Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire "Flak Traps", Vietnam aviators worst nightmare.

Don't think so, either, Dan. I was sent out twice to "verify" reported sites of a ZSU23-4 on one mission and a 37mm site on another. Both times, I elected to go in "crop duster" style at five feet and all I could get out of my Oscar Douche. Luckily, both times, they had either been moved or the intel was bad. One as likely as the other. We did know there were -2 variants as far south as mid-Cambodia, though.

I've hosted an annual informal shootfest over Memorial Day Weekend for members of an outdoor website where I'm no longer welcome, for the past 15 years. The shoot is still happening, even if a few donkeyhole moderators aren't invited. Consider this to be an official invitation to any and all of my fellow vets on the fire! We start gathering at my farm in south central Tennessee about mid-week, and the "official" shoot is on Saturday. I think the record attendance was 56 people one year. There's lots of room for tent camping or self-contained RV's and discounted accommodations are available at a nearby motel. We have a "campfire circle" with adult beverages and all sorts of jackassery included on Saturday night after the range closes! Obviously, the range (up to 300 yards) is a "no alcohol zone".
Jerry

Well, a pic of the 23-2. The important parts anyway. The barrels are aligned and it is a small pic, so it isn't obvious it was a twin. The whole package was more than a Huey could lift so they blew the turret and brought back the important parts.

The guns were set in a concrete slab in front of the 2/17th ACS Ops Center.

And for the record, I'd be tickled chittless to get together with you fellas.

Wonderful invite, Jerry, but I'm thinking more of a "just us" dozen or so somewhere. Unless I'm outvoted, in which case, I'd be delighted.

I'm up for either one- - - - -The F-4 recon cameraman I mentioned is a regular at the shoot I host, and there are a few others from the VN era who attend. If a smaller, more veteran-oriented meeting happens, count me in! I make a lot of Patriot Guard Rider escort missions on my elderly Harley soft tail, but it's always more fun when the guest of honor is still breathing!
Jerry

Old souvenirs from days gone by...



Of course there's always a flip side, right?


Anyone that's wondered what a 12.7mm will do to a chopper here's some graphics. First thing to keep in mind is the bullet does not slow down as it passes thru a LOH, or anything else for that matter.

If you look closely you will see the first contact hole and the exit. The gray plate beside the cockpit opening is armor plate and it works dandy with .30 caliber stuff. It just got nicked here and the rather remarkable aspect of all of this is neither the pilot or gunner in the back cabin were injured.


Same aircraft, a hit thru the main rotor blade. Where it penetrated contains a steel D spar that runs the length of the blade. Fella came within a wee small step of losing that half of the blade and nobody could understand a word he said on the flight back due to the violent vibrations that resulted. We could hear him 10 miles out however.


Sorry to say that the pilot, our platoon leader, and one of my favorite gunners were killed during action related to the siege of FSB Ripcord. Names were Sensing and Staton for the record.

In my first in-country assignment, with the 173rd Airborne, one of our guys went up on a "familiarization" flight with an Army O-1 artillery spotter (a kind of almost FAC) and took three hits from a 12.7mm. Two in the left wing, and one through the right wing flap. One on either side of him in the back seat, in other words. The back seat in an Army O-1 is a canvas sling. He did not volunteer for that kind of ride again.

Would this gathering be open to Grunts or is it fly boys only?

Osky

Sounds like the cyclic rate of the 12.7 saved his life!

Sometimes mechanical or electrical malfunctions can be just as deadly as ground fire. A B-52D has two wing-mounted fuel tanks, in between the outboard engine nacelles and the wingtip. Those tanks can be jettisoned with explosive bolts if necessary. About halfway from Okinawa to the target area on a bombing mission, the starboard wing tank on one of our birds suddenly departed the plane- - - -full of fuel. That made the other wing a few thousand pounds heavy, and the pilots did some fancy flying to avoid getting upside down. OK- - - -we've got plenty of fuel to get home, once we jettison the bomb load and kill a few fish- - - -let's pickle the other tank and get the weight and balance back in the ballpark! Nope- - - - -that one won't go! They flew for quite a while with both pilots holding hard right wheel and all the trim they could crank in to keep the bird wings level while they transferred fuel out of the remaining drop tank. After landing safely back at Kadena, they discovered the cause of the problem. There was about a 4-foot hole in the right wing where an exhaust turbine-driven hydraulic pump used to be. It seems that in the process of blowing up the hydraulic pack, the wires to the drop tank had gotten shorted together and initiated the drop sequence and in the process, it had disabled the rest of the drop circuits for the other tank.

Then there was another BUF that got home with the right front wheel well on fire, couldn't lower that landing gear, and made a 3-wheel landing instead of 4. The well-cooked remains of a rat were found in a wire harness in that area of the fuselage!
Jerry

Osky, welcome aboard!

Flak Traps took a number of different forms as one might imagine. The dinks were a cunning and scurrilous lot.

FSB Rendezvous sat at the end of a dirt road that connected the A Shau Valley with Hue and overlooked the central portion of the valley. We flew over it routinely to and from missions in that area of operations. So one day out of the blue, one of the birds gets plinked with a 12.7mm. One shot, one hit. No idea where it came from in specific terms, so we carried on. Time passed and over the course of a month or so two more birds got the same treatment while flying about 3,000' above ground level. The jerk behind the trigger was hot, no doubt about it.

The day came where it was decided to find this little miscreant and put an end to the frivolities. I was the bait. Before takeoff I recalled a cautionary tale my brother had related about one of his classmates in school who had decided to be a rotorhead and wound up flying C model Huey gunships and had done the same thing. He got shot down but survived....barely. Well, I figured we were not flying stuff from the Jurassic Era and I was AIR CAV(!) and therefore bullet proof.

Over Rendezvous I broke formation and spiraled down to the deck over the abandoned site and broke north up a ridge. My intention was to make a low fast pass over the high terrain then work the lower elevations if nothing happened. Hey, something happened. I had just cleared the little knob hill just north of the fire base and there was a steep drop into a deep narrow valley on the far side. A battalion strong element of NVA opened up on me. AK's, RPD's, and a 12.7 from my 4 o'clock. I cannot describe the volume of fire other than to say there was a solid wall of tracers ahead and to my right. I clicked into slow motion reality and saw my gunner lean out and start zapping dinks, one after another as I screamed "Taking Fire!" to the gun birds and broke left down the hill. I knew, without a shadow of doubt that we were both dead men.

Then a very curious thing happened. They quit shooting. Neither of us could talk for a moment, I looked back over my shoulder and saw he was OK and as I started climbing back to altitude a very familiar voice chimed in on UHF. It was one of the Bilk FACs and he asked if he could be of help. Yes, those guys had a very dry wit, I kid you not. Rocky won't deny it.

Well, it turned out that Mr. Bilk had a section of 4 F4's coming off a mission abort in Laos with a full bomb load and since they were going to dump it anyway before landing at DaNang, did we have a target?

The Blue Angels would have been proud. Bilk marked the target with a WP rocket and the boys made a straight in approach in the most lovely diamond formation you ever saw. You see, they were Bingo on fuel and weren't hanging around to talk about it. The entire flight pickled their bombs as one at the same time. I'm talking about 12,000# of ordinance from each plane in the most divine formation imaginable. After the drop they climbed straight ahead without changing course.

We were circling about 6-7 klicks to the southwest and when that load detonated it felt like someone had bitch slapped me, that's how strong the concussion was. Holy nuclear shockwave!

Well, the end of the party had me take a stroll thru the carnage, a leisurely stroll I might add. Took no fire at all. Guns wanted a body count and I told him he was out of luck. Weren't nothing left except parts. Stuff hanging in nearby trees, like legs etc. Back packs doing the same. It was a mess wiped clean. One shot Charlie was never heard from again, nor did we ever take any fire from the vicinity of FSB Rendezvous. I washed my flight suit twice after we got back to base. We did not get hit, not a single time.

People always wonder why Army aviators did what they did - in my case (and I was just little younger than the average helicopter pilot) I can definitely blame it on the vagaries of youth - the attached fifty-year old picture was taken the month before I left for Vietnam - 19 years old and full of piss and vinegar - and typical of the "high school to flight school" warrant officer flight program back in those days. Super vision and reflexes are what saved my ass when what limited good sense I did possess was constantly overcome by peer pressure and that overriding sense of obligation to do all you possibly can to get your buds out of the [bleep]. Don't get me wrong - I'm not patting myself on the back; my point is that I honestly don't know if I could have done the same if I had been 5 or 6 years older.

Thanks fellas for all your input !

Many of you remember these pics and a few of you were a big part of our reunion.

I brought back a box full of memorabilia, had a blanket made from a chute however my most prized possession was finding my war brother Jim [ ET ] Martin here on the Fire..

For those of you who don't know me Jim & I shared an evening on and above Hill 474 in early 1970..Thanks to brother Keith [ EH76 ] he put together the most memorable reunion hunt two old soldiers could ask for..

Several of you that joined us are still here posting, I will always cherish this short time we shared !


Our first meeting at the airport got a little misty even for the gal that was so gracious to take our pictures.



From another lifetime..Jim's the kool dude in the middle.


Jim and I had several of these 7.62 cases I had saved and marked from that night's engagement engraved.




I loaded several cases,borrowed a 308 then Jim & I took our antelope with the very cases shot that night in 1970..

Our lives came full circle, I thank all those involved for all the hard work to make this happen..



One of the hardest goodbyes of my life putting him on the plane back to NY.

My Dad got 2 books sometime after WWII - a company book and a division book. They are each histories of the respective unit's actions during the war written by involved officers.

Did you Nam vets get anything like that?

Don't know about the rest of the guys but I received nothing except a notification at one morning's ops brief I was no longer attached to a tail number then 48 hours later I was in Japan headed stateside .

Tyrone, I have one from the 1st Cav but not the 101st.

These are fairly common but written many years later; for instance there is a 5-volumn history of the Air Force C-7 Caribous but only written within the last few years. If you look around on ebay or Amazon you can find quite a few other unit histories. The Air Force Office of History published several highly detailed books describing different aspects of Air Force operations in Vietnam, you can still occasionally find these on ebay. For instance, there is one on the gunship ops and another on tactical airlift.

Nothing like that in the Air Force.

To this day, even though it was finally declassified, there is no official record of the mission we operated while attached to MACV/SOG. We didn't exist then, and therefore there's no record of it at all. One of our commanders is putting together a history of it, but he may never finish because all of it was so tightly compartmentalized that even he can't ferret out many details. My second book is perhaps the closest we're going to get, and it is written from a single point of reference with no bigger picture - and all the people's names are changed besides.

I got to tag along on one of those reunions- - - -Dad located his top turret gunner from his B-17 crew, and they spent a couple of days together in Oregon in the late 1980's. Somewhere stashed away on a photo CD I've got pics of them at the "Bomber" restaurant museum in Portland, where the remains of a B-17 was on display over a gas station for many years. It was the first time they had been together since the mid-1940's. They're both gone now.
Jerry