SCOUTS. DARKHORSE ONE SEVEN

SCOUTS

By the middle of March ‘69, being a slick driver looked as though it might become my life’s profession. Not a day passed that I didn’t wonder if Major Cummings had forgotten all about moving me to scouts. But while I was flying slicks, and wishing for scouts, I was learning. I was getting some in‑ country experience that helped me dry out a bit behind the ears.

I was becoming familiar with the 1st Division’s tactical area of operational responsibility (TAOR). Vietnam’s III Corps geography (war zones C and D) was getting pretty familiar to me: from the city of Saigon, the Dog Bone, and VC Island in the south to, roughly, Phuoc Vinh on the east, the Cambodian Parrot’s Beak and Fishhook to the west on up to the Cambode border on the north.

And I learned about going into hot LZs with enemy AK rounds tearing through the airframe, staying “in trail” while all hell broke loose around you. Though I desperately wanted out of Hueys and into OH‑ 6s, I knew that I’d never sell slick pilots short on raw determination and basic courage. Slicks were not gunships. They weren’t equipped with the firepower to deal with an enemy trying to shoot you out of the sky. The mission was to breach the enemy ground fire, stay in trail formation, touch down in that LZ long enough for the ARPs to jump out of the ship (usually no longer than about three seconds), and then get the hell out of Dodge. At fifteen hundred feet or more, where ground fire wasn’t a hazard, most Huey pilots kept their seats adjusted high enough to see well out of the cockpit. But as their ships hit final into the landing zone, the pilots would pop the vertical adjustment so that the seat dropped down inside the seat armor plate. When the seat was all the way down, the top of the armor shield was just about at eye level–eyeball defilade, we called it. Then, when enemy rounds cracked through the aircraft, only your legs, part of your arms, and the top of your head were outside the armor plate. The front of your body was protected by the “chicken plate, ” and the. 45 holster, tucked neatly between your legs, protected your masculinity.

In addition, I learned how to plot and call artillery strikes on a hostile target to neutralize the area before taking a flight of Hueys into the landing zone. And, on the ground, I also gained fame as the greatest rat killer in the history of hootch number 28, having some legendary face‑ offs with the very large Vietnamese rodent.

But there was one thing I never did learn while I was flying slicks. That was how to be patient when I saw the hunter‑ killer teams taking off to scout out and lay destruction on the enemy. I didn’t want to just react to the enemy. I wanted to be out there finding the enemy and laying the point of the bayonet to him.

During the days that I was flying Hueys, John Herchert was in and out of my hootch every once in a while. Herchert was commanding officer of the scout platoon, the Outcasts.

One day Herchert stopped by my bunk to tell me that one of his scout pilots had been hurt and there would be an opening in the platoon. “I need a section leader, ” he told me. “If you still want to fly scouts, we’ve got a job for you. ”

My transfer from slicks to the scout platoon was made on 23 March 1969. I had finally made it to the Outcasts!

The instructor pilot for the OH‑ 6, CW2. Bill Hayes, was off on R and R for a few days when I was transferred, so I started my OH‑ 6 orientation with scout pilots Bill Jones (One Eight) and Jim Morrison (One Four). I had a lot to learn.

The OH‑ 6 had a personality all her own. She was light, nimble, and extremely responsive to every control input. While the Huey was stable, dependable, kind of like the faithful family sedan, the OH‑ 6 was like getting a brand‑ new MGA Roadster. She was sexy!

The ship was unusually quiet in flight, giving her the added advantage of being practically on top of a potential enemy before anyone on the ground even knew a helicopter was around.

By design, the OH‑ 6 was small and cramped. Her mission gross weight was just over 2, 160 pounds. With the main rotor extended, she was only 30 feet, 3 3/4 inches long, and at the pilot’s cabin just a fraction over 4 1/2 feet wide. Not much space for two pilot seats side by side, with an instrument console in between.

There was room inside for just three people–the crew chief‑ door gunner on the right side of the rear cabin, the pilot in the right front seat, and the copilot‑ observer in the left front seat.

In combat configuration, the crew chief’s jump seat in the back was rigged so that the gunner sat sideways facing the open right rear cabin door. His M‑ 60 hung in front of him from a bungee cord. Having no seat belt harness per se, the crew chief had a “monkey strap” that secured him to the aircraft but allowed him to move around the cabin.

Vulnerable as he was to ground fire from the bottom and into both sides of the aircraft, the crew chief sat in a canvas jump seat, the underside of which was fitted with a tungston carbide armor plate. He also wore two chicken plate body armor units, one shielding his chest and the other covering his back. The chicken plate body armor for aircrewmen consisted of a curved ceramic fiberglass shell over a tungston carbide inner liner. This ballistic barrier was capable of defeating up to 7. 62mm small‑ arms fire (such as AK‑ 47 enemy rounds), but nothing as large as. 50‑ caliber projectiles.

Under Herchert’s system of flying three‑ man scout crews, each crew member had his own area of responsibility. The pilot basically flew the airplane. The crew chief, in the backseat right behind the pilot, was the door gunner and the crewman responsible for releasing grenades out the door. The various types of grenades were lined up on a wire strung across the back of the pilot’s armor plate. These usually included several colors of smoke, Willie Pete (white phosphorous), and concussion and fragmentation grenades. Besides his M‑ 60, the crew chief might also have other ordnance stowed around and under his seat, such as an M‑ 79 grenade launcher, a shotgun, and an M‑ 16 rifle. The experienced crew chief also helped with the scouting work on the right side of the aircraft in support of the pilot, who had to split his scouting mission between watching forward and sideways to the right while at the same time flying the aircraft.

The observer had the visual responsibility for the left side of the aircraft, from about twelve o’clock to his front to eight or eight‑ thirty behind. Strapped into the copilot’s seat, it was difficult for him to see very far over his left shoulder toward the rear of the ship, but there was an excellent view to the immediate left and left forward. Scout ships flew without doors, so there was an uninterrupted field of vision.

The observer carried a weapon that he could fire out the left side. This was in lieu of minigun units, which were not mounted on Herchert’s OH‑ 6s. Some left‑ seaters had a standard M‑ 60, but that weapon was less than satisfactory because of its weight and the fact that it would jam easily when fired with its casing ejector pointed against the air‑ stream. So most observers used M‑ 16s or CAR‑ 15s. The CAR‑ 15 was shorter and easier to handle. Both the M‑ 16 and CAR‑ 15 resisted jamming because they were magazine fed from the bottom of the weapon and not affected by the force of the airstream.

The observer would also string smoke, gas, and incendiary grenades on wires all over the front of the cockpit. Wires were hooked anyplace they could be on the side of the ship, and then connected to the ship’s instrument panel. That provided room for extra grenades to be attached by their spoons to various places on the aircraft. Sometimes, they were even stuck in holes in the instrument panel if instruments had been removed for repair.

The weight of the three crew members left no room for a minigun and ammunition. Scouting policy, as established by Major Cummings and John Herchert, was that a scout was to scout–nothing else. The scout half of the Loach‑ Cobra team was to find the enemy and, if fired upon, drop smoke and call in the Cobra to shoot up the place. The scout usually didn’t even go back into the area to recon it after the gun made its passes.

I was aware that probably nine or ten sets of the XM27E1 minigun kits for the OH‑ 6 were sitting in storage over at aircraft maintenance. But they had never been installed on the ships. The reasoning was that, with a minigun on the aircraft, the Loach pilot would be concentrating on shooting and not focusing on the scouting requirements at hand. It was not a scout’s job, according to Herchert, to try to kill the enemy–just to find him for the Cobras.

It always seemed to me that the enemy, under those rules, had more control of his situation than we did. All Charlie had to do when a Loach got too close was to rip off a burst or two in the scout’s general direction, and the OH‑ 6 was gone, probably for good.

My first scout orientation flight was with Bill Jones, Darkhorse One Eight. On that first flight, I flew as the observer, in the left front seat. I was to be the third set of eyeballs on the mission, my initial VR‑ 1 (visual reconnaissance team 1) operation. The date was 24 March 1969, and we were scheduled to depart at 0530.

We flew in the company of our “snake” (Cobra gunship) and headed for a recon of the Michelin rubber plantation, located about forty‑ five kilometers northwest of our base at Phu Loi. One scout and one Cobra usually comprised the hunter‑ killer team, and VR‑ 1 was always the first regularly scheduled helicopter flight to go out in the early morning for normal reconnaissance of enemy activity.

The Michelin was known to contain large concentrations of enemy troops–a perfect place for me to start learning how to scout.

Dawn was still fifteen minutes away when Jones and I climbed aboard the OH‑ 6 and strapped in The crew chief was always the last one to get into the ship. It was his job to unsnap the fire extinguisher that was stowed at the pilot’s right foot and stand fire guard at the rear of the ship while the pilot was cranking. He watched the engine section and, in case of a fire on start‑ up, he would alert the crew and allow them to exit the aircraft while applying the extinguisher.

While One Eight was running up the engine, he asked me to get on the radio and check artillery. Our flight was to take us from Phu Loi up to the vicinity of Dau Tieng, then on over the Michelin. The point in checking artillery activity was, as Jones subtly put it, “My whole day would be ruined if we fly into our own artillery rounds on the way up there. ”

When Jones had the aircraft at full running RPMs, he called the Phu Loi tower for clearance. The crew chief had replaced the fire extinguisher in the aircraft and climbed back aboard to secure his seat belt and monkey strap harness.

As we departed and cleared the perimeter fence outbound, the door gunner armed his M‑ 60. He pulled the bolt to the rear, locking it in place, then lifted the feed tray cover, pulled on the safety, and inserted a belt of ammunition. The belt was tied directly to the fifteen hundred to three thousand rounds of linked ammo in the wooden box at his feet. He was then ready to fire with just the flick‑ off of the gun’s safety.

En route, Jones lined up on the usual forty‑ five‑ degree angle off his Cobra’s left wing and maintained altitude at fifteen hundred feet. This altitude kept us out of the range of enemy small‑ arms ground fire.

I kept a close eye on One Eight and paid careful attention to everything he was doing. There really wasn’t much for the observer to do until the mission area was reached. I also noticed the team coordination between the scout pilot, the scout gunner, and the observer. It was evident that the scout pilot was the cement that held the team together.

We were nearing Dau Tieng. Off at about two o’clock I could see the tall, straight, tightly interwoven rubber trees of the Michelin plantation. They looked lush and beautiful.

One Eight had told me that the area below us was loaded with enemy soldiers, who felt secure there for a couple of reasons. First of all, the thick foliage made it nearly impossible to detect movement or military activity. Second, the bad guys were aware that the United States was reluctant to create an international incident and would avoid going into the plantation after them, and possibly shooting up the invaluable rubber trees!

Jones was now on the radio talking to his gunship, asking about the rules of engagement for this mission. This was always done before a scout ship descended into the area to be worked. In some mission areas, the Cobra would instruct the scout to maintain a “weapons tight” condition, which meant that the scout was permitted to fire only in self‑ defense. In other areas the scout had “weapons free” authorization–he could shoot anything that appeared hostile. Weapons free was the order for that day. One Eight was quick to tell me, however, that there was a modifier to both of those weapons conditions, that being the Darkhorse rules of engagement. It was troop law that nobody shot noncombatants or women or children, unless they were shooting at you.

Jones kicked the bird out of altitude and down to treetop level, where we would begin our scouting patterns. Until I had actually taken that helicopter fall from fifteen hundred feet to treetop level, I had no idea how dramatic and violent, how exhilarating and terrifying, that maneuver was. You were moving along comfortably in your aircraft on a horizontal axis. Then suddenly the ship was kicked over into a near‑ vertical descent, and your stomach felt as though it had just been pitched into the roof of your mouth.

Then, just as suddenly, that movement was followed by a recovery back into a horizontal axis for entry into the search area. The next thing you noticed was how close you were to the trees–how they suddenly were rushing by your feet at what seemed like hundreds of miles an hour, although you were flying somewhere in the vicinity of only sixty knots. But to a fledgling scout pilot, that seemed too damned fast!

All I could see was a sea of green–a blurred rush of foliage beneath the ship’s bubble that was totally indistinguishable. The sensation actually made me airsick. The only way I could even briefly relieve my nausea was to concentrate on something in the cockpit that was not moving.

I wondered how in the hell a scout pilot was supposed to see anything on the ground flying like this. I had flown low level before, but always concentrating on my piloting, not on what was passing beneath me.

“Always, ” Jones said after we were down, “come out of altitude in an irregular manner. ” In his own quiet, almost philosophical way, Jones continued to instruct me over the intercom. “Remember back at Rucker how they taught you to come down in a standard flight school spiral… how to do those broad, regular, descending orbits that were just as predictable as going down a spiral staircase? Well, don’t ever do that when you’re scouting. It’s not all that difficult for an enemy to determine your descent pattern and angle. He’ll fix where you’re going to come out over the ground, orient all his weapons in that specific area, and put his rounds right into your gut. ” That made sense to me.

“What you want to do, ” he went on, “is get out of altitude quickly. Come down a good distance away from the area you intend to work, then slide in low and fast so the bad guys have less chance of picking you up. Then as soon as you’re down and start your sweeps of the area, begin looking for anything that jumps out at you, anything that looks different from everything else. ”

Jones radioed that he was breaking to go low level and start his pattern. His gun replied, “Roger that, One Eight… and why don’t you take a look at that clearing off your right nose for any signs of bunkers in the tree line? ”

Jones had come out of our descent at treetop level a mile or so away from the search area; now he made for the clearing pointed out by the gun.

After a few seconds running along the tree line, One Eight barked at me over the intercom. “Did you see that? ”

“See what? ” I yelled back as I scoured the ground.

“I’ll come around again, and when I say ‘now, ’ you look hard three o’clock right over my helmet visor and tell me what you see. ” I still didn’t see anything but a clearing in the jungle; absolutely nothing seemed out of place.

Finally, in desperation, Jones said, “Look where I’m pointing. See the square shape there on the ground just beyond the tree line? That’s a ten‑ by‑ ten enemy bunker. The entrances are the dark holes on either side. ” He continued in his schoolteacher manner. “The reason the bunker pops out to the scout is that square shape amidst a shapeless bunch of trees. It’s out of place. It doesn’t belong there. ”

Circling the area, Jones went on with his observations. “You can see also that the bunker hasn’t been used recently–no beat‑ down trails in the grass around it, and the color of the camouflage foliage on top of the bunker is browner, deader looking, than the surroundings. ” Jones turned to me. “If you’re going to be a scout, you’ve just got to be alert to anything –”

At that moment, One Eight abruptly broke off his comment. I looked ahead to see the top of a dead tree looming in front of the ship. Jones jerked the cyclic stick back into his gut and hauled up the collective nearly out of the floor. The agile little OH‑ 6 literally jumped over the top of the tree. We heard branches brush against the Plexiglas bubble and underside of the fuselage as we blew by.

“Holy Shit! ” I gasped.

Jones calmly went on talking. “You’ve just got to be alert to anything that jumps out at you, including the tops of old, dead trees. ”

It became obvious that learning to scout from a helicopter would be a continuing process of on‑ the‑ job training. There were no army manuals to consult, no special training classes to attend. There was, in fact, no in‑ place source for helicopter scouting information at all in the army, except the experienced aeroscout pilots who flew every day. Only they could tell and show you what signs to look for, and how to read, report, and react to those signs once you found them in the field.

The aeroscout’s job, I learned, fell generally into four basic types of work (though all four might occur in a single scouting mission):

1. Conducting Visual Recons (VRs). Scouting for enemy base camps, fighting positions, supply caches, trails, and any and all signs of enemy movement and activity.

2. Making Bomb Damage Assessments (BDAs). Scouting areas hit by our B‑ 52 strikes to evaluate bomb damage to the terrain, enemy structures, and personnel. This was generally done immediately following the strike.

3. Evaluating Landing Zones (LZ Recon). Scouting out potential landing areas for the lift platoon’s Hueys. Making a careful aerial check of physical characteristics of the LZ, asking yourself the question, if I were flying with the slicks, would I like to land in that area?

4. Screening for Ground Units (for example, the ARPs). Flying on all sides of the friendly unit on the ground as aerial eyes to help them reach their objective, to give them information to guide their direction of movement, to help them choose the most advantageous terrain, and to keep the unit informed as to the area and situation to its front and flanks.

From 24 to 29 March, I continued to fly as copilot‑ observer with scout pilots Bill Jones and Jim Morrison. With my new scout call sign, Darkhorse One Seven, I logged 14. 4 hours of combat flying, mostly in the Trapezoid area, which included the “Iron T, ” and the Michelin rubber plantation.

Both Jones and Morrison were excellent scouts and good teachers. They had been in Vietnam about the same length of time and had flown together, learning their scouting techniques from each other. Their basic methods were pretty much alike, but Morrison emphasized airspeed. “Don’t get under sixty knots. If you do, you’re going to get hit, ” he would say.

After much flying experience, I came to agree that Morrison was statistically correct. The more often a scout flew less than sixty knots, the more often he would take hits‑ ^‑ no question about it. The Vietnamese ground gunners had a habit of firing right at you without applying any lead. By moving across the ground at sixty to seventy knots, their rounds would often hit three to four feet behind the ship.

With Bill Jones, scouting meant paying attention to every detail while still seeing the whole. Concentrating on shapes, colors, and hues, Jones made scouting an art. He understood, and introduced me to, the five basic principles of scouting from a helicopter: strict attention to contrast, color, glint, angles, and movement.

In time, I was able to lend my own degree of perception to these basics. I would discover, and rediscover many times over, just how fundamental these concepts were in finding, fixing, and destroying the enemy–especially an adversary who was so cunning in disguising his activities, and who was at home in his own environment.

Returning to base from those first scouting flights, I was physically drained but emotionally high–excited to get back into the air and do better next time. In self‑ evaluation, I recognized my problem: I was trying to see everything there was to see on the ground. Therefore I saw only masses of terrain swirling by. I did what every beginner scout pilot did–focused on the macro not the micro. It flooded my senses, overloaded my sensory capabilities.

By 31 March, Bill Hayes was back from leave. That signaled the opportunity for me to start OH‑ 6 transition, with Hayes as instructor pilot (IP) and me as first pilot.

Bill Hayes was a powerful, good‑ natured black man, who must have weighed more than 220 pounds, stood at least six feet two, and had hands as big as tennis rackets. The scout bird was a small helicopter, and Bill Hayes didn’t simply get into an OH‑ 6–he put it on. Everybody who knew Bill well enough to get away with it called him Buff, which stood for big ugly fat fucker!

The first time I climbed aboard the OH‑ 6 with Hayes, I couldn’t help but notice how that scout bird settled down onto the ground with his weight. The landing gear on the OH‑ 6 had shock dampers on the struts that supported the aircraft, to provide a hydraulic cushion to the skids during takeoffs and landings. As each crew member stepped up into the airplane, you could see the skids settle and spread out. When one of those people was Buff Hayes, you could almost hear the landing gear groan.

I had studied my dash 10 operator’s manual, as well as the maintenance dash 20 and 30, and had been all over the Loach dozens of times, both by myself and with the crew chief. And I had spent literally hours in the airplane cold, in the pilot’s seat with my eyes closed, mentally establishing where all the cockpit switches and instruments were.

On our first flight, Hayes instructed me to “get the ship out here in the area and hover it. ” This was the first thing a helicopter pilot did when transitioning into a new aircraft–hover the ship about three feet off the ground, then taxi forward and back, to the left and right. The exercise told you a lot very quickly about the idiosyncrasies of a particular aircraft.

Doing this basic maneuver in the OH‑ 6, I learned something right away about this ship–left pedal pressure. On the OH‑ 6, there is so much torque in the tail rotor that the left pedal had built‑ in pressure applied to it. You could actually feel that pressure in your feet.

In the Huey I was used to the foot pedals being somewhat unresponsive, almost mushy. If you took your feet off the pedals, there was no telling which pedal might gain movement over the other. In the OH‑ 6, you knew what would happen. When you took your feet off the pedals, the left pedal jumped right back at you, invariably causing the nose to spin to the right. To turn the Loach left, I pushed the left pedal; to turn right, all I had to do was let off the left pedal.

After I got used to the ground handling characteristics, Hayes told me to take the OH‑ 6 up in the pattern where I could get a feel for the bird’s general control touch and how the ship flew and responded. By that time, I was beginning to fall in love with that machine. I tried not to display all the excitement I was feeling to Hayes. He just sat there in the left seat, very relaxed, watching my moves.

Hayes was known in the troop as one of those guys with absolutely great PT (pilot technique). The old heads in the platoon had their own methods of rating their pilots. They would say, “He’s a good stick man, ” or, “He’s a good stick and rudder guy, ” or possibly, worse, “He’s mechanical… he’s behind the aircraft. ” But Hayes had overall pilot finesse that was rivaled by very few other flyers in the unit. Though he looked like a fullback in the pros, he flew a Loach the way Mikhail Baryshnikov danced. I felt fortunate that he was the guy teaching me to fly the OH‑ 6.

I notified the tower, then took off and climbed straight out the runway heading to about eight hundred feet, then turned right into the cross‑ wind, gaining altitude as I headed for fifteen hundred feet. Hayes would occasionally say something to me about a system or procedure, but he was generally quiet, carefully watching how I was reacting to the helicopter.

A good instructor pilot, such as Hayes, usually had his hands on the controls, lightly following the collective and cyclic sticks as the student flew the airplane. The smart transitioning pilot, which I hoped I was, always tried to watch the IP’s left hand on the collective. With just a quick flick of his wrist, Hayes could suddenly twist off the throttle and shut down engine power, throwing me into an autorotation mode. I was then faced with getting the aircraft to a safe landing on the ground without the help of engine power.

If you were cruising along at an altitude of fifteen hundred feet, you’d have time to execute a standard autorotation procedure. But if you were at ninety knots and only twenty to thirty feet off the ground, you had to initiate a low‑ level, high‑ speed autorotation procedure designed to give you some more altitude before heading back down for a powerless landing. Either way, fast pilot reaction was necessary to get to the ground in one piece. Down collective, immediately, took the pitch out of the main rotor blades and set up air resistance against the flattened blades to keep you from falling out of the sky like a rock. At the same time, you pulled the cyclic stick back into your gut. This action tilted back the rotor head, keeping the bird’s nose up when what it really wanted to do was drop down to the ground.

Hayes warned me, however, about an imprudent move of the cyclic when in a low‑ level, high‑ speed situation. Such a movement held the potential of abnormally flexing the OH‑ 6’s main rotor blades and cutting off the tail boom of the helicopter.

The more I flew the Loach, and the more Hayes tested me, the more I fell in love with the OH‑ 6. It handled beautifully. It was lively, responsive, and as light to the touch and maneuverable as any hot sports car. I logged 12. 6 hours transitioning into the OH‑ 6, most of that time with Hayes in the left seat, the rest with me alone in the ship.

Before Hayes signed off on my check ride slip, fully qualifying me in the OH‑ 6, he took me on one more ride–down to the Saigon River to shoot the Loach minigun. Since our scout ships were ordinarily not armed with miniguns, Hayes had had an XM27E1 system especially mounted on one of the OH‑ 6s just for transitioning pilots. He wanted me to fire the minigun to get a feel for aiming and to see what it was like to pull the trigger to the first indent, letting go with two thousand rounds per minute, then to the second indent, letting four thousand rounds a minute blaze into the target.

The armament system consisted of several components but was basically a 7. 62mm, six‑ barreled machine‑ gun assembly, an electric gun drive assembly and ammunition feed and eject mechanisms, and a reflex sight. The sight, I learned, was never used or even carried. It wasn’t too accurate and, worse than that, was totally in the way of the pilot in the cockpit.

Flying out and back from the firing site gave me a chance to talk to Hayes about my feeling that the scout ships should be armed with miniguns. I still felt strongly that aeroscouts should have the ability to shoot back at an enemy.

Hayes didn’t agree. He, like John Herchert, Jim Morrison, and Bill Jones, felt that having guns routinely mounted on OH‑ 6s could get scouts into trouble. It could cause them to think so much about shooting that they’d forget that their real mission was scouting.

I finished transitioning with Hayes on 3 April, and for the next couple of days went back to flying copilot‑ observer with Bill Jones. He was a master at spotting anything that contrasted with the natural environment. He might catch a slightly different color in the vegetation, maybe the glint of something shiny. Or possibly a movement would grab his attention, or an angular shape that appeared out of place in an otherwise shapeless jungle.

Bill continued to give me tips. He advised me to focus my eyes farther away from the ship, which would slow down the movement of the terrain and give me the chance to see individual objects instead of just a sickening blur. He told me, also, to “penetrate” my vision as the ship came in low and slow, to look through the top layer of jungle and concentrate on seeing right down to the ground.

One day Jones swooped down extra low. “Did you see those VC down there? ” he asked me over the intercom.

All I saw were treetops. He brought the ship around again, decelerated, and told me to look down. Focusing my eyes past the tops of the trees, I looked through the foliage and there they were! Five angry‑ looking, brown VC faces staring up at us from the ground. Maybe I was beginning to get the hang of this.

In addition to being able to spot things on the ground, the scout pilot had to know how to coordinate with his Cobra orbiting above him. Being down on the deck most of the time, there were limits to what a scout could do. Flying the aircraft and having his eyes almost constantly focused on the ground, a scout seldom had time to glance at his instrument panel, let alone look at maps or talk on the radio. Therefore, his Cobra crew did all that for him. The gunship orbited a good distance above, watching every move the scout made. The copilot‑ gunner in the Cobra read the map, marked coordinates, and transmitted radio messages. He also aimed and fired the turret ordnance when the scout dropped smoke and called for a strike on a ground target. The pilot, the back‑ seater in this tandem crew AH‑ 1 aircraft, flew the aircraft, always circling in the opposite direction of the OH‑ 6, so that the Loach was always inside the gunship. The pilot kept a constant eye on the scout, so he’d know immediately if his little brother was getting into any trouble.

This was the hunter‑ killer team concept. The teamwork between these two elements grew to the point where the Cobra and scout actually anticipated each other’s actions. Just a voice inflection over the radio could tell exactly what was happening, or about to happen.

So the scout had to learn to talk over the radio to keep his gunship informed. All of the scout’s radio messages to the Cobra went out over the OH‑ 6’s UHF frequency. All of the Cobra’s messages back to the scout were transmitted over VHF. Using both UHF and VHF ensured that a radio transmission between scout and Cobra was never garbled because both were talking at the same time over the same frequency. The scout usually talked all the time when he was working down low, conversationally reporting what he was seeing on the ground as the aircraft flew its search pattern. The Cobra crew was normally quiet, breaking silence only once in awhile with two quick movements on the radio transmit button. This staticlike sound told the scout that the Cobra was receiving and understood. Radio conversation took place only when the gun pilot wanted the scout to do something.

Riding with Jones as copilot‑ observer, I carefully listened to his ongoing radio talk to the Cobra as he worked his pattern, while I tracked what he was seeing on the ground. As Bill pushed his search circles farther out over the area, he studied the ground below for a sign of traffic, reporting to the Cobra. Foot traffic could be picked up by coming across a trail or a marshy area where the enemy had moved through, leaving footprints, bent elephant grass, or some other sign of passage. From the appearance of the trail, Jones could estimate the approximate number of troops, as well as how old the trail was.

Footprints that could be seen distinctly indicated light traffic–only a few people. If the trail appeared indistinct and generally messed up, you’d know that heavy traffic had moved along it, walking over each others’ foot impressions.

Bill went on to teach me that the direction of the traffic movement could also be determined by studying the footprint characteristics. Many VC wore what were called Ho Chi Minh sandals–nothing more than a couple of flat pieces of rubber cut from an old tire and strapped to the wearer’s foot. The toe and heel parts were of the same shape, but when walking along, more weight was concentrated on the heel, resulting in a deeper impression. In addition, the toe pushed up a little ridge of dirt. By carefully checking out the heel and toe impressions left on the dusty ground, you could tell which way the people on the trail were traveling.

Suddenly coming across a sign of foot traffic below, Jones radioed the gun: “I’ve got a trail. ” Call signs between scout and gun were usually dropped when there was only one team of aircraft in the area. “It runs off to the northeast, heading zero three zero degrees, to the southwest at two one zero degrees. Indications of light recent traffic–two or three people within the last twelve hours, northeast bound. I’m going to move up the trail and check it out. ” Our phones hissed, “C‑ h‑ h‑ h‑ e‑ s‑ h‑ h… c‑ h‑ h‑ h‑ e‑ s‑ h‑ h” indicating that the Cobra had copied.

Bill started moving the OH‑ 6 toward the northeast by using the trail as a guide and pushing his coverage circles out a little farther with each orbit, all the time studying the footprints, and any other signs along the way, to make sure that the enemy party hadn’t left the trail.

“OK, I’ve got a place off the trail here to the right. Looks like they had supper here last night. I’ve got the remains of a small cooking fire. It’s not smoldering… it’s out. ”

The footprints took off again to the northeast, and Jones moved the Loach up the trail. ‘There’s a bunker… about fifty feet off to the left of the trail. Looks like a twelve by twelve… maybe a storage bunker… a foot and a half, maybe three feet of overhead cover, well made, freshly camouflaged. ”

“Typically, ” Jones briefed me, “the bunkers we find fall into pretty uniform sizes: five by seven, eight by ten, twelve by twelve, fifteen by ten, with a twenty by forty being about the largest.

“When you report a bunker to the gun, give him the overall outside dimension and the estimated degree of the overhead cover. He’ll record all that information on his charts for G‑ 2 back at the base. ”

The scout identified a bunker by its shape, the condition of the camouflage on top of it, and the entrance holes either at the corners or on the flat sides. Those entrances showed up as dark splotches on the ground, and were usually dug in an L shape so Charlie could fire at you from the hole and then get back under cover. The L blunted any rounds fired into the entranceway after him. The smaller bunkers were generally to provide cover for VC moving along the trail. The larger ones were usually storage bunkers for supplies used to sustain Charlie while he was passing through or fighting in the area. Some were used as command posts.

Those additional days I flew as copilot‑ observer with Bill Jones were invaluable. I hung on his every word. Jones seemed able to sense trouble ahead. He would know in advance that he might be taking fire from an unseen enemy. I hoped that I would develop some of that warning light instinct.

^{CHAPTER 4}

DARKHORSE ONE SEVEN

It was 8 April 1969, my twenty‑ first birthday.

Now, I smiled to myself, I could take a drink legally. I could also vote. I could even get, maybe, a slight reduction in my car insurance rates, if I were back home. It all sounded pretty silly in Vietnam.

First light was breaking over the Phu Loi runway, and the fact that it was my birthday was the least thing in my mind as I walked out of operations toward the revetment line where the OH‑ 6As were parked.

Today I’d be on my own for the first time. I would be flying my own ship as the scout half of VR‑ 1 hunter‑ killer team. Operations had just briefed us that gun pilot Phil Carriss (Three Eight) and I (One Seven) would be making a visual reconnaissance of the banks of the Thi Tinh and Saigon rivers. We’d be starting near Phu Cuong, making our way north along the Saigon River to the intersection of the Big Blue (Song Saigon) and the Little Blue (Song Thi Tinh). Then we’d scout north following the Saigon, winding our way up along the west side of the Iron T to see what Charlie might be up to along the rivers.

For my first solo scout mission, I would be flying a brand‑ new OH‑ 6, tail number 249, belonging to crew chief Joe Crockett. I say “belonging to” Joe Crockett because I didn’t have a specific airplane assigned to me. Platoon Sergeant Tim “Toon Daddy” McDivitt was the scout platoon sergeant for Troop D (Air), 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry. He told the pilots what airplane they would be flying on a certain day, but the crew chief assigned to an airframe automatically flew with that ship.

I checked into 249’s revetment, which was just across from the operations hootch, and Joe Crockett was waiting for me. I had met him before around the troop while I was flying observer with Jones and Morrison.

Crockett was a little fellow, about five foot six, and maybe 135 to 140 pounds. He had blond hair and was deeply tanned. I remember him saying that he was from somewhere in California, so maybe he’d had a good start on that tan.

Crockett was one of the most senior scout crew chief‑ observers in the troop. He really knew what he was doing when it came to scouting, and handling a green scout pilot. That, of course, was why McDivitt assigned me to Crockett’s ship. It was traditional to put a brand‑ new scout pilot with a very experienced crew chief. That way both men had a better chance of staying alive.

Crew chiefs were all enlisted ranks. Pilots were either warrants or commissioned officers. But in an OH‑ 6 flying a scouting mission, we were a team. Our lives quite literally depended on how well each of us did our job.

Crockett and I began walking around the ship, conducting the pre‑ flight exterior check. Without even looking at the plane’s logbook, I could see that 249 was right out of the stateside factory. The OD paint was fresh and shiny. The Quarter Cav red and white insignia practically jumped off the fuselage. The black horse and blue blanket that was the Darkhorse emblem shimmered on the engine cowling doors. Crockett was as proud as a mother hen with a new chick.

As Crockett and I worked around the ship, I stopped on the right side of the fuselage to stick my finger in the fuel tank filler neck. This was my preferred way of checking the JP‑ 4 level. For some reason, I never completely trusted fuel gauges.

There was another thing new about number 249. At my request, a new XM27E1 armament subsystem was mounted on the aircraft’s left side. This was the rotating six‑ barrel, 7. 62mm minigun that, on slow fire, expended two thousand rounds per minute, and four thousand per minute on fast fire.

Though I had little support among the experienced scout pilots in the platoon, I wanted a minigun on my ship. I had taken fire on several occasions flying with Jones and Morrison, and I had made up my mind that I wanted to be able to throw a little stuff back when the situation required. Even though Herchert’s policy didn’t authorize scouts to fly with miniguns, he didn’t seem too bent out of shape when I asked for one. Of course, I wasn’t sure he knew that I had actually had one installed.

Finishing up our preflight outside, I climbed aboard and strapped in. Crockett grabbed the fire extinguisher from its rack on the right side of my seat and posted himself as fire guard. I fingered the starter switch with my right index finger and started cranking the turbine.

In a little more than a minute, the ship was running and ready to back out of the revetment. Crockett secured the fire extinguisher, made a quick walk around to the left side of the ship to remove the bullet trap assembly from the minigun barrels, then slid into his seat behind me.

With Crockett strapped in, I pulled the collective up enough to get the ship light on her skids. Then I did my health indicator and trend test (HIT) check to make sure that engine power was responding as it should, and I was ready to go. I keyed my intercom mike. “OK, Crockett, are we clear to the rear? ”

Crockett leaned forward from his seat so that he could see out the door. “OK, sir, you’re clear…up and rear. ” He quickly followed with, “Your tail is clear right, ” letting me know that I could swing into a climbing left turn out of the revetment area without running 249’s tail into anything.

I keyed my mike again: “Phu Loi tower, this is Darkhorse One Seven. I’ve got a hunter‑ killer team on the cav pad… north departure Phu Cuong along the Saigon… Lai Khe. ”

“Roger, Darkhorse One Seven flight of two, you’re cleared to taxi to and hold short of runway three three. Winds are three five zero at eight knots, gusting to twelve knots. Altimeter setting three zero zero six. You’ll be number two for takeoff following the Beaver on takeoff run now. ”

I responded to the tower by reading back the altimeter setting, while I actually cranked in the setting on my instrument. This was always necessary in order to calibrate my altimeter to current barometric pressure.

Pulling up short of runway three three, I waited for the Cobra. It took them longer to get cranked since their engine and systems were more complicated than those of the OH‑ 6. Once the aircraft was beside me, I looked over at Carriss and gave him a thumbs‑ up and keyed my mike on troop VHF: “Three Eight, this is One Seven. Are you ready? ”

Carriss triggered his transmit switch twice, indicating that he was set to go.

We both picked up and moved out to three three where Carriss led the takeoff. The Cobra was always in the lead on takeoff, with the scout pulling over to his side very carefully.

One of the critical things in this two‑ ship takeoff was to watch the Cobra’s rotor downwash. The Cobra was a much bigger aircraft than the OH‑ 6, and both aircraft were at maximum gross weight because of the full fuel and ammo load. If the OH‑ 6 pulled in just below and in trail with the Cobra, he would be right in the gun’s rotor wash. The scout could easily lose his lift and bounce off the runway a couple of times before he got out of the Cobra’s disturbed air.

As both aircraft cleared the perimeter fence, I could see the Cobra’s minigun turret flexing as Carriss’s front‑ seater began checking out his gun system. In our ship, Crockett did the same. Passing the perimeter fence was his signal to pull his M‑ 60 back into his lap, draw the bolt back, load, and take the gun from safe to fire.

It was my signal, too. I stuck my left knee under the collective stick to maintain rate of climb and reached over to the console circuit breaker to power‑ up the armament subsystem. Then I went to the instrument panel with my freed‑ up left hand to flip on the master arms switch and turn the selector switch to “fire norm. ”

At that point, all the weapons in the team were hot and ready for any situation we might encounter. Any area outside the base could hold an enemy capable of firing on our aircraft. So when we crossed the fence, we had to be ready.

At fifteen hundred feet, out of the range of small‑ arms fire, I pulled the ship up on the Cobra’s wing and into an echelon left for the flight over to Phu Cuong. The Cobra maintained about ninety to one hundred knots so the scout could keep up.

Crockett and I practiced a few signals over the intercom so we’d know exactly how the other would react when we got down low. Then we relaxed and smoked a cigarette. As we cruised along toward Phu Cuong, we engaged in a little small talk about the weather and the terrain below, and just kidded around to relax a bit before reaching the search area and possible contact with the enemy.

Snapping me back to reality, Carriss came up on VHF: “One Seven, you see the intersection of the Thi Tinh and the Saigon right off your nose? ”

“Yes, I’ve got it. ”

“Due east of the intersection about three hundred yards, there’s a big green open space. Let’s put you down in that area and work from there. ”

“Roger that. ” I could feel my exhilaration building. Finally, here I was in control of my own scout ship. I wasn’t on an orientation or transition flight with someone sitting in the cockpit checking me out. There was just me and the crew chief. Crockett was completely dependent on me to fly that aircraft.

I began a visual search of the grassy area below. One of the many things I had learned from Jones and Morrison was that you just don’t go down from altitude into a search area. You look it over first, while you are still high enough to change your mind if the enemy is waiting for you. I was looking for people, some sign of foot trails, or for anything else that seemed out of the ordinary.

Sensing that the letdown area looked OK, Carriss came up on my VHF: “OK, One Seven, we’re going to do a VR up the Saigon River. We’ve got a free‑ fire five hundred meters on both sides of the Big Blue. No river traffic is authorized until after 8 A. M., SO anything you see this early is enemy. You’ll be clear to fire once you’re down. When you’re down, come around on a heading of three three zero degrees until you hit the river and I’ll give you another heading from there. ”

I hit the right pedal, moved the cyclic stick right forward, and dropped the collective. This was a maneuver that Jones had taught me: The aircraft went out of trim on the right side and quickly skidded into a right‑ hand descending turn. I lost altitude fast this way and was on the deck in seconds. Carriss put the Cobra into a left‑ hand orbit so he could keep me in sight.

As the ground approached, I leveled the ship by moving the cyclic to left forward and pulling in power with the collective. This rolled me out straight ahead with a cardinal direction, which I needed to change immediately. Steering a straight‑ line course directly into the search area could be fatal if enemy ground troops happened to be around.

So the minute I rolled out, I turned. Turned again. Then again, finally going into a couple of orbits around the grassy area to make sure I was OK. I didn’t see anything, and nobody was shooting at me.

I keyed my mike to Carriss: “OK, Three Eight, we’re OK. How about a heading? ”

“Roger, One Seven. Turn right heading three three zero degrees to the Little Blue. ”

Carriss was still up at fifteen hundred feet and had me in sight all the time. At his altitude, he had the macro view. Being right down on the deck, mine was the micro.

Seeing me pick up three three zero, Carriss came back: “OK, there you go. The river that goes off to the north‑ northeast is the Thi Tinh. The Big Blue is the Saigon off to the northwest. Follow the Saigon. ”

Acknowledging, I came up on the left bank of the Saigon and began working. For the best coverage of the terrain, I settled in on the left bank and then took up a long orbiting maneuver that circled me back and forth across the river. With the pilot’s seat on the right side of the aircraft, homing in on the west bank allowed me to see right down on that bank and straight across to the east bank.

I began my search pattern by flying northbound up the river about a hundred yards, crossing the water to my right, coming back down the right bank about the same hundred yards, then completing the circle by returning left across the river in a series of wide, overlapping orbits. The forward working orbits gave me a clear view of everything fifty yards or so in from each riverbank, plus the ability to look down into the water.

On one of these orbits, I picked up a five‑ foot by five‑ foot inactive bunker on the west bank, and a series of fish traps in one of the several little tributaries emptying into the Saigon.

I kept up a steady stream of UHF reporting on what I was seeing, and Carriss’s front‑ seater, I knew, was marking them on his map. At the end of the mission, he would use that marked‑ up map in his debriefing with division G‑ 2 and G‑ 3.

After about fifteen minutes down low in the search pattern, I was making my orbit back toward the left bank when something like a black pencil line in the sky caught my attention. About three or four klicks (kilometers) away on my right horizon, pale gray smoke was rising.

I keyed my mike and told Carriss excitedly: “Hey, Three Eight, I’ve got smoke! A cooking fire out there at about three four zero degrees, maybe three klicks off to my right. Do you see? Is it on the river? ”

“Naw, I can’t see it. Why don’t you head that way direct and let’s see what we’ve got. ” I gave Crockett a “Hang on, ” pulled a fast right turn, and took off straight for the smoke.

As I left the river, heading across a large open rice paddy, Carriss came up on the radio. “You’re going right for a bend in the river. It’s probably a cooking fire. Make a first pass but keep it fast; don’t take any chances. Don’t slow it down. ”

Intelligence reports we had received made me think that anybody in this neck of the woods with a cooking fire going at this hour of the morning had to be an enemy. But they could be civilians. How could I know before I came up on top of them at sixty to seventy knots?

In those split seconds of breaking away from the river, I suddenly thought of something Uncle Billy had taught me back in the Arkansas mountains. A squirrel up a tree trunk will always stay on the opposite side of whatever he thinks is an adversary. He will back around the tree away from a noise, keeping the tree trunk between him and any possible danger. Uncle Billy had told me to throw a rock around to the other side of the tree; when the squirrel backed around the tree, you would have a clear shot. Coming in behind that cooking fire began to seem like a good idea.

I veered off sharply to my right about a klick away from the smoke, making a broad arc. By dropping down very low, and weaving my way below treetop level where I could, I figured I might be able to circle right in over the cooking fire on a heading of about two two zero. If they did hear us, at least we might confuse them by coming in on their backs from the north, instead of doing the expected and popping in on their front from the south.

Hitting about fifty knots, I suddenly broke in over a small tributary. Smoke from the cooking fire curled up right in front of my bubble. Reacting faster than I knew I could at this point, I dropped the collective, kicked right pedal, and yanked in enough right rear cyclic to abruptly skid into a right‑ hand decelerating turn. I looked straight down from fifteen to twenty feet of altitude, right into the faces of six people squatting around the cooking fire.

I could see weapons lying around, mostly AK‑ 47s. There was one SKS semiautomatic rifle lying on a log across a backpack. The people were wearing shorts, some blue, some green, and the rest black. Nobody was wearing a shirt. One man had on a vest that carried AK‑ 47 magazines. They all had on Ho Chi Minh sandals but none wore headgear. They obviously hadn’t heard me coming. I don’t know if I keyed my mike or not. All I remember is thinking, Holy SHIT! What do I do now?

As the soldiers dove in all directions for cover, Crockett ended my indecision. Without a word from me, he cut loose from the back of the cabin with his M‑ 60. By now I had the OH‑ 6 in a right‑ hand turning maneuver over the area, with my turns becoming tighter and tighter. Crockett blazed away with the M‑ 60.

As one man lurched up and ran toward the underbrush, Crockett fired at him; his rounds cut across the dirt in front of him, then down his back.

Tah‑ tah‑ tah‑ tah‑ tah‑ tah… tah‑ tah‑ tah‑ tah‑ tah. Crockett stitched two more men as they broke and tried to run. I was still in tight right‑ hand turns, finding myself almost mesmerized as I stared with tunnel vision at what was happening right under the ship.

Suddenly I became conscious of Phil Carriss’s voice firmly commanding: “Get out of there, One Seven, and let me shoot. Get the hell out of there, Mills! ”

Breaking my concentration, I pulled on power and headed up and out of the killing zone. Seeing me roll out to the southeast, Carriss said, more calmly now, “I’m in hot! ”

As I headed out, the Cobra rolled in right behind me. Carriss bored in with his front‑ seater’s pipper right on the spot we had just vacated. I could hear the s‑ w‑ o‑ o‑ s‑ h‑ h… s‑ w‑ o‑ o‑ s‑ h‑ h… s‑ w‑ o‑ o‑ s‑ h‑ h as pairs of 2. 75 rockets left his tubes.

He pulled out of his run for recovery with the minigun smoking. W‑ h‑ e‑ r‑ r‑ r’… w‑ h‑ e‑ r‑ r‑ r it spat as the Cobra front‑ seater flexed his M‑ 28 turret on the target, following the rockets with a devastating blast of 7. 62 minigun fire. Smoke and debris boiled up out of the target area. As I watched from my orbiting position out to the southeast, I couldn’t help thinking about the words on the sign hanging on the wall of the troop operations room: