True story. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAJDnhpvtJY&feature=player_embedded The above is NOT the experience related. I post it so you will get the picture of what a Huey Gunship in combat is like.Spring 1967 12:15 to 12:20 A.m. (I looked at the car clock!):I'm riding shotgun with my pal in his 1958 metallic blue Mercedes (in excellent condition with leather seats!). We are listening to the radio and smoking menthol tiparillos. It's a warm and pleasant night. We are at a stop light. The light turns green. He pulls out and crosses the intersection into our neighborhood. I was NOT thinking about my brother, Viet Nam or the war. I blurted out, "My brother just got shot. What time is it?". My friend asked me, "Is he dead?". I said, "no", as I looked at the car clock. There wasn't much else to say. I did realize it must have been day time in Viet Nam (it was an 11 hour time difference from where I was).
So, I wrote it down and waited. I didn't say anything to my parents or anybody else in my family. I figured that tiparillo had some weird
**** in or I was unconsciously just concerned for my brother and my brain "made something up". I certainly did believe that telepathy was possible but that was only the second time I had one of those flashes (the other one was from my old man several years prior and I did not link the two). Note: I was an atheist at the time.
Same moment in Viet Nam (I checked and confirmed this with my brother personally BEFORE telling him my experience!) It's mid day there (11:15 A.M.): A Huey helicopter gun ship with my brother as crew chief riding on the left side machine gun mount area was flying low while another one was flying high above. The tactic was for the low flying chopper (it was their turn in the barrel that day
) to sucker snipers into shooting at them so the high chopper can waste the sniper at the location of the weapon flash. It was a bright and hot day.
They were close to Bien Hoa Air Base where they were based. So far it had been a calm day...
My brother said he heard somebody say "move over" (when you are manning the machine gun on the left side, half your ass is in the breeze
). He shifted his ass to the right and felt something hit him like a baseball bat on the left side of his ass (had he not shifted right, the round would have missed the pelvis and gone straight up into his abdominal cavity to his heart, probably killing him on the spot). The round lodged in his pelvis and
**** it. He was thrown to the right yelling "TAKING FIRE!". They flew out of it and the high chopper "took care of business".
Flying back to base, STILL with only a mildly sore ass, he asked who had radioed to "move over"? The other three crew members said the first they knew something was going on was when my brother yelled. "TAKING FIRE!". I learned all this many months later after my brother returned from Viet Nam.
For crew chiefs only! Crew chiefs were top rated mechanics so they had "access" to some "expensive" replaced parts. My brother had one of these Huey helicopter rotor chain bracelets.