Surprised at Being Alive: An Accidental Helicopter Pilot in Vietnam and Beyond (11 page)

“Tower, Playtex One Two, you’ve got a 50 cal right off the end of your runway,” you scream into the radio.

Silence for a moment, then, “Playtex One Two, tower, those are the approach lights.”

A few more moments of silence and then again from the tower, “One Two, would you like another approach?”

Your copilot switches the radio back to GCA and you shoot the second approach until you can see the ground, ignoring the flashing strobes this time, and when you see the ground, you break off approach and fly visually the ten minutes back to Liftmaster Pad a couple miles away and end tonight’s mission.

After you taxi the Chinook back into the revetment, you start the shutdown checklist. When the rotor blades finally stop and the APU comes off line, you realize you are too tired to get out of the cockpit and you sit there in the seat in the early morning light for a few minutes until you feel you can climb out on your own. You hope no one notices, but you see the flight engineer watching you. He knows the tiredness you feel, and he knows not to say anything about it. You did the mission and brought them all back and that’s all that matters right now. It is nearly dawn as you walk away from the aircraft toward Ops to turn in your KY-28 and blood chits. Your fellow pilots are preflighting their Chinooks in the dark. Soon the Playtex aircraft will be lifting off into the morning sun for their day’s missions.

11

NAPALM

NORTHERN I CORPS, VIETNAM ■ JULY 1971

Youth is a wonderful thing. Before you actually recognize that you are not immortal, you do things that in retrospect were so incredibly stupid you wonder, what were you thinking? Then you realize you weren’t thinking at all. Orders were orders and you just did the missions. The missions must be done.

O
ne of my fellow Playtex ACs rode along on a napalm drop with his 8mm movie camera with a zoom lens. In the back of the Chinook, he lay on the deck next to the flight engineer, looking down through the hellhole at the load of red drums swinging in the net below the aircraft and the green forest below them. As the Chinook began its drop run, he aimed the camera at the load, focusing on one barrel marked with a slash of white paint. When the cargo hook opened, and the front of the sling released and the drums fell away, he kept his camera focused on that one barrel as it separated from the others in their fall. Beside him, the flight engineer threw a smoke grenade after the red barrels, purple smoke against the green jungle, but the smoke was only in frame for a second as he continued to follow the barrel going down. As the chosen red barrel fell, the AC worked the zoom to keep it large in frame—red barrel filling the view with blurry green forest around the edges. Then the red barrel disappeared into the green. Two, maybe three seconds later, the green disappeared into red orange flame and as he zoomed out, the view became green around the red orange, then black gray coming up from the red orange. Then he released the camera trigger and the view went all black.

Mostly we dropped napalm to clear out mines and booby traps the NVA planted around firebases, trails, and landing zones. Napalm was, at best, a temporary solution; the vegetation grew back so fast that it was hard to tell what had been burned after two weeks had passed. The mines and booby traps grew back fast too. Mostly we dropped napalm to clear mines and booby traps, but not always.

The Chemical Corps made the napalm we dropped and commanded the drop missions. The formula they used was probably not the one used by the big company famous for its napalm, but it worked. One of the RLOs (“real live officers,” lieutenants, captains, etc., as opposed to warrant officers) told me that they just put powdered laundry detergent in with the mogas (motor gasoline) in the red 55-gallon drums so that the mogas would jell. Jellies stick to things better than liquids and burn longer.

Fifteen of the red drums would be filled and placed in a cargo net. Our usual pickup zone (PZ) for the napalm missions was the Chemical Corps pad at Camp Evans, 30 miles north of Phu Bai. When we came into the pad at Camp Evans to hookup the load, the rigger would attach the sling to our aircraft with two donuts so that when we released, by pushing the pickle switch (the sling load release button, the normal way we let go of external loads), only the front of the sling would let go. The fifteen drums would spill out while the net remained attached for the crew to drag inside the aircraft. Save the net for reuse since cargo nets are expensive. Red 55-gallon drums full of jellied gasoline are cheap.

After the load fell away, the pilot would hold the aircraft steady at 70 knots or so while the crew pulled the net in, all the while thinking about how the slow Chinook was giving the NVA time to set up their firing solution to take the aircraft out of the sky.

The mission was simple. We would fly into the PZ, line up with the load designated by the hook-up man’s up-raised arm, and lower the aircraft to about 25 feet above the ground while bringing the load under our nose. As we came over the load, the hook-up man would raise the donuts, the nylon ring on the end of the sling, and try to hit the hook as soon as possible, always risking shock from the build up of static electricity or getting hit by the aircraft or by the hook.

“Load’s in sight. Load’s coming under the nose,” I called as I eased the Chinook forward slowly.

The flight engineer would reply, “Load’s in sight. Forward ten, five, three. Hold your forward. Down ten, five, three. Load’s being hooked. Load’s hooked. Up slow. Tensions coming on the sling. Steady. Back five. Steady. Up. Up. Load’s off five, ten, twenty—clear to go.”

I would climb out slowly, holding the transition to forward flight as smoothly as possible so as not to set the load swinging. The drums had a large surface area for their weight and could be unstable. As we passed 200 feet, I would tell the copilot to “safe” the hook. He would move the switch on the overhead console back from the “arm” position to the “safe” position so that we would not accidentally release the load before it was time. Top speed with napalm was 90 knots, by company standard operating procedures (SOP), the same as any external load. I would hold 90 until beginning the drop run and then slow to 70 for the actual drop. I climbed to 3,000 feet, our usual cruise altitude, above accurate small arms fire range and at the limit of accurate fire from the heavier .51 anti-aircraft machine guns, but they were rare. None had been reported recently where we were going today. So, at 90 knots and 3,000 feet, I would fly the big helicopter to the area for the drop with fifteen 55-gallon drums of napalm swinging below me, and on final approach would descend to our drop altitude of 1,500 feet.

Just like the pickup of the load at Camp Evans, the actual drop was not usually difficult. Sometimes a LOACH would mark the targets for us with a smoke grenade, but usually it would just be the Chemical Corps officer pointing at a place on a map and then at a place on the ground. With the target in sight, we would turn toward it from down-wind so that the red drums would fall closer to where we wanted them. Flying into the wind at 70 knots, I would watch for the load to pass under the nose and appear again between the rudders. At my command, the copilot would arm the hook by pushing the overhead switch forward. When the load reached the hydraulic line between the rudders that we used for reference, I would push the pickle switch with my right little finger and call “pickle” over the ICS. In the back the hook opened, the front of the net released, and the red drums began their fall. They tumbled toward the green earth, red drums spinning and tumbling end over end, red, red, green earth, red.

The flight engineer lay on his belly on the stretcher from where he watched the red drums as they swung beneath the Chinook. He would be holding a smoke grenade, and as the sling opened, he would pull the pin. As the red drums began their fall, he would count, “one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three” and on the third beat he would throw the smoke grenade down through the hellhole after the red spinning drums and toward the green earth.

The impact of the fall would rupture the red drums among the green forest, sending the jellied gasoline in a wide splashing arc, the gasoline fumes rising very quickly to meet the burning smoke grenade arriving three seconds after the drums hit. No more red drum, red drum, green forest, but now just a brighter red with orange in it, flame red, and then black smoke turning gray as it rose above the green forest.

If you knew you were going to be shot at or even thought it possible, the drop would be from much higher, 1,500 feet or more to stay above the small arms or light machine-gun fire looking for the napalm drums swinging below your aircraft. Accuracy was not too important in either case. Napalm, as dropped from Chinooks, was an “area” weapon, not a “point” weapon like a rocket would be. Smoke grenades would not work from 1,500 feet; dropping from that height, more often than not, they missed hitting the fumes of the napalm. Instead, the Cobras that came with you on hot missions would play their miniguns over the ruptured drums—1,500 rounds a minute and every fifth round a tracer. There would be a stream of red, like water from a garden hose, into the green forest and then red orange and black gray over the green.

Today we would be shot at. It was easy to tell. The mission was clearing mines near the DMZ, always NVA there, and because of that, the mission sheet told me I would have two Cobras for cover and a LOACH to mark targets for my two Chinooks. We knew we would be shot at. We were not picking up at Evans, but at another base further north and closer to the DMZ, which would reduce turnaround times between loads.

At the appointed time, all five aircraft arrived at the PZ, actually a small landing zone (LZ) named after a marine killed near here three years ago. Both Chinooks and the LOACH landed while the Cobras circled overhead. The Chemical Corps captain that was commanding the mission came onboard and reviewed what we were going to do. We didn’t shut down the helicopters for a brief since all of us had done this many times before, so we left our copilots holding the controls while the ACs walked over to the captain to hear what he had to say. After confirming what I already knew with the captain—mines and booby trap clearance today, probably NVA in the area—I called for the first load. The other Chinook would take the second, and after two loads each, we would all fly the 20 miles back to Quang Tri for fuel and to let the Cobras and LOACH refuel/rearm.

With the load hooked, I climbed out for the target area, near the Rock Pile, a singular pillar of rock that stood in a valley between the first row of mountains before you got to the high plateau leading to Laos. Two years before, the marines had seen heavy fighting around the Rock Pile and now it was the Army’s turn. QL9, the main east-west road, wound beneath me as the Chinook and its red drums swinging below flew past. Dash two, the second Chinook would pick up its load and follow in five minutes. As I passed over the first ridgeline, a grunt called me over the fox mike, “Hook over the Rock Pile, Alpha Zulu One three, over.” He sounded excited, upset, not the usual flat tone.

For a brief second I wondered how he got our frequency, but quickly figured that if he had an SOI it wouldn’t be hard, considering there are only three Chinook companies in I Corps. You just call on all three until someone answers.

“Zulu One three, Playtex One two, go ahead,” I called in my best bored aviator voice. Death before loss of cool.

“Playtex, One three, We’re pinned down by NVA about a mile north of the Rock Pile. Can you send those Cobras with you over to help us out, over?”

Looking off to the northwest, I could see smoke on the other side of the rocks below. Concentrating on the source of the smoke, as we got closer I could see small flashes from weapons and tracers from a ragged line of armored personnel carriers (APCs), firing their machine guns to the north, and there among the vehicles, a red flash with black smoke rising after it. Then, a streak from the north toward the APCs and a flash from one of them—probably a rocket propelled grenade, an RPG.

The Chemical Corps captain had a headset on, but couldn’t hear the fox mike, so I briefed him over the ICS on what the grunts were telling me about their urgent request for fire support. Pulling my map from its place next to my seat, I pointed out to him that the area where the NVA fire was coming from was a free-fire zone. We could kill anything that moved there, people, animals, trees, anything. Anyone and anything were all NVA in a free-fire zone. Even the earth itself was the enemy in a free-fire zone.

The captain approved the mission change, and I told the grunts they would have more than Cobras coming. The grunt acknowledged, his voice under control now. The LOACH pilot and the Cobras had been monitoring the exchange. The LOACH pilot sounded near ecstasy at the thought that he would be marking targets other than just the forest canopy.

“One three, One two. They got anything heavy? They got.51’s?,” I asked the grunts.

“Negative, One two,” he replied. “We’ve seen nothing heavier than AK’s and RPGs. Maybe an RPK (a Soviet light machine gun), but no .51’s or tracers.”

Still, we would drop from 3,000 feet, I decided. Maybe the NVA were just sandbagging while they waited for the helicopters that always came when the grunts called. Maybe the grunts didn’t tell us, afraid we would go away and tell them to call for artillery support instead. The drop would be from 3,000 feet so that if they did have hidden machine guns, one of their tracers would not hit the red drums of jellied gasoline hanging below us and put the red and black smoke over the streaked green of my Chinook, leaving just a black smear in the sky as the pieces of ruined aluminum rained down on the darker green of the forest below. It would be 3,000 feet for the drop, not lower.

The Cobras knew what to do without a word being said, and sprinted ahead, lead Cobra pulling in front of Chalk two Chinook. Far below, just above the trees, I could see the little green LOACH weaving and sprinting just above the darker green trees. Even though they are slower than Chi-nooks or Cobras, LOACHs always looked much faster down there, darting about just above the trees.

The LOACH pilot was talking to the grunts on the fox mike and the grunts were firing red tracers into the area where the enemy was, to make them easier for him to find. Suddenly I saw a yellow smoke grenade come from his aircraft, and I watched as it hit the ground in one patch of jungle no different from any other. The LOACH jerked away and back toward the grunts and their APCs, as the LOACH pilot called for me to put the napalm right on the smoke.

Lead Cobra rolled in on the target ahead of me, firing 2.75mm folding-fin aerial rockets (FFARs), and 7.72mm minigun rounds streamed red from his nose turret toward the green below. As he broke hard right just above the trees, Chalk two Cobra was in rockets and miniguns, both slamming into the green to protect lead as he pulled away. As he pulled away, I was in, 70 knots level flight, not the diving 140 knots of the slim Cobras, but a fat Chinook with fifteen 55-gallon drums of napalm swinging below me in their red barrels, red over the green.

The yellow smoke of the target marker was gone now, but the smoke from the rockets marked the area clear enough for my napalm. Unlike the Cobras, I was flying parallel to the grunts instead of over them, trying to keep down any possibility that the load might hit them instead of the NVA; it needed to spread out linearly over the NVA, killing more of them with the load if possible. The patch of black smoke and green forest I picked for a release point moved under my nose, and then appeared in my chin bubble.