Where's Rudolph when you need him?

[rotorwash]

In the States, Tom is romancing his newly wed, meanwhile back in the combat zone-

Its bad enough getting shot at, but when your own people work really hard at getting you killed it can get discouraging.


Christmas Eve, 1967, I was one of the few sober people at Duc Pho because I had been detailed to crew the flareship. The flareship was an aircraft on standby loaded with the old Mark 24 aircraft flare, each one three feet long, 5 inches around and weighing 27 pounds. Normally the aircraft was never called out and because the weather was awful with low cloud cover, we did not expect to go anywhere. The ship chosen was tail number 872, only 9 ships newer then my trusty old 863, and like 863, she had been in the unit over a year and was well on her way to being worn out. The gunner was a young new guy I did not know, the AC (aircraft commander) shall remain nameless because he was an idiot and the Peter Pilot will be called Peter Pilot because I never got to know his real name.

About midnight we got a call that the Special Forces camp at Gia Vuc, in the mountains west of Duc Pho, was under mortar attack and might get some serious activity. The cloud cover was complete and too low for Puff so they asked if we could shed some light on the subject. We were to take an arty observer, a sergeant that I knew well, but when two guys drug him out to the aircraft I knew he wasn?t going to be much good, he was so drunk he didn?t know me from his fairy godmother. I strapped him in, tying the seatbelt so he couldn?t accidently unhook it, and never even turned his radio on, just strapped it in beside him, and we took off headed west for the mountains.

The ceiling was between 750 and 800 feet, well below the tops of the mountains, some two thousand feet high, and was very thick, we would have to stay below it. As we entered the mountains we made radio contact with Gia Vuc and decided we would light our way along with our own flares, so I started kicking them out. The Mk 24 was not complicated, it was just hard to deal with. It had a dial in the top that you set for a timed delay, the shortest time being 5 seconds. They often malfunctioned at the 5 second setting, but we were so low we didn?t have much choice and I tried to fudge below the 5 second setting. The dial itself was very difficult to see and sometimes was so corroded it had to be moved with pliers, not a fun situation in a dark windy aircraft. I got the first one out and set the next one by its light, they burned for about two and a half minutes, and that is how we made our way between the mountains hugging the undersurface of the clouds. My poor gunner had no idea what I was doing, he was just trying to stay out of my way and the arty guy was singing Christmas carols at the top of his lungs. I unplugged his headset but I could still hear him.

Finally, Gia Vuc saw our flares and tried to vector us in, but we could not make out anything on the ground for reference, so he said he would fire a mortar flare. We couldn?t see his flare, it apparently got lost amongst ours, so he advised us to stop dropping and he would fire another. We stopped, he fired and at the same time as he uttered the fateful words, ?it was a dud? we were thrown in pitch darkness, the moon and stars were all above the clouds. Darkness isn?t so bad except when you have been lighting your way with 2 million candle power lights and now there is none, it is really dark. I had been mentally preparing for this and had a flare almost ready to go, but the AC developed vertigo, lost any idea of where up was and we were in about a 20 degree nose down angle spinning to our left. I couldn?t push the flare up the floor and out the door, centrifugal force was forcing me into the back of the pilot?s seats. I had been a pilot since I was 16, so a spin was not unknown to me, but I knew we had very little altitude and the clouds around us were largely rock filled. What I didn?t know was that my gunner had gotten his foot caught in a flare lanyard a few seconds before it went dark and he had pulled it. A twelve pound pull activates the ejection fuze and five seconds later an ignition fuze and an ejection disk ignite, blowing everything out of the outer container. I was on my knees trying to struggle uphill to the center of the aircraft when suddenly, right in front of me, the flare he had his feet tangled in fired the ignition charge and the ejection disk that pushes out the parachute and shoves the container away from the candle. It had jumped completely off the floor slamming my gunner against the bulkhead. I knew that 5 seconds after that charge went off, another charge would ignite the candle and I would have twenty pounds of burning magnesium in an aircraft that was spinning out of control. I braced my feet against the pilot?s seat and stretched uphill, my hand finding the flare, feeling the parachute, but my gunner?s leg was still on top of it. I picked up his foot and placed it on my shoulder, then shoved the parachute out the door. The case had not come apart, so the flare was still intact and the whole thing went with the parachute. Fortunately we had been dropping out the right door so our spin to the left carried it away. Meanwhile, Peter Pilot, who had been flying instruments, got control of the aircraft from AC, stopping the spin and getting us back to straight and level flight. The flare went off to our side and a little below us giving us light to see where the mountains were. It only burned a few seconds before it plunged into the jungle and continued to burn deep in the canopy. We were low.

Usual procedure was that in night situations, one pilot flew with visual references, the other pilot using the instruments. Normally this was not followed very closely or the aircraft were so old only about half the instruments worked. Fortunately, Peter Pilot had not been out of flight school very long and was still infected with stateside training. And 872 had just enough functional instruments to get by.

We told Gia Vuc we had problems and were returning to Duc Pho, the message was overheard by our operations. When our CO heard we were in trouble he had gone into the ops shack and was giving us continuous long counts on the radio so we could home in with our direction finder. All the drunks wanted to help, so every light in the company was lit, the maintenance ramps, the aircraft, trucks, everything. With the zeal of a new religious convert I threw flares until the blessed lights of Duc Pho were in sight, then tried to tend to my injured gunner, but I didn?t have enough light or any idea what to do. And Arty was singing louder.

We landed at the hospital pad where medics took my gunner and we unloaded Arty, still singing and totally oblivious. We then went to POL to refuel. All this time Peter Pilot and I had been silent but AC was talking constantly. I don?t know if it was from nerves or because he realized how close he had come to getting us killed. We left POL and headed east around the mountain. I sat in the door with my feet hanging out listening to AC prating on. As we turned south on our downwind leg, I realized we were descending. The jackass was going to fly us into the ground again! As I calmly informed AC that he was once more about to kill us, Peter Pilot said, ?I thought we were descending.? The man had incredible tact, I wondered how long he was going to wait before he said anything. Peter took the controls and AC finally shut up.

After we landed, AC just grabbed his gear and walked off while Peter Pilot and I tied the blade down and reloaded flares. As we walked back, Peter Pilot invited me into his hooch where we had some big slugs of bourbon. We replayed the events and concluded we must have gone through one and a half complete spins losing about 500 feet, one more would have put us into the ground. As I left, I noticed the cooks in the messhall, so I went in and got some coffee, I was not quite ready for sleep just yet.

My gunner suffered bruises and was scared to death but was OK, Peter Pilot and I never flew together again, to my disappointment. Arty was clueless, in fact he never believed a word of it, and AC was hustled away to be a mess officer somewhere.

Rotorwash

[frisco-kid]

Jaysus, RW. What a great story. Thanks for a great read.

The mountains west of Duc Pho had some of the thickest bush that I've crawled around in in Nam. I don't remember seeing or hearing about the SF camp; in our sector anyway. Was it more to the north of Duc Pho towards Chu Lai? If it was anything like when we first got in the mountains in APR67, they had a lot of neighbors. The whole place was a VC stronghold with a lot of bunkers, fighting trenches, and booby traps. It took almost the whole brigade almost 2mos. to clean out our part of the mountains. We couldn't have done it without you guys.

Welcome Home, Don.

[rotorwash]

Our battalion was responsible for five SF camps in the area you are probably familiar with.

Tien Phouc (try saying that five times real fast), was located SW of Tam Key. More precisely it was west of LZ East and straight south of LZ Center. I don't know if you operated out of these or not, when we were there it was mostly the 196 LIB.

Tra Bong was nw of Guang Ngai about 20 miles. This was the site of "Operation Bahroom" transporting the elephant in for the Yards.

Ha Thanh was west of Quang Ngai and a little bit north of the fishook area you are familiar with.

Straight west of Duc Pho about five miles was Ba To located on the old French road that eventually went all the way to Dak To.

Gia Vuc was farther out on the same road, about 20 miles from the border.

SF also had a camp just out of Quang Ngai that Mike Force and SOG used for ops but I don't think they activated that one until Kham Duc fell.

On each of these camps was a 12 man SF team, a platoon of mercs and about 150-200 Yards. They were generally beyond any arty support unless we had a firebase close by, consequently, they kept a low profile. SF had an incredible supply system that operated independant of normal Army channels so it was very profitable to operate with these guys. Got a party? Need steaks and Scotch? No problem. Need a .50 cal? How about a case of M-3 greaseguns?

RW