U.S. Army Captain Thomas Pienta: Firsthand Account of a Vietnam War Helicopter Pilot

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My mind switched back to business as we approached the LZ. I glanced back at Brady, who was manning the portside M-60, and he smiled — I think to reassure me that I was doing a decent job of flying his Huey. I thought what brave men these gunners were. They were completely exposed to hostile fire, since they rode in seats facing out the side of the Huey. They did not have an armored seat and had only their armored vests to protect them.

Ron Timberlake, flight lead for the first platoon, was flying Chalk Six and ordered us into a heavy echelon left. We made a sweeping left turn onto our final approach path as we heard our commander in the C&C ship say ‘last round on the ground,’ meaning the artillery preparation was finished. The formation was pretty strung out as I glanced at the airspeed indicator, which read 90 knots. I nosed it over with the cyclic (the control stick between the pilot’s legs). With my left hand I pulled some more collective pitch while gently adding some left pedal to control the yaw of the aircraft. As the helicopter reached about 110 knots, we closed up the formation. The fully loaded Huey shuddered and vibrated violently, but that was standard for combat assaults. Our unit flew in such tight formation on a short final approach that you could read the name tags of the men in the ship you were flying in formation with.

Flying on either side of the slick formation in oval race-track patterns, the ‘Rat Pack’ gunship platoon laid in minigun fire and 2.75-inch rockets. We were flying into the midst of a battalion-size or larger North Vietnamese Army (NVA) unit, and all hell was breaking loose around us. We ordered our gunners to engage the enemy with full suppressive fire, left and right. My heart pounded furiously as I struggled to control the Huey. In the helicopter we monitored a VHF (very high frequency) radio used to talk to the gun platoon, a UHF (ultra high frequency) radio to talk to our C&C ship, and an FM radio to communicate between Hueys in the platoon. We also used an intercom to communicate among crew members within the helicopter. We were busy, to say the least.

Over the FM radio, the pilots of the first aircraft entering the LZ transmitted, ‘Chalk Three receiving fire.’ ‘Chalk’ was the term used to designate your position in the flight. You did not break formation. You just sucked it up and flew into the bowels of the Grim Reaper. The last transmission I heard was, ‘Chalk Four receiving fire.’ The choppers were being wracked with intense machine-gun fire, 51mm anti-aircraft fire and rocket-propelled grenades. The ‘pucker factor’ gauge was in the red and climbing. We continued our approach into the raging LZ in our trail helicopter. It was trail’s job to wait until every Huey made it out of the LZ and then radio that the LZ was clear. I was flying an H-model Huey, and because the LZ was filled with 10- to 15-foot-tall baby rubber trees, which were hard to see until I was right on top of them, I had to pick my spot and could not come directly to the ground as I normally did. Snaring a tail rotor in the trees could kill you just as easily as a machine-gun.

We were just coming out of translational lift — the point at which a helicopter stops flying and starts hovering — when a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) slammed into our Huey. It apparently hit in the left fuel cell just aft of Brady’s gun well. I believe he died instantly. A Pfc Hoppe, on the right door gun, was blown out of the ship.

Brady’s death still pains me deeply. He is now known on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (’the Wall’) as james gregory brady ar 28jan48 27nov68 sacramento ca panel no. 38w line no. 71. For 20 years I lived with the thought that all the infantry aboard had died. I was finally told years later that none of the 25th Infantry Division troops who were aboard the chopper had been killed.

We were completely engulfed in flames. The JP-4 fuel and magnesium combined to make a lethal fire. The cliché about not hearing the one that gets you was true in my case. I first thought that a fragmentation grenade had inadvertently been dropped in our ship by one of the infantrymen, but not so. It seemed as if there was a big whoosh, similar to the effect a Zippo lighter has after being freshly overfilled and lit, or the whoosh of a propane grill lighting after the gas has been left on too long before the igniter is applied. All the oxygen in the Huey was immediately sucked up by the flames, and we were on fire.

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Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Airborne Operations, Historical Conflicts, Historical Figures, People, Vietnam War

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