One Army Chinook Crewman's Experiences in Vietnam Supporting the 101st and the Marines

Peter Paden was aboard a helicopter hovering through a hole in the clouds. As it dropped the rear ramp on a hilltop under fire, he reached for a wounded Marine's hand.

The Marine had stepped on a landmine. Paden's crew from A Company, 159th Assault Support Helicopter Battalion, call sign Pachyderm, took the mission to extract the wounded Marine.

"He slips from my hand and falls on the ground," Paden said. "He gets back up, I pull him up. I remember that because I felt so bad I dropped him two feet off the ground.”

The Marine thanked Paden, who offered the wounded Jarhead a cigarette.

It was one mission among hundreds. Over a single 12-month tour, Paden logged 1,800 flight hours as a door gunner, crew chief and flight engineer on one of Vietnam's most indispensable and vulnerable aircraft, the CH-47, also known as the Chinook.

Joining the Army

Paden was born Sept. 25, 1949, in Norristown, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. His parents divorced, and by his teenage years he was skipping school and running out of chances.

"My mother was tired of dealing with me and my rebelling," Paden said. "She gave me the choice to join the military or move out of the house."

He tried the Marines first. They turned him down. The Army took him in January 1967.

Military service ran deep in the family, his father was a World War II veteran, an aunt served as a Navy nurse during the same war, and an uncle worked on helicopters during Korea. 

Paden was inducted at Newark, New Jersey, sworn in at Philadelphia, sent to Fort Dix, then bused to Fort Benning, Georgia, for basic training and advanced individual training. His initial assignment to infantry airborne fell through due to a bad back. His testing showed aptitude for aviation, and the Army sent him to Fort Rucker, Alabama, for helicopter maintenance training. He finally earned his high school diploma during this training.

He was then sent to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, which had no aviation assets, so the Army put him in a motor pool as a parts clerk. After 13 months of frustration, he told a chaplain that if the Army could not put him in a job they trained him for, he was considering going AWOL. 

The chaplain got him into a small aviation detachment with no helicopters, five men and an empty hangar. Then they were assigned a Huey gunship and a CH-34 the crew rigged as a second gunship. Their job was flying demonstrations at the firing range for visiting dignitaries.

Soon enough, Paden received standalone orders for Vietnam as an 11B infantryman headed to the 1st Cavalry Division.

Arriving in Country

Paden arrived in Vietnam in early April 1968 to find the unit he was supposed to join had been decimated. With nowhere to put him, the Army assigned him to assist a wounded soldier finishing his tour as a lifeguard on the beach at Cam Ranh Bay.

"I'm saying, if this is what Vietnam is like, this won't be too bad," Paden said.

He was eventually shuffled to Cu Chi, then Da Nang, where he filled sandbags until a sergeant asked if anyone was qualified on automatic weapons. With experience in aviation and with automatic weapons, Paden was sent to his new unit.

The unit was the 200th Assault Support Helicopter Company, part of the 1st Aviation Brigade, setting up at Phu Bai airfield south of Hue. They were building from scratch with tents going up and Seabees constructing Quonset huts. The 200th would later be redesignated A Company, 159th Assault Support Helicopter Battalion, the “Pachyderms,” and attached to the 101st Airborne Division. The company operated 16 CH-47 Chinooks, each with a crew of five including two pilots, a door gunner, a crew chief and a flight engineer.

Paden started as a gunner.

"Just Shoot a Lot"

The veteran gunner who trained him kept the instructions simple.

"He told me, 'I don't need you to be accurate. I don't care if you are. When you shoot, just shoot a lot,'" Paden said.

A Chinook coming into a landing zone was not subtle, it came in low and slow, announcing itself with the thump of tandem rotors long before it was visible. The door gunner's job was to lay down enough suppressive fire to keep enemy heads down during approach and landing. Before every mission, crews checked with ground units for patrol locations and where fire was coming from.

The days started between 4 and 4:30 a.m. Missions received the night before went on the board, sorties were assigned to helicopters, and crews flew all day. But the schedule was fluid as new missions came over the radio constantly.

Paden carried his M79 grenade launcher with high-explosive, white phosphorus and buckshot rounds. He was a door gunner for only three or four weeks before moving to crew chief, then flight engineer within months, a fast progression driven by the pace at which the war consumed men.

As flight engineer, he ran the back of the aircraft. He supervised the crew chief and door gunner, managed all internal loads, coordinated with maintenance crews and had final say on whether the Chinook picked up a load or not.

"I had no problem telling pilots what to do or what not to do," Paden said. "I was more familiar with who the good pilots were and who the bad ones were."

The A Shau Valley and the 101st Airborne

For the most of his tour, Paden's company supported the 101st Airborne. The work centered on the A Shau Valley, a jungle corridor running parallel to the Laotian border that served as a major artery for North Vietnamese men and supplies flowing south along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

The 101st's doctrine was built around temporary fire support bases, establishing one to cover another, then leapfrogging forward as needed. Paden's Chinooks were the backbone, hauling howitzers and ammunition into hilltop positions unreachable any other way.

Flying between those bases was dangerous even without enemy contact. Artillery batteries ran constant fire missions, and crews had to navigate corridors between active gun-target lines.

"It's very hazardous just from your own assets," Paden said. "You want to make sure you don't fly into areas they are doing fire missions at."

The enemy added another layer. The NVA had anti-aircraft guns dug into the mountains flanking the valley. At one point, the Chinook crews took fire every time they flew through. Airstrikes never stopped it. Reconnaissance teams later discovered why.

"The NVA had dug tunnels and put a gun on a railroad track," Paden said. "When they heard us coming, they would pull it out and shoot. Then when fast movers came in, they would move it back in."

When the rounds were large enough, .50-caliber or equivalent, the crews could see the tracers and shoot back. Smaller rounds were worse.

"You could hear it. You can hear the rounds hitting the side of the aircraft," Paden said.

Paden's Chinook took hits on multiple occasions but never lost a critical system in the air. The CH-47 was built with dual hydraulic systems, losing one did not mean losing the aircraft. A round through a rotor blade was another story. 

On one mission, damage forced the crew to put the Chinook down in hostile territory and wait for a repair team while infantry secured a perimeter around them.

The Dangers of Combat

Paden's first direct encounter with death came early. His crew was flying ammunition resupply when a call came over the radio that an infantry unit had captured a NVA anti-aircraft gun and needed it extracted. Paden's Chinook diverted.

The trees had been blown to create a clearing, but a sniper was waiting.

"The pilot took a round to the head," Paden said. The pilot slumped onto the controls and nearly drove the aircraft into the tree line. The co-pilot seized the stick and flew to the hospital at Phu Bai. The man did not survive.

The captured gun still needed to come out. On a subsequent mission, Paden's crew volunteered to go back in with an extra crew member mounted on the rear ramp with an M60.

"When flying back in, we received fire from the rear. He took out the guy in a tree," Paden said. Though he was unsure if it was the same soldier that had killed the pilot.

He did not dwell on it. "I had a job to do. That's the way I looked at it."

The Pachyderms Go North

In January 1969, Paden's company was among the first Army Chinook crews sent north to support the 3rd Marine Division and the 9th Marine Regiment. The Marines were preparing what would become Operation Dewey Canyon, the last major Marine Corps offensive of the war, a 56-day sweep of the Da Krong and A Shau valleys near the Laotian border. 

The reception from the Marines was hostile.

"When we first went up there, they treated us like crap," Paden said. "They called us doggies. They wouldn't let us use their mess hall or shower facilities."

The Pachyderms operated out of Landing Zone Vandegrift, the staging base for the 9th Marines. They slept in their aircraft. They flew the same missions as with the 101st, ammunition, resupply, artillery displacement, troop lifts, but discovered the Marines had an entirely different approach to fire support base operations.

Marine aviation was smaller and lacked the heavy-lift capacity the Army brought. Marine bases were more permanent as the Marines went out to search for the enemy. The branch was just now adopting the more mobile approach to combat operations in Vietnam.

"The Marines rarely did that," Paden said. "They were starting to follow Army policy to set up self-supporting fire support bases, which they never did before. They didn't have enough heavy-lift capacity to support the mission."

Coordination problems went beyond tactics. Paden recalled flying a Marine forward observer onto the USS New Jersey because ground crews could not communicate fire missions to the battleship's gun crews.

"The first month was a cluster," Paden said. "After that, everyone started getting on the same page."

The turning point was simpler than doctrine. The Pachyderms flew missions Marine helicopter crews were unable to.

"We never refused to do a mission," Paden said. 

Marine helicopters, including the Huey and Sikorsky, struggled at times due to weather or inexperienced crews. Paden’s chinook was able to conduct operations Marine choppers couldn’t. Only after Paden left months later did Marine Corps aviation expand to include larger and more powerful transport craft.

"I picked up wounded where Marines wouldn't go because they said they couldn't get in," Paden said.

Attitudes eventually changed. The Marines came to respect and appreciated the Army chinook crews, even giving them tents and a barracks. When casualties came aboard, the crew offered water, C-rations, cigarettes and beer from the igloo cooler they flew with. When the wounded could not move, the crew made them as comfortable as possible on the cargo floor.

Not every load was wounded. Some were body bags.

"The worst thing was picking up just bags," Paden said. "It kind of makes you aware of what can happen there."

Across the Border

The hilltop medevac through the clouds was not the only time Paden's service with the Marines nearly killed him.

On one insertion, his crew was dropping a Marine squad onto a fire support base under mortar fire. A Marine struggled to offload equipment and Paden jumped in to help. The Marine stepped on Paden's communications cord, severing his connection to the cockpit. He turned around to see his Chinook lifting off without him as mortar rounds hit across the landing zone. 

The pilots did not realize he was gone until they were airborne. They circled until the shelling stopped and came back.

On another mission, Paden's crew refueled from a Marine fuel point with contaminated JP-4. While draining the bad fuel from the Chinook's three tanks, a valve stuck open and jet fuel soaked his flight suit. JP-4 burns on contact with skin. 

The pain eventually became unbearable mid-flight and Paden asked the pilot to land on a small island in the middle of a river so he could strip off his clothes to jump in.

A Marine also stole his M79 grenade launcher after his crew inserted a patrol, later triggering a CID investigation that delayed Paden's departure from Vietnam. The weapon had earned its keep. 

During one hot landing zone insertion, his door gunner's M60 jammed and Paden grabbed the grenade launcher and eliminated the threat himself.

"I loved that weapon," he said.

As the war progressed, the Pachyderms' missions expanded. They flew flare drops at night. They dropped napalm from the cargo ramp, 55-gallon drums in cargo nets, released over targets that fixed-wing aircraft could not reach. 

The infantry called corrections as thermite grenades were dropped to ignite the fuel on impact. They also dropped Agent Orange and tear gas using rack systems loaded with barrels, pushing everything out the back.

"I'm still in contact with guys I served with, eight of us that get together," Paden said. "Out of them, maybe one doesn't have cancer."

The Pachyderms also flew across the Laotian border in support of Operation Dewey Canyon, missions that were classified for decades. Crews were forbidden from speaking to journalists under threat of court-martial.

"We went in farther than the limits," Paden said. He did not learn the full scope of what his unit had participated in until he visited the National Archives 45 years later and found the declassified orders.

During his time in I Corps, Paden's crew also flew civilian evacuations during monsoon season, moving Vietnamese families with their chickens, pigs and whatever else they could carry out of flooded villages. 

They also frequently transported ARVN troops, whom Paden said he did not trust as other units had reported soldiers leaving booby-trapped grenades aboard helicopters after flights.

"The only good ARVN units were their Airborne or Tiger units," Paden said. "Disciplined and ready to fight."

Going Home

After supporting the Marines, Paden and the rest of his unit were sent back to the 101st. However, the danger was still present. After one mission, as the rotor blades wound down on the ground, the aircraft shook violently and a blade dropped onto the fuselage. A shock absorber piston had snapped in flight but held in place through momentum alone.

"If that happened while flying, we would've gone down," Paden said.

On another occasion, a maintenance crew installed a hydraulic actuator backward. The pilot engaged the system and the flight controls reversed. He managed to shut it off before the aircraft hit the ground.

Paden's flying in Vietnam ended in March 1969 during a large airmobile operation. His Chinook crashed and he walked away with bruises. He spent his remaining weeks on the ground waiting for a flight home.

He left Vietnam in April 1969.

He flew home from San Diego with a fellow crew member, a door gunner named Mitchell, the same man whose M60 had jammed on a hot LZ while Paden killed the threat with his M79. At the base gate, they walked into antiwar demonstrators.

"Calling us baby killers and throwing shit at us," Paden said.

They found a liquor store but were unable to get flights home. The two ended up in Las Vegas for two days, enjoying the experience after months in combat.

They eventually boarded a plane to New York filled with a Jewish family returning from a bar mitzvah, who bought them men drinks during the flight.

"They treated us like gold," Paden said.

In New York, the two parted ways. Paden returned to his family in New Jersey, but he still had some time left on his contract.

His last duty station was Fort Eustis, Virginia, where the Army made him a maintenance instructor on CH-47s. He separated as an E-5 in January 1970.

After the War

Paden drifted after the war working part-time but had no real structure. He eventually married his wife, Janice, and had a daughter as well as a son. However, he struggled with what he had carried home from Vietnam. Paden noted the years were tough as he struggled to cope with his experiences.

A Marine friend, a retired first sergeant, pushed him to get help. The VA's clinical approach did not work. A Vet Center in Philadelphia, built around group therapy with other combat veterans, did.

"That was the catalyst that got the ball rolling for me to get better," Paden said.

He found a career in injection molding manufacturing and retired as a production manager. He volunteered at the Vet Center for years, helping other veterans through the same darkness.

Paden is 76 now. His granddaughters attend a Catholic school that holds a Veterans Day ceremony every year. He said it means more than most people realize.

"I remember the first time someone said 'thank you for your service' to me," Paden said. "I didn't know how to react. That was eight years ago. We came home to not only hatred, but it was like they didn't care."

When asked how he views his service today, Paden was blunt.

"I did what I was trained to do. I think I saved lives," he said. "I think war is the epitome of the insanity of man. I feel as bad for the Vietnamese as I do for vets struggling with what they went through. And if I had to put on the uniform again today, I would."

Paden still remembers his experiences in Vietnam as vividly as ever. As a crewmember on a CH-47 Chinook, he logged over 1,800 flight hours and took part in countless missions ranging from resupply to medical evacuations. Alongside the Huey, the Chinook remains one of the most identifiable symbols of the Vietnam War and still remains a vital component of Army aviation today.