MOON OVER THE DELTA

By Don Callison
WAR WAGON 14
(c) 1996

Believe it or not, Lt. Larry Carmichael inspired this event when he "Pressed Ham" in the front seat of a Cobra as they dived and flashed past us.

It was the end of a day of good hunting and I was leading a flight of 4 Loach’s back toward Vinh Long. In the vicinity of Mickey Ears we came upon a lone Huey chugging along at 1500 feet. Like I said we’d had good hunting and we were wound up. My gunner, Rene Garneau and I were squirrelly and in the mood for some mischief.

I had the flight slow down and I pulled ahead and climbed to 2000. I planned a shallow dive along the right side of the unsuspecting Hubert. Garneau wiggles and contorts himself and finally manages to get his pants down and except for his feet and fingers is now completely outside of the helicopter. We went diving past the Huey making about 130 knots and Garneau was whooping and yelling obscenities over his shoulder at the other helicopter. As we roared past I saw the VIP plate with the Eagle and knew we had just mooned "Delta 6", soon to be General Maddox.

I pulled under the UH1 and continued to dive with a 180 to rejoin my flight.

As I began to regain some of what little common sense Scouts are blessed with, I envisioned Garneau loosing his grip and falling out of the Loach and plummeting to his death. Then I began to wonder how I was going to explain to the accident investigation board how my gunner ended up dead in a rice paddy with his pants down around his ankles. I manage to drag his wild ass back into the cockpit.

We never heard a word from anyone about the stunt.

No my friends, Scout Pilots weren’t crazy! For the most part we were just real good at calculating risk very quickly and manipulating situations to our favor.

CREWCHIEFS, GUNNERS, OBSERVERS, TORQUES... Whatever you call them...

THEY WERE CRAZY!!

They got into those little helicopters every day with other idiots like me flying them, to go out to find the enemy and kick his ass.

Many of the gunners were older that the pilots and should have known better.