psywar and CA
The most salient point about CA's was that the bograts (newbies) always got slotted in down the back and the LZ was always plotted on a picto-map without any allowance for the fact that after all the prepping, the pad would be a mess, full of smoke and on fire here and there. I always found that the accident potential was the biggest risk factor. After the lead ship cleared the treeline it was normally every man for himself..... and you sometimes found that you were #15 into a 13 a/c pad, and far too heavy on that first lift to overshoot over a sea of whirling rotor blades - but also with nowhere to go. My first CA was with a chap (Pete) who was about to FIGMO and he knew what he was doing - but we still ended up in the trees just short of the pad with spread skids. I will always recall that feeling of absolute helplessness as we came, still just in translational, up to the edge of the treeline and there was literally nowhere to go and with the RPM light On and audio blaring. Even though our trusty UH-1H was fully beeped up, if you'd been in and out of a few dirty pads that day and badly needed a compressor wash you couldn't overtorque past that magic 52psi if you wanted to. In fact sometimes you'd bleed off at 40TQ.
And I'll never forget the hurt and injured look of the grunt who picked himself and his rifle up after being thrown through the open door of the slick on my side when we hit. He wandered over to my window to say a few groups but I recall realising about then that I was still in one piece and just gave him a big cheesy "visor down" toothy grin. He just shook his head and wandered off. By this time there was a lot of incoming so Pete just pulled pitch and tried to keep up. We couldn't get above 45kts without shaking to bits so we flew it back to Nui Dat on our lonesome. When we tried to put it on the PSP we were thwarted somewhat by a tree trunk stuck up the hell-hole. Gunner and crewman fooled with that forever but we eventually accepted the inevitable, fuel-chopped it and fortunately, although unexpectedly, stayed almost upright.
My recollections of carrying around the big banks of PsyWAR speakers were that they were effective and because of the giant amplifiers, clear enough, particularly in the early morning hours. It was all in support of the Chieu Hoi program for deserter solicitation. Because they normally attracted ground-fire I was a bit suspicious of what the ranting Vietnamese tapes actually said. It could have been their equivalent of "Your Mother wears Army Boots".... for all I knew or cared. We sometimes used psywar ops in conjunction with the people-sniffer packs hung on the back of each pilot's seat with an operator calling readings to a C&C ship as you NOE'd along at 20ft above the tree-tops. The big readings (50 and 55) always seemed to peak and coincide with the tree in front of you erupting with a tribe of baboons - so I began to suspect that the B52 strikes based upon those methane concentrations didn't hit as many base-camps as they would have liked. On long transits back to base with the speakers it was not unusual for the gunner or crewman to play one of their favourite Diana Ross or Dusty Springfield tapes. I had a Jose Feliciano one that I liked punching out (The Entry into Bilbao etc). But I cannot recall them ever being used in the heat of battle. As I recall, the best CA's were done into base-camp areas after a B-52 strike. The SAS LRRP teams always seemed pleased with their body count after one of those ops - but it seemed hardly fair. Standing in a Fire Support Base about 8 clicks away from a six a/c ARCLight raid in the pre-dawn and feeling the ground shake makes you realise why those B52's are still in service. There's nothing like them for raising friendly morale and doing the opposite to the bad guys. But once the NVA started using the RPG-7's against our birds and then later introduced MANPAD missilry into the theatre, all the fun went out of helicopetering troops into the thick of battle. I think that era has gone - and doing something similar with NVG's? Not my idea of fun either.