Chapter 19
Dark Days Begin, September 1969
R alph was a good aircraft commander. A quiet man, he was the youngest pilot in the outfit as he’d joined the Army right out of high school. He was not a drinker and spent his evenings working on college correspondence courses. His mission for the day was flying C&C for the division’s engineer battalion commander. The engineer battalion commander wanted to fly out to where his engineers were working on various projects in the AO and see their progress. Not unreasonable, as they were scattered all over the AO improving roads, building a school in Quan Loi and supporting projects on the various firebases. The day started off normal, and they were visiting the various locations. However, just after lunch, things changed.
The colonel wanted to go on a recon of some areas. Ralph agreed to fly to those areas and proceeded to fly between Quan Loi and Song Be. The colonel was focused on looking for clearings. Finally he asked Ralph to take them down and land in one. Ralph asked for the frequency and call sign of the unit in the clearing so he could contact them prior to landing, especially as he didn’t see anyone in the clearing. The colonel came up with an excuse for why he couldn’t provide the information and told Ralph just to land. Ralph insisted on a call sign and frequency before he would take the aircraft down. The colonel became irate, but when he accused Ralph of being a coward, that was when things exploded. Ralph reached up and disconnected his helmet from the intercom system, took the controls from the copilot and headed back to Camp Gorvad. The colonel was livid. Ralph didn’t care.
Reaching Camp Gorvad, Ralph landed at the engineer pad and told the colonel politely but firmly to get out of his aircraft. He then called our battalion headquarters on the radio, which was being monitored by almost every pilot from the battalion, and told them that he had just tossed Engineer Six out of his aircraft and was returning to Lai Khe. To say the least, shit was about to hit the fan. Making that call on the radio alerted every aircraft on the frequency as to what had happened. However, someone saw Ralph’s position in this, and nothing came of it, at least on Ralph.
At this time, we had a new aviation group commander, Colonel Leo F. Soucek, and he looked out for his aviators’ best interest. More than one officer attempted to order an aircraft commander to do something dumb and paid a dear price for it when Colonel Soucek was done with them. Days later, while flying with another unit, Engineer Six did the same thing, and the aircraft managed to clear the supposedly safe LZ with only a few bullet holes in the tail. A few days later, Dave Hanna got the mission to fly him.
When I returned from my mission that evening, Major Saunders approached my aircraft as I was shutting down in the revetment.
“Mr. Cory, a word please,” he said as Posey opened my door. The major was standing in front of my aircraft and hadn’t approached me.
“Yes, sir.” I unstrapped, climbed out and came over to him. It’s Mr. Cory now instead of Dan. What did I do wrong now?
“Let’s walk. Mr. Cooper!” he called over his shoulder, addressing my copilot.
“Sir?” Cooper answered.
“Would you grab Dan’s gear and put it in his room, please?”
“Yes, sir,” he called back with a question mark look.
We walked halfway back to the Chicken Coop with nothing said between us, but were angling towards his hooch. Finally, he said, “Dan, I have some bad news. Dave and YA were shot down today. I’m afraid the entire crew was killed.” YA was Dave’s copilot for the day and fairly new to the unit. I felt like I had just been gut-punched.
“What happened, sir?”
“As best as anyone could tell, while supposedly flying from Quan Loi to Bu Dop, the engineer colonel had again gone on a recon and convinced Dave to land in a clearing. A scout team happened to find the aircraft sitting there. It was obvious that someone had landed the aircraft before the enemy opened fire with some heavy weapons, as the only damage to the aircraft was in the cockpit and transmission and none in the engine or belly. The skids indicated a normal landing. Dave and YA were still strapped in their seats, and Sergeant Alford, the door gunner was in his as well. The crew chief, however, was found about a hundred yards from the downed aircraft. It appeared that Specialist Collins fought, as empty 5.56 shell casings were around him but not a weapon. The aircraft was booby-trapped. The colonel and his staff were dead in the back of it. There had been no friendly soldiers at that location,” the CO explained as he opened the door to his hooch and motioned me inside.
“Damn! That son of a bitch has gotten more aircraft shot up than anyone. Damn his sorry ass. And now he’s gotten people killed. At least his sorry ass was one of them. Bastard,” I exploded. Major Saunders just let me rant as he opened a cabinet and pulled out a bottle of Johnnie Walker scotch. Filling two glasses, he handed one to me and raised his own.
“To absent comrades. To Dave, YA, Alford and Collins.”
And we chugged it down, then sat in silence. Finally he suggested that he and I go to the club and have a drink, bringing his bottle with us. In the club, everyone was initially looking someplace other than at me and the CO. Finally, some of the old-timers came over and offered condolences.
As word spread that the crew had been lost, other pilots came over to my room and offered condolences as well as something stronger than beer. We didn’t have formal ceremonies for lost comrades at this time, but we drank to their memories. This crew would be the first of our losses, but not the last.
A few days later, I was sitting in my room writing a letter when my new roommate, Owen Richie, came in from flying. He looked troubled as he grabbed a beer and tossed his flight gear on the bed.
“What’s up, Richie?” I asked.
Owen was a bit older than most pilots. He had been a cop in Las Cruces, New Mexico, from the time he got out of high school until he joined the Army. He didn’t have gray hair but we would accuse him at times of dyeing it, which he flat denied.
“Just a bad day. Saw my first crash and it was not pretty,” he said, finishing off the first beer and opening the second.
“Hey, what happened? Was it one of ours?” I asked.
“No, it was a Charlie Company bird, and one of the pilots was in my flight class. I’d just been talking to him before we launched, and now him and his crew are dead. Hit a tree.”
“Damn. Were you under fire?”
“No, we were coming out of an LZ, which we’d been in four times already, and the blade on the right side hit a tree about seventy-five feet up. Rotor blade just came apart and they crashed and burned. No one got out.”
“Damn, sorry, Owen. Who were the pilots?”
“Let’s see, WO1 Thomas Brown was in flight school with me. A WO1 Dennis Varney was the AC. Specialist Marcene Shelby was door gunner, and the crew chief was Specialist Robert Lazarus. I had just met them, not an hour before, when I went over to talk to Tom.”
Opening another beer for myself, I raised it and tapped Richie’s beer in a toast. “To absent comrades.”
A few nights later, our platoon leader came walking down the hall. “The CO wants to see everyone in the club,” he said. We all started heading that way. The CO did not look happy.
“Gentlemen, take a seat, after you get a beer.” He didn’t have to say it twice. After everyone was seated and holding a cold one, the major raised his beer. “To absent comrades!” The look of shock and dread was on everyone’s face.
We all stood and raised our drinks. “To absent comrades,” we all repeated and chugged our beers, still wondering who we’d lost.
Motioning us to sit down, the major looked over everyone before he started to speak.
“Charlie Company lost a crew last night. They were on a night mission out of LZ Buttons and ran into bad weather. At about zero two hundred hours, they attempted to take off in fog. The grunts on the perimeter said they had all their lights on so they could see them in the soup. The aircraft got about two hundred feet up, and as it crossed the perimeter wire, it appeared to roll ninety degrees and crashed into the trees on the perimeter. The whole crew was lost.
“Guys”—he paused—“make sure you’re practicing instrument takeoffs and instrument landings, and don’t attempt it if your aircraft isn’t one hundred percent on its instruments. Spend the night or however long on the firebase. It’s just not worth it. The weather is going to continue to get shitty, and I do not want to lose a crew to it,” he went on to say. “I expect you all to practice one instrument approach and one instrument takeoff every day. Get some hood time while moving from here to Song Be or wherever you’re going. Practice some partial instrument failure flying as well, especially with no artificial horizon flying as that’s the most likely instrument to fail.
“Hey, sir, do you know who the crew was?” asked Roy Moore, a new pilot to the unit.
“It was WO1 Ralph Tadevic, the AC; 1LT James Spencer, copilot; Specialist FW Smith, crew chief; Specialist George Avala, door gunner; and a Corporal Terrence Connoll, an observer, for what I don’t know. You know any of them?” the major asked.
“No, sir, I don’t think they were in my flight class. The lieutenant might have been, but I don’t know,” Roy explained.
“Just let’s be careful, guys. That’s all I’ve got,” he added as he walked to the door.
The next month would start off no better.
On November 5, two months after Dave went down, we lost another crew, not to enemy action but to maintenance. I had been high-time pilot for this month. The company policy brought in by Major Saunders was, if you were high-time pilot, you would be the standby aircraft. You had no assigned mission but would wait in your aircraft, and if another aircraft couldn’t start its mission because of maintenance issues, the standby bird would take the mission. If all the birds got off, you got a day off. My aircraft had been in maintenance, getting a new rotor head installed. The assistant maintenance officer had taken the aircraft out the night before on a test flight once the work was complete. He had come back, conducted a post flight and signed it off.
The next morning, my crew and I arrived at the aircraft and conducted our preflight.
“Good morning, Posey. How’s she look?” I asked my crew chief.
“All’s good, Mr. C,” he answered as he closed the engine cowling.
“Quillin, how’s the guns and ammo?” I asked my gunner.
“Fresh cans of ammo this morning, Mr. Cory. We good,” he responded. I climbed up and looked over the rotor head while my copilot for the day, WO1 Ron Fender, did the walk-around inspection and tail rotor. All appeared to be good. We strapped in, started the engine and waited, ready to assume a mission if called upon.
“Chicken-man One-Niner, Chicken-man Three India, over,” the radio crackled. It was Flight Operations.
“Chicken-man Three India, Chicken-man One-Niner, go ahead.”
“Hey, One-Niner, Two-Seven is down. Assume his mission, and contact Badger Six when you reach Quan Loi for further instructions,” Flight Operations instructed.
“Roger, Three India, One-Niner has it.”
I started pulling power. “Okay, guys, coming out.” About this time, I saw “Chip” Rumble, Chicken-man Two-Seven, along with his copilot, WO1 McCartney, waving to me and running over. I set the aircraft back down.
Jumping up on the skid next to my door, Chip asked, “Hey, Dan, I’m low-time pilot for the month. Let me take the mission.” He had just returned from a seven-day R&R trip to Hawaii and hadn’t flown much for the past month.
“You got it,” I said as Ron and I unstrapped and climbed out, turning the aircraft over to Chip and McCartney. We watched as they hovered out of the Chicken Pen and on to the runway. We were walking back to Flight Operations when they started down the runway and disappeared behind the trees. Reaching Flight Operations, we went in. Sergeant First Class Robinson was crying. He saw us and immediately got this shocked look on his face.
“Oh my God. Who’s flying your aircraft?” he asked.
I told him. “Why, what’s the problem?”
“They got off the runway and were climbing out when the rotor head came off. They’re all dead.”
I was stunned and suddenly sick to my stomach. Outside, I threw up. Ron dropped to his knees and stared at the ground. I went back to my room and just sat on the bed. Thirty minutes later, Major Saunders stopped by.
“You okay, Dan?” he asked.
“I don’t know, sir. I checked that head and all looked good. What happened?”
“Don’t know, but the accident investigation board will figure it out. You just take it easy.” He left, but about an hour later, he was back.
“Dan, I hate to ask, but can you take a mission? It seems Lieutenant Weed is too upset to fly his mission and has brought his aircraft back.” Lieutenant Weed was close to Chip, the aircraft commander.
“Yes, sir. I got it.” I picked up my gear.
“I’ll walk out with you. I want to see just how upset he is.”
The major and I walked together to the flight line. We didn’t say much as there wasn’t a lot to say. I didn’t expect what came at me. As soon as Lieutenant Weed saw me, he threw his helmet on the ground and came at me. “You son of a bitch, Cory! This is your damn fault.”
Major Saunders stepped between us. “Lieutenant, stop right there. Get your shit and go to your room. Not another word. Do you hear me? Now go!” Turning to me, the CO said, “Dan, forget this and get on with the mission.”
This wasn’t over, however.
That night at the club, Lieutenant Weed proceeded to loudly badmouth me. I let it go, as he was a lieutenant and I was just a warrant, but finally I’d had enough.
“Hey, Lieutenant Dick Weed, with all due respect for your rank, go to hell!”
I knew using his full name, as modified by the warrant officers, would piss him off, and it did. With that, he was up and heading straight for me. I was off my barstool and eager to get it on with him, looking forward to hurting him. I was not a brawler but could hold my own in a fight. Just before he got to me, Captain Armstrong, a platoon leader, stepped behind him and jerked him off his feet.
“Don’t you dare move, Lieutenant.” Captain Armstrong was an infantry officer of considerable size. Very tall and very muscular, he was a no-nonsense man. “Mr. Cory, I think you should retire for the night. Now! ” he told me.
“Yes, sir.” And I departed back to my room in the warrant officers’ hooch.
“Lieutenant Weed, you will go to your room, and don’t leave until the major calls you. Understood?”
Lieutenant Weed wasn’t happy, but he wasn’t about to have it out with Captain Armstrong in front of witnesses. He waited until he was outside and decided to challenge the captain. Bad mistake. I wasn’t privy to the conversation, but I was told that the CO had a very one-sided discussion with Lieutenant Dick Weed that night.
After any aircraft accident, an accident investigation is held. My copilot was interviewed, as were the assistant maintenance officer and myself. The crash site was examined as well. The rotor head was flown to a general aviation support facility at Vung Tu and examined. The results were posted and indicated that the rotor head had not come off but had failed. The rotor head that had been put on the aircraft the night before was a rebuilt one. During the rebuilding, the bolt holes for the bolts that held the pitch change horn had been cleaned and resized one millimeter. However the same original bolt sizes were installed aboard the USNS Corpus Christi , a floating aircraft overhaul facility. Those original bolts were one millimeter too small. Between the test flight and the takeoff, the bolts holding the pitch change horn had failed due to the stress, and the result was loss of control over the blades, making the aircraft unstable in flight. The investigation board found that there was no way the assistant maintenance officer or I could have found the problem, as the bolts hadn’t twisted out but had simply, and instantly, torn out. The bolts were never found, but the condition of the bolt holes told the story. Easy for them to say, but this would haunt me every day. I couldn’t help but think that it was something I should have caught on the preflight. It could have been me and my copilot. We had come that close.
About this time, we began losing pilots and crew chiefs. Rocket and mortar attacks targeted the Chicken Coop at night. Several crew chiefs were wounded as well as a pilot when shrapnel ripped through the night from exploding rounds. One pilot was wounded by small-arms fire. An entire crew was wounded from a “short” round fired from the 81 mm mortars on a firebase. The unit hadn’t lost a single crew member since January 1969, and now that was changing.