Studies and Observation Group (SOG) . . . Prologue
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Assistance_Command,_Vietnam_–_Studies_and_Observations_Group
Sunday Afternoon, March 24, 1968
The Crew Chief popped open my door, stepped up onto the flat surface on the toe of the skid and slid the armored seat plate protecting my left side back as the door Gunner did the same for the right seat pilot. The pilot beeped the engine governor down to flight idle. A few seconds later the engine instruments stabilized, the engine whine dropped a few dozen decibels and out of the annoying range in frequency as he rolled the throttle back to ground idle for the two-minute cool down. I pulled the lap belt release lever which freed the shoulder harness straps. The Crew Chief grabbed the left shoulder strap and flicked it over the slider to get it out of my way as I tossed the right one over the side of the seat. The pilot’s hands were all over the center console shutting down radios and navigation aids as I pushed the mic up over the visor shroud and unsnapped the chin strap on my helmet. I slipped my helmet off hanging it on the corner of the retracted side plate, straightened out my sunglasses, pulled off my flight gloves one finger at a time, and laid them on a blank spot on the center console. I grabbed the ball point pen, my Zippo and my L & M’s from the pocket of my chicken plate vest and sat them on the gloves. I ripped the chicken plate vest velcro straps to the sides and pulled the vest over my head and set it on the floor with the chicken plate leaning against the yaw pedals. As I straightened up, the Chief handed me the logbook he pulled out of the pocket behind my seat. I grabbed the little pile off the center console, put the cigarettes and lighter in a very damp left breast pocket of my jungle fatigues shirt, and laid the gloves across the top edge of the chest protector.
“Two minutes, Dale. EGT and engine panel is in the green,” the pilot said.
“OK, shut her down,” I responded. He rolled the throttle closed past the ground idle stop, switched off the battery, generators, rotating beacon, the remaining switches in the overhead panel, and glanced again at his check list. The tach needles separated as the rotor rpm slowed and the engine rpm dropped to zero. Quiet . . . except the soft swoosh, swoosh of the main rotor winding down and the clicking of the cooling engine.
“It’s hellish hot compared to the crappy weather we’ve been having,” the pilot said as he pulled off his helmet.
“You’ll get used to it. Just be glad that you’re not a grunt! At least we have a 48-foot fan keeping us cool while we are at work,” I said. “And a nice cool shower at the end of the day”
I keep track of the tonnage, number of people carried, sorties and landings using lines scratched in groups of fives on the notepad, under the folded map on the clipboard strapped to my right thigh. I also noted blocks of flight time between fuel stops. I filled in the blanks, 1.9 hours of Combat Support time, one sortee, and three landings. We practically had the day off I mumbled to no one in particular, as I handed the logbook back to the Chief. He laid it on the cargo floor behind my seat.
I pulled the map off my knee board, put it in my left thigh pocket, unsnapped the kneeboard and laid it on the floor as I grabbed the hand hold on the front edge of the door jamb, lifted my right leg over the cyclic stick, pulled myself up, rotated around the left front corner of the chair and stepped down backward onto the toe of the skid and then to the ground. I pulled my helmet bag out from under my seat, emptied the stuff inside on the floor and parked my field cap on my headb. I grabbed my helmet off the corner of the slider, unplugged the commo-cord, put the gloves inside and slipped it into the helmet bag along with knee board and the stuff laying on the floor. My stuff included a survival radio, pen signal flares and my stick of C4 (I used a thumb sized pinch like Sterno to heat my C-Rations) and then zipped up the bag and sat it on the floor next to the chest protector.
The Crew Chief was standing in front of the aircraft just outside of the rotor disc with the main rotor tie down waiting for it to come to a stop and the gunner was removing the M-60 machine guns from their mounts and laying them on the cargo floor.
“I’ll post flight the top side, you’ve got the lower side,” I said to the pilot.
“Roger That.”
The Chief hooked the stopped main rotor blade and started walking it around to the tail boom to secure it as I started climbing up to the roof of the Huey checking the rotor hub, engine inlet filters, radio/nav antennas and the skin for battle damage. Everything was normal so I climbed down and picked the logbook off the floor.
“You have anything on post flight?" I asked the pilot.
“Everything looks good.” I noted the clean postflight in the logbook and set it back on the cargo deck.
“You ready to head down to operations?" I asked the pilot.
“I’ve just got to grab my stuff," he said as I grabbed my helmet, pulled the chest protector off the floor and swung a vest arm hole over my shoulder like a backpack strap. I walked around the sandbag wall, tapped a cigarette out of the pack, replaced it in the still damp pocket, flipped the Zippo, lit the cigarette and waited for the pilot to come around the front of the aircraft. We headed down to the operations tent to check in. The Crew Chief and Gunner stayed behind to finish cleaning and buttoning up their aircraft.
I stopped by my tent on the way and dropped my helmet bag and chest protector on my bunk I grabbed a couple of Cokes out of our tent's communal mini fridge, met the pilot in the company street near operations and gave him one of the Cokes. We headed to the entrance of the operations tent.
“Mr. Fillmore.” I looked toward the sound, saw my Platoon Leader and replied, “Captain Luther" as I gave him a smart hand salute. He returned the salute. “Do you have a minute?"
“Yes sir." I turned to the pilot and told him to continue to operations and check us in as I walked toward Cpt. Luther.
“We need to send a crew down to Phu Bai to work with Special Forces for a couple of weeks. Are you interested?"
“What kind of work?"
“I don’t really know. I imagine it will be like working with the LRRPs back in An Khe”. Gutwein and his crew are already down there."
“Why are you asking me instead of just assigning me the mission?"
“It’s volunteer only. The Old Man says it's risky and he wants volunteers."
Never volunteer for anything Dale… It will bite you on the ass, I thought. “OK, when do I go?"
“In the morning. Check with operations for a fresh aircraft and I’ll round you up a peter pilot."
“Yes Sir!" I saluted and headed back toward operations when a familiar excited voice with a strong Queens accent stopped me.
“Dale, I want to go down to Phu Bai with you as your peter pilot!" blurted Tom Harnisher.
“How do you know about that?”
“Luther’s been looking for you the last half hour or so and the rumor was about a half hour ahead of him. Apparently, a crew wanted out”.
“Harnisher, you just made Aircraft Commander. Why would you be willing to fly right seat?”
“I know, I’d love to work with those guys, what they do beats the hell out of flying log and boring holes in the skies around here. Besides that, I think we would make a great team."
“If you fly with me, I’m the AC and you’re the peter pilot."
“I’m definitely OK with that.”
“OK. Go talk to Luther. He’ll have to take it to the Old Man, since you’re not in the 1st. Platoon. I’ll meet you in operations."
Warrant Officer Tom Harnisher and I were in the same flight class at Wolters and Rucker. During flight school we were always organized alphabetically by last name and so we were never in the same platoon, but we knew each other well because after hours the pool table and adult beverages opened his loud voice with humor and his exploits in Queens growing up. At Ft. Rucker after Instrument Training in the Bell “Whirlybirds” (from the late ‘50 TV show), we all transitioned to the Huey and started the tactical phase of training. We very likely flew together, although I don’t have a specific memory of that. We became closer when we both got orders to the 1st. Cav toward the end of flight school and had the same report date to Oakland Army Base for our one year all expense vacation to beautiful SE Asia via Travis AFB on a C-141 with stops on Wake Island, Clark AFB in the Philippines and finally the white sands of Cam Rahn Bay, South Vietnam. We in-processed, hung out at the O-Club after hours, transported to 1st Cav HQs at An Khe together, went to in country training (charm school) and we celebrated my 20th birthday together in Sin City just outside the gates of Camp Radcliff at An Khe. Of the group of 30 or so brand new minted warrant officer pilots assigned to the 1st Cavalry, Tom, Ken Getchell, and I were all assigned to the same field unit, B company, 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion located at LZ English.
He was always a skillful, gregarious, but unassuming pilot. Most of us could not wait for the day that we would be eligible to move to the left seat as Aircraft Commanders. There were three qualifications in our unit. A minimum of 300 combat hours in country was the first milestone. After you attain that experience level, there had to be an open slot to fill. Our unit was authorized twenty UH-1H Huey helicopters, ten per flight platoon and with that 20 pilots per flight platoon, half of them Aircraft Commanders. When I became eligible experience-wise, I had to wait until another AC vacated his position by rotating back to the world or a duty change like becoming an operations officer. The last two requirements were a recommendation by the leadership in your unit, to assume mission responsibility and the ability to command a ship and crew, and a flight skills check-ride by the company Instructor Pilot.
Tom was never worried about being promoted to AC nor was he perceived as wanting the responsibility. The result was that he did not become one until well over six hundred hours of experience. He passed his AC check-ride a week or so before he volunteered to fly with me to the SOG unit at Phu Bai. He was experienced, rock steady under pressure and an extremely skilled pilot. I could not have found a better fit as my right seat for this so-called “risky” mission.
Monday Morning, March 25, 1968
I rotated the frequency selector switch on the center console from intercom to UHF and pushed the transmit button on the floor near the console. “Phu Bai Tower, this is Killer Spade seven-eight-five entering left downwind for landing POL, weapons safe.” Tom leveled out at 500 feet pattern altitude and turned 45 degrees to the right and entered downwind.
“Spade 785, winds calm, altimeter two-niner-niner-eight, stay left of the runway on final, cleared to land POL.” (POL is a multi-station hot refueling area where several helicopters can refuel simultaneously with engines running.)
“Roger that, Altimeter two-niner-niner-eight, cleared to land POL,” I transmitted.
I flipped the console switch back to intercom and stepped down on the floor button. “Guys, as soon as we top off we’ll pop over to the Special Forces compound and see what we got ourselves into.”
As the heels of the skids touched ground in POL, Specialist Bill Quigley, 785’s Crew Chief, stepped off the skid onto the ground and walked forward as the aircraft came to a rest and opened my door and slid back the side plate armor. PFC Chuck Morris, the Gunner, did the same on Tom's side. Then Morris walked around the front of the aircraft and picked up the nearest fueling nozzle and walked toward the fueling point on the right side of the aircraft about halfway between the rear edge of the cargo door jamb and the mounting point of the tail boom. In the meantime, Quigley slid the right cargo door closed to expose the fuel point and removed the fuel cap. Morris stuffed the nozzle in the hole and pulled the lever.
Usually, especially after a long day flying, the pilots often take turns for a bio break behind the fuselage, on the ground under the tail boom when we are in POL as there is usually no opportunity elsewhere. But it was a short flight from Camp Evans where we lived to Phu Bai so the bio break was unnecessary. Instead we just sat in our seats with our outside foot holding the door open while the crew refueled us. As soon as I heard the cargo door slide open, I pulled my foot away, Quigley slid my armored seat slider forward and locked it in place, closed my door and took his place behind his machine gun. Morris did the same.
“Phu Bai Tower, this is Spade seven-eight-five, request a high hover taxi from POL to SOG Pad”.
“Seven-eight-five cleared for hover taxi to SOG Pad.”
“Roger that, cleared to hover taxi to SOG Pad” I transmitted.
Quigley intercomed “Clear Left Sir” and Morris followed with “Clear Right”.
“OK, Tom the panel is good, let's go.”
We parked at the north end of the pad on the left side, ahead of two “Smiling Tiger” Huey Cobras and behind another Killer Spade bird.
Several other helicopters of various flavors were behind us or next to us on the right side of the pad. There were two Marine Huey Gunships with no markings on the right side of the pad next to us. Behind them were two Vietnamese Air Force CH 34’s. On the left side of the pad behind us and the Cobras were two Marine Boeing CH 46 Sea Knights. Behind them a few miscellaneous aircraft not associated with our missions.
After we shut down, and filled out the log book, we left our gear in the aircraft and followed a young soldier with a green beret over to operations where we met up with Gutwein, the Operations Officer and his staff. We were on a three day rotation where our two Army Hueys and the two Army Cobras were on day one missions, the two Marine Gunships and the two Marine Sea Knights were on day two missions and lastly the two Vietnamese Air Force Choctaws were on day three missions and either the Marine Guns or Army Cobras would rotate as their escorts.
We were told that we would be assigned quarters after the briefing for officers and crew, we would be required to be on standby at all times no further than 2 minutes from operations with aircraft ready to fly. Apparently, we were on day three as we were told that we would be doing a team insertion tomorrow afternoon.
After the briefing the same young soldier showed us around. The O-Club, Officers Mess, our quarters and then he took us over to the arms room. The NCO in charge started by showing all the different flavors of weapons the teams like to take out on missions with them. Lots of flavors! They had AK 47’s, SSK’s, Thompson Sub machine guns, M3 Grease Guns, hand guns, with and without suppressors including .22’s. I was carrying my Smith & Wesson .38 special revolver and he asked me if I had a service rifle as well. I told him that I had an M-16 but I left it in my unit’s Armory as it was two long to get through the huey pilot’s door if you are downed and in a hurry. The NCO asked me if I saw anything I liked.
The Grease gun was the coolest thing that I have ever seen. I just had to have it. It was short enough to evacuate a crashed or burning helicopter, had an extendable wire stock and only one moving part while firing and it used very common .45 ACP ammunition. It would fit on the floor between my seat and the center console. I could even hang the wire stock from the ashtray making it very easy to reach.
“I’ll take the Grease Gun”, I told the Sergeant, “and some ammo.”
“Here you go Sir” he said as he handed me the M3 and two fifty round boxes of ammo. “Do you need a cleaning kit?”
“No Sarge, I brought my cleaning stuff down with me.”
He went through the same process with Tom and later with Quigley and Morris. After the Armory, the soldier took us to our quarters, left us and went back to work. Tom and I went up to the aircraft and picked up our duffel bags and we headed back to our hooch to move in. They were all wood hooches, a definite upgrade from the GP Medium tents back home at Camp Evans. There were four people to a hooch and the beds were steel framed bunk beds. Springs as it were and real mattresses. There was also a chest of drawers of sorts, but we typically did not completely unpack so utilized the top of the chest and under the bunk space. They had a single light, so they were a little dark, but the wood of the building reflected more than the dark OD of the tents, so it was relatively cheery.
I spent the rest of the day settling in, making final checks on the aircraft, checking out the fit of the M3 between my seat and the console, enjoying lunch and dinner in the officers mess, and of course lounging in the air conditioned O-Club. Life is good!
Our Mission
Our mission was to insert six-man teams into areas where first-hand intelligence was needed and to later extract the teams when that mission was concluded. We operated in the A Shau Valley and in the area around and west of Khe Sahn. The troop carrying aircraft (the Choctaws, Sea Nights and the Hueys) rotated daily as I mentioned before. Also included in every mission was an Air Force FAC (Forward Air Controller) flying an O-2 Cessna Skymaster that went by call sign “Covey”. He was there to get us assistance from high performance aircraft. Our missions had the priority necessary to divert Air Force or Navy Jets from any other mission including bombing runs to North Vietnam. The FAC was the guy who took care of getting us that support when needed.
During March of 1968 the Army helicopters and crews were provided by the 229th Aviation Battalion (Assault Helicopter), the slicks from Bravo Company (Killer Spade) and the Guns from Delta Company (Smiling Tigers). On Tuesday afternoon, March 26th, it was our turn to run the mission. We were going to insert a team consisting of three US Army Green Berets and three Chinese Mercenaries. No member of the Special Forces team carried identification and their uniforms did not have name tags, shoulder patches or any of the usual sewed on information that would assist the enemy if they got captured. The team’s mission was to infiltrate a NVA (North Vietnamese Army) Regimental Headquarters and steal documents concerning radio frequencies, call signs and other information of significance. They would also try to capture a radio operator and bring him out alive for interrogation. We were to insert them in the north end of the A Shau Valley up on the four thousand foot ridge of mountains that made up the eastern border of the valley, near what later became “Signal Hill” during the Cav’s assault into the A Shau on April 19th. This location was a few klicks east of the NVA headquarters.
WO1 Ron “Guts” Gutwien was the AC, WO1 George Phillips was Pilot, Mike Keele was Crew Chief and Wayne Carrol was Gunner of the lead ship and would do the insertion. I was AC of the high ship and WO1 Tom Harnisher was my Pilot. Crew Chief Bill Quigley and Gunner Chuck Morris made up my magnificent crew. We cranked up in mid-afternoon after enough of the cloud cover had burned off that we had some holes to climb through enroute to the valley. AH-1G Cobra aircraft were not equipped to fly on instruments, and unless we could fly our missions visually the Cobras had to stay home. The insertion went without a hitch and we were back at Phu Bai having beers in the Special Forces O-Club by dinner time. Gutwien made several landings and all but one was a decoy. The Cobra gunships stuck close and covered Guts while he made all of his stops. Harnisher and I stayed high, ready to pick up the crew of any aircraft shot down or the Special Forces team if necessary. The insertion went so smoothly that we could have given the Air Force FAC pilot and my crew the afternoon off.
When we arrived at the SOG compound the crews of the Marine gunships were kind enough to show us their equipment. Their “E” model gunships had the same airframe and rotor system as the Army’s Bravo model Huey gunships.
Their weapon systems looked like they were stolen out of the Army’s boneyard. They had four rigid mounted M-60 machine guns, two on each side facing forward inboard of a rocket pod carrying 7 rockets. Before the Army started using Mini-guns they also had this four M-60 machine gun configuration, but the Army’s were flex mounted and the aiming of the guns was controlled by the right seat pilot with sophisticated sights. It did not matter which way the aircraft was flying as long as the target was located within the area between the guns left and right outboard stops. The Marine version of the quad 60’s was rigid mounted, and the pilots had to point the aircraft directly at the target to aim the guns. Apparently, the Marines couldn’t pass up an Army garage sale when they needed some equipment. There were some things that did strike us as a positive, however, was the terrific navigational instruments their aircraft came equipped with. They had radar altimeters and two sets of VOR’s (a system that gives you the direction you are, relative to a transmitter at an airfield or ship) with DME (and the distance you are from the VOR transmitter). These systems also gave you glide slope information (the steepness of your approach into an airfield). You could land an aircraft all the way to the ground without being able to see outside the cabin with this equipment. They also had a machine gun in a nose turret. That gave them some “flex” capabilities. The main difference between the Marine pilots and us were our ages. The Marine pilots were not hot shot punk kid “Wobbly Ones” like us. They were suave, debonair, and very professional older fellows (in their late twenties and thirties), for the most part Captains, with a Major thrown in for variety, and they walked around like they had a stick up their backside. No interbranch trash talking here.
Wednesday Morning, March 27, 1968
About 9:00 AM Wednesday morning March 27th, we were out at the helipad when a Green Beret Sergeant came running out, yelling “We need all the pilots in the briefing room now!”
The Vietnamese Air Force pilots were nowhere to be found and it was their turn with the Marine gunships in the rotation that day. The weather was lousy. It was drizzling and the ceiling was less than a thousand feet and solidly overcast. We and the Marine pilots started toward the briefing room at a dead run, right behind the Sergeant.
We came into the room and the operations Lieutenant immediately started the briefing. Apparently, the team that we inserted the day before was in trouble and needed an emergency extraction. They had infiltrated the Regimental Headquarters as planned but something went bad and they were caught. Then they escaped and were now on the run evading the NVA. At the time they called in they were about a hundred meters ahead of the enemy and heading down the mountain toward the valley floor. The longer they had to wait for an extraction the more likely that they would be killed or re-captured. The Vietnamese Air Force pilots were still not there, and the Marines declined the mission due to bad weather. Gutwein immediately volunteered us to do the extraction and one of the Cobra ACs said that we weren’t going anywhere without them and promptly volunteered to fly cover. When I heard Guts volunteering us, I immediately felt a surge of adrenaline kick up the butterflies. The race was on and I no longer wondered what we got ourselves into.
We ran down to the helipad yelling at the crews to get the covers off and untie the blades. We were cranking. We had already done the preflight inspection and skipped the checklist. I started cranking the aircraft as Harnisher buckled himself in. As soon as I got the aircraft to flight idle, Tom took over as I buckled in. The 60’s were already mounted and the Crew Chief and Gunner were standing next to the aircraft plugged into the comm system and ready to go. Guts called for a radio check; I answered, and each of the Cobras answered in turn. Guts called the tower for an immediate departure from our helipad, the crew jumped in and I pulled pitch. It had been less than two minutes since we got to the aircraft and we were airborne and enroute to the A Shau Valley.
Ordinarily it would only have been a twenty-five-minute flight to the valley but this morning we were socked in and could not climb out through the clouds with the Cobras. We had to find a way to get out to the valley over the mountains without flying through the clouds. Guts was up ahead leading the way. We tried valley after valley, and each try ended in a box canyon. Finally we decided that we didn’t have time or the fuel to continue this trial and error and had to climb out through the clouds and in doing that we had to release the Cobras and go out with the very uncomfortable feeling of having to face the bully without our big brother standing behind us.
To be continued . . .
No comments:
Post a Comment