19 Minutes to Live - Helicopter Combat in Vietnam

by Lew Jennings

  We flew a loose trail formation, one behind the other up Highway 547, the winding dirt road carved in the mountains by Army engineers that wound its way from the coastal plains near Hue and the 101st Airborne Division’s Base at Camp Eagle to the A Shau Valley some 40 miles distant. I was flying my AH-1 Cobra Gunship. Mark was flying his UH-1H Huey.

  We flew low past Firebase Bastogne at an altitude less than 100 feet to avoid their artillery gunfire and continued out towards Firebase Blaze en route to our objective, a small valley to the south at the base of a ridgeline where we hoped to establish contact with the beleaguered team. We squeezed under some low clouds settling on the higher ridges and arrived at our destination a few minutes later.

  “Coca Cola, Coca Cola, this is Assault 23,” I called on our fox-mike (FM) radio that was on the same frequency that the Team was operating. Mark was listening in from his Huey as we circled in the punch bowl of the valley with the surrounding mountains obscured by mist and clouds.

  “Coca Cola, Coca Cola, Assault 23,” I called again as we strained to hear any word from the Team.

  My Cobra had been topped off with fuel and loaded with rockets, minigun ammo and grenades ready to defend Mark and rescue our comrades. The problem was, I was so heavy that I had to fly in continuous circles because if I let my airspeed drop below 30 miles per hour, my over-loaded Gunship would merely run out of power and settle to the ground. And maybe not in one piece! So around and around the punch bowl we flew in low, lazy circles trying to make contact with the LRRPs.

  “Coco Cola, Coca Cola, this is Assault 23,” I tried again and again. After about 15 minutes, Mark called over to me. “23 this is 43, let me try flying up these ravines that are surrounding us and see if I can make contact with the Team. I’ll take it nice and slow and keep you posted.”

  Man, that was definitely a dangerous idea. Flying up into those blind canyons, into the clouds, no altitude to speak of and little airspeed in bad-guy country was a recipe for disaster. But Mark was right, we didn’t have a choice; the weather was closing in and darkness would soon be upon us.

  “Roger that. I’ll wait down here in the valley for you,” was all I could say.

  Mark started up the first ravine and disappeared into the clouds within seconds. “Coco Cola, Coca Cola this is Assault 43,” he called. No answer. “Coca Cola, Coca Cola, this is Assault 43.” Again, no answer.

  “I’m coming back down. You should see me in a minute,” Mark said as he slowly appeared out of the mist and continued descending into the valley.

  “I’ll try that ridge line further to the west to see if they might be up there,” he radioed and spun off in that direction, as I continued circling.

  “Coca Cola, Coca Cola, this is Assault 43,” I heard Mark transmitting as he disappeared in the distance.

  All of a sudden, we heard, “Assault 43, this is Coca Cola.” It was an urgent whisper but sounded like a scream in our headsets. “We’re in bad trouble here and need immediate extraction!” You could almost taste the terror in that voice.

  I heard Mark’s unusually calm reply, “Coca Cola, Assault 43, can you give me your location and number of souls over?”

  “Assault 43, Coca Cola, there’s five of us and we are on top of a ridgeline; we don’t know our exact location,” the strained voice replied. “We need to be extracted immediately, we’re out of ammo and still in contact.”

  “Coca Cola, 43, we need to know where you guys are at. Can you hear my rotor blades, over?” Mark responded. The Huey is notorious for the noise it makes, as any Vietnam Vet can attest.

  “No, we can’t hear you and we don’t know where we are, except that we are on top of a ridgeline in the clouds.”

  “Okay,” Mark replied. “We are down in the valley below you. Just find a ravine or a creek bed and follow it downhill in a northerly direction and we’ll find you”.

  I knew exactly what Mark was thinking, as if he had all the answers and it would be a piece of cake, but that’s exactly what the Team needed to hear to give them hope. Mark’s advice would get them headed downhill and hopefully towards us, so we would have a better chance of finding them.

  A few minutes later Coca Cola called back; “We’ve found a stream bed and are following it downhill. Are you guys still there?”

  “Yup, we’re still here,” Mark replied. “Give me a long count, one to ten, and I’ll home in on your signal,” Mark instructed.

  Army helicopters were equipped with a special electronic device in the cockpit made for situations just like this one. As the LRRP Team transmitted on their radio, Mark could turn his helicopter until the needle lined up on the homing instrument on his panel to let him know the direction to the team. He got a good lock on the signal and his nose was pointing right at one of the ravines ahead of him.

  “23, I’m heading up into this ravine with the creek bed to see if I can make contact with them,” Mark advised.

  “Roger that,” was again about all I could say as he slowly disappeared up the ravine and into the clouds. I wouldn’t be there to cover him if he ran into trouble.

  “Keep talking to me on VHF and I’ll also monitor fox mike,” I said. The VHF was our “Company” radio to talk to each other. We had three different radios going at any one time; FM to talk to the ground guys like Coca Cola, UHF or ultra-high frequency to talk to the air guys like Air Traffic Control, Air Force, or Navy, and VHF or very high frequency to talk to each other on a dedicated air-to-air frequency just for us.

  “I’m heading up into the ravine. I can’t see forward at all ‘cause of the clouds, but I can see the tree tops through the chin bubble and will just keep hopping up the creek bed, tree top to tree top. If we find them, we’ll drop the strings and bring ‘em out two or three at a time.”

  Strings were those 60 to 120-foot ropes the Hueys carried on board to drop ammo and supplies into the jungle, rappel troops to the ground when there was not a prepared landing zone available, or rescue people when in tight spots; mostly our own aircrews when they got shot down or ground troops like the LRRPs of L Company, 75th Rangers in this case. They had McGuire Rigs attached to the ends.

  Mark had a half load of fuel on board and could only handle two or three people at a time dangling from those long lines yet still have enough power to hover. We had terrible memories of a recent accident when too many LRRP’s scrambled onto the lines during a combat rescue and literally dragged one of our Hueys out of the air with their own weight, causing the ship to crash and killed one of the courageous guys we were trying to rescue. We wouldn’t let that happen today, if we could get to them before the enemy did or darkness that, combined with this lousy weather, would cause us to have to abort the mission completely.

  “Assault 43, Assault 43,” the excited voice called over the radio. “We can hear you, we can hear you,” the Ranger said between gasps for air. “We’re running down the creek bed towards the noise, looking for you!”

  Mark’s hunch had paid off!

  A few minutes later, Mark’s cool, collected voice came over the radio.

  “I have you in sight and we’re dropping strings. I can only take a few out at a time. Only two people this time out. I repeat, only two people on the strings this time. I’ll shuttle two of you down the mountain and come back to get the others,” he repeated.

  “23, can you give me a long count? We’re coming out.” Mark radioed. He was so calm, it was unnerving. “I’ll be on instruments, so let me know when you have a visual.”

  I couldn’t believe what I just heard! I instantly knew what Mark was going to try and do. He had turned the Huey around, facing downhill, with the canyon walls on either side and two Rangers hooked onto his strings dangling far below. He would have to pull them straight up at least 200 feet, to clear the trees, using every last reserve of horsepower from the engine, while flying blind in the clouds with granite on both sides. Unbelievable!

  He noted the exact heading that he thought would take them safely out. He had requested a
long count from me on the FM radio to home in on my signal to bring him out to the valley. He then proceeded to do a blind instrument takeoff straight up into the clouds, so the Rangers dangling below would clear the treetops and not drag them all back into the streambed below.

  I flew directly toward the ravine into which he had disappeared. It had seemed like hours since I had last seen him. I started counting slowly on the FM radio; “one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, niner, ten, niner, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, long count over,” straining to see if they would come into sight.

  And there they were! Two bodies appeared above me dangling out of the clouds as if on an invisible swing from heaven. No aircraft, no ropes visible, just two bodies swinging below the clouds!

  “43, you’re clear!” I yelled. “You’re clear! Come on down!”

  With that, Mark’s Huey descended like a butterfly from the overcast sky and fluttered to the ground, gently settling the Rangers in the elephant grass of the valley floor.

  As the LRRPs extricated themselves from the strings, Mark called me. “I’ll head back up for the rest of the Team, keep an eye-out, will you?” he called. And immediately disappeared into the mist once again.

  Mark repeated the same operation all over again to get the remaining members of the Team out. It was as exciting and breathtaking as the first time, with the rangers swinging from the clouds on strings provided by Alpha Troop, 2nd Squadron, 17th Cavalry.

  We were low on fuel and darkness was falling as we flew out of the valley through a dip in a ridgeline and headed towards the nearest refueling point at Firebase Bastogne just a few minutes away.

  As soon as we landed and with the ships still running as we started hot refueling, one of the LRRPs jumped out of the Huey and ran around to the front to shake Mark’s hand. He and the others still inside the Huey all turned towards my Cobra and gave me a big thumbs-up. Their smiles were like sparkling sunshine amid the dirt, grime and camouflage that covered their bodies. All of us had lumps in our throats. It had been a great day.

  On January 25, 1970 Mark Stevens was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his heroic actions and would forever remain a hero to me.

  Mark Stevens, Assault 43.

  Mark’s Huey.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  RECON RESCUE

  It was a few days before Christmas on 22 December when our CO, Major Tom Trombley, burst into our hooch just before midnight.

  “A Marine Corps Recon team on the eastern ridge out in the A Shau has been attacked by an unknown size enemy force and is in danger of being overrun. There’s a low overcast cloud condition and no other aviation unit wants to challenge the weather to help them out. I need two volunteer Gun Pilots to help rescue those guys. Jennings, Talton, you are the most experienced Aircraft Commanders in the unit. What do you say? I need volunteers now!”

  What do you say? “Yes, sir! Three bags full! Let’s kick the tires and light the fires and head to the A Shau!” At least that’s what I thought we said as we grabbed our gear and headed to the flight line.

  I think Stan Shearin was my Copilot. I don’t remember who was flying with Mike Talton. We checked in on the unit frequency as soon as we were up and running.

  The CO was flying his Huey. The plan was for him to fly out first and climb up and through the overcast cloud layer. He would call when he was safely on top and then we would take off individually to join him. Once all of us were together above the clouds, we would be directed by radar out to the A Shau Valley and, when the radar folks told us we were over the center of the valley, would descend back down through the clouds and search for the Recon team.

  What could go wrong with that?

  The first problem was that none of us were well trained in “instrument flying” where you rely solely on your instruments to fly the aircraft. It would be required of us to safely fly in the clouds and darkness to the A Shau.

  “No problem, you are professionals,” the Boss emphasized.

  If we survived the climb through the clouds without losing control, the second problem was to find the Boss and join up with him. He said he would keep his lights on for us.

  “No sweat,” he commented.

  Once we joined up, the third problem was spiraling down through the clouds in the middle of the night trusting the radar guys were correct and hoping we would break out of the clouds before hitting the ground or surrounding mountains.

  “Piece of cake,” he described it.

  And then, once we were below the clouds and in the A Shau, how to find the friendly Team in the dark and be able to provide close air support to save them without getting shot down or crashing into the mountain.

  “That’s what we get paid the big bucks for,” he concluded. Around $400 a month, as I recall!

  The Boss launched into the dark and a few minutes later called that he was clear on top at around 3,000 feet, our signal to come up and join him.

  Mike and I had practiced instrument flying nearly every day on our return to Home Base from our missions, including radar approaches. We felt pretty confident we could fly on instruments if we had to. This would be the BIG test.

  Each of us made it through the clouds, turned on our lights, joined up, climbed to 6,000 feet or so to clear any mountains and headed west out to the A Shau.

  The radar guys called us when were over the valley. The Boss went spiraling down first. He broke out about 1,500 feet above the valley floor and called us down. We descended one at a time and joined up with him again. We had turned off our red and green position lights on the sides of the helicopters and only had our rotating beacons on, which were mounted on top and hopefully only visible to us and not targets for enemy sharp shooters.

  It was really eerie. A near full moon was illuminating the cloud deck above us to a point that we could actually see the valley and terrain around us with the naked eye. We didn’t have night vision goggles, GPS or any of the wonderful aids to night flying and navigation that would be invented years later.

  We all changed to the Recon team’s FM frequency and gave them a call. They came on in a whisper, gave us a short count to home in on them, and told us they had a strobe light in a C-ration can they would use to identify their position. They couldn’t set off smoke grenades as we couldn’t see the smoke in the dark anyways and the initial explosion would give away their exact position to the bad guys.

  I pointed the nose of the Cobra towards where I thought their position was and called them on the radio with a reverse azimuth compass direction so they could point their light towards me.

  The strobe in a C-ration can was a great idea. The light would show in only one direction yet be hidden in the can so as not to give away their position to the enemy.

  They had told us the enemy had crept up to their night defensive position, climbed into the trees above them and were actually shooting down on them.

  I spotted the light almost immediately and told them to get as far down into the ground as possible as I would be firing my wing-mounted Gatling guns in close to saw the tops of the trees down and the bad guys with them.

  When they were set, I let loose with the XM-18 mini-guns firing 4,000 rounds per minute from each side. They were like bright red fire hoses in the sky with every 5th round a tracer round.

  I aimed just to the right and above their position and, as they held the strobe light steady, walked the fire hoses of bullets to the left across the top of their position. Enemy dead and wounded started falling from the trees while others were trying to escape the onslaught. Mike was behind me in his Cobra and did the same thing with his turret mini-gun as I broke off and came back around to do it again.

  Around and around we went until we had emptied our guns on the targets, then started in with rockets, aiming away from the friendlies so they wouldn’t get hit by exploding shrapnel as we fired at the retreating enemy.

  It was all over in a just a few minutes. The enemy had retreated and the Recon Team thanked us
for saving their bacon. Hueys would later go in to extract the Team and their dead and wounded when it got light.

  It was still around 0200 hours and overcast clouds. We landed at Firebase Currahee on the valley floor. We had tested our luck at this instrument flying business and wanted to wait until daylight to try and leave the valley.

  The firebase Commander went ballistic though and would have none of that idea. We had made a huge racket with the noise of our helicopters and he wanted us out of there pronto, fearing another attack on the base. If we could fly down through the clouds we could damn well fly back up and be on our way. Logical guy.

  We did a quick brief, same procedure as we had used at home base, and climbed back into our helicopters to defy death again.

  The Boss took off first without any lights on so he wouldn’t get shot at and climbed up through the overcast clouds. Once on top in the clear, he turned on his lights and called us to join him. Mike first and then I did the same thing. We headed back to Camp Eagle and each one of us did a radar approach to a successful landing at home base.

  Shaky but exuberant, we headed back to the hooch to see if we could get some shut-eye before the dawn came with more missions. With all the adrenalin still pumping, sleep was not to be. It was a night to remember.

  Al Goodspeed’s Little Bird, December 29, 1969 “10 Days and a Wake Up”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  SPEED CRASHES AGAIN

  Al Goodspeed and I joked about how short we were getting. He only had 10 days left in country and I was down to four weeks. He had just turned over command of the Scout Platoon the day before to Roger Courtney in preparation for going home. We talked about being extra careful if we wanted to leave in one piece. Then the both of us laughed. “If you ain’t Cav, you ain’t shit!” we both said to each other at the same time as we headed out to the flight line.

  It was December 1969 and the winter monsoon season still lingered with lots of low clouds, rain and fog. We had the first light mission to check out the A Shau to see if the weather would allow us to operate out there today. It was just getting light as we cranked up the turbines and got ready to head out.