Only Temporarily and Slightly Disoriented
submitted by: Alva Leon Matheson
I was sitting at the desk in my room and had finished writing one letter and was starting on another. The field phone rang and I answered it. It was our TACP radio operator saying that an Army helicopter pilot had reported seeing a column of troops in khaki uniforms crossing a clearing. I copied down the coordinates and glanced out of the window. The sun was shining brightly now and steam was rising off of the roof of the next building. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll go take a look.” I took my map out of my map case and checked the coordinates the radio operator had given me. It was a long way away, in the far southeastern corner of our Province, but I picked up my map case, bug-out-bag, and rifle and went off to find a mechanic.
While we were pre-flighting my airplane I noticed that the weather wasn’t really very good in any direction, maybe we were just in a big sucker hole in the clouds. I knew that chances were slim that I would find the VC, and even slimmer that I would be able to put an air strike on them given the weather, but I thought something else might develop, and I always felt like I wasn’t doing my job if I didn’t fly at least twice a day.
After takeoff, I headed southeast to the target area, which was about six kilometers into the eastern end of War Zone D, an area that I really didn’t like and seldom went to. I finally found the clearing and thought I could see a faint trail across it, but I couldn’t tell which way the people were headed so I decided to return to Song Be.
When I looked around to get my bearings, I saw the mother of all thunderstorms bearing down on me from just the direction I needed to go to get home. My sucker hole had closed in and I was now under a descending and dark black overcast. I called my radio operator for a weather report. He ran outside of the commo bunker, deep underground, and came back to tell me that the wind and rain were really bad. He estimated the ceiling at 200 feet and the visibility less than a quarter of a mile. Getting back to Song Be wasn’t going to be a very good option. I told him I thought I better stay under the clouds and try to make it to Bien Hoa.
I knew Bien Hoa was to the southwest of my position and I also knew that Xuan Loc was about fifteen miles east of Bien Hoa. If I couldn’t go west far enough to find Bien Hoa, maybe I could find Xuan Loc by trying to go due south. At any rate I turned to a southerly heading and started running in front of the storm. I had to keep descending to stay out of the clouds and pretty soon I was down to about 300 feet above the ground and drifting farther to the east all the time. It was now raining very hard and I was having a hard time seeing the ground, but I didn’t dare go any lower because the terrain was getting quite hilly.
I had flown off all my maps and was only going by memory. It was very dark for mid-afternoon with black clouds above and dark green jungle below. Finally, I came to a fair size river and dropped down a little farther to see if I could determine which way it was flowing. Not so good, I thought, it’s flowing southeast, the direction I want to go, but not in the direction I’m flying. I thought that it must flow to the ocean, so maybe I should turn around and follow it, but that would take me right into the heart of the storm. As I was concentrating on the black river between the dark green banks I almost missed it, but all of a sudden I saw a camp off to my right, along the river. It wasn’t much of a camp, maybe an old French
camp, but I saw a Huey helicopter parked off the end of the runway next to some tin roofed buildings. I circled the camp and pushed and pulled the throttle back and forth a few times to race the engine. I was down to about 150 feet when someone came out and waved. I couldn’t tell how he was dressed, but I decided to land on the short muddy runway. I was afraid I might nose over in the mud, and
if that didn’t happen, there was always the possibility that I might get the airplane stuck in the mud. I landed toward the buildings and about half way down the short strip, turning around near the helicopter. Just as my O-1 came to a stop I noticed that the Huey certainly hadn’t been anywhere recently and wasn’t going anywhere soon. Both rotors and the engine were missing. Now I was really getting scared so I took out my pistol and laid it on my lap. I decided to keep the engine running in case I had to make a quick get-away.
Shortly, a young American dressed in tiger fatigues and carrying an M-16 came running up to the side of my airplane. I was certainly relieved. “Which way is Xuan Loc?” I called out to him.
“Never heard of the place.” He replied.
Now my apprehension returned. “How about Bien Hoa?”
“Just follow the river for about 30 or 40 klicks that way. You can’t miss it.” He said, pointing in the opposite direction that I had been flying. It was the direction I figured I had to go but right into the center of the storm.
I guessed that he was the FNG and that’s why he had to come out into the rain to meet me, and why he didn’t know where Xuan Loc was. I also knew that I could indeed very well miss Bien Hoa in this weather, but on the other hand I was not too anxious to spend the night at this place. I was not only concerned about my own security, but the security of my airplane as well, and I certainly didn’t want to let my airplane settle in the mud or else it might end up here as a permanent fixture, like the Huey. I said, “Okay, I’ll give it a try.”
“Good Luck,” he hollered, as he backed away from the window.
I glanced out of the windows at the lower surface of the wings and the flaps, seeing that the wheels had splattered about two or three inches of mud on to them, so I decided to leave the flaps where they were, set at 30 degrees, and I pushed the throttle forward. As I moved down the runway I pumped the stick a little, trying to get the wheels to start hydroplaning on top of the mud, like trying to get a floatplane up on the step. It must have worked because I got airborne about two-thirds of the way down the runway. It was still raining very hard as I turned out to the left and started flying down the river. After I got everything set, I glanced out the window and saw that the rain had washed most of the mud from the undersides of the wings. A couple of minutes later I retracted the flaps.
The weather got progressively worse with torrential rain and wild and gusty winds. About 20 minutes later things started to improve, and by the time I was north of Bien Hoa I was up to about 500 feet, but still in the rain and just under the dense clouds. I landed without incident and got a phone patch back to my radio operator to let him know I was safely on the ground. I never was able to figure out exactly where I had been, but I believe the camp must have been the Special Forces camp at Tan Rai, in the II Corps area, and the river must have been the Dong Nai. I’ve often wondered what those SFs thought about that crazy, lost, FAC flying around in a thunderstorm.
Editor’s Note: Charlie Pocock is the author of an excellent published memoir entitled simply “Viper 7.” It is very much worth reading. I included this last story because it reminded me of a very similar incident in which I was involved. Here it is.
I was returning to Tan Son Nhut from Qui Nhon one day, and the weather was bad. I decided, for navigation purposes, to fly down the coast. The farther south I got, the worse the weather got, and I found myself getting lower and lower and farther and farther out to sea. The long and the short of it was that I ultimately found myself at about 200 feet, with nothing but gray sky above me, gray water below me, and gray driving rain all around. I had completely lost sight of land.
The O-1 was never an instrument airplane, and it was taking everything I had just to keep the aircraft under control. I was scared to death and hyperventilating. I was running out of adrenalin, and I really thought I was going to die. Just then I glimpsed what looked like the base of a radio tower off to my right in the gloom. I turned toward it and just as I crossed the coast, I found myself at about 100 feet perpendicular to and over the end of a runway. I made a quick 270 degree turn and landed.
Once I touched down, I noticed a company of Vietnamese soldiers formed up on the runway directly in front of me. They undoubtedly assumed no one would ever be landing in that weather. As I rolled by, water spraying from my wheels, they dove left and right. I turned around and taxied right up to the small tower at the north end of the runway. Just like in the movies, I knocked on the door and asked, “Where am I?” The Army NCO in the tower said Phan Thiet. I had completely lost track of time and distance and had actually thought it was Vung Tau, a place I had never been which was much further south.
In a half hour or so, the weather cleared and I flew direct to Tan Son Nhut. That was another of those things I never told Gene McCutchan!