Mike Siegel - Dale Dow - Bill Witt - 14 April 1968 (Easter)
This is Mike's short story of an unusual Centaurs Slick pilot checkride during his tenure as Troop's UH-1D Instructor Pilot. Dale Dow adds his remembrances. If you remember that day (Easter) or any of the missions please give us your input. Maybe someone kept their award writeups which could provide more intormation.
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From Siegel:
I was the D model instructor pilot. Many of you will recall that every pilot had to have a checkride every 90 days. Because we were busy, I would usually just fly with each pilot for a day and call it a check ride.
On Easter Sunday of '68, I gave a check ride to CPT John Whitehead who was my platoon commander. Shit happened and we ended up doing medevac flights for 2 different ground units most of the day and some of the night. It wasn't pretty. John was an excellent pilot (he is the guy that taught me the U-turn take off) and he did much of the flying. I have no idea how many sorties we did, but it was a lot.
The guys on the ground were pretty happy and wrote us up. John got the Silver Star, I got my 2nd and 3rd DFC, and the guys in the back were both decorated as well. Sorry that I don't remember names. My memory of the details is foggy, but I remember being scared most of the day.
If anyone can fill in the blanks I'd sure appreciate it.
Background: I was in D troop from 9/67 to 9/68. I had been in a car accident after flight school (class 67-7, graduated in June of '67) and I came to the unit as a rusty FNG. I flew as as a copilot with Joe Bridges who was more than patient with me. I became an Aircraft commander in either Dec. 67 or Jan 68 and my call sign was Centaur 36. As a slick driver, most of my missions were 'single ship.' I was often flying "Ash and Trash", like driving a cab or bus or truck - taking people and supplies from one place to another. Honorable work, but pretty mundane most of the time.
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From Dale Dow:
The Easter 68 check ride was up in Dau Tieng. The entire squadron had moved up there in early April to do some work in the Michelin and War Zone C. One of the troops, Bravo I think, ran into a large base camp on Saturday. After pulling back and hitting the place with arty and Air Force, the troop went into night laager. Sometime around 3:00 AM, they got hit real hard by the NVA. The fighting went on until just after day break. One of the other troops moved up to help the troop out. The missions that Mike Siegel and John Whitehead flew were the medevacs for the KIAs and WIAs. Since the troop was very low on ammo, I think they flew some ammo in also.
Several years ago, I got a message from one of the ground troopers involved in the Easter action. He was trying to find out who had flown him out of the jungle to Dau Tieng and saved his life. I put him in contact with Mike. I think Mike got him contact with John.
While Mike and John were flying the medevacs and hauling ammo to the troop, the Aerorifles were getting ready to fly out to join one of the ground troops. We met up with A Troop in mid-morning and headed to the large base camp. The rifles were going to lead the tanks and APCs into and through the base camp. As we approached the battle area, one of the scout ships saw some smoke in an area a few clicks from where we were. The missions of the rifles changed and we joined up with C troop and started for the new site. That mission came to an end after my RTO, a couple of riflemen, and I found ourselves in the new base camp and then received word that the tanks and APCs had hit some very thick jungle and couldn’t move any further. Needless to say, we got the hell out of there in a very big hurray. Since the smoke the scouts saw was from the NVA cooking fires and the rice was still boiling on the fires, we decided not to stick around.
Photo from Herman Bill Witt:
