An Cosantóir

14 GUTS 'N GUNSHIPS GUTS 'N GUNSHIPS With first combat operations of the US Army in Vietnam, it became obvious, that use of helicopters gives the American forces a major tactical advantage. Soldiers were able to be dropped literally on the top of the enemy, engage them, and withdraw quickly, again by the means of rotary wing. While this was a very successful strategy during the first few months, the North Vietnamese soldiers adapted quickly by deploying portable anti air gun stations, being able to engage "low and slow" flying helicopters. Losses in both personnel and equipment forced the US Army to investigate new ways of increasing cover for vulnerable ships, which were becoming an easy target while approaching the Landing Zones. The answer to this issue was already there – the Huey. Bell UH-1B Huey was already a well proven helicopter, developed from the battletested Bell UH-1H model. This machine was, in a perfect aeronautical conditions, capable of carrying a detail of 10 fully equipped soldiers and two door gunners. The issue was that when heavily loaded, the helicopter would struggle during take-off. That wasn't a major problem during airfield operations, where pilots could simply perform a rolling take off, even on the skids just to get enough transitional lift from the rotor to lift the helicopter off the ground. The problem became aparent in a tight landing zones. This added additional challenge for the crews operating Huey on the frontline. The C version was designed to be a support gunship. Armed with rapid fire miniguns, grenade launcher and missile pods with door gunners manning 7.62mm machine guns. This helicopter could finally effectively cover landing troops and carry out its own offensive operations. Still, despite having more powerful engine than the B model, carrying all the weapons and ammunition, made it notoriously slow and underperforming. The crews named it "the Hog". In formation flight, the Hog could never keep up with the B version, also called "the Slick", hence all helicopters had to keep their speed down to 80 knots to allow for the escort falling behind. Still, the Hog saved countless American lives, providing accurate fire on the enemy, while the Slicks delivered troops to the "hot LZ's" There are many books written by a veteran Huey pilots about war in Vietnam. Not that far ago I had a huge privilege to interview Robert Mason, author of the legendary "Chickenhawk" who flew the "Slicks" in the war. He took part in the Battle of Ia Drang, made famous by the book "We were soldiers once…and young" written by Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore. This was then adapted into a well filmed Hollywood movie "We were soldiers" starring Mel Gibson. Although the movie shown the battle and preparations to it quite well, it forgot to mention the secondary combat action, that ensued straight after the US airmobile forces decided to march to their base through the jungle. Only then, enroute to Landing Zone Albany, American forces began receiving casualties from small and heavy arms fire of the NVA forces. The Battle of LZ Albany was the biggest and bloodiest single day battle of the history of the US Army. I can't recommend the book "We were soldiers once…and young" hard enough. Lt. Gen. Moore not only explains how he planned and executed the introduction of a helicopter to the modern battlefield, but also gives a great insight into a mind of one of the best army leaders of the XX Century. Both battles shown the advantages of the airmobile cavalry but also exposed their greatest weakness. On approach, take-off and hoover, helicopters were a great target for the enemy. In many combat sorties of the war, NVA soldiers would deliberately wait for the airships to get close to the landing before opening fire. That was one the experiences of Mark Garrison, Vietnam War Veteran, pilot of the Hog and a good friend of mine. Mark wrote a book titled "Guts 'n Gunships. What it was really like to fly combat helicopters in Vietnam" and in my opinion, this is one of the finest, honest and captivating works ever produced about this conflict from the perspective of a pilot. The author manages not only to take us inside of the conflict but also his heart and mind. If you ever wondered, how a Slick pilot would volunteer to fly the heavy armed UH-1C, Mark explains it in a beautifully simple way, still managing to smuggle his amazing sense of humour into such surreal experience as war. I strongly recommend reading his book before diving into our interview, however right now I would like you to open YouTube and look for "Pigpen combat Vietnam". This will take you to Mark's profile on the site and there you can not only listen to his own tales from the war, but most importantly listen to a raw, uncut audio between his and his friend's helicopters, providing fire cover to a Slick pilot landing in a hot LZ. This is one of the most chilling and very few audio recordings of Huey pilots flying combat missions in Vietnam. His helicopter sustained extreme damage, suffered from fire-catching rockets and much more and yet managed to return to the base in one piece, but we will discuss this below in our free-flowing chat. Lukasz Gancarz: Mark; an obvious question. What got you to write that book in the first place? Mark Garrison: I thought about writing this book for years. Of course, we all had PTSD when we came back, it was unavoidable, but you didn't know what you had when you came back because it wasn't described. It is hard to fight an enemy when you don't know who or what that enemy is. We had a lot of different emotions and a lot of things that would trigger it. You went through hell over there…there is no other explanation for it. Every day we went out, you never knew whether you are going to come back or not, especially with gunship. I flew Slicks for the first three months, and I got tired of going into these hot LZ's. We did a lot of LRRP insertions (Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols) and that would be four or five guys with full equipment in the back of the base model (Bell UH-1H) and the patrol commander would tell you where he wants to have them inserted. It was usually a cold, dark jungle, where you could only get one Huey in. I've been into those By Pte Lukasz Gancarz Photos by Pte Lukasz Gancarz Aerial Combat Support through the eyes of a Huey Pilot At a times pilots would be waiting for hours to be dispatched into the battle. They were called LC missions for lawn chair. Budweiser was the usual way for the pilots to relax after a mission.

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