Cooperhawk
Buckeye
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KB-qZv2H1pE
Doesn't really tell it all and I am no fan of Walter Cronkite. Mel Gibson's movie only described about three days. The battle went on for weeks.
My partner and I were in Nha Trang doing weight and balance adjustments on Forward Air Controllers aircraft in Oct. We received orders to move to Pleiku as quickly as possible. We were flown in there on a C130 full of barrels of Av Gas. No smoking!
We got there in early Nov. We immediately started working on Gunships of MACV that were involved in the battle. The problem was the ships were so out of balance they had problems bringing the nose up for landing. We inventoried each ship fully loaded with guns, ammo, drinking water, ect. Just how they flew them.
All this time the helicopters were bringing in casualties. Helicopters came in with dead crewman hanging in straps. Two of our helpers without asking volunteered to act as door gunners and disappeared. The Graves Registration was set up not far from where we slept and each evening we searched the casualties looking for them. We found them alive and well a week later. All in all we were there two weeks of the battle.
When we were flown back to our unit in the South the First Sargent asked what had happened, so I told him. He called me a liar and said he had been reading all the dispatches and none of that happened. A week later he called me in and apologized. The Army had been keeping our losses secret.
Those are days I will never forget. We slept with loaded weapons. Artillery and flares were going off all the time. The one thing that haunts me to this day is the youth that were lying there dead. I was 25 and an old man to them. They were mostly 18 to 20.
Doesn't really tell it all and I am no fan of Walter Cronkite. Mel Gibson's movie only described about three days. The battle went on for weeks.
My partner and I were in Nha Trang doing weight and balance adjustments on Forward Air Controllers aircraft in Oct. We received orders to move to Pleiku as quickly as possible. We were flown in there on a C130 full of barrels of Av Gas. No smoking!
We got there in early Nov. We immediately started working on Gunships of MACV that were involved in the battle. The problem was the ships were so out of balance they had problems bringing the nose up for landing. We inventoried each ship fully loaded with guns, ammo, drinking water, ect. Just how they flew them.
All this time the helicopters were bringing in casualties. Helicopters came in with dead crewman hanging in straps. Two of our helpers without asking volunteered to act as door gunners and disappeared. The Graves Registration was set up not far from where we slept and each evening we searched the casualties looking for them. We found them alive and well a week later. All in all we were there two weeks of the battle.
When we were flown back to our unit in the South the First Sargent asked what had happened, so I told him. He called me a liar and said he had been reading all the dispatches and none of that happened. A week later he called me in and apologized. The Army had been keeping our losses secret.
Those are days I will never forget. We slept with loaded weapons. Artillery and flares were going off all the time. The one thing that haunts me to this day is the youth that were lying there dead. I was 25 and an old man to them. They were mostly 18 to 20.
