Our F Troop, 8^th Cavalry Angel

In early October of 1972, I was flying a UH-1H “Huey”, accompanied by two Cobra gunships. Our mission was to interdict NVA infiltration into the area  south of the US Air Force base just outside the city of Da Nang. My aircraft crew consisted of myself as PIC and AMC for the mission, my co-pilot a young Warrant Officer, and three enlisted crew. We operated as a team and knew each other pretty. The enlisted crew consisted of our Crew Chief and two gunners manning an M2 50 Cal and two M-60 machine guns. They provided us with a lethal punch of our own. But the Snakes were the real fire power we brought to the fight.

I knew my entire crew knew their jobs and we looked after each other at all times. We were informal most of the time in the aircraft when in flight. But I knew they expected me to bring them home safely after every mission. I always had their safety in the mission execution formula on every fight into bad guy territory. And I know that they were “on-mission” even before we were ever airborne and always well after. Your crew, whether in your aircraft or those with you on mission are everything, Without them you have no sting, your weapons will do nothing, and you will not get home.

This was a night operation, referred to as a Night Hawk mission. We were sent out to catch North Vietnamese Army forces on the move and out in the open. Our night vision system was the “Mark-One Eyeball,” with five pairs in my aircraft always on watch. Operating blacked-out also reduced our visual signature and made targeting our aircraft much more difficult. Our mission was to interdict NVA infiltration into the area in southern Quang Ngai Province from the mountains to the west. The NVA had been moving small units into the central portion of the province so that they could move against the US Air Force base just outside of the city of DaNang.  Our job was to find and engage these forces with direct fires and indirect fire support to minimize their ability to attack the air base. We had 105mm M-102 guns on call, along with mortar fires and more air assets, if needed.

We operated both day and night, depending upon the intelligence available on enemy activities or events that occurred. Our night operations, referred to as Night Hawk missions, were conducted in the dead of night, with our aircraft blacked out, to catch NVA forces out in the open, moving or preparing to conduct infantry, rocket, or mortar attacks. These nighttime missions were the rule during this remote deployment from the rest of the Troop back at Danang Air Force Base.

One night we learned of a suspected impending attack on an ARVN security position south of the air force base. We launched at midnight with two Guns and my Slick. I was the Air Mission Commander for the mission. In addition to commanding the small force, I coordinated our operations with supporting US Air Force assets and the ARVN forces on the ground. There was a US Advisor with the ARVNs on the ground located in a small base camp outside the perimeter of the Air Force base. We arrived in the vicinity of the ARVN position to observe sporadic small arms fires being exchanged between the ARVNs and the NVA force on the ground. As we flew at tree-top level, due to the threat of shoulder fired Soviet SA-7 anti-aircraft missiles, the enemy small arms fires often passed around, below, even sometimes above us. Initially, we had some difficulty locating the main force of the NVA on the ground, as they seemed widely dispersed based upon the small arms fire we could observe, whose tracers were most often green in color. US supplied ammunition employed red tracers, so we could normally identify the enemy force by the color of the tracers, especially at night. But not always. The enemy also employed captured US weapons and ammunition, so sometimes we observed a mix of red and green tracers from suspected enemy positions. The ARVNs were careful to only fire US ammunition when we were supporting them, to reduce friendly-on-friendly engagements.

This dark night, the green tracers were flying with unusual intensity, if widely dispersed. The NVA could hear us but could not track us in the dark unless we flew right over them. When we did, we flew at high speed to reduce the time window the NVA had to engage us. So, most of the NVA fire intended to hit us went wildly wide of us and filled the sky around with green streaks of light, something like a 1950’s science fiction movie. It was unnerving and all very dangerous. But we focused on the mission at hand: find the main enemy force and engage it so that the ARVN forces could accurately target it with indirect fire. The bad guys knew our gambit well and exercised excellent fire discipline to not give away their main force location. So, we flew over the suspected locations and began to engage positions we could identify based on enemy AA fire and observed forces on the ground.

It was not long before we found a large force of NVA that was moving toward the ARVN position. We circled back over the location and my gunners, on both sides of the aircraft sitting and standing in the open doors, began to call out fires and enemy elements on the ground. The more eyeballs observing the better and my extra crewman enabled an additional weapon to engage the enemy, if needed.  In this case, in addition to the customary two door gunners, I had one extra gunner, Jim Fentress, sitting in the left-hand cargo door with an M-60 machine gun and an M-79, 40mm grenade launcher close at hand. The M-79 was useful for engaging enemy anti-aircraft positions and hardened targets below us. 

As we flew over the enemy force, the crew called out enemy firing at us on our right and I banked in the direction to observe the location and to enable me to call out that location to the Guns with us. Just as I did that, the crew called out heavy fire coming at us from the left. I quickly and abruptly banked back to the left in a steep turn to allow the two  gunners on that side of the aircraft to return fire and to aid in directing the Cobra Gunships with us to engage the enemy that was firing at us. As I got well into the steep turn, I suddenly felt the sharp tug on the controls as the aircraft’s center of gravity shifted slightly to the left. I heard one of the crew yell out over the intercom: “Holy shit…..Fentress just fell out!”   I was well into the left turn, as the monkey strap attached to Fentress went taunt at the bottom of his fall. I looked back and, sure enough, Fentress was gone from the cargo compartment doorway. “Oh crap” I thought, he must be hanging under the aircraft about 4-5 feet below us. I flattened the turn and yelled over the intercom to pull him up. Then I heard the firing of an M-60 firing directly below us and saw the flashes from the muzzle blast of Fentress’s ’60 down through the aircraft’s chin bubble below my feet. I began to lift the aircraft straight up as I pulled in collective to gain altitude to prevent dragging Fentress through anything on the ground and to help reduce the ability of the enemy to target Fentress himself. In fact, momentarily there was no ground fire that I saw coming up at us as we rapidly rose into the dark night sky. Almost immediately, Fentress was pulled back into the aircraft by the gunners in the back. He plugged back into the intercom and excitedly said “I fell out in the steep turn……but I am okay. Sir let’s not do that again.” Thank God for the monkey strap that saved him.

I was truly relieved and silently thanked God for saving him. But I also had to refocus on the mission and get the guns engaged on this enemy position.  Then, in unison, every NVA soldier below began to fire at us. Tracers went everywhere and it was time to pull back. The guns expended their rockets and “chunker” fire from their chin mounted 40mm gun on the general area of the enemy force, as we pulled up slightly and away from the intense ground fires. The enemy force gave away their main position and friendly artillery fires were now inbound, called in by the ARVNs on the ground.

It was about to be a very bad night for the NVA attack force below us. It had nearly been so for us as well.  Jim Fentress was back on board, and we had no casualties. We did have, we found later, a few new holes in our Slick. We were all quite unnerved by the night’s turn of events, despite our overall mission success. Jim Fentress had a new nickname after that night: “Angel.”  We still call him that. I often think about what it must have been like for him to fall into the midst of the enemy force, only a few feet above the ground, at night, in the middle of a battle. What a ride that must have been, even if it only lasted a few, very long minutes.  And what did the NVA troops on the ground think when a door gunner dropped out of the helicopter into their midst firing an M-60 machine gun as he flew though the sky just above them like superman! It certainly must have stunned them, as they did not immediately engage him or us. Angel’s fame spread fast through the troop and was even written about by an AP reporter, Richard Blystone, who visited us while we were operating out of Chu Lai for that mission.

Copyright John T. Hoffman    All rights Reserved