Chapter 8
In the Air at Last, February 21

F inally, after I’d been sitting on my ass for a week, the day came for me to get my orientation ride. It was conducted by one of the two-unit instructor pilots. The day started off with a briefing in the operations tent. Since I’d been hanging out there, it went rather quickly, and then we walked to the aircraft. The crew chief and door gunner were already there, mounting the guns and doing last-minute checks.

Mr. Baker said, “Let’s start the preflight.” And I reached for the checklist…no, I went looking for the checklist.

“Excuse me, the checklist is missing, Mr. Baker.”

“You don’t have it memorized? What did they teach you in flight school?” he asked.

In flight school, you had a laminated checklist, but you used it so many times that for the most part you had it memorized. I had it memorized but assumed we would still use it. Nope, I’d just learned that “assume” stood for “make an ass of u and me.”

“Cory, here we have to do it fast, and there’s no time to be reading. Have it memorized and just get at it. You take the rotor head, and I’ll get down here.”

In about five minutes, that bird was preflighted. Before we climbed into the aircraft, the door gunner handed me a chicken plate. I noticed I was the only one wearing a flak jacket over my jungle fatigues. We didn’t have flight suits at this time as Air Force and Navy pilots had; everyone wore jungle fatigues when flying. The chicken plate was a metal plate covered with ceramic tile and fiberglass. It would stop a small-arms bullet. It was normally worn over the shoulders with a belly band to hold the front and back pieces together. Here, the front of the chicken plate sat on your lap, covering your chest and stomach. It was held in place by the shoulder harness and seat belt. Where was the back plate? I wondered. The crew chief and door gunner were sitting on them, as their seats had no armor plating and the pilot seats did, at least against small-arms fire. A .50-cal or 12.7 mm antiaircraft round would punch through the seats.

As we sat in the aircraft, Mr. Baker, Tony, went over the finer points of getting the aircraft started and out of the revetment. No sloppy hovering at this point or you were going to be banging into the revetment, which would make the crew chief unhappy, the door gunner scared and the aircraft commander pissed off. Do any real damage and you’d have the maintenance officer crawling up your ass as well before the company commander got to you. The other thing to watch for was other aircraft coming out and hovering to the runway. You did not fly right out of the revetment.

As we were ready to depart, Tony said, “I’ll take it out and put it back and then you do it.” With the collective in his left hand and the cyclic in his right, he slowly and gently brought the bird up. On the Huey, the nose came up first when in the hover position. In a hover, the nose of the UH-1H was actually five degrees above horizontal. Tony was so smooth that you hardly noticed the movement. He was holding the cyclic with his thumb and two fingers, and the cyclic never moved. Once we cleared the revetment, he reversed the procedure and put us back in, setting us down just as gently as when he’d picked up. “Okay, Dan, your turn.” Oh, wow, it was Dan and Tony now.

“I have the aircraft, Tony.”

“You have the aircraft,” he responded, indicating he recognized I had positive control of the aircraft.

With my left hand on the collective, right hand on the cyclic—my whole hand—I started coming up on the power. The aircraft broke ground.

“Oh, shit!” screamed the door gunner.

“We’re going to die!” wailed the crew chief, and I was shitting in my pants.

“All right, knock it off, you two,” Tony said to the crew. They were laughing their asses off.

“Oh, sir, can’t we screw with the new guy?” asked the crew chief. So that’s the way it’s going to be today?

I got the aircraft out and over to the runway, shaking a bit, but safe. We headed north up Highway 13 towards the village of Quan Loi. Highway 13 was known as “Thunder Road” and frequently was witness to ambushes by NVA troops coming out of the Iron Triangle that bordered it on the eastern side. Highway 13 was the main road, sparsely populated, unpaved of course, from Saigon, through Lai Khe, Quan Loi, and An Loc and right into Cambodia. In the summer, it was a dusty road. In monsoon season, it was a quagmire of mud. At any one time, you would see US Army convoys, overloaded Vietnamese buses, oxcarts and bicycles. Scattered along the side of the road were young children selling Coke to GIs or fruit to the locals. Mixed in was the occasional US mechanized platoon with their armored personnel carriers, really a metal box on tank tracks.

Tony pointed out landmarks to me as we were about one thousand feet on a clear day. I was taking it all in and feeling good that I was flying again.

BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM , went the guns on both sides. The engine suddenly lost rpm.

“Taking fire, going down,” screamed the door gunner.

Just then, the engine went quiet with engine rpm dropping quickly, and I slammed the collective down and entered into a textbook autorotation. I watched the instruments and saw nothing unusual except our low engine rpm, which was now steady but very low. Rotor rpm was looking good, and the road was a perfect landing site. I looked over at Tony, who was looking out his window. Surely he was going to take command of the aircraft and land this thing. Oh, no, he’s not! I flared at the right altitude, sucked in some collective, let her drop some more and pulled in more to make a no-slide soft landing. Mutt and Jeff were laughing their asses off again.

Tony looked at me for a minute with a smile. “Not bad for a new guy out on his first flight. I got it.”

“You have the aircraft,” I responded and began to breathe.

We flew up to a Vietnamese/Special Forces base camp that had a landing strip, at Chon Thanh. Tony said, “That was a textbook autorotation. Now let’s learn some combat autorotations. I’ll do the first one and then you do the next one.”

As we were flying out, he explained that in an autorotation, you had to have altitude, and if you didn’t have that, you’d best have airspeed. He never got above one hundred feet, but we were hauling ass over the treetops at one hundred knots where normal airspeed was eighty knots. When we were about five hundred yards from the end of the runway, he cut the power and lowered the collective slightly to maintain rotor rpm while raising the nose of the aircraft to bleed off airspeed. The result was a sliding touchdown on the runway.

“Okay, your turn.”

As he turned the controls over to me, I was fired up. In flight school, we never flew this low on a single-ship mission. Getting eyeball to eyeball with the monkeys in the trees was enough excitement, let alone knowing that I was going to chop the throttle as I approached the runway. Finally Tony did that for me.

“Ease back on your airspeed. Maintain rotor rpm. Lower collective. Watch your rotor rpm. Easy, easy…nice, Dan,” he said as I put the aircraft down softly on the runway. Mutt and Jeff said nothing.

“Can we do that again?” I said with obvious excitement.

“First let me demonstrate a combat takeoff. In flight school, you brought the aircraft to a hover and then eased it forward, pulling power. Here you won’t be able to bring it to a hover as you have only three seconds on the ground. You touch, count to three and get out of there. I’ve got the aircraft.”

“You have it,” I repeated and released the controls.

“A combat takeoff is gaining altitude and airspeed as quickly as possible, but especially airspeed. To execute, you ease forward on the cyclic—remembering that sitting at a hover, the nose is elevated five degrees, so that’s five degrees you don’t want in the takeoff—and come in with thirty pounds of torque quickly and smoothly. Naturally if you’re in a formation, you have to key on the bird in front of you, but he’ll be wanting out of there just as much as you. Do not overtorque the aircraft, which is forty-three pounds. Okay, here we go,” Tony instructed. 3

All of a sudden, the nose came over and I could just visualize the main rotor blade hitting the ground in front of me. It didn’t, and the aircraft was racing over the ground and climbing fast. This was better than a Disneyland ride!

“Okay, you got it. Any questions?” Tony asked.

“I got it, and no questions.”

“Let’s shoot a low-level autorotation and then a combat takeoff as soon as you have power back up,” Tony said while pointing forward.

“Roger,” I answered.

I brought the aircraft around, and before Tony could say it, I cut the throttle and milked the aircraft back onto the runway. As soon as we stopped, I brought the engine rpm up and attempted to imitate his takeoff. Attempted to imitate.

“Not bad, and you’ll get the hang of it after a couple of missions. Most guys are timid about pushing the nose over the first couple of times. Let’s go play with the artillery now. I have the aircraft,” he said as he took the controls.

We continued on our way northwest as Tony became my tour guide. “This is what we call the Iron Triangle. Chu Chi is to the west, Lai Khe to the east and Quan Loi to the north. If you fly below twenty-five hundred feet, you stand a good chance of getting shot at. This entire area is a free-fire zone, which means we can call artillery on anything we see or want to shoot at. There are no friendlies in this area,” Tony pointed out. We were looking at an area of about one hundred square miles.

“How did you do on your artillery class in school?” Tony asked.

“Pretty good. I really enjoyed that one.”

“Okay, you see that road crossing over there?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s the grid coordinates for it?”

I hadn’t pulled the map out since this had started.

“Dan, don’t fly without a map, and know where you are at all times on that map. If you go down, you aren’t going to have a lot of time to figure that out. Take the controls.”

“I got it,” I said. As I took the controls, Tony opened his map and started giving me an orientation on where we were at. Once he got me situated, he showed me on the map where the artillery positions were located that could possibly fire the mission.

“Okay, you’re going to call either Lai Khe Artillery, Song Be Artillery, Phuoc Vinh Artillery or Quan Loi Artillery initially, depending on where you are. If you call one, after you send the fire mission, they may come back and tell you to contact someone else that will actually fire the mission. Have pencil ready to copy. Okay, what are you going to say?”

I thought about that for a minute and gave my fire mission to Tony.

“You’re good. Send it,” he said after I was done.

“Lai Khe Arty, Chicken-man Two-Seven, fire mission, over.”

“Chicken-man Two-Seven, Lai Khe Arty, over.”

“Lai Khe Arty, fire mission, road intersection grid eight-two-three-five-seven-eight-six-one, over.”

After a minute, Lai Khe Artillery came back. “Understood road intersection, grid eight-two-three-five-seven-eight-six-one.”

“Affirmative, Lai Khe.” A few minutes later: “Chicken-man Two-Seven, shot out.” The artillery battery had just fired six rounds.

“Understood, shot out.”

A few seconds later: “Chicken-man Two-Seven, splash.”

“Understood, splash,” I responded just as a small explosion hit about five hundred meters over the target, but along the gun target line.

“Lai Khe Artillery, drop eight hundred, over.”

“Roger, drop eight hundred.” A minute later: “Chicken-man Two-Seven, shot out.”

“Understood, shot out.”

Thirty seconds later: “Chicken-man Two-Seven, splash.”

“Understood, splash.” The jungle about two hundred meters south of the target exploded. The schoolhouse had taught us to bracket the target and walk the rounds in, so technically I should have had them shoot again by adding four hundred meters, but I could see the target and thought there was no point in wasting time and ammo.

“Lai Khe Artillery, add two hundred and fire for effect.”

“Roger, add two hundred and fire for effect.” A minute later: “Chicken-man Two-Seven, shot out.”

“Understood, shot out.”

“Chicken-man Two-Seven, splash.”

“Roger, splash.” And the road intersection disappeared in a cloud of dirt and flying underbrush as six rounds of high-explosive 155 mm impacted.

Tony looked at me and commented, “Nice shooting. I noted you skipped the bracketing.”

“No need to waste time or ammo,” I said, then switched from intercom to the FM1 radio. “Lai Khe Artillery, nice shooting. Mission complete.”

“Roger, Chicken-man Two-Seven. Rounds complete. Mission complete.”

Tony continued to fly in the direction of Tay Ninh. “We’ll head up to Tay Ninh and then fly the perimeter of our area of operations. You follow on the map. Tay Ninh is the west limit of our AO. Our sister battalion, 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion, is located there. You can’t miss it, as it and Song Be have the only two mountains in the entire area. That’s Song Be to the northeast over there.” He pointed to a lonely peak sticking above the jungle canopy by about a thousand feet.

“Are those two extinct volcanoes?” I asked.

“You think I’m a geologist or something? I have no clue. All I know is there’s an outpost on top of both Song Be Mountain—Nui Ba Ra—and Nui Ba Den, the mountain by Tay Ninh. That ridge line to the north of Nui Ba Den is called the Razorback. There’s a battalion firebase on top of the Razorback, LZ Dolly. The Twenty-Fifth Infantry Division has some troops operating in that area with one of their brigades located at Tay Ninh. Their division headquarters is at Chu Chi.”

As we continued to fly towards Tay Ninh, I tracked our location on the map, which wasn’t easy as there were few roads and everything was flat except the two mountains and the Razorback. Under the three-hundred-foot trees that covered almost everything, I had no idea what the terrain was like and could only assume it was flat as all the trees created a flat carpet of green. However, I noticed large swaths of jungle full of craters laid in a rectangular pattern.

“What caused the craters?” I asked.

“That’s where an arc light went in.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“A bomb strike by three B-52 bombers flying out of Guam. They’re given a box and come in at twenty or thirty thousand feet and drop. You do not want to be in that box when they do. The world literally goes up in smoke. You will see trees fly up about seven hundred to a thousand feet. I almost pity the gooks that are on the receiving end of one of those,” Tony explained.

“How do you know if a strike is going in?” I asked.

“About ten minutes before, the artillery will come up on the net and issue a warning. That’s another reason to know where you are at all times and to monitor the arty net. If you call Arty and tell them where you’re flying to and from, they’ll let you know if they’re shooting across or along your flight path. They’ll also give you the gun’s position and impact points as well as max altitude on the shot. If you don’t ask, then you’re applying the ‘Big Sky, Little Bullet’ principle, and you take your chances.”

As we approached Tay Ninh, Tony called the control tower for clearance to land and go to refueling. We’d used half our fuel as the UH-1H had about two and a half hours of flight time on a full load, but twenty minutes of that was considered reserve in case you had trouble finding fuel, so two hours was used for general planning. After two hours, everyone was ready to get out and stretch anyway. As we were in no hurry, Tony shut the aircraft down while Mutt and Jeff refueled the aircraft and we all got out.

The town of Tay Ninh was picturesque, with tile roofs and a heavy French influence as it sat on the edge of the Michelin rubber tree plantation, which covered a sizable area of Three Corps’s and our AO. One problem with the rubber tree plantations, however, was that the enemy loved to hide in them, since we couldn’t bomb it or shoot artillery into the place unless absolutely necessary. If we did, the US government would pay for damaged trees. How stupid is this policy? I wondered. As it was a slow day at the refuel point, Mutt and Jeff broke out the case of C-rations we had and distributed one to each of us.

Tony stopped them. “Okay, you two, turn the case over so you don’t see what you’re drawing and then pass them out. Which one did you get, Dan?”

“Lima beans and ham,” I responded with a look of disgust as Mutt and Jeff put it back in the box with equal looks of disgust for being caught. They had set me up, again.

“Okay,” Tony said. “I’ll select and pass out the chow.” With the case upside down, there were no labels to read, so it was luck of the draw. Tony pulled one out and handed it to me. Franks and beans. Okay, that was pretty good. Next he handed Mutt his, and it was spaghetti. Not bad. Out came Jeff’s—oh, sweet justice, lima beans and ham—and he was not happy. Tony drew his and we dug in, except Jeff, who just took out the crackers and cheese. Inwardly, I was laughing—well, maybe smiling outwardly too.

After our pause, we cranked up, this time with me doing the start-up procedures from memory. First, scan the AC electrical panel next to my left leg. Then on to the center console. Fuel off, hydraulics on, radios off, then overhead, DC circuit breakers in, nonessential bus off, battery on. In my left hand, throttle set, press starter button with my right hand, fuel on, watch N1, fifteen percent, main rotor turning; N1, forty percent, release starter; N1, sixty-eight percent, roll throttle and slowly bring up engine rpm to 6600 and rotor rpm to 325, engine oil pressure coming up, transmission oil pressure coming up. Both engine and transmission oil temps were good. Radios on and frequencies set on UHF, VHF and FM. Transponder set to correct code. Flight controls normal. Crew chief and door gunner aboard.

Tony called the tower for takeoff instructions and told me I had the aircraft. Tower cleared us to depart from the fuel area, and Tony pointed north towards the Razorback. “This isn’t a hot LZ, so no combat departure,” he cautioned me. “You’ll scare the crap out of the control tower. Just a nice schoolhouse departure.”

“Got it,” I responded. Mutt and Jeff remained quiet for once. They were learning not to screw with the new guy.

We flew past Nui Ba Den with its communications outpost on the top. Tony told me that we owned the top and the enemy owned the very steep sides. As this was the highest point in all of Three Corps, the Army Security Agency had a listening post on top of the mountain. Nui Ba Ra, Song Be Mountain, was in front of us, about forty minutes’ flying time. Like Nui Ba Ra, it was only about ten miles from the Cambodian border. We passed over the Razorback, and I saw that there was a firebase on the northeast end.

Firebases were generally round fortifications where bulldozers pushed up a berm of dirt five or six feet high, thus creating a circle about two hundred yards or more across. Concertina wire was strung completely around the outside of the berm about fifty to seventy-five feet, just far enough that someone in the wire couldn’t throw a hand grenade into the berm. Tin cans and trip flares were suspended in the wire to give early warning if someone was attempting to crawl through the wire. Claymore mines were placed between the berm and wire to blow away large groups of enemy attempting to cross the wire. In addition, fifty-five-gallon drums were buried on their sides, filled with a slurry of diesel fuel and detergent. Inside the barrel at the bottom was a pound or two of C-4 plastic explosive. When detonated, it simulated a napalm bomb. Inside the perimeter, there was generally a battalion headquarters, forward supply elements, usually an artillery battery of five 105 mm howitzers, a mortar platoon of four 81 mm mortars and a rifle company. The other two or three rifle companies would be off in the jungle conducting patrols and ambushes as well as search-and-destroy missions. The rifle companies would be rotated back to the firebase on a scheduled basis. The artillery and mortars on the firebase were in direct support of that battalion, which meant that battalion had first priority on call for fire missions. However, if we called in a fire mission to the artillery, they would decide who could shoot best from a number of firebases and would direct our mission to one of those. Firebases were normally established so the artillery on one firebase could support another firebase if it became necessary, and it had several times in the past three years.

As we approached Song Be, Tony pointed out the Song Dong Nai River. “That river wanders right down to Bien Hoa, where we’re mostly operating now. Charlie’s moving his shit from Cambodia down the river, past here and on to the Bien Hoa area with the Fifth NVA Division. We’re supporting around Bien Hoa, and SF is attempting to interdict movement on and along the river from that SF camp over there,” he said, pointing to a small outpost in the middle of the jungle. “About four months ago, five of our aircraft were operating out of and supporting that SF camp.” Turning south, Tony said, “Let’s head to the Chicken Pen. You got it.” This was a test to see if I’d been paying attention to where we were and where we needed to go.

“I got it.” I turned to a heading of 180 degrees, as the Chicken Coop was due south of Song Be. I started to relax. It felt good to sit back and scan the instruments and then look outside, scan the instruments and look outside. It was pounded into us in school never to get fixated on the instruments or the outside but be scanning constantly. And listen. Listen to the sound of the aircraft. The sound of the rotor blades. The sound of the engine. The sound of the radios. Sometimes your hearing would alert you to the first indicator of trouble, like the engine suddenly becoming quiet! Or a sudden whistling sound, which generally meant you had a bullet hole in a rotor blade. Or the sudden increase in engine noise that indicated a lost throttle governor or a compressor stall. Almost every change in sound required an immediate response.

We continued on to Lai Khe, and Tony let me take the aircraft into the revetment. As we shut down the aircraft, Mutt and Jeff began the process of cleaning it, pulling guns off and removing trash. Tony started the critique. “You did okay, and I’m going to sign off your orientation ride. You’ll get formation flying in soon enough with another aircraft commander, but I don’t foresee any problems. Do you?”

“No, I got no problem with formation flying,” I lied. I really wasn’t crazy about formation flying. In fact, I was hoping to go to a medical evacuation unit, commonly referred to as a medevac unit, where it was all single-ship flying. Oh, that lie would come back to bite me in the ass.

“Okay, then let’s head into Ops and get a beer,” Tony said.

“Don’t we need to help them get the aircraft cleaned up?” I asked. Mutt and Jeff stopped what they were doing and looked at me. Did I just screw up again?

“Thank you, Mr. Cory, but we got it,” Mutt said. Mr. Cory, not “New Guy.”

“Okay, thanks for a great day,” I stammered and fell in alongside Tony as we carried our gear and walked to the operations office to turn in logbooks and aircraft records. Tony also suggested that we stop by maintenance and give the maintenance officer a heads-up that the bird was good for tomorrow’s missions. After I dropped my gear and met Tony for a beer, for which I paid the outrageous price of fifty cents, I headed to the PX. The crew chief and door gunner appreciated the case of beer I dropped off on their bunks that evening.