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Ton le Chon resupply
It was the early months of 1970 in III Corps that I was assigned to provide daily support to 5th SF HQ, in the form of a UH-1D. As was typical for the mission at the time, I was hopping around the A-teams carrying personnel, supplies, mail, etc. and providing support as needed. It was a single ship mission, and a great break from flying combat assaults. This particular day I received instructions to proceed to the team at Ton le Chon where I would receive further instructions. Upon arriving there I was greeted by the local residents and invited into the TOC for a briefing. It seems that they had a contingent of SF soldiers with their indigenous charges out in the bush along the Cambodian border that had earlier made contact with an enemy element, and they wanted my crew and me to transport some supplies out to them. They fully understood that my SOP prevented me from flying into a known area of contact without helicopter gunship cover, and I was assured by all present that the contact had been broken and the enemy was no longer in the area. Hmm, sounds pretty good so far. Tell me more.
It would be a short flight to the friendlies, but there really wasn’t an LZ in the immediate area so I planned a “hover-kick off’ re-supply. That would require the ability to hover OGE (out of ground effect) while my Crew Chief and Gunner kicked the supplies out the door. No problem. They proceeded to stack up the supplies and load them into our Huey.
From the time I accepted the mission a Captain, that I think I had brought with me from somewhere, started asking me if he could come along for the ride. I told him that the load was pretty heavy and weight was a big concern, and there would be a lot of flailing around once we got over the DZ. The answer was no. The Captain didn’t want to take no for an answer and kept bugging me while they loaded the helicopter. He tried to convince me he didn’t weigh that much and insisted he could be a big help throwing stuff out the door. I looked at the huge pile of ammo, water, food, claymores, etc. and decided that he might possibly cut down the time we would spend hovering over the area. He was a happy camper! I briefed him on the flight and his role once we arrived over our spot. It was pretty simple. When you see the gunners come forward from their wells and start slinging stuff out the door YOU start slinging stuff out. When it’s all out, hang on, cause we’re going to haul ass.
Off we went, low-level with our load and a crew of five. Pop smoke. OK, confirm smoke, decelerate, come to a hover over the smoke. The trees were not very tall and the brush was pretty thin, so I could see people scurrying around beneath us. They had us move a little so we did not crush anyone with ammo cans and water bags. Everything was green on my instrument panel so I picked a tree for a reference point and gave my guys the signal to start the off-load. The guys came out from behind their guns and started kicking stuff out. I looked back and saw the Captain having a great time throwing stuff out the door. About half way through the drop things changed. I heard a really loud pop and immediately felt that crunch in the airframe. All hell broke loose below as the team opened up with a mad minute that would make your mother proud. The ship seemed fine so I turned to see how things were in the back. My crew was busy getting the rest of the supplies out, except for the Captain. He had assumed a position of spread eagle on the floor of the helicopter. Nothing like hovering over an enemy weapon and making yourself the biggest target you can. I guess he thought he was on the ground. I went back to the task at hand, trying to hover over my spot. The Crew Chief yelled they were done so we didi-ed out of the area.
The flight back to Ton le Chon was uneventful, except for a strange high frequency vibration in the pedals, and elsewhere. We shut down on the pad and discovered a 12.7mm hole in the tail rotor drive shaft cover. With the cover removed we could see the bullet had perforated the T/R drive shaft (entrance and exit holes) and the metal from the entrance hole had caused three smaller holes by the exit, for a total of five. When the Captain saw that he walked away, never to be seen by us again. A Chinook came to get the Huey off the pad.
I never did find out why that gun only got one round off, but I assumed it was a jam of some sort. I’m sure the guy manning it had his day completely ruined by the SF guys on the ground.
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