More detail on this person: Steve and I were in
the same company in Vietnam, and we flew
Chinooks for C Co, 159th ASHB, 101st Airborne
Div. When we each came home, we ended up in the
same unit a Ft Hood as instrument instructor
pilots. I believe that was A Co, 227th AVN Bn, !st
Cav Div. This information was last updated 05/18/2016
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03/10/2024
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As IP's, we did relatively little in the way of
field maneuvers, as compared to the other
companies in the battalion, but we had to go "camp
out" as we used to call it from time to time.
Steve was short in the Army, as he had applied for
the LAPD as a helicopter pilot, and he had been
accepted. He was doing his last few days before
leaving the Army and going to Los Angeles.
Our company was part of an exercise, which may
have been the Gallant Hand 1973 operation
mentioned in the entry. I don't remember a name.
We were to make a combat assault in front of an
area on Ft Hood that they called Black Mountain.
They had set up bleachers out there, and we
sometimes did shows" for dignitaries when they
visited Ft Hood. On this day the Secretary of
Defense was going to be there. We practiced the
CA the day before, and worked on the timing with
all of the other gunships, tanks, artillery and so
forth. We had a flight of six UH-1's.
On the day Steve was killed, he was flying with
CW2 William Charles Woodard, Jr. We called him
"Woody" of course. As we got ready to go out to
our staging area near Black Mountain, we got word
that the whole area was socked in. As the weather
around the airfield at Ft Hood proper was clear,
we were surprised, but thought that meant we would
scrub the CA for the show. Instead we were told
that we were going to move the CA to another area
just north of the Ft Hood cantonment area called
Lone Mountain. That is close to Anderson
Mountain, but Lone Mountain is where the midair
occurred. We were told that there would not be any
gunships or tanks or artillery at the new
location.
I don't remember who was leading the flight, but
he went and got a briefing, then came back to tell
us that Lone Mountain was a long narrow mountain
with a saddle between two peaks that was wide
enough to accommodate only two aircraft at a time.
We would go in with three flights of two aircraft,
drop off our pax, circle around and come back in
to pick them up again and leave. We went out there
and practiced doing this twice. Steve and Woody,
and me and the CW3 maintenance guy flying with
me (I don't remember his name anymore), were the
last two aircraft in the flight, Yellow 5 and
Yellow 6.
Because we didn't get much practice flying
formation as IP's, we swapped off flying lead and
wing while we practiced this CA. Steve and Woody
flew lead dropping the troops off, and I flew lead
when we went in to pick them up. As I said, we
practiced this twice for timing, waited a few
minutes and then went in to do it for the show".
Drop off went smoothly. We flew off to the north
and out of sight, then swapped lead and wing and
went back in to pick them up again. I called
Yellow 5 & 6 in", the troops jumped on, and I
called Yellow 5 & 6 out and we left. About thirty
seconds after takeoff, my crew chief got on the
intercom and said "Sir, an aircraft just blew up
in midair back behind us!" I called Yellow 6 and
told them I was going to make a slow right turn
because an aircraft had blown up behind us.
Yellow 6 didn't answer.
I called them again as I finished the turn and
looked down to see a UH-1 inverted and crashed
below me, and something else burning about fifty
yards away from the Huey. I knew then why Yellow
6 was not answering me.
I landed between the Huey and the burning thing,
which turned out to be an OH-58. My crew chief
jumped out with a fire extinguisher and put out a
flaming body that was laying a few feet away from
where we landed. Within a few seconds, four troops
came running towards us carrying another soldier
with them. They threw him on a seat in back, my
crew chief jumped on top of him to hold him
inside, and we flew him to Darnell Army Hospital
on Ft Hood.
After dropping off the injured soldier, we flew
back to the crash site and helped the soldiers who
were pulling bodies out of the wreckage. The crew
chief flying with Steve and Woody, Jim Vogt,
survived but had severe head injuries. Steve and
Woody were killed when they hit the ground. Troops
on the ground who witnessed the midair told us
that the Kiowa just flew up the side of the hill
and smashed into the bottom of the Huey as we
took off from the saddle.
So you can see that a "blinding rainstorm" had
nothing to do with the accident. The weather was
clear enough around Lone Mountain to fly the CA
without problems. The only rainstorm may have
been around Black Mountain. The only "blindness"
involved was changing the show location at the
last minute, and I've always guessed that no one
bothered to notify the unit that was operating in
the area that we were coming.
I read a notation that said that the flight leader
observed the Kiowa but did not inform anyone else
in the flight that it was in the area. That is
news to me, as I never heard that story after the
accident. The fact that no one told us about other
traffic in the area is certainly correct. We had
seen no other aircraft anywhere near Lone Mountain
during the practice runs or the flight in to drop
off the troops for the real thing. The fact that
nobody on my aircraft saw the Kiowa means that it
was hugging the side of the mountain and flying up
from underneath us as we took off, just as the
troops on the ground told us later.
As you can see, this accident affected me, and I
remember it well even after all these years. You
see, the Secretary of Defense cancelled his visit
to Ft Hood that day.
From: Ben Brown, CW2, US Army, 1969 - 1974