the other uh john any operations that stick out in your mind as sort of the the pinnacle of of your tour over there well i think the one that when ben toohey got hit or s son and doc that one that was the big one flew all night long you know we were up for like 12 hours just putting strike after strike after strike in so you’re so you’re sitting there and the base starts to get attacked and is it is it the first call is that a contingency plan that you all have hey if we start getting attacked we’re going to get these birds out of here well the first reaction was to get to the bunker just so it could you know then you know assess the situation and then there was that lull and said now’s the time to go and we we just ran out to the helos and hopped in and took off and how many guys were on base defending the base or did everyone get into either helicopters or swift boats and get out of there well the base was was an open area there was no perimeter around debt six and uh and i’m not sure there was a primitive around the the barges that were on the river they just had a whole string of barges right there down in the river and it wasn’t a big village or anything but uh we didn’t have any perimeter guards around where we were and we were just a couple hundred yards off from where the the barges were so we just got in the bunker and after we took off and then we went back because we weren’t sure about the rest of the people that were there the crew the other pilots and so but we found out that they had gotten to the boats and and got out how much fuel how long can you guys fly for in the huey when you’re loaded out to bear a couple of hours yeah hour and a half two most flights are pretty short but an hour and a half is a long flight yeah and the 20-minute fuel light is very accurate i had one mission where we came back and we literally the 20-minute fuel light came on we went back up to kamau which was where debt three was and as we as we touched down the engine shut itself down we ran out of fuel as we were touching down were you flying with me when we had to land and send out for fuel because we ran out and we acknowledged we got heard about that we literally got a hammer yeah well this is this is in scramble the sea wolves right this story yeah and tell us about that one mike dobson was my recruitment again and we didn’t run out of fuel but i but i landed at hottie inn because i was at the end of the 20 minutes and that light gets bigger and bigger and at nighttime it’s huge just like sun at daytime it’s still pretty damn big what was the mission that you were doing we were covering seals that day and i don’t remember what the pacific operation was the missions all come together i remember mike slattery asked me on the phone one time how about blah blah blah and i said you know they all kind of blend together it’s hard to separate them out i remember the zulu one in detail i’d i’d dream about that one and and uh and thank god about it every night not every night but most nights um but we were we were covering uh seals and and mike dobson could give you more detail but uh we had to make a call about whether we we ended up with less fuel than my wingman and we ended up swapping stations and refueling one time to cover and back and forth but we i got so low i couldn’t go back at the time the seals were already in we were safe but so you stayed on station to support them absolutely even though you were low on fuel and you you had enough fuel just to get them and then make it to a rice paddy somewhere basically well’s no place called hot tien it was even there wasn’t no fuel there and it wasn’t really a landing pad there was a rice paddy near a little town yes and so we set a perimeter up and we sent out for fuel and by sending a sending out for fuel you you grabbed ammo hamilkans and pulled fuel from the other bird yeah and and uh it’s pretty embarrassing you think about how can you let yourself run out of fuel well sometimes you don’t have and you know the big thing is contamination you worry about getting fuel contaminated and but it worked out okay we made it but that was uh it takes mike dobson to tell the story he can tell it without any alcohol he’s a better storyteller than i am mission focused for sure
My WordPress Blog