This was the second time Butch Verich had been shot down, having been bagged in August 18, 1966, and rescued that time by HC-1. This time, no one rescued him before night forced the end of the attempt.

Next morning, HS-2 got a shot at making the rescue. Lieutenant Neil Sparks Jr. piloted his Big Mother inland, crossing the coast without taking fire—a rare change of pace and perhaps a harbinger of an easy rescue. They coasted in at Hon Ma Island, an easy landmark to assist in accurate navigation. It was unusual that the gunners at Hon Ma had not greeted them, either They transited the sixty miles to the search area, almost within sight of metropolitan Hanoi.46 In flat terrain, sprinkled with villages, and well populated, they were able to localize a well-hidden Butch Verich after a methodical search.

Hovering in the area where Verich was hiding, the helicopter was subjected to intense fire. Although AX3 Teddy Ray and ADI Al Masengale returned fire with their M60s, they could not entirely suppress the hostile fire. The Big Mother was hit repeatedly, with rounds striking all over the place. One of their two electrical generators, up on the back of the main transmission above the cabin, was destroyed, causing the loss of several pieces of nonessential mission avionics. This posed no serious problem, unless the other generator was knocked out as well. Then they would be in for it, with no electrical power except a short-lived battery, which might give them fifteen minutes of final power. A round coming through the cockpit instrument panel shattered one of their airspeed indicators. Although disconcerting to see an instrument explode in your face, the problem was minor in daylight. A round through the hydraulics servo closet behind the pilot’s seat knocked out the automatic stabilization equipment. Losing the ASE substantially increased the pilot workload to hold the aircraft steady and stable. The controls were now both sluggish, yet overly sensitive, and the aircraft was slow to respond to the control inputs, and at the same time, squirrelly. A round in the nose electronics bay compartment destroyed the UHF radio.47

Without their radio, communications with RESCAP and with Verich was gone. The copilot, Lt. j.g. Robin Springer, who had been doing the talking on the radio, considered his dead transmitter switch for a moment and alertly pulled out his personal survival radio, the URT-10, and switched it on. Removing his helmet, he shouted his radio calls over the howl of two engines above his head and the roar of the rotors.48 Gathering the final bit of information to locate Verich, they hovered over his spot, and Masengale managed, through almost twenty minutes of unstable “hovering,” to hoist him aboard. Verich aboard at last, Big Mother headed for the ocean and home. They left the local militia and their accurate gunfire behind and transited through the coastal-defense belt, again, strangely, without any further hostile fire. As they went feet wet they had covered two hundred miles and been over the Red River Delta of hostile North Vietnam for two hours and twenty-three minutes, too much of it under fire.

Sparks brought his helicopter back to Hornet and stood by while his squadron mates surveyed the damage and contemplated his good fortune.

Excerpt from Leave No Man Behind The saga of combat search and rescue. George Gladorisi & Tom Phillips

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