US Army Aviation Flight Wings- Class wings 60s-70s

[Cobrahistorian]

Dooooooooh! Butter-bar! :salute:

 

LOL... sounds familiar.

[hawk3370]

Been there done that, I had that transition too. If you can call it a transition, two week course.

 

In 27 years I qualified in UH1s, CH47B, C, and D, OH58A/C and AH64As. Missed out on the CH54's by a few months.

 

You guys haven't lived until you've flown an OH-13 with a M-60 mounted on the skid at 60 knots doing perimeter patrol, looking for VC rocket launchers around the base camp at night. Now that was a kick in the butt!

[hawkdriver]

Would an OH-13 with a spray boom count while the pilot clips a fence post doing return to targets?

[hawk3370]

Would an OH-13 with a spray boom count while the pilot clips a fence post doing return to targets?

 

Close, but did the fence post shoot back? I've watched a crop duster doing his thing in a OH-13 a couple years ago. Huge gonads I must say. I must admit my hats off to all the gallant men and now women that pilot helicopters, especially those flying in the middle east these days. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. I managed to acquire a little over 1500 combat hours in UH-1C"s and AH-1G"s and only got shot down 7 times. It wasn't much of a war but it was the only one we had at the time.

[hawkdriver]

From the looks of the bottom of the 13, it did look like the post shot back.

I ammassed 500 hours on my last run in Iraq, didn't take a single bullet, they are some of the worst shots I have ever seen. Our last Vietnam era pilot just retired, I can tell you that I would rather fly Iraq than what he and you went through in Vietnam. My hat is off to anyone shot down seven times and is still talking about it. :thumbsup:

[hawk3370]

From the looks of the bottom of the 13, it did look like the post shot back.

I ammassed 500 hours on my last run in Iraq, didn't take a single bullet, they are some of the worst shots I have ever seen. Our last Vietnam era pilot just retired, I can tell you that I would rather fly Iraq than what he and you went through in Vietnam. My hat is off to anyone shot down seven times and is still talking about it. :thumbsup:

 

I was somewhat lucky, most of the shoot downs were due to bullet damage to the aircraft and not the crew. Only got personally hit four different times, the last was almost a killer when I took a round through the chin and arm and broke my back in the crash, an RPG took out one of my pitch change links and brought us down like a rock, that one got my attention. But we wern't facing surface to air missles like you guys, the biggest thing we encountered were 57mm and 37mm during Lam Son 719 and lucky for us our 20mm had better range than their 37mm so we could stand off and lay waste to them when they would fire at us.

[pfrost]

I was somewhat lucky, most of the shoot downs were due to bullet damage to the aircraft and not the crew. Only got personally hit four different times, the last was almost a killer when I took a round through the chin and arm and broke my back in the crash, an RPG took out one of my pitch change links and brought us down like a rock, that one got my attention. But we wern't facing surface to air missles like you guys, the biggest thing we encountered were 57mm and 37mm during Lam Son 719 and lucky for us our 20mm had better range than their 37mm so we could stand off and lay waste to them when they would fire at us.

 

Amazing stories!

[hawkdriver]

We didn't have much of a missile threat, the SA-7s they had were so detriorated that the seeker heads wouldn't cool properly and most of the time would malfunction, good news for us. The worst threat was the RPGs, every once in awhile, they would get a lucky shot. We had an aircraft take a RPG in the transition section in our sister Bn from about 30 yards, lucky shot, but everyone died. Made the news and our tactics changed from that. Had one aircraft take a single .30 cal in the transmission, just a lucky shot and it caused the aircraft to go down, another took 12.5 in the tail and took half of one tail rotor paddle off, that was lucky that it didn't do worse. The rest were all holes through the rotor blades or tail boom.

Always wondered what I would do if I ever got shot at, fear, anxious, what. The first time I ever saw tracers coming at me, it was anger, "who the hell are you to be shooting at me!" Was shot at a total of five times, not a single bullet hole. Because of no holes, no CAB, but I guess that is luck.