"The Day We Lost Dave Cinkosky"

"The Day We Lost Dave Cinkosky"
Submitted by - CWO Dale Bennet, Pilot, 4th PLT, Bam Me Thout, Mar '71-Oct '71

CCS - David Edward Cinkosky, KIA 5 August 1971

Below is my memory of this day. 

Dave was just back eight days from his home leave, after his first tour. The night before his final flight, Dave said lets go to the O-club for a beer. I said ok but it was a little strange because Dave rarely drank and other than pilots, who had their own bars, there were only two other officers at BMT. The club was empty and we sat at the bar and had a couple of beers. During our talk I asked Dave why he had extended for another year. He said, “I think what we were doing is significant and we were saving lives in Viet Nam.” I hadn’t thought about it much but agreed with him and said they at least let us fight in Cambodia. 

The next afternoon Dave and I flew out to the launch site at Duc Lap. Cpt. Tangney briefed us and gave us the grid quadrants of the area he wanted us to recon. He then introduced us to a Yard who he said was his best team leader. He said he would be taking a team in soon near our area today and would we take him along. If we had time would we fly over his area and also check some LZ’s. I don’t know why it was a request rather than an order other then we hadn’t done it before. We said sure and that he would be in Dave’s back seat as he was low bird today. Our rocket tubes were loaded with all HE today. We flew out to the area and Dave dropped to the deck to do the recon. Low level for us was less than 50 feet above whatever was solid. The high bird navigates and vectors the low bird around the area. No electronic navigational systems were available so we did everything with maps and a compass but our maps were very good. The maps were topographical with photo overlays and stamped Top Secret. The low bird would say something like “off my right wing…..now, I have two bunkers and their estimated size is….”  The high bird would right down the grid coordinates and take notes; we could always get a six digit grid coordinate which put it within ten meters with an eight digit about 40% of the time which put us within one meter. In fact that day we did spot two bunkers and less than 50 meters north of them was a very dense area that looked like camouflage but we couldn’t see in. We were out in the middle of nowhere; the bunkers must have a reason to be there. I than vectored Dave to the area the one zero wanted to look at which was less than two clicks away. We didn’t want to spend too much time in the area because we didn’t want to alert them to our interest in the area. A quick look showed some active trails but nothing else. The area had two good LZ’s and we couldn’t see any booby traps or firing positions around them. 

Done, we headed back with Dave staying low as we would look for a target to fire our rockets at. (We normally fired our rockets on low level passes)  No one liked to unload live rockets at Duc Lap and we weren’t allowed to have them in Darlac province. Mondolkiri city was on our way back and always had bad guys and buildings to shoot at. We decided to have a look to see if anything new was going on. I dropped back and vectored Dave in up wind near the air strip then he was on his own. We tried to sneak up on them and once in a while it worked. I was above and just behind him now. Dave was at about 20 feet and made a turn down a slight slope and between a hill and a three story building. I then heard heavy ground fire and the nose of his aircraft pitched up sharply which is not normal. I called him “Snoopy 2, Snoopy 3…..Snoopy 2, Snoopy 3 what’s happening”  (Now I started to see everything in slow motion.) The nose dropped and it looked like he had pulled power and was in a slow glide to the right toward the hill. Then the right wing tip touched the ground, it cartwheeled next hitting the prop and it looked like it exploded sending chards of Plexiglas and metal into a cloud. The wings had separated and the fuselage form the back window to the prop was missing! I was flying around starring at the crash site trying not to believe what I had just seen when I heard “Snoopy this is Mike _ _ on guard, is that one of your birds down? “ (USAF FAC’s call sign Mike flying 0-2 aircraft) They were always in the AO at 4 to 5,000 feet ready for something to happen. If nothing else was going on they would keep track of us. He said it looked like no one could have survived. I said he was strapped to his seat and could have been thrown free and be alive. I was thinking two things: no way was I going to say he was dead without seeing his body and I wouldn’t let him become MIA. Mike asked me what I wanted and I asked what I could have, he said I could have anything I wanted. I said I wanted the guns to hit them hard then a recovery team and when they were clear, TACAIR to blow the shit out of anything still alive. I showed Mike the primary and secondary targets and turned the operation over to him. 

I climbed to about 3,000 feet and went into a slow orbit, out of the way but where I could see everything. I was low on fuel but planned to stay until I could see the recovery team go in. I leaned out my fuel mixture as much as I could and pulled back the throttle to just maintain altitude and waited. Four Green Hornet guns show up and the FAC gave them instructions including my location and cleared them hot on the target. They went in on the target in their normal pairs, firing their mini-guns and rockets. (Each gun ship carries 14 rockets.)  As the first pair rolls off target the second pair rolls in hot. They fly in an oval keeping this pattern of continues firing on the target. After a couple of passes trees and camouflage was blown away and I could see a large building about 40’ X 80’ some out structures and some bunkers. I was surprised when the recover team showed up in the spare gun ship. I expected to see an H 34 Kingbee not an American crewed chopper. The guns continued to fire as the recovery team landed and Cpt. Tangney jumped out with some Yards to recover the bodies. I told the FAC that I was going back by the southern route which had some areas that you could land on. I told the FAC that I was extremely low on fuel and may have to make an emergency landing. On the way back one tank went dry and the engine sputtered, I quickly changed tanks and the engine came back to life. I babied it back and made a straight in, down wind landing. I taxied to the refueling area and shut down. When I refueled I could see the bottom of the left tank, it was completely dry and the right tank had about ¼ inch in it. I walked down to where the recovery ship had landed and told them I wanted to see the body. They pointed to a body bay and asked if I wanted it opened. The body bag had a large amount of blood all over it. They explained that he had taken a round to the head just under the jaw and it had blown the top of his head off. I declined on opening the bag. The Yard one zero was most likely killed in the crash. I walked to the briefing tent and stopped just outside as I saw Cpt. Tangney with his back to me talking on the radio. He was reporting that “I” had just been killed! After he finished he turned around and froze staring at me and me at him, no words spoken. He had turned a bit pale then quickly turned and was back on the radio changing the KIA. He debriefed me then I flew back to BMT. I think the bullet had misshaped Dave’s face and we didn’t always have name tags, he assumed it was me because Dave had a lot more experience. When I shut down on our ramp the entire platoon including crew chiefs were waiting for me. When I got out it was very awkward as no one knew what to say. Our sergeant had a cold six pack of beer and he held one out and asked ‘Would you like a beer Mr. Bennett”  I drank the beer straight down I was so thirsty and then realized my flight suit was soaking wet. The sergeant handed me another beer and everyone started talking at the same time. We went back to our bar which had A/C and I told everyone the above story.   

The next day Cpt. Estill wanted me to fly the afternoon CCS mission and I said I go on R&R tomorrow and didn’t want to fly. He said I needed to get back in the saddle right away. (he is from Texas) I said the saddle will be there when I get back I just really need a break. The next morning I hoped on a Hughie going to Plieku. We landed on a strip about a third of the way to Plieku The pilot said that the weather was too bad to fly any farther north. I started a conversation with a first lieutenant and sergeant sitting in a jeep. They said they were going to Plieku and I asked for a ride. They said ok and I jumped in the back. They handed me a steel pot, flack jacket and M-16 saying we can use another rifle. I asked if we were going to join a convoy and he said no it’s just us, any problem with that? I said no, let’s go. That night I was playing poker in our company bar when our CO walked through and saw me and said “Bennett what the hell are you doing here?”  “I said “I’m going on R&R” He said “We have been socked in for three days how did you get here....never mind I don’t want to know.” and walked out. My first day back from R&R I flew the CCS mission and on the way back flew over the crash site. All the vegetation and structures were completely gone and the entire hill looked like it had been lowered about 2 meters. I found out later that the Mike FAC had expended three sets of TACAIR on the hill. I continued to fly the CCS mission until about two weeks before my DROS 27 October 1971.