February 23, 2006

Greetings from Mojave Airport! Sometimes readers will contact me regarding an article and last week’s article about the DeHavilland C-7 (DHC-4) Caribou stirred the memories in Dale L. Hilliard of when he was in the U.S. Army in 1962 & 1963, serving as a crew chief on a Caribou in Vietnam with the 1^st Aviation Company.

Dale met with my husband Al and me last Saturday and told us stories about flying experiences that were still fresh in his mind, even though forty-four years have gone by. He said, “I lived in the Caribou and miss everything about it.”

Just recently retired from NASA as a painter, Dale worked for TRACOR Flight Systems at Mojave Airport years ago and has lived in Mojave, California City and Tehachapi. He now restores vintage cars and keeps horses on a small ranch in Quartz Hill and is thinking about checking out Ridgecrest!

A graduate of Hawthorne High School and mechanic with TWA after graduation, Dale was drafted into the service by Uncle Sam and the Army placed him right where he needed to be when they saw his aircraft mechanic experience. A SP4E4 as a crew chief was unheard of but he had valuable previous aircraft mechanical skills and knowledge that was recognized and utilized.

A historic 11,000 mile flight across the Atlantic Ocean, from Fort Benning, GA to Southeast Asia by the 1^st Aviation Company, marked the first time an Army Aviation unit had flown their aircraft to an overseas destination outside the North American continent and Dale was aboard one of the CV-2B Caribou aircraft.

“We Support,” motto of the 1^st Aviation Company in Southeast Asia was not just an idle boast, as Captain Arthur E. Dewey describes in an article in the U.S. Army Aviation Digest. It was a necessary way of life to many units in Vietnam.

Flying the versatile CV-2B Caribou, 1^st Aviation Company supported the first major tactical unit assigned to JTF 116, the 1^st Battle Group, 27^th Infantry (Wolfhounds) in weekly rotation of its rifle companies to positions near the Laotian border. During the monsoon season the undeveloped portion of Thailand’s northeast was accessible only by air.

As Dale talked I tried to take notes, but his memories came so fast and the unusual names of villages and towns in Laos, Thailand and Vietnam were hard for me to record. He was kind enough to entrust to me a small wooden box of photographs, his flight log, a brass plate with the 11,000 mile route etched onto a map of the world and a May 1963 issue of United States Army Aviation Digest. Photos show Caribou Dale was crew chief on and the inset picture is Dale with the cowling open for engine inspection. (I always thought it was neat how the cowlings opened up like a banana peel to reveal the Wright R-2000 radial engines.)

These mementoes represent the year’s of his life when he served America in Southeast Asia. Thank you Dale for serving in the military during the Vietnam War and thank you for re-enlisting and carrying out the mission to provide immediate and flexible support to the isolated troops on the ground with the wonderful Caribou aircraft. When Dale re-enlisted, the Army sent him to the DeHavilland factory in Canada for special training. He also worked on the single engine DeHavilland Beaver while in Vietnam.

This unique cargo plane has a back door that swings up into the ceiling area of the rear fuselage and a ramp that can be lowered when on the ground to drive jeeps and equipment in and out. It was common to fly with the back door up so paratroops could exit the aircraft safely, also supplies, ammunition and food could be dropped by parachute to U.S. and South Vietnamese ground soldiers.

Dale told of missions when they would fly pigs, ducks, chickens and geese to outposts that were cut off from the outside world. It would be the only meat the locals had for survival. One time the cages holding the chickens and ducks opened and the birds were flapping around inside the airplane. His concern was for the flight cables that were exposed and ran along the top of the fuselage. Somehow they were able to deliver all the live birds, but the airplane was full of feathers after that flight!

The resourceful Caribou had the ability to land on short narrow runways, sometimes only 1,200 feet long. One Christmas Eve in the late afternoon, Dale’s Aviation Company flew into one of these short runways. They had waited at Da Nang for nine days while monsoons and low clouds blanketed the area. They were praying for an opportunity to fly supplies, some pigs and foul into the troops in the A Loui valley. When the weather broke slightly, they were off the ground and landed 30-minutes later to the delight of the hungry troops.

Another quote from Captain Dewey’s article states, “The Caribou provided valuable terrain intelligence on reconnaissance flights with the battle group staff and company commanders. They flew the tactical troops and their equipment to Chiang Mai, kept them re-supplied and evacuated medical patients and defective equipment back to Korat on a daily basis, in spite of heavy monsoon rains and low ceilings, which added to the hazards of flying in the rugged terrain.”

As the crew chief, Dale always went with his aircraft. He survived one crash landing and scores of hazardous flights over dense jungles and mountainous terrain. Thank you Dale for contacting us and letting me tell a little about your experiences with the DeHavilland Caribou during the Vietnam War.

Until next week.  .  .  .  .  “Keep ‘em flying!”