"Target Fixation & Other Hazards"

"Target Fixation & Other Hazards"
Submitted by - Charley Barnes, Cpt, Headhunter 36, Pleiku May '67-May'68

After arriving at the 219th in May 1967, I was assigned to the 4th Platoon at Camp Holloway, under command of Major Vic Weber, which supported the 4th ID.  It was very quiet initially, with little if any enemy contact.  After two or three months, I made my first significant contact with the enemy.  While on recon just northwest of Pleiku, I spotted a squad of NVA soldiers hiding along a trail.  After confirming there were no “friendlies” in the area, I decided to engage with my HE rockets.  Rolling in from altitude, I aligned the sights, then threw the arming switches to hot.  When I pressed the trigger, nothing happened.  I looked out at the wings and saw several of the wires flapping loose in the breeze.  With the ground rapidly approaching, I armed the other two and fired.  They worked, but I found myself pulling out below tree level and flying through my own shrapnel.  Target fixation almost killed me early in my tour. 

Something I had been warned of during my orientation flights was not to recon up a valley.  A Birddog pilot could find themselves in rising terrain without room to turn around if they did this.  But what they didn’t tell you was to make sure you looked out the window on the uphill side of a mountain.  While this may seem pretty self-evident, one of our pilots, WO1 Ted Fiedler,  managed to fly right into the side of a mountain in VC Valley by doing the opposite.  Fortunately he and his observer were not seriously injured and were safely recovered. 

But it was dropping grenades out the window at low altitude that probably killed more Birddog pilots than anything besides enemy action.  This was really just another form of target fixation.  Scared myself a few times that way too, as well as low altitude stalls while engaging “VC” water buffalo. 

Lastly, there was an aircraft-related way to be killed by pilot error.  The Bird Dog had two fuel tanks, one in each wing.  When one was almost dry you switched to the full tank.  Forgetting to do this caused several harrowing moments for me, especially at low altitude.  Most of the time the engine would cough and sputter, giving you a few seconds warning, but sometimes it would just quit.  On one very memorable occasion I went through several restarts before the engine started.  I’ll bet there were very few Birddog pilots who didn’t experience this at some time during their tour.