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The story of Jim Moore and Charlie Johnson and two helicopters full of flight crew enjoying the pleasures of flying night fire support missions during the heavy rains and solid overcast of Vietnam's seasonal monsoon storms.

I recall a mission during the heavy part of the monsoon season in which I was AC of a HOG gun ship (C model with rockets and grenade launcher) and Jim Moore was AC of a Heavy Scout (C model with mini-guns and rockets). I was mission leader on this particular flight.

We were the #1 gun team on standby when we were awakened sometime around midnight and sent on a mission to support a Special Forces camp in the swampy area toward the Parrot's Peak area bordering Cambodia. It was difficult to locate the area on a map (flat swampy ground all looks alike at midnight with full cloud cover during a heavy rain) but we finally got close enough to it that we could see aerial flares dropped by the Spooky or Puff the Magic Dragon on station and the tracer stream from their on-board mini-guns hosing down the area around the base camp. You could also see different color tracers heading back up toward that US Air Force flying arsenal. If you have seen the movie 'Apocalypse Now' the night scene at the bridge had much the same feel as the isolated SF base camp that night.

We checked in with our control and were advised to look in a particular area and engage the enemy. We were also advised to stay alert for incoming artillery, outgoing mortars, the Spooky, other helicopters and Air Force close support fighter/bombers. So, we began our reconnaissance at about 500' circling the area around the base camp in a counter-clockwise direction while dodging the various aircraft and non aviation aerial devices like what seemed to be about a thousand parachute flares. If tanks could fly we could have used a tank to get all this done but no flying tanks were available so we soldiered on. The heavy cloud cover prevented us from going any higher.

Sometime during the next 20 or 30 minutes or so we found no sure targets (the rain was so heavy we couldn't have seen them if we had flown right over them - which we probably did) but we kept trying to get into position to do what we were there to do which was put 7.62mm bullets, 2.75" rockets and 40mm grenades on target. I recall that Jim was able to do some mini-gun firing but it was more reconnaissance by fire than actually assaulting the enemy. While this was going on our stress level and adrenaline level were increasing almost as fast as our fuel was being burned we came under fire by one or more .51 cal. machine guns, presumably being operated by the same people who were assaulting the base camp. So while dodging green tracers that appeared to be about the size of basketballs, and dodging parachute flares, and dodging the air to ground fire coming from Spooky, and turning off our navigation lights so were not such easy and tempting targets, and because we couldn't go any higher due to the heavy cloud cover, and couldn't go any lower because there were people down there who appeared to have every intention of inflicting bodily harm on us, Jim's aircraft and my aircraft became separated.

While doing the horizontal jitterbug evading the .51 tracers I lost any motivation to fly in a counter-clockwise direction and begin flying in a clockwise direction, assuming my faithful wingman was still following my aircraft. Jim and I were in radio contact but had not yet reestablished visual contact. Sometime during the next few minutes we were all straining to watch for and avoid the previously noted hazards to aerial navigation when I detected a faint red glow directly to our front. Within a couple or three seconds the red glow grew a little larger and distinct. Then I thought I saw Jim Moore's face in that red glow. Then I saw what I recognized as a UH-1 helicopter hurtling towards us. And I mean directly towards us - at the same altitude we were flying. At that moment some primal fear (maybe that flee or fight thing we have all read about) caused me to throw the cyclic stick to the full right stop as quickly as I could move it. From what I observed out of the corner of my left eye, the other helicopter did the same thing (full right cyclic) at just about the same instant. In retrospect, neither Jim or I had any concern at that moment what Bell Helicopter Company or it's engineers might have to say about our abusing their helicopter with that harsh maneuver.

After I was able to start breathing again I called Jim who confirmed that what I had seen was his UH-1C and that he had done the hard right maneuver. He also told me that he was getting low on fuel, had to return to Cu Chi and that they were already headed in that direction. Since that seemed to be a rational and appropriate thing to do at the moment and I could tell that my fuel gauge was indicating a low fuel state. I don't recall a specific US Army definition of 'low fuel state' but I clearly recall that we were in that state right then and needed to go home too. I called our ground control and informed him of our imminent departure then turned and headed for Cu Chi all by our lonesome. Jim had already determined that it just wasn't safe right then for the two of us to be flying too close together.

As we turned to head back to Cu Chi my Pilot (can't recall who was flying in the Pilot seat) and I were taking turns flying the helicopter, getting vertigo, then turning the controls over to the other pilot. We each seemed to be able to sorta' fly on instruments for anywhere from two to five minutes before losing it. Very difficult situation for us but I recall that old saying - Don't be too concerned about some bad thing that's happening now - it could always get worse. That's when it got worse. When the crew chief asked a question over the intercom that sent chills down my spine. Not just a figure of speech, I'm talking about the feeling of a bunch of ice cubes down the back of my flight suit. The question was: "L T, why are we going to Cambodia?" I had no immediate answer to that question.

So: here we are somewhere between Cu Chi and Cambodia (over toward the Parrot's Peak you will recall) really starting to get low on gas, heavy monsoon rains, can't fly above the weather, both pilots having bouts of weather and stress induced vertigo, all alone, our wingman presumably somewhere close to Cu Chi by now and we are heading 180 degrees away from the place we wanted to be at that time, Home, via Cu Chi, and not in body bags. So we got the compass in our heads settled down, confirmed that the magnetic compass and the directional gyro were in agreement as to where North was and flew that sucker back to Cu Chi with all four crewmen working really, really hard to keep the nose pointed toward home while keeping the dirty side of that Huey facing the swampy ground a couple of hundred feet below us. Then - We made it.

We got back to Cu Chi. I have no clear recollection of the route we flew to get there nor how long it took us to get there but when we made contact with Cu Chi tower I was almost happy. Happy actually took a few more minutes, until we could set the aircraft down at the refuel/rearm point, get all that stuff done then getting around the traffic pattern to the Corral and shutting the aircraft down. We all got soaking wet walking from the flight line to Operations and our hootches but that was normal. Nothing about the rest of that mission was normal.

So I owe a large Thank You to the memory of Jim Moore for instinctively taking the correct action so we did not have a mid-air collision. Very large Thanks to my Pilot whose name I regret that I cannot recall. Very, Very large Thanks to my Crew Chief for having enough smarts to recognize that we were heading toward Cambodia and pointing that out to me in an (unnecessarily) courteous manner. It may have been Woody Gardner or possibly Doug Olsen. Maximum Thanks to all the Crewmen for the teamwork that got us through an extremely dangerous and potentially deadly situation. We made it in large part because all four of us were in constant communications about what was happening and what we needed to do to keep the situation from getting worse.

When I talked with Jim Moore about this incident later he and I agreed that the damn blue Tactical Instrument Card the Army issued to helicopter pilots at that time was certification that we knew enough about instrument flying so we could be ordered to go up into that monsoon madness. However, we also agreed that we didn't know enough about instrument flying, nor enough or current training, to operate safely in that environment.

Regrettably, Jim was killed later by a rocket attack at Cu Chi while performing Operations Duty Officer duties but he helped avoid the loss of two helicopters and eight crewmen that night. He was a good man, a good pilot, a good friend and he will be missed as long as any Centaurs are still around.

Jim Moore & the Monsoon flight - Charlie Johnson