Grenades in the Fuel Tank
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A Troop, 3/17 Air Cav Squadron was moved to Lai Khe to stand down and deploy out of Vietnam. Their area was off the South end of the Runway.
One night, as duty officer, I was in the duty jeep riding down and checking our line of Helicopters. As I approached the A Troop area one of their LOHs exploded in flames. I had the driver take me to the fire station which was on the far side of their helicopter parking area. I alerted the fire department went back through the A Troop area alerting their duty officer.
As I headed back to F Troop a second A Troop LOH exploded in flames. I went direct to the F Troop operations area hit the siren to put the troop into bunkers and called squadron. Squadron sent a 334th light bird and two Cobras to orbit Lai Khe and be available if needed. Two A Troop Cobras also exploded. The first was a single explosion – fuel, rockets, 40mm, etc. The largest pieces left of this Cobras were the tail rotor gear boxes. The second Cobra was a smaller explosion – fuel only but with the fire launching rockets.
The finding was that sappers had dropped hand grenades with the pins pulled and wrapped in tape in the fuel tanks. The JP4 melted the glue on the tape and the hand grenades went off. My understanding is that later this resulted in closed port fuel ports being insulted on all the helicopters.
No F Troop helicopters were damaged in this attack. Note except for one small shrapnel wound – too small for a purple heart - there were no injuries.