wounded out and I know I did it every now and then you just what they call you you push the envelope you know you're not supposed to fly in this bad weather but you know how bad it is for them up on top of that mountain and so you you fly what's the nap of the Earth you scud you run you running the low low clouds and low visibility and you just kind of hug the side of the mountain and you finally get up to where you can land and you land and you resupply them and uh more than once you'd land and they would be so happy to see you they'd run up and they just stick in their face in the window and they grab a hold of you and put a big plant a big kiss on you and they didn't smell very good though I got to tell you that but it was a little male bonding that was just okay I love the grunts the uh there's the only reason that we existed uh was to uh was to uh put smiles on their faces and get them out of Harm's Way and get them to hospitals uh they're uh Indescribable as far as what they went through we uh we experienced as the as the Airman nothing compared to what our what our grunts what our grunts endured I'll tell you if there were people if there were soldiers on the ground your mission was to to help them to get them ammunition to evacuate them you never thought any other way never I mean it would be night it would be I can recall literally flying through Cloud Banks because that's how they were and then you'd get through the top you'd be on the top to go out and and and take supplies to people on a hill or to evacuate them from a uh a hillsite someplace like that that's the only reason reason it's the only reason any Force exist is to support the infantrymen on the ground life in the various Aviation units in Vietnam was as different as their missions but for most of them the stresses were the same the shock of losing close friends the uncertainty of surviving Wonder at the conduct and purpose of the war all took their toll truly the hardest part was losing your friends and knowing that you could be next I mean I can I can remember some mornings getting up and and laying in the in my bunk there for a little bit thinking you know today would be a good day to go on sit call and you know just take a break because you haven't had a break for several days but I was you know for me I was thinking gee the first time you do that that would be the end you just cannot do that so you know you get up and you press on and for me the very worst parts that I remember were when we would get ready to go on a uh what I knew to be a hot assault when I knew to be uh plenty of bad guys out there for us and we get all set to go and uh then they'd call a halt to it and leave us sit on the ground while something developed uh those periods were probably the worst when you fly in the helicopter inform formation and you're on the assault and what have you you're just too busy to really worry about what's going on um there's absolutely no time there's absolutely no time to worry about yourself or or to worry about anything except uh the task at hand and that is to control the helicopter and get on the ground but when you know that there's a hot LZ waiting for you and you got minutes or maybe hours and in a couple of cases a couple of days to kill it really weared heavily on you it really we heavily on us there was a lieutenant who came to me one day and said was in my platoon when I was in the 48th and said sir I just can't fly today if I fly today I'm going to die just know I'm not going to be good you know I'm going to be a danger um and he literally said said he want to turn his wings in he didn't want to fly anymore he just couldn't do it and I said well we don't have enough people you can't not fly um you got to fly and he just cannot go I got to have you go and they said well I tell you what I'll swap with you because I was supposed to fly the CNC ship with the um company commander and so I swapped places with him and uh I flew the assault he flew the CNC ship and they got hit with a sa7 and they all got killed and this day you know that's one of those experiences where you just think about it and say golly you know why why was it him and not me and you know why did he do that and why did that happen and that's one of those things you think about just is just kind of locked there in your head for the rest of your life the value and purpose of the war in Vietnam has been hotly debated since its conclusion nearly three decades ago but despite the criticisms the fact remains that army helicopter Pilots flew With Honor in a war that honored few that year of my life was the best year ever in my life if I could do do it over again i' do it a thousand times this sounds DB but if you weren't killed at least to me Vietnam was a great experience it was a beautiful country I didn't believe in what we were doing but that was not my call I was just told to go do it I have absolutely no regret at all um I'm I've always been proud of the service um proud that I was there um and frankly I wouldn't trade it for or anything and if the balloon went up again and I wasn't 53 years old and overweight I'd go do it again well the lessons I learned of the impact on my life from that experience oh gosh there there's many many many many things I guess at the at the bottom of it all is the pure joy that I have for living after surviving all that I wake up every single day of my life look out the window and say thank you Lord for another day on this good green earth I I think that we had the troops and that we had the equipment and the Warfare to win the war this is my opinion I think as everyone has surmised that that it was a a lot of politics involved in that war well the travesty is that we wasted so many lives over there for very little actual accomplishment I mean that's that's a loss to the world not just us personally but have all those people die for nothing over there just uh for the sake of uh of the politics of North and South Vietnam and the and the kind of the greater Cold War politics that were influencing all of that at the time that's that's a shame just just think of the loss What Might Have Been for some of those people that were killed uh you fought together you you seen and did experiences together you're tight and and one of those doesn't come home you feel feel guilty I think one is uh it's like I can kiss my wife I can hold my hands with my children I'm enjoying all these experience that they made possible for me and not just me all our fellow countrymen uh you walk down to the wall you see those names uh those people pay the ultimate price why I stayed alive and others died who I don't know whatever it was that was in the cards and I would like to say this too uh I have a son now and I have a beautiful granddaughter and when I go to the Vietnam memorial wall and I look at all those names what strikes me is how many children were not born how many of those men would have had children and grandchildren that will never exist and for whatever the reason is that I stayed alive and now have a a beautiful granddaughter and a wonderful son I'm very happy for it and I thank God and I never ever ever take it for granted [Music] [Applause] never [Music] the oh [Applause] [Music] [Music] Wings us when we get the call like eag we will roll the pitch and throttle Cy to the wall listen to the Army Eagles Ro we're Wing soldiers we fly above the P Defenders of the land and the free from the we do our die and let the Angels Rest soldiers are we Charing Through the Jungle our down the valley the hill fighting aviators out to win the war here comes the esad we're Wing soldiers we fly above the best defenders of the land and the from the we do or die and let the Angels Rest soldiers are [Music] we ples are churning diving the screaming in like eagles for the kill after our Inferno Troopers must [Music] funding for this program has been provided by Bell Helicopter Techtron Boeing Sikorski a United Technologies company Panasonic broadcast and television systems company Legend Airlines and carpel video to purchase a copy of this program please call 1 1800 553 7752

Channel: FlightLine Media

Views: 122,104

Keywords: Vietnam War, Helicopter Pilots, History, Documentary, Huey, UH-1

Id: bOz4pdfCpmU

Length: 61min 16sec (3676 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 01 2017