19 Minutes to Live - Helicopter Combat in Vietnam

by Lew Jennings

  Mike Talton was up to his usual antics, from one near disaster to the next. As if his tail rotor failure in the A Shau wasn’t enough excitement to last a lifetime.

  This time he was flying a reconnaissance mission, boring holes in the sky without much of a care in the world, when he noticed that one of his 17- pound high-explosive warheads had come unscrewed from its rocket motor and was precariously hanging out of its tube in the rocket pod.

  Mike related the story to me.

  “To the casual Observer, it might not seem to be very important that the warhead was hanging out there almost free and clear, but not quite. To a steely-eyed, icy-nerved, combat-seasoned Cobra Pilot such as myself, that hanging warhead was a serious problem.”

  “Because it was in the number one tube, it meant that it and its soul mate in the number one tube over in the inboard rocket pod, attached to the left wing, would be the first rockets fired if I had to fire rockets using the inboard pods,” he continued to explain.

  “As soon as the right-hand rocket motor ignited and flew out of the number one tube, it would push the warhead out of the tube, maybe, and then it would be trapped inside the tube with all of its hot exhaust gases and flames heating up and eventually melting through the thin cylindrical wall of the rocket tube.”

  “Call me a pessimist or label me a paranoiac, it seemed to me that there was a good chance that the motor would succeed in burning its way into the surrounding tubes, all six of them, each of which held a rocket motor just like the one that would be setting the world on fire. Of course, I could then jettison the inboard pods, both of them, but call me Mr. Negative, because in my mind’s eye I could see a color video of that burning pod doing a slow tumble in flight and somehow talking one or more of those adjacent rockets, complete with their warheads still screwed into their motor bodies, into igniting and giving me an E-Ticket Ride to the Pearly Gates.”

  “Even if the rocket motor was successful in pushing the tipped warhead out of the tube without causing a catastrophe in the process,” he continued, “the motor would then become an unbalanced, self-propelled spear that had an open tube facing into its relative wind. Where it would go after flying out of the tube would be anybody’s guess, but my guess was that it would fly up into the main rotor blades and then we were going to have a really bad day. No glass half full for me!”

  “Sure, I could just not use the inboard tubes in case we got into a fire fight,” he admitted, “but a Cobra Pilot has a really hard time convincing himself to carry 38 rockets to the fight and then not use them. Besides, who could predict that we wouldn’t need those 38 rockets (make that 37 rockets, since one had decided to check out of the net)!”

  “Looking at that hanging warhead again, I decided to shake it loose and then take my chances that the motor without a warhead would find its way out beyond rotor blades, IF I had to shoot it.”

  “I called my Scout up off of his tree top recon, briefly told him to take up a trail position on me and to stay at an altitude above the range of most ground fired weapons and then began a series of WAMs (wild-ass-maneuvers) in an attempt to shake the warhead loose. I tried rapidly induced cyclic dives, standing the Cobra on its nose, followed by rapid cyclic climbs, standing it on its tail. The warhead stubbornly stayed in place. If it moved at all, I didn’t see it happen.”

  “Next I tried steeply nose low attitudes combined with quick up and down pumps of the collective in an attempt to cause a vertical vibration that might shake it loose. Still nothing, except that I think my front seat Copilot was getting a little airsick.”

  “Finally, I surrendered. The warhead had bonded to the rocket pod tube. They were now one. It was time for some drastic action.”

  “For those wondering why we didn’t just land and remove the warhead by hand, or even screw it back into the rocket motor after landing, since a 17-pound warhead sticks out of the tube far enough to grip and turn it, the easy answer is that we were in the Land of the Bad Guys. There were no friendlies within thousands of meters, make that miles and miles for those of you who don’t do metric, except for the Copilot in my front seat and the two guys in the Scout bird. If we landed and then the NVA decided to pop up out of the ground or jump out of the jungle or maybe even lob a few mortar rounds over to us, my front seat and I could become permanent residents of South Vietnam soil and our poor burnt out Cobra would become a permanent monument to a bad decision that I would likely reconsider as I sat at the feet of Saint Peter, explaining why as an Army Aviator I deserved special dispensation.”

  “Landing to fix it was not an option,” Mike emphasized.

  “Time for outside of the box thinking, or out of the cockpit as it were. I gave control of the Cobra to my front seat, telling him to slow the aircraft to 40-45 knots indicated airspeed as specified by the Operator’s Manual for opening a cockpit door in flight.”

  “He didn’t argue when I explained that I planned to exit my cockpit and attempt to dislodge the warhead with a well-placed kick. I confirmed to him that I had to unplug my helmet and would not be able to communicate while outside the cockpit. Fortunately, he and I were friends, so I was fairly confident he would hold the helicopter steady, maintaining straight and level flight, resisting any temptation to wiggle the cyclic or bounce the collective just for grins.”

  “With our Scout following behind us (hopefully with his map across his lap in case someone needed to mark the spot where I impacted) and both aircraft above 1500 feet ground level to avoid enemy small arms fire, I unstrapped my shoulder harness and lap belt, opened my cockpit door and with an admonishment to my Copilot to remain cool, unplugged my helmet and carefully worked my way out of the cockpit. Piece of cake, I thought. Same as being on the ground, except that we weren’t.”

  “Moments later I was standing outside in the wind with one foot on the little right-side fuselage step and the other on the step located on the front of the right skid tube. I hung onto the fuselage at the rear of my now empty cockpit and dared not look down at the ground far below.”

  “Exhilarating. Yeah, that’s what it was! Exhilarating!”

  “After studying the warhead for what was probably a few seconds but what may have seemed like hours to my Copilot, I decided that I had to stand on the small step at the front of the skid tube and use my other leg to reach for the warhead until I could touch it with the toe of my boot, maintaining all the while a one-handed death grip on the cockpit framework. I had never thought much about the advantages of being eight feet tall, but at that moment, five feet eleven inches seemed like a woefully short height when hanging onto the side of a flying helicopter with one leg stretched out to its physical limits.”

  “Reaching, reaching, stretching, stretching. There at last, as the tip of my jungle boot slid for the briefest of moments under the tip of the warhead right at the fuze, I flexed my foot and raised my toe and lo and behold, the warhead moved. It actually moved. It moved upward, until I could level it and then coax it out, very slowly, just enough to help gain its freedom. Away it fell as I recovered my leg and foot to the relative safety of the fuselage step beneath my cockpit door.”

  “I watched the warhead fall, its OD color fading from view during the last moments of its terminal flight to earth, blending into the greenish-brown terrain below me. If only there had been something for it to fall into. Even if it wasn’t armed and couldn’t blow anything up, it would have been a nice surprise for an NVA soldier to have it come crashing through the roof of his hidden bunker. Heck, maybe it did!”

  “After I crawled back into my cockpit, I plugged my helmet into the intercom and advised my Copilot that I was back and the mission was a success. I closed my canopy and strapped into my seat. Then took the controls, advised our Scout that we were good to go, checked the time and our fuel and declared the mission complete, for that fuel load at least.”

  Mike “Warhead” Talton, Assault 27, Aviator extraordinaire! On call for rocket warhead removal anytime, anywhere, at any altitude and the purve
yor of heart attacks for his Copilots. He became a legend among us in Alpha Troop!

  As we were winding up operations out of Mai Loc in November, a very interesting and mysterious mission came in for the Blues.

  One of our Scouts on a first light early morning recon discovered what seemed to be the lost wreckage of a Marine OV-10 Bronco twin-turboprop airplane on the very top of a mountain. The clouds had parted at sunrise at just the right moment to reveal the crash site. The Blues were called in to investigate, identify and recover any remains of the Pilot and Copilot.

  This peak was covered in clouds most of the day except for a couple of hours right after sunrise, which might explain why it had not been found for the past one to two years.

  Don McGurk relates the story.

  “I was called in to Battalion Operations and briefed that the long-lost aircraft should have two Pilots and sensitive radio gear in the back. The S3 (Operations Officer) and CO of the Battalion wanted me to take my Blues onto the mountaintop and retrieve what we could. I asked to recon the area first with one of our Scouts, which we did the next morning. I returned to brief the S3 and told him there was no practical LZ up there. Also, even if we did get there, I could not realistically get everyone out in case of enemy activity.”

  “I suggested a plan to have myself and three others rappel into the area to complete the mission. If there was enemy activity, the Huey could fly in with the rope ladders extended and we could hook ourselves onto the ladders and be extracted. They accepted the plan and we executed it the next day.”

  “My RTO and Chief Warrant Officer Tom June, who was acting as an Assistant Platoon Leader and who eventually took over the Blues when I left around the end of November 1969 and one other trooper volunteered for the mission with me.”

  “Mark Stevens was the Huey Pilot and did an extraordinary job of hovering on that mountaintop while we rappelled in. My RTO and I took care of searching the aircraft while Tom and the other trooper did a recon of the surrounding area and provided security.”

  “We found only one body in the airplane. His weapon was missing as well as the emergency kit, so we can only assume that the other Pilot lived and tried to escape and evade back to friendly lines. He was still listed as MIA (Missing in Action) at this time.”

  “We placed the one Pilot in a body bag and put the equipment in the other bag. Mark flew back in with the Huey for our extraction, just as clouds were starting to form and obscure the mountaintop again. My RTO climbed the ladder first, I went up second and Tom and the other trooper hooked themselves onto the ladder with D-Rings, along with the two bags. Mark somehow managed to get us through the clouds to the valley below, landed and got everyone inside the Huey and then departed to return to Base Camp. He and his Copilot and crew did a super job of getting us off that mountain. At least we had recovered one fallen Marine for God, Country and his folks back home.”

  We wrapped up operations at Mai Loc by mid-November and Alpha Troop headed back south to Camp Eagle for more missions in the A Shau Valley and surrounding area. We would return a short time later to operate out of nearby Quang Tri.

  The Special Forces Camp at Mai Loc came under attack six months later, resulting in 20 KIA. US Special Forces left the Camp in August 1970 and it was eventually abandoned completely by the Vietnamese Army when the NVA crossed the DMZ, attacking Quang Tri city and the surrounding province in April 1972.

  Don McGurk On Patrol

  Marine Corps and Air Force OV-10 Broncos

  Stairway to Heaven

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  HEAVEN’S SWING

  It was late in the afternoon on a gloomy November day when I received word to report to the Tactical Operations Center (TOC). I was resting on my bunk in the hooch I shared with Mike Talton. I had been up since 4 a.m. as I had already flown the first-light reconnaissance mission out to the A Shau and had returned earlier in the day.

  It was 26 November 1969 and by now I had flown over 500 combat missions during my tour in Vietnam. Only a couple more months, a few hundred more missions and I would get to go home. Having flown the first light reconnaissance, I was supposed to have the rest of the day off. Something bad must have happened if I was being called up to the TOC.

  I quickly donned my gear, pulling a heavy bulletproof vest we called a “chicken plate” down over my head and jungle fatigue shirt and cinched the body armor over my chest with Velcro straps.

  Next was a survival vest containing some signal flares, signal mirror, first aid kit, strobe light, flashlight and a few survival items like matches and fishing line in case we got shot down or crashed.

  Then I strapped on my trusty .38 caliber pistol; a revolver that wasn’t good for much of anything except a false sense of security. I carried it in a “John Wayne” western style holster and belt. Before I would get in the aircraft, I would swivel the belt around so that the holster and pistol covered my crotch giving some “additional” protection.

  Last was my “Ballistic” helmet, an experimental flying helmet that supposedly was strong enough to deflect small arms fire, bullets smaller than a fifty-caliber round.

  I grabbed my water jug and a box of C-rations on the way out of the hooch. It’s always above a hundred degrees in that enclosed Cobra Plexiglas canopy if there’s any sunlight at all, so I carried lots of water even though it was cool and rainy today, remnants of the monsoon season in Vietnam.

  And we’ll probably miss chow tonight at the mess hall so the C’s will come in handy. Hopefully I made a good choice, like beans and franks.

  In my haste, I didn’t have time to pick and choose. Please Lord, just so it isn’t beef and potatoes or tuna or scrambled eggs. I didn’t want to look.

  My Copilot that day was Stan Shearin. He had been alerted to ready our aircraft for an urgent mission as I headed towards the Operations bunker.

  Mark Stevens joined me from the Lift Platoon. The Slick Pilots were famous guys in their own right, flying UH-1 Huey workhorses that could carry up to 10 soldiers and did everything; haul troops, food, ammo, beer, wounded, body bags, Generals, Privates, and even celebrities like Bob Hope. Anything, everything, anytime, anywhere.

  Mark and I entered the bunker together and stooped low under the corrugated steel roof as we made our way past the piles of stacked sandbags and towards the sounds of crackling radios. We emerged into a small room filled with stale cigarette smoke and surrounded by maps of our Area of Operations, Mission Status Boards showing who was up flying, where they were located, and what unit they were supporting, Aircraft Status Boards indicating what aircraft were available and which ones were down for maintenance or had been destroyed by enemy fire or accident, and the SITREP Board indicating the date, time and short summary of the latest Situation Reports sent in by our own reconnaissance teams. This was the heartbeat and communications center for the unit.

  Dick Melick had been promoted to Captain and was now the Troop Operations Officer running the TOC. Staff Sergeant Sanders was the Operations Sergeant and Melick’s right-hand man.

  “The 75th Rangers have a team in trouble somewhere in the mountains out towards Blaze,” Sergeant Sanders said, as he started in on our Mission Brief and pointed to one of the maps.

  “You and Mr. Stevens are to go out and find the team,” Sarge continued. “They have been in contact with the enemy for six days and have run out of food, water and ammo and are suffering from exposure in this monsoon weather. On top of that, they’re lost and can’t give us exact coordinates. You need to find them and get ‘em out! Here’s your Mission Sheet with their frequencies and call sign.”

  The 75th Rangers were a band of courageous guys, specially trained in clandestine operations to find and fix the enemy with small Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol Teams (LRRPs) or simply “Lerps”. L Company lived next door to us back at Camp Eagle and we trained with them in helicopter operations to drop them into the jungle or pluck them out of tight spots with the use of ropes; long 120-foot lines called simply “strings” with
a McGuire Rig attached.

  The McGuire Rig was invented by Sergeant Major Charles T. McGuire of Project Delta Special Operations fame. It was an 8-foot long cargo strap, doubled over to form a large loop with a quick-fit buckle at one end and a smaller loop at the top for a wrist strap. The Rig was lowered down to the waiting soldier who would step into the larger loop, grab the wrist strap and be lifted out by the helicopter and when clear, be landed nearby for loading inside the Huey.

  It was a simple system, however could not be used for long distances or with wounded personnel without undue danger of them falling from the Rig.

  Later, the Army would develop the STABO (Short Tactical Air Borne Operations) harness. That harness, worn outside the fatigue uniform, provided loops to attach snap links for quick hook up to rescue lines which had loops built in as well. The STABO harness allowed rapid extraction of troops while also freeing their hands and arms to provide self-protection. Wounded soldiers could be snapped onto the rescue lines without danger of falling off.

  Mark and I looked at the Mission Sheet and then at each other. The Team’s call sign was “Coca Cola”. It was already late afternoon, darkness a few hours away and low clouds in the mountains. We had to find them and we had to do it quick.

  Mark had already pre-flighted his bird as he was on standby that day. His Copilot, Crew Chief and Door Gunner were already up on the flight line waiting for him. My Cobra Gunship was all ready to go too, since I had returned from the earlier reconnaissance mission and Stan had the blades untied and ready for start. We were up and airborne in less than ten minutes.