Ch 10: Down in the Valley
Down Chu Lai way we flew in rolling hill country mostly. It's the friend of the antiaircraft gunner in one part, yet it isolates the source and makes them fine targets for arty or tac air. By the time we arrived back at Camp Eagle I was conversant with the fundamentals of survival, knew how to call arty missions and generally stay out of trouble in that environment. I also had the ability to impart KNOWLEDGE into our new Scouts, something not particularly administered to me due to the need for warm bodies in the AO.
As platoon combat check pilot I had no concern about teaching systems or flight characteristics in a classroom sense, it was all about survival and tactics. I had flown with the good and the bad, a few of the uglies too, and had learned from all. One thing for certain, a continuous state of panic was not conducive to long term survival. We had guys that would fly everywhere as fast as possible, have the oscars drop red smoke when ever they saw something and then start prattling with the Snakes about what they had found. I relieved one of these fellows one day and when the team arrived for relief briefing the area looked like a rock concert with all the colors drifting around. Green here, grape there, white or red someplace else.....fuggin' guns didn't like it and I didn't either. Thankfully there were only a few that did that and they had short careers as Scouts. One was an Lt from Hawaii. Flew everywhere like a raped ape with gross control input that was hard on the bird and hard on the crew. When in free fire zones (most of the time) he would have the gunner "recon by fire", that being a term for random fire, and the intent was to draw fire. Now I want you to put yourself in Nguyen Van Dink's boots and think about it when this madman flies over at warp 2 dropping smoke and making violent maneuvers. Got that? You might think you'd been spotted, right? Right! So, what do you do when the only way you can avoid getting smoked by a pair of Snakes is to put the LOH down in your lap? Right! Ratta-tat-tat! The LT drew more fire than anyone in the platoon and never understood why...and nobody could make him understand. Bone head! Well, he got shot down in Chu Lai twice and lasted but a month or so up in the tall country. Sent him to a desk job after that and we all lived happily thereafter. Among all of us, the door gunners and oscars were the happiest about his departure. Even they understood his hazard. Perhaps more than us now that I think of it....
Teaching combat tactics is an art in itself. You're taking a neophyte out into the woods after his contact transition and pretending you're an oscar...telling him what to do and when at first, then eventually turning him loose. I never gave any of them less than 5 full days of dual and I cut no slack, be they a warrant or a captain. Basic rules of the road:
1) Do not repeat a ground track. Ever.
2) Do not forget to look ahead...dead trees grow with amazing speed.
3) Always have an escape plan, every second you're low level.
4) The UHF radio is yours. If somebody other than the Snakes starts jabbering on it, climb to altitude.
5) Do not look for a body count. Your job is recon. Let the Snakes take the Glory. More Scouts got shot down because of testosterone than any other reason.
6) Do not repeat a ground track. Ever.
7) Avoid hovering at max gross weight, or early in the mission. If you must, do it on high terrain so you can accelerate quickly...down hill.
8) Do not go back to see if a Snake knocked out the .50 cal that shot at you. He probably did not knock it out.
9) Do not repeat a ground track.......EVER.
It goes on and on guys. Yes, I did teach them some maneuvers and flight techniques such as the air brake stop. I also explained what the LOHs with miniguns got shot down about 3:1 over the other LOHs. Reason: Testosterone and the fact that once the bad guys were behind your 3 and 9 o'clock position you had no suppressive fire capability. One that point I had quit flying the mini equipped LOH by the 2nd month we were in Chu Lai and did not return to them until about month 9 of my tour. I'll get into that later. Anyway, from those early days I trained all of our pilots how to survive, first and foremost. Yep, we still got the chitt(ok) shot out of us, but not one of the pilots I checked off got shot down for nearly 6 months. I remain proud of that for it is a very improbable statistic.
We went into the A Shau with a different attitude than the unit had left with, and a great deep pool of experience. Flying in the tall mountains is a different trick that the coastal lowlands and rolling hills of our previous AO. The jungle was the jungle, the air was clean, the streams clear and rock bottomed. Monkeys everywhere bounding thru the canopy and we had to learn to find thing under deep canopy. Trees over 100' tall were as common as rain drops. Mountain tops to over 5000' feet likewise. I'd show you a Google image of the A Shau but it's a computer generated thing of no great worth. Take a look if you like but my old memory is much clearer. It is about 20 miles long, maybe 5 miles wide and has very high terrain on both sides of the north and south ends. Moderately high on the east side center and a bit lower on the west center. The terrain on the perimeter is rugged and quite amazing to view. That of the valley floor is elephant grass, boggy creeks and streams. When we were there it was a moonscape of Arc Lite craters and helicopter parts and pieces. In 1968 the 1st Cav lost 57 Hueys there in 2 days, most of them still visible when we arrived for our waltz. Many of them were in staggered formation on the ground where they had landed and never departed during combat assaults. Casualties were light but equipment loses were awesome. Apparently one thing the dinks didn't reckon on was that after all were disabled that instead of leaving 7 grunts on the ground there were now 11 and every little impromptu squad now had 2 M-60 machine guns. It was a mixed bag to be sure.
Tactics: People are animals and behave like animals when hunted. There are terrain features they will not occupy and they have necessities such as water and shelter. That they shoot back is not the issue. They can be hunted just like deer. I'm not kidding boys, you hunt peeps just like critters. They are lazy, they get hungry and they need to rest. They also cook and their cooking stinks over in the Nam. The gomers use a sauce on about everything, it's called Nuc Mam or something like that. Rotten fish with a lot of spices. Aged to perfection. I guess they do that 'cause they ate all the cats. I only saw two of them in 2.5 years over there, both in high gear headed for cover! Point about the sauce is this....you got to play bird dog in the AM...following the smell of breakfast. You use EVERY sense you own in battle, no matter how improbable it may seem from the recliner.
So, you get up in the AM and saddle up, fly west into indian country with the sun at your back. Up in the mountains the air is cool and humid, it feels good after a balmy night in the lowlands. It also does something curious to the rotor system of the Snakes, or the other way around I guess. The retreating blade of the system is moving thru air that is reverse flowed from the advancing side. If you're doing 100 knots and the tip speed is 400 knots, the airflow seen by the rotor blades is 400 + 100 on the advancing side and 400 - 100 on the retreating side. To provide balanced lift the retreating blade uses more pitch to compensate. The accelerates the airflow more and it causes humidity to condense on that side of the rotor disc. It looks like smokey scimitars and in the early morning it can be almost hypnotic. Well, cool things pass and soon enough you find yourself motoring past Fire Base Birmingham, then Veghel, Rendezvous and there you are, passing the east rim of the Valley. The place is ominous, a scared hellish vista of craters on craters, ours today, theirs tomorrow. Lead briefs on the area we want to work, we mingle a little so he can put eyes on us. I look over at the FNG who sports wide eyes and say, "Take it down."
He begins a gentle standard rate turn to the right (his side) careful to check for traffic and I'm thinking I know why Jesus wept. "Hey, you're making a helluva target out of us." He steepens the turn just a bit and keeps looking for Cessnas and Pipers like back in the States. "I've got it, lemme show you how to do this." I took the controls, put the pitch down to the stop and rolled us into a 70* bank, then sucked the stick back into his gut. "You mind backing into the seat a bit more?" He nods, looks a little....discomforted. His chicken plate was restricting movement of the cyclic to the aft. It's one thing to witness this once or twice, another to do it yourself. We wind ourselves into a little whirling dervish of azz chasin' nose and screw ourselves down, cross controlled and falling like a rock. Sure as chitt, about 2 seconds before we marked our position with black smoke I rolled out and dove to the back side of the ridge, hooked a left and continued down the draw at full gallop, bursting out into the elephant grass prairie of the Valley floor at 110 knots, just a few grass stains on the skid toes. "OK, you got it." I look over and Wide Eyes is a little green. They always get over that when they take the controls, just like they always puke their first time out. "Next time, don't dick around." A nod followed by an aimless wandering around without a clue as where or what he was supposed to be doing. Class is in session...............
It is an alien environment and nothing about it comes naturally. I found many different aptitudes of course but in the end everybody I trained got checked off except for the next to the last platoon leader we had. His name was Hector C. and he was an ROTC Lt from Puerto Rico. Poor boy saw too much violence one day and never quite recovered from the shock of it I suppose. Great disappointment to me is all I can say. I'll talk about Ol' Hector later on in chronological order.
We were lucky when we got back to the A Shau. Hamburger Hill was a distant memory and affairs were unnaturally quiet out there in the Zone. Well, I didn't mind the break and neither did anyone else. We flew hours, blew up some chitt now and then and not much of anything important happened for about 6-7 weeks.
Most of you know that major offensives are preceded by planning and staging, usually with stealth and cover. We knew something was up but it would take awhile to ferret it all out. Think Spring 1972 and you are there for the NVA ramp up to that party, pizzin' down their legs and calling it rain. Meanwhile, I liked the tall country. I liked the clean air and I liked droppin' frags on carp and other fishes in the streams, or shooting monkeys when we had a chance. Those little bastids......you're hoovering along a ridge real sneaky like, all concentrating and chitt and all the sudden 200 of the little fuggers start leaping across the canopy. Likes to scare you to death!
Dinks hang out in trees too and they carry guns......
Some folks don't like the use of the word "dink". If you prefer I can call them slopes, gooks, squints, zips, dudes, Charlie, dumb asses, targets, slow targets, Chuck, and a long list of other things. It's not that I disrespect them for I don't. They were about 5% as effective as killers as we were. I can and do respect the 5%. They were able and dedicated warriors. Their tactics were near suicidal in many ways and they never evolved much in the course of the war. If you wish me to be more sensitive, kindly piss in your hat. If you wish them to respect you, carry a bigger hammer and don't ever blink.
