- 7/8/2025
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00:00To the G.I.s fighting in the Vietnam War, it was a vital lifeline, providing food, ammunition,
00:28medical assistance, and fire support. In just a few years of operation, it was the difference
00:34between life and death to thousands of men, the Huey helicopter.
00:40The Vietnam War was the Huey War. It was not a grand war. It was a helicopter war.
00:48Vietnam was a brutal conflict. Huey gunships changed U.S. Army tactics and the way modern
00:54wars are fought, as their lethal guns wrought havoc on the Viet Cong.
00:58They considered us to be the mortal enemy, because they'd seen what we'd done to them
01:05with those Gatling guns, and they hated us.
01:10The Huey not only revolutionized the U.S. Army's thinking, it changed the face of aviation forever.
01:18Using rare archive film and calorie enactments, Battle Stations goes right inside the Huey
01:23helicopter, shows its role in combat, and the everyday do-or-die existence of its crews.
01:37Helicopter development dates back to the early part of the 20th century, when the first Rotary
01:42Wing flight took place.
01:43Full-scale development soon began to attract many flight enthusiasts, including Igor Sikorsky,
01:49a Russian immigrant to America, who in the 1930s managed to get his rotary machine in the air.
01:55At the same time, a brilliant young American engineer, Arthur Young, was also experimenting
02:07with rotary wing aircraft. Using models, he discovered that independently hinged blades
02:13follow the movement of the mast, and by fitting a stabilizer bar to the mast,
02:17the performance improved dramatically.
02:23In 1941, Young and another brilliant engineer, Bartram Kelly, took the initiative to demonstrate
02:29their new model to Lawrence D. Bell, founder of the Bell Aircraft Company.
02:38Two gentlemen, young kids, called and said they'd like to come and talk to him.
02:42That was Art Young and Bart Kelly. They had a model helicopter plugged in the wall, had a rotor on it,
02:50and they could guide the thing, and they landed on Larry Bell's desk. He was absolutely amazed.
03:00Larry Bell agreed to build two full-scale prototypes, designated the Model 30. Arthur Young is seen here,
03:07lifting one off the ground for the first time.
03:12The project was centered in an old garage in Gardenville, New York.
03:19Here, Floyd Carlson, a Bell test pilot, tested the Model 30 for several months,
03:24making various adjustments until it crashed during a test run.
03:33But Bell and his team forged ahead with development. By 1943,
03:38an improved second prototype was ready to be tested. Its first passenger was Larry Bell,
03:44seen here eager to demonstrate his machine for the camera.
03:51During World War II, the Germans and allies still considered the helicopter unproven technology,
03:56and only limited resources were devoted towards tests.
04:02But Larry Bell, whose company had grown considerably during the war, building fixed-wing fighters and bombers,
04:08had the vision to see the helicopter's potential.
04:10He was excited by the concept of vertical take-off and the flexibility it gave compared to planes.
04:22To prove the point, Bell's favorite demonstration was for his helicopter to land on the palm of the hand.
04:28Larry Bell was a legend. He was a man of foresight, a man of integrity, and had tremendous faith in the engineers.
04:39If they said they could do something, they could do it.
04:44Arthur Young and his team built a third aircraft for Bell, the Model 47. It was an instant success,
04:50becoming the first commercially certified helicopter. More significantly for Bell, it became the workhorse of the US military.
04:58The US Army first deployed helicopters in large numbers during the Korean War from 1950 to 1953.
05:11Their primary role was for scouting and medical evacuation.
05:17On these flimsy flying machines, the wounded were carried precariously on stretchers strapped to the side of the helicopter.
05:23It was here that the MASH units, or Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals, would create the first helicopter legends.
05:37Korea had provided the US Army with much valuable information on the use of the helicopter in war and its possible effect in future conflicts.
05:45The integration of helicopters in the place of ground vehicles to permit units to do recon,
05:55to maneuver, to do fire support. In other words, of everything that happened in combat,
06:00by the use of air mobility. And the helicopter was so key to that, it was just a natural answer to the Army's requirement.
06:08After the Korean War ended, the Army asked American manufacturers to design a new utility helicopter,
06:17wide enough to carry a stretcher inside the fuselage and with an 8,000-pound payload.
06:22At the time, helicopters were powered by piston engines.
06:32But research had begun on a new gas turbine engine. With their lighter weight and considerable increase
06:38in power, gas turbines held a strong advantage over the outdated piston engine. Running on gas turbines
06:45also meant the engine could be mounted on top of the fuselage, allowing more valuable cabin space inside the craft.
06:52Bell's engineers developed a turbine-powered utility helicopter, the X-H-40.
07:00The United States Army was impressed and awarded Bell a contract.
07:05We had a good design team. We had Bart Kelly as our leader and we had some other key engineers that were running the show.
07:13They had a lot of maintenance experience, they had a lot of field experience, and we had pilots
07:18that lived flying, and they knew what the aircraft ought to do.
07:25Bell's new helicopter was originally called the Iroquois by the U.S. Army.
07:29When I went into the production phase, they called it the H-Helicopter U-Utility 1.
07:39So then I was H-U, and the GIs put the name Huey on it from H-U-E-Y, and that's how I got the name Huey.
07:48The nickname stuck.
07:52The Army was keen to integrate the Huey into a new strategy of air mobility and immediately
07:57recruited a new generation of warrant officer pilots. Men who entered the Army specifically
08:03to fly helicopters under a farsighted program that began in 1951. The new program, which lasted nine
08:11months, gave recruits without college degrees the opportunity to become helicopter pilots.
08:19All they needed was the intelligence and desire to fly.
08:22In all of my life, people have asked me about how do you fly a helicopter. I've always tried to come up
08:27with a nice analogy about, well how flying a helicopter is a lot like, and then you're stuck
08:32because there's not really anything a lot like it. You must use both hands and both feet simultaneously,
08:39and you have to move them in a variety of directions. Some are dependent on the other and some are not.
08:45The left hand is the collective, which controls going up and down. On your right hand, you have a cyclic
08:51stick, which makes the aircraft nose go up and down or back and forth and left and right.
08:58The trick comes when you do what's called hovering, and that's stopping a helicopter in mid-air,
09:03and that requires the feet. New pilots were quick to grasp the potential of the Huey over other
09:09helicopters. We trained at Mineral Wells, Texas, and I flew a huge helicopter there. And then the last two
09:18months at Fort Rucker, Alabama, we started flying the Huey. And it was like a Cadillac compared to these
09:25smaller things that we used to fly. But it was far from a smooth ride for Bell. The US government,
09:33now under pressure from other manufacturers, proposed that Bell should let other companies
09:38share in building the massive numbers of Hueys it needed. We told them it wouldn't work. We tried it,
09:46and it was just going to be a waste of money. What we would do is give every state of the union
09:52a portion of subcontracting. And we used to have a great big map of the United States, and each state
09:58was colored with how much money it got. And that's the way we kept the program, the sole source of Bell.
10:03As the first Hueys entered service with the army, America pledged its support to the people of South
10:12Vietnam in their war against communism. The war in which it would become a weapon of legend was about to begin.
10:24In the spring of 1962, the first Hueys were sent to assist the people of South Vietnam locked in a brutal struggle
10:31with communist insurgents. Vietnam had been a French colony until 1954, but when the French were finally
10:44driven out after a long war of independence, the victors could not agree on who should rule.
10:50The country was divided by international agreement into communist North Vietnam and the Democratic Republic
10:56of South Vietnam. Under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh, the communists rejected partition. In retaliation,
11:06they created the National Liberation Front, known as the Viet Cong, to wage a guerrilla war against the
11:11South Vietnamese army. Originally, the American government only intended to send military advisors to support
11:22South Vietnam. But it soon became clear that unless they undertook major combat missions themselves,
11:28the South would not survive. We have made a national pledge to help South Vietnam defend its independence.
11:41And I intend to keep that promise.
11:45By 1965, large numbers of American combat troops began pouring into South Vietnam.
11:58In the capital, Saigon, the Viet Cong retaliated by stepping up their bombing campaign.
12:08The communists also controlled much of the countryside, where their hidden network provided food,
12:13ammunition and refuge for their fighters. These secret Viet Cong cells were almost impossible to detect.
12:23The terrain in Vietnam was another major obstacle. The impenetrable jungle and high mountains made the
12:29ground movement of large numbers of troops virtually impossible. It was in these conditions that the
12:36mobility of the helicopter became essential. But for the newly arrived pilots, flying in Vietnam for the
12:45first time was a shock.
12:45I just couldn't really believe it was happening to me. And I hadn't flown a Huey in over a month.
12:56And the first thing they did is put me in a loaded gunship and made me go fly a traffic
13:01pattern. And I nearly crashed because I had never flown one loaded like this. It's too dangerous in flight school.
13:08And that's my first impression, that I wasn't as good as I thought I was.
13:16In Vietnam, the majority of Hueys were used for utility work. These were known as Slicks,
13:22and were each capable of transporting eight fully armed troops. Slicks had a four-man crew,
13:28the pilot and co-pilot, a door gunner, and the crew chief, who had two different roles.
13:32On the ground, naturally, you're a mechanic. You're responsible for daily inspections, which
13:42you're looking for obvious things that are wrong with the helicopter.
13:46When you were in the air, you were actually just a door gunner. However, we sat on the left-hand
13:53side, the crew chiefs did, because the instrument panel up front was offset. I could look between the
14:01pilot's seat from my cubby hole right there at the back, and I could read all the engine instruments
14:07and monitor things. On Slicks, the regular door gunner sat on the right-hand side.
14:13The toughest part about being a door gunner is that so many people depended on us. And you had to be
14:19alert all the time. I mean, you had to be looking everywhere and listening, because, you know, when a
14:25gun goes, a bullet goes off around you, it makes a popping noise. And that's the first thing you start
14:30looking for, a muzzle blast. And so you're not just flying through the air doing nothing. You're
14:35constantly observing the ground. The Viet Cong soon learned to aim their automatic weapons of these
14:42slow-moving troop transports. With helicopter losses mounting at the landing zones, it became clear the
14:48Slicks needed more than their own door gunners to suppress enemy fire. The need for an armed gunship to
14:55act as escort had become a matter of life or death. Many B-model Hueys were immediately converted into
15:04gunships. A variety of weapon systems were developed and implemented.
15:15Door gunners also tried new tactics. Leaning out on the skids, they would fire underneath the gunship.
15:21But this soon proved extremely dangerous. They finally gave us some harnesses to where,
15:27so we wouldn't fall out of the choppers. So it was the beginning, you know, it was like
15:33nobody had ever done it before, but no one ever been in a combat situation where we had to lean out of a
15:38helicopter almost upside down. And I can't tell you the number of times I'd fallen out and they'd pull me up.
15:44Eventually, M6 quad machine guns were mounted on a turret and fired by the co-pilot, while some Hueys
15:53were armed with a lethal 7.62 minigun, manned by the door gunner that could fire up to 4,000 rounds per minute.
16:04On regular missions, an average of two Huey gunships escorted a force of eight Slicks. Gunships never
16:10carried troops, needing to give all available cabin space to weapons and ammunition.
16:17More muscle was also added by incorporating various rocket pod combinations.
16:2324 on a pod on one side, 24 on a pod on the other side. When we first got over there,
16:29we would try to shoot like four at a time. And we didn't have the accuracy with four. And if you shot
16:35all 48, you'd back up 20 feet and scare the hell out of you because you feel like you've fallen down.
16:39But we could shoot two at a time with pinpoint accuracy.
16:45As the war in Vietnam escalated, many in the US military felt the unique qualities of the Huey
16:50could be used to form a well-armed mobile force that could respond rapidly to enemy operations.
16:56In July 1965, a new unit, the 1st Air Cavalry Division, equipped with nearly 500 helicopters,
17:07arrived in Vietnam to begin the longest tour of duty in American combat history.
17:13The Air Cavalry was specifically designed to perform classic cavalry missions,
17:17riding quickly to battle in a helicopter instead of on a horse. They were the only division in the
17:23world whose units were trained to work with and depend solely on the helicopter.
17:32Tactics were pioneered by the 1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry Regiment,
17:35under the command of the flamboyant Colonel Jim Stockton.
17:40John Stockton was an outstanding cameraman to begin with. Because of the training that he gave the
17:46squadron before they deployed, right from the beginning, they were an outstanding unit in combat
17:51against the enemy. I personally feel he's the father of Air Cavalry. When I took over the
17:57squadron, I just built upon what he had already trained in the squadron.
18:03If you were in the 1st Cav, you were in a special unit. You were making history. You were doing
18:09something that no one had ever done before. This wasn't like hitting a beach. This was flying a
18:15flying machine that no one had ever fought a war with. And it was a piece of history. I don't remember
18:21any bad morale, ever. Equipped with Hueys, the Air Cavalry immediately went on the offensive.
18:27Their mission, to search out and destroy the enemy. The Huey was our horse. I mean,
18:33we rode it right through the war. It took us everywhere we wanted to go. As in the horse cavalry of old,
18:39Air Cavalry commanders were expected to lead from the front. Every troop commander was a pilot. I
18:48wanted to be intimately knowledgeable of what was going on, on the ground, in the LZ as well as around
18:54the LZ. I don't, I never did see how a commander at any level could be really on top of everything,
19:04unless he was right in the middle of it. The Air Cavalry used scout helicopters to search for signs
19:10of the enemy. Once contact was made, the well-armed squadron swept out of the sky, destroying the
19:18opposition with its massive firepower. We were very lethal. I mean, the D.C. hated us. They hated us
19:27because we could see them and we could blow the hell out of everything we saw. We had enough firepower.
19:34In a matter of months, the Air Cavalry and their battle-ready Hueys had earned a reputation as
19:38aggressive fighters. But as the demands of the Vietnam War changed daily and the pressure
19:45increased on helicopter crews, the Huey would be forced to take on multiple roles.
19:50It was well on its way to going from workhorse to legend.
19:55The war in Vietnam was one in which the speed of deployment of men and firepower was vital.
20:07By 1966, half a million American and three-quarters of a million South Vietnamese were fighting in South
20:14Vietnam. The Huey had become a crucial element in the logistic support of these men.
20:23In addition to regular combat sorties, the Hueys would also fly ash and trash missions,
20:29the routine fetch and carry duties that were part and parcel of supporting U.S. and South Vietnamese forces.
20:34Slicks would fly two to three times as many hours as gunships. When gunships went out,
20:46they went out to kill people. We went out every day to do everything imaginable,
20:51literally. You're carrying people and anything that needs to be carried.
20:58The demands of war meant Hueys often transported loads that far exceeded their normal weight
21:03limitations. The flying skills of the pilots were pushed to the limit.
21:08We load them until they would not hover. And we used the springs in the skids to a lot of times just
21:14pick it up as you were sliding and get it up about a foot and a half and drop it and bang it and you'd
21:21use the recoil off the skids to pop it into the air.
21:28The damp tropical climate of Vietnam often hampered ground support of the helicopter fleets.
21:34The highly trained ground crews sweltered in the heat of summer and endured the cold downpours of
21:39the seasonal monsoon rains. Rotor blades had to be constantly changed. Their surfaces eroded by the
21:49sandblasting from fine dust during takeoffs. The Hueys blades were originally expected to last a
22:01thousand flight hours, but in Vietnam this dropped down to 200 hours. The combination of the climate and
22:09the demands of war caused heavy wear and tear on the Hueys. Every 25 flying hours they would go into
22:18maintenance for a pretty basic inspection. And if you're flying a lot that's about every third day.
22:26At a hundred hours it was a periodic inspection that was much more thorough and every 300 hours the
22:35engine had to be overhauled. To keep the weight down the Huey was made of light materials which made it
22:42vulnerable to small arms fire. A helicopter is made of aluminum and plexiglass. The aluminum is so thin
22:53that you could shoot through it with a 22 caliber bullet. We wore an armored plate on our chest and we were sitting in
23:00armored seats but your lower half of your body is totally exposed. Your entire head is exposed and
23:07then there's parts hanging out of course that are exposed. Being hit by enemy fire was a constant threat on
23:16every mission. In case the pilot and co-pilot got shot there's a red handle down the back of their seats
23:25that we can pull and whichever one we need to roll out of the seat the seat literally falls back. We can
23:30pull the body out jump in there fold the seat up and fly it. Hueys were one of the biggest threats to
23:39the communists and every opportunity was taken to shoot them down. But it wasn't crashing that the Huey
23:44pilots feared. It was the Viet Cong. The instructions were to kill all helicopter pilots. There was a $25,000
23:55gold reward on any helicopter pilot and they wanted them dead. We did so much damage to them. They
24:06considered us to be the mortal enemy because they'd seen what we'd done to them with those those Gatling
24:11guns. It was it was hard for them unless they had a deep hole to get into those things would
24:16really do a trick when you had them working and they hated us. In addition to the myriad of roles
24:24taken on by the Huey it was also designed to be a medical evacuation helicopter.
24:32The medevac missions were known as dust off by the troops. Dust off units were autonomous and
24:37consisted of six Hueys working within a specific geographical area.
24:46Each Huey had pilot, co-pilot and two medics, one also acting as crew chief. The bravery of these
24:54crews was legendary. The dedication of the pilots was exemplified by Michael Novosel, a Congressional
25:01Medal of Honor winner. If you've flown just one mission where you've saved a life, it sort of grows
25:08on you. It's catchy. It's almost narcotic. You realize that you have this ability to help and
25:15sometimes that really and truly you're extending a man's life. Not all army pilots could fly medevac
25:22Hueys, which were equipped with advanced flying instruments. Most of the pilots at that point of
25:29the war were not instrument qualified in the dust off business because the nature of the missions
25:37flying under instrument conditions was absolutely necessary when the weather closed in and the job
25:43had to be done. In Vietnam, 51 percent of combat casualties were due to small arms fire. Ten thousand
25:54U.S. servicemen lost a limb to booby traps and mines. It was therefore a huge boost to troop morale to know
26:01that they could be evacuated from the battlefield to an army hospital in an average of a hundred minutes.
26:10Of the 390,000 army wounded transported during the war, 90 percent survived. Much of the credit for this
26:18success was due to the rapid response of the dust-off crews. By late 1967, the American forces had steadily
26:29closed in on the Viet Cong. But the communists were about to launch an ambitious new offensive they hoped
26:35would turn the tide of the war. The legendary attack would stretch the Huey and its crews to the limit.
26:43early 1968, the communists were preparing to launch a major offensive against South Vietnam that would
26:57provide the greatest challenge to the Huey and its crews to date. Their aim was to spark an uprising to
27:04coincide with Tet, the traditional Vietnamese new year, and topple the government. They hoped this mass
27:11destruction would force the Americans to rethink their policy and withdraw from Vietnam.
27:18On January the 30th, 84,000 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese regulars mounted simultaneous attacks
27:24in more than a hundred towns and cities.
27:29I was one of the few helicopter pilots in the air when the Tet Offensive started. And we'd been up on a
27:35firefly mission, two gunships and a slick with about 12 landing lights hooked up to shine down on the river
27:42and catch their sandpans as they move supplies through. So we looked up and we actually thought
27:47they'd set off a nuclear bomb on our home base. Many of the helicopter units were taken by complete surprise.
27:54They probably took out three or four of our Hueys just mortar hits. We had six flyable gunships out of eight.
28:03They went up. When they came back that day, we had non-legally flyable. They were shot to a hole.
28:10We got the other two up and about three days later, none of the eight were legally flyable.
28:15The Americans and South Vietnamese were stunned by the scale of the offensive.
28:25We went out and put a strike in and then we couldn't find a place to refuel because every
28:31place was under attack. And so anyway, I wound up refueling right in the middle of a firefight.
28:39And they actually quit shooting as I landed on this runway and we just put in enough to knock the fuel
28:44light off. The Tet Offensive was the first time the US forces fought large numbers of North Vietnamese
28:52and Viet Cong in face-to-face combat. In the cities and in the countryside, every inch of ground was
29:02bitterly contested. Casualties on both sides mounted. Huey crews were pushed to the limit as they flew
29:12double their usual number of missions. There was no front line in Vietnam and the Allies used their
29:22superior air mobility to transport reinforcements to the numerous battles raging around the country.
29:27Although Tet was a great propaganda coup for the Viet Cong, they suffered massive losses as a
29:35consequence. 32,000 were killed in the first two weeks against 3,000 South Vietnamese and 1,000 Americans.
29:47The Tet Offensive revealed how vital air mobility was to American strategy.
29:52Without the Huey, the speedy movement of troops around Vietnam's treacherous terrain would have been
29:59impossible. The Huey was to remain the key element in all future campaigns. American commanders realized
30:08cohesive action by aircrew and helicopter-borne infantry on combat assaults was essential if the
30:13communist forces were to be contained. Careful operational planning would also minimize losses.
30:26Once the Hueys reached the battle zone, they would circle for 10 minutes during which the air force would strike.
30:31The gunships would then unleash their weapons into enemy positions near the landing zone.
30:46As soon as the Huey would come in, we'd drop our loads into two to four rockets at a time and we'd peel out.
30:55And the crew chief on the left would lean out on the skids and shoot everywhere that we're flying into,
31:00and I would lean out on the skids on the other side, up like this, and I'd shoot everything behind us so that
31:07they couldn't shoot us as we were pulling out. And the next chopper would come in and be doing the same thing.
31:16A colored smoke grenade was dropped to mark the landing zone. This technique of using different
31:21colors was adopted to avoid the enemy laying down its own smoke as a decoy.
31:25Slicks descended in a stepped formation, each one at about 45 degrees to the side and rear of the leader,
31:37high enough to avoid rotor wash.
31:38When you're going into an LZ, it's unbelievable how the turbulence works. In other words, to put a
31:46helicopter down on the ground, you have to have an air cushion. And when the turbulence is churning
31:53off the helicopters in front of you, it blows the cushion out from under you and it's like a control
31:58crash. And you best know what you're doing or you're fixing to bang it into the rice paddies.
32:04As the Hueys flew in, the Viet Cong concentrated their fire on the approaching helicopters.
32:13You are under anti-aircraft cannon at high level. And at low level, you are under AK-47.
32:22And when you land on the landing zone, you are under artillery or mortar fire. That's a three-layer
32:29fire you encounter. And it is very dangerous. And that is the sitting target for the Army.
32:40The confusion that just reigns supreme in a person's mind during your first combat assault
32:47is just beyond description. There are bombs going off, rockets going off,
32:52there are gunships flying by, the M60s start chattering, the ground is burning, people on board
33:00are, there's a murmuring you can hear in back, and you know they're excited about the landing.
33:07And it's just so much total confusion and total chaos that I don't think there's any type of training
33:12that can really prepare you for that. The first troops on the ground secured the landing zone,
33:17while the slicks departed for the refueling points to await orders for their return.
33:24If necessary, the gunships would continue to support the ground troops.
33:30The sheer ferocity of combat in Vietnam meant little quarter was given or expected.
33:36The Huey had proved itself on the battlefield time and again. It allowed the infantry to do its job
33:48against a determined and brave adversary. Even against overwhelming firepower, the Viet Cong were
33:54prepared to fight on at any cost.
33:57A lot of people looked at them as gooks in pajamas. They were extremely talented soldiers. They were a
34:10tough soldier to fight and they fought as hard for their country as we were fighting for our country's
34:17principles. They were damn good soldiers.
34:19The superior air mobility of the US forces had helped defeat the Viet Cong in the Tet Offensive.
34:30But the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a series of communist supply routes winding through the jungle,
34:35was still open. Supported by Hueys, American Special Forces teams were deployed to search out and
34:41destroy this vital Viet Cong lifeline.
34:43Sometimes we would just insert an American Special Forces unit. A lot of times their mission was to
34:53interdict traffic along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, to put sensors out, sometimes to kidnap a North
35:01Vietnamese officer to gain intelligence and to take captives.
35:07When landings were impossible, Special Forces units such as the Green Berets or Rangers would
35:12parachute into action. Sometimes they would swing down on 120-foot ropes in a technique known as rappelling.
35:27Secrecy was the key to successful operations. Because of the rotor noise,
35:31pilots tried to avoid alerting the enemy until the last possible moment.
35:35You can't tell always where a sound is coming from. And the same is true with a helicopter. You can hear it,
35:42but you're not quite sure where it is. And if you stay close to the treetops, it's much harder to see one.
35:47And when you do see it, it's in your vision for a much shorter period of time, so it's hard to get a beat on it.
35:53And so we would generally stay pretty close to treetop level.
35:56The US Navy also began to fly a special squadron of Hueys, nicknamed the Sea Wolves. Their task
36:10was to keep the waterways of the Mekong Delta open and free from the enemy.
36:18The Sea Wolves protected Navy river patrol boats by searching for sandpans laden with weapons and
36:23ammunition for the Viet Cong. The Mekong Delta was a vital link in the Viet Cong supply line.
36:33Patrolling this large network of waterways was risky. The possibility of ambush was a constant danger.
36:42The reputation of the Sea Wolves pilots for pinpoint navigation in poor weather conditions
36:46meant they were in constant demand by the US Navy SEALs and other special forces groups.
36:53On August the 29th, 1969, Daniel Kelly was on a mission to drop special forces into the Delta area when
37:01his Huey came under sustained fire. We no sooner dropped them off than everything just went nuts. I
37:08mean, just enemy fire everywhere. And we kept circling around low level to try to suppress the enemy fire so
37:16we could pick these guys back up again. We flew through this one clearing as we were making our third round,
37:22and it was like they had us set up. They were waiting for us. All the plexiglass was shot out of the
37:25helicopter. All the instruments were shot out. Had so many bullets went through that helicopter,
37:29my ICS cord was shot in half. So nobody knew I even got hit. And I ended up having to take a spare
37:36barrel and hit my gunner on top of the head to get his attention.
37:39As soon as I got hit, it was like a giant water balloon of blood just exploded all over the helicopter.
37:49With Kelly seriously wounded, the stricken Huey managed to struggle back to base.
37:53As soon as the helicopter sat down, they already had a tourniquet on my leg, what was left of it.
37:59The engine died. All the fuel and oil lines going into the jet engine had been shot off.
38:04We flew for about 15 minutes with no fuel or oil going into that jet engine.
38:08Could not explain it even to this day.
38:12As a result of his injuries, Daniel Kelly had to have his leg amputated above the knee.
38:17But without the Huey, he would have lost his life.
38:25The robustness of the Huey and courage of its crews continued to save lives throughout the war.
38:32Michael Novosel had already been flying for seven hours on a series of medevac missions
38:37when he received an urgent request to evacuate wounded South Vietnamese soldiers from the Cambodian border.
38:43We have a mission that we really don't have to take because these were all Vietnamese troops,
38:49no American on the ground, no covering fire, no one to talk with, no way of determining whose enemy, whose friend.
39:01Despite ferocious small arms fire, Novosel skillfully positioned his Huey for landing.
39:07Skidding over the ground in the contact area where I'm surrounded by the enemy also.
39:11Novosel, never stopping, but only moving, and as the wounded stood up,
39:18they were yanked on board by either the crew chief or the medic, depending on which side of the aircraft they were on.
39:26Novosel dropped the wounded at a medical station and returned for more soldiers.
39:31Over the next two and a half hours, he flew into the area 15 times.
39:35He was forced to abort twice and refuel three times.
39:42As Novosel maneuvered to pick up the last wounded man, a Viet Cong fired his automatic weapon at point-blank range.
39:48And he emptied out his AK at me personally. Of course, he couldn't have done that without hitting me,
39:55as I was hit above the knee and below the knee and in the hand.
39:59And the reaction caused me to lose control. The aircraft jumped into the air and skewed off to one side.
40:11The co-pilot took control at that critical moment and nursed the Huey back to friendly territory.
40:15For his selfless act of courage, Michael Novosel was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
40:27Every one of the 29 that we say was wounded to some degree or other.
40:33Most of them had severe wounds, but they could not have lived throughout the night.
40:37And I'm sure the Viet Cong wouldn't have permitted them to anyhow.
40:40Despite the Huey and the success of air operations, it became clear Vietnam was a war that could not be won.
40:51Public opinion had turned against American involvement.
40:57We won all the battles. We did. You know, politics lost the war.
41:04Although the American presence in Vietnam officially ended in 1973,
41:09the Huey continued to fly with the South Vietnamese army.
41:12But without American support, the end of South Vietnam seemed inevitable.
41:22After the American withdrawal, we flew only two or three mission a day.
41:30The reason is we lack of spare parts, components, and even fuel.
41:39The artillery can only fly four rounds a day.
41:44We can only bring very serious wounded soldiers back to hospital.
41:50The minor ones, we just leave them on the battlefield.
41:54In April 1975, South Vietnam finally fell to the victorious communists.
42:05The long and bitter conflict was finally over.
42:13But the Hueys' performance during the war became legendary.
42:17Over the course of 11 years, more than 7,000 Hueys were deployed in Vietnam, flying a staggering 36 million sorties.
42:27The Vietnam War was the Huey War.
42:29It was not a grand war. It was a helicopter war.
42:33Of the 58,000 American servicemen killed in the Vietnam War, 4,900 were helicopter crews.
42:43To the men who lived and fought their war in helicopters, the Huey remains something special.
42:49I think of the Huey as my best friend. We spent a lot of time together and he was always good to me and I tried to be good to him.
43:00Huey was a fantastic machine. It was beautiful.
43:05It would take you into the worst kind of hell you could go into and almost always bring you back,
43:13bring you back home to where you were safe.
43:16I evacuated 5,589 wounded, flew 2,028 hours of combat, all in the Huey, and it never let me down.
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