|
Synopsis of
Incident:
SYNOPSIS: SFC Edward Guillory, Lt.
William Lemmons and Maj. James McKittrick were aboard an OH23 Raven helicopter
on a visual recon mission operating in Quang Tin Province on June 18, 1967. They
were to spot artillery targets for the Artillary Battery that McKitrick and
Guillory were attached to.
At 1845 hours, the helicopter was declared missing. Extensive searches were
conducted that night aided by artillery flares and aircraft mounted
searchlights, but no trace of the aircraft or crew was found. In the next few
days several crash sites were reported and searches made, but all efforts were
fruitless.
Guillory, Lemmons and McKittrick were classified Missing In Action. There is
reason to believe the enemy knows their fates. They are among nearly 2500
Americans still missing in Southeast Asia.
When the war ended, and 591 Americans were released in Operation Homecoming in
1973, military experts expressed their dismay that "some hundreds" of POWs did
not come home with them. Since that time, thousands of reports have been
received, indicating that many Americans are still being held against their will
in Southeast Asia. Whether the crew of the OH23 is among them is not known. What
is certain, however, is that if only one American remains alive in enemy hands,
we owe him our best effort to bring him home.
William E. Lemmons and James C. McKittrick were promoted to the rank of Major
and Edward J. Guillory was promoted to the rank of Sergeant Major during the
period they were maintained missing.
Tue Mar 03 1998
Final Addenda -- Lt. Bill Lemmons
I have some background information on 1st Lt. William Lemmons who became MIA in
June 18, 1967. I was a fellow pilot with Bill in the 196th Lt. Inf. Bde.
By chance, I was serving as the aviation duty officer at the brigade tactical
operations center (BTOC) the day he went missing, and I helped
sound the alarm that Bill was overdue.
The first realization that one of our aircraft might be missing came suddenly
when the infantry unit for whom Bill was flying called me at the BTOC. The
infantry officer asked, "Did the aircraft return directly to the brigade
heliport for refueling without dropping our passengers off, first?" I
immediately called our heliport, about five miles away at Ky Ha, where the
operations clerk did a ramp check for the aircraft. He called back several
minutes later to say, "No, the aircraft isn't back yet". This was about 1730
hours. With nightfall only an hour or so away, we needed to move fast.
We scrambled our two UH-1 (Huey) aircraft to look for Bill and his passengers in
the area we thought he should have been flying. At about 1845 hours, as you
reported, we were into a full-blown night time emergency. We got helicopter
gunship and flareship support from a nearby unit and continued looking until
about 2300 hours. We suspended the search that night for two reasons. First, the
area in which we were searching was incredibly dark with hilly and mountainous
terrain. It was remote and, so, had no ground lights from peasant shacks or
roads or even ponds to reflect moonlight and starlight. Without a full moon, it
was like flying into a gunny sack. Spatial disorientation and flight into the
ground or a mountain would be easy.
The second reason we stopped looking that night was because we almost lost other
aircraft. The supporting flareship, which carried many crates of magnesium
flares, was hit by ground fire from a village in the dark below. Normally,
crewmen in the rear of a flareship prepare and arm flares one
at a time and then, very carefully, throw them out. After clearing the
helicopter, the flares' small parachutes open and the flares float to earth. On
their way down, they might light the ground
enough to see survivors or, at least, a glint of metal from an aircraft
wreckage. When the flareship
started taking groundfire, one of the flares inside the aircraft was hit by a
bullet, ignited, and started to burn. Realize that these flares burn at about
1000 degrees Fahrenheit. Within seconds the temperature of the one flare burning
out of control would ignite the others still in their crates
and the aircraft would have exploded or -- more precisely -- would have
vaporized.
I was beside our unit commander who was coordinating the search from our radio
in our BTOC. The flareship pilot keyed his microphone and yelled that he had a
flare burning inside his aircraft. With his mike button still keyed from
tension, we heard his increasingly more panicked yells to his crewmen.
The radio was filled with "Kick the flare out ... Kick it out ... GET IT OUT ...
WE"RE ON FIRE ...GOD, HELP ...GET IT OUT" . With even a single flare burning
inside the helicopter cabin, the light would have been like that staring into a
bank of stadium floodlights from three feet away. The heat from the flare would
have been rising constantly and putting your boot near it to give it a kick
would have been like sticking your foot into a furnace.
In about five seconds -- which seemed like an hour -- the flare was kicked out.
Nevertheless, the ground fire from the enemy below continued. After a minute or
so, when things got a little more quiet, the gunship flight leader reported over
the radio that it was the heaviest fire he'd seen -- let alone received -- in
all the time he'd been flying in Vietnam. He asked for permission to retaliate
and our commander replied, "Level the village". In Vietnam, where we fought a
"politically correct" war, this was a very unusual reply. In fact, the gun
flight leader was so surprised to hear it that he asked our commander to repeat
the clearance. The commander did. Both gunships expended all their ammunition on
the enemy hidden below. By then, all the search aircraft needed refueling and
the gunships, rearming.
Because of this -- with the real threat we might lose several more aircraft that
night -- the search was suspended until first light in the morning. It was then
after midnight. We all hoped that Bill and his passengers were alive and could
evade the enemy until we resumed searching in few hours. If anyone slept that
night it was only because we knew the tasks that faced us when the sun came up.
We searched for days -- again, like you reported -- without luck. Nothing, not
one single trace of even the aircraft was ever found. This alone was too unusual
to believe. We crisscrossed all the ground we thought Bill and his passengers
would have flown over and, depute the thick jungle, we should have seen at least
something left from a wreckage. For weeks, whenever any of our aircraft flew
near that area, crewmen would fly missions with one eye on the ground and an ear
peeled for a rescue signal or Bill's missing aircraft. Nothing was ever seen or
heard.
----------------------------
Several months later -- again, as if by chance for me -- I drew a mission to fly
the brigade intelligence officer (S-1) to Tam Ky. This was the Vietnamese
administrative center just north of Chu Lai, the brigade's headquarters. A Chu
Hoi -- a Vietcong who turned himself in to the South Vietnamese government --
was claiming that he knew something about "a downed pilot and two passengers".
After landing at Tam Ky, I accompanied the S-1 into the administrative center. I
wanted to see a Vietcong up close, even if he was one who had just surrendered.
A moment before his questioning
started, my eyes locked with those of this former Vietcong. I will never forget
my surprise at the look of hate in that dishevelled man's eyes. I thought,
"That's strange. Here's a guy asking for mercy and now willing to work from his
former enemies while looking like he'd still like to kill them". I excused the
look of hate to his fear and left the building.
During the flight home, the intelligence officer told me what he'd heard. The
Chu Hoi reported that "... Bill's aircraft was not shot down (evidently, then,
it landed because of maintenance problems). When a Vietcong unit advanced on the
pilot and his two passengers, a firefight started. Bill and his passengers took
refuge in an old bomb crater and, during the firefight, the VC lobbed a grenade
into their position. All were killed. The aircraft was then dismantled and
hidden in a river".
The location that the Chu Hoi gave where all this happened we now realized
contributed to why -- at least during the first few search hours -- we never
spotted Bill, his passengers, or the aircraft. The area over which Bill had been
flying was an area known to be infested with VC and North Vietnamese
solders. It was, in fact one of their staging areas. This area was several large
valleys to the West of Chu Lai and, therefore, outside of normal artillery
support range. Because of this, our aviation unit had made an operating
procedure for the area. No pilot was to fly over that area unless escorted by
helicopter gunships. That Bill was flying in the area may tell you something
about who Bill was as a person.
Bill may have been the nicest guy
in our unit. He was a religious person, who didn't smoke, drink, never lost his
temper, or use bad language. Because of this he was teased -- sometimes more
than
a little -- by the rest of us. The day he disappeared we believe he'd been asked
to fly over that area by his two passengers. Because their infantry unit planned
to assault this dangerous area in a week
or so, the passengers -- a senior sergeant and a major -- wanted to take a quick
look at the area just to see what it looked like. Bill was the kind of guy who
was always ready to help. Perhaps, instead of saying "no", because getting a
gunship escort would be time consuming, Bill decided to accommodate his infantry
passengers. If that is the area in which Bill went down, we couldn't have found
him that first night. We weren't looking there. It was outside our usual
operational area.
However, because now we see from records on the POW-MIA Database that Bill
perhaps didn't die in a firefight with the enemy, another possibility exists.
The Chu Hoi who reported these events could have been a "plant". A Vietcong who
purposely defected only to spread disinformation about Bill's
real fate. If true, this Chu Hoi wanted us to think Bill and his passengers were
dead so that we would stop looking for him. This might make it easier for the VC
to transport him among their camps. Either way, it's not very pleasant thinking
about what happened that day and, worse, the events for a
long time afterwards.
I've never forgotten Bill and I hope this addition to his biographical
information may help his family or friends. Should anyone want to contact me
directly, please do. If my email address should change, my postal address should
always remain valid.
Regards,
Fred Startz
196th Lt. Inf. Bde 1966-67
Jakarta, Indonesia
start@idola.net.id
PO Box 4160
Jakarta 12160
Indonesia
Source:
POW Network - Biographies on POW/MIA from the
Vietnam Conflict
.gif)
Please e-mail me if you have
any additional information about Sergeant First Class Guillory,
Lieutenant Lemmons or Captain McKittrick, or if you have any comments about this page.
Go to Cpl Keiper and Sgt Ravenna's Page
Go to Capt Consolvo's
Page
Go to LCpl Padilla's Page
Go to Main POW/MIA page
Click here to view letters I have written on behalf on my adopted
POW/MIAs.
<![CDATA[
<bgsound src="Shared/YouAreNotAlone.mid">]]>
© 1999-2008 by Jade Ostroha
Updated March 4, 2003 |
