WWWD! What would Wollman Do?

You guys remember Craig Wollman and the story I told about him and the Nighthawk mission that lasted all night long? If not, you may want to go back to the stories I wrote about him when I was his copilot with the 199th Light Infantry Brigade. The reason I say that has to do with "Plausible Deniability".

By that I mean, I learned everything I knew about combat tactics from Wollman, Femmer, Young and Kat Ballew but 99% of it came from Craig Wollman. Again, the best lesson I ever learned about combat tactics was to throw away the school book, watch what they were doing and simply adapt to the differences that were applicable to the times we were in.

Having said that, before I get into the meat and potatoes of this mission, let me describe a really screwed up situation that existed in December of 1970, roughly 90 days after I came to the 11th Cav from the somewhat famous Fireball Aviation Section of the 199th.

Times were really tough then as we'd suffered 2 KIA's in the Scout Platoon as well as a Scout Pilot and a couple of enlisted gunners who were wounded in action. Nothing like seeing dried blood stains all over the cockpit to start your morning mission with.

In any event, I was more or less "sent to my room", so to speak, on the day that Dan and Blick were killed.  The way I see it, our C O knew how to handle 19 to 21 year old pilots during times like those and, having read my entire combat history from the 199th, he sent me to the ready room with orders not to fly until he said so.

I certainly don't mean to insinuate that I was anything special but I feel it is important to note that he already knew I had taken part in blowing up a log truck that was clearly NOT owned by the NVA and that I led a mission where we dropped CS gas canisters over a "No Fly Leper Colony" that was really a VC resupply center but not classified as such.

Looking back on all of it now, I'm sure Major Wulff's decision to ground me was the right thing to do. I recently wrote an Editorial describing that day and I entitled it something like: "Shock, Rage, Adrenaline, Vengeance and Killing".

I remember running into Major Wulff only moments after I'd heard that Dan had been killed. I'm certain now that he saw the eyes of a crazy man who was experiencing the 5 emotions listed above. and, at the same time, had the keys to his minigun equipped helicopter in one hand and a flight helmet in the other.

Despite being grounded during a time like that and knowing that my best friend in the Scout Platoon, Mike Olinger, was already scheduled to fly and running toward HIS minigun equipped helicopter, I got over it.

Since there is a chance that Major Wulff may read this through the link from the 11th Air Cav Site, let me say "Thanks" for the insight and you were totally right as I planned on putting a bullet hole in every square inch of ground between Phu Loi and Phuc Vinh.

I don't know if Major Wulff had a crystal ball but he certainly knew what he was doing and he did it very, very well. He should have been a General.

I say that because shortly after that day, he made sure that I took my first R&R thereby removing me from the unit for a full week until calmer minds prevailed. It was a great break for me as I flew to Shreveport for a couple of days during Christmas of 1970. It was incredible.

As I was returning to the unit from my Christmas R&R, I remember the Budweiser Beer drinking binge I'd been on but the closer I got to Vietnam, I remember thinking about Dan and the scenes of the Troop area when I left for R&R.

I knew I wasn't finished with it but I wasn't experiencing any of the madness that comes immediately after those things happened. That would change the second I flew into Dian and reported for duty.

To my complete shock and horror, I discovered that my best friend in the Scout Platoon had been shot down, crashed and burned. I was told that the shoot down and resulting wounds were so bad that Mike and his gunner had to be medically evacuated from Vietnam and that I might never see them again.

To say that my return to the unit was a shock, is an  understatement. Even though I wasn't crazy that day, crazy like I was on the day that Dan and Blick were killed, I knew I was going to do something to take my vengeance.

I began to make plans to inflict as much pain as possible on the VC and NVA that were roaming the areas where they'd been shot down. The problems with doing that and not getting caught were astronomical.

I was a Scout Pilot and only had unencumbered access to the Hughes OH 6. Even though it was equipped with a 4,000 round per minute mini gun and came with a gunner who held a 650 round per minute M 60 machine gun, something just didn't seem right and I couldn't come up with a plan to sneak away from the unit and do my dirty deeds.

As good fortune would have it, I already had lots of time flying Hueys and my friend and future room mate, CW2 Joe Hight, was our unit 's AMOC officer. That's Aircraft Maintenance Officer in Charge and he had an open door policy on every aircraft in the unit. Basically, he could go to any of the 36 helicopters in our unit and fly off in it without permission. He was the source of "permission" and had the power to ground any helicopter he wanted whenever he wanted to.

This is important to know because it will explain to you how I was able to steal a Huey and not get caught. There's some of that "Plausible Deniability" I mentioned early on. I could deny anything and justify it by claiming that I was serving as a test pilot on a maintenance flight and helping the poor, overworked AMOC officer.

My plan seemed to unfold as soon as I connected the dots between me and Joe Hight. I knew I could get my hands on a Huey anytime I wanted it and if I wasn't on flight duty and scheduled to fly Scouts that day, everybody would have viewed me as simply helping out.

I don't know how in the hell the intelligence report I needed came from an enlisted man, but in reality, the enlisted guys knew everything and the old saying that Sergeants ran the Army, was true.

As things started off, it appeared that the flight surgeon needed a pilot to fly him to Vung Tau to inspect the prostitutes for sexually transmitted diseases. The reason that's important has to do with the fact that the enlisted man in charge of the armory, wanted to be a nurse and the Flight Surgeon wanted to be a helicopter pilot.

That's when it all came together for me. I only took a minute to visualize the flight to Vung Tau with Doc Pramus sitting in the co pilot's seat of the Huey, the armory guy sitting in the back, anxiously awaiting to see so many naked girls, and my people stealing everything they could get their hands on out of the armory. It was a dream come true for me and it solved a whole lot of problems.

Since there was a ban on using Agent Orange in this area, a decision that only provided more growth of the jungle and better places to hide for the NVA and VC, it seemed perfectly logical for me to burn the whole damn place to the ground. I really thought it out.

The area I was concerned about was only 8 miles wide. Even though a Huey isn't a rocket ship, I could cover that distance in less than 4 minutes. With a group of enlisted men in the back, tossing out as many thermite grenades as they could possibly throw, I figured that they could sew a couple of hundred thermite fire starters out the side of the Huey before I had to turn around and head back.

Since the distance between Phu Loi and Phuc Vinh was about 20 miles, there were 160 square miles of area that I wanted to destroy. As I saw it, as long as the wind stayed at about 10 knots and remained out of the south, I could put about 400 thermite grenades on the ground and subject the jungle to one hell of a forest fire that could cover the 20 mile distance to Phuc Vinh in a couple of hours. Man, did I ever think I had that one figured out!

In any event, before I knew it, we'd returned and my bandits had the Huey loaded with a zillion thermite grenades and, with Joe Hight's Huey, off we went.

I didn't have the wind velocity I'd hoped for but it was out of the south and that was good enough for me. Hell, I didn't care if it took two hours or all day long. As long as I could burn the place down, I figured we would be able to see the bunkers and L shaped trenches that were common in that part of Vietnam and Cambodia.

With all that exposed, I could visualize our Cobra pilots shooting 2.75" diameter high explosive rockets into the bunkers or the Air Force pilots dropping napalm on the red smoke canisters we would drop on the targets to be eliminated.

The enlisted men, not to be robbed of their revenge for Dan, Blick, Mike and his gunner, would fantasize the NVA running out of the bunkers with their uniforms on fire only to be shot by the gunners. We were a group of mighty pissed off 20 to 21 year olds with a huge grudge.

Having successfully started what I hoped to be the largest forest fire in the history of South Vietnam, I was quite pleased to make it back to base in plenty of time not to be missed. Since it's true that pride comes before a fall, let me say that everything was perfect and I was quite proud of myself until the wind changed and blew the wall of smoke toward Long Binh Air Force Base, shutting it down as a result of "zero visibility". That, as they say, is when the shit hit the fan for me.

Having said all these things and since it's 1:30 in the morning, I'll have to close now and make my next post the one that covers getting caught. There's a bit more of What Would Wollman Do in that one, too.

I hope you guys enjoyed this and those of you who remembered it, I hope you get a laugh out of it.

G'nite
Tim