Gallery 21- John J. LaDue's Pictures

John LaDue was a pilot with D/227th, flying gunships out of Phan Thiet from June 1967 until November 1967. His callsign was "Cobra 15" and following are some pictures that he took on his missions. The comments and observations below and on the photos are John's and illustrate the role helicopter gunships played in supporting the 2/7th at Phan Thiet.

ARVN APCs in the Le Hong Phong forest.		Two UH-1C gunships	Davey Armstrong riding bareback

A final flight back			Gunship heading back to LZ Betty

The world's tallest door gunner, "Pea Pie" Pearce		"Pea Pie" Pearce getting a boost from Crew Chief Davey Armstrong
Replacing damaged helicopter blade		The crew working on the blade	Finishing the job
A day or two before the blade replacement, I was flying lead over the Le Hong Phong when our right side Door Gunner saw a VC take a shot at us. BIG mistake! The DG threw a smoke grenade out as soon as he saw him and our trailing gunship rolled in on him within 5 seconds. I broke right and rolled in a few seconds behind him. We probably did 2 or 3 passes each and then did a slow pass to see if we could find him. No luck. I think that both of our ships were fully armed and we expended rockets, grenades, door gun and mini-gun fire on him. I remember thinking that this guy was too stupid to live, and that we had totally f***ed up his day. We took one round through a rotor blade and after we landed back at base, we wrapped the blade with "200 mph" tape (duct tape) and flew the ship until we got the replacement blade.
Cleaning up the spent cartridges					Reloading ammo for the mini-guns
Here are two close up photos of 1st Platoon, D/227th, UH-1C gunships, at Phan Thiet. One shows spent cartridges on the cabin deck. These are probably from the 2 M-60 door guns, as cartridges from the mini-guns would have ejected into midair. The 2nd photo shows a crew refilling the ammo boxes for the mini-guns. The cabin seat has been folded up against the rear cabin wall. 1000s of rounds were belted together for each mission and fed by electric motors thru flexible chutes to the mini-guns. The normal rate of fire was 2400 rds. per minute, per gun, in 3 second bursts, so the sound they would make, when fired, wasn't RAT-TAT-TAT, but more like a continuous, medium pitched, WHAAAAA. Every 5th bullet was a tracer, so on a night mission, mini-gun fire would look like a continuous, swirling, red line. The light could be so bright that pilots were very wary of losing their night vision. A gunship, mounted with mini-guns, could put a bullet in every square yard on a football field, in less than 1 minute. The vernacular at the time was "Peeing Bullets" or later as "Bringing Pee"!
Graphic image of ARVNs with dead Viet Cong	Graphic image of ARVNs moving the body of a Viet Cong			Graphic image of ARVNs waiting to move bodies of VC
LZ Bartlett

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GALLERY 21
MORE PICTURES

Two UH-1C gunships

Cleaning up the
spent cartridges

Reloading ammo
for the mini-guns

Graphic image of ARVNs
with dead Viet Cong

Graphic image of ARVNs moving
the body of a Viet Cong

Graphic image of ARVNs
waiting to move bodies of VC

LZ Bartlett

Pictures by permission
© John J. LaDue, All Rights Reserved, 2009.

GALLERY 21 MORE PICTURES

Two UH-1C gunships

Cleaning up the spent cartridges

Reloading ammo for the mini-guns

Graphic image of ARVNs with dead Viet Cong

Graphic image of ARVNs moving the body of a Viet Cong

Graphic image of ARVNs waiting to move bodies of VC