We were put on a higher state of alert and anticipated that there would be a greater-than-normal need for gunships. Over the next day, February 3, our battalion was involved in several actions that demonstrated that the war had assumed a whole different scale. As luck would have it, my section still didn’t draw support in and around any of the big city hot spots, but again we had a support mission for the Aussies at their base camp, Nui Dat.

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We landed at the small Nui Dat airfield and were met not at operations, as was the norm, but rather on the flight line, by an Australian officer who excitedly told us that his men had a “Tac E”—tactical emergency—to their west, near the town of Beria. A tactical convoy had been ambushed. The Aussies had some seriously wounded personnel, but had been pinned down for 30 minutes by .50-caliber fire, which prevented helicopter medical evacuation. The officer gave us the approximate convoy location, as well as the site of the .50-caliber machine gun and a frequency and call sign. We logged the information, climbed to altitude, called Bearcat to apprise them of the mission and headed west for Beria.

We then punched in the ground commander’s frequency and identified ourselves as Bounty Hunter 21 and Bounty Hunter 23, a light-fire team with 2.75-inch rockets, a 40mm grenade launcher, two miniguns and four M-60 machine guns. We were now about six kilometers to his east.

The ground commander, an Australian major, quickly—and with understandable excitement—briefed me on the situation. His company had been on an operation and was traveling in a column formation through a village when it came under simultaneous fire from all directions. The Australians’ initial actions on contact had driven off most of the enemy. But, while they were in a herringbone formation—a defensive immediate-action drill in which tracks assume a zipper-like configuration to provide omnidirectional immediate defense—they had come under .50-caliber fire from a gunner located in a small bell tower atop a one-room schoolhouse. Since the tracers were pinkish-orange and not green, we concluded that we were up against an American .50-cal, but it really didn’t make any practical difference, as a U.S.-made .50-caliber and a Chinese .51-caliber were both formidable weapons.

The enemy gunner could fire on any angle from which the Aussie company had approached him. The Aussies were hopelessly pinned down and needed help in eliminating the machine gunner in the bell tower.

I told the major that we were familiar with the area, since we had frequently worked with the Australians as a part of the American helicopter force that routinely flew in support of the SAS patrols. He was relieved to hear that. I told him to stand fast and give me a few minutes, and we would come up with an appropriate strategy.

We were about three kilometers to the southwest of the area of operations when I began assessing the conditions in order to set up the attack. My wingman, Command Warrant Officer 2 Larry Miller, and I got the lay of the land. There was no terrain cover, but rather good unrestricted observation in all directions. The bottom line was that we had no option but to attack the .50-cal in a head-to-head fight.

I set up the attack parameters. We would be starting our attack at 2,500 feet, as opposed to the normal 1,500-foot “over the top” gun run. What we would lose in initial rocket gunnery accuracy we would make up in ship and crew safety. I can still feel the adrenaline rush and stark fear I experienced while going over the top on the first gun run. As I started inbound, the enemy gunner perched in the cupola let me know that he knew exactly where I was, and that he was going to do his best to kill me first and then my wingman. Seconds into the run I saw large, bright pink golf-ball-size objects flying at me on what seemed very close to a 180-degree course to mine. What bothered me most was that for every one of these orangey-pink “mothers,” there were four more nonilluminated bullets of .50-caliber size in between them.

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