"Psy.-ops" and using a Huey as bait

I don’t remember the Kilo designation for a mission called “Psy.-ops”, or psychological operations. Prior to mission launch, a set of huge speakers on aluminum booms were installed on the Huey. The speakers stuck out over the skids and were attached to a powerful amplifier in the back. An interpreter sat in back and during the mission and would speak from a script encouraging the gooks to surrender, or “Chu Hoi” adding that they would be well treated and well fed as POW’s. We also carried leaflets that contained the same message and even offered monetary rewards that we’d throw out over the jungles and other likely looking areas. I flew this mission five or six times and never drew fire. That changed abruptly one evening after about an hour of the interpreter doing his thing and chucking out the Chu Hoi leaflets. We drew fire like this regularly after an uneventful hour or more at the beginning of the mission and we started to see a trend developing. We also noted that the normal bored expression of the interpreter changed to one of grinning and laughing just prior to taking fire. A Lt. Col. flew with us on one of these missions once as an observer and he was fluent in the Vietnamese language. After receiving fire and returning to base camp, he explained that the interpreter apparently got bored with the script and launched into an ad-lib message of his own design. His message included remarks about the enemy’s wives, mothers and sisters carrying on with other men, women, monkeys and water buffalo back home. He also remarked about their fathers and brothers activities as well. I guess he got quite graphic during his dialog and was obviously pleased with the results. By this time we always flew the mission with gunship cover as we took fire so often. We quit flying Chu Hoi soon thereafter but flew a modification of it for a while with mixed results.

Since Psy. op's didn’t cause legions of gooks to march in to be voluntarily incarcerated, it certainly did tempt them to fire on us, compromise their position and allow the gun ships to engage. From this experience, we devised a new mission that capitalized on what we learned.Gambler Guns UH-1B "Hog" Gunship

The mission consisted of a UH-1H and a fire team, (two gun ships) or heavy fire team, (three gun ships). We would launch in the evening as the sun was setting since this was the most prevalent time to take fire for some reason. The UH-1H would act as “bait” and fly about 100 feet over the jungle canopy at 50 – 60 knots with all our navigation lights on bright. The gun ships took up an orbit about a half mile away and wait for us to take fire. The gooks could not resist this tempting target and fired on us with little restraint. Upon receiving fire, the gunner and crew chief would drop smoke grenades then we’d clear the area as fast as possible and call the gun ships to identify the smoke color and clear them in hot. They’d roll in on the smoke and hose down the area with minigun and 2.75 rockets. Sometime the gun ships would take fire too and when they were “Winchester” or all ordinances expended, we would call in artillery on the area. Occasionally, we used “Spooky” to engage the target. Since this mission ended in darkness, we seldom got a confirmed assessment of KIA, (killed in action) or battle damage. What this mission did accomplish was to almost completely stop the gooks from shooting at us in the evening as had been their habit. They learned pretty quickly not to compromise their position.