For educational purposes
Meet the commanders of a true military legend and fight alongside the special breed of "madmen" who piloted the versatile olive drab chopper during the crucial battle in Landing Zone X-Ray.
The UH-1 Huey, the most widely used military helicopter in the world, began to arrive in Vietnam in 1963.
Before the conflict ended, more than 5,000 of these versatile machines were employed in Southeast Asia.
The choppers were used for a variety of purposes, including MedEvac, command and control, air assault, transport of personnel and material, and as gun ships.
This is an in-depth look at the role this helicopter played in Vietnam and how it came to symbolize the war itself.
Meet the commanders of this military legend and hear gripping stories of the special breed of men who piloted Huey.
Meet the commanders of a true military legend and fight alongside the special breed of "madmen" who piloted the versatile olive drab chopper during the crucial battle in Landing Zone X-Ray.
The UH-1 Huey, the most widely used military helicopter in the world, began to arrive in Vietnam in 1963.
Before the conflict ended, more than 5,000 of these versatile machines were employed in Southeast Asia.
The choppers were used for a variety of purposes, including MedEvac, command and control, air assault, transport of personnel and material, and as gun ships.
This is an in-depth look at the role this helicopter played in Vietnam and how it came to symbolize the war itself.
Meet the commanders of this military legend and hear gripping stories of the special breed of men who piloted Huey.
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LearningTranscript
00:30The first battalion of the United States 7th Cavalry readies for battle in Vietnam.
00:45The orders are simple, find the enemy and kill him.
00:51History haunts this unit.
00:53Only a century ago, the 7th Cavalry, led by George Armstrong Custer, was massacred by
01:00the Sioux.
01:01No one imagined that on this November day in 1965, these young men, like Custer's 7th,
01:09would be surrounded by an angry foe and chant on their destruction.
01:17These modern day cavalrymen ride into battle not on horseback, rather they fly on steeds
01:24of metal and glass.
01:27For the Americans, everything moves by helicopter, and one ship, more than any other, shoulders
01:36the load, Bell Helicopters Huey.
01:44In the early 1960s, the United States Army set out to test a new kind of warfare based
01:50on the concept of air mobility.
01:53For thousands of years, soldiers have been enslaved by terrain.
01:58With the helicopter, infantry attack moves into the third dimension.
02:04Troops can strike at the heart of the enemy with unimagined speed.
02:09Air mobility will revolutionize the way armies fight and make the helicopter an integral
02:15part of battle.
02:16In the central highlands of Vietnam, in a distant place known as the Ya Drang Valley,
02:31air mobility will endure its first trial by fire.
02:36We're flying the helicopters and the infantry into a landing zone almost 15 miles from the
02:43nearest road, and they're out there to stay.
02:48They're going to fight, they're going to be supplied by the helicopter, they're going
02:53to use artillery support that has been jumped out there by helicopter.
03:00This is the graduation ceremony.
03:02This is, either it's going to work or we're all going to die out there.
03:08This chopper's official name is the UH-1 Iroquois.
03:13Early on, crews take those initials and dub their steed the Huey, the nickname sticks.
03:25This single rotor machine, designed by Bell, is the first helicopter to fly into combat
03:30with a turbine engine.
03:33The aircraft was designed to fit the army's need for a faster, more powerful chopper.
03:40The Huey was relatively untested against small arms fire and automatic weapons, and certainly
03:47against anti-aircraft weapons, and so no one knew how that would come out in a combat situation.
03:55Vietnam is the first helicopter war.
03:58At one point, there are more American helicopters in Vietnam than any other country even owns.
04:06The Huey comes to symbolize the struggle.
04:10The rugged chopper serves as jeep, truck, ambulance.
04:19The UH-1 is also the world's first dedicated attack helicopter.
04:25On countless occasions, the cavalry looked to this aerial gunship for salvation.
04:32With 2.75-inch rocket pods, machine guns mounted on the sides, and a grenade launcher in the
04:38nose, it carries more firepower than the typical World War II fighter.
04:55Before November 1865, the Americans chased a shadowy enemy, the guerrillas of the Viet
05:14Cong.
05:15Except for a few chance encounters, Americans have yet to fight the well-trained, heavily
05:21armed troops of the North Vietnamese Army.
05:26The first cav is given free reign by Commanding General William Westmoreland to conduct the
05:32now infamous search and destroy missions.
05:37Reports indicate sizable enemy movement into South Vietnam near the Cambodian border.
05:47Led by Lieutenant Colonel Harold Moore, the Americans fly to a landing zone in the Yod
05:52Rang Valley known as LZ X-Ray.
05:56I picked X-Ray because it was the one clearing in the area of operations which I had been
06:02assigned which could take the most helicopters.
06:06And I wanted to get as many men on the ground as possible as soon as possible, and as many
06:13on the first lift as I could bring in.
06:17At dawn, UH-1 crews begin the first of many missions.
06:27On a day none of them would forget, Moore and his officers fly a reconnaissance mission
06:32over LZ X-Ray.
06:35Just after 10 o'clock, artillery from two nearby firebases opens up and pounds the perimeter.
06:43The goal is to soften up the area for the incoming grunts.
06:53As the barrage lifts, AR-8, an aerial rocket artillery, lays the LZ with rockets and machines.
07:13Once these pull off, gunships fire on the LZ while escorting arriving troop carriers
07:21called slicks.
07:23Four-seven, search the drain.
07:25All members of the drain, everybody in.
07:27Over.
07:31At 10.48 a.m., the first of some 450 U.S. troopers jump into landing zone X-Ray, unaware
07:40of the odds against their survival.
07:48And I had the feeling that we were going to get into a fight in that area.
07:52And we captured a prisoner within 25 minutes who was unarmed and had an empty canteen.
08:00And he was obviously an outpost.
08:04And he told us through an interpreter that there were three battalions of enemy, of Vietnamese
08:10army forces on that mountain.
08:12They wanted very much to kill Americans but hadn't been able to find any.
08:20During and since the Vietnam War, the Huey's biggest impact is the movement of troops and
08:26supplies.
08:28The UH-1 forever changed the way commanders viewed the battlefield.
08:34Infantry company commanders and infantry battalion commanders usually only had to think at two
08:42and a half miles per hour because that's how far their troops could move on foot.
08:48So you had a map sheet that only covered two and a half kilometers.
08:54So you never really had to worry about anything outside that box.
08:58Now you have a machine that will propel you into hyperspace.
09:03For us, so now you have a map sheet that's instead of one little pocket size, it's four or five
09:09pages.
09:13The Huey represents a tremendous step forward in rotary wing technology.
09:21With its Lycoming T-53 turbine engine, the craft is much more reliable and more powerful
09:27than earlier piston-driven helicopters.
09:29The Huey flies at 124 knots with a range of nearly 300 miles.
09:37In optimal flight conditions, it can carry as many as 13 people.
09:46On this combat assault mission, special forces train with the pilots and crews of the
09:52Pennsylvania National Guard.
09:59Calling 36 men to a mountain ridge in central Pennsylvania is a trip that would take a day
10:11were it not for the choppers.
10:15As in Vietnam, the troops secure the LZ.
10:19The helicopters take off within seconds to move out of the range of enemy guns.
10:29Once the aircraft has started and running, and you've got clearance to take off,
10:37you will be using the collective to bring the aircraft up off of the ground.
10:43You'd use the cyclic input to maintain your position over the ground,
10:47and you'll be using the pedals to maintain the longitudinal axis of the aircraft
10:51so that the aircraft will stay directly over where it is as you bring it up.
10:56In a situation where if you had, for example, a left crosswind,
10:59you'd actually have to put a little bit of left cyclic into the rotor system
11:03to maintain your position over that one spot over the ground.
11:06From that point, to take off, apply a little bit of additional collective
11:10and a little bit of forward cyclic.
11:12At that point, you'll need just a little bit of right pedal,
11:16and that should maintain your ground track in your intended direction of takeoff.
11:26The UH-1 looks very much as it did when it was first built.
11:33Because the chopper flies many low-level missions,
11:37one modification of the Huey is a wire strike protection system.
11:41It is designed to help the ship survive running into telephone or electrical lines.
11:47I've got wires on the nest.
11:53If a wire came in and hit the nose of the aircraft, it could be either deflected up or down.
11:58If it was deflected down, it would come down below the chin of the aircraft.
12:03This fairly flimsy metal would come off, and then it would hit that cutter.
12:07As the wire is guided into the jaws of the cutter, it actually gets snapped.
12:12If it was to hit the nose of the aircraft or above,
12:16it would be guided up so that it gets up to the jaws of the wire strike kit and then just cuts the wire.
12:25In places like Yadre, choppers took hostile fire daily.
12:30That's the main reason for this, the M60 machine gun.
12:34Mounted on both sides of the slick, the 60s were manned by the door gunner and the crew chief.
12:42The 60 that we used was basically the infantry type.
12:46We'd take the 60, roll it upside down, and use your little finger to actually operate the trigger.
12:51You just work it like this.
12:54In order to stop that from falling out of the aircraft, we had bungee cords.
12:59So if you did get shot or had to make a maneuver that you wouldn't lose the 60, it wouldn't fall out of the aircraft.
13:07American chopper crews flew more than 30 million missions over Southeast Asia.
13:14This intensity forged a bond of enlisted man and officer to a degree not normally found.
13:24The aircraft commander was assigned to the aircraft.
13:28It was his aircraft. He knew that. Everybody knew that.
13:34The crew chief knew it was really the crew chief's aircraft.
13:39But we humored the aircraft commander.
13:45The crew chief had the responsibility for the logbook on the aircraft.
13:49Both the crew chief and the aircraft commander did a pre-flight check every day.
13:54Looked at different things sometimes.
13:57A lot of times we didn't tell the aircraft commander everything that we were looking at.
14:03We figured he had enough on his mind flying the thing.
14:07We didn't want any distractions.
14:13In Vietnam, the helicopter crews earned a reputation for going to work regardless of the hazards.
14:22Army aviators, they're a special breed of madman.
14:29They came when called.
14:32They were God's lunatics, I guess you'd have to say.
14:39They just didn't know any better or didn't care.
14:43I loved doing what I did.
14:45And all of the guys I flew with, whether they were pilots or crew chiefs or gunners,
14:52were there because they wanted to be there.
14:58Went out every morning ready to go.
15:01If we didn't want to fly, all we had to say was, I don't want to fly.
15:06For those who rely on the Huey, the craft becomes more than a means of transportation.
15:13For those who fly it, like Bruce Crandall, there is a paradox to the mission.
15:20A PFC explained it all to me one day.
15:22He says, I love you sometimes, but I hate you sometimes, too,
15:24because we get in contact and we know that you guys are there and you're going to take us out.
15:29If we get one down, we're out.
15:33We know that you guys are there and you're going to take us out.
15:36If we get wounded, you'll take us out.
15:38You bring us food, you bring us our supplies that we need,
15:42and I love you when you're doing that.
15:44But then we win the fight and you guys pick us up and take us someplace else and put us back into trouble.
15:49South Vietnam
16:00Thousands of North Vietnamese soldiers have spent months moving down into the Central Highlands.
16:06Their aim is to split South Vietnam in two.
16:11The Americans are aware of their presence,
16:14but they don't know their exact strength or location.
16:19On November 14th, 1965,
16:23the men of the 1st of the 7th Cavalry set out to find them.
16:29Most G.I.s expect this to be another routine search and destroy mission.
16:34To date, the routine has been more searching than destroying.
16:43When we landed at X-ray, it was fairly calm at the beginning,
16:48and then it wasn't long, just a few minutes, 15 minutes.
16:52Like that, we headed into the creek bed area towards the mountain,
16:57and we came under attack.
17:01Very vicious, fierce attack.
17:04And all around me, in front of me, there must have been about 6 or 8 guys that got chopped down immediately.
17:11North Vietnamese soldiers swoop down from a base camp on a nearby mountain to attack the cavalrymen.
17:18The Americans are outnumbered nearly 5 to 1.
17:29At the very outset, for them to be struck so savagely,
17:35for them to be struck so savagely,
17:38I thought, man, I'll laugh.
17:41And I'm the 1st Battalion of the 7th Cavalry,
17:44direct lineage from George Armstrong Custer's 7th Cavalry Regiment
17:49at the Little Bighorn in Montana in June of 1876.
17:52And it freely crossed my mind that,
17:55by God, I wouldn't let it happen to us what happened to Custer and his men at the Little Bighorn.
18:05Combat is thrilling for a young trooper, a young grunt, 20, 22 years old.
18:15I guess it's your adrenaline that kicks in.
18:19But it's extremely thrilling.
18:21I mean, not that it's enjoyable.
18:23It's just the fear and the shock value of it all.
18:28What spoils that thrill of excitement in combat is the horror.
18:33The dogliness of war.
18:36Especially when you see your own.
18:40Their guts are out on the ground and their arms are mangled
18:45and their legs are blowed up.
18:49Even the enemy, it's pitiful.
18:52Everybody dies a horrible death in combat.
18:56American casualties quickly mount for those critically wounded.
19:01Their only hope lies in swift evacuation.
19:05The Huey and its on-board medics
19:08mean that field hospitals and ample blood supplies
19:11are usually just minutes away.
19:15You had normally a three-liter configuration
19:18which you used up against the transmission wall where you secured.
19:22The problem is when you went into a hot LZ
19:25there was no time for that kind of stuff.
19:28So what would happen is as soon as you hit the ground
19:31the medic and the crew chief would load the patients in
19:34and depending on how many of them there were
19:37put them wherever you could in here.
19:40You just laid them wherever you could on the floor
19:43so that you could get out of there as fast as you could.
19:46Once you had all of them loaded in the back
19:50and you took off, then the medic and the crew chief at altitude
19:53would start sorting out who was the priority
19:56to start to treat first and tell us located up front
19:59as to what the condition of these patients were
20:02and what kind of hospital we needed to get them to.
20:07By war's end, medevacs, known as dust-offs,
20:10will haul nearly 400,000 wounded to safety.
20:20What we were taught when we went through the medevac course
20:23was that dust-offs stood for dedicated, unselfish service to our fighting forces.
20:28And it was kind of the creed of the medevac pilot
20:31that whatever else, we weren't going to leave any of our guys on the ground wounded.
20:36So you did what you had to do to get our people out.
20:39So evacuation this morning, we have six with the 3-6 element
20:42and we have three with the 1-6 element.
20:46The Geneva Convention prohibits the medevacs from mounting guns.
20:50Thus, they become easy targets.
20:55What the Red Crosses did was basically tell the bad guys in the tree line
20:59you can come on out, kneel down and get a real good aim
21:02because this is a medical helicopter and it has no guns on it.
21:06Quite often, we'd be on a medevac mission
21:09where the crew chief or the medic would say,
21:12look out to your whatever, 9 o'clock,
21:15and you'd actually see one VC come out of a tree line
21:18so that he could get a better shot at you
21:21because he knew you really didn't have much to suppress his fire with
21:24other than the M-16, let's say, that your medic carried or your crew chief carried.
21:29The hoist mission was the toughest.
21:32In places where the Huey couldn't land,
21:35the medic was lured to the ground on a cable
21:38in order to pick up the wounded.
21:42The core remained in that vulnerable hover
21:45until all were back on board.
21:56At LZ X-ray, heavy enemy fire pours through the landing zone.
22:02Cav medevacs are prohibited from touching down in a hot LZ
22:06and they abort.
22:09Instead, the pilots and crews of the assault companies
22:13haul out the wounded at the deck.
22:22Those flying into X-ray have a clear view of the battle
22:25raging beneath them.
22:28On his fifth drop of the day, Bruce Crandall watches helplessly
22:31as enemy soldiers penetrate the landing zone.
22:35He was there and there was nothing I could do about it.
22:40As I touched down, he came up
22:43and started firing and shooting at people
22:46and he killed the radio operator
22:49sitting in the center of the helicopter.
22:52Got my crew chief in the throat.
22:55When I came out of there, I had three dead
22:58and three wounded on the aircraft.
23:01Our aircraft was severely damaged.
23:04We couldn't fly it anymore, so we switched to a new one
23:07and got that up.
23:10And we knew we'd have to go back in
23:13since our unit as pilots had never been under that kind of
23:16direct intensity and heavy volume of fire.
23:19It was not only our aircraft hit.
23:22Almost all of our eight aircraft that went in,
23:25we had six of them that were damaged.
23:28Early in the war, the Vietnamese are terrified of the helicopter
23:32The M60 machine gun fires
23:35at a rate of 550 rounds per minute.
23:43Americans flying at treetop level
23:46wreak devastation on those below.
23:55Typically, American helicopters show up.
23:58V.C. run at a cut-down instructor.
24:05Telling soldiers from civilian is often impossible.
24:11But Viet Cong begin training to fight the helicopter.
24:15The hunter becomes the hunted.
24:19They learned if you stood your ground and fought back,
24:22you could make things come out your way.
24:26They learned how to lead a helicopter
24:29like you lead a duck or a covey of quail
24:32when you're bird hunting.
24:35And they did a whole lot of training.
24:38It was very crude and didn't always work,
24:41but they got better at it.
24:44They were endlessly adaptable, the V.C.
24:49This chart had been tacked to a tree
24:52and what the V.C. were doing that day
24:56was to show where to shoot down helicopters.
24:59This up here in Vietnamese says,
25:02gun sight, where to aim to shoot down helicopters.
25:05This is the gun sight here
25:08and you can notice the aircraft way back here.
25:11And you can see the writing
25:14and then this little writing in red
25:17with the number 5 which basically says
25:20when the aircraft is straight and level,
25:23this one shows you if you're doing a normal takeoff.
25:26In other words, when a helicopter takes off,
25:29very rarely does it come straight up.
25:32It normally accelerates forward and climbs.
25:35So you'll notice the gun sight is located in front
25:38and above the helicopter
25:41so as to allow you to fly again into his line of fire.
25:44When we landed to have the wounded picked up,
25:47I guess as a thank you for getting them,
25:51this was given to me by the people on the ground.
25:54More than 4,800 helicopter crewmen were killed
25:57and more than 2,000 UH-1s were lost
26:00to hostile fire in Southeast Asia.
26:03Countless others were damaged but made it home.
26:06Testimony to the craft's resilience.
26:09In combat, the aircraft could take 20 or 30 rounds
26:12and continue to fly because no critical part was hit.
26:15For example, it could go through here
26:18and straight through the other side
26:21and never affect any component that was necessary for flight.
26:24It's really between you and the gods.
26:27If luck is on your side today
26:30and one round didn't hit one very important component,
26:33yes, you'd be OK.
26:36As a measure of protection, the crews in Vietnam
26:39are issued body armor known as the chicken plate.
26:42It's heavy, it's hot, it's uncomfortable to wear.
26:46I always thought it was a macho type thing,
26:49not to wear it, but I always thought
26:52chances of a round coming straight at you
26:55is not going to be all that great
26:58because that would be an air-to-air type fight.
27:01Most of the people shooting at you
27:04are going to be shooting from the ground up,
27:07so I'd rather have my bottom side covered
27:10where the rounds are coming through the bottom of the aircraft.
27:13Looking at an LZ
27:16with the tracers bouncing off the ground
27:19and bouncing off trees,
27:22realizing we're about to go in there,
27:25decide that you're dead.
27:28That's it.
27:31If I go in there, I'm not coming out.
27:34But let's go.
27:37Once you make that decision, you accept that.
27:41You continue to operate,
27:44but it changes you.
27:55Just past noon on the first day,
27:58LZ X-Ray is shut down.
28:01With enemy soldiers in the landing zone,
28:04Al Gore cannot risk losing units.
28:11They're still in the process of getting out of the way right now.
28:17Crews are forced to return to base,
28:20knowing that at some point they will go back.
28:27The worst part, mentally, was the waiting.
28:32When you're sitting around waiting,
28:35you have an awful lot of time on your hands to think.
28:39It seemed like it just took an eternity
28:42sometimes to get back off and go to this place
28:45where you weren't really sure you were going to come back out alive.
28:50Huey driver Lee Comidge was just 25 years old
28:53when he flew into X-Ray.
28:56This film of him was taken by fellow pilot John Mills.
28:59When we sat and then got ready,
29:02it was like, well, what are we going to do?
29:05Are we going to go back in or whatever?
29:08So we called for volunteers to go with us.
29:11We never knew what really would show up
29:14at that time when the call came.
29:17So when Colonel Moore called for the reinforcements
29:20for the next lift, then just everybody got back
29:23in the aircraft and we then picked up
29:27the next group of infantry and headed back in,
29:30knowing that we were going to encounter
29:33just what we had left before.
29:36This was a bad place.
29:39This was not a safe place to be.
29:42However, we knew that it was our comrades,
29:45we knew that it was our countrymen on the ground
29:48and swallowed, although our throats were probably pretty dry,
29:51and just went on in.
29:54I remember at one point thinking,
29:57gee whiz, if we weren't supporting Americans,
30:00I don't believe I'd do this.
30:031,500 feet above the battlefield
30:06flies a command and control chopper.
30:09Outfitted with a bank of radios,
30:12this Huey enables commanding officers
30:15and support staff to observe their men
30:18from a safe distance.
30:22It was the brigade commander's airborne sedan
30:25that he could use to get to and from places.
30:28From the commander's perspective,
30:31it was a great thing to have.
30:34If you were a smaller unit commander,
30:37you might have been apprehensive
30:40about the fact that now your boss
30:43could drop in at any moment, unannounced,
30:46for the first time,
30:49from out of nowhere
30:52to visit your location unannounced.
30:55The situation at LZ X-Ray is bleak.
30:58Huey crews are ordered back into the sky
31:01to relieve the beleaguered troops
31:04of the 1st of the 7th.
31:10When we finally got the word to pick up ammunition
31:13and go back to LZ X-Ray, the LZ was easy to find.
31:17There was a lot of smoke billowing from the LZ.
31:20As we got into trouble,
31:23you could hear people come on the radio.
31:26Where in the hell are they at?
31:29And you get a lot of screaming and hollering.
31:32People were clearly in trouble.
31:35People were clearly frightened to death.
31:38It really turned your stomach.
31:41Late in the afternoon,
31:44Moore's command post is in danger
31:47of being overrun.
31:50Huey crews drop in reinforcements.
31:53Within seconds,
31:56they rush to block an NVA thrust
31:59aimed at the exposed flank of the Americans.
32:07As enemy tracers raid
32:11across his command post,
32:14Hal Moore calls in all of the firepower he can get.
32:21Artillery is close by in two firebases.
32:29A-1E Skyraiders join the battle from above.
32:32This dive bomb,
32:35developed at the end of World War II,
32:39is capable of attacking targets
32:42with both 20mm cannon
32:45and more than 10,000 pounds of bombs.
32:51The ARAs also stand cocked
32:54and ready to go.
33:02These choppers are loaded with 48 rockets
33:05and up to 8 machine guns.
33:08Able to hover in close
33:11and find them with deadly accuracy.
33:33So when they called in firepower,
33:37or ARA, it was in on us also.
33:44And I remember at least one or two times
33:47we had to pull back.
33:50And that was when we were making assaults across the creek
33:53that we got out too far.
34:01And we were taking casualties,
34:04ourselves, from our own explosive.
34:10The Americans will not survive
34:13without close artillery support.
34:25Dudley Tatamy circles above the battlefield that day
34:28in a command and control chopper.
34:32He listens as a captain radios for help.
34:35It works in the fact that if it isn't close enough
34:38where I can feel it going over,
34:41some of the strap may be going over close enough.
34:45When you get involved in hand-to-hand combat,
34:48you can expect that
34:51there will be some friendly
34:54and opposing elements intermingle.
34:57And the bad feelings that you always end up with
35:00is...
35:06whether or not some of the...
35:09whether or not your actions were responsible for the loss.
35:14And so you learn to
35:17adjust and live with that.
35:24Had it not been for our airpower, ARA,
35:28our sky raiders dropping bombs,
35:31tables could have been turned the other way.
35:34I might not be here today.
35:37I feel real strong about that, too.
35:42As darkness settles on the Yadrang Valley,
35:45the Huey crews shut down for the night.
35:48The men on the ground dig in and wait.
35:51We were exhausted. It was very hot that day.
35:54And we were moving constantly, at least I was.
35:57And I was pretty much out in the open
36:00of the first hours.
36:03And that night,
36:06I was out there in the open again
36:09laying flat as a listening post.
36:16Nighttime's scary.
36:20You see things moving that aren't.
36:23Bushes are moving and trees are moving.
36:26And your imagination, you're a nervous wreck
36:29anyhow from what you've seen earlier that day.
36:32So you imagine everybody's sneaking in to try to kill you.
36:42We had flares of illumination
36:45dropping out of the sky and it lit up the area
36:49very bright, like daylight.
36:52And you could see every blade of grass.
36:55And I imagine the enemy could see us, too.
36:58I don't know. But that's the way we felt,
37:01that we were spotlighted also.
37:06On a machine gun, every fifth round is a tracer.
37:09And at nighttime, you really don't want to fire
37:12your weapon if you don't have to
37:15in addition to being directly assaulted
37:18because tracers work both ways.
37:21They not only mark the target you're trying to hit,
37:24the enemy could see where it's coming from also
37:27and they could pinpoint your location.
37:30We had the red tracers. They had the green and the orange tracers,
37:33the North Vietnamese.
37:36So if you saw green tracers coming at you or orange ones,
37:39you knew it was the enemy.
37:42So you just fire from wherever they're coming from.
37:46You pretty much see when a North Vietnamese would be shot
37:49because all of a sudden the orange or green tracers
37:52would shoot straight up in the sky.
37:55So it would be a North Vietnamese that would fall down
37:58with his finger on the trigger.
38:04Day two begins with a mad minute.
38:07Every man opens up his weapon on full automatic.
38:16We got orders to just put the spot
38:19where we were facing out from our perimeter
38:22and do a mad minute. It may have lasted three minutes.
38:25But just to clear your weapon and fire at anything that's out there
38:28might be sneaking up on you.
38:31So it worked. A few people fell out of trees,
38:34you know, North Vietnamese.
38:40Dawn, November 15.
38:43The battle rages for a second day.
38:55For the cavalrymen, it is another day
38:58in violent combat with a persistent foe.
39:02The Vietnamese attack in waves
39:05and the fighting continues at this ferocious pace
39:08all day and into a second night.
39:13By the morning of the 16th,
39:16the enemy is gone.
39:19After 48 hours of combat,
39:22the North Vietnamese pull back.
39:25The Americans police the battlefield,
39:28collect enemy weapons,
39:31and their own dead.
39:35For the Americans, there are 79 killed
39:38and 121 wounded.
39:42North Vietnamese casualties
39:45are estimated to be 10 times higher.
39:48Thus, it is declared a victory.
39:52We policed that battlefield.
39:55We walked across enemy dead.
39:58We picked up their weapons.
40:01We survived. They quit the fight
40:04and retreated.
40:07I call that a victory when you can walk across the enemy dead
40:10and pick up their weapons.
40:13The tone of victory is high.
40:21UPI reporter Joe Galloway
40:24rode into X-Ray the first night.
40:27He describes his photos.
40:30I look at the faces
40:34and I see how basically
40:37how calm everyone is.
40:40There's no panic.
40:43There's almost, if anything,
40:46resigned attitude.
40:49I look also
40:52and I see the feet, the boots.
40:55Where they're wrapped in their poncho,
40:58maybe the only thing you see are those two boots
41:02sticking out the end of it.
41:05And, you know, that guy sat down
41:08last night or whenever
41:11and laced those boots up
41:14and now he's dead.
41:21The 1st of the 7th Cavalry
41:24has ridden into another valley,
41:27fought another enemy,
41:30which claims George Armstrong Custer at Little Bighorn
41:33is averted by Hal Moore and his troopers.
41:38I felt very proud of what my men had done.
41:41I felt very saddened at having lost so many men.
41:44And I felt guilty
41:47that I was still alive
41:50when so many of my men were dead.
41:54The survivors from the 1st of the 7th
41:57are pulled out of X-ray.
42:00Air mobility with the help
42:03of massive American firepower
42:06has withstood its first large-scale test.
42:09The portion of the air mobile concept
42:12was definitely validated,
42:15but we did not use helicopters in X-ray
42:18to envelop the enemy
42:21in a single, flowing, 3-day battle.
42:24We were in a perimeter
42:27fighting off wave after wave
42:30of attacks by the enemy.
42:33We could not have succeeded in doing that
42:36had we not had air mobility
42:39in the form of Huey helicopters
42:42bringing us ammo and water.
42:45I think if we had attempted to destroy that enemy
42:49through the jungles on the ground,
42:52we would have worn out our men
42:55and they would have had the advantage.
42:58This was their turf.
43:01They knew it better than we did.
43:04The next day, November 17th,
43:07air mobility would again be tested.
43:10This time, the outcome will raise
43:13the haunting memory of Custer.
43:16Takeoff time for the first cell
43:19is 0500 local.
43:22Climb out on the standard departure route.
43:25Level off at point Bravo.
43:28The morning of November 17th,
43:31E-52 pilots and crews prepare
43:34for their first tactical strike
43:37of the Vietnam War.
43:40Their mission?
43:44The bomb doors 30 seconds prior to release
43:47on X-ray 3-0.
43:50The men who have replaced
43:53the 1st of the 7th need to get out
43:56of range of the bombers.
43:59I don't want anybody with their flak jacket
44:02or their steel pod off.
44:05Is that understood? Can anybody not hear that?
44:08For reasons lost to history,
44:11the men of the 7th Cavalry
44:14are ordered to walk out of X-ray.
44:17Their destination is LZ Albany,
44:20two miles from X-ray
44:23through enemy-held territory.
44:26They leave any connection with air mobility behind.
44:29With no helicopters, no security,
44:32and no forward reconnaissance,
44:35the men march out of X-ray in a column
44:39and leave.
44:47After walking 3 hours,
44:50the Americans stumble upon the enemy.
44:58The 2nd of the 7th is ambushed
45:01in a furious and savage attack.
45:09They took the Americans by surprise
45:12and strung out
45:15over 600 yards of jungle.
45:18They cut the column into pieces
45:21like you chop the head off a snake
45:24and then just segment it with a hoe.
45:27They were attacking through the column,
45:30cutting it into pieces.
45:33And except for defensible perimeters
45:37of this column,
45:40everybody else in the middle was fair game.
45:43And they were fighting and dying
45:46by 1s and 2s and 3s.
45:49The confusion on the ground
45:52prevents those aboard a command-and-control Huey
45:55above the battlefield
45:58from helping the Americans below.
46:01It was a very dense canopy
46:04with streamers of smoke
46:07coming out of a lot of directions.
46:10And I remember somebody saying,
46:13get the artillery in.
46:16Oh, where's the artillery?
46:19And I remember telling Colonel Brown
46:22that I couldn't do it now
46:25because we didn't know where anybody was
46:28at this particular point.
46:32Can you hear me now?
46:35I'm coming in.
46:38Tell me where you are
46:41from the sound of my motor blades.
46:44At nightfall,
46:47Huey crews are sent in
46:50to pull out the wounded
46:53and drop in reinforcements,
46:56some of whom had just fought at X-ray.
46:59It was very, very hot.
47:02I can remember the dry throat,
47:05and I was frightened to go.
47:13A firefight broke out
47:16in the LZ,
47:19and it looked like a laser show.
47:22The tracers were just lacing back and forth
47:25across the LZ itself.
47:29I truly don't know
47:32how the North Vietnamese gunners
47:35didn't lock on to our Hueys
47:38and do us a job.
47:41For those on the ground,
47:44it goes beyond hell.
47:47The enemy were walking around
47:50shooting the wounded,
47:53shooting their prisoners,
47:56bodies so closely mixed.
47:59There were guys with bayonets,
48:02guys with their hands tied behind them.
48:05They'd been shot.
48:08It was probably the most horrifying experience
48:11that I've ever had.
48:14It convinced me that there was,
48:17and I think Larry Gwinn said this,
48:20there's no glory in war.
48:24There's no glory in death.
48:32To prevent a massacre,
48:35U.S. artillery was called in,
48:38virtually on top of the cavalrymen.
48:41The enemy left.
48:44They had gone in and policed up
48:47most of their bodies,
48:50and they had taken some napalm.
48:53They had taken their own,
48:56and they policed up what they could,
48:59and they left.
49:02And the fight was over.
49:05But as far as that being anything but luck,
49:08I don't know what it would be.
49:11They'd done what they set out to do,
49:14and they left.
49:17The death toll for the Americans is 155.
49:21The North Vietnamese have learned how to blunt
49:24the American advantage,
49:27get in so close that technology is rendered useless.
49:34They were afraid of what this new way of warfare
49:37was going to mean,
49:40what the helicopter was going to mean,
49:43and they wanted to blood their soldiers,
49:46they wanted to test their tactics against ours,
49:50and find some way for a peasant army
49:53to deal with the highest-tech army
49:56then operating in the world.
50:00They learned how the only way
50:03that they could survive under the firestorm
50:06was to get under that,
50:09get in, grab them by the belt buckle,
50:12and make them fight us one-on-one.
50:20Where the only firepower then that matters
50:23is hand grenade and rifle and bayonet.
50:26And then it doesn't matter how high-tech you are,
50:29it matters what's in your heart.
50:35The battles in the Yod Rang Valley prove
50:38that a technological advantage does not guarantee victory.
50:44Though thousands of their soldiers perished at X-ray,
50:47NVA commanders considered the battle a victory.
50:50In the end, they were willing to pay any price
50:53to expel the foreigners.
50:58But in 1965, U.S. policymakers were unable
51:01or unwilling to recognize this.
51:07Instead, they too look at X-ray as a victory.
51:12Convinced that Americans and their firepower
51:16could win the war,
51:19the Johnson administration doubled
51:22the number of soldiers in Vietnam to 400,000.
51:25By 1966, 15,000 young Americans
51:28were arriving in Southeast Asia every month.
51:37Many would ride into battle on the UH-1 Huey.
51:41Once there, they would find themselves
51:44in a guerrilla war, a war of attrition,
51:47a war of bodyguards.
51:55For Huey pilot Bruce Crandall,
51:58the perceived success at X-ray
52:01prolonged the war for the Americans.
52:05You look back and you realize that if we had not fought that fight,
52:08that that war might have been over sooner.
52:12The idea that the air mobile concept was good
52:15and our politicians decided to continue the war,
52:18nobody told us to win it.
52:21That's where, if we were going to expend that kind of resource,
52:24we certainly should have been trying to win.
52:30For the actions in the Yadrang Valley,
52:33the 1st of the 7th would be recommended
52:36for a presidential unit citation,
52:39awarded by the Army.
52:43Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moores, 1st of the 7th Cavalry,
52:46fought and died in unprecedented numbers
52:49in a valley in Vietnam.
52:53If not for the work of Huey pilots and crews,
52:56the troopers would have known a similar fate
52:59that befell George Armstrong Custer
53:02at Little Bighorn.
53:05I think Moore would be as famous as Custer.
53:09And the helicopters kept him from being that famous.
53:12And then I think if Custer had had a couple of my helicopters,
53:15we'd never heard of him either.
53:18I knew that we would prevail.
53:21We had fire support in massive quantities,
53:24and I had a disciplined bunch of men.
53:32They were going to fight,
53:35and fight hard, and fight to the death.
53:39I think the helicopters made a difference
53:42in the fact that he had to have ammo,
53:45and he had to get his movie done.
53:49A lot of my men only had 10 days left to serve in the Army
53:52when they were into this battle.
53:55A lot of them came home in boxes.
53:58Not one of them backed up.
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