A Vietnam Retrospective
PART 9
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Shark training for the new gun pilots included shooting rockets, mini-gun and 40mm cannon in
either a 'free fire' zone or out over the ocean for 'familiarization' to all the systems.
It also included "What if" discussions in order to plan for the unexpected.
  
Above: A little “practice”
and a little “play”. Left: Rocket sight at DFC Meadows. Both right: Shark #242 target practice
with 2.75 rockets out at Sea.
Flying with Captain Mike Ackerman was flying for a purpose. To eliminate enemy. He flew
'low' and 'slow,' as did most of the gunship A/C's. About forty knots tops. He had two
nicknames. His contemporaries in the platoon leaders hootch were heard to refer to him as
"Roger Ramjet" and went so far as to paint it on his hootch door.
Among the Shark pilots and crews, he was "Strack" or Captain Strack. It was not snide or
anyway meant in disrespect. To the contrary, he was strack. If you looked up strack in
the O.D. dictionary, it said "see Mike Ackerman!" Every hair in place and he could run
through mud without getting any on him.
 
Above: Top left- 1970 174th
AHC Yearbook Photo. Top right- Ackermann and Zavales discussing the finer aspects of a
pretzel (Duc Pho "O" Club '70). Bottom: A very frustrating moment. "Socked in" at Khe Sanh and no rocket crates
to be found to load the Shark Team. CPT Ackermann takes his anger out on the photographer
(me)- Feb 1971.
Bob Jansen was the only one I ever heard to call him that to his face! He hadn't had much contact with him and he thought everyone called him that. When he responded with a "Whatever-you-say Captain Strack!" reply to an order that Captain Ackerman had put to him, I thought Ackerman was gonna shit. It made for one of those rather long, uncomfortable silences, where everyone else was saying to themselves: "Oh shit, boy!' Now you've done it!" Maybe not such a good good thing to say to a future Major-General. (Webmaster note: In the August 1999, Mike Ackerman received his third star and promotion to Lieutenant General.)
The respect for Shark 6 Ackerman stemmed from the way he flew, carried himself and that he had been a successful infantry platoon leader with the 1st Cav, in Hue, during the Tet Offensive of '68. He could smell Charlie from the air. He knew where they'd be and when. One day, a little after Thanksgiving of 1970, we were out snoopin' about, north of Hill 411, before a big combat assault, and Ackerman does this sudden, hard right turn and punches off a pair of rockets. They hit dead on into this 10-meter bush and created a 15-meter hole. Inside the hole were four dead NVA.
I was in shock. I asked him on the way into Duc Pho that night, "How did you know there was somebody in there? What do you look for to find them? He tells me: "I just look for their eyes, lookin' back up at me!" No trail or smoke through the trees. Just eyes. Shit! Try that some time. Just driving down the street. See if you can see someone's eyes, just looking through a bush or window at you. It was amazing and something I never was able to apply.
The platoon sergeant was another incredible character. Sgt. Alan Parker was, I believe, doing his 4th tour? He was very much a knowledgeable, supervisor type that not only maintained order among the crews, but also rode along as a gunner for the much junior crewchiefs.
Shark Platoon Sergeant Dale Parker
To me, another of the most memorable moments with the 174th were those good old Shark Scrambles. Sounds like something off a breakfast menu but it was the main reason the Shark gunships were assigned in Duc Pho, to support ground troops. In the operations hootch, there was an electrical switch behind the counter. Anytime an 11th Brigade unit, or any unit for that matter, operating in our AO got into the shit, (contact) the brigade would call operations and have the primary gunship fire team scrambled.
The OPS guy would hit that switch that triggered a deuce-and-half horn that was mounted on the front of the Shark hootch. "Aunk . . . aunk . . . aunk . . . aunk" the thing sounded and the crews would hit the ground running for the flight line. The primary Fire Team Lead A/C would go right into ops for the handoff of grid coordinates, frequency and call sign of the unit in the shit. By the time he made it to the aircraft, fifty yards away, the gunners had untied the blades and the pilots had the aircraft fired up. After take off, everyone would get strapped in and both aircraft would meet on the Shark 'victor" (VHF radio frequency) for a quick briefing on where we were headed.
It was that type of adrenaline rush that was intoxicating to anyone who had the fortune of riding with the Sharks. We'd fly out, day or night and throw 'smoke' on whoever was giving our guys the shit. It was dynamite action, even if it was a false alarm. This same style of "lights and siren" employment led me right into the L.A.P.D. for a career after the Army. You didn't have to sell nothin.' There were those horrible times that made us all hate it, howeer, but then there would always be those indescribable moments that we just lived for it!
On November 22, I was Jim Kinne's co-pilot and we had finished some CA's west of Hill 411. He
wanted to snoop around the Horseshoe where he'd gotten shot up a few weeks before. Scott
Sparks spotted a whole line of NVA, to include a nurse, in a dried up gully and opened up on
them with his 'sixty.' He only got a quick burst off before his gun jammed. Jim wanted to see
where the dinks were and rolled right as they opened up on us.
We must have taken ten hits through the cockpit as plastic and metal flew everywhere. One round
tore through the floor and went right through Jim's cyclic and shattered his left leg, just
below the knee. I can remember his nomex pant leg turning a black, glossy color as it soaked
up the blood. Another round came up through the control panel warning lights and blew them all
to hell. That round continued up and grazed the right side of my neck and cut the audio cord
to my helmet, leaving me incommunicado. Another round went through a large coil of wiring
behind the dash console, knocking off my right foot pedal and slamming into my left boot.
Jim grabbed his left leg with both hands (including the cyclic) and we went into a steep left
bank, which I was able to recover from rather than cartwheeling onto the ground due to our
low altitude. Sgt. Parker threw a colored smoke on the area and Sugar Bear emptied his rockets
on the dinks, at Jim and Sgt. Parker's direction.
I flew the aircraft to Quang Ngai where one of the slicks picked up Kinne with Scott Sparks and
went on to the med pad at Duc Pho. Parker and I stood by until a Chinook hooked out Shark 540,
the "Grim Reaper" UH-1C 65-09540. It was only then that I realized the squishiness in my left boot was blood.
The slug that had taken off my right pedal had only enough velocity to enter the leather boot.
It gave me a rather minor laceration and a sizeable bruise. A couple of stitches closed up my
foot but 540 was not flyable for nearly a month.
 
 
 
All above photos are aftermath photos of 22 Nov 1970, with UH-1C 65-09540 "Grim Reaper", except top left is Jim posing next
to #045, on a better day, just prior to Nov 22. The eighth photo down on right is Jim stateside
in the 1980's.
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End of Part 9 of 20 Parts.
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