-
derivative filename/jpeg
-
363-05482 to 363-05490.pdf
-
Digital Object Identifier
-
363-05482 to 363-05490
-
Title
-
Article about helicopters in the Vietnam War
-
Description
-
Original title: "helicopter", article about the importance of helicopters in the Vietnam Warfare, published by the New York Herald Tribune
-
Transcript
-
--------------------
- Page 1
--------------------
deepe
helicopter-1
RELEASE: DEC. 11, 1964
не
SAIGON--Three years ago today the first American helicopters
arrived in Viet Nam.
The event was was historio; they were to become the first
helicopters in any war to be used in bombat assault missions. The
WACH
Tat 42 H-21 "banana boats"/surprised the sophisticated Saigonese
by their capability to fly have seen been seen in the smallest hamlets
and outposts in the country.
The American pilots who upon their arrival were told to wear
sport shirts and slacks to "look like American tourists" have since
become a legend.
£
"The USS Core pulled up the river and stopped in front of the
" recalled
Ma jestic Hotel at the base of the main street in Saigon,
M Lt. Col. Chamiam Robert Dillard, who flew the first helicopter)
off the aircraft carrier. "The streets around the ship were blocked off
but thousands of people were backed up for blocks. They had never
seen helicopters like ours before and they didn't think they would fly.
But when the choppers did fly, they all applauded like mad."
--------------------
- Page 2
--------------------
deepe
helicopter--2
"We were told to fo fly from the carrier à about two miles til
we saw a water tower and land there," Dillard recalled. "But we didn't know
if once we got there we would find anyone who spoke English and then we
still didn't know if we were in the right place."
Lt. Col. Dillard, now on his second i tour in Viet Nam as
commander of a fixed wing aircraft battalion, was three years ago commander
of the 57th Helicopter Company, now numbered the 120th, but still known
as "the Deans."
"Several weeks after arriving, we had our first large combat
mission," Dillard recalled 1x this week. "It was a special sensation.
サ
We though it would be easy to follow the red and blue lines on the map.
But then we learned that what we thought were roads were actually canals.
we learned to navigate by canal instead of road. Nobody ever did get lost.//
"Not long after that we had our first sad occasion occasion," he
continued. "We lost our first aircraft on a mission. We never did find out
if it was shot down or what. When you fly a helicopter, it hurts to see
one destroyed."
Almost 2 years later--June 27, 1964-Dillard again flew "049"
Soom
for the last time-in a simple ceremony in which all the famed "banana boats"
were retired from Viet Nam and replqo replaced by the swank turbojet UH-1's
("Hueys"), shaped like huge metallic dragonflies.
(More)
--------------------
- Page 3
--------------------
deepe
helicopter-3
The rugged increase in the intensity and pace of the
war against Communist guerrillas is indexed by the increase in the number
and calibre of helicopters. Fromminam The first H-21 companies were soon
to be accompanied by three more plus a Marine helicopter squadron.
Z
Later
the
s five companies am of the slow-moving, highly vulnerable
H-21's were replaced by the turbo-jeet Hueys and four more Huey companies
Now
were added for a total of nine. One-third of the Hueys are armed with x letha
rockets and .30 calibre machine guns.
During the past three years, the anti-Communist struggle here
has increasingly been identified as "a helicopter war."
During the
The three-year Stars, helicopters have carried more than one million
passengers and 40,000 tons of cargo.
Now
Of the 22,000 American
military personnel in Viet Nam, 30xilongmition bearly nearly 7000 belong
to helicopter units. Yet ex
personnel have have sustained more than
casualties.
hom this one-third of the
per cent of the battle
"The helicopter has made the difference between holding our
own in the war and failure," one high-ranking helicopter pilot explained.
"The Vietnamese keep asking for more and more helicopter support and we've
now increased helicopter effectiveness 100 percent..
"The helicopter in a counterinsurgency provides mobility for
ground forces they can never achieve in this terrain. When the Viet Cong
(Communist guerrillas) hit a town, by the time government troops move on the
ground, the enemy is gone. The helicopter can move ten times as gast fast.
--------------------
- Page 4
--------------------
deepe
helicopter-4
"In addition when the government was road-bound, the Viet Cong
took advantage of this by ambushing the routes," he explained. "You remembe:
entire French units were wiped out during the French Indo-China War
by ambushes in the mountains."
Begie Besides cutting down the chief advantage of the
Communist guerrilla--his mobility-helicopters have brought under government
control areas totally inaccessible by any other means.. They are used to
transport province chiefs throughout his villages; to supply isolated
outposts with food and pay.
A visit to the heliop helicopter units throughout the country
produces a collection of stories--some fantastic, some funny, some said
sad; most of them displaying as one infantryman explained, "the day-im
day-out courage of these pilots. The things they are willing to do is
incredible. I've seen the medical evacuation choppers fly at night
120 miles from Saigon to Camau to pur pick up the wounded--and when they
couldn't get them all, they came back for for the others."
One American division advisor explained,
"These helicopters
Om
are flying stageoc stagecoaches. They taken in the pay; sell stamps
and money orders; cash paychecks and are a small department store.
the circuit last week,, we had only one carton of cigarettes and four
boxes of razor blades left. They've carried around the Thanksgiving
turkeys, birthday cakes and mattress bags of toys to isolated outposts at
Christmas time..
(More)
--------------------
- Page 5
--------------------
deepe
helicopter-5
A Marine helicopter pilot of one of the "Flying Wells Fargos"
happily recalled "the day a duck got stuck in the radio; we couldn't get
the quacks out for a
week."
His buddy, a Marine major, complained, "I don't like that
white flour. One of the bags always breaks open. When the rotar blades
pick it up, it looks like a white tornado."
Another chimed im with the inevitable--that "stinking nuoc mam,"
te the fermented fish sauce the Vietnamese eat with every meal. The
potent mixture is so aromic the chopper crew chief flies along with his
head out the door and has to scrub down the ship after each flight.
MAM
(Air Viet Nam-popularly called "Air Nuoc Man," the country's commercial
airline, refuses to carry the little white squat pots of the
sauce on their flights. It explodes at high altitude.)
Then the reminisces began. One pilot laughed, "You remember the
day we had the airborne cow. We were carrying livestock down Shotgun
Alley (a miniature Grand Canyom one-mile long with no exit so the
Viet Cong can shoot down rather than up at the choppers.) The crew chief
started to control the cow but it ran out the door, turning five
sommersaults in the air. We hadn't issued it a parachute," he laughed.
"And there was the day the crew chief shoved that Americam
colonel out the door with the Vietnamese troops," he recalled.
One medical
evacuation pilot recalled evacuating an outpost
while the Viet Cong were moving in only 15 minutes away.
--------------------
- Page 6
--------------------
deepe
helicopter-6
"Every Vietnamese in the post was climbing into our ships...
they were on the skids and the dash and the controls. At final count we ha
28 (ordinarily carry only nine)-and one of those was a woman in labor.
I don't know what I'd have done if she'd have started giving birth," he
explained. "But then one more wouldn't have made any difference." he said
the morale in some of the isolated outposts was so low that the peasants
and paramilitary units knocked down the American crew chief and rushed
on board. Some have to be ordered off at gunpoint. One time, an
elderly Vietna mese man grabbed the tire of an airborne helicopter and
flew along outside the aircraft.
The landing of the choppers in isolated outposts and strategic
hamlets causes a stir something similar to the Second Coming...the
town turns out to watch the "men with the long noses" and to inspect
the helicopters.
"One chopper pilot made the mistake of handing out candy to the
kids," a ground advisor laughed. "He had kids under him and over him and
around him. If he'd have fallen down, they'd have smothered him."
Upon their arrival, crews of the American choppers expressed
surprise at what they were being attacked with. Several water buffaloes
and one elephant charged the helicopters in maounta mountainous
landing zones. One ship was hit by a four-inch bolt fired from a grenade
launcher.
(More)
--------------------
- Page 7
--------------------
deepe
helicopter7
During the first year, Lt. Arthur A. Williams of Ft. Bragg,
North Carolina, maintained for months he was being fired h at by spears and
bamboo arrows of the primitive mountain tribesmen.
"Go have a couple of drinks," he was consistently told.
"Pretty soon they'll be throwing elephants at you."
But weeks later his suspe suspicions were confirmed. A 15-inch
bamboo arrow was lodged in the fuselage of a helicopter ru returning from
a mission in the mountains.
"We've had everything but the kitchen sink thrown at us,"
one pilot explained two years ago. But today, the crude homemade
Viet Cong weapons have given way to lethal .50 calibre and .57 recoiless
rifle gunfire which makes helicopter missions perilous..
One crew chief, swearing he was sober, reported seeing a pink
elephant. His Marine cohorts alughed and the company cartoonest drew a
curley-eyelashed Dumbo x saying: My coordinates are: YPX 345. Color me
pink.
(Actually the elephant had wallowed in the red mouta mountain clay)..
Then there was the second lieutenant on his first mission
who came back nervously swear sweating after being shot at.
"Don't worry about it," he was told. "You have only 11
more months to go."
The pilots have a language all their own. Seldom are the worlds
words "yes" or "no" used. "Rogge" or "that's affirmative"
or "negative"
are used by them all, each pronounced with the slowness of a sleepy
Southerner.
--------------------
- Page 8
--------------------
deepe
helicopter-8
In their phonetic language over static-ridden radios,
Viet Cong become Victor Can Charlie; B-26 fighters become "Bravos."
But the most frequent expression is "Sorry about that,"
generally used when one is least sorry. Another favorite is "Ho Chi
Minh is a fink" or "V. C. Go Home." The American pilots tell their
Vietnamese observers "Today we got fly to Hanoi." They give their
cocks special English lessons, for example, the 121st Helicopter Company
in Samm in the Mekong delta has a small-framed chef named
Duke, who always wears a New Years Eve hat. "Duke, you No. 1 V. C." he
was asked. He replied in the only English he x knew, "Me No. 10 V. C.;
No. 1 fink."
The responsibility for each hele helicopter rests in the hands
of the crew chief and he lavishes his attention on it, scrubbing it down
and christening it such names as "The Green Speckled Bird," or "The
Boneyard Special." y During one mission, the rotor blades of
Helicopter 2085, nicknamed "the Great Ghost," were pierced by 12-foot
high poles which Viet Cong had pa placed in the elephant grass in the
landing zone. The crew chief clarly calmly hopped out of the downed
chopper and under Viet Cong fire mended the holes with green masking tape.
And many a downed helicopter in battle zones have been repaired with
flown
"peanut butter", a sealing compound, and then quickly im limped out of
the area..
--------------------
- Page 9
--------------------
deepe
helicopter -9
Of the more tha n than 200 Americans killed in battle during
the past three years, a high proportion have been "chopper boys."
In the northern seacoast city of Qui Nhon, the fire field is
named after the crew chief who never returned; pres
the heavily Communist-infested Mekong Die Delta provinces have been
ca lled "the graveyard of choppers" and their the menm charred
skeletons are still se visible in the rice paddies and treelines where
hard battles took their toll.
Rarely do the "chopper boys" recall these "grim" stories.
"There's no shortage of courage among chopper boys," one
American ground advisor muttered.
They seem to expect little thanks for their missions.
The words of one company song goes:
History will buy violets,
For dead chopper pilots...
-
Date
-
1964, Dec. 11
-
Subject
-
Military helicopters; Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Aerial operations, United States; Tactics; Strategy
-
Location
-
Saigon, South Vietnam
-
Coordinates
-
10.8231; 106.6311
-
Size
-
20 x 26 cm
-
Container
-
B187, F1
-
Format
-
dispatches
-
Collection Number
-
MS 363
-
Collection Title
-
Beverly Deepe Keever, Journalism Papers
-
Creator
-
Keever, Beverly Deepe
-
Copyright Information
-
These images are for educational use only. To inquire about usage or publication, please contact Archives & Special Collections.
-
Publisher
-
Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries
-
Language
-
English
