The following stories are recollections of members of the Vietnam
Heliocopter Flight Crewmembers Network who were present when North
Vietnames Army rockets slammed into the ammunition storage area.
Russ Warriner
The date was 5/20/68 and this is when C 2/20th area got really messed up
and most A/C were so messed up that they all were grounded for repairs.
When things first started to happen Jim Krull and Tommie Rolf and one
crew chief were on the flight line. Jim Krull had just done a
preflight to the A/C he was to fly and Rolf was getting his gear into the
one he was to fly in Krull yelled to him to get over and help him get at
least one A/C off the ground. They cranked and took off with the crew
chief that was there. When things slowed down they landed and had just
gone to the bunker when the Ammo dump went up. A 155mm round was blown
from the dump accross the compound and came through the bunker roof
hitting Tommie Allen Rolf in the head (may
he rest in pease) and fell over onto Jim Krulls leg. No one else was
hurt although there were several pilots there at the time. Some where I
have a photo of this round after in lay in the bunker a while. Tommie
Allen Rolf was a new Warrant Officer straight out of flight school and
charm school. Had been in C Battery for only a day or two.
Ed Donovan(C/2-20 ARA)
I was one of I think only two aircraft to take off during the
ammo dump blow. Not sure who the second a/c belonged to but it appeared
to be from the 227th's area. Interesting attempted take off by that
huey, I could see it come up & head towards the perimeter fence when a
blow occured & the a/c went straight into the ground. Did not explode but
no more movement was seen. My rotor was not turning yet. The decision
to launch a BlueMax a/c came from Div Arty. down to C-Btry, I was the
unit IP and so was the volunteer to try the launch. Obviously I made it,
what a sight from the air! What a rush getting to the a/c, & started, &
off the ground
It rates way up there on the non-shooting pucker trips. Stayed up in the
air all night refuling Norh at B-Btry I believe that was at Sharon
(possible crs on the name of the LZ.) I was relaying data back to our
commo as to if any incoming was also a fact. Never saw any flashes out
of the ammo dump area. Were the biggest explosions I have ever seen. As
I understand it only one American fatality occured. It was a Warrant in
our unit that was the victim; I had not yet even finished his in country
checkout. A 155 round w/nose plug still in came down through the B-Btry
pilots bunker (we thought it was 122 proofed) and as I understand the
round just broke thru and fell on his head killing him instantly. Sad
way to go; in a "safe bunker" Have to tell you I definitely had a
different view of the "Big Blow"
Joe Potvin (A/227)
We were directly across the flight line from the dump so we took a
real beating, I remember right after the two? rockets came in that when
we got out of the bunkers we looked over to the dump and noticed smoke
and some small arms cooking off. About five minutes later a fire truck
went racing down the road to the dump and got within a few hundred feet
when something bigger
cooked off. That truck went faster in reverse back up the road than it
came forward down the road.
I spent the evening in the COs bunker with Jay Dirnberger Clyde
French the ops officer. The CO and XO were stuck in the Battalion Bunker
as they were attending the daily Bn briefing at the time the party
started. They deedeed those bunkers and hotfooted it across the flight
line about 11:00PM when they started to cave in, Bn was surrounded by the
ammo dump and MoGas
POL so it really got creamed. Maj. Peterson, our CO picked up a piece of
schrapnel running across the flight line, pretty leathal envioronment
outside.
The command bunker had curved entrances and grenade traps built in,
I was sitting halfway up the entrance when the big one went up...got
blown down into the bottom of the bunker by the concussion, lit up like
daylight in the bottom of the bunker.
Next day when we crawled out there was a split open 8" shell laying
on top of the bunker, crap everywhere. Biggest problem were the M-79
rounds laying all over the place...couldn't tell whether they were armed
or not. B Co pilot kick an armed one thru his tent the next day, got a
ticket home.
` Met him 10-12 years ago...he was flying for the Indiana NG but
needed a cane
due to the foot injury. I found a smouldering M106 recoiless rifle round
laying in my bunk
Quite a night. My brother(Bob Potvin) said they watch us cook off a
night from up in Quang Tri thought we were all dead.
Larry Russell(B/227):
I managed to get shot own earlier that day, east of Quang Tri,
CA'n someArvns. Took one round up the tailpipe. Due to superb PT :-)))
set it down with only a broken hinge when I pulled the emerg handle on
the door. My side was near the tree line!!
Later that day when good ole 228th brought it back, we were surprised at
how little damage there was. (I wasn't) One round had wiped out the
turbine blades. Maint said they'd have it up the next day! HA! Left it
parked on top of the flight line OUTSIDE of a revetment - broadside to
the ammo dump!
Guess what............I have some photos of Evans the next morning, I
plan to put them on the homepage as I work on the 227th pages.
If you check out that page now you'll see a photo of about 15 shell
shocked pilots from B-227th the next day. Of my two tours in Nam -
that night (day) stands out the most. (goto b227.org)
After getting blown from a trenchline, sucking CS gas for a couple of
hours, crawling over a dead ARVN (thought it was a sapper!!! as NO
indigenous people were allowed on Evans at night!) Watching all of
B/227ths tents burn down (cept mine and I think the ole mans), I finally
wound up in the 228th TOC. Then as I was sitting there in nothing but
fatigue pants and ho chi
minh sandals............some Major came in asking for RLOs as we might
have to defend the base camp.................damn.....and I thought I had
finally found safety. A toast to you Pat Murphy and your 228th pals.
Saved my life TWICE!
Dave Greene:
We (B/227th) were right next to the division ammo dump (about 75 yds.).
When the CS got blown upwind by the first big boom, it was coming back
through our area. I HATED that stuff, so I ended up going out into that
firestorm to get everybody's gas mask. Visibliity was real good since
the first blast took away all of our tents. Got mine, then started
rounding up everyone elses. I was at the end of the GP medium temt
closest to the fire when the second blast went
off. It blew me through the air to the other end of the tent. (Does
anyone know how big a GP Medium tent is? I felt that I was in the air
for about two years, but it probably wasn't quite that long. I remember
thinking that it was a real pisser that I- a helicopter pilot - was going
to die on the ground. It was long enough) I landed on the sandbag wall
around the other end of the tent.
That broke my reentry speed. When I came to, (about 10 seconds later), I
was lying on my back, looking up at the fireball rising in the air.
Someone told me later that the fireball topped out at 15,000 ft. and was
quite beautiful. From underneath, it certainly was spectacular.
Multicolors, with stuff flying out in all directions. I admired it for a
time, then the old brain turns over once.
It says to me "Everything that goes up must come down. Get under
something." So I pulled a sqaure of tent canvase lying nearby (about two
square feet) over me. Brain turns over one more time about 30 seconds
later and says "No, that isn't going to be enough!" So, with diminished
brain power (I've only had two consecutive thoughts sofar) I stand up and
walk back to the bunker with all that stuff whizzin by me. I still had
the gas masks in my hand! I toss them down
into the bunker and sort of fall face first into the bunker myself.
Everybody is pissed at me! What? What? Oh, I forgot to mention, I am
stone deaf now too, in addition to being stone stupid! They are mad
because they think I am dead, since I didn't respond when they were
shouting at me. Well, I was busy, admiring the fireball at that time.
All the gas masks are now being used. Where's mine, damnit. Shared a gas
mask with George Smith. That is a really
stupid thing to try and ends up being tottaly usless to both people.
Steve Harper has taken a piece of shrapnel in the leg, and when
soneone comes by to tell us to evacuate, we take him with us (at his
insistance), and drop him off at an aid station farther away. Finally
felt safe somewhere down in the 228ths area, about 1/2 mile from the
fire.
I heard estimates that the big blasts (7 of them) were entire
revetments being cooked off after being surronded by fire. They said
that each blast was about 200,000 lbs of explosive going off at once,
with the second blast being the largest. It was certainly my personal
favorite. 10,800,000 pounds of ammunition were destroyed that night.
We had NO helicopters the next morning. The entire Cav was just
about brought to its knees by one (or two or three) rockets that night.
When they rebuilt the ammo dump they put it away from most of the
inhabited areas of Camp Evans. Good thinking, Why didn't I think of
that.
Mel Canon(B/227):
I remember the night of May 19th, '68 very well. As mentioned by either
Larry Russell or Steve Harper earlier...I was in the shower when the
first rocket impacted at Camp Evans. I dee dee'd to the tent and by the
time I got there all hell had broken loose. I bypassed my bunk and went
directly into the bunker with just the towel and shower shoes on. Spent
the whole damn night that way...well, almost, lost the towel a time or
two. I remember David Green being deafened by the explosion that took
out our tent, I remember Steve Harper going outside for some reason and
taking a piece of shrapnel in the leg...but the most vivid memory that
night...besides the
stinging crotch from the CS that infiltrated the bunker...was Terry
Glendy taking out an ARVN SGT.
We were inundated with explosion after explosion for most of the
night.Sometime during the early part of the night we heard the guns on
the perimeter open up and later heard gooks talking in gook outside the
bunker.
A couple of us went into the trench of the bunker with weapons to check
things out. I remember an ominous figure stepping into the entrance of
the tent (that was no longer there...but the sandbags around the entrance
were).
Terry yelled something as I recalled that this figure went into a crouch.
Then Terry cut loose with, what I believe was, a Thompson .45. The
figure fell backwards and lay in front of the tent entrance the rest of
the night.
Sometime during the night our bunker began to weaken from the massive
explosions and we evacuated, moving to other bunkers in the area. I
still had only the towel and shower shoes and by this time my living area
in the tent had totally disappeared. We all hauled ass out of the bunker
and I don't know where any of the others went. I ran south to some sort
of command bunker and there was someone else with me. I remember sitting
on the floor of this well fortified hotel of a bunker with it's ammo box
walls and PSP/Sandbag roof feeling like it was just a matter of time
before I died.
I remember sitting on the floor of the bunker and feeling the vibration
in my butt as each explosion rocked the compound. Pallets of 8" powder
bags were exploding all at once and when the things would go off I could
feel the ground shake against my ass before the concussion invaded the
bunker. The roof seemed to lift up with each explosion and dirt would
fall all over the place. I was never so damn scared in all my life as I
was that night.
At first light I ambled out of the bunker and made it back to the B/227th
area looking for something to wear besides the towel that was mostly
caked mud by that time. The whole place was one eerie junkpile of
fragments of shell casings and mangled helicopters. The ground was so
covered with spent and unspent ordinance that mearly walking around was
dangerous. Several
people from the camp were injured from exploding devices as the tried to
walk around...setting stuff off as they walked near it.
I made my way back to the place where my tent had been and there by the
entrance was an ARVN SGT...cut nearly in two by the impact of the .45
rounds he taken when Terry popped him. I remember that he laid there
amongst all the shrapnel and mangled tents for what seemed like hours
before anyone removed the body.
Terry just came up online, by the way and will be joining our net soon.
He'll have just a vivid a memory of that night as any of us that went
through it. I'd never been that close to ground zero of such a large
explosion before and it was a long time before I got over the impact of
that
night. Someone indicated that it might have been me that tried to take
off that night and was blown into the ground...it wasn't but if I'd not
been in the shower when it all started...if I'd had some clothes
on...I'd have certainly made a dash for a ship and tried like hell to
get off the ground.
That was a living hell for too many hours. I'd have opted for a chance
to get airborne, given the opportunity.
Don't remember how many of us were in the bunker that night before we
evacuated it but I do remember that we had only enough gas masks for
about half of us and we were passing them around to share. They must
have been the masks that David Green managed to bring back into the
bunker. The same explosion that deafened him caught me in the bunker
entrance trying to get
to some clothing from my bunk. I was blown through the trench and across
the entire bunker by that explosion. When I had enough courage to stick
my head out again...there was no tent...nor much of anything that had
been in it either.
B/227 lost all their tents that night...and all their aircraft. We
managed to get one up and running next day and Jerry Colonna and I flew
down to DaNang and conned the Marines out of some GP Medium tents. Then
commenced the rebuilding of Camp Evans. I was about 45 days from DEROS
at that time.
Pat Murphy(C/228)
Well, it just so happened that my ship was the furthest from the dump,
and I had minor damage to one rotor blade and some holes in the sheet
metal in a few places. The next morning we repaired her and I got
airborne. However, the rest of the company did not fare so well. We had
4 birds totally destroyed, as I remember, and the rest of the ships
(except for mine) were damaged enough that they took some time to repair.
I believe that I was the only airworthy Hook in C Co. for the next three
days or so.
I have a distinct recollection of that 1st BIG blast. I remember that we
were sitting on our helmets just outside a bunker in the dark. Suddenly,
it lit up so bright that I could see the whiskers on the face of the man
across from me, and almost simultaneously, we were picked up by the
concussion and thrown to the ground. I remember looking up at the rising
column of fire and seeing large black objects tumbling over and over high
above me. Being familiar with
with the theory of "What goes up must come down.", I lost little time
visiting that nearby bunker I mentioned.
You must remember the debris lying all around thenest day. You could not
take a step without stepping on a piece of shrapnel. When asked how it
was "over there", I always tell people, "Noisy!".