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David Mitchell
Jim, I was going to hold off on that one. I keep thinking I want to try and keep this off the Forum but we're in this now so here goes. Sorry to those who prefer not - I get it. Just take a break.
BTW, I think if you just google up "Loach helicopter" you get one choice with nothing but photographs. I did that once and saw two of my own photos near the top of that page - one of me and Bob Buffington from that reunion newpaper article I posted a while back, and one of Bob (again) and another of our guys. I was kinda stunned. No idea how they got there.
* But yes, if you go to You Tube and type in "Top Ten Helicopters - "OH6-A Cayuse" (the title of a History Channel series), you will pull up what I think is one of the only recorded film bits of our history. It is a kind of weak episode with some rather hollywood-ish interviews, describing our ship and our mission. Understand of all the thousands of hours of helicopter footage filmed during the war, there is almost none of us or our Loaches. It was quite difficult to have one of us using a movie camera in the cockpit while flying this low level, intense mission. We were not secret or covert, just not many such units, and even less well known. It really is an amazing little story within the bigger story if you ask me. I have acually only met three or four other Vietnam Vets who had ever heard of us. If you weren't in or near one of our units, chances are you would never have known of us.
Sadly, one of our guys reconnected with his "Observer" a few years ago and they had planned to get together. But the Observer (one John Klark) died suddenly and that never happened. Klark used to be the only guy we knew who did take a movie camera in the cockpit every day. It so happens I located Klark's sister and she said they still had boxes of his films somewhere, but after three years they cannot find them. Those would be treaures!
A few things to notice in that video - much of it appears to me to be file footage shot somewhere in Callifornia, but you will see a few seconds of us (not my specific unit, but a similar one) hovering about 8 feet off the ground with purple colored smoke on the ground - over what appear to be gravestones. I am certain those clips are the real thing. Colored smoke was what we used to mark a target before getting out of the way of our Cobra gunhsips circling over our heads at 1,500 feet - who were waiting to pounce on the target with rockets and mini-gun fire when we called (or screamed as the case might be). They must have already let the "guns" hit once in this video, otherwise they would not be hovering so close to a smoke.
Note: the official Army name was the "Cayuse" - we never called it that! It was a "Loach" or an "OH-6". And the video refers to "the killer egg" - never ever heard it called that - ever.
If you are careful to look again at precisely 1:53, 2:03, and 2:23, you will see more of the same (one is a repeat I think).
Also note: after about 2:35 it becomes more about later configuartions of the Loach as used for Mogadishu. We had no rockets, no external outrigger seating, no double mini-guns mounts (just a single on one side, made for intersting foot pedal work when firing). Interstingly, many who saw "Blackhawk Down" think that is the first use of the Loach in combat, but are surpised to learn we were their "forefathers". I think it's fair to say our mission was far higher risk than theirs.
We spent hours at a time, day after day searching and hovering, attempting to locate them through their (incredibly clever) camoflauge, then attempting to "bait" them into firing at us. Once they finally did, that gave us two things - it confirmed their position, AND gave us permission to fire on them. (remember - "undeclared" war - we cannot fire first - except in a "free fire zone") It also got us shot down - a lot. I will venture a guess that in the three companies in my squadron alone (one of several squadrons who flew this type of mission throughout the country) over my 18 months there, we may have had as many as 100 Loaches shot down. I am not making that up. Repeating myself here - In that Hilton Head Monthly magazine article I posted months ago, just five of us in the photo were shot down 14 times (me just once but what a memorable aftermath - long story). And one late comer who missed the photo would have added 5 more himself. And that was only part of just my company alone. I estimate we (my company only) had about 30 shot down. And one of out sister companies, "Apache Troop" had a much worse track record than we did.
When the opening scene last night had the guy - an obvious Loach "Observer" talking (very animatedly) about "my job is to get shot at", he was NOT speaking figuratively, but in fact, literally.
Did the rest of our pilots in the mission ("Slicks", "Guns" and "C&C") think we were nuts? -- Is the Pope Catholic? And they teased us about it all the time.
This is one of several photos I have of them after being lifted back into our Maintinence yard. My shoot down was smoother than this - I did not roll my ship.
Some of the guys coined phrases like : "Thall Shalt Not Bonk" or "Bonking in Rice Paddy May Be Hazerdous to Your Health".
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