Helicopters in Combat-Vietnam
 

We introduced this topic in the current PHI EMS crash thread and rather than divert a very important discussion about EMS safety perhaps we might take the opportunity to explore helicopter aviation during the Vietnam War in which a lot of us old geezers took part in.

This is a link that shows helicopters operating into a "Hot" LZ where the infantry are engaged with the NVA. It is one of the better video's I have found so far.

SASLESS

This is going to be a tough one. Too few of us, and too few with perspective. Love to see the guys from Australia pipe in! Worked near them a bit but never knew much about their tactic, etc.

The 135th EMU's were a composite unit of Australians and Americans. One of my drinking chums flew for them until he took a round through his shoulder only four months into his tour of duty. That retired him from the Army with less than two years in.

I also heard today that Phil Connolly is planning to add another helicopter to what will hopefully one day be a full Air Cav Troop!

Not that I have any experience, but is there any worse fighting environment than a jungle...

Not sure if I'd prefer trooping or being a low-level hanging target in a Huey... scary. I always think it's a wonder more weren't lost.

Yes, in a knocked down built-up-area.

Jim

Went on two Medcaps outside Marble Mountain with a Aussie medic in 69. Did see Aussies at Butterworth in 70 also but none with helos.

Aussie were also FAC's, flying OV-10's out of Lai Khe. Don't recall the unit designation but I do remember some strong beer called "Victoria Bitters".

My Chinook unit did quite a bit of work with the Ozzie's....and frequently shared invites to BBQ's and the like. A lot of us were able to trade poncho liners for their leather boots which shamed American made.

Seems we called the beer "Green", "Yellow" and "Red".....it also shamed what we called beer in those days. Anyone else remember the rusty Black Label beer that must have been made in WWII and stored in the tropical sun until sold to us in 68-70?

At one of our parties....with the booze flowing rapidly....my Company Commander (a Major) got very upset with the lads for splashing in the pools of rain water and hanging upside down from the rafters drinking pints of beer.

The Major made a slight tactical error when he upbraided the most boistrous of the Australians.....seems he picked the Brigadier for the victim of his rant.

Words along the line of "Go away boy, you bother me!" as translated from the Australian dialect used by the General resulted in a very crestfallen US Army Major going to his room.

Good Lads those Aussies and Kiwi's!

'Too few of us, and too few with perspective' - very perceptive WhirlwindIII.

I don't have the faintest clue what the vets went through (nor what the current generation are finding in Afghanistan or Iraq), and reading the posts brings me no closer than reading a brilliantly-written novel. But you lived through it. Every day, you did not know whether you were going to live or die. By definition, you were the lucky ones. 35 years later you're remembering the 'good' bits. For me, if I don't step off the kerb at the wrong time, it will be a dull, senile, dribbling drift off to sleep in about the year 2045.

I actually met SASless at Helitech 2005 beside the Huey, and he invited me to sit at the pilot's station. I was so excited! I felt like a little kid. Partly because 'hey, I'm in a Huey!', but mostly because I couldn't actually reach the controls it was so damn big. Then he drew the bullet-proof screen across and the fun drained right out of it. People died in that machine. On the other side of the aircraft, their names were written on the door.

I feel guilty laughing at these funny stories, because I haven't earned the right to. A lot of civilians haven't. But please keep telling them, because they deserve to be read.

Malcolm McPherson's book "Robert's Ridge" relates the account of a Spec Ops mission gone horribly wrong in Afghanistan. One of the Chinook helicopters was hit by an RPG and suffered a Flight Control Hydraulics failure (The "Collective" would begin to bind up as fluid pumped into the resevoir was lost!) and the account of how the crew worked together to land the aircraft safely is an amazing story.

Black Label, aka Panther P*ss, aka Star Beer, aka whatever we had in Egypt, aka bottled Champion in Nigeria - Gawd, the head ache from Formaldehyde (Sp? - quite the opposite of Champion from the keg fetched from the brewery in Uyo).

SASLESS, sounds like the BlackCat callsign out of Phu Loi!? Nui Dat is a place remembered.

The Australians in RVN just had a matter-of-fact about them that hit me curiousity button those days. Their directness, AND ability to take a hit, makes them honorary Americans! A kind of having both feet on the ground, or flight deck floor, that was handsomely a matter of home.

What Helo Vets went through in RVN, hmmmmm....., let me see. Quite varigated and LONG days, good flying (if one enjoys being cannon fodder, no offense, but let's be real), a few interuptions from Sir Charles and the ever present highly disciplined NVA, and a menu of progressive exposure to obnoxious things like bigger and bigger, and more and more bang bang shoot 'em up, and down! Maybe that was just me waking up to the reality of the skitiation but I remember from about month 8 or so it seemed I progressively lost breakfast before hitting the flight line, and wound up coming back to the states @15% lighter than when I went there. Flying at night for six months on search and destroy with the INFANT and a couple Cobras, C&C (CCS), a medevac, and a light ship made us the premier piss-'em-off (they being NVA) unit/s that bluntly made me think reprisal. Two months after getting out of there our unit had a ground attack that didn't do much damage but proved my suspicion we were knocking on all the right doors. Got the heck out of the Green Machine (NO disrespect whatsoever!!) and pursued me life of interest and leisure, having felt I paid a bit of due. The Good bits were definitely the comfort of knowing what could be done, would be done in the short, and eventually the long, to get me butt out of there. Reunions are the most comfortable place on earth, hands down.

From the number of posts below I realize perhaps this is a nice thing to talk about.

My very dear Chap! There is no reason why one should be so crude and insulting. Why anyone with even a modicum of knowledge would never malign the parentage of others who had faced the Dragon in its lair by breathing such heresay.


http://www.geronimos.org/GeronimosPhoto/IMAG0001.GIF

This might sort out some of those jumbled brain cells of thine!

....and upon simple word he drew the Dragon slayer to gaze its countenance and fathom courage in the face of creation....

As to the brain cells? No hope. Senility rocks!

I remember the "Black Cats" at Phu Loi. We were across the runway on the North end. I flew Cobras out of there from Sep., 69 thru, Apr., 70, then on to the Delta. We were Troop D (Air), 1/4 Cav, 1st Inf Div.
The Aussies would occasionally come over from Lai Khe and fly front seat Cobra with us. I remember getting into a !!!!! fight with the NVA and my Aussie front seater was not shooting the turret during the breaks.. I asked him why he wasn't shooting and he said that he was too busy taking pictures!!

One of the few funny times.

Were you there when a Scout Pilot named Louwassa (sic) was making legends? He and I met vicariously in-country and wound up in the same National Guard unit afterwards.

It seems he was sat on his Vietnamese made folding chair cleaning his rifle when a burst of machine gun fire straddled where he was sat. As he told that tale in our bar at the NG Armory, he identified the source of the gunfire as being a Chinook. Someone then asked me "Didn't you fly Chinooks out of Phu Loi?" I quickly answered "Nay!".

It was my right door gunner that fired off the rounds....the entire trigger mechanism fell off the M-60 when he closed the feed cover over the belt of ammo and the gun ran away. The gunner immediately twisted the belt and shut the gun down.

I quizzed the crew on what had happened and they promised me on their Mum's Grave that none of the rounds went inside the airfield perimeter. Three years later the truth came out during a game of Pool.

Lou was the scout pilot who got pinned down by a .51 Caliber MG on the side of Nui Ba Dinh mountain. Every time he tried to climb out of the crevice he was hiding the aircraft in....the .51 let loose on him getting the occasional hit. After no short time he announced to his Cobra buddies that he was running out of stuff to hide behind as the .51 was trimming the trees down which he was hiding behind. His buddies asked him how he was doing and Lou said "I think I am winning!" as his gunner was shooting back with an M-60.

Sasless,
I don't recognize that name. We had scouts of course, but B Company of the 1st Aviation Battalion (not to be confused with 1st Aviation Brigade), 1st ID also had OH-6's and along with their Cobras conducted some Hunter-Killer missions, though not as many as we did. We flew Hunter-Killer missions almost exclusively.
Our unit was Dark Horse. Our scout platoon leader, Hugh Mills later wrote a book called "Low Level Hell" which was not exactly accurate as far as who did what. We had Pipe Smoke as well as Black Cat haul our aircraft out of the bush after being shot up, which happened often.
The AO was pretty intense with a lot of .51 cal shooting at us, but the Delta was a lot worse. The shallow water table down south of My Tho didn't allow for deep bunkers so the NVA had to stay topside and shoot it out with us when we found them.

Darkhorse 30 - Fast forward to Nov 1970, please. We were E Troop 3/17th based at 334th (northeast side of Phu Loi), Op Con to 1/9th, with tents at Quan Loi doing CCS. Did you perchance fly the XV15?

Interesting to know the Delta was a lot worse. Some RVN helo books are a bit much to me though some professional and informative. I guess one never knows how others perceive such work and later pen it to paper. Some guys really had a much tougher time over there than I did.

Flew out of Chau Duc to places north for awhile but in our time frame things were hot and cold so I couldn't say things were a lot worse there than flying out of QL to the north. Of course QL north got hot @May 1971 for a short time, replete with tanks and ZSU 23/4, etc.

Regards.

And I thought we made you guys honorary Aussies. A bunch of us were given the keys to Pensacola, though haven't tried to see what lock they might fit.
http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m...am227/EMU3.jpghttp://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m...am227/EMU2.gif
EMU got you slicks, TAIPAN got you guns
EMU27 (Dong Tam)

Brian,

Did you know a wee tyke named Dexter Greene....did four months with the 135th and took a round in his shoulder and was medevacced.

As he is an avid golfer, he reckons he got his handicap after a single round.

Knight 18 here with the 114th out of Vinh Long, March 70-71. I recall that Emu outfit. A bunch of them paid us a visit once and brought a bunch of that Australian beer. I drank it just like I would the American stuff and when I got up to leave there were two doors going out when I knew there had only been one coming in. The one I picked going out was actually the brick wall the base of which is where I came to the next morning.

What I remember best about the Emu's was the incredible bad luck the Aussies seemed to have. They were good pilots and all, but if a lift of five went in with 3 US and 2 Aussies and 2 were shot down, it seemed the 2 were the Aussies.

I always figured it was that Karma thing. The Aussies being Navy always claimed they didn't "understand our system" so they skated on the crap jobs like supply officer (or so I was brought to understand before I walked into the wall...) in the Emu outfit.

I've always been prejudiced in favor of any Australian (or Kiwi for that matter) I've met since then, there weren't many who stood along side us then.

When Iraq was getting ready to go down I told my son who was an infantry buck sergeant with the 101st, that France wasn't going, but Britain and Australia were. Having served with both the French and British in Kosovo he simply replied "Good and good...but I don't know anything about the Aussies dad...?" I told him they were right good fellows but to stay the heck away from their beer...

SAS - contact tells me he was 2nd Platoon Peter Pilot at Bear Cat 5/13/69 - 8/29/69 (before my time)
In May '05 his address was:
Dexter Greene
4025 Ebert Road
Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27127-6657
email [email protected]
Phone (336) 785-3645

Brian

I guess American and Australian RVN helo pilots have sufficient in common to bestow like privilege. As to the keys for Sydney.......?

WIII

Whirlwind,
The 334th took our barracks at Phu Loi around April of 70 when our unit left. The 1st Infantry (Bid Red One) "went home" on April 1, 1970 which was a joke. Our unit was re-designated Troop C , 16th Cav and sent to Soc Trang, then to Can Tho. We kept the same people, aircraft, call signs, and even the ARP's. I think that the only ones that went home were the CG and the CSGM.
Helped in some of the preliminary design of the XV-15 before going into the Army in 1968, but did not fly it.
The Delta was so flat that your just set your altimeter to zero and you were rarely more than 20 feet wrong. The bad guys couldn't dig deep to cover themselves as in tunnels in III Corp, like in the Iron Triangle or Cu Chi. They had spider holes and shallow bunkers, otherwise hid among the vegetation, villages, etc. They had no problem just stepping out into the open and open up on you. They also seemed to have a lot more .51 cal anti aircraft guns, as many as eight at a time. We killed a lot more of them in the delta and lost more aircraft. We also made the incursion into Cambodia.

Darkhorse

Thank you for the information. I very much enjoy filling in the history gaps with input from real world vets!

Flew the XV15 on conceptual evaluation for a huge bank. Of course there remained all sorts of questions but it had vertical capability and speed, obviously. The complexity of the concept, particularly the V22 which I toured, didn't seem to lend the aircraft to the somewhat straight-forward high cycle and dispatch reliability required of commercial operations. My final thought was that helicopter upper speed barriers were going to be broken one way or the other thus precluding the requirement for such complex machinery. I was absolutely stunned at being able to select a downwards tilting deck angle below 60 knots IAS such that one could fully view the landing area - absolutely fantastic, especially after 3000+ in S76.

WIII

I departed for my second tour (volunteered actually) on 1 April 70.....that should have been a warning for how that tour would go. (Fool's Day)

Did the Cambodia thing supporting 11th Armored Cav and 1st Aircav...got whacked very near Katum in the morning....and again in the afternoon north of Bu Dop. Second time was the charm....quick posting to Japan and the Burn Unit at Camp Zama then back home for convalesence.

SASless

Welcome home!

First I was told that was just about five years ago. Hope this is not your first.

Sorry to hear about the trip to Japan, and glad you are here on this Forum.

Your contributions are oft brilliant and much appreciated!

WhirlwindIII
I work across the runway from the Bell X-WORKS which is where most of their experimental stuff is done. The 609 flies frequently there and south of the Arlington airport, along with the ARH and some others. It is interesting to me that they would latch on to Nick Lappos as the X-WORKS VP when he is/was such a vocal critic of tiltrotors. I guess I'll never understand the politics at Bell, nor do I choose to try.
I will be flying a UH-1H in Oklahoma again starting Thursday of next week looking for marijuana growth. I was there last week and will have another mission in August.
The 609 looks kind of small to me. I would have thought that they would have designed something along the lines of 10-12 passengers plus pilot. I believe that they did design it with a collective instead of power levers like the V-22. The collective seems to be more intuitive.

Sasless,
Since we were in the Delta, we were supporting the ARVN 1st Division(I think) and did not cross the Cambodian border until 10-14 days after the others crossed near the Parrot's Beak. We launched basically north to the town of Tuc Meas, the first day being the roughest. Lots of antiaircraft fire, and shot up ARVN's, including some US Army advisers. We did not lose any crews until after we pulled out about two weeks later. Must have really stirred them up.
The U Minh forest was the worst place in the Delta, though not really a forest. It was mostly palm trees and low brush in a huge swamp. We had four aircraft shot down on the southern edge, but managed to get all of our guys out, some wounded and sent home. We did lose several ARVN, about 25 I think.

Darkhorse 30

Needless to say Nick has a good understanding of process and how to get from A - Z whilst consuming the least time. I suspect his presence has far less to do with tiltrotor and more to do with helicopters doing 250 knots. He sure has the background.

Yes, the 609 is small and probably not going much of anyplace. I suspect that realization is dawning on Bell thus my suspicion mentioned above.

I liked the collective in the XV15. As you say, intuitive.

WIII

I tried to sell Nick on the concept of a new V speed....that being Vmrc....or in the working world of helicopters....Velocity, Max Revenue Cruise. How slow can you fly without the customer throwing a fit!:ok:

All he wanted to do was talk about how fast the Sikorsky ABC went....with two turbojet engines hung on the sides.:mad:

I wonder if his presence at Bell in light of ABC has been mentioned elsewhere.

Of course IMHPO (In My Humble Pundit Opinion) the one very important thing about ABC is not stalling either blade layer via speed, turbulence or maneuvering, whatever, etc.! :sad:

Vietnam......The Helicopter War
 

Some folks have asked in the past about "stories" from Vietnam Helicopter Pilots.

Anyone that flew there during the "American War" has some to tell.....but I prefer to relay other's accounts as they are far more exciting than my own.

This is one of them.....as it portrays the gallantry, loyalty, and sacrifice of so many who served.

I have always said.....my Life's greatest honor is to have been allowed to serve with such Men. What they did a normal course of business, with great humility, day after day, is what set the Standard for those who followed after them.


One story of many.....



Special Operations.Com


Rosendo Montana, SP5, Army, Big Spring TX, 15Apr70 11W008 - The Virtual Wall®



TogetherWeServed - SSG Herndon Arrington Bivens


Information on helicopter or incident 68-16203



Dak Seang SF Camp



http://www.c-7acaribou.com/album/dkphotos/dk_4_04.jpg

I had the pleasure of meeting a Nam CH-53 Pilot last year when I was in America. He didn't say to much about it which is understandable. A good friend of his told me he flew Medevac missions in the 53 and was shot down after lifting from the landing site with a full load of injured troops. The Pilot in question was severely injured but recovered from his injuries after 5 months in hospital I believe.

I was lucky enough to fly in his Bell 47 with him before leaving the states. He was impressed with my first go in the 47. Remarkable person!

Utterly outstanding. Thanks for the link SASless.

This was another hard fought battle....during Lam Son 719 towards the end of the War.

Count the Huey's in the photo if you can find them all.


LZ Lolo Picture

http://www.174ahc.org/images/lolo1.jpg

You are 19-20 years old....Aircraft Commander on a Huey....you have about 600-700 hours total flying time and about Six Months in Country.....your Unit is engaged in Combat Assaults along the Vietnam/Laotian border in support of South Vietnamese Forces going up against Main Force North Vietnamese Regulars of Division sized units. It ain't a real good Day.....




Compared to Malaya and Borneo.....things were a bit different in Vietnam.

Aircraft losses of the Vietnam War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphot...49910266_n.jpg

A couple of Recon Teams are discovered by the North Vietnamese and find themselves fighting far superior forces and call for help. One Team sets up and fights in place....and the other is running being pursued by the NVA.

A recording of the event......which shows how things sounded when you were involved in those kinds of actions.

Anyone listening to the recording can understand why Military Helicopter flying in combat....is a very intense experience sometimes.

The Huey.....one of the Icons of the Vietnam War and of Helicopter Aviation worldwide.

The Sound that Binds | Small Wars Journal