19 Minutes to Live - Helicopter Combat in Vietnam

by Lew Jennings

  Stan was not injured. He hadn’t been hit or taken any rounds up front.

  I was OK, just a little bleeding from my left cheek and there was a big hole in the left window in front of my face.

  The bullet had gone into the instrument panel and damaged or destroyed many of the engine instruments. I wasn’t sure what was or wasn’t working, nor did I know if we had taken more rounds elsewhere in the airframe. My teammates flew in close to look for additional damage, as we all headed back.

  With a huge sigh of relief, Quang Tri finally came in sight. My rotor rpm, while the gauge indicated it was still too high, was actually too low, so I declared an emergency to the control tower and set up for a “running” landing to the runway. The running landing allowed me to keep some airspeed up and to better control the helicopter as we landed at 30 to 40 knots and skidded down the runway until coming safely to a stop. The fire trucks and emergency crews were there in a jiffy, but thankfully we didn’t have to use them. The Cobra didn’t catch on fire and was towed to the maintenance area for further evaluation and repairs.

  The CO’s Huey did not sustain major damage. The Scouts were in good shape too. Another Cobra was brought out for me. My Copilot and I transferred our gear into the new bird and got it ready to go out again.

  That night, we were in the mess hall for a debriefing when the CO, Major Tom Trombley, pulled me aside. “Lew, you only have a few days left in country. I don’t want you going out with us to The Salient any more. I want you to pack your gear, return to Camp Eagle and help Maintenance with test flights until your DEROS (Date of Estimated Return from Overseas Service).”

  “Yes Sir,” I replied. It was over. Just like that.

  We shook hands and I headed to the Quonset Hut to pack my stuff and fly south to Eagle in the morning.

  Len Constantine and Lew Jennings (very skinny at the end of my tour)

  “Mr. Hollywood” Bob Larsen back from the hospital in Japan – crazy guy.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  AUSSIE FAREWELL

  The night before, our Commanding Officer, Major Tom Trombley, had ordered me back to Camp Eagle to conduct maintenance test flights. After nearly being shot down with a bullet into my cockpit and an emergency landing, I think he just couldn’t stand the thought of losing another Pilot who was within days of going home, like what had happened to Al Goodspeed.

  I said my goodbyes to the buds at breakfast and headed to the flight line at Quang Tri to take a Cobra back to Eagle. Mike Ryan would be flying a Scout bird back there with me, carrying my duffel bag in the back of his Loach. It was a flight of sheer joy that morning as we raced each other down the QL-1 highway, super low level at 100 knots for some 50 miles, all the way back past the ancient capital city of Hue and into the Scabbard Pad at our Home Base at Camp Eagle.

  After shutting down and securing the Cobra and unloading my gear back at the hooch, I headed to Operations to check in with Captain Dick Melick and Staff Sergeant Saunders.

  “Hi Lew. Welcome back. Why don’t you check with Keith Finley and see if he needs some help with Cobra maintenance,” Dick told me.

  Keith had taken over maintenance duties from John Bacic after John had been wounded in the crash with Mike Talton. Keith and I got along great. He lived in a hooch across from mine, with a nice bar built in. Over the next two weeks we enjoyed many an after-hour drink he made with some orange flavored powder that was popular at the time. I started sprouting warts from my face and neck within the next few days. Seems Keith had mixed the orange powder with some bad water. I soon stopped drinking the stuff as it was ruining my good looks!

  The next two weeks were focused on maintenance test flights to keep our Cobras up and running and mission ready. Most of the flights were less than an hour. Many times, I would fly the Crew Chief in the front seat, so he could get some flight time in the bird he spent so many hours maintaining. It was especially a treat for him to test fire the weapons from the front seat when we were out over the ocean and in the clear.

  It wasn’t long though before I got called to Operations.

  “We received a Mission Request to conduct reconnaissance of an area near Firebase Barbara,” Dick Melick explained. “Everyone is committed up at Quang Tri so I need you and Ryan to go out there to do the mission. Your contact is an Australian advisor to the ARVN (Army of Vietnam) Artillery Battalion on the firebase.”

  So much for maintenance test flights. Three days and a wakeup!

  Keith Finley volunteered to be my front seat as we joined up with Mike Ryan for the short flight north to the vicinity of Firebase Barbara. The firebase was located about 20 miles north of us in the low foothills about ten miles inland from the coast. We checked in on the radio and started a reconnaissance in ever-widening circles out from the firebase, mainly focusing on the hills to the north and west.

  We didn’t expect to find any enemy activity so close to our friendly locations and the coastal plain, however within an hour or so Mike Ryan spotted a campfire with cooking utensils that appeared recently abandoned. The search was on.

  In minutes, he tracked footprints to a nearby well-camouflaged and fortified bunker. We called in a report to our Aussie advisor. There were no reported friendlies in the area and we received permission to conduct reconnaissance by fire. Ryan flew low over the bunker and dropped a CS gas grenade to see if we could detect anyone in the bunker. Sure enough, two NVA soldiers emerged firing automatic weapons and the fight was on.

  We quickly dispatched the two enemy soldiers and continued to recon the area, finding more traces of enemy activity and a fairly large complex of bunkers. I called in an Artillery mission to the firebase to lay in some delayed-fuze high explosive rounds to try and penetrate the bunkers.

  It turned out the location of the bunker complex, just a few kilometers from the firebase and deep down in a ravine behind a ridge, proved too difficult for the Artillery guns. At low angle fire, the rounds would hit the front of the ridge and at high angle they would land beyond the bunker location. The only way to get at them was to fire rockets into the small bunker openings with the Cobra or bring in some fighter jets with 500-pound bombs. Most of the bunkers proved to be too difficult to locate and fire rockets into the entrances, so fighter jets were the order of the day. We continued our reconnaissance and using TAC air fighter jet support to attack the bunker complexes.

  The next morning, we were out there early checking in with our Aussie friend. By now everyone on the firebase was on high alert, knowing there was extensive enemy activity right in their back yard so to speak. As we continued our reconnaissance, we discovered many small groups of enemy soldiers in prepared fighting positions that had been previously occupied and abandoned the month before by the ARVNs (Army of the Republic of Vietnam). We called in the reports and this time, were handed off to the Navy to employ naval gunfire from a ship offshore.

  This was a first for me. The procedures for employing and adjusting Naval gunfire weren’t much different from Army Artillery. I called in the location of the enemy activity in six-digit coordinates within 100 meters of the center of the target area and the ship fired a spotter round. I adjusted from there, long or short (which is ‘Add’ or ‘Drop’ in Artillery speak) and left or right, in 50 meter increments and it was only a few minutes before all the guns on the ship were firing huge delayed-fuze projectiles that literally ripped the enemy fortifications apart. It was quite a sight to behold and the sailors aboard ship were ecstatic when we reported the substantial number of enemy dead and fortifications they had destroyed.

  Our Aussie advisor was grateful too, however, he was very concerned with all the enemy activity so close to their position. I had radioed in our sightings continually to our Home Base and they in turn had passed them to higher Headquarters. That night we were congratulated on discovering all the enemy activity and were told planning was underway to conduct a major air assault of Infantry in the area in the next day or two.

  The following morning Mike Ryan, Keit
h Finley and I were out there again. It seemed so ironic that everyone was up on the DMZ and out in the Khe Sanh plain where we thought most of the bad guys were, only to find them right in our own back yard.

  We found blood trails from the previous day’s battle and more enemy activity. We had some skirmishes with small groups of NVA throughout the day and employed Artillery fire from the firebase.

  As I was checking out on the radio with our Aussie friend, he said he looked forward to working with me the next day and hoped I would be there coordinating things. I told him sorry, no, someone else would be out to support him. It was my DEROS date and I was catching my “Freedom Bird” home. “Good on ‘ya, Mate,” he replied and with that I wished him good luck and a fond farewell. My last mission was over!

  The next day a few of the buds drove me in a jeep to the airfield at Phu Bai. I caught a flight to Cam Ranh Bay and two days later found myself standing in the terminal at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, awaiting a flight home to San Francisco. I started my tour in Vietnam at 167 pounds and now only weighed 138 pounds. My khaki uniform that had been in my duffel for a year was baggy and wrinkled and I needed a shave badly, so I headed to the airport barbershop.

  There were two barbers who looked up as I entered. “Hi, I’m Lew Jennings, just back from Vietnam. I look and feel like crap. I hope you guys can clean me up before I meet my family in San Francisco.”

  “Sit right down here son,” one said, as he motioned me to the empty chair as the other started getting some hot towels. “We’ll have you looking great and feeling good as new in no time.”

  As I leaned back and closed my eyes, I whispered; “Thank you God, this must be Heaven,” as the first hot towel caressed my haggard face.

  It was 2 February 1970. I had officially survived 58,560 minutes flying Army helicopters in combat in Vietnam.

  Chief Warrant Officer Lew Jennings, Assault 23, 1969

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  THE HELICOPTER WAR

  A lot of us survived being Army Helicopter Pilots in Vietnam. So maybe it was a bit of a stretch to believe we only had “19 Minutes to Live” as had been reported in the media.

  On further reflection however, the statistics reveal some incredibly brutal facts about helicopter combat in Vietnam and the dangers faced by those that carried rucksacks and rifles.

  There were nearly 12,000 helicopters deployed in Vietnam by all the Services that flew over 10 million flight hours. Almost half, 5,086 to be exact, would be lost.

  Of the approximately 1,100 OH-6A Light Observation Scout helicopters employed in Vietnam, we would lose 842 or 80 percent.

  Of the estimated 950 AH-1G Cobras, we lost 270, nearly 30 percent.

  The Hueys would accumulate 7,531,955 flight hours in Vietnam, making it the most combat seasoned aircraft in history. Of the 7,013 UH-1 Hueys deployed to Vietnam, we lost 47 percent or 3,305.

  And while all of us thought we were young and immortal, we lost just under 5,000 helicopter crewmembers killed in action or 10 percent of all the casualties of the Vietnam War, plus an untold number of wounded.

  Those that carried a rucksack and a rifle faced unbelievable danger as helicopters carried them into combat. Once the enemy was located, helicopters would fly them directly into combat in minutes, time and again, day in and day out. The average GI, Army or Marine, experienced 240 days of combat in a one-year tour of duty.

  The average “tooth to tail ratio” of 30 to 70 describes the relationship of fighters (30 percent) to support personnel (70 percent) in a battlefield situation. Using that ratio, of the 2.6 million service members who served in Vietnam, approximately 780,000 would be involved in combat, many carrying a rucksack and a rifle. There were over 58,000 killed in action and 304,000 wounded in the Vietnam War suggesting that nearly 40 percent, or one in four of those carrying a rucksack and a rifle would become a casualty.

  The helicopters that carried soldiers into battle however, were the saviors of the wounded as well.

  During World War II, there were less than 25 medical evacuations by helicopter as there simply weren’t very many helicopters produced at that time. The death rate for casualties, once they reached medical facilities, was four percent.

  During the Korean War, the OH-13/Bell 47 bubble helicopter of MASH fame performed over 25,000 medical evacuations and was credited with reducing battle casualty death rates at medical facilities by half compared to World War II; from four percent to two percent.

  Over 500,000 helicopter medical evacuations were conducted during the Vietnam War, transporting nearly 900,000 sick and wounded patients, reducing casualty death rates at medical facilities to less than one percent. Most wounded were airlifted to medical facilities within an hour (known as the “Golden Hour”). This resulted in the lowest casualty death rate in the history of warfare and ushered in the use of helicopters world-wide to provide emergency medical transport for civilian populations.

  “Dustoff” was the call sign of those courageous helicopter crews dedicated to medical evacuation of the sick and wounded from the battlefield. The Dustoff call sign was acquired in 1964 by the 57th Medical Detachment (Helicopter Ambulance) by the outgoing Commanding Officer, Major Lloyd Spencer and maintained by the new incoming CO, Major Charles L. Kelly, who himself would become a legend in the Dustoff community as “Combat Kelly” and lose his own life saving wounded.

  Over time, Dustoff became defined as Dedicated Unhesitating Service to Our Fighting Forces. And Combat Kelly’s response, when prompted to leave a landing zone while under fire; “When I have Your Wounded” became the battle cry for all Dustoff Pilots and crewmembers.

  While most, if not all Huey crews conducted medical evacuations, Dustoff helicopters were dedicated, unarmed Air Ambulances displaying the Red Cross, whose sole mission was to evacuate the wounded from the battlefield to medical facilities. Needless to say, they were all miraculous, courageous helicopter crews who saved thousands of lives and suffered severe casualties themselves in the process.

  Three Dustoff crewmembers would be awarded the nation’s highest decoration for conspicuous gallantry, the Congressional Medal of Honor; Major General (then Major) Patrick Brady, Chief Warrant Officer Michael J. Novosel and Chief Warrant Officer (then Sergeant First Class) Louis R. Rocco. They epitomized what all of us flying helicopters in combat were dedicated to - supporting our fighting forces.

  That’s also why I love Helicopter Pilots in general. I don’t know a single one who wouldn’t try to save a life if they were able.

  In this day and age of evolving technology and especially the development of drones to perform missions such as reconnaissance and evacuation of wounded from the battlefield that will surely save lives, I’m reminded of the sage advice of Chinese General and military strategist Sun Tzu who prophesized over 2,000 years ago in his treatise The Art of War:

  “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

  May it someday be so.

  Lew Jennings, Major, US Army (Retired), July 2017

  2,202 Helicopter Pilots and 2,704 Helicopter Crewmembers were Killed in Action. An untold number were wounded.

  Lots of the buds in Alpha Troop, 2/17th Air Cavalry 1969

  Steely-Eyed Lew Jennings

  EPILOGUE

  AFTER VIETNAM

  Major Lew Jennings, US Army, 1985

  The Army awarded me a Direct Commission from Chief Warrant Officer to First Lieutenant on my return from Vietnam in 1970. I retired as a Major in 1987, after assignments in the US at Fort Ord, California, in Europe with the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, back in the US at Fort Knox, and four years of duty with the Navy and Marine Corps, including two years of sea duty coordinating helicopter and search and rescue operations throughout the Pacific for the U.S. Navy’s Third and Seventh Fleets.

  I met many talented, wonderful people of all ranks in all the Services during my military career and cherish their friendships to this day.

  After retiring from the Ar
my, I flew commuters for American Eagle out of San Francisco and jumbo jets for World Airways out of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and then pursued the corporate world starting my own Company, Performance Education Systems (PES), helping companies organize and train for national expansion.

  In 1995, my wife Anneke and I sold our home in Seattle and moved aboard our 41-foot sailing ketch Unicorn. We sailed off over the horizon to seek adventure and follow our dreams as long as we were healthy. We fell in love with the tiny fishing village of La Cruz de Huanacaxtle on mainland Mexico just north of Puerto Vallarta, where we built and operated an oceanfront bed and breakfast resort for several years.

  We returned to the USA in 2005, retiring to Lago Vista in the Texas hill country near Austin. I had just spent several months based near there, flying volunteer missions to aid survivors of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. I thought the area was beautiful and the people great.

  I came out of retirement in 2008 to fly secret Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) and Logistics missions in Iraq for two years. My old friend and Vietnam bud from Alpha Troop, Mark Stevens, joined me over there to terrorize the terrorists. The efforts of our group of “Gray Hairs” helped save thousands of lives of US soldiers, coalition forces and innocent Iraqi civilians.

  Aviation has always been a passion for me. I continue to stay involved in general aviation, restoring and building airplanes and participating in aviation groups like the Experimental Aircraft Association, Old Bold Pilots, Palm Springs Air Museum and Quiet Birdmen. And I always enjoy telling stories and doing presentations on Vietnam – The Helicopter War.

  We currently live aboard our restored motor yacht “Le Rêve” (‘The Dream’ in French) near family and friends in the beautiful Santa Cruz Harbor in California. I grew up here as a child just a few blocks away and it’s nice to be back home.