Apocalypse Now has one of the most famous scenes in war cinema: the attack by helicopters against a Vietnamese town to the rhythm of Ride of the Valkyries, by Richard Wagner. Long before Francis Ford Coppola devised that sequence on the big screen, these aircraft had become one of the icons of that war in Southeast Asia.
The evolution of military helicopters cannot be understood without analyzing the long conflict in Vietnam. It was the first war in which these vehicles played a prominent role, and since then, they have become an indispensable tool for any contemporary army.
Helicopters began to be developed at the end of World War II, although at the time they were little more than prototypes. They were contemplated for transportation and observation, but were not used as a first-rate offensive weapon. Everything would change with the conflicts that came in the decades after 1945.
In the Korean War (1950-1953), its use by the US Army remained limited to non-combatant roles: artillery observation, medical evacuation or supply transport. The Marines went a step further than the Army and used them closer to the front. For example, on September 20, 1951, 224 Marines aboard several Sikorsky HRS-1s made the first landing with this type of aircraft in a combat zone.
This milestone marked the way for the wars that would come later, especially in insurgent conflicts, such as Vietnam. Armies discovered helicopters as a way to quickly transport troops to combat zones. France began to use them in its colonial wars, although on a very limited scale: for example, it would only deploy about three dozen in Indochina between 1954 and 1956, compared to the 11,800 that the Americans would use in the same scenario the following decade.
Why this massive employment? The Pentagon took good note of the lessons learned by the Marines in Korea, and from then on, all branches of the US armed forces incorporated helicopters for a wide variety of missions. In fact, they soon became the most visible face of the American military presence in South Vietnam.
In 1961, when President John F. Kennedy ordered increased aid to Saigon in the form of weapons and advisors, the first helicopter squadrons were deployed as part of that support. Its high mobility was seen as a relevant factor to support the South Vietnamese troops. At the end of that year, thirty-two aircraft operated by four hundred soldiers (including crew and ground support personnel) were already involved in the fight against the Viet Cong guerrillas.
Three years before the first American soldiers arrived on a combat mission, helicopters openly confronted communist guerrillas. It was January 12, 1962, during Operation Chopper. The thirty-two aircraft carried a thousand South Vietnamese soldiers to assault a stronghold of the communist insurgency located ten miles west of Saigon. It was a success: the Viet Cong, surprised, could not react to the airmobile assault.
Thanks to Chopper and other actions, American strategists became convinced that helicopters were an indispensable tool for the conflict in which they were getting involved. In a war without fronts, with fighting at almost any point in the territory, the high mobility offered by these devices allowed troops and materials to be transported in a short time wherever necessary.
The success of Operation Chopper encouraged more devices to be sent to Vietnam. On December 31, 1962, the number of helicopters deployed exceeded two hundred. Throughout the entire US intervention, that figure increased sixty-fold. In addition to transporting troops, heavy weapons and supplies, various armed models also came into action for attack missions.
The most iconic helicopter model in the Vietnam War – like the ones we see in Apocalypse Now – were the Bell UH-1 Iroquois, soon nicknamed Huey. During the conflict, some seven thousand were deployed, which were the main means of transporting troops to the areas of operations. Each one could carry a dozen soldiers. This aircraft remained active in the US forces until 2005, and its heirs have been the also famous UH-60 Blackhawk.
The transport Hueys were accompanied by gunned variants with rocket launchers or grenade launchers – in addition to their side M-60 machine guns – which escorted the troops during their journey and when they were on the ground. Another attack helicopter model that became famous in Vietnam was the AH-1 Cobra, a veteran of future conflicts such as Panama or Iraq, in 1991.
For its part, the HH-3E was used in rescue missions for downed pilots in hostile territories. This saving role and its great size earned it the nickname Jolly Green Giant by the aviators. Duane D. Hackney, pararescueman, participated in two hundred missions and received seventy medals for saving several pilots, making him the most decorated member of the US Air Force to date.
The usual procedure for an airmobile operation was to take troops to a landing zone (known as LZ, for the English acronym for “landing zone”). To facilitate their arrival, the artillery attacked beforehand, and the helicopter gunships used to protect the appearance of the transport aircraft, trying to quell any pockets of Viet Cong resistance.
Once in the LZ, the transport helicopters made rapid rotations so as not to offer a stationary target for a long time. Each device had to disembark the soldiers in a period of between fifteen and thirty seconds and return for more troops, if the mission required it.
Another task in which the Hueys excelled was providing ambulances to evacuate the wounded from the front. It is estimated that they transported around nine hundred thousand people (US military, South Vietnamese, civilians…) who required some type of health care.
The ability to quickly remove soldiers hit by the enemy to field hospitals helped save a good number of lives. In this sense, according to data from the American Veterans Aid association, if in World War II 29% of those wounded in action died, in Korea the percentage dropped to 26% (when this type of missions began), and in Vietnam stood at 19%.
The use of helicopters spread throughout most American units. Some of them were specialized in airmobile tactics, which gave them great operational autonomy to attack the enemy. Specifically, two stood out: the 1st Air Cavalry Division (First Team) and the 101st Airborne (Screaming Eagles). Both with a history of outstanding service in previous conflicts, but who had to adapt to fighting with helicopters.
The importance of these units was soon accredited by participating in the major military actions that the United States launched once it intervened directly in Vietnam starting in 1965. In the battle of the Ia Drang Valley – the first major clash between troops North Americans and North Vietnamese, in mid-November of that year – the 1st Air Cavalry Division was deployed in its helicopters to prevent the communist troops from consolidating their positions in the central highlands; If they achieved this, they would have threatened to cut the territory of South Vietnam in two.
In the Ia Drang Valley, fighting focused on LZ X-Ray and Albany, with very fierce battles. The North Vietnamese troops, superior in number, tried to overwhelm their enemies at those arrival points. The support of artillery, aviation and helicopters was essential so that the US forces were not overwhelmed.
Despite the success, the tough battles in the LZ of the Ia Drang Valley demonstrated that the North Vietnamese army and the Viet Cong had quickly learned to fight against helicopters. Communist forces discovered that the Hueys, due to their lack of armor, were vulnerable to automatic weapons fire. To take them down, a single direct hit from a B-40 grenade launcher, the local version of the Soviet weapon known as RPG, was enough.
The 1st Air Cavalry Division participated in other decisive moments of the war, such as the Tet Offensive (it fought in the Battle of Hué, frustrating the arrival of North Vietnamese reinforcements to the city) or in Operation Delaware, where they mobilized four hundred and fifty helicopters to cut off enemy supply routes on the border with Laos.
For its part, the 101st Division carried out forty-five operations of some magnitude in the seven years it fought in the war. Their high mobility caused the soldiers of the unit to call themselves the “nomads of Vietnam,” as they operated throughout the territory.
As the conflict progressed, U.S. enemies received more useful anti-aircraft weaponry to shoot down those aircraft. Soviet DShKM heavy machine guns stood out, and towards the end of the war the North Vietnamese had more advanced anti-aircraft guns.
The effectiveness of the enemy was seen in the large number of aircraft shot down. Of the 11,800 helicopters deployed, about 5,600 were shot down (of these, about 3,300 were Hueys). Regarding human losses, according to data from Arlington National Cemetery, about 4,800 pilots and crew members died in combat in Vietnam (the number of Americans killed in combat was about 47,000).
The role of helicopters in this war lasted until the last moment. Faced with the collapse of South Vietnam, the United States launched Operation Frequent Wind, which evacuated seven thousand people from Saigon between April 29 and 30, 1975. Aircraft were essential, since the The departure of Americans and their allies by plane was interrupted by attacks by communist forces on the Tan Son Nhut air base.
Despite the great defeat suffered in Vietnam, the US military learned some very important lessons about how to use helicopters. The Pentagon added more aircraft and tactics were developed to make better use of their mobility and firepower. All this work was reflected in the extensive use of these devices in more recent conflicts such as Iraq or Afghanistan.
