"Get the Hell Out of Here"
Submitted by - CPT Dave Farenbach, Pilot, Kontum 8/67-8/68 Fletch Maffett was one of my heros. My most vivid memory of Fletch was produced on day 2 of Tet. At about 1500 several of us 2d platooners were milling about our area at the Kontum airfield waiting for 2 of our birds to return from their mission so we could turn them around and join the fight. We began to hear some sporadic small arms fire coming from the north side of the runway and very shortly thereafter, Larry Thompson who was HH 26 at the time, landed, hurriedly taxied into the ramp area , jumped out, and looking directly at me yelled, "Get a pilot in this airplane and get it the hell out of here". I bloody well grabbed my hard hat and M-16, I got it the hell out of there heading east. Immediately after breaking ground I put the airplane into a right turn, building airspeed but with a steep bank. It was in this bank close to the ground that I saw several blue baseballs go flying in front of the nose and heard and felt something hit the airplane. When I had enough altitude to look at the gas gauges, the fullest one had 1/4 tank, so there was no hanging around to lend a hand. Thompson had expended the rockets and since I was alone I couldn't reach anything in the back seat either so I headed for Holloway. I double-timed it from the ramp to Fletch's office and as best I could, told him what had just transpired and that's pretty much all I remember of that day. But I soon found out that Fletch got to work immediately. He scrounged a Chinook, flew in it up to Kontum, cleaned out our ops hut taking maps, maintenance equipment, whatever was deemed carryable and hard to replace, plus all of our enlisted guys and a couple of pilots and flew it all out of harms way. And that night the Huey company that had recently moved into temporary encampment on the north side of the airfield lost 2 birds (quite possibly to the same big gun I encountered) and our building, revetments, POL and ammo dump went up in a giant explosion that could be seen from the bunkers at Holloway. Could have been a flare; could have been a sapper--I never found out. At our reunion at Rucker in 2009, I had dinner one night with Fletch, Arlie and a couple of other guys and I overheard him telling Arlie about this airplane that somebody flew down from Kontum with a hole in the right wing about a foot from the wing tip and inches from the aileron hinge big enough for him to stick his fist through. It was really fun telling him that I flew that airplane into Holloway and telling those guys how it all happened. And also to have those guys know the extent to which Fletcher Maffett's natural instinct was to take care of his people. He was a terrific man and I shall never forget him as long as I live.
0 Comments
"Trees in the Trail"
Submitted by - Charley Barnes, Cpt, Headhunter 36, Pleiku May '67-May'68 I’m not positive of when this happened, but I think it was in January 1968. 1Lt Art Morecraft and I were on a two-ship mission to go from Pleiku to Cheo Reo. What for, I don’t recall, but it seems it was administrative in nature. Art’s observer was one of our crew chiefs, Marlin Wagner. I don’t recall who I had in the back seat, if anybody. The weather was overcast with a fairly low ceiling in Pleiku when we departed, becoming higher as we flew southeast toward Cheo Reo, and we were flying fairly high. As always, regardless of the mission, a VR pilot has his head out the window looking for the bad guys. As we passed over the escarpments that formed the Five Fingers area southeast of VC Valley, I noticed a well-worn trail with trees growing right in the middle. That couldn’t be, so we dropped down to take a better look. That’s when the trees stepped off the trail into the brush. Before the day was out, we had put in 6 flights of A-1E’s on the target and coordinated a company-sized air assault of troops from the 4th ID. Love those A-1E’s, they were SO accurate. The next day we were invited to go to Phu Nhon, the headquarters for the 4th ID brigade that had been involved in the fight. There were at least twenty NVA bodies collected there. I don’t recall the exact number and I’m sure many more had been dragged away by the enemy. From the intelligence that was gathered, we learned that we had happened upon a company-sized contingent of replacements headed for the NVA 95B Regiment that operated in the Pleiku area. I often wonder why the NVA didn’t just step off the trail and then freeze when they heard us coming. Must have been because they were newbies. "Kontum Evacuation - Remembering Fletch Maffett"
Submitted by - Cpt, David Fahrenbach, Headhunter Pilot, Pleiku & Kontum, Aug 67-Aug 68 My most vivid memory of Fletch was produced on day 2 of Tet. At about 1500 several of us 2d platooners were milling about our area at the Kontum airfield waiting for 2 of our birds to return from their mission so we could turn them around and join the fight. We began to hear some sporadic small arms fire coming from the north side of the runway and very shortly thereafter, Larry Thompson who was HH 26 at the time, landed, hurriedly taxied into the ramp area , jumped out, and looking directly at me yelled, "Get a pilot in this airplane and get it the hell out of here". I bloody well grabbed my hard hat and M-16, I got it the hell out of there heading east. Immediately after breaking ground I put the airplane into a right turn, building airspeed but with a steep bank. It was in this bank close to the ground that I saw several blue baseballs go flying in front of the nose and heard and felt something hit the airplane. When I had enough altitude to look at the gas gauges, the fullest one had 1/4 tank, so there was no hanging around to lend a hand. Thompson had expended the rockets and since I was alone I couldn't reach anything in the back seat either so I headed for Holloway. I double-timed it from the ramp to Fletch's office and as best I could, told him what had just transpired and that's pretty much all I remember of that day. But I soon found out that Fletch got to work immediately. He scrounged a Chinook, flew in it up to Kontum, cleaned out our ops hut taking maps, maintenance equipment, whatever was deemed carryable and hard to replace, plus all of our enlisted guys and a couple of pilots and flew it all out of harms way. And that night the Huey company that had recently moved into temporary encampment on the north side of the airfield lost 2 birds (quite possibly to the same big gun I encountered) and our building, revetments, POL and ammo dump went up in a giant explosion that could be seen from the bunkers at Holloway. Could have been a flare; could have been a sapper--I never found out. At our reunion at Rucker in 2009, I had dinner one night with Fletch, Arlie and a couple of other guys and I overheard him telling Arlie about this airplane that somebody flew down from Kontum with a hole in the right wing about a foot from the wing tip and inches from the aileron hinge big enough for him to stick his fist through. It was really fun telling him that I flew that airplane into Holloway and telling those guys how it all happened. And also to have those guys know the extent to which Fletcher Maffett's natural instinct was to take care of his people. He was a terrific man and I shall never forget him as long as I live. "1,000 ft. RULE?"
Submitted by - 1LT David Miller, Headhunter 45, Pleiku & Kontum 1,000' rule?? When I was a HH (Pleiku & Kontum) the "rule" that was never followed was 1500' - ask Bill Silva who got written up for getting caught working too low, by someone from staff (I think). I still don't think we could've done our job up that high ... besides, the "cone-of-fire" was too big at that altitude. While we didn't talk openly about it then, we did most of our flying "work" between the tree tops & about 200'. Dragging wheels thru the trees happened now & then, while dropping a sandbag of mail or a case of rations, to some isolated radio relay guys. Or while supporting LRRP's - the bad guys couldn't easily see what we were doing. Also, it's really hard to see the footprints in the dirt etc., when doing a BDA (Bomb Damage Assessment) after an "Arclight" (B52 strike) at altitude. Bonus: my observer (from Dayton, OH) could put a round (grenade launcher) in or damn close to a bunker if I was flying "coordinated." Beyond that, I can talk about that business, just west of Dak To, where we were taking small-arms fire from above, while flying thru the saddles - some of us got gassed, too - I put Crazy Al Morton in for the Silver Cross after that all calmed down. And, I have an issue with some who say that Army Recon Pilots weren't allowed to FAC or run air strikes etc. Whenever I had a hot target of opportunity, I'd go up on guard & ask if anybody, who could hear me (& be close enough), had any ordinance to drop. (Fighter bomber jocks didn't like to go home with ordinance onboard.) I ran airstrikes by Thuds & F-4's & gave them the BDA when they were done. Would've liked to fire the Missouri, if I'd have been closer to the coast. Didn't we do it all? Shoot heavy artillery missions as well as mortars, cover convoys & Dustoff's when needed, make deliveries when the choppers couldn't fly, run Donut Dollies around to the various S.F. camps, cover LRRP's, cover ground unit movements, support radio relay teams etc. etc. ??? About the only times we would fly at altitude were on admin trips like taking a bird in for maintenance, or giving a familiarity trip to a new staff officer, or a milk run to Qui Nhon. "Rocket Ridge"
Submitted by - CPT Bill Beckwith, Headhunter 14, Spaf 1, Kontum In April 1968 1LT Steve Butler and I had flown to Dak To, located in the region known as the Tri-Border Area where Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia meet. We were to pick up two sergeants from Dak To Special Forces camp as observers in the back seats of our aircraft and fly a dual-ship mission along the borders where the Ho Chi Minh Trail entered Vietnam from Laos. My engine had been running rough on the flight north from Camp Holloway so after we landed I performed a common, but probably unauthorized, maintenance procedure. Each aircraft carried a spark plug wrench, steel brush and a grease pencil (actually composed of colored wax) in a small pouch. The Bird Dog's six-cylinder engine has a dual set of spark plugs, two in each cylinder, for safety reasons. In case one set of plugs and its separate electrical system ceases to function, the other will keep the engine running. If a spark plug in one or more cylinders happens to become fouled by gunk in the gasoline, a not uncommon situation, the engine will run rough. The procedure was to open the cowling on both sides of the engine, mark each cylinder with the grease pencil, and briefly run up the power. The cylinder with the fouled plug, having run at a lower temperature than the others, would not melt the wax grease pencil mark. The fouled plug would be removed with the spark plug wrench, cleaned with the steel brush, replaced and with the engine running checked for proper performance. A ridge line just to the west of the Dak To airfield was known locally as Rocket Ridge. This feature was so named because of the frequency of Soviet-supplied 122 millimeter rockets that were fired by the VC or NVA from the other side of the ridge onto the airfield, Special Forces camp and other US and Vietnamese Army facilities there. Just as I was replacing the last cleaned spark plug in my engine and before our observers got to us, rockets began to impact the far side of the airfield. It was either jump into a ditch along the runway or get in the aircraft and get out of there. Steve started up first and hit the runway from the ramp at full power with me in hot pursuit. We flew west around Rocket Ridge, climbing for altitude, and Steve immediately saw the rocket position that was firing. He immediately rolled in on the position and fired four high explosive rockets carried under the wings, all of which impacted right in the middle of the position, stopping the attack and causing secondary explosions from stored rockets That was one of the finest examples of what Bird Dog pilots were supposed to do. However, Steve never received the award he should have gotten for probably saving lives and property in Dak To that day. "Incoming Mortars!"
Submitted by - Al Paulsen, CWO, Headhunter, Pleiku "My orders tell me that I was assigned to the 219th on 21 September 1967. I left the unit on 20 June 1968. The incident that I described happened in January or Feb 1968. I’m thinking that it happened shortly before the Tet offensive began in earnest, but I’m not positive. We had a lot going on during that period of time. The event I remember happened about the same time, in the early morning, as your event. We took a real beating. In addition to the hit on the roof of the orderly room, we had 3 rounds hit the roof of the Headhunter hanger. The wings and fuselages of three Birddogs in the hanger looked like sieves. We also took a round on the ground just outside the maintenance office attached to the hanger. The round landed a couple of feet from the south wall and peppered the office with shrapnel. The large water jug we had in the office was shattered and water flowed all over the floor inside. During another attack a couple of Headhunter barracks also took hits and shrapnel came through the walls of my hooch and tore through some family photos that I had under clear vinyl on top a small desk in my room. I still have those photos too. I’ve attached photos of the hanger roof and the south wall of the maintenance office where the mortar round hit. The guy pointing at the impact crater was a flight school classmate of mine that was with the 185th RAC “Pterodactyls. He had RON’ed the night of the attack. For some reason he never came back for a visit after that! I’ve also included a hooch that took a hit. It may have been the Officer’s Club at Camp Holloway." "Dodging the Bullets"
Submitted by - Charley Barnes, Cpt, Headhunter 36, Pleiku May '67-May'68 Several months after arriving in Pleiku and being assigned to the 4th Platoon of the 219th, we received a very interesting intelligence report from the 4th ID. It addressed captured VC instructional materials concerning antiaircraft fire, and specifically dealt with the O-1 Birddog. The basic thrust of these materials was to fire in front of the aircraft and to lead it based on the visibility of certain items on the aircraft. These included the tail number, the whisker antennae, etc. I didn’t think much of it then, but as I thought about it over time I came to realize that perhaps you could trick them by putting your aircraft in a full slip and descending when you started taking fire. That would make you seem to be traveling in a direction 90 degrees from your actual flight path. Months later, I was on a VR mission west of Plei Djereng Special Forces Camp and just north of the Se San River. It was an area where the 4th ID had fought several battles with the NVA about a year prior to that. There were many craters and old gun positions visible. However there seemed to be evidence of some fresh digging, so I cranked up the 175mm arty at Plei Djereng and started a little recon by fire. The NVA must not have liked it much. I soon saw some movement and made another pass over the area when all hell broke loose. I was the target of multiple AA machine guns while at an altitude of about 500 feet at most. Here was the unwanted opportunity to test out my theory. I applied a full descending slip and made it to tree-top level without taking a single hit. That was the good part, obviously. The bad part was having to look at all those tracers coming up right in front of you. I then continued with the artillery. After I left the artillery peppered the area with H&I fires all night. There were no friendlies in the area, so we never knew what damage we did. In later months I had several more “opportunities” to use the slip technique. I don’t think I’d be writing this story today if I had not learned to do that. "On the Ho Chi Minh Trail"
Submitted by - Charley Barnes, Cpt, Headhunter 36, Pleiku May '67-May'68 In early 1968 the NVA started converting the Ho Chi Minh trail from a dirt path into a highway. Because of the barrier posed by the high mountains along the border between Cambodia and Laos, the trail had to come through a small portion of Vietnam just west and south of Dak To known as the Plei Trap Valley before turning west into Cambodia. In an attempt to forestall this project, the USAF directed a multitude of B-52 strikes into the area. In April 1968, three weeks before my DEROS, Captain Stan Irvin and I were assigned to conduct a two-ship bomb damage assessment of the area. We initially surveyed the southern portion of the Plei Trap. We found evidence of fuel dumps and saw a few enemy troops, upon whom we wasted all our rockets. As we moved further north and east, slightly into Laos, where there had been no bombing, the highway was in plain sight and had bunkers every 40 or 50 meters. Just up the road we saw a platoon of NVA pushing a gun south. It was pretty large and had eight wheels. Stan had a case of CS grenades and his observer dropped a few. Then we had to skedaddle because we were low on gas, so we headed for Kontum, but cranked up the 175mm arty and fired blind while enroute. Of course, we had to fudge a bit on the border between Laos and Vietnam. As we departed I noticed a nearby hill top where the bamboo had all been cut down and wondered what that was all about. After refueling and grabbing a bite of lunch, we headed back to the area. Thinking we were being sneaky, we flew low level up a valley toward the ridge line where the road was located. I was lead ship and as I approached the ridge line I drew heavy fire from the smaller ridges to my left and right. All I could do was evade and get over the higher ridge and road to my front, while Stan had room to turn around. As I passed over the road, all I could see was masses of humanity running for the bunkers along the road. We both put a little distance between ourselves and this area, then climbed to an altitude of 1500 or 2000 feet above ground level. We cranked up the 175mm arty again. While adjusting the arty, I noticed that the area of cut bamboo I had seen before was cut in a clover leaf pattern. This looked ominously like what an antiaircraft position was supposed to look like, and my suspicions were soon confirmed. I heard a continuous boom-boom-boom sound, looked down, and saw what looked like green baseball bats coming up from the ground in my direction. The only solution was to get low again, so I went into a spin until I was low, flew a good distance away, and then went back to altitude. It was then that a USAF FAC called us on guard and told us to get away, he was putting in a flight of F-4s on the AA position. But they were jinking so much when they went in that they didn’t come anywhere close. After that we headed back to our base in Pleiku. I’m told that this road became a very dangerous place when it was completed, because the NVA had truck-mounted AA guns all along it. "The Observer"
Submitted by - Cpt David Farenbach, Headhunter, Kontum Aug '67 - Aug '68 About mid-afternoon on day three of the Tet Offensive I landed at Dak To for fuel and rockets. I’d been in the airplane since just after dawn and had logged nearly twenty hours in the two days before this one. The 2nd Platoon of the 219th Reconnaissance Airplane Company (mine) had to relocate from Kontum Airfield to Holloway under great duress the day before. And that night, the Kontum airfield along with a temporarily resident American Huey company, had been overrun and our platoon’s entire physical plant--ops shack, revetments, POL and ammo dumps, everything—went up in a huge explosion that lit up the sky sufficient to be visible 30 miles away at Holloway, over the mountain range that rose 4,000 feet exactly half-way between the two towns. On that day, the North Vietnamese Army was very much in control of everything in the city of Kontum except the MACV compound where I lived with a couple of hundred Americans, and the Province Chief’s residence. (He kept all the tanks.) I remember feeling very tired, filthy and scared to my toenails. The fact that Dak To was out of rockets didn’t help. And that was my emotional footing when I first heard his voice. I was up on the step pumping AVGAS when I heard him ask if I was going anywhere near Dragon Mountain, the 4th Infantry’s base camp somewhere South of Pleiku. I’d only heard about it—didn’t even know if the place had a runway. I explained in what must have sounded like a royal wimp-out that I was going in that general direction, that this load of fuel would last until just after dark, that the airplane needed to be at Holloway for the night, and that what we would encounter on the way was anybody’s guess. I did mention that good ole’ 690 been accumulating bullet holes for the last three days and things were still pretty iffy where I was headed. He said that was fine. He said, “You see, sir, I got separated from my spare pair of glasses in a firefight in the bush yesterday and I can’t see shit. Gotta get to base camp to get a coupla more pairs.” It would soon be dark in the central highlands and he’d be one helluva lot better off at Holloway than Dak To. I told him, “Jump in.” The only clean thing he brought with him was his M-16 which we tied next to mine behind the door. His boots and web gear were funky and his personal persona was pretty ripe from being in the bush for a little over 3 weeks; his fatigues hard-caked mud sheets at the knees and elbows. He was one of those people whose face seemed frozen in a permanent smile, which when combined with his myopic squint gave him an air of optimistic intensity that you had to see to appreciate. Since this was the first time the observers’ seat was to be occupied in at least three days it was, therefore, the first time I had reason to inspect the only observer’s helmet on board—and found it wanting. All padding, save the earmuffs, was AWOL. His smile seemed to imply that the dirty bandana surrounding his head would suffice just fine and where did you plug this thing in? We had a little chat about how to drop stuff and took off. My memory of what happened over the next 3 hours has become a somewhat fuzzy over the last 43 years. But for the sake of brevity it can be summarized by saying that we played out a version of a standard scenario common to countless Birddog pilots throughout the Vietnam war: somebody on the ground was in a bind; two other Headhunters showed up, helped out and we were able to make the difference that got the job done and a few dozen innocent people got to go on living. But in doing so, there was a lot of yanking, banking, low flying and dropping stuff. Years later, it occurred to me that I had had in my backseat an observer who could see nothing and had every right to be scared to his toenails, too, but if he was it surely didn’t show. He performed like he did this every day and every time I glanced at him in the mirror the look on his face said, ‘Man, if you gotta go to war this sure beats the hell outa what I been doin’. In short, he was in hog heaven, thoroughly enjoying the experience and this was going to make one helluva good story to tell the folks back home. Or not. I remember thinking that this chap was much more comfortable in my world than I would have been in his. After we landed at Holloway, he donned his pack, picked up his M-16, said, “Thanks for the ride, sir”, and started out across the PSP. Needless to say, I never saw him again. But the man’s slightly crazy smile has never left my mind in all these years and I’d surely give a lot to be able to buy him a beer. I don’t think I even asked him his name. "Not My Machine Gun"
Submitted by - Charley Barnes, Cpt, Headhunter 36, Pleiku May '67-May'68 During my year with the Headhunters I replaced one set of rocket tubes on my O-1 Birddog with a machinegun on several occasions. The Air Force would get wind of it before long and an edict would come down from on high to remove all machineguns. Seems they were worried we were encroaching on their close air support role. In early 1968 the third platoon of the 219th was formed to support the 52nd Artillery Group in Pleiku. I was assigned as platoon leader and began to develop a close relationship with the S-3 Section. They always sent forward observers and assistant S-3 on missions as backseaters. Finally one day the S-3 himself, a major, went on a mission with me in the back seat. This was during a period when I had removed the machinegun. We did the usual registrations and then began some visual recon in the mountains to the northwest of Pleiku. The area had patches of open fields where the Montagnards had exercised their slash-and-burn agriculture and there were craters and old antiaircraft positions here and there. Having been in the area recently, my attention was drawn to a field on the crest of the mountain. There had previously been digging along the edge of the jungle that I thought had been fresh. Now it was nowhere to be seen. So I made a low pass down the edge of the woods, all the while just seeming to wander around. Sure enough, there was a camouflaged antiaircraft position there, fully manned and ready to shoot. I informed the S-3, we alerted the artillery, and I decided to surprise them first with a few HE rockets. The approach was low level, this time over the length of the field. After I dipped my nose and fired two rockets, a machinegun opened up on me from the other side of the field. (Memory lapse dummy, they always operate in pairs.) Being on the crest of the mountain, I did a diving wing over to the left, masking the fire. All the while, the S-3 was cheering me on about giving it to them with my machinegun. When I said that it wasn’t my machinegun but theirs making all that noise, I thought he was going to pee in his pants. Subsequently we plastered the area with 155mm artillery, but I don’t think that S-3 ever took another ride in the back seat of a Birddog. |
© 2021 Eagle Team Publishing Group. All information on this website is the property of the brave military personnel who sacrificed their time and well being by putting themselves in harm's way in the service of their country. This website is dedicated to those 219th Aviation Company Headhunters personnel & their families who made the ultimate sacrifice with their lives in this service. Permission for the use of any content on this website is reserved for use by any person who served on active military duty with the 219th Aviation Company . All others must obtain written permission in advance by contacting bob@219headhunters.com