Combat Assault

Most combat assaults were boring. It was moving soldiers from one location to another without any real fear of a hot LZ. It might be a day or two before we hit anything that could be considered hot, and most of the time, the enemy just fired a couple of bursts at the flight and then ran off. On one occasion, they, or rather he, only fired a single round that splashed the rice paddy water I front of my aircraft and I don’t believe anyone else saw it.

There is one other aspect that I need to mention. The helicopters were equipped with an Automatic Direction Finder, known as the ADF. The ADF could be tuned to a small transmitter that would provide a morse code identifier of three letters. When that station was dialed in, the needle on the ADF would point toward it, making navigation simpler. But the ADF also covered the broadcast band, which meant that radio stations could be found. If you wanted to fly to Denver you just had to dial in KIMN-AM (which I listened to as a teenager in Denver), and follow the needle. In Vietnam you could listen to AFVN, Armed Forces Vietnam radio which played the current top forty hits. If there was a good tune being played, someone might say over the radio “ADF,” so others could tune in. Pat Sajak was the morning DJ while I was there… yes, that Pat Sajak.

The typical combat assault began with a landing in the PZ, pick up zone. The soldiers, eight to ten of them, climbed on. Once all the helicopters were loaded, the Trail aircraft would radio lead, “You’re down and loaded with ten.”

Lead would then announce, “On the go,” and take off. The others would follow and we’d climb out, usually at about 80 or 90 knots until we joined with Lead, which was flying at 60 knots. Once Trail said, “You joined with ten,” Lead would respond with, “Rolling over.” That meant airspeed was increased to 80 knots.

At that point we’d head for the LZ, avoiding the gun target lines. The gun target lines were the direction and altitude that artillery would be firing. Artillery is an indirect fire weapon, and the artillery shells could easily reach the altitudes at which we flew. It wasn’t difficult to avoid the gun target lines. The Air Mission Commander, in the Command and Control (C and C) helicopter had that information. He supplied the route for the flight. The Aircraft Commander on a single mission flight had to get the clearance himself from one of the arty controls, most often where we operated was Cu Chi Arty.

If there was an arty prep of the LZ, we’d stand back, orbit outside the gun target lines, waiting until we heard, “All rounds on the ground. Tubes clear.” It meant that no additional artillery rounds would be fired and all had impacted the LZ. We then turned inbound.

Smoke and dust from the arty prep as we turn inbound at the IP. Photo copyright
by Kevin Randle.

Depending on the situation, we’d be met by a gunship. He would lead us to the LZ, and either the door gunner or the crew chief would throw out a smoke grenade to mark the touch down point. Lead would be told to either land short of the smoke, on the smoke, or beyond the smoke.

If there was full suppression, the door gunners with the flight would open fire on likely places of enemy concealment and the gun ships would be working over one or both flanks of the flight. We’d land, the soldiers would jump out, sometimes deploying into the trees, or other obvious places where enemy might hide. As they left the aircraft, the door guns fell silent. Trail would say, “You’re down with ten and unloaded.”

Lead would then take off, climbing out rapidly and the rest of the flight would join as quickly as possible.

That then, is a quick synopsis of a combat assault mission. This is the somewhat generic version because there were, of course, many variations, including hostile fire, aircraft accidents and soldiers injured as they jumped out to name but a few. A hot LZ could add many complications and I’ll get into some of that later.