Pacific Stars and Stripes information
for NVA helicopters
For date 680619
Quang Tri Province, I Corps, South Vietnam
Location, Dong Hoa
Description: 19Jun68(Wed)-North Viets May Be Using Copters
SAIGON (UPI & S&S) - Unidentified aircraft, believed to be enemy helicopter, have been spotted and fired on by U.S. Navy vessels near the eastern end of the Demilitarized Zone, the U.S. military command in Vietnam said Monday night. If they are enemy copters, it marks the first time they have been used in the war. The report comes on the heels of rumors that a Communist copter gunship was responsible for the sinking of a Navy Swift boat, the PCF 19, at 1:30 a.m. Sunday a few miles below the DMZ. It was the first U.S. gunboat lost in the war. Early reports on the sinking indicated it was the work of Communist shore batteries above the DMZ. The boat went down about a mile offshore, four miles below the DMZ. Five of the seven crewmen were listed as missing. The other two were picked up. A South Vietnamese general said Monday U.S. warplanes shot down seven North Vietnamese copters from the skies around the DMZ. Lt. Gen Hoang Xuan Lam, commander of South Vietnam's (northern) I Corps, said two of the copters were shot down over South Vietnam and five more over the north in two separate night-time battles Sunday. Lam also said there had been reports, still unconfirmed, that a Communist jet airplane, possibly a Russian made MIG interceptor, buzzed the frontier area Sunday. Lam said two of the copters went down on the south side of the buffer zone between North and South Vietnam. A U.S. radar installation at Dong Ha, about seven miles south of the border, picked up the Communist copters early Sunday, he said American jets swept in and blasted three of them from the skies, Lam said. Sunday night the copters returned and this time Allied troops at a string of military bases along the DMZ saw them, the general said, American warplanes, believed to be flown by Air Force pilots based at Da Nang shot four of them down, according to Lam. Two of these, he said were pair that fell into South Vietnam. The helicopters, believed to be of the ML4 model built in the Soviet Union and exported by the Russians to numerous other nations since its development in 1952, "are probably hidden in the various jungle sites around the Dong Hoa area," Lam said. In Monday night's announcement a U.S. military spokesman said positive identification of the aircraft had been impossible because the spotting was at night. He said the "UFOs" had been spotted flying low "in the vicinity of the eastern end of the DMZ, above the Ben Hai River." This would put them on the Communist side of the demarcation line. There was the mention of time in the announcement only that it had been dark. The Navy vessels fired on the unidentified aircraft with unknown effect, the spokesman said. He said a daylight aerial reconnaissance operation had been started to seek wreckage or other evidence that could determine if the aircraft were copters.
The source for this information was 6806PSS.AVN supplied by Les Hines 3/97
Additional information is available on CD-ROM.
Please send additions or corrections to: Gary Roush Email address: webmaster@vhpa.org
Return to panel index
Return to Helicopter Pilot KIA index
Return to VHPA Home Page
Copyright © 1998 - 2023 Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association
Date posted on this site:
05/13/2023