The Fate of Otter Five One Deuce
Tom Forbes, Corporal, US Army Pathfinder, 1st Cavalry Division, Kontum Province, May 1970
When people ask me what I did in Vietnam, I tell them I was a Pathfinder. This usually results in a look of puzzlement, what is a Pathfinder? A Pathfinder is an elite paratrooper who is inserted into an area to operate drop and pickup zones. They also coordinate helicopter landing sites for air resupply operations, all in support of the ground unit commander. Pathfinders first appeared in World War II and continue to provide an important role in the modern military due to our reliance on helicopters or airmobile operations. The Pathfinder motto is First In, Last Out.
In May of 1970 I was assigned to Fire Support Base Bruiser located seven miles south of Vietnam’s Border with Cambodia. This was a busy place because at the end of April, 1970 Richard Nixon authorized the US Military Incursion into Cambodia, a multi-division offensive designed to destroy the enemy’s safe havens. They contained significant supplies and the enemy’s Central Headquarters for South Vietnam operations. My unit the 1st Cav was one of the Divisions assigned to this Cambodia mission. Later in May, I also would be in Cambodia supporting a temporary firebase there, Firebase Gonder, but this story involves the events of May 2, 1970.
I was basically the air traffic controller for Firebase Bruiser. There was no radar and it was my job to coordinate all the air traffic into and out of the base. It was hard work and you had to stay focused. A pathfinder is trained to identify aircraft by their sound and by sight from a distance, also taught to identify the flight’s direction and approximate altitude. Coordination of air traffic was especially important at a firebase because if an artillery fire mission was requested, the air traffic would need to be rerouted until the guns stopped firing. If the air traffic was picking up or dropping off a load, base personnel would need to be ready to assist in that operation so that it was done as quickly as possible.
May 2nd was a very busy day due to all the activity involved with the Cambodia Incursion. We were on the radio all day long and the weather was bad, cloudy with intermittent rain followed by heavy rain. Around 1700 I was in contact with a flight that had a callsign of Otter Five One Deuce. This was a Huey or UH-1H the standard workhorse helicopter of the US Army during Vietnam. The flight originated at Tay Ninh Combat Base, 21 miles to the south and they were carrying four passengers and spare parts supporting the attacking forces at Fire Base Bruiser. I got to know a lot of the helicopter pilots because I talked to them every day due to my pathfinder duties and I knew this pilot. His first call was routine that he was inbound with four packs or passengers. The next call alerted me that he was having trouble finding FSB Bruiser due to the bad weather. I then had multiple radio contacts with him and I was trying my best to assist in his location of the base, to no avail. I would ask that he change direction or change the pitch of his rotors so that I could identify which direction he was at from the base. I would say “I hear someone north of me, change your pitch.” He would adjust his pitch but I still couldn’t hear him. Besides the bad weather we had multiple traffic in the air so locating him was proving very difficult and it was starting to get dark. I did everything that I could think of to try to find him. Still no luck. He would say “I am somewhere west of you” and I had to say “sorry I don’t hear you.” This went on for some time and then I heard over the radio a message I’ll never forget. “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday,” a pause, “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, Otter Five One Deuce is going down west of Bruiser.” I immediately tried to contact him and got nothing. So, I put it out over the air that an aircraft was down and the approximate location. This set in-place a massive search and rescue operation which was standard procedure when an aircraft was downed. It took several days before I heard anything more about Five One Deuce. I was at another firebase where a pilot told me that one of the door gunners from that helo had found his way to one of our bases. He walked at night barefoot, did not want his boots to slow him down in the mud, and followed the general direction east that the helicopters seemed to be going. After two days he found LZ Xray and reported on what he knew about the flight and the rest of the crew.
It wasn’t until many years after the war that I learned the full story of Otter Five One Deuce. In fact, it wasn’t until 2015 when the remaining bodies were identified that this story had closure. The flight left Tay Ninh around 1615, climbed to 2500 feet. About 10 minutes into the flight, they encountered a huge rain squall approaching. The pilot tried to skirt the squall and this resulted in them flying into Cambodia. There were four aircrew, pilot, copilot, and two door-gunners. They also had four passengers from the 34th Armor, 25th Infantry Division who were transporting supplies and spare parts. The rain was so bad that they couldn’t see the end of the storm nor the ground. As they struggled to find Firebase Bruiser, the pilot descended to try to get under the weather but then came under fire from an enemy .51 caliber anti-aircraft machine gun which hit the tail and set the fuel afire. The Huey lost hydraulics and crash landed in a rice paddy. The men scattered in all directions as they came under fire from Viet Cong enemy units. In the ensuing firefight three soldiers were killed in action, and four were captured. Only the one door gunner was able to escape. Of the four GI’s captured, two would die in captivity and the other two eventually made it home.
Even though I did everything I could to get these men safely into Bruiser, everything I was trained to do, I still feel like I let them down. I couldn’t bring them home. I had performed these procedures successfully many times before without a problem but this time nothing worked. An incident like this stays with you forever. Is there anything else I could have done to change the result? After a lot of soul searching, I have had to accept that on that day I couldn’t change Fate.