Firefly and the Dragons

It seems to me that we evacuated the aircraft a number of times. We always ended up in the Ben Hoa, Long Binh area, housed for the night with another assault helicopter company. I was flying with the Crusaders when, again, intelligence suggested that there was the possibility of a ground attack at Tay Ninh. We were ordered to evacuate the aircraft and found ourselves at Ben Hoa with the 334^th Aerial Weapons Company, known as the Dragons.

Normally, we would make use of their club facilities. During one of these evacuations, we ended up with a company that had access to all sorts of good food. We all began ordering steaks. At Tay Ninh, we could get a small pizza, cooked in a toaster oven for a buck. That was the extent of the menu. There were steaks on special occasions, but not as a nightly choice. Such was the problem with being at the end of the supply chain.

When we arrived and shut down the aircraft, we were escorted to the Dragon company area. I don’t remember how it happened, but I ran into a good friend from flight school, Preston Rainwater. I had visited his home when we were at Fort Wolters for primary flight training and we roomed together while at Fort Rucker for the advanced course. I hadn’t seen him since graduation about a year earlier.

He was scheduled to fly the Firefly mission that night and wondered if I wanted to come along. Thinking about it now, I’m not sure how it was arranged. It seems to me that he told his co-pilot that he wouldn’t be needed that night. I was going to take his place.

A Huey configured for Firefly. This one was from the 1st Cav Division. The
Dragons' Firefly wasn't armed, if I remember correctly.

Firefly was set up to draw enemy fire. One aircraft, a UH-1, was set up with a cluster of landing lights in the cargo compartment. They would be directed at the ground, searching for enemy activity. I don’t remember the altitude at which we flew but I don’t believe it was any more than about a thousand feet above the ground and probably less.

That aircraft was accompanied by two gunships, one called the high ship and the other the low ship. They orbited around, at various altitudes, waiting for something to happen and when it did, they would roll in to engage the enemy.

After the preflight, and some preliminary instructions, like the closest evac hospital if someone was wounded, and the radio frequencies used by the company, we took off to search a specific area. I will assume here, that the mission was coordinated with the ground units operating in that area so that we didn’t accidentally engage a friendly force… of course, if we were fired on, that would pretty well rule out friendlies.

Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure that we violated a couple of regulations. We, in this case me, probably flew more than eight hours that day. I had been with the flight all day and the flying time for all that was five or six hours, and often longer. Add to that, four or five hours for the mission, and I probably had eleven or twelve hours that day.

And, yes, we often exceeded the eight-hour maximum but no one actually ever said anything to us about that because there was nothing that could be done about it.

The mission was fairly boring. I spotted some firing on the ground, which is to say I saw the red tracers. It looked like .50 cal. bouncing along the ground, engaged with something smaller, given the green tracers that answered. That is not to say that I could tell the caliber by the color, but by the size of the tracer rounds. The enemy seemed to always use green or white and we always used red.

Although we circled for a few moments, there was nothing for us to do. Rainwater might have attempted communication with the ground, if he knew the unit and their radio signals. I do know that we did not engage anyone there and flew off looking elsewhere.

The Dragon Pin, which
I still have.

The rest of the night was routine. I don’t believe the gunships fired a shot, though we did use the landing lights to search the ground. As dawn approached, we returned to the Dragon company area.

With the mission finished, we all went to breakfast, that is Rainwater, me and the pilots of the Cobras. We were sitting there when some of the pilots from the Crusaders walked by and said something snide to me… sort of the ongoing joking that went on in the company because I was so young. Something like, “Does your mother know that you’re here?”

One of the Cobra pilots said, “Leave him alone. He’s cool. He flew with us.”

Before we left, I was given a pin with the company’s logo on it. I pinned it on my cap.

I don’t remember if we were scheduled for a mission that day, or if we just returned the aircraft to Tay Ninh. Seems that if we did, and I was scheduled to fly, I would have been tired, really tired. It is also possible that the crews that evacuated the flight were given the day down, with a couple of exceptions. I simply do not remember.