It was the newest UH-IH in the platoon, yet the "Huey" staggered and pitched like a punch drunk heavyweight as it tried to rise off the dusty, heat soaked runway on a late afternoon in the Mekong Delta of South Vietnam. It certainly was a helicopter but it was armed like a tank. The right side of the aircraft sprouted gun barrels. There were two M-60 machine guns mounted on a home made swivel so that the gunner could fire them as one. The other gunners carried two more M60's that they had "fixed" to such a fashion that the weapons were now smaller than sawed off shotguns and fired so fast that the tracer
rounds looked almost continuos. The pride of the crew was the .50 caliber. With its six foot long barrel and its mixture of armor piercing, high explosive, incendiary, ball, and tracer ammo that could be fired accurately from almost a mile away, this one weapon alone gave the aircraft a lethal bite. Of course there were other weapons "of choice" carried by the crew; personal favorites ranging from .357 Magnums to World War II submachine guns and shotguns as well as four cases of various hand grenades.Later on, I we will add a dozen or so flares in a pod on the left side of the cargo area. Due to all this firepower, ammo and fuel on board, the take off was "non standard" and observed by all others only from a safe distance from the runway.
    With all souls on board, the pilot would see if he had enough engine power to raise the Huey to a one foot hover. If this was achieved, one of the gunners would jump off the Huey to lighten the load. He then would keep pace alone side of the ship as the pilot slowly inched forward, bouncing and sliding the landing skids down the runway trying to gain enough speed to enter into translation lift or "flying speed". At this point the gunner, running alongside, would leap onto the landing skid and dive into the aircraft and the aircraft would, hopefully, continue to rise. All in a days work!
    This night would find us close to the Cambodian boarder near Moc Hoa working with one other Huey as a night hunter killer team. This tactic had the "high" ship with all the guns flying at about 2,500 feet above the terrain and the "low" ship at 1,000 feet. Low ship had a unique light mounted on the left side of the Huey. It could light up a fifty foot area or narrow the light beam to a six foot circle and stay at the same altitude. High ship would circle above while tossing out 1 million candle power flares for area/target illumination and attack anyone firing at the low ship or as directed. Tonight we would do all "of the above".
    The low ship starts yelling into his radio that he sees movement off to his side. He says there are many men in the water next to a small deserted village. We've tossed some flares and are now plummeting from the black night sky .The gunners await my command to unleash a wall of burning metal on the brazen enemy. We are almost on them when the flares ignite and a small flotilla of fishermen appear. They shield their eyes and crouch in their tiny boats, mortally afraid of the thundering holocaust diving towards them. Low ship is now screaming not to shoot. He's misread his map and this is actually a friendly fishing village. The whole crew monitors the radios, so even before I speak, they have turned their guns. I break off the attack at high speed just ten feet above the villagers heads and two heartbeats past their intended destruction. We climb
back into the inky sky.
    We head back to Moc Hoa to refuel and eat some rations. I sit in my seat and eat in silence. I'm shaken by the nearness of tragedy. I'm beginning to feel the extra strain of night flying and this night is only half over.
    We're scrambled back into the air and this time it's the real thing. Three South Vietnamese patrol boats have been fired on and are trapped in a small canal by the intense firepower from a well fortified bunker. These bunkers are strong; built with bamboo, palm logs and mud that hardens in the tropic sun like concrete. I've witnessed rockets with 17 lbs. high explosive warheads explode harmlessly off the sides of these mini-forts. I'm not sure yet how I'm going to take this one on.
Because of the location of the trapped patrol boats, I'm limited in the number of directions I can attack from and the enemy knows that. I can't fire at the bunker with the patrol boats directly behind it or off to the sides. The rounds that I fire can ricochet into them and cause further damage. Flying right on the deck with my running lights out helps hide me till I open fire. With all the guns going, I light up the night and hiding is impossible. The bad guys see us and pour a withering fusillade in our direction. The night is colored with red and green tracers that streak all around us or bounce off of the ground and tumble, helter-skelter, into the now burning grass or up into the sky like crazed spirits. There's got to be a smarter way to do this.
    I climb back up to two thousand feet and check for any newly acquired holes, leaks or other problems. The crew and the ship are okay and, except for my shorts, so am I. I'm wishing out loud that I had a big bomb of sorts when one of the gunners reminds me that we have many little bombs, grenades! A plan starts to form.
    We climb to three thousand feet and release all of our remaining flares. We've tossed all of them to fall to one side of the bunker while we attack from the other side out of the dark. We're traveling at 110 mph about two feet off the deck in the dark with our lights out. My mind feels the grass tickling my feet. My eyes sting from the strain of trying to find the bunker. It almost leaps out of the night at us. From 500 feet out our .50 cal cuts loose. I pull the nose up tight to slow down and climb 50 feet to protect the tail of the ship. Fifty feet from the target I slam the ship over in a hard right turn, kick the pedals to knock it out of trim and skid over the top of the bunker as two of the gunners release four hand grenades onto it. With the .50 cal still hammering away, I dump the nose and depart the immediate area tail high with a fist full of throttle. A quick series of flashes behind us tells us our "bombing run" has detonated and I climb sharply to complete the attack. Just a few hundred feet above the bunker now, I pull into a steep right hand spiral and hold it as all the guns now fire down vertically into the weaken structure. The gunners keep firing till the barrels start to glow and the ammo belt runs out. I break off, dive away and hold my breath. It must have worked as the boats departed safely. I wanted a closer look but the low ship called us off to go play some place else. A few days later, a recon team scouted the bunker and found numerous blood trails. Those guys wouldn't be coming back.
    The rest of the evening is a blur now. The demands of night attack and the numbing effect of to much adrenaline burns a man out rapidly. When released, we refueled at Moc Hoa and headed back to Vihn Long airfield. It's not quite an hours flight, but to me it took all morning. The crew, including my co-pilot, had all dozed off. This is against the           I couldn't fault them. I knew how tired they were cause I was also. I set the trim for the stick to cause the aircraft to dive, if I fell asleep. The downward attitude would cause my head to fall forward, wake me up and I would pull the ships nose back up. The rest of the flight home was a roller coaster of nose down; nose up; nose down; nose up. I woke them all up on final approach and the landing to the revetment could
not have been all that bad as we could still walk away after it. The crew chief said he'd send me the repair bill.
    I didn't even undress as I fell into the bed and I know the hooch maids thought they had one crazy round eye laying there with his pistol and chest armor still on and a wonderfully smug expression on his face as he dreamed of flying his Huey "bomber" once again.

Ed Gallagher

(The author is a former US Army helicopter pilot with over 200 combat missions in Viet Nam and Cambodia)