Routine Missions? No Way!
Warrant Officer Ron Clark, Pilot, Dustoff 37
SFC Dan Collins, Medic
Aircraft Nose art “Auggie”
Even a routine mission could be quite hazardous for a Dustoff crew. A prime example was the loss of a helicopter in the 45TH Medical Company flown by Ron Clark and Michael Rominger.
8 April 1969
On standby at Villa 5, a hospital pad near Long Binh, Ron had just finished a MARS call back home to his family. A MARS call is best described this way, according to the internet web site http://www.ne7x.com/web_pages/ vietnam1968.html…
“During the Vietnam conflict there were no individual personal cellular or landline telephones available for soldiers or sailors to use for calling family members back home. To address this, United States MARS (Military Affiliate Radio Service) stations from all branches of the service, Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force, were deployed throughout Vietnam. The MARS system offered soldiers and sailors a way to personally communicate with loved ones back home via the use of a "phone-patch" telephone connection over short-wave radio. MARS stations would allow each soldier a free 5 minute personal radio telephone call home to the United States. In just about all cases, MARS was the only way soldiers could call home. In other words, "MARS was the soldiers’ Telephone Company."
That was the good news about MARS calls; the bad news was that one had to place a request for the call hours or sometimes days before it would be placed. So if you happened to be out of the Company Area, say on a mission, perhaps, you lost your place in line and had to re-request the call.
There was also humor in these calls. Because it was a radio call, the radio operators at each end had to know when to switch from transmit to receive. So a typical call could sound like “How is Grandma, over” “Grandma is fine, over.” How are you doing at work, over” “I am doing well, over” “I love you, over” “I love you, too, over” and so on for up to 5 minutes…
So Ron Clark is the co-pilot on this mission, with Rominger the Aircraft Commander. (As of this writing, Michael Rominger has since passed away, Died After Tour, DAT.) It was 1900 hours (7:00 PM) and not yet dark.
“We got a call to pick up a guy who had been run over by a jeep…it was a non-combat mission, what we called routine if the injuries were not life-threatening. We picked him up a rather short flight away and dropped him off at the hospital in Saigon with nothing unusual whatsoever.” It was a typical non-combat injury flight, no apparent enemy activity in the area, just transport in an expedient manner.
“When we arrived at the hospital with our patient, there was an Air Force guy who wanted to ride down to Nha Be, pronounced “Nah Bay”. (Authors note: Hitching rides on aircraft was very common and happened all the time. Taking a passenger like this was solely up to the discretion of the Aircraft Commander…if someone wanted a ride somewhere, it was the AC’s call.)
“We refueled about 15 miles south of Saigon at a Navy base that controlled the mouth of the Mekong River. We were in a hurry to get back because we wanted to see the latest Clint Eastwood movie that was available to us that night, I think it was “For a Few Dollars More”.
So we beat feet to get back and they shot us down about 3 miles north of the refueling base, over the river, with .51 caliber machine gun fire. I was the Peter Pilot and the AC was flying; I was turned around talking to the medic on the other side of the aircraft when I saw the tracers fire and the Crewchief saw them, too, because he was also looking backwards as they were supposed to do. The aircraft started to shudder and the transmission started to seize up as we started an autorotation. The RPM was starting to bleed off, so I checked the collective to make sure it was all the way down and it was. We were about 300 feet AGL (Note: Above Ground Level) when we were hit.
Dan Collins, Medic on this mission, remembers: “We were all joking around on the intercom and laughing about Eastwood kicking ass when we got hit and knocked about fifteen feet to the right.
When we got hit, I stood up, released the door strap, pushed the door open, leaned-out, and observed we were on fire and spitting turbine blades. I reported that info to the pilots. The aircraft shuddered and turned left toward shore, with the nose dropping down at an angle. I dropped to the floor, grabbed the 22 inch door and braced my feet against the transmission wall, watching the water and shoreline rush up, I was absolutely terrified. I was praying, ‘Not yet God! Not yet!’ My door slid toward the front of the aircraft and in the reflection of my window I saw my wife smiling. She must have been counting my life insurance as a few weeks later I received my ‘Dear John’ letter.”
Ron Clark recalls: “The first thing we hit was the water in the river near the shore and we rolled on my side. That was when the doorpost on my side collapsed and cut my head open. We rolled three times from the river up into the rice paddy and we were on fire. We came to rest upright with the skids separated from the aircraft; the skids were laying on top of the main rotor head. Blood was running down my face so I unbuckled my seatbelt and just stepped out of the aircraft. Nothing was left of the helicopter in front of me, I just jumped out and headed across the paddy for cover. The whole nose of the aircraft was gone, it was just the two pilot seats sitting out on an open platform.”
Note pilot’s seats at top right, Clark just simply unbuckled and stepped out.
Post-crash and fire remains of UH-1 Dustoff Huey “Auggie”
Note the 3 "X"s that indicate each impact on the ground as the aircraft bounced and rolled ashore into standing water.
Collins again adds his recollection, “On impact with the river the nose disintegrated and tons of water crashed in. On initial impact I crashed head-first into Rominger's armored seat, placing a two inch crack in the back of my helmet.”
Ron continues: “It was like we were flying a lawn mower at the time as we cut out a pretty good section of the trees as we rolled up the riverbank. Everyone in the back was thrown clear and the Crewchief had the yellow emergency exit ring from the side door wrapped around his waist from being thrown through the window. The Crewchief and I got the AC out, both he and the medic were unconscious. We got both of them to come to and the Air Force guy was OK, also.
I had my survival vest on with the emergency radio and was trying to get someone on Guard as we started taking fire from the tree line. We couldn’t get anyone to respond so the medic threw the radio into the fire and I almost shot him! (Author’s note: Apparently it was the Medic’s attempt to keep it from falling into enemy hands???)
Medic Collins says: “I woke up under about eighteen inches of water, the area was flooded at high tide. I was stuck on my back in the mud and clay, it hurt like hell to move. It may be that Ron woke me up, I don't know for sure. When I became aware, I moved toward the aircraft and noticed about six inches of M-16 stock sticking out of the mud.
The sliding door on my side (left) had sheared-off. The transmission was at an angle in the crew compartment and the ceiling was mostly smashed to the floor. The aircraft was starting to burn again... everything was so damned quiet...
I saw Rominger's door mostly wrapped around his seat and in a panic began clawing at the door screaming, ‘Mister Rominger! Mister Romminger!’ Someone was pulling me away from Rominger's seat. I was screaming and fighting them off...then realized Rominger and Clark were trying to calm me down.
Ron was using the radio. I saw an unmarked [sterile] Huey flying between the River and crash site...flying slow and low enough I could see the door gunner's face. I have no idea why, at the time, but I was very afraid he was going to kill us. I do not remember throwing the radio in the fire, but my impression of imminent death may have had something to do with it. The Huey continued on it's way without rendering assistance.”
Clark continues: “A Caribou was flying over us and rocked his wings to let us know he saw us and then a Navy patrol boat came up the river to see what the smoke was all about. I had a pen gun flare and we were evading the enemy as we went through the rice paddy to the river bank trying to work our way back to the Navy base. I shot the flare over the bow of the boat (Author’s note: The pen gun fires a small red tracer round which looks like a rifle tracer round) and they started shooting back at us into the tops of the trees. The AC ran down to the river’s edge and started yelling ‘Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle’ and any other Yankee players he could think of! He started swimming towards them. I still had my chicken plate on so I didn’t jump in and it turned out I didn’t need to as they crashed the boat up onto the bank to get to us once they realized we were Americans.”
Collins goes on: “I did not see the Caribou, however if it was there, then there were radio transmissions and perhaps that is why the sterile Huey departed the area.
The way I remember it (all five of us probably remember something different), Rominger made sure we were all together and led us up-river across mud flats and a dike or two; we took a hard left toward the river. There was gunfire, recon by fire, ammo cooking-off, Navy shooting at us? Maybe it was all of the above. I went back toward the aircraft long enough to verify in my mind that it was just ammo was cooking-off. It may be I had tunnel vision and from my perspective it was ammo cooking-off.
From Ron's perspective looking in a different direction he may have seen other sources for gunfire. I remember Ron was still wearing his ‘Chicken-Plate’ and despite the serious situation we were laughing and cracking jokes about it.
I went into the water up to my chin. I also remember swarms of mosquitoes and I was hurting all over again. Someone grabbed me under my arms and dragged me into a skiff. I was vaguely aware of another boat pulling-out in front of us and heading back down-river to Nha Bhe.”
Back to Ron Clark: “We all got on board and they tried to stop the bleeding with a compression bandage on my head but they weren’t having much luck. They got us back to the Navy base where a second compression bandage seemed to be working. They called our Dustoff Unit. They came down and picked us up, then they took us to the hospital in Long Binh. They got me sewed up and it turned out the Crewchief had a broken arm. The Air Force guy banged his kneecap and couldn’t walk for about 3 days.
There was a Major in our unit who was convinced that it was an accident, that we had screwed up. He did not believe that we were shot down. For some reason he didn’t like me in particular, and he felt that we had an engine failure and messed up the autorotation. The Crewchief and I were the only ones who saw the tracers and they didn’t believe us as the other guys in the aircraft didn’t see them.
Collins: “We were picked-up by our Company Commander, LTC what's his face, I don’t remember his name. In the Emergency Room he immediately got into Rominger's face, accusing him of flying AUGGIE into the ground. I was furious! I got in the LTC's face, maybe going for his throat, and with a string of profanity ‘advised’ him we had been shot down and Rominger saved our lives.
That’s the way I remember it!”
Ron adds: “I was the maintenance officer at the time so I installed a cargo hook in another aircraft and went out to pull the engine and transmission out of the mud. When we got it back, there was a .51 caliber hole in the compressor section of the engine and the transmission parts had started to melt down from taking hits. The Major said he was going to return the engine back to the states but instead, he punched it off over the water, saying it was lost due to the faulty installation of the cargo hook. What he didn’t know was, an accident investigation team had already taken pictures of the bullet holes.
Bullet hole in compressor section.
He obviously didn’t like us that well, that’s how big of a grudge he had against me, trying to nail us with an accident rather than being shot down. We all got purple hearts out of it and went on down the road. We never did get to see the movie that night.”
Routine missions? No such thing, no way. Not in Vietnam. With a bounty on our heads as aircrew and helicopters, we were never routine. What the bad guys apparently never realized was that the Army was pumping out helicopters, pilots and aircrew faster than they could shoot us down. They tried…there are just over 2000 pilot’s names on the Wall in Washington DC and just over 2000 aircrew names. We, and our aircraft, were expendable then. We knew we were expendable, but we tried not to think about it; we were too young and too stupid then, I suppose.
Ron’s wound.
His helmet
CW2 Ron Clark in country.
SFC Dan Collins
Phil Marshall "Dustoff & Medevac Vietnam" Amazon Purchase