Salute!
Thanks
Melch, the helo insertion is exactly as I remember from those days.
if you want more recent more impressive flying then I heartily recommend We Were Soldiers which has more flying in it than you can shake a stick at from the initial air assault in the the Ia Drang valley through to napalm laden CAS and JTAC action later on as they are pinned down and in danger of being overrun.
Those guys were the first to use the "air mobile" concept versus trucks and APC's and such. I arrived on-scene about two years later and covered many of an assault, and a few covert team insertions/extractions in Laos when we were not there, heh heh. They also did not have assigned airborne FAC's from USAF and the Aussies ( Aussies were mainly down south and not in the Central Highlands - Sidewinder callsign)..
Whoever did the screen play segment for the video I posted and the helo pilots involved did the thing perfectly. Gave me flashbacks.
We would normally arrive beforehand and drop a few bombs around the perimeter if there was any indication of enema. Then hold above to meet exactly the scenario that you see in the video. Remember, at the time of the story they had not perfected the process/tactic.
They called our missions "LZ prep". And most of the time we would drop ahead of time, but that depended on the grunt assessment of how "risky" the insertion was gonna be. If initial resistence was light, we would then drop on likely concentrations or whatever the grunts wanted.
Gums recalls....