19 Minutes to Live - Helicopter Combat in Vietnam

by Lew Jennings

  The Blues (Six Hueys and a platoon of approximately 40 Infantrymen) were usually on standby ready to do a mini combat assault into a hot area, if we found ourselves battling the enemy.

  Up north we had a vast area to operate in and lots of reconnoitering to do to try and find and fix the elusive NVA in the mountainous and jungle covered terrain. Major Curtin intentionally decided to split us up into four to six Pink Teams of one Cobra and one Scout each to operate independently and cover as much area as possible.

  Two to three Pink Teams would be flying while the other two or three would be at a nearby firebase ready to relieve one another when low on fuel or ammo.

  Major Curtin or his Operations Officer, Captain Roy “Bud” Dowdy, would stay in contact with all of us via our unit radio frequency and fly the Command and Control (C&C) Huey around the area checking in on us. The C&C Huey was also loaded with lots of rescue gear in case one of us got into more trouble than we could handle.

  The Cobra in the Pink Team was the high bird providing cover for the little bird down below. The Cobra crew would do all the navigation chores and mission coordination with ground infantry units, artillery units, air traffic control, Tactical Air Command (TAC air) fighter jets, search and rescue and unit operations, so the Scouts could concentrate on their job of finding the bad guys and identifying the good guys.

  Today in the A Shau we had multiple operations going on.

  Speed and I were a Pink Team assigned to reconnoiter the A Shau from the middle of the valley near the old A Luoi air strip, to the far north end past Tiger Mountain.

  Other Pink Teams would recon the south end of the valley while the Hueys and Blues were on standby at a new staging area, a clearing the size of a football field bulldozed in the floor of the valley called LZ Rendezvous at the eastern entrance to the A Shau.

  There wasn’t much chatter on the radio going out. We were well trained and disciplined to stay off the radios as much as possible and concentrate on our flying and the mission.

  As we neared the A Shau the other teams and Hueys broke off while Speed and I dropped down low to crest the east ridge and then down on the deck to start reconning the valley floor.

  “Geez, this is incredible!” I said to Mike over the intercom, our private radio link in the aircraft to converse with one another. The huge jungle trees, the swift running river, the rich green tall elephant grass, the beautiful foliage and what looked like banana trees. It was something out of the Lost World, an amazingly beautiful place and eerily quiet as we continued north, back and forth, looking, searching, straining, and anticipating trouble.

  The A Shau Valley from the east rim looking northwest with Aloui Airstrip middle left, Hamburger Hill behind it upper left and Tiger Mountain in the distance upper right

  Speed flying low in his little Scout bird startled a deer from the elephant grass. It was huge! It was the size of an elk as it ran across the plain and into a small depression where it could hide. We held our fire.

  Then I saw what appeared to be an alligator lumbering out of the river and onto a sand bank. I called Speed to check it out. He radioed back it wasn’t an alligator. It was a lizard! We all chuckled. Incredible. Back to the business at hand trying to find the bad guys.

  We continued our reconnaissance north past Firebase Airborne which was high up the ridge to our right.

  We were following a well-camouflaged trail that meandered up the center of the valley, back and forth, looking for anything that might detect recent enemy activity. When we reached the end, still nothing except an old bomb crater with a fifty-gallon drum perched on the edge.

  Now we were feeling a sense of quiet relief. We had traversed the valley from south to north and had not found any signs of enemy activity. I radioed Speed.

  “18, 23, How about we conduct some recon by fire?” I asked.

  Sometimes, if we are in an area that does not have friendly forces nearby, and designated a free fire area, if we don’t find anything, we will intentionally start shooting up the area to see if the enemy is actually there and hiding from us.

  “23, 18, Sure! What do you have in mind?” he radioed back.

  “Let’s see which one of us can knock over that barrel on the edge of the bomb crater with our mini-guns. You first.” I responded.

  “Okay! Here goes!” he replied, as he whipped the Loach around and started blasting away at the barrel, immediately filling it full of holes and kicking up a lot of dirt as he fired off a few hundred rounds in a short burst with his Gatling gun.

  The barrel still stood right where it was.

  “Hah!” I laughed. “My turn,” as I arched high and lined up a gun run “remain well clear, I’m in hot,” I warned.

  “Mike,” I whispered over the intercom, “I’m going to fire a pair of rockets instead of the mini-gun. We’ll blow that thing sky high,” as I let off a pair. Direct hit!

  I pulled off and banked hard right, gloating over my expert shot as the Best Cobra Pilot alive. I looked over my shoulder for Speed and saw he was hauling ass away from us heading back down the valley with smoke pouring out of the side of his Scout bird.

  “Aw Geez Mike, what’s he doing?” I said.

  I depressed the radio switch as I chased after him.

  “18, 23, where are you going?” No answer as he continued flying low at full speed.

  “18, 23, you okay?” No answer.

  “Speed, what’s going on?” I pleaded.

  It was at this point that we saw his rotor blades stop in midair. He plunged into the ground doing nearly 100 miles an hour. His helicopter pitched end over end. The rotor blades flew off. The tail boom flew off. The machine continued disintegrating as it finally rolled to a stop in a cloud of dust and smoke.

  My body reacted violently. I wanted to throw up. Oh God, Oh God, Oh God. This can’t be happening!

  “MAYDAY! MAYDAY! MAYDAY! THIS IS ASSAULT 23 IN THE NORTHERN A SHAU, MY SCOUT BIRD 18 IS DOWN. I REPEAT 18 IS DOWN!” I screamed over the unit frequency as I swooped low over the wreckage trying to see any sign of life.

  “23 this is Assault 12, I’m on my way.” It was Tom Michel, another one of our great Scout Pilots.

  Before I could answer, Mike was hollering at me over the intercom: “Lew, land here, land here! There’s a spot down here by the trail. Land here so I can go over and help!” he continued as he pointed to an area below us.

  The Hughes OH-6 was beloved by all of us who had a chance to fly it. It was nimble, quick, fun to fly and best of all for Scout Pilots, had a built-in roll cage that made a crash survivable, even when hitting the ground at a hundred miles an hour. We could see someone was still alive down there and the cockpit was relatively intact.

  I did a tight circle, checking out the landing area for obstacles and slowed down to set up for an approach.

  “6 this is 23, we’re landing on the trail near the crash. We think we can see survivors.” I radioed to Major Curtin as I landed in the small clearing on the trail.

  Mike was out of his front seat in a heartbeat and immediately disappeared into the tall elephant grass to our left heading to the wreck, while I kept the Cobra running at full speed in case we were attacked while on the ground. I could then pull pitch to a hover and start firing our weapons in all directions.

  Al Goodspeed recalls the crash. “We went down fast, landing on our skids and flipping end over end for about 150 feet or so before coming to rest with the aircraft lying on Hayden's side. I was able to get out relatively quickly. We were in the middle of the elephant grass in about 18 inches of water and deep mud. I immediately crawled back into the aircraft and removed Hayden's seatbelt and pulled him from the aircraft. He was in shock, bleeding profusely, but conscious. That is when I realized that sometime during the crash the first aid kit had been lost.”

  “We were in the mud in the high elephant grass and had no visibility except straight up,” he continued. “I knew we had to get Hayden out fast or he'd bleed out. I lifted him on my shoulder to try to c
arry him to the trail that I figured was about 50 meters to the west. The problem was that the mud was so deep, I could hardly take a step. I could hear Lew's Cobra nearby toward the trail but couldn't see him.”

  “About that time Mike Talton came running through the elephant grass to help. Mike was a sight for sore eyes at that point. We laid Hayden back down and decided to use a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. I ripped off my shirt and removed my t-shirt for Mike to apply a makeshift tourniquet. While he was doing that, I tore off one of the engine bay doors from my Loach to use as a sled to make it easier to transport Hayden over the mud and elephant grass. We had Hayden on the sled when Tom Michel arrived in another LOH. Mike and I then started stomping enough elephant grass down so that Tom could hover close enough to the ground to load Hayden.”

  Back in the Cobra I was catching my breath and trying to make sense of what had happened, when I noticed small poles beside the trail that had communications wire strung on them. Holy moly, this must be one of those major enemy supply routes where the NVA had set up communications lines hidden by the elephant grass! We were right in the middle of it! The trail we had landed on was actually known as Highway 548, a major NVA infiltration route in the A Shau.

  In less than five minutes that seemed like hours, Tom Michel swooped in low overhead in his Scout bird and set up for an approach to land near the wreck.

  “23, 12, I can see the guys next to the wreckage. For sure one wounded. I’ll call on the way out,” he radioed as his little bird disappeared in the tall elephant grass maybe 50 yards to my left.

  “6 and 23, this is 12, coming out with one WIA. 18 Oscar (Sgt. Hayden) is seriously wounded. Heading direct to 18th Surg at Evans”.

  Al Goodspeed appeared out of the elephant grass a few minutes later like an apparition, covered in dirt and blood. He lurched toward me and planted a big kiss on the Plexiglas canopy by my left shoulder, gave me a big thumbs-up, and disappeared back into the grass as a Huey approached.

  Al relates what happened next. “Mike returned to the Cobra and Lew and a short while later a Huey was able to land on the trail where Lew had landed and flew me to the 85th Evac Hospital at Phu Bai.”

  “John Hayden had survived, but lost his leg. I remember he had shown me pictures of his new baby before we took off on that mission. I recall that all I could say while pulling him from our aircraft was ‘It's okay you're going home to see your baby!’ I've often thought about that day and regretted that I was so young and inexperienced in life that I didn't appreciate the excitement he was enjoying about his newly born child. Much later, once I had become a parent, it haunted me that I was unable to convey to him that day how excited he must have felt,” Speed reminisced.

  By then Mike appeared and climbed back into the front cockpit. “LET’S GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!” he yelled over the intercom.

  The Huey landed to pick up Speed as Tom Michael took off in the Scout bird.

  “12, 23, right behind you,” as I pulled pitch for take-off.

  Mike started explaining what had happened.

  “You wouldn’t believe it! There was an NVA 12.7 machine gun near that 50-gallon drum. When we started firing on it, the bad guys thought we had discovered them and fired at Speed when he flew nearly directly overhead. He took rounds through the cockpit, radio console and transmission. It knocked out his radios, so he couldn’t talk to us and then the transmission froze and he crashed.”

  “One of the rounds nearly severed Hayden’s leg,” Mike continued. “I used my pistol and a t-shirt as a tourniquet to try and stop the bleeding, while Speed got one of the engine doors that had been ripped off the helicopter to use as a stretcher to load him aboard 12’s Loach.”

  “Speed seems to be okay. I don’t know if Hayden is going to make it,” Mike sighed.

  The Chicom 12.7mm machine gun is approximately the same size as our .50 caliber machine gun. It fires BIG bullets that easily tear through the aluminum and Plexiglas of a helicopter, not to mention the skin and bone of our bodies.

  Mike Talton holds CHICOM 12.77mm/.51 Caliber Anti-Aircraft Rounds or what he describes as Great Balls of Fire (GBOFs) later in Chapter 22

  I called our CO, Major Tom Curtin and gave him an update on the radio. He called me back with word that he was in contact with an Air Force FAC (Forward Air Controllers flew in small light observation airplanes) who was bringing fast movers inbound with CBUs (Cluster Bomb Units).

  And then he asked if I would direct them to the location of the enemy machine gun position and mark it for the attack.

  “Yes, Sir!” I could hardly get back there fast enough.

  I broke off from escorting Tom Michel and dove to fly fast and low back up the valley along the trail to muffle the direction of the sound of my rotor blades pounding the air and to stay out of sight of the enemy’s anti-aircraft guns.

  “Mike, we’ll come in low and fast, do a cyclic climb as we near the target, then a single run to mark the area with rockets for the FAC. We’ll break early to stay well away from the gun emplacement. Be ready to cover us on the break with the mini-gun to keep their heads down.”

  “Roger that,” Mike replied as I saw him squaring his shoulders and getting the flexible turret sight ready and fingers on the triggers.

  The Air Force FAC was circling high to the west and had me in sight coming up the valley. I fired a series of several pairs of rockets on the single run, marking the target area, then dove for a low exit while Mike poured lead towards the gun emplacement with the mini-gun at 2,000 rounds per minute.

  As we cleared the target area and rapidly climbed to altitude, the first of the Air Force fighter jets appeared and started their bomb runs.

  The cluster bombs look similar to conventional bombs however, they break apart in the air as they descend, scattering hundreds of bomblets over a wide area. Each bomblet was like a huge hand grenade with a killing radius of maybe 20 meters. Perfect for taking out enemy troops and disabling vehicles and equipment caught in the open, like the NVA manning the machine gun and who knows what, all still hidden there.

  After helping out with the Air Force raid on the machine gun emplacement and surrounding area, it was time for us to head to Firebase Blaze just east of the valley to rearm, refuel and prepare for our next mission. We had been airborne less than two hours.

  The adrenaline was finally starting to seep out of our bodies as we landed at Blaze, hot refueled and rearmed, then shut down for a quick break as another Scout was flying out from home base to replace Goodspeed as our hunter-killer team mate.

  As we were grabbing a bite to eat from the box of C-rations I carried behind my seat and a drink from a jug of water I always kept on hand, the CO landed nearby in his Huey and headed over to us.

  “Oh Man, what a day,” he sighed. “You scared the crap out of me Lew, landing like that, and you too Mike. But you guys did the right thing and I think saved Hayden’s life. He’s already on the operating table at 18th Surgical. I don’t know if they will able to save his leg though.”

  “I’ve got to get back up and head to a LRRP (Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol) extraction in the south valley,” he said as he turned to leave. “In the meantime, as soon as your Scout arrives, I want you to escort and cover Goodman who is coming out with a maintenance bird and a recovery team to sling out what’s left of the Loach before it falls into enemy hands.”

  With that, he climbed into his waiting Huey and was gone.

  A few minutes later Eddy Joiner and his Observer “Smitty” Smith arrived to join up with us and shortly after that “Goody” Goodman arrived with the Huey and recovery team.

  We briefed on the spot, going over the details of what happened that morning, looking at the wreckage site on our maps, going over the enemy situation, weather, obstacles, radio communications and artillery, air and medevac support if we needed it.

  I would be coordinating all from above while providing initial prep of the landing zone by doing a series of gun runs, laying down rocket fire ar
ound the crash site. Then Eddy would come in with the little bird, do a short reconnaissance, and mark the landing site with a smoke grenade.

  Mike and I would then escort Goodman in the Huey on his approach and landing and continue circling the area to provide instant fire if they ran into trouble.

  The whole operation took about half an hour as the team rigged the remains of the wreckage for sling load.

  The Huey has a large, electrically operated cargo hook in the middle of its underbelly. The recovery team ties the wreckage together with ropes and straps and hooks the end of the strap into the cargo hook.

  Once it’s all ready to go, the Huey slowly and carefully comes to a hover directly over the cargo until the strap is tight, then carefully lifts the cargo to make sure it is stable and not too heavy for the Huey to lift.

  Then the Huey slowly takes off with the cargo slung some 10 to 20 feet beneath it.

  If the cargo is too heavy or starts swinging violently in flight, the Pilot can push a button on his cyclic control stick that instantly opens the cargo hook and drops the load. It’s called “Pickling the Load”, which is not a good thing.

  And that’s exactly what would happen to Speed’s little bird, as we hit some afternoon turbulence crossing the eastern mountain ridge and Goodman pickled the load from 1,000 feet.

  As Tom Curtin had sighed earlier, “What a day!”

  OH-6 Scout Wreckage Recovered

  And it wasn’t over yet. Little did we know that the LRRP extraction in the south A Shau, that the Boss was going to check on, had turned into a disaster.

  Specialist 5 Don Foster was the crew chief of the Huey from our Lift Section that was going in for extraction of the Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRPs). Roger Courtney and Bob Craig were the Pilots. Here’s how Don describes what happened.

  “We had a 0530 wake up call. It was going to be another hot Vietnam day. On the way to my Huey helicopter, 67-17663, I met up with Captain Roger Courtney who was going to be the Mission Commander and his Pilot, Chief Warrant Officer Robert Craig. Specialist 4 Larry Lyles joined us too, as he would be our other door gunner for the mission besides me.”