An Cosantóir

15 LZ's where you wouldn't have six feet of clearance between the canopy of the jungle and the rotor. I would have the Crew Chief in the back telling me: "there's no more tail rotor room on the right" and you had to keep it really steady. You came to a hoover and these trees were sometimes 100 to 150 feet tall, and it was a triple canopy jungle so the farther you got in, the darker it got… as you set up your rate of descent, you intensely paid attention where your position was in relation to the trees so you wouldn't crash and burn. As you went down, if there were bad guys in the LZ, they were experienced, and they wouldn't shoot at you. They would wait until you got into a descent and would hold until you hot half to three quarters way down and then they would open up. They would get you in a crossfire and everything just lit up…you didn't have a power to pull up until you got rid of that weight, the LRRP's. I've seen guys jumping from 15 feet off the helicopter. If you think about that, they thought it was a lot safer to jump off the helicopter down in front of guys with machine guns that it would be on a helicopter. One more than one occasion I had bullets coming through the cockpit and the aircraft. They (LRRP) would open up with their M16's and everything was just lit up on both sides. When you got rid of that weight, if you were lucky not to get shot down, then you can pull up. Thar was a hairy experience…it really was, and I can't think of a way it could get any harrier. So, I got an invitation to join the gun platoon (the UH-1C gunships). I don't want to brag but everyone considered it to be the elite platoon. There were to different types of missions: combat support or combat assault. Most Slick missions were combat support, fire bases and stuff like that, with LRRP insertions and extractions mixed in. When gunships went to escort Slicks in and out in case if they did receive enemy fire, in many cases, these missions never turned out to be hot. At a lot of times, we would get called in when the crap was already flying and that happened a lot. So, these would be combat assault missions. I liked this better than Slick flying. At least I could shoot back! The slick had two M60 (heavy machine guns) on tripods, one on each side, but they were pretty much unarmed in comparison to our gunships. When you're flying a Hog, you have 38 rockets, two M60's in the back, the rocket had 70 pounds, high explosive warheads…that's assuming that you had enough power to take off with 70 pounds warheads. I also had two miniguns mounted on each side, and the co-pilot can control them with mechanical sight. We had them set for 2400 rounds per minute because of our airspeed. The jets have them set for 6000 RPM because they are a lot faster, and they needed more saturation rate. With 2400 RPM that meant 40 rounds per second, which meant 4800 rounds per minute (both miniguns), two M60 at 550 a minute so you're putting 100 rounds per second, and you can put a bullet into every square foot if you know how to do it. If you fire a rocket, the miniguns would automatically cut off because you would shoot your own missile down! If I remember that right, the GUTS 'N GUNSHIPS In flight over Vietnam. 7.62 mm miniguns, that very versatile round was flying 2800 feet per second. The rockets were 1800 feet per second so the rounds would catch up with the missiles, you would shoot the fins off them, and the hell knows where they would go! As I wrote in the book, one of the guys had a faulty rocket and it went off the rail spinning in the air and killed like 7 of our guys. I don't know how Jack ever got through this, it was none of his fault, but friendly fire was very hard to deal with, if you killed your own troops. LG: Let's go back to your first contact with the army life. You described it so well in your book, but did you ever had any doubts or second thought about joining in? MG: Only about 100 times a day (laughing). Of course! I was in my third year with the University, and I haven't proclaimed to the major study area. I just haven't decided. I took a student loan because I was a poor boy. I lost my dad when I was 13 and I was working from the age of 14. Then I nearly got drafted. So pre-emptively I went and volunteered. My brother was a pilot, and I was really into aviation. I had some bootleg time flying myself, so I decided to inquire about flying programs with the army and they came up with the Warrant Officer Helicopter Pilot and I was interested immediately. So, I taken the flight standards test and if you messed it up, you could never take it again. It's like an IQ test for flight. I took it and they guaranteed that if I join, I will go to the flight school. I didn't have much chance, Luke. It was either I was going to get drafted and be a ground pounder in Vietnam or of fly. So, I went but the basic training was something so different from what I would expect! That question was on my mind a lot…flying school…I think it was the best flight school in the world. I had 212 flying hours by the time I got out of it. A civilian helicopter pilot does 40 hours and if he passes check ride you can have your licence and I think these guys are just an accident waiting to happen (laughing). Only when you get to Vietnam you are starting to question yourself: what we are doing in here. Everything was the same and nothing changed. Everybody had questions about that. I think that this war was probably a big mistake. LG: You mentioned your "Hiller horror stories". Hiller was a basic helicopter trainer back then and everyone hated it. How surprised, or shocked for a better word you were when you first came across this contraption. MG: Oh, I remember it so well. The day when I got introduced to Mr. Hiller. There were two basic training aircraft back then. The TH-55 Hughes 300 and the Hiller OH-23D. It had a 250-horsepower engine and a transmission system over your head so it was quite a roar in the back. For the first time when I tried to hoover, they must have thought I was going AWAL. It had such an insane control lag that if you put aft cyclic input to it, it wouldn't do anything for a little bit. So, an inexperienced pilot wants to give it more and by the time it catches on, it's galloping backwards! And then you overcorrect the other direction and it's just a wallowing exercise and you're trying to keep it away from crashing. Of course, on start you can't hoover. The instructor must be there to show you the works, but that's the hardest helicopter that I have ever flown. But when I came back, I was an instructor on OH-23D in Fort Wolters and Mark after graduating from the Flight School.

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