Tony in Viet Nam
OH6A sn 67-16674 and OH6A sn 67-xxxxx
D Troop 3/5th Air Cav
Cpt. McMinn, 'Lead' pilot.
WO C.J. Wheeler, 'Trail'pilot.
16 July, 1969
Dong Tam, RVN APO 96370 SF A. 0. XS 09/64
'The Wagon Wheel'
An example of our enemy's ingenuity. While the Viet Cong were deficient in Air Power, they never lacked from brain power.
The 16th of July, 1969 was just another
day in the Delta for this Light Fire Team, from the 3/5th Air
Cav, "D" troop. A light fire team is made up of two AH-I
G Cobras (Snakes) and two OH-6A
Cayuses (LOACHs) in their Area of Operations (AO). The
AO was up around the "Wagon Wheel" out 15 kilometers west of My Phouc Tay
(XS 20/59).
The "Lead" pilot, Capt. McMinn had just got finished checking out a "Sniffer" reading that had been provided to them by another AHCo. that had been given the job of flying the XM3 "Aircraft Mounted Concealed Personnel Detector" and the 'Lead' was just wandering around the way Scouts do, looking for trouble.
McMinn saw a bunker that had recently
been built and he started to look around it some more. The Scouts found
a hooch made out of ponchos. They blew up the bunker with a "Baby Bomb"
and threw
a CS-smoke grenade into the hooch. But nobody came out.
They continued to hover around and
dropping grenades into the little trenches that "Charlie" digs along the
banana tree-Iines. They were checking out the edges of a canal when Capt.
McMinn saw, what he thought at the time, four children in a canal with
only their heads sticking out of the water.
He held back and did not shoot them because this time
he was sure that they were children. McMinn suffered from the memories
of other times that his judgment had been in error. Captain McMinn had
never been one of those types that just liked the killing. As in any war,
there had been unlucky innocents to die under his guns. They just had been
in the wrong place at the right time. His conscience told him that he couldn't
call back a mini-gun burst once it's fired.
McMinn hovered the aircraft over within 30 feet of the boys heads in the water. A move that he was soon to regret. (He should have placed the aircraft's left side to them, where the crew chief/ gunner could have covered them with the M-60 Mg.) He motioned them to get out of the water and come up on dry land where he could see them better. The pilot motioned twice more with his hand, then suddenly they stood up, raised their weapons out of the water (one BAR, two AK-47s, and one SKS) and they opened up on him.
They had him cold, why he wasn't wounded
he doesn't know. The 'Trail' Loach was holding off to the rear. The pilot
of the 'Trail' aircraft was hovering and observing this scene as it unfolded.
WO C.J. Wheeler felt a sudden shock when he saw the tracers. He said that
fire from one of the gunners
looked like big fireballs coming up at the McMinn's aircraft.
(Likely the guy with the BAR firing WWII era 30-06 red tracers.)
Capt. McMinn took immediate evasive
action and put in hard left cyclic and pulled moderate pitch to triy to
get out of there. At this point, McMinn felt that his Loach was just about
ready to come out
of it and was beginning to pick up some airspeed. He
was ready to pull the cyclic back to neutral and forward, when everything
just went wrong. The aircraft started spinning as McMinn tried to regain
control with the anti-tourque peddles, but without efect. He lowered the
collective pitch, then centering it, trying every trick that he could think
of to get the Loch back straight.
He did not know it then, but there wasn't anything that he could have done. At some point in the midst of his "jinking", a bullet from one of the Bad Guys struck the flex-drive coupling to the tail rotor drive shaft and a few moments later it separated.(This drive shaft coupling is aft of the rotor-drive transmission located in the overhead above the passenger compartment.)
For Capt. McMinn, being shot at from such a close range was a traumatic experience. Everything seemed to be happening at once (which was true ). It had Cpt. McMinn pretty confused. At one point he thought that he had lost the engine. The whole thing was a mute point after the aircraft lost a rotor blade and the tail boom hit a tree.
Their fate was sealed. He knew anything
that happened after that was completely out of his hands.
The aircraft was spinning so violently it was as if he
was in a centrifuge. The force kept him pressed back into his seat. He
thinks that they went around about one more time before they fell into
the water. He had received a blow behind his ear at the time that the tail
boom hit the tree, and was unconscious until after they had crashed. Two
CS smoke grenades went off in the cockpit to add to the mess.
The "Trail" aircraft pilot, said that
the "Lead" set off some kind of anti-aircraft mine as he was
spinning. They were exploding behind him as he passed
over them. These charges would blow straight up to about 40 ft and the
cone of fire was about 30 ft across.
McMinn woke up with his aircraft on its side in about 4 feet of water while his observer was attempting to get him out. There was CS gas allover the place, it looked like an oily sheen on the water. The grenades had either been exploded by gunfire or the pins had been pulled out in the crash. The crew chief/observer/gunner was underwater after the crash. The butt of his M-60 had smashed him in the nose and he had been unconscious for a moment. The shock ofbeing underwater brought him around, he unbuckled himself, came up for air, and then tried to get the pilot out.
From his position, left side now on the bottom, he couldn't manage moving the pilot. So he went out through his windscreen bubble, which wasn't there anymore, and came around to the pilot's side to unstrap and lift him out of the water. The pilot began to regain consciousness and together they helped each other to get clear of the aircraft.
Meanwhile, the "Trail" aircraft (WQ C.J. Wheeler), had been holding his trail position and watched as the shooting began. Then as the 'Lead' went into it's final spin, Wheeler pulled pitch, droped the nose and roared across the four VC "children" with his mini-gun on, kicking pedals and muddying the water with them without even looking back.
He followed the 'Lead' aircraft until
it crashed and then tried to find a place to land nearby in order to help
his comrades. WO Wheeler flew over the crash site and saw the observer
getting out and the
pilot trying to get out. Then he flew to the nearest
clear area. But the lowest that he could get was about lOft over the water
without the rotor blades hitting any trees. The area was swampy, thick
and jungle-like with palm trees 30 to 50 feet tall. The quickest way to
get help to his friends was to hover over the water just a few meters from
the crash site and have his observer drop the ten feet into the water.
After surfacing, the 'Trail.'s observer waded and swam over to the crash
site through the cloud of CS gas to help the downed crew.
They could see the anti-aircraft-booby traps with the bamboo props and their windup trips. The VC had them setup in the trees, in the saw grass, they were allover the place.
By this time, McMinn's observer had gotten the pilot out and together the two observers helped the pilot through the mud and water to a dike. McMinn and his observer were physically drained from the strain of the crash and sick from breathing the CS gas.
WO C.J. Wheeler had to find a place
to land to pick them up. The first choice couldn't work out. The
"Trail" pilot buzzed around and finally found a place, he returned to the
dike to guide his observer
and the "Lead" crew to his mini PZ. WO Wheeler flew back
to the clearing; landed and waited at a ready. The two observers and the
"Lead" pilot struggled through the water to Wheeler's Loach, climbed aboard
and collapsed across the cargo deck. They lay there exhausted with their
legs hanging over the edge of the deck.
During the time that Wheeler was buzzing
around he believes that he set off some more of the aerial -booby traps
and that possibly his tail boom received some damage from one these blasts.
After all were on board, the "Trail"
aircraft took off and was heading for Dong Tam, when Wheeler
looked back and saw the "C&C" ship (UH-ID) had set
up for a landing flare to the spot he had just left. After the "C&C"
Huey touched down, the "C&C" officers got out and went over to the
crash site. Wheeler circled back around and swung low over while trying
to yell down at the C&C people, to warn that the whole place was mined,
booby trapped, and that the downed crew had already been rescued.
The next thing that Wheeler knew, was
that one of the anti-aircraft mines had triggered and had
almost blown his tailboom off. The T/R drive shaft was
severed and away they went again, around and round. He was about 25 feet
over this clearing, it was about 15-20 meters across.
This was his first anti-torque failure and McMinn's second for the day. (I believe that if there was a tab to be worn over the unit shoulder patch that denotes being "Anti- Torque Failure Qualified." McMinn and his observer would get their's with two palms.)
Without any foreward airspeed, he was committed to a spinning crash. The aircraft started settling, turning to the right. Before the aircraft hit, Wheeler had lowered the collective, then pulled in all that he had. That seemed to stop the spin somewhat but not enough correction to get any kind of flare in time. But hit level on a dike bank on it's right skid, and then tipped over on its left side.
The Loch was way too over loaded for a good emergency landing. When the rescued passengers in the back saw that they were going to crash again, they held on to whatever they could. The lead observer was thrown out when they hit.
Luckily all of the rotor blades had
been shed by that time so he escaped that danger. Still, this
second crash landing didn't improve the condition of
his face and nose at all. He was on light duty
with a nose patch and a back injury for several weeks.
Out of the two crews and two crashes, he was the only one really hurt.
WO C.J. Wheeler had been trying to
warn the "C&C" about the Boobytraps and instead he was the
one that had been shot down. The 'C&C' landed there
fat dumb and happy, walked around looked at the crashed Trail Loch and
took credit for the daring rescue and wrote themselves up for citations.
Such is life... Well they did rescue both crews, didn't they?
Format Edited by Don Callison
Editor's Note:
This account was written with good and kind intent.
Please forgive any errors regarding the use of aircraft flight controls
or mission inaccuracy.
Mr. Spletstoser wrote this based on personal interviews
with the crewmembers.
He is not an Army Aviator or Crewchief.