Tag Archives: Vietnam War

Military Operations, History & Cyber Warfare, National Security, Weapon Systems

RNSK Vol 2, Edition 7

What Was it Like as an Army Helicopter Door Gunner in Vietnam?

Published July 20, 2022

In terms of all forms of air combat across all services in the Vietnam War, the most dangerous job was Army air crewman on a Bell UH-1 “Huey” helicopter flying the new, highly successful air assault missions.
The Korean War (1950-53) revealed some important facts about helicopters: 1.) They were essential to ground combat and needed some serious RDT&E money to take advantage of the potential, and; 2.) Airborne assaults using paratroopers were an essential asset, but limited in terms of putting a platoon or company-sized element on-target without scattering soldiers over a wide area. The right kind of helicopter could revolutionize airborne combat assaults. The Huey helicopter was the game-changing assault platform the Army needed. Now a target could be Air Assaulted with precision, and limited only by the number of Hueys available.
The UH-1 was the first Army helicopter to use a jet engine connected to a transmission that powered the main and tail rotors. It was faster, had more range and climbed faster, too. With hydraulic-assisted controls, pilots said it was like flying a luxury car! They carried a 4-man crew and were designed to carry a 9-man infantry squad. In Vietnam, however, the oppressive heat and humidity robbed all helicopters of a lot of lifting capacity, and limited them to 6 soldiers instead of 9.
The Huey was flown primarily in the basic transport (“slick”) configuration and some as modified gunships. Being a door gunner on a slick and a gunship were very different jobs. Each aircraft had a crew chief with a maintenance mechanic MOS. The crew chief was quasi-owner of the bird, and was charged with keeping it flying, as well as flying on her. Door gunners were not from an aviation MOS; just someone willing to fly, live dangerously, and learned to be a good shot firing from a moving platform. They helped the crew chief work on the chopper, too.
A Huey gunship was adapted to carry (most of the time) forward firing 7.62mm miniguns and 7-tube, 2.75″ folding-fin aerial rockets. Crew chiefs and gunners on Huey gunships were primarily aboard as weapons mechanics and spotters. The Huey gunships were already weight-limited and unable to carry anything other than the four crewmen, the weapons and extra ammo. If the bird ever touched down during combat, it was because it was forced to.
The “slick” version was the most plentiful variant where the flying crew chief and door gunner had M60, 7.62mm machine guns for use as directed by the aircraft commander. A good door gunner realized very early on, the best way to stay alive was to not only shoot well, but to meld as quickly as possible with the crew chief on a day-to-day basis. Since pilots were assigned to fly different aircraft all of the time, crew chiefs and door gunners had to learn to mold themselves into a 4-man team every time they flew with different pilots. This meant acting and doing things to keep everyone safe, the chopper flying and the guns shooting without having to be told. If you did these things on a regular basis as a crew chief & door gunner, the word got around, and pilots felt good to have you “watching their six.”

Ciao,

Steve Miller, IAPWE – Certified & Member
Managing Editor
The Report on National Security Kinetics™
Seattle, WA. USA
vietvetsteve@millermgmtsys.com

Steve Miller © 2022 – All Rights Reserved
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Military Operations, History & Cyber Warfare

Understanding why U.S. Psychological Warfare Operations do not use drones to infiltrate propaganda into North Korea.

Global Hawk flying environmental mapping missions in Latin America, Caribbean An RQ-4 Global Hawk UAV, high altitude reconnaissance aircraft.   (U.S. Air Force photo/Bobbi Zapka)

     My USAF unit was the sole American military outfit that flew drone reconnaissance missions for 11 years during the Vietnam War in Southeast Asia .  Occasionally our unit, the 100th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing (SRW), was asked by the secretive Studies and Observations Group (SOG) to launch and fly “Psy Ops” drone missions over North Vietnam.  SOG was the unit reporting to the commander of the U.S. Military Assistance Command-Vietnam (MACV), that directed all of the covert military operations during the War.  MACV-SOG’s Psy Ops department cooked-up quite a few propaganda leaflet campaigns for dissemination over North Vietnam and the Ho Chi Minh Trail supply route in eastern Laos.  What follows here is drawn from our squadron’s experience and the operational challenges faced in flying leaflet dispensing sorties over territory that is denied airspace.

     Keep in mind that any sort of written propaganda operation has to be well thought-out to realize even the slightest amount of perceived value.  In any sort of Psy Ops program the greatest obstacle to success is the intended audience has been receiving a steady diet of propaganda manufactured by their own government.  This was the case with Germany in WW II, North Vietnam, and definitely with current-day North Korea.  In North Korea’s situation, their citizens have been subjected to a state-sponsored Psy Ops program for more than 60 years.  A good Pys Ops program contains a high percentage of factual information that will carefully lead someone to believe the whole thing.

     Airborne leaflet dispensing missions in denied airspace were/are extremely dangerous.  To have any effect at all, the leaflets have to be distributed by the millions over a wide area.  This means the air delivery vehicle has to be large enough to carry a heavy payload.  None of the quad-copters or other commercially available drones would be suitable…their payloads would be a mere drop-in-the-bucket.  Even the more common military drones, like the MQ-1 Predator, or the larger MQ-9 Reaper, would not have the sufficient payload, or ability to evade North Korean air defenses.

     In Vietnam, leaflet dispensing missions conducted in the less dense air defense areas were undertaken with MC-130E Combat Talon aircraft from the 15th Special Operations Squadron.  The MC-130s were specially equipped for flights through denied airspace.  But, no one was foolhardy enough to tempt fate by trying to fly an MC-130 on a Pys Ops mission over the heavily defended capital of Hanoi, or the deep-water port of Haiphong.  If a Psy Ops mission had to be conducted in those areas, our unit was asked to do it with a Ryan Aeronautical Model 147N jet-powered drone.

     Our Model 147 drones (later given the DOD designator AN/AQM-34) were all purpose-built for a certain type of reconnaissance mission – photo imagery, signals intelligence, etc.  Our unit became quite successful in flying high-speed reconnaissance drones over North Vietnam.  Eventually, the military spooks from MACV-SOG and other MACV departments began asking our operating location (OL-20) at Bien Hoa Air Base, near Saigon, to fly other types of drone missions besides reconnaissance.  One of the alternatives was for ECM (electronic counter-measures) missions to dump radar-defeating chaff.  Chaff dispensers (ALE-2,4 or 5) had been carried on fighter jets, but, the missions were getting too dangerous for the aircrews.  When OL-20 was asked to use Model 147 drones to fly chaff missions, they were not going to use the expensive versions crammed with intelligence collection gear; they had Ryan send over stripped-down versions with wing hard-points to upload the dispensers.  After flying a few successful ECM chaff missions, MACV-SOG inquired whether the same drones & chaff dispensers could deliver propaganda leaflets over Hanoi.  This was doable, and the slang term assigned to these birds/missions was “Bull_ _ _ _ Bomber.”

     The photograph shown below is a Ryan Aeronautical RPV (remotely piloted vehicle). OL-20’s drone crew chiefs are uploading ALE-4 leaflet dispensers to a Model 147N prior to a Psy Ops leaflet mission.  As you can see, the leaflet dispensers were large and very heavy.  It was SOP in the drone maintenance manuals to upload the birds first to the launch aircraft – then the leaflet dispensers were attached last.  Not wanting to take any chances, the technicians have temporarily installed a cargo strap under the drone as a safety measure.

     These no-frills drones were flown on dispenser missions, expecting them to not make it back home.  Ironically, however, quite a few managed to make it back to the recovery area in South Vietnam without being shot down!

     Several people have asked me about drone operations in denied airspace.  I hope that providing this information about American military exigencies in dealing with actual leaflet dispensing drone missions over North Vietnam will demonstrate what would have to occur to attempt something just as complex over North Korea.

                                                     Steve Miller, Copyright (c) 2016

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Military Operations, History & Cyber Warfare, Miscellaneous Topics

My Thoughts as a Vietnam Veteran About the War Memorial on Veteran’s Day 2015

vietnam war memorial     Recently, someone asked me what I think about when the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. comes to mind.  Over the years my thoughts have coalesced into one recurring image and my feelings that go with it.  I am sharing this with you on Veteran’s Day, as a Vietnam 4th Generation Veteran.  I hope my thoughts will strike a cord with you.  God Bless All of Us, and God Bless America.

     I was an aircrew member of an Air Force reconnaissance aircraft that was the last U.S. military aircraft to leave the territorial airspace of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975, the day Saigon fell.  Our bed-down base in Thailand was besieged with all sorts of South Vietnamese Air Force planes when they fled the country.  The planes often landed without any radio contact with our airfield control tower.  After seeing this spectacle, we went to our hootches for the night, but were back on the flightline at 0700 hrs the next morning.  My pal, Jerry, and I just stood there in profound silence, looking at all of those SVAF planes that did not belong there, but, were scattered haphazardly everywhere.  Both of us felt this overwhelming sadness because we had witnessed the death throes of a country until the last twitch from the lifeless body.

     That same profound silence and overwhelming sadness comes back to me whenever I visit the Vietnam Memorial.  It’s a humbling experience, and I’ve never seen anyone who does not have a sense of reverence during their visit to the wall.  It’s only my feeling that the souls listed on the wall are watched over by angels, as it should be, for the supreme sacrifice they each made.  Every one of them deserves that respect and reverence…we can never repay the 58,000 dead.  In a way, the men & women listed on that wall have a level of peace & understanding that their comrades who made it home haven’t had.

     To those 58,000 lost souls, I can only render a hand salute and say: “By the grace of God, from the bottom of my heart, thank-you for your service.”

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Intelligence Collection, Analysis & Estimates

Book Review: Vietnam Declassified: The CIA and Counterinsurgency, by Thomas L. Ahern Jr.

Steve Miller, Copyright (c) 2011

vietnam-declassified-book-cover

Note: This article first appeared in the Air Force Research Institute’s “Air and Space Power Journal” in the Summer 2011 Edition.

Vietnam Declassified: The CIA and Counterinsurgency by Thomas L. Ahern Jr. University Press of Kentucky, 2010, 450 pp., $40.00 (hardcover).

Anyone intent upon a serious study of the Vietnam War or of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) operations in general, must read this book. Of the more than 1,000 hours I’ve spent researching the war and the nearly 300 books and oral interview transcripts I have read, Ahern’s study stands as one of the best accounts of America’s involvement in Indochina. He deserves a standing ovation for giving us the unvarnished truth.

Anytime an author attempts to write a book about a controversial subject, he or she knows that not everyone will agree with the results. The real challenge involves getting the story right without creating more negative thinkers. Given the amount of mud tossed around about Vietnam, an author must have iron-willed courage to buck the trend—exactly the case with Ahern. He properly acknowledges situations in which judgment should have been better or which produced mediocre results. But Ahern does three things that reflect his integrity:

1. He stays clear of making editorial comments or offering personal opinions.

2. Even though many different types of intelligence operations ran simultaneously, Ahern keeps the reader informed about the chronology and the direct or indirect linkages between them.

3. He avoids using his professional expertise to fill-in gaps in the story or fabricate topic linkages. Ahern wisely keeps his literary license in his pocket, letting the facts tell the story.

I appreciate the author’s effort to prepare a balanced narrative that covers the various intelligence programs. He takes the right course by not dwelling on the well-known Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS) or Phoenix Program. By time a reader finishes the book, it is apparent that very few programs did poorly while the CIA was in-charge. Ahern notes the common project pattern: develop and launch it in one or two provinces, prove that it works, and then decide to roll it out nationally. Generally speaking, project incubation went well under CIA guidance.  It was not uncommon, however, for a Program to fall on hard times when it transitioned to a larger effort and the CIA relinquished control.

In the best part of Vietnam Declassified, the author shows how he and his colleagues tirelessly pressed forward, trying to salvage something of enduring value. Ahern notes that most CIA officers serving in Vietnam realized the near impossibility of having an operation develop the “legs” to do well all over the country or make any long-term gains. He cites an exasperating meeting about a problem with a certain pacification program, during which someone tossed out a new idea. William Colby (the CIA station chief in Saigon, and a future CIA director) replied that he was willing to try anything—if it would work (pp. 69, 86).

Ahern purposely—and correctly, I might add—calls the reader’s attention to repeating themes throughout the text. Vietnam Declassified shows the many recurring actions/inactions outside CIA control for which the agency nevertheless received blame and/or an assignment to tidy up a mess not of its making.

The book clearly points out that for any given intelligence operation, the Saigon government and armed forces, provincial as well as local leaders, and the US military or State Department might have held differing goals for the desired outcome; however, Ahern demonstrates the CIA’s consistency in resisting involvement in actions having dubious intelligence value. He demonstrates the fine line present in operations, whether overt or covert, that successfully hid a clandestine intelligence-collection effort. Early in the book, he explains one of the more common accusations made about the CIA in Vietnam—that it participated in operations perceived to have no intelligence value. Ahern reveals that, on the one hand, outsiders who concluded that the CIA’s participation in an operation produced nothing beneficial, actually validated the agency’s concealment of an intelligence operation inside a pacification program. On the other hand, the CIA had to “take it on the chin” for purportedly spending taxpayer dollars on something without intelligence value.

Coming out of Vietnam, the CIA carried the undeserved image of a power-hungry loose cannon, but the author debunks this paradigm. Ahern explains that, aside from avoiding power grabs on ethical grounds, the CIA actually had the least amount of manpower and one of the smallest budgets in-country. Although he does not say so explicitly, I have the impression that the CIA saw its role as a “counterinsurgency project manager,” not as a full-scale “production (i.e., combatant) manager.”

One of the thorniest issues Ahern mentions had to do with convincing South Vietnamese leaders that the war was in the countryside, not in the cities. The CIA routinely coached Saigon leaders on the “battle” not being against Hanoi or merely about stopping the Vietcong from bothering rural peasants. The author reminds us that the Americans constantly repeated and demonstrated this particular message, starting in 1954 when they arrived and the French left. According to the CIA, the real task lay in convincing the peasants to side with Saigon before the Vietcong talked them into going the other way.

Vietnam Declassified left a lasting impression. Specifically, Ahern writes in several places about the CIA as a trailblazer in Vietnam, as was the author himself. In fact, he observes that “most [CIA] officers who served there had no previous experience of third world insurgency, and many of us . . . found ourselves facing challenges and exercising authority at a level well above the norm for our rank and experience” (p. 4). It seems that in situations in which young officers lack the extrinsic benefits of manpower, money, equipment, precedence, and experience yet still need to get the job done, they do so, according to the author, by using intrinsic skills they could not buy or receive from someone else—tenacity, creativity, and courage.

When I closed Thomas Ahern’s book, a time-honored passage kept ringing in my ears: “We who have done so much, for so long, with so little, are now qualified to do everything with nothing.” Excellent work, Mr. Ahern.

Steve Miller, Copyright (c) 2011

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