After being shot down by enemy ground fire an American pilot

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After being shot down by enemy ground fire an American pilot - machine gun in hand - braves Viet Cong small-arms fire from a village 500 yards away as he stands guard over his crippled Huey. An extremely small percentage of helicopters are totally destroyed by the enemy.

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All's well that ends well. After being partially dismantled the crippled Huey is airlifted back over the Mekong River delta to it's home base by an Army CH-37B Mojave. The CH-37s have done an outstanding job in Vietnam retrieving downed aircraft, thus preventing the Viet Cong from cannibalizing guns, radios, and other valuable equipment.

The Rest of the Story
By Milton Witt

The aircraft on the ground in the above photo is #62-01962, and the location is a rice field about half way between Vinh Long and Can Tho. The date was July 23, 1964. I was flying the machine, a "hog", and Mac Bosdorf, the pilot in the picture, was acting platoon leader. Redmond was crew chief. We had just left Vinh Long enroute to an operation when we had engine failure. We took it in from about 2000 ft; "flopped in" in about 2 ft of water and rice; rocked up on the nose, luckily staying upright; and the tail boom separated.

Once we determined that everybody was OK, we started getting the ship ready for recovery. The remainder of the Cobra platoon stayed on station, flying security while we unloaded the rockets, "dumped" the fuel, and got the machine ready for recovery. The second photo is of the H-37 taking the aircraft to either Vinh Long or to Vung Tau. I am not sure how the photographer got on the scene, but I think that he came in with the maintenance crew. While waiting for the H-37, we had great fun setting up the picture. No hostile fire, although the did Cobras keep some approaching VC at bay, but it did make a great picture for the magazine.

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