USMC Helicopter Support in Vietnam Congressional Gold Medal Act

If you are a Marine, served in Vietnam, and flew or worked in a helicopter squadron, you'll want to read this. It's a little long for a social media post, so find a comfy place with good lighting and take your time. It's probably one of the most definitive renditions of the role we played "in country," including the places and battles, all with stark numbers that define the missions we had in cold reality. It's the writeup, i.e., "Findings," that has been included with the proposed act mentioned above under consideration by Congress now as H.R.5939.

The "USMC Helicopter Support in Vietnam Congressional Gold Medal Act" is a proposed bill, H.R.5939, to award a Congressional Gold Medal to Marines and Navy Corpsmen who served in USMC helicopter support missions in Vietnam. This legislation would recognize their heroic service, particularly those in medical evacuation (Medevac) roles, who transported over 3.2 million troops, flew 1.6 million sorties, and medically evacuated about 189,000 patients between 1962 and 1975. 

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1.

SHORT TITLE. This Act may be cited as the ‘‘USMC Helicopter Support in Vietnam Congressional Gold Medal Act’’.

SEC. 2.

FINDINGS. (a) 

By the end of the war in Vietnam in 1975, there had been approximately 391,000 U.S. Marines and 10,000 Navy Corpsmen who had served in Vietnam. Out of all of these men it is estimated that roughly 90 percent of them served in either the First or Third Marine Division, while the remaining 10 percent served in the First Marine Air Wing (1st MAW). (b) 

The 1st MAW itself consisted of both fixed-wing and helicopter (rotary) Marine Air Groups (MAG), and over 60 percent of the Marines and Corpsmen who served in the 1st MAW were assigned to the MAG. (c) During Vietnam’s 13 years of war the 1st MAW saw 25 of its helicopter squadrons deployed to Vietnam, and by January 1968 there would be 11 squadrons flying in the country on any given day until mid-1971. (d) 

The first Marine helicopter squadron to be deployed to Vietnam was HMM-362 on April 15, 1962. Their mission in Vietnam was to both advise and train, transport troops, passengers, and cargo, and to provide aeromedical support to the troops of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). (e) 5 months later, at the request of the United States Military Assistance Command in Vietnam, and with the Marines having much more capable aircraft and instrument-qualified pilots in country, the squadron that replaced HMM-362, HMM-163, was relocated to the airfield in Da Nang. 

21 days later, tragedy struck when one of their helicopters flying on a medical support mission crashed into a mountainside due to a mechanical problem, killing 7 of the 8 men aboard. The casualties would include the first Navy Corpsman, first Navy Flight Surgeon, and the first Marine aircrew members to die in Vietnam. (f) 1 year later while flying on a search and rescue mission, 2 helicopters from yet another Marine Squadron, 0 HMM-361, collided in mid-air while trying to avoid ground fire, killing 12 men. The casualties in this mishap included the first Hispanic, and the first African-American Corpsmen to die in Vietnam, as well as another Navy Flight Surgeon and 9 Marines. (g) 

In March of 1965, upon the orders of President Lyndon Johnson, 3,500 Marines of the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade made an amphibious landing on Red Beach, 9 miles north of Da Nang, making them the first United States combat troops to be deployed to Vietnam. With their arrival came the need for a much larger, and more diverse system of helicopter support. (h) 

By the time the last United States Marine ground troops were pulled out of Vietnam, the number of Marines having served in the country was estimated to be between 81,000 and 85,000. It was because of who and what they were, that they were tasked with conducting both large and small scale ground operations, search and destroy missions, counterinsurgency operations in both rural and urban settings throughout the 10,540 square-miles of what was known as the ICTZ, or the I-Corps Tactical Zone. (i) 

Comprised of the perhaps the 5 most hotly-contested provinces in all of South Vietnam; Quang Tri, Thua Thien, Quang Nam, Quang Tin, and Quang Ngai, the Marines often found themselves engaged with the enemy in places whose names became synonymous with the horrors of the war. These were places like Khe Sanh, Hill 881S, Mutter’s Ridge, The Rockpile, Dong Ha, Con Thien, A Shau Valley, Phu Bai, Hue, Marble Mountains, Hill 55, the Que Son Mountains, LZ Baldy, LZ Ross, An Hoa, Hoi An, Liberty Bridge, Chu Lai, and Go Noi Island. (j) 

The Rockpile

These became the very places where Marine helicopter aircrews flew into, and always hoped that they would leave again. And not fearing to do so, some of these places became the same places where the Marines decided to establish some of their helicopter bases. (k) From these bases the helicopter aircrews would support those on the ground by flying large troop insertions or extractions, as well as large civilian relocation. 

They also inserted or extracted small reconnaissance teams, flew life-saving medical evacuations or participated in search and rescue missions, delivered much needed ammunition, food, water, medical supplies, or mail from home which to those on the ground proved crucial because it impacted both their morale and emotional well-being. 

Khe Sanh

Other missions flown were because someone needed an overhead escort, aerial reconnaissance, target spotting, a night time flare drop, or because a VIP needed to be flown around. (l) No matter what the mission was, or who it was for, or where it was needed, there were always great risks involved. It might be from the automatic weapons or small arms ground fire, mortars, rockets, landmines in the landing zone, RPG’s that the enemy used, or perhaps because of something as simple as a barbed wire entanglement or a triple canopy forest. Mountains, the weather, pilot error, a mechanical, electrical, or fuel problem, basically you name it and it could kill you. But the aircrews flew anyway. (m) 

The Rockpile

There was one mission flown by helicopters, however, that not only carried these same risks, but was also known by intelligence and the aircrew members themselves to be much more of a prize target to the enemy, the Medevac. (n) Flown by an exceptionally skilled, calm, decisive, dedicated, compassionate and both physically and mentally resilient crew consisting of a pilot and co-pilot, crew chief, two gunners, and a skilled combat-trained Navy Corpsman, they were ready to fly anywhere and anytime, 7 days a week. Of note is the fact that the corpsman and gunners all volunteered to fly medevac missions. (o) 

These medevac aircraft were normally accompanied by a ‘‘chase’’ ship (minus a corpsman) that shadowed them, and 2 gunship escorts that would accompany them into what many aircrew members described as ‘‘hell and back’’. (p) This ‘‘medevac package’’ of 4 helicopters and their crews demonstrated the foresight that the Marines had put into these packages in that they were strategically located throughout the ICTZ and were always ready to go. 

To have such a package on standby and already in place when a mission was called was considered better than trying to piecemeal one at the last minute, thus endangering the life of a casualty. Bullets could kill, but so could a delay in launching. (q) 

Medevac helicopters often flew into some of the most formidable, dangerous, and hostile environments in all of Vietnam. And as a result of where they went, and what they were doing, there would be 26 Medevac Corpsmen who were killed in the line of duty. (r) 

There were however, times when a medevac helicopter was not readily available, which in time served as the impetus for creating a plan where another nearby helicopter that was already tasked with another type of mission would be re-tasked to conduct the much needed evacuation instead. This was what the aircrews considered to be a ‘‘flight of opportunity’’. (s) 

Those who were being evacuated were usually United States Marines, South Korean Marines (ROKs) ARVN Troopers, or the occasional Vietnamese civilian who was sick, wounded, or oftentimes deceased. Some evacuees were carried on, while some walked on, and there were also those who had to be hoisted up into the helicopter in a stretcher, or on a jungle penetrator. In any case, because the pilots were always aware of the ‘‘golden hour’’ they would often inform the corpsman in the back how soon it would be until they would touch down. (t) 

Depending on the circumstance of the evacuation, the evacuee or evacuees would either be flown to the 700- bed Naval Support Activity hospital in Da Nang, or to whichever United States Navy hospital ship like the 750- bed Repose, or the 786-bed Sanctuary, either which was in the Da Nang harbor at the time. Sometimes it was to either the 1st or 3rd Medical Battalion, or the civilian hospital in Da Nang. 

It is difficult to forget that amongst all of the other missions that the aircrew members flew, those were those missions that carried the bodies of many of the 18,844 Marines and 645 Navy Corpsmen who lost their lives in Vietnam. These missions would take them directly to Graves Registration. (u) The aircrews believed that those who were on the ground expected helicopter support, that they needed helicopter support, and because of this, they made sure that they received helicopter support. (v) 

There was a saying that went that those who flew did so ‘‘outside the wire’’ while those who never flew stayed ‘‘inside the wire’’. These were those young men, who in their own specialized way, supported both those Marines who flew and those Marines who were out in the bush. (w) These were the forgotten heroes of the 1st MAW. They were the men who maintained, serviced, and repaired the helicopters, fueled them and armed them, worked in air traffic control, maintained the runway, the hootches, the admin buildings, the clubs, cooked the meals, did the paperwork, studied the intelligence, worked in base security, drove the vehicles on and off base, and like the chaplains, prayed for everyone. (x) By the end of the war, the Marines would lose 280 of their helicopters and 845 of their helicopter crew members and passengers in Vietnam. Not quantified anywhere, however, is the exact number of those Marines on base who were killed and did not fly. (y) 

The helicopter aircrews of the 1st MAW who flew in Vietnam between 1962 and 1975 transported more than 3,210,000 troops and passengers, flew more than 1,600,000 various sorties, delivered more than 338,000 tons of cargo, and medically evacuated approximately 189,000 patients. (z) But it was the former Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Leonard F. Chapman, who best summarized what helicopter support meant to the Marines on the ground in Vietnam when he stated that ‘‘When a Marine in Vietnam is wounded, surrounded, hungry, low on ammunition or water, he looks to the sky, he knows the choppers are coming’’.