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C H A P T E R 1 2 LZ LOLO February was going by fast. Lam Son 719 had turned into a fullfledged war. The ARVN units we were supporting were meeting heavy resistance everywhere. Up at Ranger North, the 39th ARVN Rangers had to fight their way over to Ranger South, leaving over a hundred dead behind and several wounded.23 The ARVN forces at LZ 31 got overrun.24 They were taking heavy casualties, along with the American aviation units that were supporting them. There was no safe haven for helicopters; they were getting shot down everywhere. Even the gunships were taking heavy losses. It was standard operating procedure (SOP) for our gunships to work in teams of two. Because they worked in teams, the NVA figured out they could set up a trap by putting three of their .51 cal. machine guns in a triangle. When the gunships made their gun run on one of the spotted .51 cal. positions, the other two machine guns would wait until the second ship had finished its gun run and was pulling up and away. Then they would open fire. It was a great tactical ambush—we heard that several Cobras had been shot down this way. This triangle ambush was working so well for the NVA that some of the aviation units were banning the Cobras from attacking .51 cal. positions. Later on, when the ground units came upon some of the .51 cal. positions that had been blown away, they discovered that the NVA had been chaining their gunners to the guns so that they could not run, forcing them to stay and fire. Incredible! Back in our company, Fast Teddy was still pulling the same old crap. When Major Davis had been our CO, he handled our pilots with respect and received respect in return. The senior aircraft commanders 145 had always run our flights and missions because they had the most experience and knowledge. You became a SAC by experience and leadership, not rank. But when Fast Teddy came in as our new CO, he decided to disregard this. He wanted commissioned officers to run the missions and be flight leads. The warrants had nothing against commissioned officers—we had several that were excellent pilots and leaders . The problem lay in the fact that most of the SACs at that time were warrant officers. That was where the experience was. Now, because of Fast Teddy’s order, we would have the inexperienced leading the experienced. This did not seem logical to us, but for Teddy, we were to find out that this was him at his best. Logic meant nothing and personal emotion meant everything. Overnight the junior ACs, because they were commissioned officers , were leading the flights, with the SACs in the rear of the formation . They would be trying to run the flight on the UHF radio, while on the VHF radio the SACs would be telling them how to do it. I knew and understood that it was just as hard for these poor junior ACs being forced into running the flights as it was for the SACs being forced out. The night of March 2 a group of us were sitting around talking about Fast Teddy and how disgusted we were with him. We could see how demoralized our men were becoming and could not believe that one man could make such a difference in our company’s morale. After much debate, we decided that we had had enough of Fast Teddy and needed a break. Several of us, including myself, decided that we would take tomorrow off and not fly. We were worn out from flying more than 140 hours per month, so all we had to do to ground ourselves was tell the flight surgeon that we were fatigued and did not feel safe to fly. In this way, several of us from First Platoon grounded ourselves via the flight surgeon. There would be no flying for us tomorrow. March 3 was supposed to be a typical day of flying. Our unit would be participating with other aviation units to insert a battalion of 1st Infantry ARVN troops into an LZ, over in Laos, called Lolo. Their mission was to establish a fire-support base. Unknown to us at the time, LZ Lolo was going to be one of the worst helicopter disasters of the Vietnam War.25 By the afternoon of March 3, we ended up losing two...

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