What We Did

Local Area and People

Pleiku City is the administrative capital of Pleiku Province in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. The province is a plateau ringed by mountains to the east (the Mang Yang Pass connects Pleiku with lower elevation An Khe Province) and to the west and northwest by mountains along the border and extending into Cambodia. The plateau region consisting of flat and undulating terrain extends northward into Kontum Province.

Main drag, downtown Pleiku City. In the foreground is a Vietnamese
policeman, known as a "White Mouse" because of their uniforms.

The predominant ethnic group in the highlands were the Montagnards, a French term meaning mountain people. We referred to them as Yards. They consisted of a number of tribes loosely allied in their dislike of the Vietnamese government, and since the Viet Cong were Vietnamese, the Yards didn’t like them either.  The Yards were oppressed by the government and were basically looked down upon as uncultured minorities. But they had the reputation that even if they wore loin cloths, they were good fighters when led by Americans.

The relatively flat areas were farmed for rice and tea. Catecka was one notable tea plantation, an undisturbed oasis in a war zone. This allegedly resulted because of agreements, financial and otherwise, between the French plantation owners and both the Vietnamese government and the Viet Cong. It was essentially a no fire zone, and as far as I know there was no enemy activity on the plantation.

Catecka tea plantation. Burned areas and artillery and bomb craters
can be seen beyond the borders of the well-tended plantation but none
are visible on the property.

The Ins and Outs of Missions

While we were supposed to fly in a strictly visual role, there were times when some type of offensive action on our part was needed until helicopter gunships or Air Force tactical aircraft could reach the scene. So when we could we modified the aircraft to take care of these occasions or just used what we had on hand. OK, here’s the truth: we were always looking for situations in which we could actually shoot and fight, because it was very frustrating to be flying around with only radios when the guys on the ground needed help.

There were two “hard points” under each wing on which rocket tubes were normally attached, one or two tubes on each hard point (four or eight rockets total). The rockets had solid fuel motors tipped with warheads, either smoke (to mark targets) or high explosive used in a more offensive role. These five-foot-long rockets were fired electrically from the cockpit by a trigger on the control stick.

The rockets were usually fired in a steep dive and a more effective method of aiming than just by eyeball was needed. This was a ¼-inch steel rod that was bolted to the top of the engine cowling in front of the windscreen and was cut off at a length of twelve or fourteen inches, about the same height that a pilot’s eyes were above the cowling. Theoretically, the pilot’s eyes, the top of the rod and the axes of the rocket tubes were all aligned. Of course, this varied by the stature of each pilot, so each pilot put a grease pencil mark on the inside of the windscreen in line with the top of the rod when he was sitting straight up in the seat. He would then go out, fire a few rockets, and adjust the mark so that it and the top of the rod were aligned with the impact of the rockets.

One airplane was set up as close to a gunship as we could make it, and everyone wanted to fly it. On the left wing’s hard points an M-60 machine gun and 750 rounds of full tracer ammunition were attached. On the right wing was a seven-rocket pod we had scrounged from one of the helicopter companies. The machine gun was bore sighted with the rocket tubes so they would hit the same spot at about 1,000 feet from the airplane. That let us roll in, fire the machine gun until the stream of red tracers hit the target, then fire the rockets. It was unconventional but accurate and effective.

We also carried hand grenades, hung from wires stretched across the back of the pilot’s seat and in easy reach of the observer who sat directly behind the pilot. We could carry about two dozen that way. They were mainly smoke grenades used for marking targets. About the size of a beer can, they emitted dense, colored smoke (red, yellow, green, violet or white). For a while I also carried high explosive grenades until one of my Special Forces friends told me that these grenades would explode if hit by a bullet. From that time on, those grenades and I were not in the airplane at the same time.

Artillery Adjustment

The most common mission beside visual reconnaissance was adjusting artillery fire on known or suspected enemy positions. We would establish radio contact with the nearest firebase (in some cases, for long range guns, at distances up to 20 miles) and request a fire mission by giving map coordinates of where we wanted the rounds to hit. The first rounds fired were two-piece smoke shells. These contained a small bursting charge that was initiated by a time fuse over the target and broke the shell into two smoking pieces. The alignment of the smoke from these pieces accurately indicated the gun-target line. Knowing this line was critical to our adjustment (left or right, add or drop so many meters) of the high explosive rounds onto the target, not to mention critical to our safety while flying near the target.

Since we needed to be in a position to observe the impacts of the rounds and to accurately call in adjustments, we would fly horseshoe-shaped or racetrack-shaped patterns around the target and at least at least 1,500 feet above it. If we timed our patterns properly, we would be on the side of the target when the rounds impacted. A problem might occur if we found ourselves between the guns and the target or just beyond the target and a round fell short or long. One of our pilots (not me) came close to disaster. He was inadvertently flying where he shouldn’t have been, along the gun-target line, when the rounds arrived. A shell passed through the aircraft’s tail without exploding (!) and caused him to crash land. He was successfully picked up by helicopter. Way too close for comfort!