We all knew we were going to Vietnam it was the game changer I think and the mission it flew although dangerous was exhilarating we’d get in all-day battles we get in half day battles the air Cavalry troop was a unique organization unique to the entire Army the first sergeant took me out and pointed y’all’s hoot and said that’s the outcasts don’t go down there I said I think it’s an American the fight of War without booze when you’re 19 20 years old you’re bulletproof nobody’s really thinking much about the real dangers that we’re
About to face our engagements were very very close they were man-to-man they were extremely personal and the other guys that are here today are all guys who have covered me in combat a warrant officer in the United States Army from 1968 to 1973. I spent 25 years in the military I served two tours in Vietnam Scout pilot over pilot her chief on an 086 the 1968 to 1970 to years in Southeast Asia nearly seven years Captain I flew h1g cobras uh uh-1s 086 Alphas oh 58s came into the service on October 66 and was separated in February
Of 72 flying ah1gs uh-1s and listed in the Army in 1969 and served in the Army until 1973. a Year’s tour in Vietnam flying the 086 Alpha joined the army in March of 1968 the Army let me get into the warrant officer program and become a helicopter pilot I served in the United States Army from 1967 to 1993.
I was a commissioned officer of armor and Cavalry I flew Scout helicopters Cobra helicopters and Huey helicopters in Vietnam we were almost indispensable to what was going on in this jungle environment yeah we were kind of the Wild Bunch of Vietnam in the 60s of course the biggest enemy was the Soviet Union and the biggest theater for fighting the Soviet Union was Germany Vietnam was completely different military from what I’ve read and learned made a decision to not supplement equal numbers of armored vehicles in Europe to what the Soviets
Had that they were going to use helicopters and Vietnam was the The Proving Grounds because they were thinking of future National Defense in the mid 60s the Army ran a competitive process to develop a new Scout helicopter for the Army participants were Belle Hiller and Hughes directly related to Howard Hughes the winner was the 086 hand down it set 23 world’s records during the competitive process of becoming the Army’s light observation helicopter it was a four-person aircraft was extremely agile to maneuver on the ground four to
Six feet above the highest obstacle and to do it while Under Fire with drastic movements turn on a dime and give you nine cents back the oh-6 was built around what was called a truss A-frame and if the aircraft would have a catastrophic crash it was prone to shed the landing gear on all four points it would shed the tail it would shed the rotor blades and it would essentially roll up into a ball but that truss a frame protected the crew chief in the back and the pilot in the front I’ve come home with as many as 25 or 30
Rounds in the aircraft I’ve come home with a 50 caliber round through the compressor which should have failed it flew at 300 hours it was set to go through intermediate maintenance never in either of my tours and Scouts did any of my aircraft make it to 300 hours there was a field full of brand new cobras Huey Chinooks and oh Sixers and we didn’t have time to repair them we simply replaced them with brand new aircraft I’ve gone down 15 times in an oh60 it was not made to crash it was made to survive darts and weaves and we used to say we’d
Put it on like a backpack that hadn’t been for the eggshell construction of the cockpit I wouldn’t be here today because we hit the ground at about 120 knots and rolled about three or four times but the egg shape of the cockpit stayed intact and preserved myself in the two Gunners flying with me we crawled out of that before it caught on fire and got rescued just of our buildings right here approved and if we’d have had to fly the Bell instead of the fuse everyone on the outcasts probably would have quit because that
Thing was a POS [Laughter] a draft lottery a live report on tonight’s picking of the birth dates for the draft tonight for the first time in 27 years the United States has again started a draft lottery and the famous first pick tonight is September 14th I got a knock on the door said Uncle Sam needs you boy so I got drafted three weeks into the draft at basic training in Fort Leonard Wood I decided to go R.
A and go to OCS they said who wants to go to Rotary Wing flight school and I said sign me up I never thought about flying before that but I figured that was better than being a forward observer in Vietnam rather than get drafted I decided to enlist hoped to maybe get to fly some fixed Wing in the Army but they had very very few fixed-wing machines so that never happened the Army has what they call a dream sheet at the end of your training where you ask for what you want and then they give you what they need I asked for Chinook school and Alaska and
They wound up giving me Cobra school and straight to Vietnam back then you could join and if you qualified you could pick an MOS so I picked the aviation in the west because my dad was an aviator did basic at Fort Polk Louisiana that confirmed that I didn’t want to walk for all of the 67 had no Direction had no idea what I was going to do and one evening some friends of mine while playing pool and drinking too much alcohol decided that we would beat the draft and enlist under the buddy system started basic training and
Amazingly I loved it took a while for them to explain to me what OCS was and the XO was very instrumental in saying the pay was better and then I went down took the physical for a helicopter flight school and shortly thereafter went to Vietnam I was a older Soldier I was 23 I had received a draft notice and they decided that they weren’t going to draft me because of my age after some self-inflation I decided to join I was going to join the Air Force to fly Jets when I went down they they said I needed a college degree I didn’t have one but
They said why don’t you go down and talk to the army they need helicopter Pilots 30 minutes later I had signed up the warrant officer helicopter program for the Army I don’t know what my draft number was it was 1969. part of my life where I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do I thought maybe enlisting in the Army and serving my country would give me some maturity and perspective on life went to Fort Polk Louisiana for basic training we were on a two-week deployment in the swamps it was miserable and one of our guys got
hurt and this helicopter came in picked him up and took him to the hospital and I looked at that helicopter flying and said what am I down here in the swamp for when I could be up there I graduated from high school in Delray Rio Texas graduated on a Friday and on Monday I enlisted in the military I was commissioned an officer in the United States Army and was going to be an infantry officer and was on my way over to Vietnam but during that time they announced that if anybody wanted to go take the fast which was the test and
determine if you could go to flight school or not well it was raining it was sleety and we were out there and I said well I don’t know anything about that but I’ll I’ll certainly if that’s what it takes me to get out of this field wet feel I’ll go do that off I went to Fort Walters Texas where I learned to fly a helicopter it is 20 hours and 12 000 miles to war to Benoit air base near Saigon all these men are in the Army summer draftees some regulars I’ll never forget coming in on The Airliner at 17 hours or something across the Pacific
and we’re descending into Saigon and an F4 Phantom flew right underneath us and I went okay this is for Real landed in Vietnam the heat was almost observable pleasure they opened the doors in the airplane you can almost see the wave of heat coming through the aircraft I arrived in Vietnam after a 30-day leave on the first of January 1969.
my heart was set on going to the 11th armored Cavalry Regiment commanded by George Patton at the time the son of the World War II patent and after the first day in the replacement station some guys got orders to go off to the 11th ACR and I’m still sitting there and then I said well if I can’t go to the 11th I’ll go to the first Cav Division and after a day or so of guys leaving for the first calf I’m still sitting there with no unit assignment and on the third day I went out and looked at the board that had ultimate assignments on it and I was assigned to the first
Infantry Division the big red one and I thought I’m a Cavalry officer what in the heck am I going to do in an infantry division my introduction to the first division was told to me by the charger quarters who came to get me and he said sir your ride is here to go to the big red and I went outside and there was a dump truck sitting there with dirty laundry in it and the spec four said just get in the back and that was my introduction to the first infantry division sent forward to the Airfield at Fu Loy the Personnel officer said
Lieutenant Mills you’re a Cavalry officer we’re going to send you across the runway to the air Cavalry troop of the fourth Cavalry and I thought terrific that’s exactly what I want to do and I went to become a dark horse 1-6 or the platoon leader of the Scout patent hello I’m Lieutenant Jim Joel and I’m your host on this issue of your army reports today’s program tells the story of new and interesting developments and practical uses of the helicopter the aviation Scout was the Vietnam equivalent of the Indian Scouts of the
Indian Wars we were man Trekkers we flew in what was called Hunter’s killer teams the hunter was the Loach and the killer was the Cobra the Scout platoon was a totally volunteer unit no one was forced to fly Scouts it was an extremely dangerous occupation the Aviator of the time ranged from 19 to 22 years of age they were for the very most part single and when you’ve got a 19 year old single pilot who also believes himself to be invisible and bulletproof that’s what you want in a scout pilot you don’t want anybody that’s going to be timid if you
were timid you made mistakes if you made mistakes you got killed when you’re 19 20 years old you’re Bulletproof so nobody’s really thinking much about the real dangers that we’re about to face at least I wasn’t they wound up sending me to D troop first and fourth Cavalry at fuloi when I got there my friend Larry Kaufman here and I were both in country at the same day going through the same processing center and wound up at fuloi together as Hooch mates let them know right away I wanted to be in a combat unit a dark horse as a
platoon leader and air Mission Commander I had a door under signed to me and unfortunately I am from Texas and he was from Texas and we hit it off right off and this is my door gunner here when I got the Vietnam I spent maybe 30 minutes in Benoit or some 86 grabbed me up and said you’re going to first division serving an 086 in division artillery I got sideways with a captain up there and by popular demands he sent me down to Detroit first quarter in the fourth cab that was the best thing anybody could ever done to me because all the D
troopers were great great combat soldiers we just want real good Garrison soldiers we kind of had a get a tendency to push the limit so to speak well it was a lot of holding my beer and watching this yeah D troop was considered Elite unit I was assigned to the Lyft platoon which was the four horsemen at Fort Hughes we had the mission of inserting the aerial rifle platoon when it was needed by that area real good and you talked to him before he leaves station so that you know exactly where I want you to search
oh that wasn’t something we got trained on in the states the tactics weren’t taught in the States you learned the helicopter itself you learned the Weaponry itself you got to practice shooting and hitting targets our unit was a Cav unit consisted of the gun platoon which was the cobras the Scout platoon which was The Observers the hunters River then the aerial rifle platoon which was infantry transported by the Huey’s that was new technique in the Vietnam War the fourth platoon was unique to the Army in that as an
aviation unit we had our own rifle platoon organic to our troops here now but they keep running I want to blow all these hooches away so I recommend that you probably need more than a squad to search this out there’s quite a few of them all over the scouts would find the target the cobras would address and service the Target and protect the Scouts and then once we had an enemy location fixed then we could insert the Arps onto the ground to exploit the reconnaissance by ground means they also served the wonderful purpose of going in and
picking up down aviators if we lost an aircraft we could put 28 Riflemen right on top of you at the drop of the Hat the orbs were basically infantry that were airlifted in and out by the Slicks the Ops also had oh about a half a dozen group of people which were called Kit Carson Scouts which were basically North Vietnamese would come over to the to the good side become the Republic of Vietnam soldiers and worked with us as part of our kid costs and Scouts the mission was based on need if one of our helicopters
went down the four horsemen would insert the arrow raffle platoon dropped them off that would fly to a fire support base at the fire support base we would wait for further instructions as to what we needed to do if we needed to fly in more troops which several times we had to do if not they would secure the area and then later in the day we would pick them up in a nice job but we it was to go out in early mornings and find them and engage them and get us in contact as much as possible many times while I was in the
area I’d let Ken fly the helicopter something happened to me the only other person in that aircraft that can fly is the door gunner so what I always liked about Rod is he realized that there were two people in that ship it was kind of a democratic joint process because he had to fly the aircraft and keep a good eye on what was going on and all I had to do was delivered showed up had been there a couple of months so I was a old guy and you’re always skeptical about a new pilot because they have a tendency to not
grasp exactly everything that’s going on sometimes they hit stuff that was a not in in the program right running in the trees and that kind of thing until you kind of form that cohesive unit that we thought the same way we acted the same way I knew what he was going to do he knew what I was going to do we developed into a pretty lethal team so to speak we became very uh very good at finding the enemy and killing them a lot of Vietnam was covered with triple canopy jungle very difficult to see down through it or see
10 feet in front of it we acquired tremendous amounts of information that the ground troops couldn’t acquire simply because they couldn’t see very much because of the Dead’s foliage we were almost indispensable to what was going on in this jungle environment quite often because we had such an advantage over the ground troops we were given an awful lot of authority and I can remember one day the the ADC was on site it was a heavy activity and contact going on on the ground the general was giving the information or telling the
parent truth what to do but he had to leave to refuel but while he was gone Dark Horse 3-4 who was me was in charge and it was a long period of Silence and a few disgruntled yes sir or varija go ahead and uh you’ve got the lowest fuel going to bed logs take down about 300 pounds and then come back I could stay on station five minutes we flew a rotation I mean the machine wouldn’t stay in the air but a couple of hours so we would fly until it became time for us to depart station and go refuel rearm if need be and we’d refuel
with it still running and somebody would come up and relieve us so there was never a time when the guys were exposed without any kind of air cover place market area and make sure that two six recognizes where it’s at from your marker over you’re going at 60 knots you can’t see anything you’ve got to constantly turn the The Experience Scout will say wow do you see that I didn’t see anything you would see more at faster speeds beat his life to a combat pilot you slow down or you make multiple turns back into a Target especially in
the same direction or axis you’re going to get popped we flew at four to six feet off the ground Cobra flew at about 1500 feet I flew in concentric right hand orbits because I was on the right hand side of the aircraft my Gunner directly behind me in the rear and the Cobra flew in left-hand orbits with the front seat marking on a map the audio clues that I was giving him about foot traffic and construction and bunkers we started checking it out I’m sure they’re aware that there’s going to be a little accident here the real value of
it was the I believe the Cobra and the Firepower of the Cobra it was the game changer I think the Cobra unleashes rockets and showers of flechettes thousands of tiny nails the front seat yeah and the Cobra is the Gunner the back seat guys the aircraft commander and he controls the rockets and he can control the weapons in the turret but only straight he can’t swivel the turret the front seat Gunner co-pilot can swivel a turret had his own sight and he could select whichever weapon he wanted out of that turret our major function as
a front seat Gunner was to monitor the location of the Loach at all times hey Scout detect something if of course they would take fire the the first thing out of your mouth was inbound hot you would be firing immediately okay three one we got one we carried a 1500 round box magazine three thousand rounds of of 762 linked with the M60 in the back seat along with multiples of smoke grenades concussion grenades frag grenades white phosphorus grenades thermite and Willy Pete we would drop them from the aircraft I had
a Target I wanted the Cobra to shoot at I would tell the gunner in the back I’d say get red smoke and he’d take a red smoke off this line that we had strung on the back of the bulkhead pull the pin and hold it out the door I’d then turn inbound to the Target I would say now and he would drop it straight down forward momentum would take that smoke into the target I wanted to hit and then I’d break out until the Cobra pilot hit the smoke I had a brand new crew chief and I will never forget it I said get me a Pete he
pulled a willy Pete out pulled the pin and stuck it out the door I looked over my shoulder I identified a Willie Pete I turned inbound on the target and I said now threw it up and when he threw it up it hit the rotor plane and bounced and I looked out the door and I’m now flying formation with a Willie Peak grenade that’s like right outside my door and I’ve hit the left cyclic extremely hard turned it over on its side in there and the Willy Pete blew up he darn near blew us out of the air an accident he was new
he was excited oh there’s a guy down there one right on the door most of the time when we encountered the enemy they weren’t in holes so they were physically out moving around because of the altitude that we flew and the extremely quiet nature of the oh-6 we were quite often on top of them before they ever knew we were there you’re looking in a jungle environment for glent the jungle does not glint the jungle doesn’t move faces glint you’re looking for right angles or unusual angles that don’t necessarily appear in
nature bunkers have corners we tracked Footprints we could tell 24 to 48 hours whether they were old or new Burning cigarette butts you knew they were close if the cigarette butt was still burning by smell Vietnamese soldiers ate a lot of fish a lot of rice the urine concentrations and sulfur concentrations and basically the lack of hygiene for soldiers that live in the in the bush I think there’s a tunnel complex under this too I see a lot of openings in the uh in the ground I remember flying over those Scout pilots and they would say
back there at that yellow smoke I saw Footprints for 19 people going into South another Direction 30 minutes ago one day I approached Lieutenant Mills I said how in the heck looking through all that jungle can you tell me that there was 19 people or 20 people 30 minutes ago going that direction and he said well it’s easy because we’re not looking for anything we’re just looking at what’s not supposed to be there and I thought man those guys are so smart I can’t believe it hey hey I got another one I got another one okay
foreign we flew every day seven days a week over there and the missions you know lasted you know uh 8 10 12 hours I think I flew like 1800 hours in my time in Vietnam I never thought I was going to get hurt I don’t think you’d still do that if you thought you were gonna get you know shot and hurt seriously I came out around this Trail around this big group of trees and all sudden the stench it was so overpowering I said old Chrysler right in the middle of a bunch of them quickly accelerated to about 120 knots
and then the engine blew up because they hit it and we tumbled and we tumbled and and everything is in slow motion you probably heard people say that that it just went so slow well there is one tumble there’s another one there goes the skids there goes the tail boom there goes the rotor head and it keeps tumbling to arrest upside down and so I released my seatbelt and fell to the top of the helicopter which was now the bottom and crawled out and my two Gunners were heard pulled them out and then the CNC gunship was just right
above me and he landed and we picked ourselves up and got in there and got out of there in a hurry but I was in the hospital for about a week after that with some back problems because of compression of the spine when I got out of there I kept flying but uh but I was scared [ __ ] was mostly after that in the later years the Vietnam war helicopter missions became especially dangerous the enemy’s anti-aircraft fire was improving and helicopters were vulnerable Birds the men who flew them were something special we were on last
night the cobras said come up to altitude because we were headed home and I looked out about two o’clock in about oh six seven hundred yards you could see this thin trail of smoke and I said smoke two o’clock so Rod just peeleds over there as we came by there was four NBA around a little campfire I turned my 60 on one of them fell into the fire that one of them went backwards and they all had a case between your legs right another one started to run I got him but one guy got away and we told the Cobra that we made contact and he said doesn’t
matter come up to altitude so we went up went home the next morning because we knew where they were they sent us back out following morning when we got there it was a hell of a lot more of them waiting for us fire was coming from everywhere we could see one bunker area that Ken was putting M60 ammo into and while we were trying to stabilize the aircraft out where we could shoot successfully into there we took fire and we went down we hit the ground crawled out of the aircraft there’s two arms killed just brought off an aircraft came
down and I’m not sure who it was but somebody came down picked us up several other people orbiting above their decision was that them to bring a helicopters out to us because we knew where the enemy were and the Arps were pinned down and it was gonna be very hard to try to move them guys around without knowing exactly where they were they brought a helicopter in and we picked up that helicopter and went back into the contact area we were starting to move some tanks from another unit we were coming up from another Direction
and it looked like that about the only way we’re going to be able to get them out was buy tanks because there was it was just heavy fire all over the place they had armor on the way but armor was quite a bit quite a distance off so what they did was they inserted a company Element you remember that and that company Element got pinned down just almost automatically once they got pinned down they scrambled that armor I got a case of smoke grenades because we had talked it over and thinking that maybe if we dumped out enough smoke and
the visibility was cut that the Arps could get their wounded and pull back we were in the process of dumping that load of smoke out we got shot down a second time uh controlled toward the tail boom up and went through the engine so they brought us a third helicopter and that’s the one we went back in in we were sold entrenched in getting the arbs out of there these These are guys that you know who risked their lives on numerous occasions to pick up town Scout pods we’re going to do everything we put to get them out of that location and the
fire was continuing to get higher and higher because there was more in the enemy in the back and they were pulling them so on the third time we got shot down it wasn’t from the same location it was from the reinforcements that were coming from the enemy front after an all-day battle and getting the tanks and we finally were able to pull the Arps out but we did lose three helicopters But Ken and Ken and I did live to tell the story so the sad part was there were only three helicopters lost that day and they were all three hours
Hugh Mills would walk back in and say you’re going to lose every guy aircraft we got so you know uh in one particular Mission which is in the chapter of the book called hot dogging it we were flying from point A to point B to prepare for a mission and I didn’t want to fly at altitude and so I just stayed low level the whole way and the Cobra Pilots put up with my foolishness on occasion and we were simply hot dogging it over the tree lines I’d hit a tree line and I’d pop up and dump the nose and go back down to
the ground as I popped over one of the tree lines and rolled the nose over and right in front of me spread across an open field was a 28-man a North Vietnamese heavy weapons platoon they had tripod mounted machine guns they had mortars they had rifles and Squad machine guns just left the cover of the Jungle and were crossing in column as the nose came down I hit the minigun to 4 000 rounds a minute and kicked left pedal and and skewed the minigun right across that line of guys they were running in every every direction and in
a turning back panel which would go for another four or five minutes and as I passed over the column and did a hard right hand turn I noticed that a guy was running down the trail away from me and he had a huge metal pot on his back a rice pot hit the minigun and rolled him and three or four other guys that Cobra is yelling on the radio get out of there one six get out of there they wanted to work and my theory has always been as long as I could control the fight I’m not rolling out knocked out 28 enemy soldiers in about a minute it’s the most
aggressive active turning fight I was ever in in three tours it was a standard routine recon mission day myself and Captain Mike Woods were in the Cobra I was a front seater he was the aircraft Commander so I already told you what my job is right keep my eyeballs on that Loach all the time we were searching in a far north west sector of Rao where there was really nothing but we were searching for for what was purported to be an underground NVA hospital with like 400 beds it was up near as I recall a mountain called nuibara and Bill Jones
was the Scout pilot and his crew chief was Potter I’m looking at the Loach and without any communication at all it started spinning out of control and crashed and exploded didn’t give any sound no no radio call no nothing my gut reaction was to ask Mike Woods to land the helicopter and let me out so that I could go see if anybody survived I left the helicopter and Mike was supposed to go up and give me gun cover while I went into the woods I had a 38 with six rounds of snub nose that was it stupid Brave I don’t know the
first thing I’ll tell you is I’m not a hero I started out charging off through the elephant grass which is about seven or eight feet tall and I’m into a basically a forest canopy floor towards a crash site which I could see smoke burning fire and I could hear the rounds cooking off from the fire and I’m hollering out for Bill Jones or anybody to see if I get any response I didn’t hear a thing I got my weapon up like this in case I saw anything move as I’m running suddenly I hear a voice from behind me I didn’t like it I turned
around and brought my weapon down and realized it was Mike Woods who had left the helicopter running in the in the grass and had come after me with his weapon to help me it was just the two of us out here now in the woods and we didn’t have much for weapons but we kept going and sure enough we found Bill Jones he had gotten out of the helicopter he was burned he was leaning up against a tree we rendered first aid as best we could of course he’s in shock Potter died in the crash turns out Mike had been able to make contact with an Air Force
Forward Air controller that was coming on scene and he also coordinated a rescue Chinook and they were going to hoist Jones out but he couldn’t he couldn’t hold on to the Jungle penetrator so I rode the jungle penetrator with Jones up into the Chinook and then off to kuchi to an immediate emergency hospital I don’t know what happened for sure after that except that our unit did arrive they put the Arabs in they secured the area and they picked up the remains of Potter that action I got the one medal that I’m really
proud of and he did too we got a bronze star with v that is only given for ground Combat Action helicopter Pilots don’t get it that’s my story I usually flew in the second aircraft I was a warrant officer as it was pretty much the same guys we had the same Lieutenant who was the leader of the Arps he would go into the lead aircraft he would be the first underground he would lead our our four horsemen into these lz’s some of the lz’s you would go in one at a time some of them we’d go in all four together there was one instance where we went in
all four together and it wasn’t a good result the first aircraft landed it was uh on the side of a river the T-10 River landed on a booby trap grenade or mine and it blew up the second ship got hit with the shrapnel I was in the third ship the fourth ship started to exit the LZ and thought it was an RPG the Rockefeller grenade he flew through the trees and damaged his rotor blades the door gunner fell out and he had been mortally wounded and we saw him fall into the river so our ship was the only ship that had no damage we
went back in we picked up our wounded there were probably 10 of them so we flew out as many as we could we went in four times to take out the winded on the fourth time to go into the area we wanted to get our dying Soldier out of there we found him he was in the water he obviously to me he was obviously dead we had to lower our our Huey into the water to the water level because the body was too heavy to pull into the Bay of the helicopter unless we did that proceed needed to come to a hover and take off because we were sure that there
might be another booby trap waiting for us and we lost RPM which you need 6600 RPM to to fly so we went down to 6000 RPM but we had to go back through the booby-trapped area because the bottom of our Hue is full of wires we drained water as we flew out we were able to get our RPM back up and then you know take the the dead soldier into the hospital area where they would take care of him that’s just a vagary of War I guess this young man on a day in Vietnam came to my rescue Dean signer and I were in the Cobra we got shot down because we
were going low level back towards fuloi and all of a sudden Mills was taken the lead and all of a sudden he said break right break right and he saw some ground troops down there and I looked down and I saw VidCon raises AK-47 and then I heard and I knew we’d been hit I heard gauges were going this way and Dino said I’m setting it down we got out of the helicopter and I looked over at it and I saw fluid running all down the side of it and I had seen those things burn before and I said we got to get out of here Dino so we took off running ran
about 100 meters we ended up running and getting in tall elephant grass we finally came to a stopping point stopped in the meantime he had called for gun support he said I need any Dark Horse aircraft tell what you heard because you were on the other end of what you heard I was flying another mission another team Hugh Mills had called to anybody in the area that they needed help went racing to a two Mills and Larry Kaufman probably about five to ten minutes away from their location the NVA is getting closer to Steen and Larry and I could
pick up Hughes aircraft bobbing up and down in the distance Over the Hedge line as I got close enough I popped up pick them up I’m in down high shut the hell out of the area and I saw what Dean and Larry were then and I saw all of the Vietnam we had basically separated them from these guys he did when those Rockets came out of those rocket pods and I’m on the ground that was like a jet engine coming out I mean it was really loud and then when they blew up it was really louder and I probably came two feet off the ground
when I heard that thing because it scared me that bad bills came in to pick us up we got in the aircraft well it was marshy right there it was as Vietnam boys rice paddies when Dean and I climbed in this kids went down like that and spread out so they’re in the mud down underneath and Q tried to pull up and he could not get that little bird out of that mud he said throw out all the ammo Scott pilot started tossing out all the ammo as a side effect I lost my pistol all of a sudden Hugh kept rocking back and forth pulling power pulling
pitch pulling power and all of a sudden we shot up and went about 50 feet straight up near just when we landed the Bell Tech rep came out and he said you need to take a look at a helicopter because I don’t think it’s in good anymore he went over and took one look at it and he said how did you get here and he said well we flew that thing here and he said no you didn’t fly that that thing won’t fly and he had it was burnt to a crispy everything was melted on it it had overheated over torqued everything the art platoon leader told
me later it took him four hours to go from where they picked us up back to the helicopter I said why did it take you four hours it couldn’t have been more than 100 meters he said there were so many mines and booby traps that we had to use our bayonets and dig into the ground to see where the mines were we ran through 30 seconds in Houston I landed in it there might have been a little Divine protection there Paul and this young man if he hadn’t been there I probably wouldn’t be here today [Applause] [Music] [Applause]
[Music] [Applause] [Music] sometimes when you came in the only thing you wanted to do was go get drunk I mean that was the way we coped and uh they Outcast Hooch was known for as the party Hooch everybody showed up there to drink and raise cane I went to a veterans thing and I got taken upstairs to meet the general said what do you think about this thing in the sandbox and I said Jennifer as an old Air cab trooper I said I think it’s Un-American the fight of War without booze and he looked at me and kind of went
okay I’ll take a notation of that the officers they stayed over there on on their Turf because I think the rest of the troop was kind of afraid of us at one of the reunions a male clerk came we were all camped around the table the outcast two and he said you don’t remember me do you and you don’t want to hurt somebody’s feelings right I go you look familiar but I can’t place the name and he said well I was the mail Clerk and he said when I came into the troop the first sergeant took me out and pointed to y’all’s Hooch and said that’s
the outcast don’t go down there he said I never went down there I gave your mail to your platoon Sergeant I never you know they overlooked a lot and I feel sorry for today’s Army because we probably said an extremely bad example and that’s why the new regulations are so strict good evening my fellow Americans I believe that one of the reasons for the Deep division about Vietnam is that many Americans have lost confidence in what their government has told them about our policy I’ll tell you this for most of us Vietnam Vets we didn’t
get a real good welcome home gotten out of the army and was transported back and I landed at San Francisco I was aware that it was a controversial War but I wasn’t aware how much hatred was out there and um so I I tried to hitchhike in my uniform into San Francisco proper and I had a guy throw a cup of coffee on me he said you need a ride and you roll down the window I said yeah and so he throws coffee on me he said you know so I thought well what was that all about you know I was just doing my job PTSD jumped in there at about that time I was
wandering I didn’t know what to do I spent about nine months I had bought a car just kind of traveled around the West sleeping in in parks and staying with some friends because I didn’t know what to do I was I was having a lot of flashbacks and bad dreams and sweating um and I didn’t realize the impact of the brutality of War on my emotional development and so I had a hard times dealing with the death destruction that I witnessed over there and took part in and at the time I thought you know I’m doing what my country’s asked me to do
you know and I didn’t disagree with going over there but those people were dishonest they lied they were Cavalier about how many casualties are we going to have this weekend I’ve heard tapes of LBJ and and McNamara saying how many casualties are we going to suffer this week well it’s only going to be 2500 oh just only 2500 oh gosh that’s great well okay let’s send them into Harm’s Way it just totally pisses me off that they were so reckless with the Loyalty of the servicemen that were over there you know we shouldn’t have been there it was a
mistake in my opinion to be there we weren’t serving any purpose you know there wasn’t a strategic objective you know it’s just how many people can you kill so my my political views have changed on that we need to be a lot more careful strategically when we get involved in foreign affairs we we’ve got to make sure that our strategic interests are at stake because we can’t fight every little battle in the world and try and say of humanity that’s not going to work because when you send men into Harm’s Way you’re sending people
that are going to die and you better be careful that you’re doing the right thing and we weren’t doing the right thing in Vietnam in my opinion thanks for the opportunity to present my story over 842 oh Sixers were shot down and lost 4 000 plus Aviation crew members were killed in Vietnam we had a casualty rate people hurt at a rate of about 80 percent all of the pilots killed in 1969 were Scout Pilots Paul Fishman probably saved my life along with Larry Kaufman I’m alive today because of scout crew chiefs who were very good with their M60
and Cobra pilots who were very good with rockets one day I was driving through Sulfur Springs Texas and I saw an Apache helicopter at the Sulfur Springs airport and I said what is an Apache doing here so a turnaround went back young Captain standing I dressed do you mind if I take a look inside the cockpit and he said well yeah I guess so for what reason why would you want to look in the cockpit I said well I flew cobras in Vietnam and I just wanted to kind of see how how much are they alike he said oh man did you
flew hundred killer things fly 100 killer teams I said yes you can climb in that thing if you want to go ahead just have a seat he said we studied you guys you’re our heroes well I had never contemplated that ball that we were somebody’s Heroes and they studied our tactics what we had learned in Vietnam and learning flying low fighting an enemy Force helped us to begin the present day utilization of helicopters on the world stage the Apache is the end result of what Cobras did the Scout pilot of Vietnam evolved into the Night
Stalker of today and we are extremely proud of that these guys have kept the legend of the 086 the little bird alive the guys that gravitate to the night stalkers are the guys who would have been Scout Pilots I personally didn’t have a lot of need to keep living in Vietnam so I didn’t go to any reunions even when they started having them early on it was probably 25 years at least maybe more than that before I got a call from one of the guys Larry Kaufman and he said the daughter of one of our one of my mentors and guys at in our unit a fellow
named Joe vad who died on his last day in country his daughter was now a grown woman and was coming into town and wanted to meet up with some people who knew her father so I thought well that’s okay I’ll go do that and I found out it was pretty fun see the bond is such that 50 years later we still talk to each other routinely we still have have reunions we we have get-togethers I bond with Hugh Mills we’ve been together uh as best friends I I live less than a block and a half running now for over over 30 years you
know I think I was 19 when this all started but it was something that I would never never trade for anything else got friendships that’ll go for a lifetime and got memories that uh that’ll last forever even though I was there just for yeah a short time there was so much going on there was so much coordination and working together and bonding it has lasted 53 years you know I left there in 1970.
and I’m visiting friends that I made in in that time today we brag on our grandkids and children and their accomplishments and mostly we’re just we’re just thankful you don’t really know a person until a wife or death thing is presented to you and it’s amazing you know the quality of the American Soldier and all of Dietrich was that was my privilege in life to have served in Detroit because every one of those guys would have gone to the Limit to help you out so it’s a very uh very good friendship that has lasted almost
two three quarters of our lives so I’m a recreational pilot these days but I can tell you that my days as a scout pilot are the most formative portion of my military career I was as close to being Immortal as I was ever going to be I saw the most action I would ever see as a scout pilot and the thing I’m most proud of if you look at the memorial page in the in the early pages of the book you’ll see the names of the guys that died with us very few people in the scouts got any kind of recognition it’s a very small
number of people when you consider there’s only 10 Scout pilots in in the unit of 150 people it was an opportunity to tell the story of the Scout pilot in Vietnam that is a a trade that’s gone today it’s completely gone the Army has no Scout capability but it was the formative assignment in my career and as far as I’m concerned it laid the foundation for me as a human being like most military guys if you serve close you are a literal Band of Brothers and there’s nothing we wouldn’t do for each other you should ask Rod Willis about the day
that the reporter from CBS came to our unit and wanted to fly in the scouts because he didn’t know anything about it he lasted 15 minutes begged to get out of the aircraft started this nice reporter with me and I engaged him with my mini gun and when they did that they started firing back and when they started to fire back the Stars and Stripes reporters slid down in his seat because you could see all these things coming back at him and he was petrified and we found out after we inserted the Arps and everything in there to the area
to find out what it was it was a large NVA unit it was moving a bunch of Vietnam prisoner War back up to Hanoi so we were able to free up a lot of Vietnamese soldiers who probably died if it had him but they never never sent me out again with another reporter so it was a fairly
