Vietnam and Back

It was another sunny day late in the afternoon in South Vietnam. I had just positioned my gunship at an altitude of 3,000 feet above my target and was in a steep dive launching rockets as fast as I could pull the trigger. My target was a long canal with palm trees on both sides where the Viet Cong were hiding in tunnels. This was the location where Frank, another Captain and a friend of mine, had been killed a few days before by enemy gunfire. We were upset and delivering a little extra punishment on the bad guys. I fired 20 rockets before I reached my maximum airspeed and had to begin pulling out of my dive. I turned hard left into a steep turn climbing back up to altitude for another attack. Reaching altitude, I performed a wing-over maneuver and rolled back on target into another steep dive. I launched another 18 rockets in the few seconds it took to reach maximum airspeed. I made another hard left turn and began climbing to altitude heading back to base when all of a sudden there was a loud explosion. My gunship shuddered and the cockpit filled with white smoke. We were hit hard. I felt the blast on the back of my legs. The VC were known to have shoulder fired B40 rockets in this area and we were always wary and watching out for them.

I immediately reduced power and headed down to the ground, our ultimate refuge. On the way down I moved my flight controls back and forth and they seemed to still function okay. I quickly scanned my instrument panel and all systems appeared to be operating normally. So I applied power, stopping my descent, and continued my climb back toward base. I checked my legs for injury and I was apparently okay.

Wow! What happened? Looking around the helicopter quickly, I noticed a hole about the size of a softball through the lower part of my door on my right side about a foot away from my seat. There were ragged, torn, metal edges outlining the hole. We continued on back to base and landed without incident. This was one more close call, one of many past, and one of many more to come.

My time in Vietnam actually had its’ beginning many years before.