I had never flown with Don Rice, but he was one of the older, more
experienced
pilots in the squadron, and I felt he knew his business. Nevertheless,
an airdrop mission takes close coordination under the best of
circumstances, and a combat airdrop, in the mountains, with adverse
weather and heavy anti-aircraft fire, is not the best place in the
world to get acquainted.
We on-loaded four 2000-pound pallets of supplies at Chu Lai, each
rigged with three large cargo parachutes, and then reported to Division
Headquarters to plan the mission. They wanted us to airdrop the
supplies into a little camp near Hiep Duc where about 500 South
Vietnamese and their American advisors had been under siege without
supplies for eight days.
We already knew the friendlies were in trouble, by the type of
cargo we saw on the pallets--food, water, medicine, blood plasma and
small arms ammunition. We also knew the Army had lost several
helicopters in there, and that a crew from our Wing had tried this
mission the day before, collected several holes in a very short period
of time, jettisoned their cargo, and climbed out of the valley.
It was a nasty valley to fly into. Hiep Duc sits in a gash in the
mountains about 2000 feet deep and only a couple of kilometers across
at the bottom. The north-east monsoon keeps the top third of the
mountains covered with clouds, so the obvious approach was to fly up
the valley under the clouds, parachute the supplies into the camp, and
climb out straight ahead.
Too obvious. That's what the crew from our Wing tried to do. The North
Vietnamese knew we had to come in from one of two directions, so they
concentrated their guns in two clusters, one on either side of the
camp. I didn't relish the idea of flying into either of those
flak-traps, and I thought there might be a better way--if we could pull
it off.
I knew our C-123K aircraft could dive steeply under full control, so I
laid out a mission that called for us to dive through the clouds
between the mountains, cross-wise to the long axis of the valley. That
meant I would have to know exactly where we were when we started the
dive, and Don would have to fly the aircraft absolutely as planned,
with little if any margin for error, on instruments alone.
After we took off and climbed through the broken overcast, neither
pilot could see the ground. From where they sat looking out of the
cockpit windows, the top of one cloud obscured the bottom of the next.
But by climbing down in the cargo compartment, sticking my head out the
side window and looking straight down, I could see to navigate.
I took my last position fix directly over a bend in a river and started
my stopwatch. Then I climbed back up in the cockpit, stood between the
pilots, and gave Don the heading, airspeed, and rate of descent for the
dive.
As the computed stopwatch time expired, I called, "Stand by to start descent ... ready ... ready ... now!"
As I said, Don watched me plan the mission. He knew some of those
clouds had rocks in them; he knew the valley was full of guns; he
hadn't seen the ground since we took off, and he had never flown with
me before.
He was not a dare-devil, and he was not crazy. He was a sound, sober,
mature and responsible man. But he also knew the troops in that camp
might not last another 24 hours without supply.
He took a deep breath, chopped both engines to idle, dumped the nose
down, and flew precisely the heading, airspeed, and rate of descent I
had given him.
We dove through the clouds for what seemed like an awful long time, but
when we broke through, we were right where we were supposed to be, in
the edge of the valley. We continued the dive, leveled off with about
ten seconds to go, delivered the four pallets right into that
75-by-150-yard camp, and then had to pull a steep, climbing turn to
keep from running into the other wall of the valley.
Another climbing turn, and we were back into the clouds, on our way
home. As it turned out, we surprised the gunners so thoroughly we
didn't take a hit.
Later, all the members of our aircrew were awarded medals for that
mission, with citations that said we were instrumental in saving the
lives of 500 men. That was nice, but looking back, I think I also got
something else that day.
Don showed me the difference between belief and faith. Belief is of the
mind, an intellectual assent to something or someone. Faith is when you
bet your life on it.