Joe Kline, (B Co 101st AVN BN VN), wrote that he has located the aircraft that he crewed in Viet Nam. Here is his story.
As was common with many crew chiefs, I crewed several aircraft from time to time during my tour in Viet Nam, however there was one aircraft that I called my own. I crewed this particular aircraft about 90% of the time, and have to admit that I developed quite a personal bond with it, one that only a crew chief would understand. I guess it is similar to the feelings that a kid has for his first car, only multiplied a hundredfold.
This particular aircraft was a UH-1H Slick, serial number 67-18569. Although it was one of the older ships in our outfit, the Kingsmen, (three years old when I had it) it was real strong and had a personality all it's own. It had a healthy sprinkling of bullet hole patches. In fact on one particular slow day I painted all the patches red. The ship was always good to us, the only maintenance related forced landing I recall was when a tail rotor servo went out and we had to make a forced landing along the Perfume River in Hue.
It was a sad day for me personally when she was transferred to a sister company, C/101, the Black Widows, about two weeks before I was to return home. I saw her several times wearing the new blue diamond over the old white one before I left. It was during Lam Son 719, the Laos invasion, ans the aircraft were being shifted around more than usual to make up for combat losses.
I kept in touch with several buddies after returning. Some had said that they heard that 569 had been lost in Laos while with C/101 AVN. In December 1988, I attended the dedication of the California Vietnam Veterans Memorial and struck upa conversation with an ex Black Widow pilot. He said to his knowledge, C/101 had not lost any aircraft in Laos during the Lam Son operation. After hearing that I thought that maybe 569 survived at least long enough to be shoved off the side of a ship in 1975, or perhaps was still sitting derelict in some Vietnamese airfield with a yellow star on the tailboom.
In 1989 I made a new friend, Mike Sloniker. Mike was an artillery officer with the 101st in 1968, and later a Huey pilot with A/229, 1st Cav and the 174 AHC Dolphins. He is now a Lietenant Colonel working in the Pentagon, and he really knows his way around the data files. As a long shot, I asked him to follow up on my aircraft as a curiousity, wondering what scrap heap it may have ended up in.
To my surprise, his response was that 569 was still tearing up the skies! It is assigned to the 397th Medical Detachment, Concord Municipal Airport, New Hampshire Army National Guard. My younger brother is living in Boston, and on Janueary 2, 1990, he drove up to Concord to get me some pictures. I had previously drawn him a sketch, based on photos and memory, on where to look for bullet hole patches. The Guardsman that showed him around said that the ship had been through Corpus Christi several times, and it has had several tailbooms since Vietnam. Most of the bullet holes were in the original tailboom. However the photographs do show one of the patches on the upper right nose compartment. It is visible as a small red circle in the Vietnam era photo, and as a circular O.D. patch in the recent photo. 569 apparently flies about once a week now. Undoubtedly some of her crew members were not even born when she was in the skies of Viet Nam.
The above story originally appeared in the March - April 1990 Issue of the Screaming Eagle Magazine.