Oral History of COL Ret Douglas C Lovelace Jr

8/10/2019 Oral History of COL Ret Douglas C Lovelace Jr

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FOREWORD

This oral history transcript has been produced from an interview withColonel (Retired) Douglas C. Lovelace, Jr., conducted by LTC (Retired)

Brent Bankus, as part of the Academic Year 2013 US Army War College/USArmy Military History Institutes Vietnam Company Commander InterviewsProgram.

Users of this transcript should note that the original verbatimtranscription of the recorded interview has been edited to improvecoherence, continuity, and accuracy of factual data. No statement of opinionor interpretation has been changed other than as cited above. The viewsexpressed in the final transcript are solely those of the interviewee andinterviewer. The US Army War College/US Army Military History Instituteassumes no responsibility for the opinions expressed, or for the general

historical accuracy of the contents of this transcript.

This transcript may be read, quoted, and cited in accordance withcommon scholarly practices and the restrictions imposed by both theinterviewee and interviewer. It may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, byany means whatsoever, without first obtaining the written permission of theDirector, US Army Military History Institute, 950 Soldiers Drive, Carlisle,Pennsylvania 17013.


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DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

PROF AD

DOR: 01 NOV 1999

SPOUSE'S NAME: MARY E. LOVELACE

CHILDREN: AMY, 1971; LAURIE, 1976

Professor Douglas C. Lovelace, Jr., is the Director of the U.S. Army War College

Strategic Studies Institute and held the Douglas MacArthur Professor of Research

Chair at the U.S. Army War College. He earned a Juris Doctorate degree from

Widener University School of Law, a Master of Science degree in Business

Administration, and a Bachelor of Science degree from Embry Riddle Aeronautical

University. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago Program in Social and

Behavioral Sciences, the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, and the

National War College.

Professor Lovelace was commissioned an infantry lieutenant in 1969. After

completing the U.S. Army Officer Rotary Wing Aviation Course, he was assigned asan AH-1G Cobra Attack Helicopter Pilot and Section Leader in the 101st Airborne

Division in Phu Bai, Republic of Vietnam. Upon returning from Vietnam, he was

assigned as a Flight Platoon Commander in the 82d Airborne Division, Fort Bragg,

NC. Subsequent assignments included Company Commander and Battalion

Executive Officer, 3d Basic Combat Training Brigade, Fort Dix, NJ; Combat Skills

Flight Instructor and Section Commander, Lowe Division, Fort Rucker, AL; Assistant


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Professor and Professor of Military Science, Gannon University, Erie, PA;

Commander, C Company (Attack), 3d Aviation Brigade (Combat), 3d Infantry

Division, Schweinfurt, GE; Commander, 1st Battalion (Attack), 4th Brigade, 3d

Infantry Division, Giebelstadt, GE; Evaluation Officer, U.S. Army Operational Test

and Evaluation Agency, Falls Church, VA; Commander, 1st Battalion (Attack), 82d

Aviation Brigade, Fort Bragg, NC; and Deputy Director for Exercises, G-3, XVIIIAirborne Corps, Fort Bragg, NC.

After graduating from the National War College, Professor Lovelace was assigned to

the Plans, Concepts, and Assessments Division and the Conventional War Plans

Division, J-7, Joint Staff where he collaborated in the development of documents

such as the National Security Strategy, National Military Strategy, the Joint Strategic

Capabilities Plan, the Joint Military Net Assessment, national security directives, and

presidential decision directives. He subsequently was appointed Director of Military

Requirements and Capabilities Management at the U.S. Army War College. Upon

his retirement from active duty as a Colonel, he became Chairman of the Strategic

Research Department of the Strategic Studies Institute until his appointment as the

Director.

His military awards and decorations include the Legion of Merit; Distinguished Flying

Cross; Bronze Star Medal; Defense Meritorious Service Medal; Meritorious Service

Medal with four Oak Leaf Clusters; Air Medal with 27 Oak Leaf Clusters; Joint

Service Commendation Medal; Army Commendation Medal with three Oak Leaf

Clusters; Army Achievement Medal; Army Superior Unit Award; Army Good Conduct

Medal; National Defense Service Medal; Vietnam Service Medal; Armed Forces

Reserve Medal; Army Service Ribbon; Overseas Service Ribbon; Vietnam

Campaign Medal; Joint Meritorious Unit Award; Vietnam Cross of Gallantry withSilver Star; Master Army Aviator Badge; Parachutist Badge; and Joint Chiefs of Staff

Identification Badge. He has published extensively in the areas of national security

and military strategy formulation, future military requirements and strategic planning

and is a member of the Pennsylvania Bar.


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Interview with Colonel Douglas C. Lovelace, Jr., USA Retired

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword i

Biosketch of Colonel Douglas C. Lovelace, Jr., USA Retired ii

Introduction and OCS 1

Flight School and Vietnam 1

Attack helicopter company, 101stAirborne Division 2

Missions 3

AH-1G Cobra 4Pilot Training Program 5

Unit Morale 6

The TO&E 7

Flying the A Shau Valley 8

Existing in Two Worlds 11

Lam Son 719 13

Aircraft Armament 14

Perimeter Security 15

Flying a Lot 16

Advice to Commanders 20

PTSD 20

Sometimes You Need a Break 21

Appendix A Access Agreement AColonel Douglas C. Lovelace, Jr., USA Retired

Appendix B Biosketch BLTC Brent Bankus, USA Retired


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U.S. Army Military History Institute

1

VIETNAM COMPANY COMMANDER INTERVIEWS

INTERVIEWER: Brent Bankus

INTERVIEWEE: Colonel (Retired) Douglas C. Lovelace, Jr.

[Begin Tape L-123, side one]

INTERVIEWER: This is 30 August 2013. I am Brent Bankus, I am the branch chief

for the Oral History Branch, U.S. Army Military History Institute. Today I am

interviewing Colonel (Retired), Professor Douglas Lovelace, Director of Strategic

Studies Institute. Sir, welcome and I thank you for participating in our Vietnam

Company Commander interview. Could you provide us with a little bit of background

on yourself and tell us what organization you served with in the Republic of

Vietnam?

COL LOVELACE: Yes. I was commissioned through OCS [Officer Candidate

School] in September 1969. I went to Flight School and graduated from Flight

School at Fort Rucker in October of 1970 and went from there to Hunter Army

Airfield where Cobra Hall was located at the time and transitioned into the AH-1G

Cobra aircraft. I arrived in Vietnam in January of 1971. I was assigned to the 101st

Airborne Division, the 101stAviation Group, 101stAviation Battalion and Delta

Company, which was the gunship company.

INTERVIEWER: Sir, what Corps area was that in? Or what was it in?

COL LOVELACE: It was in I Corps.

INTERVIEWER: In the Hue/ Phu Bai area?

COL LOVELACE: Yes, in the Hue/Phu Bai area, as they called it. We were actually

located in Phu Bai.


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INTERVIEWER: I see. During your tour, what did you consider your most

significant people problems? Kind of like by that time 1970/71, at least here in the

States you heard a lot of drug issues and those kinds of things.

COL LOVELACE: Drugs with the enlisted personnel was probably the most

significant issue. They seemed to be able to find all kinds of drugs and very pure

forms of heroin and that sort of thing. So yes we did a lot of health and welfare

inspections in the barracks. We found a lot of drugs and got treatment for a lot of

the soldiers. That was probably the most significant issue. Following right behind

that was perception on the part of mostly the enlisted soldiers, but by some of the

officers also, that they were on a mission that was no longer supported by the

American public; so, that drove the morale down. Of course driving morale down,

drove performance down.

INTERVIEWER: Sir, did you find, talking a little bit about the drug issue that the

soldiers that you mentioned you got treatment for, that they had experienced drug

experience prior to getting to Vietnam?

COL LOVELACE: I think in a lot of cases, maybe even a majority of the cases, no

they hadnt. Their introduction to drugs occurred in Vietnam.

INTERVIEWER: I see. Sir, how did you utilize your officers and NCOs

[noncommissioned officers] in the 101?

COL LOVELACE: An attack helicopter company is a little bit different than an

infantry company or an armor company, because your officers go forward and fightand your enlisted stay back and support, which is almost the reverse of how it is in

most army combat organizations. In my section I had all warrant officers. At one

time I had another lieutenant, but it was all warrant officer aviators mostly, and we

were the tip of the spear. We went out and flew combat missions almost every

day. Enlisted personnel were assigned responsibility for each aircraft. There also


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were additional maintenance personnel and NCOs who rearmed the aircraft and

maintained it once we got back from missions at the end of each day. My interaction

was mostly with the officers leading the combat missions and flying missions. Only

when we got back to home base after flying the missions did we interact with the

enlisted personnel. As a result, the enlisted personnel functionally reacted to the

maintenance officer who stayed behind in the rear, more so than they did the

leadership and the platoon. I probably should mention that back then the captain

command level for aviation was at the platoon level, which was equivalent to a

company today; so, the commanders were called platoon commanders. Each

platoon had two sections, and I was the section leaders, although I became acting

platoon commander on two occasions when my platoon commanders were killed. In

a functional sense, while we were out on combat missions, our enlisted personnel

and NCOs were reacting to the orders from the maintenance officer.

INTERVIEWER: Sir, did you find that as far as maintenance and so on, that the

soldiers were competent when you went up for missions that you didnt break down

right away for maintenance reasons?

COL LOVELACE: It was kind of mixed, however all of them had been very well

trained. Some were dedicated to the mission. For example, my crew chief -- we

each had a dedicated aircraft and mine was 421 -- was an outstanding SP/4, Greg

Pile. He took one hundred percent personal pride in making sure that aircraft was

as flyable as it could possibly be. In fact, he would get extraordinarily irate when I

brought it back with bullet holes in it, which happened a few times. He would let me

know about it and accuse me of low level flying or doing something else that caused

the aircraft to get shot.

INTERVIEWER: The missions that you did go on sir, were they combined arms

where you would be in support of infantry battalion or so on or what were they

usually like?


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COL LOVELACE: There were basically two types of attack helicopter missions in

Vietnam. The first was what was called aerial field artillery or aerial rocket artillery.

That is not what we were in the gun company. In an attack helicopter or gun

company as we called it. We didnt do fire missions, as a rule. That was primarily

the mission of the aerial rocket artillery. They would get a target and it was just like

shooting an 8 inch or shooting our 175, they would get a target assignment and go

out and deliver ordnance on the target, normally from high altitudes using steep

dives to improve accuracy. Then they would go back home. Our job was to provide

fire support for the air assault or the air mobile operations as they were called back

then. Normally we would go out in a fire team of two: a fire team lead and a wing

man. We would escort the Hueys, or Slicks as we called them in and out of their

combat assaults. But from time to time we would also get emergency fire missions,

for example, if one of the Cav troops came across a .51 cal position or something

like that, and they needed emergency help, we would go out and shoot those targets

also. We flew relatively low level somewhere between 2000 and 1600 feet. We

used shallow dives and had a mix of armament; the aerial rocket artillery was only

rockets. For example, my aircraft had a 7.62 mm mini-gun, 40mm grenade

launcher, 2.75 rockets and a 20mm Vulcan cannon; so, we had a variety of weapons

because of the unpredictable nature of the gun escort mission.

INTERVIEWER: Sir, as a segue into it, what type of ship did you fly? It wasnt a

Huey, correct?

COL LOVELACE: No. It was an AH-1G, Cobra, which was the first model of Cobra

that was fielded in combat. Many different models of the Cobra followed that but

they all derived from the original G model.

INTERVIEWER: Did you find the aircraft easy to maneuver? How was it for a pilot?

COL LOVELACE: The G Model Cobra is probably the best flying helicopter that the

Army has ever bought. It is only 40 inches wide at the fuselage, not counting the


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wings, and is very maneuverable. It had what is called a 540 rotor system which

was a very rigid rotor allowing for a very wide flight envelope. It was training

intensive because of all the armament systems, it had a built in stability and control

augmentation system and a bunch of other things that the Huey didnt have. But it

flew very well.

INTERVIEWER: When you first got in country there did you have an opportunity,

was there anything that the 101st, the Aviation organization had set up for new pilots

such as yourself? In other words, they didnt just throw you into the cock pit and

say, Go to it. Did you have an orientation?

COL LOVELACE: Recall that Vietnam was an individual replacement system; so, in

every unit in Vietnam at any given time there was a certain level of experience and

expertise resident within the unit. So when the new guys would come in to the unit,

they would fly co pilot in the front seat with an experienced pilot who had been there

for maybe six or seven months or longer, until such time that they thought the new

pilot was competent to be aircraft commander. Then, you would move to the back

seat and you would get one of the new guys in your front seat. It was always an

internal turning or rotating of inexperienced people flying copilot-gunner in the front

seat and then the experienced pilot in the back seat. Progression to the back seat

depended on the individual and it depended on the circumstances. Normally you

would expect a pilot to fly as copilot for about six months and then fly as aircraft

commander for the remaining six months of a one year tour. Sometimes because of

increased personnel losses, such as in operation Lam Son 19, or because of the

competence of the individual, person you might get moved to the back seat earlier or

you might get moved to the back seat later.

INTERVIEWER: Sir did you find that as an effective way to keep the more

experienced people out front?


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COL LOVELACE: It worked extraordinarily well because you were always

transferring knowledge and experience from experienced people to inexperienced

people and as that transfer took place over many, many years in Vietnam, the level

of the knowledge that was transferred kept rising also. Every year an aircraft

commander would be better than the commander the year before because the

knowledge transfer kept accumulating. So the individual replacement system,

especially for an aviation unit where you are talking about individual proficiency

being a pretty high priority, the knowledge and experience transfer worked really

well.

INTERVIEWER: So in your organization the 101stdid you find that there were a lot

or not too many pilots that had been there prior to?

COL LOVELACE: Seventy-five percent of the pilots were on their first tour, about 25

percent were second tour. A third tour pilot was very rare.

INTERVIEWER: What kind of morale did you have in your unit?

COL LOVELACE: It wasnt good. It wasnt good among the enlisted nor was it good

among the officers. The reason was by early 1971 most of the soldiers thought that

they had lost the support of the nation and they were doing what the army ordered

them to do. But at the same time, especially among the officers, many took pride in

knowing that they were doing the right thing-- what their country was asking them to

do--in spite of the reports of protest and various other things back home.

INTERVIEWER: Sir, with regards to the TO&E [table of organization andequipment], do you feel that was adequate for you or did you have to go outside the

box and procure other things regardless of what the piece of equipment was to do

your mission?


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COL LOVELACE: The TO&E was adequate. Some of the creature comforts were

not very good. In Vietnam, like in a lot of places I suspect, there was always a lot of

horse trading going on to get a little bit thicker mattresses for your bunks or to get

maybe a small window unit air conditioner for your hooch. But as far as the

warfighting equipment, it was all good. We had everything we needed.

INTERVIEWER: At that time did you all fly night missions, did you have night vision

goggles?

COL LOVELACE: We didnt have goggles but we flew a lot of night missions.

INTERVIEWER: How did you maneuver through that? That sounds interesting.

COL LOVELACE: Before you could become an aircraft commander you had to

memorize your area of operations. When I say memorize, you had to know where

every draw was, where every sucker draw was, where it disappears, where the

mountains were, etc. I think some of us may have carried maps but none of us used

them because in order to become aircraft commander you had to memorize the area

of operations. I Corps is mountainous of course, so it is very dangerous flying at

night. In fact, when we had some of the attack units come up from the South to help

us out on Lam Son 719 we lost a lot of them in the mountains because they were not

used to mountain flying in I Corps. It was just tough flying. We flew with flares every

once in a while, but personally I never liked flares because inevitably you wouldnt

be able to get one eye closed in time and it would take away your night vision in both

eyes. The night flying was dicey but no goggles. It was all naked eye.

INTERVIEWER: That is interesting. Again, as you mentioned, I Corps was a fairly

mountainous area so you knew fairly well where the AA was going to come from?

True statement?


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COL LOVELACE: We knew where the hot areas were, but we would also get

surprised every once in a while.

INTERVIEWER: I was going to say, did they move around on you?

COL LOVELACE: Every once in a while. There was a road that went out from Phu

Bai to the A Shau Valley, and of course the A Shau Valley had a reputation for being

hot. We always thought it was hot when we out there but on the way out there were

a series of three or four fire support bases and one was called Fire Support Base

Veghel. It had long been abandoned but suddenly became how. I recall we all

joked about fighting the Veghel war that seemed to come out of nowhere. Before

that, we sometimes would fly weapons cold as we were flying over Vehgel, on our

way to the A Shau and wouldnt go weapons hot until we were close to the A Shau.

Then all of a sudden the NVA [North Vietnamese] decided that they were going to

move into the area of Vehgle so they could get close enough to us in Phu Bai to

range us with their 122 mm rockets. So they just came out of nowhere; it was so

unusual that we all joked about it.

INTERVIEWER: Now the place that you were talking about, Vehgle that was at the

mouth of the A Shau Valley, is that true?

COL LOVELACE: No, it was actually still on the Hue/Phu Bai side side of the

mountain range that you had to go over to get to the A Shau.

INTERVIEWER: Sir, tell me again a little bit about morale. To what extent were you

able to communicate with loved ones back home? Nowadays we talked about in thedesert, Iraq and Afghanistan you can call people back home over a cell phone. How

was it in those days?

COL LOVELACE: We had two ways to communicate verbally. One was with a

MARS [military affiliate radio system] call, which I am sure you have heard of. It is


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kind of a land line radio patch type of a situation, but the other is that there was a

bank of actual land lines that were cable calls that you could go sign up for and

stand in line for. Those were good calls because they were full-duplex and your

loved one didnt have to say over. Military people are used to saying over, but

when you are talking to your wife, your mother or somebody like that, they were not

used to it. You could probably get a MARS call maybe once a month. You could

almost never get a cable call and that irritated me. Part of what irritated me about

that was when you went over and stood in line to make a cable call, newspaper

reporters would be in line ahead of you calling their stories back home. Most of the

communication was by letters. Letters were extraordinarily important.

INTERVIEWER: Did the letters get to you fairly quickly? Did it take a few weeks?

COL LOVELACE: It took about ten days to two weeks. The letters and the care

packages were really important.

INTERVIEWER: The telephones you were talking about, were they located in your

area, the Hue/Phu Bai area or did you have to go down to Saigon or somewhere like

that?

COL LOVELACE: Yeah, they were at division headquarters if I recall correctly at

Camp Eagle, which was about a half hour ride in the truck.

INTERVIEWER: In the area of combat service support what kind of internal

communication did your troops use during fire missions?

COL LOVELACE: We had three radio frequencies. We used FM [frequently

modulated], Fox Mike as we called it for communicating with ground forces. They all

had FM radios. Air-to-air we used ultra high frequency [UHF] primarily and very high

frequency [VHF] as the secondary. Our communications back with our base

operations was always on UHF, primary, VHF secondary.


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INTERVIEWER: Did you find that the communications, the radios, as a matter of

speaking, that there were any issues as far as communicating with the ground?

Because as you know better than anyone, when you are in the middle of a fire fight,

you have to be able to talk to the ground troops; you have to be able to talk to the

command net and so on. Were there any problems with that in your view?

COL LOVELACE: Raising the ground units on FM was a problem from time to time.

You knew you had a fire mission and you wouldnt be able to raise them so

sometimes you would just look for the smoke. They would mark their position with

the smoke so you knew that is where you dont shoot in that area. In todays

standards that sounds really odd, but sometimes when you couldnt raise them, that

is all you could do. In a Cobra, unlike an OH-6, you cant just land and go talk to

them. You have to stay above the canopy and keep flying.

INTERVIEWER: I want to delve into that just a little bit, whether it is the movies or

whatever, the NVA or the VC [Viet Cong], they were always mimicked that to be able

to throw smoke out there. Did the ground troop call you? You might not have been

able to talk back to them, but they would say, I popped green smoke, or how did

you differentiate between ?

COL LOVELACE: If they said it that way then they said it wrong. In other words

they would call and we would say, Pop smoke. Then they would reply, Smoke

out, identify. Then we would call back and identify the color and they would confirm

and say something like enemy is 500 meters north of the smoke. That was the

correct way to do the smoke identification. The incorrect way is yellow smoke isout. Then you could see four or five yellow smokes down there.

INTERVIEWER: So you knew something was hinkey?

COL LOVELACE: Right.


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INTERVIEWER: The Vietnam environment now because it is Southeast Asia, very

hot, did that have any impact on your aircraft? If so, how?

COL LOVELACE: Yes. The Cobras that we had then were mostly air conditioned

because a Cobra, unlike a Huey, is a closed canopy. You are in a greenhouse when

you are inside it. So it had an environmental control unit, as we called it. If the

environmental control unit didnt work or if you didnt have one, and some aircraft

didnt have them, then you had what was called forced air. Forced air was nothing

more than a ventilation system that scooped in the air from the outside and blew it

over you. However I can remember one particular day flying an aircraft with only

forced air when I have to open the canopy in flight and keep it open because I

literally passed out and came to from the heat. I probably only passed out for a few

seconds or so but it was hot in that thing. You would get hot. The Cobra was

especially a problem because you are in an enclosed canopy and you couldnt open

the doors like you could on a Huey. If you fly with the canopy cracked then you can

only fly 40 knots and then you are a sitting duck.

INTERVIEWER: If there was any, what other problems existed in your unit that were

peculiar to Vietnam?

COL LOVELACE: Unlike how I understand the state of affairs in units in combat

today where each evening or at least periodically you can reconnect with loved

ones, in Vietnam it was different. You actually compartmented. You had two

worlds. You had Vietnam and what we would refer to as going back to the world.

So you actually had two lives. One life was the life that you were living in Vietnam.It consisted of all your buddies and all the people who you worked with there. That

was separate and completely distinct from this life that you left at home back in the

world. It was an odd environment. On a day to day basis you got your support from

your wing man and the people that you were flying with, the people that you


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socialize with at the end of the day. But in the long term, your support came from

your loved ones back home. That was kind of an interesting psychological situation.

INTERVIEWER: I know they had traveling road shows like Bob Hope. Did you ever

have the opportunity to go to any of those shows?

COL LOVELACE: We had a few things. We had what was called back then the

Donut Dollies. These were USO teams that would come by and literally bring donuts

and things like that. They would have some recorded music and that sort of thing.

We had the Bob Hope show or the beauty pageant, I cant recall which, come to us.

I never got to see it. But that is not exactly true; the reason I didnt get to see any of

them is because I got tagged to fly gun escort for them. So I could see them waving

from the Hueys, but that is about all I got to see. I think they came through twice in

the year I was there, but I didnt get to see them either time. They were mostly for

the enlisted soldiers any way.

INTERVIEWER: I was going to say how did that help, if any, did that help the

morale of the enlisted folks?

COL LOVELACE: No, I dont think so. It goes back to the compartmentation that I

mentioned before. As long as you were compartmented, and you knew that this was

your life, at least until you got to go home on leave or somewhere on an R&R [rest

and recuperation], then you could deal with it. But when somebody would inject a

dose of what the other life was like and then take it away from you a couple of hours

later, I think that did more harm than good.

INTERVIEWER: At that time sir, the tour in Vietnam was obviously a year, give or

take a month, did you also have the opportunity to take the mid tour and what was

that like?


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COL LOVELACE: That was in effect when I was there. We got to take two weeks

leave mid tour, which I did. It was great. But coming back was hard.

INTERVIEWER: What opportunities were available? What places could you go in

other words that were open to you?

COL LOVELACE: For the mid-tour two week leaves you could come all the way

back to the States, which I did. Some people would meet their spouses in Hawaii or

something like that. That was different than an R&R. An R&R was normally

between 3 and 7 days and there were specific R&R sites. I was sent on an

involuntary R&R at one time because my commander thought I needed a rest; so, I

went to Thailand for a week.

INTERVIEWER: Oh did you?

COL LOVELACE: Yes. When I got there I realized I was really, really tired. I didnt

realize how tired I was before that. The week helped out. So the R&R and the two

week leave are two separate things but you could normally only get one. You could

either take the two week leave or take an R&R. The favored R&R places where Tai

Pae, Australia, and Thailand. Those were probably the three favorite places that

people went to for R&R. The only reason I got an additional R&R is because of the

nature of some of the missions that we had been flying and a lot of us were being

run into the ground pretty hard.

INTERVIEWER: I was going to say were they mostly I remember when you talked

about what missions you did but were there any anti tank or did you have any ofthose kinds of missions or were they just mostly like we talked about before?

COL LOVELACE: There was an operation that you are probably familiar with; I

know a lot of people are familiar with it. As a matter of fact General Berry wrote a

book about it. I was called Lam Son 719. In Lam Son 719 there was a fair amount


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of NVA armor involved. We would come across armor very infrequently other than

in that large operation, Lam Son 719. Of course when we did come across the

armor we had some armor piercing rounds in the Vulcan cannon that I had in my

aircraft. It might pierce a quarter inch of steel. Even though it didnt pierce the

tanks, when you bring it down on them with the Vulcan cannon and a bunch of

rockets and everything, it gets their attention. They are going to stop fighting. But

we did not encounter very much armor at all.

INTERVIEWER: In the area of supply and maintenance and given the fact that you

had such an intricate piece of equipment, did you have any problems in that area?

COL LOVELACE: There were some things that never got fixed. For example, I

dont think I ever flew a Cobra that had a functional fuel gauge. I know this sounds

kind of odd, but it was a real problem. If you were going to load a full load of

armament on a Cobra you couldnt fill it up with fuel because you couldnt get it off

the ground; it would be too heavy. You refueled the aircraft yourself by looking

inside the fuel port. Inside, where the fuel level probe goes down, there are a

number of rings on the probe, so we were taught which ring equated to how many

pounds of fuel. We always would fill up to 1100 pounds looking at the rings, then we

would restrict ourselves to an hour and a half flying. But even though the fuel gauge

didnt work, and it never did, your twenty minute light would work. That was a

requirement. When your 20 minute light came on you knew that you had 20 minutes

until you had to be on the ground. That was a perennial problem. The jamming of

the mini gun also was a perennial problem. Every mission before you would fire the

full drum of ammo, you would probably get a jam in the mini gun. But other than

that, the G-model was a good aircraft.

INTERVIEWER: Were there any work rounds like for the jam of the mini gun? I

would imagine that after awhile when you are flying you kind of get a real feel for

how far you are going so that when your 20 minute light comes on, you know it is

time to get out of there.


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COL LOVELACE: Right. You were always doing work arounds. For example,

when your mini gun jammed you still had the 40 mm grenade launcher up there that

you could use and you still had rockets that you could use. And in my case I had the

Vulcan cannon. The Vulcan cannon had two magazines on each side of the aircraft

and each carried 400 rounds. If you loaded both sides, you couldnt get the aircraft

off the ground so you normally only loaded one side. Four hundred rounds doesnt

sound like a lot but they were all 20 millimeter rounds and that is a lot.

INTERVIEWER: Sir, the rockets, what size were they? And in your minds eye were

they very effective or just kind of like a shot gun?

COL LOVELACE: No, the rockets were good. There were two sizes: 12 and 17

pounders, I believe: a sort of small rocket and a large rocket. We had different

warheads. We had high explosive, flechette, and smoke, but we never used smoke.

On my aircraft I filled the 7-shot rocket pod on the Vulcan side with flechettes and on

the other side I loaded high explosive fragmentary into a 7-shot pod and a 19-shot

pod. That gives you a wide variety of munitions..

INTERVIEWER: Back in the base camp, what were the general living conditions like

for your unit? You always hear about aviators had it good and so on.

[End Tape L-123, Side 1]

[Begin Tape L-123, Side 2]

INTERVIEWER: Continue sir.

COL LOVELACE: Basically we had it pretty good. A lot of people lived in tents with

sand floors or sometimes it was almost like a pallet type of flooring. We lived in

Quonset huts with a concrete floor. It was just one big Quonset hut when it was built


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but over time people took the rocket box material and made little walls and partitions.

We didnt have any running water but that was ok because we had a water tower

and we found a garden hose and ran that hose up to the tower and snaked it inside

the hooch. So we had a little sink. Of course our sump was just wherever the water

ran out outside. But it was pretty good. Quonset hut living was good compared to

everybody else.

INTERVIEWER: I was going to say in your area, did you have security around the

aircraft and around the base? And who supplied that?

COL LOVELACE: We had a large perimeter around the airfield. The engineers of

course put in all the claymore, the fugas and the wire and everything like that.

However individual units had responsibility for manning certain portions of the

perimeter. Our company had responsibility for manning a portion and being an

infantry officer, that was before aviation was a branch, I was assigned as the ready

reaction force commander for our section of the perimeter. We would go out and

reinforce the perimeter whenever there was a report of probing .

INTERVIEWER: Did the roster change? Did you have to pull from the unit a certain

number of folks to act as the ready reaction force? Was it a rotating roster?

COL LOVELACE: Kind of. Really, for the ready reaction force, we exempted crew

chiefs because of their critical mission in maintaining the aircraft. And we exempted

some maintenance personnel, so the ready reaction force consisted of the rearm

and refuel people. Sadly it also consisted of people that the platoon sergeant

thought that they could lose for a day without a problem. As a result the quality ofthe ready reaction force left a little bit to be desired.

INTERVIEWER: I was going to say, what would you say was the most difficult

aspect of command that you encountered in your tour as a section leader?


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COL LOVELACE: Dealing with the somewhat indisciplined nature of aviation

warrant officers at that time. Once again, morale was low. A lot of them felt

betrayed by their own society. Some of them thought, I am going to do this job only

because they are making me do it. I dont have any other choice. So supervising

the warrant officers was a bit of a challenge. Not all of them, but some of them. The

other thing was dealing with the loss of air crews was a difficult also. It caused you

to not get too close to anybody.

INTERVIEWER: You hear that not only in todays operations but also if you have

any kind of interaction with those in past conflicts they will say the same thing. Sir,

what do you spend most of your time and effort on during your tour there?

COL LOVELACE: We flew a lot. You get an air medal for every 25 combat

missions you fly. I left with 27 air medals. We flew a lot because we were a gun

company and everybody always needed some help. Except for the monsoon

season you were probably up in the air every day.

INTERVIEWER: Now, the monsoons, that was the October time frame, is that

correct?

COL LOVELACE: I dont recall exactly when it was but for us it would last about a

month.

INTERVIEWER: What was a typical day like if there was one?

COL LOVELACE: You get up. Our hooches were quite a bit away from ouroperations building so somebody would send a truck sometimes. Sometimes we

would walk to the Mess Hall and have breakfast, then go up to Ops, go to the ready

room and then, as the section leader, I would go over into Ops and get our missions

for the day. I would go to the mission briefing, take a look at the map. The map was

on the wall in Ops so everybody understood where we were going. Like I said,


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everybody memorized the area of operations so you didnt normally take a map with

you. Then we would go fly the missions, come back, fill out the after action report,

which is normally just how many KIA [killed in action] that you had for the day and

who you worked for. Then we would go back to the hooch and drink beer, play

cards and go to bed. The next day it would start all over again.

INTERVIEWER: Was there ever a time you were pulled out of one place and sent

to another while you were flying where you werent really cognizant of where you

were?

COL LOVELACE: No. You knew the AO [area of operations] like the back of your

hand. It was a big area of operations. From the coast to the A Shau was probably a

hundred miles. And from Marble Mountain on the south of I Corps down near Da

Nang, up to Dong Ha or near the DMZ [demilitarization zone] was probably 200

miles. So it was a big area of operation but when you are flying every day and at a

different location, you get to learn it very well.

INTERVIEWER: Sir, what was your greatest satisfaction and dissatisfaction during

your tour there? Satisfaction first.

COL LOVELACE: That I knew that I was doing a good job. And I knew that

somehow I had become a pretty good Cobra pilot that I was a fairly respected

section leader. I became acting platoon leader twice when we lost two air crews. I

had satisfaction that at least I knew, regardless of what was going on back home, I

knew that I was personally doing a good job.

INTERVIEWER: Any dissatisfactions?

COL LOVELACE: Dissatisfaction was when you came home, you almost had to

conceal the fact that you were a Vietnam vet to avoid ridicule. That was hard for a

lot of us. But there also was a bright side to that, a silver lining to that cloud. It


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caused the band of brothers to band together very tightly. We supported each

other, notwithstanding the lack of support from the overall society. And the lack of

support from the overall society was not a general rule, because there were a lot of

people who still supported the soldiers back then. But it became fashionable to say

that you didnt support the war and, therefore, the soldier.

INTERVIEWER: Sir, what was the senior leadership like? Were they very effective?

They didnt fly into an ambush. Can you talk a little bit about the senior leadership?

COL LOVELACE: The aviation companies back then were commanded by majors.

When I first got there the major commander that we had was pretty good but he

never flew. I think he flew one mission and the one mission that he flew while he

was there, I flew as his co pilot. I was an experienced aircraft commander at that

time but he wanted somebody to lean on if he needed to. So I always thought that

was kind of odd that he never flew. I think in aviation you lead in the air just like you

lead on the ground. The commander after him had some real ethical issues.

Actually he ended up being in prison for revealing classified information. He wanted

to come out of Vietnam with as many awards as he could get because he thought

that could increase his chances of staying in the army and being promoted and that

sort of thing. Then the last commander that I had, I had three, he was pretty good.

He went on to become a colonel and he retired as a colonel. It was a mixed bag.

We produced some officers during the Vietnam era that never should have been

commissioned. That one company commander I was telling you about, he was one

of them.

INTERVIEWER: I guess sometimes you have rotten apples anywhere you go.

COL LOVELACE: That is why I dont want to go into this in much detail, but this

particular one was just egregious to the extent that I said to myself, If I ever catch

up to this guy in rank, then I will go and have some words with him. He was a

lieutenant colonel down at Fort Rucker and I was a frocked lieutenant colonel going


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down for precommand to take over an Apache battalion. I had it on my calendar to

go see him as soon as my schedule would permit and that was when he got arrested

and court martialed.

INTERVIEWER: So you never had the opportunity to get together.

COL LOVELACE: Which was probably good.

INTERVIEWER: Sir, if you had it to do over again, what would you change?

Anything? Your tour in Southeast Asia?

COL LOVELACE: No. When I got there everybody told me to stay in the South

because if you go North where the 101stwas you can be shot at. When they asked

me for my preference I told them I wanted to stay in the South, so they sent me to

the North. Now talking to other people who flew down around the Delta and that sort

of thing, compared to what we did in I Corps, I think if I got my wish it would have

been the wrong thing for me. The Army sent me to the right place. I dont think I

would change anything. Although I would also say that much of that wasnt due to

my planning, it was just stuff that happened.

INTERVIEWER: Is there anything that you didnt get done that you would have liked

to have gotten done there?

COL LOVELACE: No. Nothing I can think of, however, in 1973 when we were

watching the masses of civilians fleeing Highway 1 through Hue, headed South

when the North Vietnamese were rolling through, that left you wishing that we hadsomehow stayed there to complete the job.

INTERVIEWER: Understandable, having been there in the area. Sir, what advice

would you give to commanders who might find themselves in a similar situation?


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COL LOVELACE: Well an aviation unit is all about everyone relying on everyone

else. It is all about team work to the extent that you can build a good, coherent team

where people will literally risk their lives for you. In our unit we did have people like

that. That is your most important task as a leader, to build that type of unit cohesion

and to keep the morale up as high as you can. It was hard in Vietnam to keep

morale up. I remember we had a West Point officer, who was a platoon

commander. I remember walking up to the ready room with him. He was speaking

a lot of four letter words and he said, They can take my education, I want out. I

was thinking this is a West Point officer talking like that. But that was because his

morale had been damaged by the lack of support.

INTERVIEWER: Sir, that kind of winds it up. Is there anything else that you would

like to add that maybe we didnt cover as much as you wanted?

COL LOVELACE: No, I dont think so. Maybe just one thought. You hear a lot

about PTSD [post traumatic stress disorder] from Vietnam. The nation went for

years denying that it existed. You look at people who stayed in the Army after

Vietnam, and there is no evidence, no trace of PTSD in most of them. I think the

reason is, that a lot of people during the Vietnam era, came in, did their two years, or

actually you could do one year and ten months and you would get an early out if you

went to Vietnam and came right back. But then when they jumped back out and

joined society, they left their support group so they were back in a society that didnt

value what they did, so it really affected them psychologically. If you take the people

like me, like Doug Campbell and others who stayed in, we had that continual support

group all the way through the period of time when you may have had some

difficulties. So the psychological issues never really set in.

INTERVIEWER: As you mentioned, there were several points in time, at least one,

where the commander said you needed a rest. So I can imagine that there are

times where you just need to back off and need a break from the action for awhile.


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COL LOVELACE: Exactly. And I can give you another example. We were flying

some missions that I cant talk about too much but they were called CCN missions.

They were highly stressful missions and we had a platoon commander--a great guy.

I admired him a lot. We were flying these missions for maybe a month at a time and

it was wearing on everybody. So we were up playing poker. He was in his little

room trying to sleep. He came out and he said to us, Turn the lights out and get to

bed. We said, OK. A couple of people were teasing him a little bit saying, Cant

you stay up with the rest of us? So he went back in his room and we stayed up still

making noise and playing poker. He came out and he said, If you dont turn those

lights out, I am going turn them out. So we said, Yeah, ok, we are going to go.

He walked back in his room, he came back out with his .38 and he shot the light out.

The next day he realized that he shouldnt have done that so he went to the

company commander and said, I need a rest. The company commander said, I

just need you for one more day. He went out that day and was shot down and

killed. This is the same company commander who sent me for a rest later on. So

maybe the company commander learned something from that. I didnt ask to be

grounded; Keith did. He knew that he was at the end of his rope. He was probably

Mr. Cobra at that time. He wrote the tactical manual for Cobras. But anyway, that is

just kind of a war story.

INTERVIEWER: Well, it has been a pleasure. We appreciate your time. Again, if

there is anything else that comes up that you havent thought of, we can always do

another follow on to this.

COL LOVELACE: It has been my pleasure to do this. If you ever would like to

follow up, I would be more than happy to. We just kind of hit the tops of the wavesbut that is probably all you need.

[End interview]


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Oral History of COL Ret Douglas C Lovelace Jr

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