Helicopter losses were staggering. “Of the 6,414 total aircraft-related deaths, to April 17, 1971, 1,792 occurred in fixed wing operations, and 4,622 in rotary [helicopters],” according to a U.S. Air Force policy letter of May 1971.
An even more shocking statistic from the same policy letter follows: Of the 4,622 deaths in helicopter crashes, 1,981, or 43 percent, were “casualties not from action by hostile forces.” If you had helicopters, you did not need an enemy.
Not only was the helicopter a tragic and costly adjunct to an altogether tragic and costly war, but it is entirely possible that the helicopter—or more specifically, the voracious demand for support that is directly related to and attributable to the helicopter—was instrumental in creating a situation that had much to do with the unfortunate and unnecessary escalation of the war. By all standards, the demand for manpower to support helicopter operations proved massive.
Helicopters sent to Vietnam in 1960 for what had appeared to be a noncombatant role resulted in the broad exposure of Americans to hostile fire. Once American blood had been spilled in Vietnam, no matter what the cause, it became a matter of national pride and interest to avenge those deaths and, as it was commonly expressed, to “drive out Communist-inspired subversive insurgents.”
This whole helicopter saga had begun with that brief telephone call from the deputy director of central intelligence to the Office of Special Operations in the Office of the Secretary of Defense in December 1960, when he sought to obtain the transfer of a squadron of U.S. Marine Corps helicopters from Udorn, Thailand—where they were being used in a CIA program in Laos—to Vietnam. This movement of “cover-unit”5 helicopters caused the displacement of the first few pebbles that became a major avalanche in South Vietnam.
It should be noted that this initial call in 1960 from the deputy director of central intelligence, Gen. C. P. Cabell, came shortly after the First National Bank of Boston had arranged for the Textron Corporation to acquire the Bell Helicopter Company. The CIA had arranged a meeting in the Pentagon in order for a vice president of the Boston bank to discuss Cold War uses of, and demand for, helicopters before it recommended the merger to the officers of Textron. It was the Bell-built “Huey” that became the most-used helicopter in Vietnam.
In earlier days, these old H-19 Sikorsky helicopters had been used to provide transportation for the indigenous security forces of the Saigon government, who would range over the villages of the lush rice-growing country of the southernmost Camau Peninsula. At that time, rioting and banditry had broken out because the Chinese brokerage system had collapsed. This had nothing whatsoever to do with the Vietminh, the Vietcong, or communism. These were simply desperate people deprived of food and water by the removal of the Chinese.
Diem’s government misinterpreted this banditry and violence as insurgency and chose to attack and wipe out these “hot spots of communism.” Thus, the CIA’s helicopters were used in an attempt to suppress a “violent” situation. American advisory personnel flew the helicopters, and American “civilians” maintained them. South Vietnamese police manned the guns.
It is worthwhile to note how fundamentally important an offshoot of this action became. These villages were surrounded by water, but the water was brackish and undrinkable. As a result, huge earthen jars, passed down from generation to generation, were used to store fresh water. During dry periods these jars were replenished by shipments delivered by the same Chinese-owned sampans that came at harvest time to pick up the rice. When these sampans no longer came, water supplies became precarious. Working with the brutal logic of the ignorant, Diem’s police machine-gunned these lifesaving earthen jars in the so-called Communist villages. From this time on, these villagers became maddened by the lack of potable water and by the tragedy of their situation.
Tens of thousands of these terrorized and desperate people became homeless migrants, called “Vietcong” and subversives, in their own homeland. Without intent and without choice, they fell upon residents of other villages that still had water and food. They turned into bandits. Thus, the tens of thousands in turmoil became hundreds of thousands labeled “enemy.”
What else could Diem’s people tell their benevolent American advisers and counselors, who had given them the helicopters and helped them into power in the first place? Of course, it was not all altruism on America’s part. The CIA had been working for fifteen years to bring this struggle to the point where American forces would have to become involved, bringing all their expensive military equipment with them. It became tactically expedient to make use of these helicopters as a throttle on the pace of the war. Whenever villages were attacked, “insurgency” flared up among the people. This created an active “enemy” and gave the new Diem Self Defense Force units, and the new army and its Philippines-trained elite units, plenty of action. From this modest and ostensibly innocent beginning, the United States followed up by sending helicopters by the thousands into Vietnam.
As the strife heated up in 1961, Secretary McNamara created Combat Development Test Centers in Vietnam to study firsthand how the war should be waged. The helicopter became more intimately associated with close-in combat. A wild, carefree helicopter sweep was more thrilling than a motorcycle race along the California oceanside, and ten times as hell-raising. American and Vietnamese gunners armed with automatic weapons sprayed indiscriminate barrages into villages and forest havens from one end of the country to the other. When more action was desired, they dropped napalm to set the flimsy huts of the villages on fire. It was at this time that Agent Orange was introduced as a military weapon. It was intended by McNamara’s “Whiz Kids” to defoliate the jungles of Vietnam so that the gunners in the helicopters could better seek out their targets, that is, those Vietnamese who ran away as the helicopters approached.
In those earlier days, tactical intelligence was nonexistent. Helicopter crews dashed out on missions, little knowing where they were going or what they would find when they got there. They shot at anyone and anything that moved. Those were the days of deadly ambushes of American helicopters and of blind attacks upon any target. Because of the helicopter’s slow speed and vulnerability, the crews soon learned how costly a 55-mph flight at gun-range altitude could be. They abandoned higher-altitude flights and resorted to very low level “nap of the earth” tactics. This put the odds in their favor, because they were able to reduce their exposure time if they remained consistently below treetop level over the rice fields. The tactic generally paid off, except for chance encounters with wily ground teams.
For a while, losses were cut, but then the battle-wise bandits found a way to turn this tactic to their favor. The combat helicopter of that 1960—66 period was overtaxed when it had to fly two hundred miles in a round-trip with any more than ten passengers and their military equipment. The bandits learned that if they struck a target village in order to set up a helicopter counterattack less than sixty or seventy miles from the helicopter base, they would allow the helicopter pilots discretion to fly a deceptive and devious flight path to the target, providing the helicopters with a margin of safety against ambush.
However, when they attacked a target that was eighty to one hundred miles from the helicopter base, the pilots were forced to fly a more nearly straight-line flight path at low-altitude, “nap of the earth” levels to the target and back. In such situations, it was much more feasible for the bandits to set up an ambush. And this is just what they did, repeatedly.
Having learned this tactic, the bandits had won a definite advantage. They knew where the helicopter base was, and they had the option to attack any village they wanted in order to set up a situation that would lure a helicopter response. By observing the preparatory action at the base, they could alert the ambush parties by radio that the helicopters were en route.
Teams of natives equipped with any weapons they could find would lie in the tall grass in fields along the intended flight path of the massed helicopters. Then they would wait for the helicopters to fly
overhead.
One of their most effective tactics involved the use of a bow and arrow barrage. These archers had none of the style and color of Robin Hood, but they were just as lethal. They would lay upon their backs in the fields with crude, heavy bows across their feet, upraised to the aerial target. When the helicopters approached, they would load their bows with heavy, clublike projectiles that were fastened to twine, wire, rope, or vines. The air would be filled with this trash, which would catch in the rotor blades, bringing down as many as fifteen helicopters at one time.
As the years passed and escalation of the war took place, more and more airfields were built and covered with helicopters. It was no longer necessary to fly long missions. Refueling stops were more frequent, and thus cargo tonnage increased. The battle helicopter “gunships” were developed, and these aircraft, bristling with machine guns and rockets, gave better than they received. This situation gave rise to the next level of enemy tactical measures to prey upon the ever-lucrative helicopter target.
To these homeless men in the bush, the helicopter was still the best and most worthwhile target. They were densely concentrated on airfields all over Vietnam. This was just the type of target that a small, stealthy band could attack, hit and run, with little fear of loss and great expectation of spectacular results. With great care and stealth, the enemy moved mortars and short-range rockets close to the airfields. Without warning, a wild barrage of weaponry would descend from the sky, and large numbers of sitting-duck helicopters would be lost. These sneak attacks took their toll as total helicopter losses climbed into the thousands.
The primary objective of guerrilla forces in this type of warfare is not to become involved in major battles but to keep hitting the enemy where he is most vulnerable, to make him bleed to death.
To those who have seen the hand of the Kremlin behind all this master strategy, it must be clear by now that if the objective of the Communists in Southeast Asia was to see the United States sacrifice men and money in tremendous quantities while they themselves gave up little money and no men, Vietnam was the ideal situation. It bothered the Kremlin not at all to see Asians die along with Americans. In fact, as long as the war continued, the Soviets won on a relative basis over Asians and Americans at the same time. The war in Indochina was a classic example of how this modern concept of “war by attrition” could prove successful.
The Indochinese were the innocent victims in this struggle, because their homeland had been chosen as the battleground for this impossible contest that earned more than $500 billion for the military-industrial power elite. The helicopter war exemplified the success of this guerrilla strategy, both from the Pentagon’s point of view and from that of the detached, chess-playing men in the Kremlin, who understood that you must give up a little to win a lot.
Helicopter operations can be likened to an iceberg. The good and the glory, if any, were seen at the top; the cost and the tragedy were submerged. Sometimes this submerged mass shows itself above the wave. Statistics are not always the best resort, but they serve a useful purpose. The study of statistics was what Secretary McNamara liked best. Those statistics forecast that a helicopter-augmented war machine would churn out big dollars.
For many, many years, all military helicopter operators in the army, air force, and marines had attempted to maintain their ungainly machines at a 50 percent or better “in-commission” rate. This means that, at that time, they expected one out of every two helicopters on hand to be flyable.
The army, for example, for years plugged away at a 49 percent rate and strived for better. Such a rate was affected by many factors and would most likely have been lower than 49 percent had not a great number of helicopters in the field been factory-new, making it nearly certain they would be in commission. A 50 percent rate was considered good. Newer models may have exceeded this rate for brief periods, but then their high support costs created problems of their own. The significance of this 50 percent in-commission rate was felt most when evaluated in terms of operational factors. For example, to move one hundred men one hundred miles in one day at the rate of ten men per helicopter actually took twenty helicopters. This ensured that ten would be ready to perform that job, because 50 percent, or ten helicopters, would not be available at any given time.
Keep in mind also that in the typical Vietnamese tactical situation, it was no more than one hundred miles to the operational site, and then another one hundred miles back, and there was no fuel at that base in the hostile zone. As a result, moving one hundred men two hundred miles in one day for a mission at midpoint took twenty helicopters. At unit price, this doubled the cost of operation.
The next cost showed up in personnel. A twenty-helicopter squadron consisted of some two hundred men. Two or more of these squadrons required supply and maintenance units of an additional two hundred men each and the food, housing, and fuel elements essential to support their operations.
As a result, a continuing demand for operations that required an average of twenty helicopters per day to transport two hundred men one hundred miles actually required a base with forty helicopters and close to one thousand operational, medical, headquarters, and support personnel—not including those who provided housing, food, fuel services, transportation, and the vital function of twenty-four-hour-a-day perimeter defense.
Between 1960 and 1962, when the American military advisory strength in South Vietnam was limited to 16,000 men, Gen. Paul Harkins, then the senior commander in Saigon, complained bitterly that with a ceiling of 16,000 men, he could get only 1,200—1,600 effective combat advisers, because most of the rest were confined to logistical support work. The bulk of that support work and cost was related to the helicopter.
Gen. Earle Wheeler, at that time director of the Joint Staff,6 ordered an analysis of the Harkins complaint that led to the Okanagan study7 of helicopter operations in Vietnam. The study revealed that not only was General Harkins’s complaint well founded; it was learned that a major segment of the oversized logistics contingent was directly involved in the support of helicopters that General Harkins himself had requested, little realizing the resultant burden of his action.
The surprising thing revealed by this study was that this was true even when most of the helicopters in Vietnam were assigned not to the army but to the CIA8 and much of the maintenance was being performed by highly paid contract civilians.
The helicopter mushroom grew, and it generated greater demands of its own. Helicopter bases were soft and vulnerable targets. They needed vast supporting perimeter defenses. These defenses created a heavy demand for “noncombatant” U.S. military personnel. Because these perimeter guard elements were sparsely positioned and were immobilized by the nature of their task, they became centers of little wars of their own, thus heating up the intensity of combat throughout the land.
As opposition increased and became more sophisticated, helicopter formations were seeded with gun-carrying helicopters. Because the gunships carried no combat troops at all, the ratio of men carried, per aircraft per mile, dropped. With this, the cost per man transported, related to the number of helicopters per mission, skyrocketed again.
There is much that can be said in support of the tactical employment of the helicopter in warfare. But there are very few missions of such exceedingly high priority that they can best and most profitably be performed at the cost that helicopters incur. And even if certain operations can be justified, do they occur with enough frequency that they require the continuing availability and maintenance of operational helicopter units?
We have noted the loss of five thousand helicopters, the loss of fifteen thousand or more American lives, and the loss of not less than $1 billion in direct cost; yet we have not scratched the surface. The helicopter is one of the most costly vehicles to maintain and operate of any device ever built, and in South Vietnam the cost per hour of civilian maintenance and facilities was without equal. The helicopter is a voracious consumer of engines, rotors, and spare parts—all of whi
ch had to be airlifted from the United States, halfway around the world.
Although the helicopter can land in a space roughly equal to its own length, large numbers of helicopters must be gathered onto major airfields in order that supplies, fuel, and other services may be brought to them efficiently. The vast number and expense of helicopter airfields must be added to all the above.
Of course, these are not the only costs and the only burdens. The military services have thousands of pilots and aircraft crewmen. But these men (and now women) cannot be used for helicopter operations; all helicopter crews must be specially trained. All of these helicopter-related requirements cost heavily in men, money, and material things.
In a war in which the true measure of victory and defeat must be measured in terms of the cost and attrition on each side, the helicopter was found to be the biggest contributor to both cost and attrition. In retrospect, we discovered that the Russians, the Chinese, the North Vietnamese, and the Vietcong never had to contend with anything like it on their side. They won because we lost so much.
This paradoxical situation has caused many of us who were close to that action to wonder what might have happened if the war in Vietnam had been a “normal” war, with aerial strike forces on both sides? Imagine the havoc and devastation that could have occurred if a real, first-class enemy had been able to mount effective air attacks against those airfields where the helicopters were massed. The losses would have been catastrophic. We could not have justified having created such targets in the first place in the face of sophisticated opposition.
JFK: CIA, Vietnam & The Plot to Assassinate JFK Page 19