183rd Aviation Company : Dedicated to Veterans of the Vietnam Conflict

My Best And Worst War Story
By Captain Donald E Tyler

It was 10:30 Saturday morning January 1970. I was Seahorse 2-1 in the 183rd Reconnaissance Airplane Company. I was flying my Cessna O-1 Birddog. I was taking off on landing zone Betty in Phan Thiet, Vietnam. The runway was 3000 feet long which was short but we only needed 600 feet. The runway was dirt covered with psp, preforatesteel plate. There was a 50 foot cliff at the north end of the runway down to the South China Sea.

I dove down 20 feet above the beach and zigzags north. It was a beautiful beach but no one was on it but an occasional fisherman pulling in a net. About 60 miles later I got to the village of Song Mao. There I headed west into the foothills looking for trouble.

By 12:30 I had not found anything so I started back to l z Betty. It was mostly jungle below me with patches of elephant grass 8 to 12 feet tall. There were no houses and the road was mostly dirt.

I noticed up ahead a Lambretta stopped on the road in the middle of the jungle. I could think of only two reasons why it was stopped. Either someone had to use the bathroom or it was a tax collection point. That is where an enemy soldier stops traffic and charges them a chicken, pig, or ten dollars to pass. We had heard of them but no one had ever found one.

A Lambretta is a 1960s Vietnamese mini bus. It is a three wheeled vehicle with the driver sitting in front with scooter type handlebars. There is a box on the back that holds eight passengers.

I was at 1000 feet which is pattern altitude for small aircraft at the airport. How was I going to tell what they were doing on the ground? I quickly decided to fly over it and if someone ran from the jungle to the Lambretta they were using the bathroom. If they ran from the Lambretta to the jungle, it was a tax collection point.

I flew over and pointed my left wing straight down and did the tightest turn I could make. A man in black pajamas went running into the jungle and over into the elephant grass. He backed into a spider hole and pulled some stuff on top of him.

He did not shoot at me so by our rules I could not shoot at him. We had to let them shoot at us before we could return fire. I called Sector, who was in charge of our area and told them what i had. They asked if I would stay around and I told them I would.

I did not know that they launched a jeep from a Vietnamese army camp at high speed to intercept the vehicle. It was a tax collection point, but they did not tell me that. Sector said they were going to put artillery on it in 2 minutes and asked if I would adjust it. I said I would.

As soon as this was said, people started coming out onto the road. This was months after Lt Kelly had the Me Lai massacre. We were very careful not to get civilians caught up in the fighting. I called for a ceasefire on the artillery. They came back with negative on the ceasefire. I could not believe they were going to shoot anyway. I was there and they were fifty miles away. But they knew something I didn’t. I explained the situation and again called for a ceasefire. Again they said negative.

In my mind there is only one thing to do. That is to go down and take a look. I did a wing over and started down. My Vietnamese interpreter in the back seat Bang went ballistic. I can’t pay any attention to him because I am concentrating on the people on the ground.

I fly past them at 50 feet. They are a bunch of teenagers, a couple of girls. I wave at them and they all wave back at me. One of our pilots, WO Bobby Beall with Lt Bud Damagata called and said they were coming to help. I told them I would show them the little guy in the spider hole.

I turned around and started back down the other side of the road. Those kids reached back into the jungle and got their AK47s and machine guns. It was found out later that it was a company size ambush, nearly one hundred of them. I flew past them at fifty feet and they all started shootings at me.

They were so close that I could hear the guns firing. That only happened twice that year. When a bullet comes close, it is breaking the sound barrier. It makes a pop somewhat like popcorn. I have heard some pilots say they have heard it and some ground troops say they have not. When the bullets hit the metal skin of the Birddog it sounds like a mule kicking a tin barn.

If you fly straight and level it takes seven seconds to fly out of range of an AK47. If you pull back on the stick and climb, you slow down. It takes nearly nine seconds. I knew I only had one second to live and had to get behind something. There were no trees and no rocks. So I dove down into the elephant grass,hoping I would not hit any tree stumps. That stopped most of the shooting.

After seven seconds, I pulled hard back on the stick and climbed up to one thousand feet. I noticed a light spot between my feet on the way up that had not been there before. Looking down to the right side of the stick between my feet was a bullet hole. That’s not good. Looking up at the ceiling for the exit hole,there was none. That’s really not good. There was no hole in the door and there was none in the side of the plane. I was the only thing between that bullet hole and the ceiling.

Turning the stick loose, I felt of my right leg and it felt okay. Feeling of my left leg it felt okay too. There was no blood on the floor. Then I got pissed off. When I got excited, I couldn’t speak the few words of Vietnamese I knew. When Bang got excited,he couldn’t speak any English.

We had a grease pencil. It was used to write call signs and coordinates on the windows. I quickly drew a picture of the road,the judge,and the elephant grass. An x was put where the man in spider hole was. I figured he was the one who put it bullet hole between my feet. Bang gave me a thumbs up. I put a white phosphorus rocket in or very close to the hole. It burned all around the hole.

Bobby and Bud flew down the road at ten feet. They didn’t take a hit. Bobby said “we have two guys getting away to the north “. I replied “Everybody is enemy”. Bobby had no rockets and didn’t want them to get away. He flew straddle them and swung his wheels and knocked them off. A Tigershark helicopter gunship was one hundred yards behind Bobby and hit them with rockets. That was the end of them.

After about thirty minutes I was low on fuel and returned to LZ Betty. When lining up with the runway the rudder was extremely hard to push. After a safe landing, I went into the hangar to talk to the platoon leader. Fifteen minutes later my crew chief,Carl Forgey,came in. He said that one of the bullets came up between the landing gear,tore my rudder pulley all to pieces, then made a hole in the aluminum plate between my feet and ran out of gas. It fell back down in the fuselage. Carl had that bullet and gave it to me. It is in my shadow box now.

This is a good place to end the story but there is a little bit more. Two Saturdays later I had the same mission. Different aircraft because mine still was not fly able. On the way back following the road,QL1, I saw a Lambretta stopped in the same place. I kept going like I had not seen it.

I called Sector and requested American infantry troops. Thirty minutes later I met a helicopter with infantry troops and two Tigershark helicopter gun ships. I then led them to the tax collection point. Instead of a company guarding it there was only a squad. After a four minute battle all Viet Cong were killed.

Two weeks later I had a seizure. If you are a pilot you will never fly again. I was sent to company headquarters at Dong Ba Thin to do odd jobs until my tour was over. Two weeks later I got a call that I was needed back at Phan Thiet. I couldn’t figure out why since not being able to fly anymore.

Captain John Anderson flew up and flew us back to Phan Thiet. The next morning I was standing at attention in front of a Vietnamese army battalion. A Vietnamese general pinned a Vietnamese Cross Of Gallantly With Bronze Star on me. I was not expecting that.

That is my best and worst war story.