December 2008 Cover Story:
Tribute to Veterans:
Flying Firefly Missions

Story by Bob Worthington, Lt. Col. US Army (retired)

At one thousand feet the only noise was the steady whap-whap-whap of our Huey’s main rotor blades. The night was pitch black as I sat in the open right door, an M79 grenade launcher cradled in my lap. Over my left shoulder I could make out the soft red glow of the instrument panel. On the ground below, soft flickering orange cooking fires pinpointed scattered civilian houses. I was directing a Firefly mission over our target 30 miles northwest of Saigon on the Cambodian border. The mission began 72 hours before on Veteran’s Day, November 11, 1968, in South Vietnam.

As a U.S. Army infantry major and senior advisor to the Vietnamese District of Trang Bang, my assignment was to assist in pacifying and securing the area. Trang Bang was a district in Hau Nghia Province bordering Cambodia. One component of the effort was interdiction of weapons re-supply from North Vietnamese in Cambodia to the Viet Cong forces in the Saigon area. I had intelligence agents in Cambodia who had provided information regarding enemy activities.

On November 11, information was received that a major effort was underway to transport 107 mm rockets to Viet Cong troops that were within firing range of Saigon. The 107 is a six-foot, 90-pound weapon with a maximum range of six miles. The intelligence indicated that the weapons would be moved, within three days, out of Cambodia at night by water buffalo. At that time Cambodia was off limits to us. We could observe what the NVA were doing in Cambodia, but we couldn’t touch.

Our best way to interdict night movements was with a Firefly team of three UH-1C Huey helicopters. The team consisted of a command and control (C&C) Huey (the high ship), another Huey with a door-mounted search light (the Firefly or lightship), and a gunship with rockets (the low ship). The 334th Armed Helicopter Company stationed at Bien Hoa AFB had three Firefly teams. A team could remain airborne for two and one-half hours at most.

The light ship, the Firefly, was armed with an M-60 7.62mm machine gun, and flew at 500 feet AGL. Above that, at a thousand feet, the C&C ship hovered. It was armed with a .50-caliber, air-cooled machine gun. Hugging the ground was the gun ship armed with two door-mounted M-21 7.62mm mini-guns and two side-mounted, seven-tube 2.75-inch rocket launchers.

The Firefly helicopter had a brace of seven Lockheed C-130 landing lights bolted together and mounted on a metal pedestal in the right doorway. The lights could move up, down or sideways, casting an intensely powerful beam on the ground. The Firefly lightship illuminated the target so the gunship could make the kill. The light operator was the key man. He had to maneuver the heavy light, exposed to the air stream, constantly keeping the beam on the target, regardless of which way the chopper turns or twists. (With a combined brilliance of 1.2 million candlepower, the system provided lighting roughly equivalent to that found in a modern football stadium.)

Flying Firefly missions had built-in hazards in addition to enemy ground fire. Each aircraft had to maintain strict altitude restrictions, flying without lights. The pilot doing the flying (Army choppers have two pilots) flew on instruments, guided by the non-flying pilot. (The reason for this is vertigo, disorientation caused by flying circles while concentrating on the spot of light on the ground.)

Training for Firefly pilots involved a 90-day apprenticeship, and flying of all three helicopters in the team. Assignment to a Firefly team guaranteed an average of 100 hours of night flying each month — earning one’s flight pay the hard way. Three hundred hours of flying were required to qualify as a Firefly aircraft commander.

For the next two days we waited for confirmation of when the rockets would leave Cambodia. On November 14 we got the word. Later that night I crouched on the edge of our small landing pad. The C&C ship had radioed in…they were five minutes out. Shortly I heard the muted beat of the chopper. Sweeping in over our headquarters building, the pilot landed facing toward the open fields around the base, alert to sniper fire, poised for an immediate departure.

Seconds after I climbed aboard, the C&C ship moved quickly forward, nose down, picking up speed and then banking sharply away from the black emptiness of the open fields, climbing up to join the other two Hueys of the team. We flew west toward a river near the border where I hoped we would find the rockets. Following the river, we spotted the crossing point. Directly below us were unmistakable tracks where several heavy animals had trampled the banks on each side of the river. The tracks faded almost out of sight beneath the dense jungle growth away from the river bank. We followed the faint trace of an old jungle road where occasional cleared areas revealed freshly matted areas…we were on the right trail! Twisting and turning, we followed the faint tracks to an open area about half the size of a football field.

Eager excitement turned into instant disappointment. The tracks just ended in the field — they went nowhere. Maneuvering around the field we could not see anything to explain what happened. Wondering aloud to each other over the intercom, we cursed our luck. The hot trail had evaporated into nothing. Radio silence was broken by the low ship. Someone had noticed movement in one corner of the clearing. Quickly the light ship shifted according to the hurried commands of the gunship.

“Swing right…more…more…go to the edge of the tall trees…hold it…stop, don’t move.” Excitement mounted again as we strained to see beneath the foliage. All we could see were shadows, but the low ship, down on the deck, was below the tree tops and had an excellent view. They had found the water buffaloes. Moving into position to destroy the animals, the gunship unleashed the first use of our firepower for the night.

We were puzzled, though, as to where the NVA rockets went. Hovering over the field, we couldn’t understand what had happened. The gunship, now flying a few feet off the ground, saw that what was camouflaged from above became visible at ground level — three underground bunkers. The gunship was unable to engage the targets. The openings were too low and the clearing too small to allow a proper rocket run without flying into the shrapnel.

I was armed with the M-79, a single shot shoulder-fired weapon; I carried about 10 to 12 high explosive, point-detonating rounds. The pilots and I agreed that 40 mm grenades would be the best weapon to shoot into the bunkers. We switched places with the gunship. The C&C Huey hovered a few feet off the ground nearby while I lobbed a couple of rounds into the black hole. I engaged first one, then a second bunker. Our efforts were rewarded by secondary explosions indicating we had found the rockets.
We targeted the third bunker and attacked. The night was torn apart by the muffled boom of the exploding grenades; shrapnel was flying all around us. As I fired my weapon into the hole in the ground I felt a sharp, hot jab in the back of my right thigh, kind of like an electric shock. I had just been shot.

We knew where the North Vietnamese soldiers were and they weren’t very happy about being discovered. It was like the grand finale at the end of a Fourth of July fireworks display: noise, lights, flashes, explosions, all going on at once. Each side was trying to outshoot the other. I gained the upper hand with my grenade launcher though. I became totally engaged responding to the pinpoints of flame flickering toward us by the enemy rifles countering our attack.

It was over quickly. I grabbed my thigh and pulled the copper jacket of a bullet out of the thick muscle. Apparently a bullet had hit the chopper and ricocheted up into the back of my leg. The damage was not too severe. (Our camp medic treated the wound when we returned from the mission but it became infected and a week later it required an operation.)

We had accomplished what we set out to do. The rockets, buffaloes and soldiers had been located and destroyed without serious casualties on our side. Checking the area thoroughly to ensure we had not missed any bunkers, we were satisfied our mission was over. Rising one by one, the helicopters climbed out of the field into the black night, lights out, blending once again into the dark sky.

Bob Worthington served as a combat advisor to various Vietnamese infantry and special operations forces in 1966, ‘67, ‘68, ‘69. During this time, he earned the Combat Infantry Badge, seven decorations for valor, the Purple Heart, and Air Medal. As a Marine Corps NCO he experienced his first combat in the Middle East in the 1950s, earning the USMC Combat Action Ribbon (albeit 50 years later). His combat flying experience included serving as non-pilot crew member, aerial observer and medevac patient in: UH-1, OH-6, Cessna 0-2, Cessna L-19/0-1 bird dog, and AC 47 gunship aircraft. A civilian instrument rated pilot, he has over 6400 hours.