Veterans, as you exit the theater after today pfsz program, National Archives staff and volunteers will present each of you with the vietnam veteran lapel pen. On the back is engraved a grateful nation thanks and honors you. The vietnam war commemoration is a National Initiative and the lapel pen is the nations lasting momento of thanks. The National Archives building is always an impressive site on constitution avenue but this week were attracting a bit more attention thanks to the North Carolina Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association who are it custodian of those aircraft. We can see and learn three vietnam war era helicopters. This deisplay is presented in part by it National Archives foundation through the generous support of bell helikapter and now youll hear from general richard a. Cody. He graduated at west point in 1972. Hes a master army aviator, rated in over 19 helicopters and has over 5,000 hours of flight time. During his 36 plus years of service, general cody served in six of the armys combat divisions. During operation desert storm, then Lieutenant Colonel cody led task force normandy, a patch of eight apache helicopters to iraq prior to the start of the allied air campaign. General cody is currently it Senior Vice President and officer for l3 technologies incorporat incorporated, washington operations, board trustee of the intrepid fallen. Heroes fund, george w. Marshal foundation, on the Advisory Board for hope for warriors and operation flying heroes, an organization that provides flights for iraq and afghanistan wounded warriors. General cody has received distinguish graduate award from george c. Marshal and it is an inductee in the Army Aviation hall of fame. Please welcome general richard a. Cody. Thank you everybody. For our Vietnam Veterans and their families, sometimes thank you for our service isnt nearly enough and i want to tell you what i really want to do is say thank you for inspiring a young 16yearold book in 1966 as i got to watch your helicopter pilots on tv and that inspired me to want to become like you, a helicopter pilot and i was lucky enough to achieve my dream and as soon as i graduated from Flight School, it was hundred hads of vietnam era warrant officers and colonels who taught me what right looked like, taught me how to be an aviation leader and quite frankly i tell everybody i wouldnt have made general officer had it not been for my vietnam toouters and so thank you for everything youve done for this great country. I also want to thank you because in 1991 when i came back from the iraq war, it was 3 00 in the morning. I had my squadn are from the 100 first, we landed in banger, maine and we were some of the last guys out of coming out of the iraq war, the first gulf war. And my guys we were watching on tv, waiting back in saudi arabia and we saw all the parades s a everybody being welcomed home and our troops saying nobodys going to greet us. We got off to refuel and there was a corden of Vietnam Veterans at 3 00 in the morning shaking hands and giving my soldiers and myself a welcome home from combat that you guys never got and ill never forget watching young soldiers exchanging their sandy caps with the bush caps for the Vietnam Veterans and it touched me in a way that youll never know. But our nation is well past that and this series about helicopters and those daring men that flew helicopters and they crews is something all americans should know about and we should take time to honor. So im very, very pleased that the archives are doing that. What you all did in vietnam was really transform our army and our way of thinking about warfare in terms of a 360 degree battle field and today many soldiers are alive from battles of iraq and afghanistan and other places that we have fought in because we learned from you the tactics, techniques and procedures of vertical lift and aviation in the ground regime, whether its medivac, troupe transport, supplies so we dont have to drive through ied ridden lines of communications to the helicopters on the battle field. A lot of people dont know that we sent 7,000 uh 1s to vietnam and over 3,000 of them got shot down. We sent over 1100 cobras just like the one out for, starting in 1967 we sent 1100 of those into combat. And over 3en had of those got shot down and over 2200 pilots, helicopter pilots, fallen comrade s got shot down and pai the final salute to the United States and sacrifice from all of us. And we learn from all of that. I think its fitting we take time to understand the sacrifices of you guys and those who were over in Arlington Cemetery and how important it was and the way you pioneered todays aviation force. In 1979 we had the hostage situation over in iran and as you know that didnt end well. But we formed up what is the special operations regimen and it was vietnam veteran pilots we called back to active duty. And it was again the vietnam veteran helicopters we depended on so we could form up that special Helicopter Unit today known as the night stockers. Probably the worlds best unit on aviation. So today youre going to get to hear from several of our vietnam helicopter pilots. They all have Great Stories to tell. Theyre all heroes in their own right, just like you. Theyre all great americans, great patriots. But the other thing theyre great is theyre great brothers in arms. These guys have been together ever since vietnam and people forget its been over 50 years since we brought the hewy and the cobra into vietnam. So i think its fitting we hear from them today. Let me end the way i started. Thanks for your service. And i get asked a lot what do we say to our veterans who served in more uniform and dawned the cloth of this nation and i told america saying thank you for your service is important. But if you really want to thank the men and women who have born the brunt of battle what we really need do as americans is live our life as americans, worthy of their service and sacrifice. So god bless all of you and i hope you enjoy the event. Thank you. [ applause ] turning over to our moderator, a decorated vietnam veteran and helicopter pilot. Graduated from Flight School and assigned to the 175th hept helicopter company. Where he served as gun ship pilot. After restoring vietnam, he was reassigned to port walters in texas and served as an Instructor Pilot until his Honorable Discharge in 1969. In the 1970s, he was a line pilot in the off shore oil industry and began a career as a chief pilot and Instructor Pilot, demonstration pilot and experimental test pilot, first in iran and then fort wurlorth, texas. Currently resides in arlington, texas with his wife of over 52 years. Please welcome Dwayne Williams and members of the north Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association. [ applause ] good afternoon. Can you hear me . Thank you all for being here. Its certainly my pleasure being here this evening and i think its even more so a great honor to be here with these guys. I was called, vited to participate, the first thing i did was shut my size 40 flight suit i wore in vietnam. I got to get one leg in it. But these guys continue a regimen of strict workout, diet. But my wife said youre going to look nice. So she dressed me up and here i am. We do have a story today to tell, several stories. But before we get for had to that, kwab i would like to introduce these guys. First of all theyre from the North Carolina Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association and ta are the ones responsible for those beautiful aircraft that you see out front. They come all the way from North Carolina. They got here sunday night and they will be here through here sunday and they have been standing throughout every day, long days taking care, answering questions and they do a great job and i think id like to give them aand f anhand for that. To my right here is joe del fonzo, colonel, United States army retired. He was in vietnam in 1968. He was it Commanding Officers of the 604 transportation company. Call sign care takers. They provided maintenance for it 189th Assault Helicopter Company maintaining 28 to 30 aircraft and he had a heck of a job doing that. Sitting next to him ed hughes Lieutenant Colonel retired. And he was in vietnam in 1971. Flew with the 116th, call sign hornets. And he is a survivor of 719. Dont know if you know what that is, but he is going to tell us about it. And then we have jerry filts, retired. 274. He was in rehave the nom, 1968 69. He flew in the 101st and he also as an interesting story hes going to tell about flying 086 gun ships. And lastly but not lease we have jerry seagull. Jerry and i are the only two that felt we would cash in our fortunes as civilians. I think jerrys done pretty well. One of the things im sure hes proudest of is he is probably in talking about it, the founding father of this group and he has done a tremendous job putting it all together and maintaining his aircraft and i know the work it takes. So id fliek jlike for jerry to just a minute. First of all id like to thank the Archives Foundation for bringing us here to help honor the Vietnam Veterans. Back in 1989, 16 pilots gathered in greensberro, North Carolina to see if there was an interest inputting together a local organization,helicopter pilots could get together, tell war stories and i say theres two things they dont do, they dont drink beer and they dont tell war stories. Both of them are lying. And they dont lie. We started off in the 16 people at about 9 00 in the morning. And with two cases of beer, three dozen Krispy Kreme Doughnuts we had set up to be incorporated. Luckily we a lawyer present. Three months later we after some people decided we needed a helicopter to talk about, we decided we would go ahead and try to get a helicopter. This took three years to get our first aircraft. After we put this thing together and got it presentable, we went to wilmington, North Carolina to do a araid. This was purely selfish on their part because we wanted to ride in the parade. We got there, we did the parade and was putting the aircraft back together. First off we had 150 people standing around the aircraft. So we realized theres an interest in this. So from there we proceeded to procure other aircraft and right now we have six aircraft. We do static displays all up and down the east coast from papato florida,ing kentucky, tennessee. We have done over 300,000 units of schools at no cost to schools. By virtue of what we do, we can take the aircraft schools and not only their historical as part of their education but we can relate the course of studies to these aircraft and they would be doing this when some student decides what hes going to do. Today this is the third trip to washington d. C. This year. This year we did our third president ial with aircraft. Weve been told this is the most brave any organization has done in the history. Hopefully well be around for afther one. But well see. One of the things im most proud of these guys is they put up with me and they go sometimes to places i wouldnt go with me and they put in long hours like theyre doing out here today. We are self supporting. We take no federal or state funding or no private sponsorship from organizations. Weve been doing this for 28 years and we continue to do this successfully. So it can be done for organizations thats willing to put forth expert and have support with these people. I thank you all for supporting us here. It photos are really not relevant to what were talking about but theyre really neat photos. So occasionally im going to flip through here so you see something new and it might trigger one of us to oh, i have a story for that. But for right now im going to let joe talk just a minute about what it was like maintaining 28 aircraft in a combat situation. Thank you. Its a real honor and a privilege for me to be here. I was a young brash lieutenant and gunning ho. I wanted to be the greatest infntry platoon leader there ever was and a young lady took me by the hand and said youre going to Flight School. So long story short we got the Flight School which was kind of unusual because in those days we need needed helicopter pilots. And aircraft maintenance. And off to vietnam and i was confident that when i got to vietnam i was going to end up flying a u 21 which is a beach king air, twin engine, nice safe airplane, real high, no problem. Well, dream went kaput. I ended up at camp holloway and took over the t c4 attachment attached to the ghost riders, the Assault Helicopter Company at probably it worst time in their her history. I was talking earlier today to one of our guys and we got there both about the same time and it seems like in the month or two before i got there there was some pretty intense combat operations and the 52nd battalion, which was our Parent Organization had literally flown itself to the ground flying combat, combat assault, evacuation missions of all kinds. So long story short. When i arrived, our unit, which was 20 uh 1s, 20 slicks and eight gun ships had had absolutely nothing flyable. No Mission Capable aircraft anywhere. Our aircraft were shot full of holes, we were short of parts and i just want to say a thank you and a call out to the maintenance personnel that worked behind the scenes there. I had some of the best enlisted men and warrant officers that i think the army ever saw. They were professional. They were dedicated, competent beyond belief. Maintenance guys are behind the scenes guys. You dont hear a lot about them when you see the vietnam things and you see other documentaries in war stories. But let me tell you maintenance is never ending. The uh 1 is a marvelous aircraft. You go to wikipedia and look up uh1 and youll be blown away by what that airplane can do and the capabilities it brings. But it also takes a lot of maintenance. Combat damage to be repaired. And our guys were sometimes 24, sometimes 36 hours. We test flew airplanes after maintenance when we should not have. Literally sitting there half asleep in the cockpit doing a half hour hover check to make sure everything was cool. Jerry was one of my test pilots. The enlisted guys they turned too. We got back to our mission required 12 slicks and six gun ships within about a month and it was only the dedication and professionalism of the nco core that did that. I had an infantry First Sergeant in an Aviation Unit and he was a leaders leader. The ncos youve heard before and youll hear again are the backbone of the army. He trained them and brought them up the way they should be, made them just love what they were doing. I a Technical Inspector that had grown up, worked on the evaluations and he knew as much about the airplane as pretty much any bell engineer out there. I was blessed. I had the greatest warrant officers in the crowd. We used to laugh one of my guys said he could do the rotationt and land the thing on a dime in the dark. And he could. They were that good. As i say 24 hours a day, seven day as week we didnt have sundays, thursdays or whaurv it was. We just fixed airplanes and loved what they were doing and they did very, very well. One of the more exciting parts of that was recovering downed aircraft. And that ran the gambit. There were airplanes that got shot down we would have togo out and rig and pick up with a chinook or a kraen or whatever and bring it back so it could be salvaged or repaired to fly again. There were airplanes that we to fix on site and i was telling the guys one of the most exciting times i ever had was i went up to a place which was pretty hotly contested piece of ground and we had an airplane that had landed there and had damage to the rotor blades and to the tail rotor. So my chief Technical Inspector got and i got dropped off and we spent the next two or three hours to get enough battle repair to bring it home. And i was putting duct tape on the rotor blades where it holes were and frances was fixing the tail rotor. He had to faks tail rotor in the field. Probably not another man in the army could have done that. Standing on a 55gallon drum trying to change the tail rotor on that airplane and the bad guys started lobbing mortar shells into the base. Fortunately were on the other side. But it gets your attention. So we jump over and run a ditch and the gun fire would go away and wed go back and do our thing. After about the third iteration i said to frances i think theyre having more fun with this than anything else. So we might as well finish the airplane and we did and off we went. Thats just a quick run on the maintenance parts of it. Again we cant give enoughf thanks to the warpts that work so hard and the other group that often gets over looked is the run who but the wives and the families we didnt have cell phone s no way to communicate with them for it most part. We were too busy, folks, hawn to say goodness to think about it. I dont remember getting shot or killed but my wife did and she thought about it every day as did all of these guys wives and their mothers and their families. So i just and forever. [ applause ] echoing joe, my young wife of four months dropped me off in november of 1965 and last august we celebrate our 52nd. Anniversary but all you wives up there, you get kudos, you really do. And my wife suffered through. Like joe said they didnt know. I know my wife woke up one morning or in the night with terrible pain in the knee. She knew i had been shot, which i wasnt. But she didnt know that and she didnt know that for weeks. So like joe said they endured, they suffered and they endured and good for you. I tell you. The wives get a round of applause. Jerry, mr. Phelps. Jerry, like i said 101st and i think it was one of the things he started flying was an 086 gun ships and ill let him tell that story and what that was like. I arrived in vietnam and assigned to Charley Company 101, the black widows. Flew hewy slicks for about two months. With they called down and said they asked for volunteers to fly it 086 for the third brigade. So i volunteered for that and i went up to join it Head Quarters company, camp evans, vietnam. We started flying the 086 with a mini gun on the left side and the door gunner in the right rear and a few hand grenades. And wed go out. Our typical day would start first light in the morning. Wed do recon around camp evans, looking for any targets the ground radar and sensors had picked up it night before. Many times it was just waterer buffalo, stuff like that. But every now and then wed find a few bad guys and in our unit we had had six u 86s. And uh 1s were more command and control. We also a blues platoon. When one of the 086s went out and found some enemy activity, we could install or insert the blues platoon to develop the situation. And at that time they were fully armed, carried very few rations, just bullets and rations. We call another infantry platoons and companies and wed pull our people out at night. After we completed these recons in the morning, wed either marry up with another 086 gun ship and wed be assigned to maybe an ao to recon and develop the situation in other areas or if there was a mission came in from a Ground Support unit that was in contact and needed some aerial support, we would go help them out as much as we could. We could also marry up with the ara cobra. Which really give us a little bit of fire power there. So wed go down and hunt the tree tops. Look around at what we could find. When we developed something, wed call in for it cobras to take care of the situation. And that was pretty much our routine every day. We did this area perimeter every morning and we worked anywhere from the dmz, south to vasovagal, birches garden, eelgales nest, up by the rock pile in the dmz, vandagriffe, the marine base. The marines built vand griffe in the valley and the mountains on both sides were own fwhied bad guys. So whenever we landed there, we took fire. But it was very fulfilling job. I enjoyed doing it and i was extremely lucky. I was pretty good. I openinly g shot down one time but we made it through, went back and got another helicopter and took off again. So its about our day there and i ended up with about 950 combat hours. Thank you, jerry. [ applause ] jerry 950 hours. I think it average helicopter pilot in vietnam probably flew a thousand hours and that is a lot of time. That is a lot of time in a year and its all pretty much combat. From the time you lifted off you, could be shot anytime. So think that was the average time that the pilots flew over for. And when i introduced ed, when i first looked through their bios, i saw where ed hughes flew. He was in vietnam in 1971 and he participated in lam som 719 and i dont know if you know the history of vietnam war but lam som 719 was primarily the South Vietnam army operation. But that time the vet muization of the war was starting. The lot of the military u. S. Military were standing down. So they did have some military support but they werent the primary units in this operation. And it was the largest combat assault operation in the history of the entire vietnam war. And there was an incursion into laos to cut off the supply line and they used 276 hewies. And then i dont know how many cobras but im sure there were several hundred and of that group, 168 helicopters were shot down. I think going in wasnt so bad. Its always it picking up and the pz. The lz sometimes not so bad. But the pzs, the pick up zone, oh, boy, thats when you sweated it. So anyway, im going to let ed tell us hiz story about nam som 719. I showed up in c, had hulai. Thank you. Senator mccain, when you look back 50 years ago when your plane went down in hanoi and the last 50 years, what today, in your opinion, are the legacies of vietnam, good and bad
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