CHAPTER 4

THE SHOOT-DOWN

SEPTEMBER 20, 1965

WHEN THE EMERGENCY ALERT came in shortly past noon on September 20, 1965, Captain Jerry Curtis and his crew —1st Lieutenant Duane Martin, copilot; Airman First Class Bill Robinson, crew chief; and Airman Third Class Neil Black, pararescue jumper —immediately began rescue-operation preparations. An Air Force F-105 had been shot down just beyond the Laotian border in North Vietnam. The fighter’s wingman observed the pilot ejecting, then remained in the area until he had received a “good beep” from the ground, a radio signal confirming the downed pilot was still alive and where he was located.

Jerry and his copilot, Martin, quickly scanned wall maps to locate the area where the downed airman was presumed to be. After calculating heading and distance, they called for an additional barrel of fuel to be loaded onto the helicopter. Enterprising crews before them had developed a way of carrying extra fuel in fifty-five-gallon barrels. As the pilots charted the mission route, they would call for an additional one, two, or three barrels, depending on how far they had to fly. When a barrel was emptied, the crew chiefs simply pushed it out the back of the helicopter, their personal contribution to the “bombing” effort.

Jerry grabbed his clipboard and held the door of the radar hooch open. “We’ll be flying low bird for this one. Robinson will be operating hoist.” Helicopter rescue missions normally used two helicopters in their recovery efforts, one flying high bird as backup, one flying low bird to pick up the downed airman.

The four-man HH-43 crew ran to board their waiting helicopter, call sign “Dutchy 41,” and strapped in. In the meantime, two A-1 Skyraiders, nicknamed Spads, staging out of NKP and operating under the call sign “Sandy,” also readied for takeoff heading toward the same location. Since the HH-43s carried no firepower, their missions were accompanied by two of these planes. They held 20mm cannons and folding fin rockets and could provide formidable firepower, keeping enemy ground forces down while the helicopter worked to complete the rescue.

“All right. Let’s go get our guy and bring him back home for supper.” Jerry’s voice, as usual, was calm and confident. Seconds later, the long counter-rotating rotors began their steadily increasing staccato whirls, and the helicopter lunged upward and forward. The Mekong River lay just ahead.

Flying loose formation with the second helicopter in a generally northward heading, the pilot soon found himself over extremely rugged Laotian terrain. Scattered emergent trees towered above an already high jungle canopy, creating a near-solid green blanket some 3,500 feet beneath the rescue helicopter. As they approached the projected crash site, Jerry spotted the two escort Spads circling.

“This is Dutchy 41. What have you got for me?”

“We’ve picked up a clear signal from the ground, but tree coverage is really thick here,” the A-1 pilot radioed back.

Jerry began the usual methodical searching in a slow hover as his crew continued to scrutinize the area for signs: debris, smoke —anything that would help them identify the exact location. Suddenly, a pistol flare pierced upward through the forest canopy, and Jerry maneuvered the helicopter toward it. Small arms fire could be heard from several different directions.

“Okay, Robbie, talk to me,” said Jerry. Using “hot mics,” the pilot and his crew chief now began the tedious process of working together to execute the rescue mission. Bill Robinson would have to be the “eyes” of his pilot since the tree canopy below was so thick, Jerry couldn’t see anything at all on the ground. Maneuvering to avoid nicking the treetops with the chopper’s blades required his total attention.

When Robinson leaned out over the edge of the open door, wind ripping past, he could hear bullets pelting the sides of the helicopter. Suddenly, he spotted the downed pilot through the trees.

“I’ve got a visual, Captain. Come back left a little . . . okay, okay. . . . I’ve got a visual. Come right now, come right a bit. A little forward . . . okay . . . steady . . . steady . . . I’m lowering the hoist . . . hoist going down.” Bill began to run out the line.

Jerry continued hovering, with Bill calling out necessary adjustments in position so that the hoist could be lowered as close as possible to the downed pilot. The crew chief, by now, could see him clearly on the ground.

What happened next, however, made an already grave situation suddenly worse. Jerry glanced upward to see black plumes billowing from one of the escort Spads.

“I’m hit! I’m hit!” signaled the A-1 pilot as smoke continued to pour from the rocket pod. After repeating another emergency call, the pilot banked off to fly back to Thailand. The second escort plane, which normally would have continued to provide cover for Jerry’s helicopter, also broke off to shadow the other plane back to base. These A-1 crews had been trained to return together as a unit when they flew as attack bombers, but now, in their new capacity of escorting unarmed helicopters, one should have remained behind to provide cover for Jerry’s helicopter.

In the years following, Jerry never blamed them for leaving the area. His explanation was simple: “This was how they normally would have done their job; assisting rescue helicopters was, unfortunately, just not on their learning curve yet.”

Now, the unarmed HH-43 was alone and completely vulnerable. But Jerry stayed, continuing to push down into the treetops to give his crew chief the best possible chance of delivering a lifeline to the man they were trying to rescue.

“We’re right on top of him. . . . We’re almost there . . .” Bill said into his mic as he noticed he had red line in his hands. The cable extended one hundred feet in length, with the last ten feet painted red to alert the hoist operator how much more remained. He immediately relayed the information to the pilot.

Jerry pushed the fuselage down into the treetops to give the downed pilot a better chance of reaching the hoist.

“He’s got the hoist! He’s got it!” the crew chief called to his pilot. Jerry recognized two things happening almost simultaneously —a difference in weight indicating the pilot was on the hoist and off the ground . . . and a quick burst of ground fire.

At this point, the rotor blades were no more than a foot or so above the treetops. As he tried to take the helicopter upward, when there should have been 100 percent power, suddenly he had power failure. Within seconds, the Huskie’s large, whirling rotors began nicking leaves and branches, creating thousands of toothpicks out of its laminated blades.

Fortunately, the thickness of the canopy kept the helicopter from over-ending, an event that would have resulted in certain death for its occupants. Instead, it stayed upright and fell flat but very hard and fast through the trees. Jerry’s last thoughts before crashing were for the pilot on the hoist.

Lord, please don’t let me kill this man by landing on top of him.

Upon impact, all four crewmen hurriedly clawed their way out of the helicopter. They knew it would soon be overrun with enemy soldiers. The force of the landing resulted in hairline fractures in Robinson’s neck plus jamming of his kneecaps —he had been kneeling while operating the hoist.

When Jerry reached down to pull out his M16, which he kept wedged between his door and seat, he found that the stock had broken from the violent fall. As he leaned over to get out the door, Jerry realized his spinal column had been jarred severely during the hard one-hundred-foot drop —he experienced a sudden bolt of very sharp pain below his waist and suspected he had sustained some kind of compression injury. But adrenaline was kicking in, and for the moment, his survival instinct took precedence.

God . . . help us survive this day . . .

Jerry looked around for his copilot, who seemed completely disoriented for a moment. In his excitement while trying to get out of his parachute, Duane Martin had nearly shot himself in the foot with his own weapon.

As they huddled together in front of the crash, Jerry spotted the downed fighter pilot they had been trying to rescue. He ran over to him. “Hey —Tom Curtis —are you all right?” Jerry helped the pilot scramble out of the hoist and up on his feet.

“Yeah —Will Forby —I think I’m okay,” answered the pilot.

Jerry knew all the antennas located on the bottom of the helicopter would be useless for signaling the second chopper. He immediately reached for a small handheld radio. Much to his disappointment, when he pulled it out of his flight suit, he discovered its antenna was also broken.

“Come on,” he yelled to his men. “Let’s get away from this crash site.” Enemy troops certainly would lose no time getting to them. They could hide until dark, then maybe get back to a safer area. Jerry, Neil Black, and Bill Robinson half ran, half slid down a nearby steep ravine, then across a muddy stream and started back up the other side. They all thought Duane Martin and the downed fighter pilot were following along behind them.

As they scurried upward through dense forest growth, the three men reached an enormous fallen tree with a huge trunk covered with thick vegetation about two-thirds of the way up to the top of the ridge. They immediately crawled behind and under it as much as they could.

Jerry looked around and didn’t see Martin.

“Where’s Duane?” he whispered to his other two crewmen.

“Don’t know, sir,” said Robinson, breathing hard. “Looks like the other pilot is somewhere back behind us too.”

They hunkered down at the sound of shots in the distance.

Oh, God . . . don’t let them find us . . .

Moments later, they heard the second helicopter flying somewhere above them and, almost simultaneously, small arms fire began coming from somewhere nearby in the jungle. Jerry looked up —it was directly over them.

He quickly set off a pencil flare. But when he heard the helicopter being pummeled with bullets, he waved it away, knowing that any second it, too, might be shot down if they stayed. Jerry thought he had done an unselfish act until he learned, years later, the other crew never saw him through the thick foliage.

He then ducked back down behind the log. Within twenty minutes or so, they heard loud thrashing noises through the brush, men shouting back and forth.

Jerry peeked over the top of the log. In the distance he could make out thirty or forty men armed with a variety of weapons and deduced they were militia. He reached down and yanked off the strings he still wore on his left arm, tied by the two-star Laotian general Vang Pao and other dignitaries at the friendship ceremony of strings. He didn’t have any desire to try and explain what they were to these Vietnamese soldiers.

At first he thought they might even sweep past where he and his crew were hiding, but as soon as the Vietnamese were directly down the slope from where they were, several turned, hastened up the ravine, and stumbled almost on top of them. They quickly yelled for the others, and a huge crowd of angry men suddenly pointed everything from machetes to automatic weapons down upon the faces of the airmen.

Jerry had long before decided he would not try to fight a war with a .38 pistol, the extent of firepower he had left after losing his M16 during the crash. It wouldn’t have made any difference. The three men were overpowered by arms and numbers.

Reluctantly, he stood up. The other two crewmen followed suit, and within seconds they were tied up, elbows and wrists pulled tightly behind their backs. Neither Duane Martin nor the fighter pilot Will Forby were anywhere to be seen.

Ropes of imprisonment now replaced the strings of friendship. And just that unceremoniously, Captain Thomas “Jerry” Curtis found himself a captive of war.