Information on U.S. Army helicopter OH-23G tail number 64-15194
The Army purchased this helicopter 0565
Total flight hours at this point: 00000665
Date: 06/18/1967 MIA-POW file reference number: 0737
Incident number: 67061814.KIA
Unit: HHC 196 LIB
South Vietnam
UTM grid coordinates: BT275115 (To see this location on a map, go to https://legallandconverter.com/p50.html and search on Grid Reference 49PBT275115)
Original source(s) and document(s) from which the incident was created or updated: Defense Intelligence Agency Reference Notes. Defense Intelligence Agency Helicopter Loss database. Also: 0737 ()
Loss to Inventory
Crew Members:
P MAJ LEMMONS WILLIAM E BNR
OB SGM GUILLORY EDWARD JOSEPH BNR
OB MAJ MCKITTRICK JAMES CLIFFORD BNR
REFNO Synopsis:
SYNOPSIS: SFC Edward Guillory, Lt. William Lemmons and Maj. James McKittrick were aboard an OH23 Raven helicopter on a visual recon mission operating in Quang Tin Province on June 18, 1967. They were to spot artillery targets for the Artillary Battery that McKitrick and Guillory were attached to.
At 1845 hours, the helicopter was declared missing. Extensive searches were conducted that night aided by artillery flares and aircraft mounted searchlights, but no trace of the aircraft or crew was found. In the next few days several crash sites were reported and searches made, but all efforts were fruitless.
William E. Lemmons and James C. McKittrick were promoted to the rank of Major and Edward J. Guillory was promoted to their rank of Sergeant Major during the period they were maintained missing.
Source: Compiled by Homecoming II Project 15 October 1990 from one or more of the following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews.
War Story:
Tue Mar 03 1998
Final Addenda -- Lt. Bill Lemmons
I have some background information on 1st Lt. William Lemmons who became
MIA in June 18, 1967. I was a fellow pilot with Bill in the 196th Lt. Inf.
Bde. By chance, I was serving as the aviation duty officer at the brigade
tactical operations center (BTOC) the day he went missing, and I helped
sound the alarm that Bill was overdue.
The first realization that one of our aircraft might be missing came
suddenly when the infantry unit for whom Bill was flying called me at the
BTOC. The infantry officer asked, "Did the aircraft return directly to the
brigade heliport for refueling without dropping our passengers off, first?"
I immediately called our heliport, about five miles away at Ky Ha, where
the operations clerk did a ramp check for the aircraft. He called back
several minutes later to say, "No, the aircraft isn't back yet". This was
about 1730 hours. With nightfall only an hour or so away, we needed to move
fast.
We scrambled our two UH-1 (Huey) aircraft to look for Bill and his
passengers in the area we thought he should have been flying. At about 1845
hours, as you reported, we were into a full-blown night time emergency. We
got helicopter gunship and flareship support from a nearby unit and
continued looking until about 2300 hours. We suspended the search that night
for two reasons. First, the area in which we were searching was incredibly
dark with hilly and mountainous terrain. It was remote and, so, had no
ground lights from peasant shacks or roads or even ponds to reflect
moonlight and starlight. Without a full moon, it was like flying into a
gunny sack. Spatial disorientation and flight into the ground or a mountain
would be easy.
The second reason we stopped looking that night was because we almost lost
other aircraft. The supporting flareship, which carried many crates of
magnesium flares, was hit by ground fire from a village in the dark below.
Normally, crewmen in the rear of a flareship prepare and arm flares one at a
time and then, very carefully, throw them out. After clearing the
helicopter, the flares' small parachutes open and the flares float to earth.
On their way down, they might light the ground enough to see survivors or,
at least, a glint of metal from an aircraft wreckage. When the flareship
started taking groundfire, one of the flares inside the aircraft was hit by
a bullet, ignited, and started to burn. Realize that these flares burn at
about 1000 degrees Fahrenheit. Within seconds the temperature of the one
flare burning out of control would ignite the others still in their crates
and the aircraft would have exploded or -- more precisely -- would have
vaporized.
I was beside our unit commander who was coordinating the search from our
radio in our BTOC. The flareship pilot keyed his microphone and yelled that
he had a flare burning inside his aircraft. With his mike button still keyed
from tension, we heard his increasingly more panicked yells to his crewmen.
The radio was filled with "Kick the flare out ... Kick it out ... GET IT OUT
... WE"RE ON FIRE ...GOD, HELP ...GET IT OUT" . With even a single flare
burning inside the helicopter cabin, the light would have been like that
staring into a bank of stadium floodlights from three feet away. The heat
from the flare would have been rising constantly and putting your boot near
it to give it a kick would have been like sticking your foot into a furnace.
In about five seconds -- which seemed like an hour -- the flare was kicked
out. Nevertheless, the ground fire from the enemy below continued. After a
minute or so, when things got a little more quiet, the gunship flight leader
reported over the radio that it was the heaviest fire he'd seen -- let alone
received -- in all the time he'd been flying in Vietnam. He asked for
permission to retaliate and our commander replied, "Level the village". In
Vietnam, where we fought a "politically correct" war, this was a very
unusual reply. In fact, the gun flight leader was so surprised to hear it
that he asked our commander to repeat the clearance. The commander did. Both
gunships expended all their ammunition on the enemy hidden below. By then,
all the search aircraft needed refueling and the gunships, rearming.
Because of this -- with the real threat we might lose several more aircraft
that night -- the search was suspended until first light in the morning. It
was then after midnight. We all hoped that Bill and his passengers were
alive and could evade the enemy until we resumed searching in few hours. If
anyone slept that night it was only because we knew the tasks that faced us
when the sun came up.
We searched for days -- again, like you reported -- without luck. Nothing,
not one single trace of even the aircraft was ever found. This alone was too
unusual to believe. We crisscrossed all the ground we thought Bill and his
passengers would have flown over and, depute the thick jungle, we should
have seen at least something left from a wreckage. For weeks, whenever any
of our aircraft flew near that area, crewmen would fly missions with one eye
on the ground and an ear peeled for a rescue signal or Bill's missing
aircraft. Nothing was ever seen or heard.
----------------------------
Several months later -- again, as if by chance for me -- I drew a mission to
fly the brigade intelligence officer (S-1) to Tam Ky. This was the
Vietnamese administrative center just north of Chu Lai, the brigade's
headquarters. A Chu Hoi -- a Vietcong who turned himself in to the South
Vietnamese government -- was claiming that he knew something about "a downed
pilot and two passengers". After landing at Tam Ky, I accompanied the S-1
into the administrative center. I wanted to see a Vietcong up close, even if
he was one who had just surrendered. A moment before his questioning
started, my eyes locked with those of this former Vietcong. I will never
forget my surprise at the look of hate in that dishevelled man's eyes. I
thought, "That's strange. Here's a guy asking for mercy and now willing to
work from his former enemies while looking like he'd still like to kill
them". I excused the look of hate to his fear and left the building.
During the flight home, the intelligence officer told me what he'd heard.
The Chu Hoi reported that "... Bill's aircraft was not shot down (evidently,
then, it landed because of maintenance problems). When a Vietcong unit
advanced on the pilot and his two passengers, a firefight started. Bill and
his passengers took refuge in an old bomb crater and, during the firefight,
the VC lobbed a grenade into their position. All were killed. The aircraft
was then dismantled and hidden in a river".
The location that the Chu Hoi gave where all this happened we now realized
contributed to why -- at least during the first few search hours -- we never
spotted Bill, his passengers, or the aircraft. The area over which Bill had
been flying was an area known to be infested with VC and North Vietnamese
solders. It was, in fact one of their staging areas. This area was several
large valleys to the West of Chu Lai and, therefore, outside of normal
artillery support range. Because of this, our aviation unit had made an
operating procedure for the area. No pilot was to fly over that area unless
escorted by helicopter gunships. That Bill was flying in the area may tell
you something about who Bill was as a person.
Bill may have been the nicest guy in our unit. He was a religious person,
who didn't smoke, drink, never lost his temper, or use bad language. Because
of this he was teased -- sometimes more than a little -- by the rest of us.
The day he disappeared we believe he'd been asked to fly over that area by
his two passengers. Because their infantry unit planned to assault this
dangerous area in a week or so, the passengers -- a senior sergeant and a
major -- wanted to take a quick look at the area just to see what it looked
like. Bill was the kind of guy who was always ready to help. Perhaps,
instead of saying "no", because getting a gunship escort would be time
consuming, Bill decided to accommodate his infantry passengers. If that is
the area in which Bill went down, we couldn't have found him that first
night. We weren't looking there. It was outside our usual operational area.
However, because now we see from records on the POW-MIA Database that Bill
perhaps didn't die in a firefight with the enemy, another possibility
exists. The Chu Hoi who reported these events could have been a "plant". A
Vietcong who purposely defected only to spread disinformation about Bill's
real fate. If true, this Chu Hoi wanted us to think Bill and his passengers
were dead so that we would stop looking for him. This might make it easier
for the VC to transport him among their camps. Either way, it's not very
pleasant thinking about what happened that day and, worse, the events for a
long time afterwards.
I've never forgotten Bill and I hope this addition to his biographical
information may help his family or friends. Should anyone want to contact me
directly, please do. If my email address should change, my postal address
should always remain valid.
Regards,
Fred Startz
196th Lt. Inf. Bde 1966-67
Jakarta, Indonesia
start@idola.net.id
PO Box 4160
Jakarta 12160
Indonesia
=========================
Bio, Lemmons, William E.
Fred Startz covered Bill Letnmons pretty well with just a few exceptions. His
OH-23 helicopter was not found several valleys over from where we normally
operated. Fred had returned to the States when we got word that a farmer knew
the location of the downed helicopter. I was chosen to go get that farmer,
along with his ARVN interpreter and locate the aircraft. The farmer had
difficulty getting his bearings from above, obviously because he had never
flown before, so we went low level. When we were approaching the area where
he said the aircraft was hidden, we began to receive a lot of automatic small
arms fire. He kept pointing down excitedly and saying "there" in Vietnamese,
but we saw nothing.
We flew out of the area and gained altitude and decided to fly further west
and come back the other way along the water at low level. It was then that we
saw the rotor blades sticking out of the water. We kept going as if we saw
nothing and flew the farmer back to the ARVN compound. We went home and
reported where the aircraft was located, and it was right where we had gotten
most of the enemy fire from on the first night of the search for Bill.
The next day an Infantry company, and two very scared volunteers, were
airlifted into the area to recover Bill's aircraft. A sling was rigged up and
a CH-47 came in, picked it up, and flew it back to Chu Lai. After the CH-47
left, I got a chance to look around the area. You could see where the NVA/VC
dragged it to the water. As I walked further back, I saw where Bill had
autorotated. I was the unit maintenance test pilot, and I smiled at his
ability to put it down that nicely with two additional passengers on board,
not an easy job in that old antiquated aircraft. We were airlifted out by one
of our Hueys and went right to Chu Lai to look at the aircraft. It was a
mess, especially after being submerged under water for months. Although the
fully intact OH-23 was full of bullet holes, obviously the NVA/VC wanted to
make it useless, Bill went down due to an engine failure; which was documented
by the maintenance people.
This would normally have ended the story, but for a strange development. The
grunts (and I use that term with respect) always laughed at me for
volunteering to go on that combat assault. About one month later one of them
asked me a question that almost floored me. I had just brought some of them
back from working an operation that was a lot further west than they had ever
worked before. He said..."Have you ever heard of a guy named Clem?" I asked
him why and he said that they had found the name "Clem" scratched into the
side of a destroyed NVA truck way back in the valley. Let me explain. CPT
Jim Yoho, who was in our unit, gave a lot of us nicknames, and "Clem" was the
one that he gave to Bill, and Bill sure hated that nickname. This told me
something, and I reported it right away. I feel strongly that Bill was a POW
and I got in touch with Jim Yoho several years later, and he agreed that the
name "CLEM" scratched in that truck was Bill's way of saying..."ITS ME!"
What appalls me the most is the totally wrong information that our government
has on this incident. What happened to all of our reports? They even list
the aircraft as unrecovered. If I had a map, I could still show exactly where
Bill went down.
John Simpers
johnlynn@natco.southshore.com
02/04/2001
This record was last updated on 02/08/2001
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