Veterans Day

In honor of Veterans day, here is a transcription by my sister of an old audio recording made by our dad, who was a Navy pilot during the Vietnam war. These are scans of his slides. I’m sure that the place names and technical abbreviations are approximated based on her best guess. Thank you, Sara.

Thank you, veterans.

These events occurred on my 10th logistic missions in country. I had arrived 15 days previous and the day in question was Thanksgiving. At the time we were operating direct from Tam Sam Phut(Nhut or Vhut) to Camau. The weather that day was on the stormy side and multi-layered. As we crossed the first river between Dong Tam and Long Phu we had attempted to contact VINH LONG metro without success. We were forced even lower after the 2nd river. I was flying and in the right seat and Lee told me to pick up some speed. He intended to find PHUNG HIEP and fly the canal to CAMAU.

My first indication of anything amiss was the port M-60 opening up with a short burst. Next Lee yelled something and told me to get out of there before I knew he had left his seat and gone aft. I pulled up into a climbing right turn and we were in clouds almost immediately. Our crew-chief Garza had put a tourniquet on Lee’s left leg and before I knew it he was back in his seat. By the time he got back I was having a little trouble controlling the aircraft and the turbulence wasn’t helping. I yelled to Lee for some assistance and he pointed to our attitude gyros, which were both showing OFF flags. I went to a partial panel scan and attempted to level the wings and erect the turn needle. Glancing back at Lee I noted he had passed out and was slumped over in his seat and quite pale. There seemed to be an up-load in the collective and my torque indicators didn’t respond to collective movement, by that time I was around 2,000 ft still in cloud and beginning to doubt whether I was going to be able to manage the aircraft. Noting 95% NR I decided this was pushing my luck and I had better try and put her down, I dropped the collective and started looking for a hole. Eventually I broke out at around 500 ft and spotted a small canal, rice fields, and a fairly large building in the foliage along the canal and decided the closer I was to civilization the better. Landing was fairly soft all the SAS was beginning to get wobbly. On landing I secured the engines and applied the rotor brake  – we were sitting fairly level. For a moment I debated starting the APP, as I was uncertain how far from the point we took fire we had traveled.

It soon occurred to me that I hadn’t had time to get out a mayday on the way down and I knew I had to radio back and chance the bad guys homing in on the noise. At first I concentrated on the aircraft radios broadcasting mainly on UHF and putting the IFF in EMERG. Lee had awakened when I called his name after landing. A corpsman we luckily had aboard extracted Lee from his seat and we laid him on the deck with his feet slightly inclined. We had gotten the passengers down and the corpsman was doing what he could for Lee and the two passengers who had more minor wounds. Eventually we set up one survival radio on beeper and listened intermittently. The first contact we were able to establish was CA MOI on HF and we started relaying through them.

I decided it was best we keep everyone inside the aircraft and we distributed the few weapons we had. After about ½ hour we thought we heard some DV-10s overhead but the rain and clouds came in again and we never saw them. As we sat we eventually saw movement in the tree line along the canal and I passed the word not the fire unless we were opened up on. Lee came to from time to time and once was able to give the last team position off 115 he could remember. Eventually we made contact with the locals through some of the VN (Vietnamese) aboard and got the name of the village and the grid co-ordinates. We were told there was a PF camp close by and I asked them to set up a perimeter for us but was unable to verify that they did. After an hour we had a couple of HUEYS overhead and with the FLT surgeon from HAL-3. The wounded were put out a short time later. Weather was still hampering efforts to find us, the A/C blended in too well with the rice paddy, and the other aircraft was having difficulty homing on the beeper probably because we kept it inside the A/C. Finally about 2 hours on the ground a Jolly Green came in. Through CA MUI I had been relaying to base. I checked with the Jolly HAC to see how much time he could spare on deck as I had been told to get the radio since we weren’t sure whether we could get the bird out. HAC said he had taken some hits coming in and showed one FUEL GAUGE showing empty to prove. After a few trips we had the guns, ammo, and most of the radio gear parked out and the 53 lifted the last 11 of us out.