I left Vietnam in February of 1970 but sometime in the summer of 69, I flew a mission involving a spray rig. We sprayed marijuana fields out by (and in Cambodia). The missions entailed my ship at tree-top level, with spray rig and an E-6 to operate the sprayer, another slick at 1500’ to provide navigation & guidance, and a light fire team about a half mile back, also at 1500’, to provide support if needed. I have no idea what chemicals we used but it supposedly killed pot. I am also sure the mission was legally iffy. We wore no protective gear in any of the aircraft. It was one of the stupider missions I ever flew, it marked my coming of age as an Aircraft Commander, and it almost got us killed.
When this mission came up I had been an Aircraft Commander for about a month and my stuff didn’t stink. I’m not sure if it was a MACV mission or not but we flew West to some outpost on the imaginary border and me up with a slick and light fire team from another outfit. While we were briefed, they installed a big plastic tank in the belly of my Huey and spray booms (a propeller driven system) stuck out both sides. The brief was to spray small fields of supposed ENEMY marijuana, thus cutting off the profits they made selling the stuff to us. Economics 101 for a young AC..Oh, boy, let me at ‘em.
My ship was to stay down in the trees and go slow (Briefing: Recommend airspeed 60 knots or less for good agent dispersal and to avoid having the relative wind tear off the booms, possibly sending them into the tail rotor with adverse results). The Sergeant sitting behind the huge tank would, upon command, pull the lever and release the spray as we dropped down into the tiny fields, flew along about 6’ high, and then he would stop the spray at the end of the field as we climbed up to clear the jungle. Sounds good, huh?
The high slick did all the navigating and would give me commands such as: “come left 10 degrees, looking good, small field in 300 yards, now 200 yards, get ready, NOW!” We’d dip down and slowly spray to the end. No sweat.
As we got good at it; the high ship and our ship really clicked and the amount of commo necessary went way down. Lots of little fields got basted with God knows what. The only thing that ruffled my feathers even slightly was the slow flight; it felt like a bad idea but we were performing the mission.
After about an hour or less we ran out of Brand X and all ships went back to this small outpost for POL while we filled the tank. The LT running things had a map showing all the little fields we’d hit and I noticed the border cut through the area we were working. What the Hell, marijuana has no borders. Off we went with tank number two.
About field number three, the high ship said: “this is a really big one so I’ll bring you down one side and then turn you around to come down the other side.” Down we went and, wow, this was a big one...wide and long. After forever, we pulled up and the high ship took about a quarter of a mile to turn us on the reverse course and…NOW!...we dropped into the field; six feet, 55 knots,spraying up a storm. That’s when the machine gun opened up, my heart stopped, the seat leaped up into my ass, and I stopped taking directional orders from the high slick. I pulled the collective up into my armpit and almost went inverted jumping sideways out of that field. I blathered for help from the fire team but I was sure we had sustained hits and damage, the machine gun sounded like it was IN the aircraft, and I headed for the only friendly spot in whatever country we were in, the little outpost.
I made a running landing because I wasn’t sure I’d have a turbine all the way down. Incidentally, those booms could handle 90 knots, no problem. We got down, shut down, and started breathing again. I’d already established that none of the crew was actually bleeding but, from the length of the burst and its inferred proximity, I knew we’d have extensive damage.
Not so! Not a mark on that aircraft! And believe me, we looked. I’ve fired machine guns that made less noise than the one that shot at us but they missed! As we performed the inspection, I realized how stupid it would be to kill my crew spraying marijuana in Cambodia and the Crew Chief (I wish I could remember his name) and I had a meeting of the minds. During the inspection he found a pitch-change link way out of tolerance and red-x’d the ship. He also cleared it for a single flight to Dong Ba Thin.
Future missions went through a rather more elaborate risk/reward analysis and, occasionally, failed the sniff test. I’m still here and I probably owe it to marijuana.
