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Coming September 10th, 2004

Chapter 17

  by Kathy Hufford

   GUNS AND GAS STATIONS

UH-1C Helicopter Gunship landing in enemy territory checking out rocket motor shell and enemy dead. Gunship crews would land and take documents and weapons off of enemy dead.

Gunships flew in at least pairs. One would fly low, the other above 700 feet, providing cover. The low ship would do recon in front of ground troops. When you killed an enemy soldier, many times the lead ship would land next to the body and the crew chief or door gunner would hop out and search the body for papers and weapons. We would give the ground infantry the papers, and we kept the weapons. We would keep the weapons for our own use, or as trading material with other units that did not have a chance to get captured weapons. None of us were stupid enough to sneak a captured weapon back to the states. Each of our gunship miniguns used six bolt groups. They wore out fast. We could not get them thru the Army supply system. On our base at Bien Hoa, the Air Force had a “Puff the magic Dragon” unit. A unit of armed C47 fixed wing aircraft that had a couple of miniguns and a 105 artillery howitzer in the back that also dropped flares at nite.  The Air Force mechanics replaced their minigun bolts every night. They had a supply system that worked. So, we went over and offered captured AK47s for used minigun bolts. They loved it. They had no chance to land and get enemy weapons, but we did. One one mission, the lead helicopter gunship killed a couple of VC, and he landed to get the weapons. The pilot and gunner hopped out of the running aircraft and ran over to the body. They started to turn over the body, then let it go, and they ran as fast as they could back to the aircraft, and took off in a haste, leaving weapons on the ground. He got airborne, and I asked what happened. As they turned the body over, the body was holding a hand grenade with the pin pulled. The idea was when they turned over the body the grenade was to go off. But rigamortis must have set in. After that incident, we were more careful turning over bodies.

A gunship will fly about 2 hours on a load of 245 gallons of fuel. A warning light comes on when you have about 20 min. left to fly. On a mission about 50 miles west of Saigon , supporting ground troops sweeping an area, we were receiving lots of ground fire, but also killing lots of VC. As the ground troops sweep, more VC would make a run for it, and we took care of them. But, we needed gas. We had been flying for just about 2 hours. The 20 min. light had been on for about 15 min. The nearest fuel point was 10 min away. We got into this mess, because more VC were popping up, and no replacement gunships were around. Finally we had to head for gas. As I was making my approach to a dirt runway, to turn off to a taxiway to the fuel point. The engine quit while I was at a hover. I did a hovering autorotation, and shut down the controls. An Air Force Bird Dog aircraft was at the other end of the runway, real mad. We hooked refueling hoses from three refueling points together, and dragged the hose out to the runway and refueled our gunship. Started up and flew away. The Air Force pilot was real mad. Sometimes you are just lucky.