Chapter 37
The Pace Picks Up
A pril proved to be a typical month. Hardly a day went by without some aircraft returning with battle damage from enemy fire. Most of it was minor and could be patched fairly quickly with some sheet metal work. Each damaged aircraft added to Warren’s anguish as he was attempting to get to one hundred percent availability. A couple of pilots returned with battle damage as well. Hot LZs were becoming a frequent event. The NVA were stepping up their game. So did the division. More and more hours were being flown, and crews were getting tired. We were still short of pilots, with little room if a pilot was lost to rotation home or leave. As much as we hated to see a guy go on leave or R&R, we were glad to see him get out of the area for those ten days. The good news was we had a couple of pilots extend. Bill Hess and Mike George decided to stay for another six months. They were on leave, but we knew they would be back. And our unit got the Night Hunter Killer mission back, with a few changes.
“Mr. Cory, you’re on Night Hunter tonight, so you might want to sleep in today,” the ops clerk told me as he was waking pilots up at 0500 hours. I rolled over and went back to dreamland. When I finally rolled out of bed and got some coffee, I went out to check the aircraft. Specialist Lovelace was there with some maintenance personnel.
“What’s up, Lovelace?” I asked as I approached and noticed that the aircraft was being modified.
“Sir, they’re replacing the .50-cal with a minigun,” he said. Previously, the aircraft had been equipped with an M2, .50-cal machine gun in the crew chief’s position and the searchlight with starlight scope mounted on top in the cargo door. This time, instead of a .50-cal, a 7.62 mm minigun was mounted in the crew chief’s position. The only problem with this arrangement was that the minigun expended three thousand rounds in a minute at a slow rate of fire! If a crew chief got carried away, he would use all the ammo up very quickly. Short bursts were needed, not sustained suppressive fire. Our guns were there to get us out of trouble. Let the Cobra do the suppressing.
“Just don’t burn through all the ammo on the first pass,” I instructed. Lovelace loaded three more cans of ammo, a total of nine thousand rounds, just for the minigun. Arriving at the brigade TOC for our mission brief that evening, I was met by not only the operations officer, S-3, but by the brigade S-2 intelligence officer and a lieutenant colonel from division intelligence. I knew the brigade officers; I had never met the lieutenant colonel from division.
“Mr. Cory, how are we tonight?” asked the S-3.
“I’m good, sir, but I can’t speak for you,” I replied. We had joked and bantered before over the months, so I didn’t feel that I was being disrespectful, nor did he.
“If you’re good and the aircraft’s good, then I’m good too. This is Lieutenant Colonel Mills from division G-2.” The lieutenant colonel nodded in acknowledgment. He was across the room and made no effort to move to me, so I made none towards him.
“How do you do, sir?” I addressed him.
“Glad to meet you, Mr. Cory. Mind if I ride along with you tonight? I have my own helmet and chicken plate.”
Wow. A lieutenant colonel from division intelligence riding along and bringing his own gear. That had never happened before.
“No, sir, glad to have you.”
Interrupting, the brigade S-2 piped up, “Do you mind if I come too?”
“Okay, what’s going on?” I asked.
The lieutenant colonel walked over to the map and motioned me as well as the Cobra pilot and the flare ship AC to follow.
“We need you to fly this route tonight, and keep the shooting to a minimum. We need to start here”—he pointed at a point on the river—“and work our way up to here.”
“Sir, that’s over the Cambodian border. We’ve never even been close to it before. No telling what we’re going to get into. And we’re going to be stretching our fuel going there.”
“Yeah, I know, but when you give us bingo on the fuel, you bring us home and we’ll go from there. We need to recon as much as we can tonight,” he admitted. Translation: You are going to fly your ass off tonight . “Oh, and one other thing. I’d like one of my people to operate the searchlight tonight. Give your crew member a night off. Just don’t bring him tomorrow.”
“Excuse me, sir, but what is he supposed to do tonight if not fly?” I asked, a bit confused.
The S-3 jumped in. “I have a cot for him to sleep on tonight.” I was sensing a setup in the making. This was no last-minute party.
“Okay, sir. Are there any other changes you want to make?” I asked.
All three looked at each other. This was not going to be good. The lieutenant colonel pointed at a spot about five klicks south of the Cambodian border. “When we reach this point, the Cobra and flare ship can’t follow us any further on the route, unless we get in serious trouble.”
“You mean you want me to fly across that border with no air cover and no illumination if I need it.” My voice was slightly strained. Now the truth had come out.
“You’re equipped with a minigun tonight, aren’t you?” asked the lieutenant colonel.
“Yes, sir, but—”
“Well, there you have it. Suppressive fire if you need it. No need to have them tagging along up there. Besides, there may be things that can reach up one thousand feet easily up there,” he concluded. I looked over at the AC for Lobo, and he wasn’t objecting, nor was the AC on the flare ship.
“Okay, sir, what’s the intel on the gooks up this way?” I asked.
He went into a detailed description of enemy forces, to include some suspected radar 23 mm and 37 mm antiaircraft positions, concluding, “We’ll be flying low, below their ability to track us.” Now I understood why no high birds.
The Cobra AC spoke. “Dan, we can’t go up there in that.”
“Yeah, I know, but I sure don’t like going up there without you. Okay, sir, let me brief my crew, and when you’re ready, we’ll take off.”
“I’ll be out shortly.”
As the other ACs and I walked back to the aircraft, we were talking about this crazy mission. We concluded that this wasn’t the ordinary, and something must be up. The division must be getting ready for a major push towards the border. Reaching my aircraft, I sent the searchlight operator up to the TOC after explaining to the crew what was in store for the night. He didn’t feel bad about not going with us. Lovelace and Peters, on the other hand, expressed their opinions about this mission, with comments such as “Oh shit,” “I’m too short for this shit,” and “We’re screwed,” just to name a few. When the lieutenant colonel arrived, they quieted down and became professional again. We cranked and got into the air. My copilot, Grandpa, was on his first Night Hunter mission, so this was also a training mission for him.
“Flying with you, Dan, is making my hair turn gray,” he mumbled.
“Hell, it was already gray when you were born, Grandpa.”
“Hope you brought your own cigarettes this time.” He was not grinning.
We proceeded to the start point. The lieutenant colonel was seated in the center of the cargo area, following our position closely on his map. I was navigating and Grandpa was doing the flying. We normally flew at sixty knots on this mission, but Grandpa was attempting to increase our speed as we moved further north. I had to slow him down. He gave me this look each time as if to say, Are you stinking nuts? Some guys were just not cut out to do this mission. They were usually married men, like Grandpa, with two kids. You had to be a little nuts just to be flying a helicopter in Vietnam. You had to be really nuts to volunteer to fly this kind of mission. You had to be flat-ass insane to fly this particular mission.
As we were moving north on the route the lieutenant colonel had mapped out for us, he was talking with the searchlight operator, but they were keyed to private conversation, so I had no idea what they were saying. The operator would be looking, then turn and say something, and the lieutenant colonel would write on his map. A couple of times he asked us to make a 360-degree turn. I asked if they had something, and the answer would be “No, we just want to have a relook.” The searchlight never came on. In fact, the searchlight never got turned on at all that night on this mission. As we approached the Cambodian border, he was having us fly almost exclusively in 360-degree circles, which didn’t hurt my feelings as it made it much more difficult for a ground shooter to track us. Finally I called “bingo” because of fuel and we headed back. I took the controls as Grandpa had been doing most of the flying for the past hour and a half.
“Hey, Mr. Cory.” The lieutenant colonel had my attention over the intercom.
“Yes, sir.”
“We have all we need for tonight, so we’ll be getting off when we get back in. The brigade S-2 here will have a few more missions for you tonight. Do not refly this route that we just flew or go anywhere in that area. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh, and one more item. Don’t discuss this mission with anyone,” he added.
“Yes, sir.”
I said no more but wondered what the hell was going on. Once we landed, my searchlight operator rejoined us as we were refueling. The lieutenant colonel left, and the brigade S-2 followed him like a puppy dog after he told me where he wanted us to go—Bu Dop. Shutting down, I pulled the other ACs and crews together as everyone had questions.
“Dan, what’d the colonel tell you?” asked the Cobra commander.
“Nothing, except he doesn’t want us flying anywhere up there. He didn’t say if they saw anything or indicate what he was looking for. The brigade intelligence officer didn’t say jack shit either. And we’re not to discuss this mission with anyone.” We had lots of questions and no answers.
“How far did you get across the border?” the Cobra AC asked.
“Just south of Snuol,” I told him.
His only response was, “Holy shit. You were lucky!”
The rest of the night was uneventful. We thought we would have some good hunting, but the night was a bust. For the next week, we flew the same mission, being directed on different routes each night with the same lieutenant colonel and the same results. We didn’t turn on the searchlight or engage any targets. Boring! Finally I got off Night Hunter assignment and was glad to get back to daytime missions.
But things changed. Captain Kempf, the maintenance officer, had been pretty good about letting pilots get an aircraft and take soldiers to Bien Hoa or even Saigon for the day as the PX at Lai Khe was reducing its contents since the First Infantry Division had left and there were only a handful of units left at Lai Khe. As April progressed, he was becoming more hard-nosed about releasing an aircraft. The division was getting into more contact, and aircraft were returning with damage. The pilots just assumed that he was husbanding the aircraft.
“Mr. Cory, the CO wants to see you in his hooch,” the company clerk stated as I sat writing a letter. It was about 1900 hours on April 31, 1970. Wonder what this is about?
Knocking on his door, I was told to come in. There sat Major Sundstrum along with Captain Wehr, the XO, Captain Beauchamp, the ops officer, and Captain Kempf, the maintenance officer, as well as another flight leader, Mr. Roberts.
Once we were all settled, the major broke out seven cups and poured a shot of scotch in each, passing one to each of us. As he did so, Roberts and I looked at each other with What the hell? looks.
“Gentlemen, I have been in a meeting this afternoon at Quan Loi with all the aviation company commanders from 227th, 228th, 229th and Second of the Twentieth Aerial Rocket Artillery. General Shoemaker headed up the meeting and gave a mission brief on tomorrow’s missions.” Caged eyeballs were moving around the room. What the hell is going to happen?
“Warren, how many aircraft do we have up for tomorrow?” the major asked, holding his drink in his hand. He hadn’t taken a sip yet, nor had anyone else.
“Sir, we have twenty-one aircraft for tomorrow, but two only have ten hours each before they’re due for their one-hundred-hour periodic inspections.”
“Those aircraft fly tomorrow. I told Battalion twenty-one aircraft, and that’s what they expect.
Okay, here’s the deal. We have a major mission tomorrow. We have twenty-one aircraft to put up.” I looked at Mr. Roberts and he at me. “Mr. Cory, you will be flying Chalk Two in a heavy right formation. I’ll be flying flight lead. If I go down, you take the flight in. Mr. Roberts, you are Chalk Three. If Cory goes down, you take the flight in. Understood?”
Mr. Roberts and I looked at each other with our mouths open and our eyes the size of saucers. What in the world is this about?
“Yes, sir. Where we going?” Mr. Roberts asked.
“You’ll get that info in the morning. We launch at zero seven thirty and will join up with Bravo and Charlie companies at the runway at Chon Thanh, the SF camp.”
Again I looked at the other AC. We’d never had a mission with so many aircraft since I’d been in the unit. Those big lifts had been common back in the mid-sixties, when they’d had larger LZs to operate in, but not since the division had moved to Three Corps.
“I want you two to get the other aircraft commanders and preflight all the aircraft now. Any problems should be reported to maintenance immediately. Any questions?”
“No, sir,” we both responded.
“Good, gentlemen. To tomorrow.” And he raised his glass. We all chugged our drinks and left at a fast pace to roust other pilots. Within fifteen minutes, the flight line was a beehive of activity as someone had told the crew chiefs to get out and look their aircraft over and the door gunners to double-check the machine guns. It was a busy night.