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Show aiimcix rift W The Salt Lake Tribune, Sunday, March 9, 2A ft rum i' iffrrfanMiiirwH wwriinfttn 1969 Frail Copters Keep Pace Despite Wars Ferocity The Vietnam tear, in eight years has escalated from light guerbatrilla fighting to large-scale tles. Simultaneously s Associated Press Photos In 1968 helicopters in Vietnam flew more than six million missions, tak- - As the intensity SAIGON of the Vietnam war swirled higher and higher, more than one U.S. infantry commander more powerful predicted enemy firepower would push the glamorous but frail helicopter into a minor military role. The theory was that the extremely vulnerable choppers could never stand up to units equipped with massed heavy machine guns and flak cannons aimed by enemy radar. the helicopter proved itself more than capable of serving in the third or conventional stage of the insurgency here. Textbooks on tactics, U.S. senior officers say, must be rewritten to give the helicopter increasing importance in warfare. But Minor Tinkering to the surprise of many military planners, only miner tinkering with tactics was necessary to adapt the mass use of helicopters in Vietnam from the shotgun and home-madpistol days of guerrilla warfare in the early 1960s to todays sometime", involve heavily armed divisions on both sides. The U.S. Command estimates that the 2,500 helicopters now in Vietnam have given Allied infantrymen such mobility that if they were withdrawn it would require one million added trigger-puller- s in Vietnam to do the Much e low-lev- battles that same job. U.S. Command sources say an Allied war machine withat present out helicopters be on the defensive than the offensive and that casualties would be far American higher. Because troops are doing the heaviest would rather their fighting, would be l The operation. Cav pilots duiing the first days of the assault heard over their radios for the first time the beep, beep, beep of radar locking onto their ships. But the flak batteries were silenced in a matter of a few days by U.S. jets and rocketshooting helicopter gunships. Although the 130 chopper toll seemed high, it actually was seven short of the number lost in one month in a 1967 of south campaign Da Nang. month-lon- Infantrymen work to free crewmen from chopper in" a million men in and out of battle, also carrying a million tons of supplies. g little-note- d Proud Sunial The chopper has proved it could survive in as hostile an environment as any it now seems likely to meet in Vietnam. U.S. ground commanders, who knew the French record for disasters in such inaccessible spots as the A shuddered at the Shau, thought of what might have been if they had had to march into the valley and then out again through major enemy ambushes. Dealing with enemy flak with radar direction units turned out to be less of a problem than was feared. The beeps come through on the HI radios, hile choppers the radar is locking on, pilots can execute sharp diving turns and other high speed maneuvers to elude the electronic aiming systems. Dealing with heavy machine guns sometimes is a harder problem. These can be dug in and carefully camouflaged to direct fire that is deadly up to 5,000 feet or more. But use of continuous bomb, shell and rocket fire on landing zones effectively silences most such assaults. weapons during For the entire year 1968, the 1st Cav counted 1,004 helicopters hit by enemy ground fire. Of hese 774 flew on and completed their mission or at least got home safely, 128 weie shot down and recovered, and 102 were destroyed. The human loss was 101 killed and 230 wounded. Counting the more than 1,000 men assigned to regular helicopter flying duties, the casualties were far lighter than those the average infantry unit of the same size could expect. Since the war began, more have than 2,365 helicopters been destroyed from all causes in Vietnam, but only a few more than 1,000 were shot down and destroyed. Many of tne rest involved mechanical failure and the type of crashes and collisions that could have happened anywhere in the world where choppers are ordered to fly in marginal weather into small landing zones. The how of the helicopters survival in increasingly hos- tile battlefield situations mostly stems from an emphasis on precision timing and flying and the massive use of firepower. Another major factor was the introduction of ever faster and more heavily armed lielieoplets. Typical Assault In the Cav where techniques have been most finely honed, a battalion-siz- heliborne e assault in War Zone D northeast of Saigon worked like this : A helicopter landing zone was picked near a suspected concentration. The enemy zone was carefully studied by aerial reconnaissance includ- small scout helicopters that often flew below tree-tolevel and at speeds ranging down to 10 miles an hour to look for traps. ing p downed by enemy fire. But success of helicopters The entire assualt was timed to coincide with the touchdown of the first infantry - bearing helicopter. Air strikes of up to 20 minutes started hammering the area to sanitize the landing zone. The artillery took over as the helicopters maneuvered into position off to the side of the zone. Rocket Ships Finally the artillery lifted and Aerial Rocket Artillery carrying (ARA), helicopters up to 76 rockets each, swung into their firing runs. When wararmed wih heads, each rocket has the punch of a 105mm artillery shell. They can be delivered with a precision and rapidity no artillery battery could match. slicks With the helicopters having no heavy armament and filled with troops only 30 seconds from touchdown, gunships took over suppression of the landing zone, lifting their fire the moment i onized revolu-- t counterinsurgency warfare, it is the Air Cavalry that has given U.S. commanders their most potent weapon intelligence against the enemy. Pioneered by the Air Cav, the "Cav of the Cav concept has been expanded to cover all U.S. Army divisions. In the 1st Cav the job is carried out by a mixed helicopter and infantry battalion that forms the eyes of the divison. Their tactics are to launch more than a n missions a helicopters day of light backed up by Huey Cobras, the chopper with the biggest clout in Vietnam. The scout nicknamed the choppers, Loach, poke around at tree-to- p level looking for trouble or signs of the enemy. Trouble can mean an isolated sniper or whole battalions. When it works right, the do-e- Loach quickly against heavy fire has forced the rewriting of the tactical textbooks to enlarge the role of the choppers. pulls out of range and the Cobra goes to work. If the area looks promising, a platoon or more of infantry is thrown in to investigate the area with plenty of Cobras to back them up. When a really big firefight breaks out, the Cav can, and does, launch entire battalions within 15 minutes or less to join the battle. In their years in Vietnam, the Cav ha" become far more sophisticated about its work. Scouting has enabled the division and others using the same techniques to cover far vaster areas than during the days of Gen. William C. Westmorelands giant search-and-destro- y missions. Now Cav pilots are as alert for drying clothes on bamboo bushes or stray chickens in the jungle vastness as they are for the sight of enemy Oddly enough, the combat assault is not statistically the most dangerous work a chopper crew can encounter in Vietnam. Far more are shot down or damaged by enemy ground fire during resupply missions. The enemy knows ground units need food and sometimes water. Once they pinpoint a battalion position, they can put men with automatic weapon", on the fringe to shoot up the resupply chop- pers. Resupply for Army troops in the field is not limited to combat rations ammunition, and uater. Hot chow, ice cream and mail, three potent factors in GI morale, often are flown in despite sniper fire. Cobras and lighter gunships often have had to clear the way for the ice cream man in jungle landing zones with pockets of enemy snipers sprinkled outside the Reds Move The statistics for 1968 show choppers flew more than 6 miluon missions, carrying more than one million men in and out of battle zones, lugging more than one million tons of supplies and carrying more than 250,000 wounded Allied troops and civilians to rear-are- hospitals. a Helicopter missions routinely take the birds into infantry firebases and battalion positions impossible to reach oil the ground with heavy loads because there are no roads. And in the deep jungle, helicopter Cobras and other gujV ships often provide the needed muscle to save units from being smashed when enemy soldiers have closed in on a numerically inferior Allied unit and the fighting is too close to use artillery or air strikes. lp Since the air and artillery strikes pinpointed the intended landing zone, Communist units could and sometimes did move into position to blast the ground troops as they hit the ground. However, as much as muscle operations involving one or casulaties offers finest quality glasses at lowest low-lev- war. A Strong Hand A major reason our negotiators in Paris have a strong hand in bargaining for peace with the Communists is bea cause of the helicopter, senior officer of the U.S. 1st Air Cavalry Division says. This division, with 449 choppers ranging from miniscouts to giant Flying Cranes, has more helicopter muscle than any other in Vietnam. It uses them with a precision and a backing of massive firepower that, in the opinion of several officers who have served here during both the little war and big war" days, it is safer to be in helicopter units now than almost at any time in the past five years of war. A major watershed for helicopter warfare came last spring when the 1st Cav assaulted into the A Shau Valley, an enemy stronghold in northeast Vietnam that still includes a truck road off the Ho Chi Minh Trail and is protected by 37mm antiaircraft guns directed by radar. The Cav and the 101st Airborne Division, which operated in the mountains east of the valley, lost 130 cnoppers shot down or grounded due to battle damage during the possible prices! SINGLE VISION ONE LOW PRICE OUR COMPLETE PRICE INCLUDES: SCIENTIFIC SINGLE YOUR EYE EXAMINATION VISION OF FRAME CHOICE SELECTION ,.iC IANS FROM OF FASHIONABLE NO INTEREST EASY CREDIT, tYf CLEAR OR TINTED (M D ) OR SATISFACTION LENSES OUR LARGE STYLES AND COLORS OR CARRYING OPTOMETRISTS CHARGES PRESCRIPTIONS FILLED GUARANTEED! DOWNTOWN SALT LAKE CITY teas 246 SOUTH MAIN STREET -- ts is whet y6u come when youif; through playing games.' DOWNTOWN COTTONWOOD 129 So. Main 4841 Highland Dr. ,v- BOUNTIFUL perime- ter. ended. proportionately far higher if the helicopter hadnt been able to make the transition from large-scal- e more battalions have j the first infantrymen raced out of their choppers to secure the zone. Such precision was unheard of years ago. Then the helicopters quite olten were late in picking up the troops and since the artillery and airpow-e- r w ere not given new orders, troops often hit landing zones anywhere up to a half hour or fire more after the prep over-al- to helicop-ter- have proven more valuable than most people had hoped. By John T. Wheeler lsJ , OGDEN PROVO |