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https://www.nytimes.com/column/vietnam-67?emc=edit_vm_20180320&nl=&nlid=53807643&te=1
By Bill Lord
We were the river people, but we also spent a lot of time on helicopters. I was a radio operator in the 9th Infantry Division, based in the Mekong Delta south of Saigon.
By the time I left, someone told me I had made more than 50 combat assaults via chopper. Most but not all of them were routine insertions that could happen as often as three times in a day. Occasionally there was light resistance.
A few times there was a good deal of shooting. And since you never really knew if and when the shooting would start, we all developed our own little formula for when, under fire, we would decide to jump out of the helicopter.
If I knew what a differential equation was, I would say this might have been one. There were so many variables. Foremost was altitude. You could jump from very high up and maybe break your legs.
The forward speed of the chopper was something to take into account. The landing area might be water, mud or dry land. All were factors. You wanted out of that chopper in the worst way because the chopper was the target.
Still, you didn’t want to get panicky and jump too soon. So each individual had his own leap point. Mine was probably about the height of jumping from the roof of a one-story house. Survivable and a good middle ground balancing all the risks.
The pilots did not have the luxury of jumping out. Helicopter pilots in Vietnam were among the hardiest of the whole bunch of us. They took a lot of casualties but they always seemed to be there when you needed them.
Flying us into hot landing zones, flying medevacs to “dust off” the wounded and just getting potshots from all over when they were in the air meant there wasn’t much in the way of a routine day for them.
They earned every accolade they received.
Many, too many, didn’t survive: 2,165 helicopter pilots were killed in action, and another 2,500 crewmen.
Many of the survivors stuck with flying. Long after Vietnam those pilots often showed up to fly news helicopters for the television stations where I worked, and I loved to go flying with them. In uniform or out, these were very cool customers.
A helicopter is an awkward contraption. There are huge competing g-forces pulling in different directions, and it seems almost a miracle it can fly.
It takes no small amount of skill to fly one even without the overlay of ground fire, steep landing zones and various life-and-death emergencies. And these pilots in Vietnam were never pampered.
We got a horrifying example of that one afternoon as we lined up to board choppers coming in to take us to the next landing zone. We were spread out in what were called pickets of six men each.
Five groups were in a line on the left separated by about 25 yards each. Five more were on the right as the choppers descended onto our positions.
You could figure out quickly which bird was coming for you and it was easy to follow it right to the ground. In this case as my eyes followed our chopper, I noticed a short length of barbed-wire fence just a couple of feet off the ground.
It seemed too low to make any difference but the chopper came in a little fast, causing the pilot to lift the nose and drop the tail just enough for the tail rotor to hit that wire.
The next events happened so fast it’s hard to imagine even now how we survived.
At the moment the tail rotor hit the strand of wire, the chopper flipped onto its left side. The main rotor was driven into the ground and splintered into a thousand pieces.
It was just our good fortune to have been on the right side of the chopper or we probably would not have survived. We had dived onto the ground but we could still see the right side door gunner and the co-pilot climbing out just as the now crashed chopper burst into flames. The co-pilot must have known that was going to happen because he exited the wreckage with a fire extinguisher. But it wasn’t to put out the fire.
The fire was already beyond that. He sprayed it directly on the plexiglass windshield in front of the pilot who was struggling to get out. The cold spray of carbon dioxide shrank the hot plastic and the windshield literally popped out.
He pulled the pilot to safety as the fire raged.
The left-side door gunner never had a chance. He was pinned under the chopper right next to the fuel tank that was exploding into black smoke.
By now we were all up and everyone thought to flip the burning chopper upright, but searing heat prevented us from getting near it. The gunner died very quickly.
The pilot was distraught beyond all description. Anyone would call this a tragic accident, but in his mind it was pilot error.
In his mind his mistake had taken the life of one of his crew. There isn’t much worse for a guy in his position.
It was a very bad scene. A smoldering chopper. A dead door gunner. Scared soldiers and this inconsolable pilot sitting on the ground wailing.
A few minutes into this drama several new choppers arrived on the scene, one carrying a guy who was clearly the man in charge of this whole chopper squadron. He was all business.
He walked straight over to the pilot and told him to get up off the ground. He never asked what happened. No arm around the shoulder.
He just walked the crying pilot over to the helicopter he had just arrived in and ordered the pilot to get in and take the stick.
The scene drove things home to us. This was a war. If you are going to be an effective pilot in the future, there is no time for grieving now.
It was the ultimate version of getting back on the bicycle. But that’s how they did things. There was no time for sentiment.
I met up not long ago with a former Vietnam chopper pilot who had been a few years ahead of me in our high school. He said it was the best job he ever had, despite all the dangers.
He still missed it. As we talked I could tell that even now, 50 years later, he would happily get back in the cockpit. He still had that gritty commitment that reminded me of all the Vietnam pilots I had known.
That’s why we all trusted them with our lives.
Bill Lord is a retired television news executive and former general manager of WJLA-TV in Washington, D.C. During the Vietnam War he served as an infantry sergeant carrying a radio for Charlie Company, 4th/47 Infantry, 9th Infantry Division.
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