Phantom Rescue
187th AHC, RVN – Sep 68

We all came home from Vietnam with memories we’ll never forget, situations that we re-live time and again. They do not necessarily haunt us; it’s that they made a very big impression on us, like this one:

September 1968:  Every good story begins with something like “There I was”.  And there I really was, holding onto a wounded F-4 Phantom pilot, kneeling in the cargo bay of our Huey which was hovering precariously over a bomb crater. As a newly minted Warrant Officer pilot I had arrived in Vietnam just a month earlier.  I was now thinking: “What in the hell am I doing here?”  A few moments later I heard a loud crack and our Huey settled to the bottom of the crater, shattering the main rotor and breaking off the tail boom.

The day started out routinely enough, picking up troops and transporting them out to field operations.  We headed back to base after completing the morning mission. As the last ship in the formation it was our responsibility to monitor the emergency radio.  On approach to Tay Ninh, an Air Force mayday reported an F-4 Phantom shot down and requested help from any helicopter in the area. I knew we had to go.  After reporting to our Command and Control ship, we broke off and headed up north to the crash site. With me were A/C commander CW-2 Bill Fullerton, crew chief SP-4 George Lux, and gunner SP-4 Larry Bird. Monitoring the radio traffic enroute, we learned that the Air Force 0-1 Bird Dog circling the site was receiving fire.

Close to the crash site, the Bird Dog directed us to a large hole in the jungle, the result of a bomb dropped by the F-4. We soon saw a white parachute hung up in trees close to the clearing, with the pilot hanging from it.  Bill made an approach to the top of the trees and began our ~100ft vertical descent down that hole.  The crew leaned out and reported clearances to our tail rotor, and I have a memory of our main rotor blades chewing a bit of tree bark on the way down.  At the bottom, Bill was able to move forward enough to place the front of the skids on the edge of the crater, giving some stability and a path along those skids to the ground.  The bulk of the aircraft hung out, hovering over the 15 ft deep crater.

We were not prepared at all for such a rescue, but without hesitation, George and Larry climbed out and worked their way over to the pilot, 75ft in front of us.  The ground between us was covered with crisscrossed trees and a thick layer of silt, the result of the bomb dropped by the F-4.  One of our crew shimmied up a tree to be next to the pilot.  We watched with apprehension, wondering how he would be able to get the pilot out of his harness and down to the ground.  He reached out and grabbed the pilot’s leg and secured it to the tree with his belt.  Presumably, he then planned to have the pilot grab the tree as he released him from his parachute.  It was quite a predicament, made worse by the threat of being a target at any time.  He had trouble with the parachute harness release, causing the pilot to assist, at which point the pilot slipped and fell (it turned out that he was injured when he ejected).  Now hanging by his leg, the pilot requested to be cut loose and fell the last few feet to the ground.  Our crew picked him up and carried him over the debris back towards us. The going was slow, so I ventured out to help them the last 25ft. Now back at our Huey, the three of us worked him into the cargo bay, with me backing in pulling and the crew pushing.

Just as I thought we would soon be on our way there was that loud crack, followed by a quick trip to the bottom of the crater.  I scrambled to the ground, fully expecting a hail of bullets coming in our direction (no doubt memories of that vintage movie “The Bridges of Toko-Ri”).  It was not to be. Collecting our thoughts, we repositioned our AF pilot to the edge of the crater, removed our M-60 machine guns and radios, and prepared for a rescue, just as we were trained to do.

A short time later a small Army OH-6 scout helicopter landed in front of us.  We moved the pilot over to it. Again, I found myself kneeling in the cargo compartment holding onto him.  I felt especially vulnerable as the OH-6 lifted us out and away from that hole.  They dropped me off at a nearby Special Forces base and continued onto Tay Ninh with the pilot.  By the time I got back he had been transferred to a larger hospital.  An Air Force Kaman Husky, which had been enroute the whole time, hoisted my crewmates to safety.

Now back at Tay Ninh, I was sent out to our refueling area to answer some questions from a senior Army Officer who had been monitoring the operation.  Later, our Ratpack gunships returned to the site and destroyed the remains of our Huey. The following day the four of us were called to Saigon to partake in a bit of publicity with the theme “Army Rescues Air Force, Air Force Rescues Army”, emphasizing a joint team effort by military branches.  The story appeared in the Army “Stars and Stripes” newspaper, but it was disappointingly inaccurate.

Twenty-five years later I received a letter from our F-4 pilot asking if I was the “Ian” who helped rescue him.  I responded to Carl Parlatore with “If you found yourself dangling from a parachute hung up in a tree in Sep 1968, then that would be me.” That began a friendship that continues to this day, and out of that initial contact he sent me the official USAF detailed report (below). Carl also contacted Bill Fullerton, and as a consequence, Bill and I renewed our friendship.  None of us have been able to locate George Lux or Larry Bird. I have only the USAF official record of our grand adventure, plus our personal correspondence.  The Army does not maintain records of their rescue operations, per a note to Carl from a USAF Colonel.  I could not find any record of it in the 187th daily logs, which is a curiosity.  Carl wrote to the Army in Apr 69 requesting the names of the OH-6 crew.  Those names came in a reply from Brigadier General Allen Burdett Jr (!).
Reflecting over all these years, that “loud crack” I heard could have been the tail boom impacting the edge of the crater, or the shattering main rotor blades.  Further, if we had crashed several minutes later, climbing out of that hole, it would undoubtedly been a major disaster for us; and then there’s that distinct possibility of being overrun when we first went down.  We were all being watched over that day. “All’s well that ends well”.

Ian Dawson, Sep 2016