[rotorwash]

Your thesis here seems to be that combat effectiveness is measured in aircraft and crew losses and that "low and slow" is not the way to conduct war.

If that is the case, this is exactly what I would expect from the Air Force - my father-in-law was an AF MG, so this discussion is not new to me.

You can say anything you want about the Air Force and the way they did things, but your thesis doesn't work when talking about Army helicopters in Viet Nam.

I was a crewchief in an assault helicopter company and spent 19 months in Vietnam. The mission of Army aviation in Vietnam was to support ground troops, not to worry about the cost of helicopters getting shot down. Grunts were dying every day, it was our job to be where they needed us when they needed us to minimize losses to the infantry. If we lost one helicopter a day, so what, as long as the infantry thought we were doing the job.

The 1/9th Cav of the 1st Cav Division killed more enemy then any other battalion sized unit in Vietnam and they had more aircraft losses then any other battalion sized unit. They also lost more aircraft crewmen then any other battalion sized unit, but they did the job, and they did it with small recon helicopters backed up by gunships and infantry delivered quickly to exploit a situation. Rarely more then 500 feet AGL. And they never lacked for volunteers.

The Marines were tied to some strict aviation doctrine that the Army felt was ludicrous, like restrictions against flying when the weather was below VFR minimums. This was an embarrassment when the first Marine wounded at Hue were brought out by Army Medevacs. When the Cav first went north prior to the excursion down Hgihway 9, they were astounded by the way the Marines operated. A Marine patrol was pinned down south of Phu Bai and needed extraction, the Marines got together 2 CH-46's, 2 gunships and fast movers, this took almost an hour. When they got on station, the gunships at 1500 feet, the patrol had already been picked up by a 1/9th slick escorted by 2 gunships. In another situation, a Marine general's aircraft went missing. It took the Marines over an hour to determine it was missing and then another hour to organize a search. A Cav officer at the briefing said, "If I get shot down and it takes an hour for you guys to come find me, don't bother, because if I'm still alive, I'm shooting you."

The Marines were stunned by the effectiveness of the Cav. In the first place, they had never seen so many helicopters. The Cav didn't need tarmac, any old field would do. On more then one occasion Cav Pink teams came upon large groups of NVA who simply stared in amazement at the low flying scout ships and literally stood and allowed themselves to be shot up by gunships.

The Marines realized they had no scout capabilities and coordinated an exchange with our battalion to evaluate the situation (read about it in the 16th CAG entry in this forum) but quickly concluded that not only did they not have an aircraft capable of scout duties, but that the Navy was not going to buy them one. The upshot ended when they criticized the Army for being willing to accept 25% losses on an operation. OK, you tell me, how many grunts die before you justify a helicopter loss?

Not that all Marine aviation was bad, there was the case of the CH-46 pilot who hovered up a completely socked in canyon to rescue some guys in trouble. SOG used the Marine E model Hueys as crossborder escorts because they did not carry the weaponry of an Army gunship, therefore, they could carry more fuel.

During Lam Son 719, probably the operation that was the costliest to Army aviation, 21 aircraft were lost for every 100,000 sorties, a loss rate of 1 quarter of 1 percent, or, to put it another way, 1 aircraft lost for every 963 flying hours. True, the observation helicopters were pulled back, but the 17th Cav commander just added more Cobras and the scouting mission continued. Low and slow works.

Regards,
Rotorwash