Combat Lessons, Wollman Style.

For those of you computer gurus out there, go to google earth and plug in Phan Thiet. If you fly a short distance away from the coast and head back toward Xuan Loc, you will see that things become a bit mountainous.

The NVA and VC loved to hide there and we didn't have any fire support bases on the top of the mountains in that area. In June of 1970, less than one month of my tour in Vietnam, lesson number 1 in the "Oh Shit" department was given to me by Craig Wollman and one of the gunners who I think was Little O.

The bad boys had decided to attack one of our field units and they called in for air support. The Colonel apparently had Wollman on call because we were scrambled to get the Command and Control Helicopter ready, the one with the huge radio package in the back, and Craig led the charge of crew to the Huey that was parked just outside the burm at Mace.

Everybody was running to the ship including the Colonel. In less time than it takes to write about it, the crew had the rotor blade tie downs off the rotor blade, the turbine inlet guide vane filters off and the engine was spooling up with that familiar whine the everyone is familiar with when a jet starts up.

I wasn't hooked up to the Colonel's scrambler radio set in the back but I was hooked into the intercom and Wollman and I both heard everything the Colonel wanted us to do through the intercom. I didn't know exactly what was going on but I knew there was one hell of a firefight going on somewhere and continued to flip my map as Craig continued to head to the area where all hell was breaking loose.

As we approached the site of the battle, I saw a pair of Huey gunships making gun runs toward the mountain as well as the impact of artillery rounds landing on the side of the mountain.

This was my first daylight experience of a huge ground attack and my mind was running a million miles an hour. I was trying my best to pay attention to the details coming from the instrument panel, listening to the ground commander who was now coming across our headsets as he transmitted the situation reports from his PRC 10, hand held, field radio set.

I didn't know which artillery battery was being used to suppress the enemy but I know that the Colonel told us to hold west of the battle field and make north south runs. Craig banked the Huey and began making back and forth passes so the Colonel could watch the firefight below and just east of where we were orbiting. I wasn't scared shitless but I was speeding a million miles an hour trying to do the best a newbie copilot could do in the middle of a really bad situation.

As if there wasn't enough going on at the time, the Colonel contacted another artillery battery and added them to which ever battery was already being used by the ground commander. With all the shells landing, and Wollman and I being in a position to see every one as they impacted,
the Colonel began ordering a complete reconfiguration in the responses we were making in the battle field.

He ordered the gunships that were on station to get out of the area and to hold east and north of the battle field. Worse than that, he then told Craig to change his holding pattern so we wouldn't be shot out of the air by our own artillery.

I had a momentary flashback of the difficulties I had during the artillery adjustment phase of tactics and hoped like hell that Craig wouldn't ask me anything. About that time, Craig scared the BeJesus out of me and I have never forgotten the maneuver he made to meet the demands of the Colonel and to avoid so much artillery fire flying through the air. What did he do? He stopped!

I mean he literally brought the Huey to a very serious slow flight condition that I considered to be as close to hovering as possible. In effect, he put the nose in the wind which at that altitude may have been 15 knots or so. That was enough to give him enough lift to keep the helicopter from falling out of the sky but it was not enough to eliminate my pucker factor which was attempting to suck the entire co pilots seat up my ying yang. I will admit now that I was scared shitless. Not only had I never heard of anything like this being done, I'd been taught not to do it.

All I could think of was the biggest rule of all that dictated that we never give the enemy a stationary target unless we were forced to like times when we had to land and off load or extract troops from the ground.

Here I am, fresh out of flight school and more current with Ft. Rucker's tactics course than anyone else in the unit. I didn't know what to think and actually looked over at Craig to see if he'd caught a round and was just frozen in his seat. When I looked at his face, I even became more concerned than I was previously.

He looked like he was as comfortable as a guy on a coffee break. I don't mean to imply that he was enjoying any of this but reflections of the past and many more combat missions with him bring me to the conclusion that he was just real happy with the performance of the ship and wasn't at all worried about falling out of the sky.

Nothing seemed to phase him including the fact that there were 51 caliber anti aircraft positions on the mountain that could have shot our asses down at a much higher altitude than we were flying. Despite that, I remember being embarrassed when I asked him such a stupid question as to explain why we were hovering. He just smiled and said something to the effect that he was avoiding artillery lines. He added that he would explain it later which was a really considerate answer and far better than "You know nothing idiot, sit back, shut up and learn".

After the Colonel had directed all the artillery in the world on that little space in Vietnam, the battle was over. He promised something like an extraction of the men or an immediate resupply, congratulated Captain Dave, who I would meet later and then told us to head for the barn.

I learned alot of things on that day and Wollman's aerial tactical skills were only one. I saw how a fighting Colonel could arrive at the battle field, take control and literally make one hell of a difference. I knew that I was in real good shape with guys like Wollman serving as Aircraft Commanders and Colonel Collins actually getting into the battle and making things happen.

I have a lot of stuff to tell about Wollman but for now Imma hang this up and call it a night. I hope you guys appreciate the details of this as it was guys like Wollman that wrote the book on rotary wing combat tactics and co pilots like me that he mentored on every mission. I eventually replaced Aircraft commanders as they went home, mentored the new guys and created some of my own tactics. Thanks to Craig Wollman, Dudley Young, Terry Femmer (rip), J. C. Moore and Kat Ballew for helping me become the combat pilot that I became.