19 Minutes To Live Helicopter Combat In Vietnam

"19 Minutes to Live" illustrates the incredible courage and determination of helicopter pilots and crews supporting those heroes that carried a rucksack and a rifle in Vietnam. Over 12,000 helicopters were used in the Vietnam War, which is why it became known as "The Helicopter War". Almost half of the helicopters, 5,086, were lost. Helicopter pilots and crews accounted for nearly 10 percent of all the US casualties suffered in Vietnam, with nearly 5,000 killed and an untold number of wounded. Lew Jennings flew over 700 Air Cavalry Cobra Gunship Helicopter missions and received Three Distinguished Flying Crosses for Valor. This memoir describes first-hand the harrowing experiences of helicopter pilots and crews in combat operations, from the far South to the DMZ, including the infamous Ashau Valley, Hamburger Hill, LZ Airborne and others.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 I had dreamed of flying since I was a toddler, and I had earned my Pilot’s license at age 19. I was working fulltime and attending community college at night. My draft classification was IA, and I knew in the back of my mind that I could be called to serve in the military at any time. #2 The average life expectancy of an Army Helicopter Pilot in combat was only 19 minutes. I was ecstatic and couldn’t sign the papers fast enough. I was a soldier first and a Pilot second in the Army, which meant that I would be sent to Fort Polk, Louisiana, for Basic Combat Training as an Infantryman before attending flight school. #3 My father had arranged for me to fly for the first time in a helicopter. I was shocked at how difficult it was to fly, and I was soon called up to start my processing. I took all the written tests, received a flight physical, appeared before an acceptance board, and received orders for my first assignment: Basic Infantry Combat Training at Fort Polk, Louisiana.

The Vietnam war was a war the US didn't win but one in which the US armed forces performed with honor, courage, dedication, and capability. the numbers, the dates, and the key facts of the US Air Force experience in that war still have value Most of America experienced the Vietnam War only in the form that was delivered in the evening news. The actual fighting and sacrifices in that far-off jungle were borne, as is still true to this day, by a minuscule fraction of the population and their families. There are plenty of history books and scholars that break the war down into miniature, bite-sized chunks of history, politics, science, and statistics. This book, however, isn't about accounting for the war. It is about the fighter pilots who fought that war in the air.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to fly alongside of a helicopter pilot in the Vietnam War? Come along with me and discover what it was like to live, fight and fly a helicopter in combat in a foreign country 13,000 miles from home. The main story is a US Army helicopter pilot's account of a very dangerous 1970 clandestine helicopter rescue mission of four South Vietnamese Long-Range Patrol members from inside Cambodia. The book is also interspersed with other accounts of Vietnam War flying stunts, mishaps and near misses, some dangerous and others admittedly reckless, all during the author's one-year tour of duty in South Vietnam. The people mentioned in the book are all real and made up the author's family, both at home in rural Western New York and for one action packed year, his "new" family of helicopter flyers stationed at Camp Holloway, Pleiku, Vietnam.

It was 1968 and Robert Hartley was on his first combat mission in Vietnam as copilot of a helicopter gunship. As he and his platoon leader flew over the A Shau Valley, a Chinook helicopter engulfed in flames suddenly came into view. Hartley noticed tiny black smoking objects exiting the tail ramp of the aircraft. Seconds later, he realized those objects were men escaping the flames and plunging to their deaths. It was in that moment that he silently wondered, “How the hell did I get here?” Mr. Hartley was still wet behind the ears when he was tossed into the cauldron of America’s most unpopular war as an attack helicopter gunship pilot. As he shares a gripping, birds-eye view of battles that took him from the Demilitarized Zone in the north to the Mekong Delta in the south, Mr. Hartley compellingly details how he learned to rely on his superior training and equipment to follow through with his mission to kill the enemy and save the lives of his fellow soldiers below. Gunship Pilot provides an unforgettable glimpse into two combat tours of duty in Vietnam as a helicopter pilot soaring high above rice paddies and jungles attempts to fulfill his duty of protecting America’s warriors on the ground.

Rattler One-Seven puts you in the helicopter seat, to see the war in Vietnam through the eyes of an inexperienced pilot as he transforms himself into a seasoned combat veteran. When Chuck Gross left for Vietnam in 1970, he was a nineteen-year-old army helicopter pilot fresh out of flight school. He spent his entire Vietnam tour with the 71st Assault Helicopter Company flying UH-1 Huey helicopters. Soon after the war he wrote down his adventures, while his memory was still fresh with the events. Rattler One-Seven (his call sign) is written as Gross experienced it, using these notes along with letters written home to accurately preserve the mindset he had while in Vietnam. secret teams into Laos. He notes that Americans were left behind alive in Laos, when official policy at home stated that U.S. forces were never there. He also participated in Lam Son 719, a misbegotten attempt by the ARVN to assault and cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail with U.S. Army helicopter support. It was the largest airmobile campaign of the war and marked the first time that the helicopter was used in mid-intensity combat, with disastrous results. Pilots in their early twenties, with young gunners and a Huey full of ARVN soldiers, took on experienced North Vietnamese antiaircraft artillery gunners, with no meaningful intelligence briefings or a rational plan on how to cut the Trail. aircraft sustained combat damage. Gross himself was shot down and left in the field during one assault. Rattler One-Seven will appeal to those interested in the Vietnam War and to all armed forces, especially aviators, who have served for their country.

At age 19, Chuck Carlock volunteered to become a helicopter pilot, convinced that by the time he finished training, the Vietnam War would be over. Little did he know that he would see some of the war's most intense combat. This dramatic, first-person account propels readers into the chaos of machine-to-machine combat, chronicling some of the most ferocious combat undergone during the years of American involvement in Vietnam. 30 photos.

Combat helicopter pilots in the Vietnam War flew each mission facing the possibility of imminent death. Begun as a series of attempted letters to the Department of Veterans Affairs, this compelling memoir of an aircraft commander in the 116th Assault Helicopter Company--"The Hornets"--relates his experience of the war in frank detail. From supporting the 25th Infantry Division's invasion of Cambodia, to flying the lead aircraft in the 101st Airmobile Division's pivotal Operation Lam Son 719 invasion of Laos to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail at LZ Hope, the author recounts the traumatic events of his service from March 1970 to March 1971.