An Cosantóir

16 I learned to love the old girl. She would take hard landings, you can bounce them in, and when you got onto it, it was such a nice machine to fly. It always demanded your attention, that's for sure. LG: I always must ask this question. What was your first impression of Huey in comparison to Hiller? Some pilots are amazed by the looks, some by the sound of the turbine, so what got you? MG: I was very excited to fly the Huey. I love the way it sounded when you cranked it! The whine of the turbine, slowly spinning blades when you got the RPM…it was something almost romantic about it to me. You had completely hydraulic controls, where Hiller was mechanical and you had a ballast system there so the collective would get very, very heavy! In hoover you really had to literally pump the collective to throw the ballast out. Huey was very smooth on the controls, and it was just a great helicopter. LG: And how was your advanced training going, especially flying in confined spaces and combat operations? MG: On the job training in Vietnam (laughs). Mountains was quite an experience because of the up and downdrafts around the ridges and you really had to be aware of the wind direction. I'll give you a good example. I was on a flight, sometime halfway through my tour of Vietnam, when we got called to a hot mission of some LRRP team that was in a big trouble. There was a mountain ridge, then a valley and another ridge and we had to get over it. Charlie models were underpowered. Around 1100 horsepower, but the Slicks had 1500 BHP, and we needed 1500... anyway that day I was flying into the wind and as I approached the ridge, the downdraft just kept sucking us down. I tried three or four times to get there, and I never made it. The last time that I tired I had zero airspeed and I had another 100 feet to go. I had to kick right pedal just to fly down the side of the mountain to keep us flying into the jungle. When you flew Slicks over the mountains sometimes it was so hard to keep them in hoover with the wind whipping around, and sometimes guys (soldiers) would throw your centre of gravity around with all their equipment flying around the helicopter. LG: Between the expectations and your understanding of war, how much of a shock was it to start flying into combat? MG: You can't really prepare for that. You must be there and be that. The only thing that could prepare you for it was to be there and you don't really feel ready for any of these incidents. This was a stimulus overload. Everything is happening at once and for me the time slowed down, and I have a theory about that. I think that you are getting so stimulated from enemy fire, three channels on the radio that you're trying to listen to, placing rockets and miniguns into the right place at the right time and avoiding friendlies… LG: Do you remember the exact moment when you said, "enough is enough" and decided to switch from Alligators (UH-1B slick) to Crocodiles (UH-1C Hog) and have means to shoot back? MG: Yes, I do. It was a little bit of a transition, not a snapping moment, but I have decided two months into the Slicks, that I would rather flying the guns. I was looking for an opening and one day their CO came into my hut and asked me do I want to join the guns. That was like learning to fly again! I mean the Charlie model was so different than the Slick! The Slick had all kinds of power. The Charlie model was the opposite once she was loaded. Slick was built for power. Charlie was built for manoeuvrability. When I took my fist check ride, the guy took me up in an unloaded UH-1C, and I thought: "wow, that's not that bad". But then we took the loaded aircraft and man, that was different! You had over 5000 rounds of ammo, crew chief, gunner, rockets, and fuel. So, you couldn't hover it! So, you must run it like a regular aircraft, only on skids and only then we would go through transitional lift, when she would shudder and dip a little and only then when you would get some speed, you would go over some fences and tall grass. When you got her airborne, you were generally okay in the air. The thing was so underpowered. I think they never figured it out that we are going to take it to Vietnam and be idiots to load with 15000 pounds of weapons. Each time we were way above our gross weight limits. LG: In your book you described an unplanned rescue mission of a LRRP team and I absolutely lover the story. Can you tell me how that played out? MG: That happened by an absolute accident. We were coming back from an aborted mission, and we were fully loaded with fuel and ammo. I was fiddling with the radios, and I came across the guy on an FM radio range, which we are using to communicate with the ground troops. We also have UHF which we are using to talk to Slicks and VHF to talk to the gunships and the gun teams. In the battle you could have three conversations at the same time really. I just happened to come across this guy transmitting. He was panting and I could hear brushes hitting his mic. I asked him to identify himself and his position and that's when I realised, I was right on top of the guy and talk about luck! And there was a whole platoon of North Vietnamese right behind him, just about to catch up with his squad. I said to pop red smoke, but some of the Vietnamese had our radios and they could hear us and deploy the same smoke, just to get us into an ambush. He said that he can't because the are right on them, and obviously they were running for their lives, but I told him that if he won't deploy smoke, I can't help him because I won't know where they are. They finally popped smoke and right after that there was a rice patty among the grass, and I saw a unit of NVA soldiers in pursuit of our troops. Jim "Mac" McDonald (the wingman) came in first and I behind him and he got them right in the middle of that patty, punching off a few rockets. I had a minigun ship, really suited for this mission and we basically wiped an entire platoon out. Of course, as we came back, their AK's opened up on us, and you will never forget a sound of an AK-47 round hitting your ship, when you're on the angry end of it. I called in the Slicks, and we got those guys out. Then later these guys came down asking is Mac anywhere around, but at this stage Jim was already back in the States. Mac died last year actually. So, they came looking for him and I and I called them over, but I knew who they were. There were the spec ops guys that we saved back then. They were talking to me with tears in their eyes, thanking me for saving their lives. That was a very touching moment, and it became very real in that moment. He wanted to make sure I'll thank Mac from them too when I go home. I think that us, me and Mac helped those guys to go back home, have life, grandchildren was very fulfilling. I wanted to have this story in my book to add this strong human aspect to it instead of talking just about Guts 'n Gunships. LG: Let's talk about that recording of you being literally lit up over Vietnam that everyone can watch on YouTube… MG: That was just an unbelievable experience. I thought, sure I GUTS 'N GUNSHIPS Marks helicopter on a low pass. Marks Slick coming to pick up LRRPT in the middle of the jungle.

• Cover