By Donald
Porter
In The Giant
Killer
Of 1,419
Loaches built, 842 were destroyed in Vietnam
Cobras and
Loaches, two vastly different aircraft, relied on each other to fight the
enemy.
“You were
right in the enemy’s face with a helicopter and had to know what you were
doing,” recalls warrant officer Clyde Romero of his 1,100 hours flying scout
missions over South Vietnam in 1971. “It’s like a street cop going into a bad
neighborhood. You can have all the guns, vests, and radios you want, but you
need street smarts or you’re going to be dead within an hour.”
Although most
combat aircraft in Vietnam aimed for altitudes and speeds that helped them
avoid anti-aircraft weapons, U.S. Army crews flying Hughes OH-6A Cayuse
helicopters flew low and drew fire—to set up the shots for the Bell AH-1G
Cobras circling above.
These
hunter-killer missions, among the most hazardous of the Vietnam War, tested the
resolve of the OH-6 pilots and the aerial observers sitting beside them.
Although many were still teenagers, their survival depended on well-honed
instincts and razor-sharp reflexes, along with plenty of luck.
In 1965, the
concept of helicopter-borne fighting forces was still new and largely untested,
and units in Vietnam invented tactics on the spot. The U.S. Army began to use
Bell OH-13 Sioux and Hiller OH-23 Raven helicopters, once artillery spotters,
to scout ahead of UH-1D Huey formations in the moments before air assaults to
gather information about landing zones and enemy locations.
Vietnam’s
mountainous terrain stressed the underpowered, obsolete helicopters to their
limits: They could neither fly fast enough to escape enemy fire nor carry
enough armament to pose a meaningful threat. Units in Vietnam began sending
UH-1Bs outfitted with rocket pods and machine guns to circle over the scouts at
around 600 feet and attack anything that might interfere with the imminent
troop landing.
But the Hueys
proved too slow to do the job properly, and the need to replace both scouts and
protectors was immediately evident.
Within that
same year, help was on the way. An inventive Bell Helicopter engineer was
already at work on the world’s first attack helicopter, and Bell’s decision to
keep the project hidden until complete let the model slip into service as a
Huey derivative. In August 1967, the AH-1G Cobra arrived in Vietnam.
The Cobra was
fast and deadly. From the rear cockpit, the pilot fired rockets from launchers
fixed to the stub wings on either side; the copilot in the front operated a
chin turret that held a minigun and grenade launcher.
Unlike its
troop-carrying ancestors, “a Cobra was like a World War II fighter,” says Jim
Kane, who arrived in Vietnam fresh out of Purdue University. “It was a joy to
fly.” Kane, who today sells securities in Richmond, Virginia, flew AH-1s in
Vietnam from 1968 to 1971.
Following a
contentious selection process that included allegations of industrial espionage
and political favoritism, the first Hughes OH-6A observation helicopters
arrived in Vietnam in December 1967. Army troops called the OH-6As Loaches, a
contraction of “light observation helicopters.”
The ship was
unusually light and had plenty of power, perfect for flying nap-of-the-earth
missions, and its 26-foot-diameter main rotor made getting into tight landing
zones a snap.
It had no
hydraulic system and its electrical setup was used primarily to start up the
engine—simple even by 1960s standards, which for practical purposes meant it
was easier to maintain and harder to shoot down than other helicopters.
But the light
aluminum skin could be easily pierced by rifle bullets, and it also crumpled
and absorbed energy in a crash, and a strong structural truss protected
critical systems—like the people inside. Loach crews regularly walked away from
crashes that would doom others.
As the H-13s
were phased out, Loaches were paired with Cobra gunships. Loaches, usually with
a pilot and observer and sometimes a door gunner aboard, flew as little as 10
feet above the treetops at between about 45 and 60 mph, scouting for signs of
the enemy.
Cobras,
nicknamed Snakes, flew circles 1,500 feet above the scouts, waiting to pounce
on whatever the Loach found. But the Vietnam War was unlike any previous
American conflict; there were few real definable frontlines, and combatants
needed to know what was happening all around them, all the time.
“We operated
from fixed bases that were islands, if you will, of allied control,” says Hugh
Mills, who flew both Loaches and Cobras in Vietnam from 1968 to 1972, and went
on to fly helicopters for the Kansas City Police Department.
He recalls:
“360 degrees around you was enemy territory, and the ability to work with
American and [South Vietnamese] units on the ground really required aviation to
be able to look eye to eye to tell the good guys from the bad guys.”
Loach-Cobra pairings were sent out more and more frequently, until their main
role was to gather general intelligence rather than prepare landing zones.
Missions began
every day at dawn, when crews were briefed on where to fly and what to look
for. To hunt for encampments, bunkers, or other signs of the enemy, commanders
would deploy a flight of one scouting Loach and one supporting Cobra, called
Pink Teams. (Scouts were known as White Teams and Cobras as Red; the two colors
combine to become pink. In some areas, Purple Teams—one Loach and two Cobras—were
also common, as were other variations.)
“We were so
close to the elephant grass that we’d blow the grass apart to see if anyone was
hiding in there,” observer Bob Moses says. Moses, a 19-year-old draftee,
arrived in Vietnam in July 1970 for the first of two year-long tours, and later
worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs as a therapist and administrator.
Even trampled grass was a clue; it meant that enemy troops had passed through
the area within eight hours, the time it took for grass to dry upright.
Since units
were all but permanently assigned to particular areas, they came to know the
local geography intimately and could spot anything out of the ordinary. “We
were combat trackers,” says Mills. “I followed footsteps. I could see a
cigarette butt still burning. I could tell how old a footprint was by how it
looked.
“Most of our
engagements [we] were 25 to 50 feet [away] when we opened up on [the Viet
Cong],” Mills continues. “I’ve seen them, whites of the eyes, and they’ve seen
me, whites of the eyes…. I have come home with blood on my windshield. A little
gory but that’s how close we were.” As the Loach flew among the trees, the
rear-seat pilot in the Snake circling above kept a close eye on the little
scout and the front-seat gunner jotted down whatever the Loach observers
radioed.
Upon
encountering enemy fire, Loaches were to leave immediately, dropping smoke
grenades to mark the target so that within seconds, the Cobra could roll in.
Loach crews were equipped with small arms and returned fire as they fled. They
could also use grenades and on occasion even homebuilt explosives; more
aggressive units mounted forward-firing miniguns.
Cobras
generally attacked with rockets, preferred for long-range accuracy, switching
to the less-accurate chin-mounted machine gun and grenade launcher only if they
were far enough away from friendly troops or if the rockets—AH-1s could carry
as many as 76 rockets—ran out. Four troop-carrying Hueys (called a Blue Team)
often sat idle somewhere nearby, ready to insert troops if the Pink Team
discovered an interesting target—or were shot down and needed rescuing.
Loach and
Cobra were in constant radio communication, and because of the intensity of
hunter-killer missions, it wasn’t long before pairs in each type knew each
other well enough to anticipate the other’s moves.
“It had to do
with the timbre of your voice—how you talked to other guys on the radio,” says
Romero, who arrived in Vietnam in 1970, initially as a Huey co-pilot. (He later
transferred to the Air Force and flew F-4 Phantoms, and eventually became an
airline captain.)
Loach and
Cobra crews lived together, and schedulers generally paired the teams with the
partners they requested, though given the high turnover rate, that wasn’t
always possible. “To this day I am closer to those guys I flew with in Vietnam
than my own brothers,” says Mills. “I spent more time with them.”
For most of
the war, there was no formal Army training to prepare scout pilots and
observers. Army headquarters developed doctrine by building on what worked in
the field, rather than the other way around, and each unit in-country did
things slightly differently.
Though Cobra
pilots were trained Stateside, most Loach pilots didn’t take control of OH-6s
until arriving in Vietnam. “You had a couple of flights in the Huey, then you
rode front seat in a Cobra,” scout pilot Allan Krausz recounts. Krausz was
ordered to Vietnam in April 1971, and today teaches Army students how to fly
the Eurocopter UH-72 Lakota, a twin-engine trainer.
After around
10 hours at the controls of a Loach, the pilots were deemed worthy of flying in
combat.
Warrant
officer John Shafer was 21 when he arrived on October 16, 1970, to fly Loaches.
“I was just out of flight school when I went to Vietnam.” He flew Loaches for
the next 11 months, and today is an accountant in Seattle.
The observers
and gunners had even less experience. “There was one day of initial training,”
says Bob Moses, who was first trained as a tank crewman and then as infantry
before a sudden transition to helicopter door gunner. “I went up in a Loach
with an M60 machine gun to get used to firing the weapon. That was about it.”
Another such
gunner was 19-year-old Joel Boucher, drafted and sent to Vietnam from 1967 to
1969. Boucher quickly discovered that life as a qualified crewman was extremely
dangerous. “We flew down along the Ho Chi Minh Trail,” he says of the supply
route that wound through Vietnam and neighboring Laos and Cambodia.
“The NVA
[North Vietnamese army] was everywhere. Each time we went out, we got shot at.
One time we ran into hundreds of enemy troops. We thought they were ARVNs [Army
of the Republic of Vietnam] until they started running. It was pretty hairy,
and we got the hell out of there.”
But Boucher
got a rush from the missions, and stayed six months beyond what was required of
a draftee. Upon returning to the United States, he established a career in the
construction industry and settled in rural Sierra City, California.
Other Army
pilots, most of whom flew Cobras or Hueys, thought of Loach pilots as a little
offbeat. “Scout pilots were a different breed of cat,” says Cobra pilot Jim
Kane, who likens his former colleagues to the airborne equivalent of the Tunnel
Rats, soldiers who crawled head-first into Viet Cong-built tunnels without any
idea what awaited them there.
“I was wounded
three times and shot down nine times,” Romero reports. “The shelf life of a
scout pilot was probably six months. You were killed, shot down, or got scared
and quit. I liked it because in the Bronx, I was a ghetto kid. I was used to
getting up close and personal with the enemy.”
Mills, who
served two tours in Loaches and one in Cobras, was shot down 16 times—all but
once in OH-6s. The Army dictated that after 300 hours of flight time, each
Loach go through a thorough inspection, but in practice such inspections were
rare: Few Loaches survived to reach that mark.
“I had a
wingman shot down,” pilot John Shafer says. “They went down in the jungle, and
both [members of the crew] survived. I had another lead that went through 150
feet of trees, and they survived.”
Shafer himself
had brushes with disaster, and his luck nearly ran out on a mission west of Dak
To, near the border with Laos. “I got shot down on my 22nd birthday,” March 27,
1971. “I was flying wing and just dropped into the AO [Area of Operations].
Following the lead, we got peppered with rounds.”
The Loach had
a bad vibration, but he made it about half a mile before he had to land. “Just
as I set it down, the tail rotor spun off. The enemy was moving toward us when
a [command and control] ship picked us up. Cobras rolled in and blew the downed
aircraft up—taking with it about 15 bad guys standing around it.”
Jim Kane’s
Vietnam tour abruptly ended one day in February 1971. NVA troops shot down a
Cobra, killing the crew. Kane was dispatched to the crash site in another Cobra
with copilot Jim Casher. While they were circling the wreckage, enemy rounds
hit their ship. Kane recalls, “The vibrations were so harsh I had to return to
base camp at Khe Sanh,” seven miles from the Laotian border.
Upon landing,
an inspection revealed a damaged pitch link, a rotor head component so critical
that had it failed, they too would have crashed.
“We got into
another aircraft and went back out. We were about ready to call in tactical air
support to blow up the wrecked ship when another Cobra took a lot of fire. So I
engaged the enemy, but didn’t make it out of that one.
“We got hit by
incendiary .51-caliber rounds, and the phosphorus ignited the Cobra’s hydraulic
fluid. The flames covered my boots and lower legs. It was the same for Jim. I
still have scars on my legs—it was terrifying. I tried to move the stuck
controls and prayed for a place to set down.”
It took all of
Kane’s strength to pull out of a steep dive, and they crash-landed with a
horrific thud. “Jim was unconscious when I helped pull him out of the burning
aircraft.”
Kane’s
commanding officer flew his command-and-control Huey to the ravine where Kane
and Casher huddled. The Huey descended gingerly into a clearing smaller than
its main rotor diameter, the aircraft’s rotor blades chopping tree limbs as it
descended. Kane and Casher were pulled aboard and returned to Khe Sanh, but the
Huey barely made it back; slicing trees had left its blades shredded, and the
tail section had almost separated. It never flew again.
The
hunter-killer tactic worked well for a few years, but by the time the United
States left Vietnam, it was obsolete, says Mills. In 1972, as U.S. troops
slowly withdrew, the NVA began a major push that became known as the Easter
Offensive. The campaign included the first major use in the war of
Soviet-built, shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles.
SA-7 Grail
heat-seeking missiles could down a Loach before its crew even realized they
were under fire. The Cobras high above had a few seconds of warning—they could
spot the missile’s exhaust plume—but were all the more tempting because at
their higher altitudes they were more easily seen than the smaller Loaches. The
North Vietnamese deployed hundreds of the missiles, and from then on, both
hunter and killer tried to stay well hidden.
By the end of
the war, the Loach’s replacement was imminent. Despite a strong outcry from
crews in Vietnam, the Bell OH-58A Kiowa, powered by the same Allison T-63
engine as the OH-6, was being distributed to Army units. Scout crews argued
that the Kiowa was nowhere near as nimble as the Cayuse, but scouting flights
were changing.
The high-low
hunter-killer combination gave way to uniform-altitude missions, with all
helicopters flying nap of the earth. Kiowas, largely relegated to low-threat
cargo and liaison missions in Vietnam, were after the war tasked to spot
targets from afar and guide Cobras (and later, Boeing AH-64 Apaches) to good
firing spots.
A sobering
statistic: Out of 1,419 Loaches built, 842 were destroyed in Vietnam, most shot
down and many others succumbing to crashes resulting from low-level flying. In
contrast, of the nearly 1,100 Cobras delivered to the Army, 300 were lost.
Both Loach and
Cobra have been in production, on and off, in one form or another ever since.
The
Loach-derived MD-500 and other civilian variants still roll off the assembly
lines at MD Helicopters, Inc., while Boeing produces an upgraded variant, the
AH-6 Little Bird, for military forces (including an autonomous drone version).
The Little
Bird’s weaponry is a far cry from the M60 machine gun carried aboard a Loach in
Vietnam: AH-6s can carry miniguns, rocket pods, grenade launchers, Hellfire
missiles, and air-to-air Stinger missiles.
The AH-6 and
its troop-carrying sibling, the MH-6, are still heavily used by U.S.
special-operations forces, as everything from airborne sniper platforms to transports
inserting small teams to expeditionary light attack helicopters.
