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)