Holloway

Camp Holloway was not only an airfield, it was the major base in the Central Highlands. It was the end of the logistics "pipeline" through which most of the ammunition, fuel, food, medical supplies and creature comforts (liquor, beer, toilet paper and other supplies) necessary to prosecute the war flowed. The material came by truck convoys from the ports on the coast through the mountains over highways (see the picture of Highway 19 through Mang Yang Pass below) and was stored at Holloway and re-distributed to combat and support units in the region, by road and air.

The runway at Holloway was about 2500 feet long with a concrete surface. Some facilities remained from the French colonial period but most on the base were built by the US Army. Within a few miles was New Pleiku Air Force Base with a new concrete runway and facilities built by the US Air Force.  All Air Force aircraft could use this 6000-foot runway.

Near the Air Force base was the 71st Evacuation Hospital, a major medical facility which treated all levels of wounds and prepared soldiers to be evacuated to larger hospitals in Japan and finally, if necessary, to the States. The 71st Evac was an important lifesaving facility for US forces.

Besides our Bird Dogs, three assault helicopter companies flying UH-1 Hueys were based at Holloway and there were medium-lift CH-47 (Chinook) and heavy-lift (CH-54 Sky Crane) units there as well. At an airfield elevation just under 3000 feet above sea level and with high heat and humidity, helicopters needed a great deal of power to hover and take off. The larger helicopters put out a great deal of rotor downwash,.and we normally requested the tower to ask the helicopters to reduce power so out light airplanes would not be blown off the runway.

Headhunter ramp at Holloway. Notice the white painted  markings on the tops
of the wings so the aircraft would be visible from above against the green
jungle below. Dragon Mountain is visible just above the horizon.

The aircraft were parked in revetments constructed of 55-gallon steel drums filled with dirt. The revetments were to protect the aircraft from shrapnel from exploding mortar and rocket rounds fired at the airfield.  In the right background of the picture above are the company's administrative buildings and living quarters. Aircraft maintenance took place in the sheds adjacent to the revetments.

"Hooches" - where we lived. Notice the sand bags around the outside walls to
 prevent shrapnel or bullets from entering the building. Some of us used the
 lawn chairs to work on our tans when we weren't flying.

Our living quarters were rooms within the wooden hooches, with sandbags stacked about four feet high around the exteriors of the walls. Each bunk was a mattress on a sheet of plywood supported by two-by-fours. Many of us realized there might not be adequate warning of an attack (and often the first indication was the explosion of a mortar or rocket round), so we lined the plywood under our mattresses with steel if we could get it. Known as PSP (pierced steel planking) or SSP (solid steel planking), these were sheets of steel six feet long by two feet wide that were interlocked on the ground to form runway surfaces where permanent pavement was not available. We scrounged what we could from Air Force or Army engineers.

The space between the mattress frames and the floor were built up with sandbags, leaving a small entrance hole that we could (and sometimes did) scurry into for protection in case we could not make it to the underground bunkers in time.

In-country Checkout

All new pilots were required to fly 10 hours with an instructor pilot, getting indoctrinated into the 219th's operational area and procedures. This included becoming familiar with the geography of Pleiku and Kontum provinces which are located in the heart of the mountainous Central Highlands; identification of international borders (Cambodia and Laos); flying into and out of all airfields, especially short dirt strips at Special Forces camps; and learning techniques to keep us alive and as safe as possible.

The instructor, Chief Warrant Officer Bobby Joe Gray, had hundreds of hours flying in Vietnam among his thousands of hours of flight time, and was responsible for turning each aviator, usually fresh out of flight school, into something resembling a combat pilot. Competency would come only after many hours in the air. We all knew how to fly but this was a new flight school.

These 10 hours with Bobby were spent flying to and navigating by map between all airfields, some of which were as short as 800 feet. We flew over mountains and into valleys, low enough to see through the trees, usually two or three hundred feet above them, to minimize our exposure time so that the chances of our being seen, shot at and hit by someone firing from the ground was low. If we flew between airfields or were adjusting artillery fire or directing helicopter gunships or Air Force fighter-bombers against ground targets we flew higher than 1500 feet above the ground. The prevailing wisdom was that even if we were shot at the chances of the aircraft being hit at these altitudes were small.

Since our job was to look out the windows of the airplane down and to the sides and rear, we had to divide our attention between flying and looking. The cardinal rule for the area in which we flew was, "never VR up a valley", because the possibility of the terrain rising faster than the airplane could climb was a very real problem and the results of doing that was never in favor of the pilot.

Monsoon clouds over  Mang Yang Pass, with the packed dirt National Highway 19 
 leading from An Khe (to the right rear) to the higher Pleiku plateau. Enemy
ambushes of truck convoys on this and other supply routes were not uncommon.

This picture is an example of the terrain over which we sometimes flew. The accepted "rules of the road" when flying through passes like this was to fly well to the right side of the road (not over the road itself) while keeping a safe distance from the mountain side, and to fly with the aircraft's landing light on (located on the front edge of the wing). I and other pilots have experienced lights on opposite direction aircraft appearing out of the low visibility conditions, and some were much larger than the Bird Dog.

The first 50 hours of flight time after the initial checkout were required to be dual ship missions, flying with a more experienced Headhunter in another aircraft in the same vicinity and in constant visual and radio contact with each other. This was to get the "new guys" like me used to conducting VR and adjusting artillery fire over the varying terrain in the highlands, from flat rice paddies and open fields, to deep jungle, to steep and rugged mountains. After all this we were considered to be fully qualified to fly single-ship missions. Certain areas were always flown dual-ship because of mountainous terrain, distance from airfields, or enemy activity. It was certainly safer having two aircraft flying together in these situations.

The night before my first mission I got my maps together, cleaned the weapons I would carry in the airplane (rifle and pistol), checked my survival radio and other equipment and tried to relax. The next day I would be flying into combat! I spent a lot of time thinking about the events that had led me to this particular spot, some ten thousand miles from home.