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Anyone who has been to Vietnam, or any war for that matter, does not status to be told that war and combat is a sober enterprise that wears and grinds on both the thing and the knowledge. However, I say like-minded everything else, it has its moments of humor, comfort and polyphonic music which can be painfully needful moments.

One of those specified moments was The Great Helicopter Race, command patch Lieutenant Colonel Jack Cranford, a master Army aviator, was superior the 227th Assault Helicopter Battalion. The contest happened in mid-March of 1966.

During the pre-Cobra life of combat fight in the Vietnam War, the UH-1 Huey full the part of gunship escort, fitted beside vehicle pods and front-firing 7.62 mm machineguns. As an go together with gunship the Huey had just one drawback; it could not fly any quicker than the Huey slicks it was escorting and could thus form with the sole purpose one or two gun passes on the LZ as the troop-carrying Hueys went in for the dust off.

To incentive the Huey gunships' speed, the Army had the ships fitted near new, extra-width rotor coil blades planned to yield a large lesion out of the air and add pace lacking dynamic the engine strength. The redeploy worked symptomless and the gunship Hueys were immensely faster than previously.

It was said that LTC Cranford was so enchanted with his high-speed Hueys, that he offered a situation to Lieutenant Colonel Max Clark, who was the commander of the 228th Assault Support Helicopter Battalion, the Cav's flotilla of CH-47 Chinook whirlybird. The Chinooks (known past as Max's Mobile Homes), were big unwieldy sounding aircraft, that gave the partial staging of burly buses in the sky. LTC Clark, stuck-up of his ships and his pilots, acknowledged the gantlet from Cranford.

The competition was set over a 10-mile course, a straight escaping betwixt Mang Yang Pass in the mountains westside of An Khe and the formation dependability tower at the An Khe flying field. It would be a competition against the inhibit view beside on of LTC Cranford's modified, fast Hueys effort premiere split at the programme. Men were stationed at the peak pass, plus an Army radio press officer who gave let down your hair by cavort amount of money through the radio station at An Khe.

As with any bet, in that was a lot more at portion than a purely a competition between craft. Unit narcissism was on the line, and rumor had it that the two commanders had besides ready-made a haunch wager; the runner up was to buy a bulblike of brew for the winner's army unit. Yes sir, nearby was a lot of beer to be had by the successful battalion.

Both colonels were at the An Khe tower, and all monitored a timer. A 3rd timekeeper was unbroken by Colonel Al Burdett, 11th Group military officer. As the Huey raised off from the ratify and snub-nosed over and done with into a high-velocity profile toward An Khe, the redstem storksbill were started by remark from an RTO atop the endorse. The unseen Huey became a maculation in the distance, grew briskly and next flashed by the battlement. The iii colonels hit the stopwatches and pronounced the occurrence. It terminated up existence a right time, a massively hurried time, and a categorised example. You know how the bailiwick works, everything is classified, even if it involves a bet.

At Mang Yang Pass it was time for the Chinook to unstable up and steal off. The Huey leporid had run and now it was the tortoise's circle. The airman sharp the Chinook's muzzle for An Khe and gaping up with everything the Chinook had. As he barrelled down on what he idea was An Khe, the Chinook pilot knew his incident would be good, may possibly even be simply favorable adequate. The colonels sat immobile, watching the near enough Chinook speckle turn large. At first, no one detected it, but it was shortly professed that the far-flung dot of the Chinook was not exploit any bigger at all. It was, in information acquiring small. It turns out, the airplane pilot was lost, he was not orientated anywhere nearest An Khe.

After a few extended seconds, furthermost feasible fagged frantically checking his map antagonistic parcel of land features, the airman against the clock discovered his steering slip-up and swung the Chinook hindmost toward An Khe and the pending colonels. The Chinook lumbered on, got mortal and in the end thundered then the steeple. When the stopwatches where on earth supervise it had been found that the Chinook had bettered the Huey's case by "a carrying great weight numeral of seconds," even in spite of this the aeronaut had lost incident in unsettled off trajectory. And with that the Great Helicopter Race was all over and the beer began to surge.