Hugh Mills - Low Level Hell

Seeing that the gunships had temporarily taken the heat off the LRRPs’ position, I went back for a pass over the ARPs to see how they were doing. “Four Six, this is One Six. Snakes have got Charlie off Ranger’s back for a minute. Have instructed Ranger to control fires to sierra whiskey your direction. Now, how are you doing?”

“Not good,” Harris came back, “not good at all, One Six. I’ve got two men hit bad and down, and another not so bad. We need to medevac these people so we can move on up to our friendlies. Can you get a Dustoff in here?”

I immediately radioed Sinor, who was just back to altitude after hosing down the enemy bunkers. “OK, Three-One, good rocks, good rocks. But right now Four Six has got three badly wounded. He needs a medevac before he can move up to the LRRP team. Get me a Dustoff in here as quick as you can.

“Also, Three One,” I continued, “get hold of One Seven, who’s on his way out here right now, and have him link up with Dustoff and escort the Huey into the LZ where the ARPs are down.”

In just a few minutes my radio told me that Dustoff was inbound with Willis leading the way. I turned and saw the medevac Huey on short final with One Seven breaking over the LZ ahead. They had made good time.

While Dustoff was loading the ARP wounded, I briefed Willis on the LRRP position and enemy bunker locations. “All right, One Seven,” I told Rod, “come on around and get on my tail. And for God’s sake try for a change to not get your Texas ass shot out of the sky, OK?”

“That’s one big roger, One Six,” Willis drawled. “I am on your tail, pardner!”

We orbited the LRRP team position and found them all OK after the Cobra runs. In fact, they were looking up and smiling at us, indicating that they were not taking any more bunker fire.

I told Ranger that Dustoff was picking up the ARP wounded and would be right back to get his. All he had to do was sit tight until the aerorifle platoon got up to him with their medic. Then we’d pull them all back to the LZ for extraction. This all went like clockwork.

Just to be sure the enemy bunkers were out of business, the Sidewinder FAC was then called in. It wasn’t long before he had fast movers on the target to massage the bunker complex with their hot stuff. Our work was done.

Not many missions involved the entire troop, but this was certainly one of them. Every available Darkhorse scout, gunship, and slick had been brought into action. Fine-tuned coordination and esprit de corps was typical of D Troop people—it was always there, in all our operations day in and day out. But it was especially keen when ground guys were in a tight spot and committed to a firefight. Or when an aircrew was down. These were high-priority situations.

Only a week later another Darkhorse aircrew was shot down by Charlie’s heavy automatic weapons fire and ended up down and stranded. Only this time it was a Cobra gunship and not a Loach.

The OH-6 was the usual victim of enemy ground fire because we flew right down on the deck, and slow enough to make a juicy target. The Cobras were usually high, fast, and heavily armed, so getting shot down by enemy ground fire was not their greatest worry.

On 18 August, Dean Sinor (Three One) and I took off on a routine VR mission up over the Saigon River near the northwestern corner of the Iron Triangle. Larry Kauffman, a hootch mate of mine, was Sinor’s front-seater in the Cobra. Jim Parker was my crew chief.

As a flight of two we rolled out of Phu Loi at first light, bound for the areas known as the Coliseum, the Onion, and the Onion Stem, located between the Michelin rubber plantation in the north and the Iron Triangle in the south. Reaching station, we started in the north near the edge of the Michelin and scouted in east-west legs on south down to the Mushroom and the Saigon River. Other than an occasional bunker and a few trails showing relatively fresh traffic, we didn’t see anything unusual or make any enemy contact.

We intentionally did not fly any farther south than the river because the Saigon was the boundary line between the operational areas of the 1st and 25th Divisions. Everything west of the Saigon belonged to the 25th; everything east to the 1st. About the only thing that operated back and forth over the river between the two divisions was artillery. Many times 1st Division artillery fire was coordinated at unfriendlies on the 25th side of the river, and vice versa.

As we finished our VR and got ready to head back to Phu Loi, Sinor ran his procedural radio check to see if any friendly artillery was firing near our route of flight back home. He found out that artillery was being fired south out of Lai Khe in 1st Division O A, as well as rounds coming north out of the 25th Division base at Cu Chi, right through our route of return.

Sinor came up to me on the radio. “One Six, we’ve got an arty problem going home. We’ll either have to take the long way back to papa lima or go lima lima to Dogleg.” That is, we could either fly all the way around the artillery that was crossing our return flight path, or we could drop down to low level (lima lima) and fly all the way back on the deck to Dogleg Village, which was the IP (initial point) for the northern approach into Phu Loi.

We decided to take the short route. Though it was unusual for a Cobra to spend much time traveling down low, it wasn’t any big deal for a scout. We did it every day for a living.

Kauffman checked his maps and plotted a heading of one two zero degrees. The course would take us straight south and east across the heart of the Iron Triangle, over the Saigon River at Phu Cuong, north to Dogleg Village, and then the short descent south into Phu Loi.

We dropped down out of altitude, took up one two zero, and began zipping along at about a hundred knots. Though fairly fast for the Loach, that speed was kind of lumbering along for the Cobra.

We were in trail with me leading and running about twenty to thirty feet off the ground. Since we hadn’t worked this particular area, we flew with guns hot and everybody watching. With big bird in tow, we were being especially cautious.

It couldn’t have been more than three to four minutes later when I looked down at the ground and was shocked to see troops below in contact! U.S. ground pounders were running through the marshy terrain and firing their weapons in the same direction.

As I passed over the American soldiers, I saw what they were shooting at. Coming up under my nose were twenty to thirty VC slogging through the mud and firing their AK-47s like crazy back at the Americans.

I hit the mike button for Sinor and yelled, “Three One, break right, break right now! I got gooks under me. Get the hell out of here!”

As I spoke, I slammed hard right pedal and jerked the cyclic to whip the Loach up and away from the danger zone, hoping that Sinor’s Cobra would be right behind me.

At the same moment, Sinor shouted, “Three One’s taking hits. I’m taking hits. We’re hit!”

Still in my hard right turn, I looked around and saw Sinor veer off slightly to the left, then back to the right. I hoped nothing serious was wrong. Sinor was out of his element—actually hearing ground fire and seeing the people who were shooting. Maybe he was just over-reacting.

No such luck. “One Six, they got my hydraulics. I’ve lost my hydraulics and I’ve got to put it down!”

I swung around behind him and got on his right wing. We would have to find a place fast to put her down before Sinor lost his accumulator auxiliary. When something caused hydraulic fluid to escape the aircraft’s system, an emergency accumulator provided a small reservoir of fluid, which permitted some movement of the aircraft’s hydraulic controls. But that emergency fluid was soon pumped right out the same hole in the lines that caused the initial loss. Sinor had to get his aircraft down before he lost complete control of his ship.