THE MOST AWESOME FIREWORKS!

This story is short.  If anyone was there, they will never forget it. 

We were leaving a firebase on top of a hill.  As we dropped down into a valley all hell broke loose.  The whole bottom of the valley erupted in flames.  I was looking down and I could feel the concussion and heat from the bombs!

The helicopter was shaking and rattling, the pilots were calling in a mayday!  WOW!  I told them what was going on. and hopefully they were able to enjoy the greatest fireworks display of our lives without getting killed!  Not too many people get that close to a B-52 bombing run and live to talk about it!!

                               The Lost Korean Platoon

We don't hear much about our other allies, the Koreans or the Australians.  We had many missions working with the Koreans.  They had a bad reputation with the Viet Cong.  The Koreans didn't use the restraints of the Geneva Convention to moderate their treatment of prioners.  What I saw of the Koreans was their incredible workmanship with stacking sandbags.

On this day, I think in January of 1968, I was flying with my crew chief Bob Shipp and am not sure who the pilots were.  We picked up a Korean officer with a mission to find his lost platoon.  How could they lose a platoon?  Their radio had quit working.  We looked for them all morning without any luck.  We were getting hungry, so we dropped the officer off at his base.  I don't remember what we did for lunch, but we had to go back to pick him up and search some more.

When he returned to the helicopter, I noticed that he was bleeding out of the corners of his mouth.  We went out again and this time we were successful!

We were hovering over a three level canopy of trees.  How were we going to get the new radio down to the troops?    We had a spool of explosive cord on board and it was perfect for lowering the radio to the Lost Platoon!!

       Great stories from Hans Herm - Stallion Crew Chief

                                11/67 - 12/68

I believe I was covering the insertion when the B-52 dropped that load. 

I was on a inbound leg of a daisy chain covering the slicks and the valley just erupted- we were never briefed that it was to take place..  I remember the May Day call and if I remember correctly the airfield we staged out of was cut out of a small hill and a "Caribou" was making a landing and clipped one of the embankments.  I was laying under the C-model in the shade and looked up and there was an engine rolling down the runway in our direction ---it stopped on the runway before getting to us.

Gordy Henson

Sidekick 15

Hans,

Reference your story The Lost Korean Platoon. 

I was the pilot that day, and a long day it was.  The Koreans were conducting a Brigade size sweep of the large mountain behind White Horse Brigade Headquarters, which were south-east of Dong Ba Thin. The dilemma the Koreans faced was they had to turn off the artillery because they didn’t know the location of the platoon.  The artillery is what they were depending on as a blocking force for any VC trying to go out the back door.  

As I recall we took off about 0900hrs with a Korean captain who gave us the coordinates where they though the platoon was located.  We hovered up and down the mountain until we were bingo fuel.  We flew back to White horse to get some more gas and the captain told us to stop at the brigade helipad.  When we did a Korean Colonel came out and the captain ran up to him and hit a brace, at which time the colonel was yelling and flailing his arms. 

We took off again and did the same thing, up and down the mountains, no platoon, low fuel, and return to White horse.  This time when the Captain ran up to the Colonel, I noticed the Colonel had shaved his head, he hit a brace and saluted, and the Colonel hit him, square in the face.  Sooo, as I recall we felt sorry for the poor guy and took him up one more time.  This time we got lucky and the platoon popped smoke.  We were not really sure if it was the good guys or Chuck baiting us.  I believe you or Shipp finally got a visual and we decided they were good guys.  The Captain was ready to jump out of the helicopter to get to these guys.  That is when someone said that we had a reel of DET cord we could use to lower the Koreans the PRC 77 that the Korean captain had with him.  I was cringing the whole time, not knowing what would happen when the guys on the ground touched the radio, if there would be enough static electricity built up to detonate the DET cord.  ( to this day I still don’t understand why we had a reel of DET cord on board our aircraft.)

Once the guys on the ground had the radio, we dialed up their frequency; the captain grabbed my mike boom and started chatting with them.   Of course his face was three inches from my face and it was all I could do not to throw up from his kimche breath.  When we got back the wanted us to have a few beers, but we passed, we had been smelling he aroma of kimche all day and wanted to get back home.  I believe we spend 7 hours flight time looking for the lost platoon that day.

Dick Snow