MISSION IMPOSSIBLE GOT NOTHING ON THIS!
CARIBOU MODEL CV-2
It was late February 1969, and I was playing the courier role again. My mission this time was to hitch a ride on a twin-engine Caribou that had just picked up an A Team from B-32 Special Forces Camp in Tay Ninh East. After we dropped the A Team off, we would then continue to Cu Chi, where I would deliver my documents to the 25th Division G-2, Military Intelligence.
It was a good assignment, and I looked forward to flying into the cooler air. The countryside in Tay Ninh Province was beautiful from above; the foliage and the shades of yellow and green were mesmerizing.
On this trip, we had sixteen Americans on the plane: twelve Special Forces, the flight crew, and me. The rest of the plane had ammo and supplies for the A Team’s camp.
The takeoff was uneventful.
Then, at around 2,000 feet, the left engine caught fire.
Then it exploded.
Pieces of it tore into the wing and fuselage. The whole aircraft snapped into a violent, rapid oscillation. Our cargo went bouncing across the floor.
I looked through my window. All I could see were flames.
The engine was burning right against the wing. And that wing held the fuel tanks.
The plane banked hard left, and for a moment I could see the full extent of the damage. It looked like the engine had simply come apart.
I glanced around the cabin. Everyone was calm. Nobody was shouting, nobody was scrambling. But every hand was locked onto the webbing of the seats. Calm on the outside. White-knuckled underneath.
A burning engine inches from the fuel tanks. Live ammunition behind me. I was sitting between them.
The plane went into a steep spiral dive. The pilots fought to gain control and put the fire out. I sat there and did the math: a burning engine next to a full fuel tank, a hold full of ammunition, and jungle below. If we went in, there wasn’t going to be much left to find.
Three hundred feet. That’s all we had left when the pilots got the plane back under control.
We clipped the treetops. Then the gear-up landing — hard, fast, sliding across three rice paddies before we hit a dike and settled on the left wing.
The tail ramp had already lowered during the descent. The second the aircraft stopped, everyone was out in seconds.
I ran fifty yards, waiting for the explosion. I looked back, certain I’d see the plane go up. Instead I saw the flight crew — the men who had just saved all our lives — still on board, working the fire until they put it out themselves.
I stood in that rice field for what felt like minutes, just thankful to be alive. By the time I made my way back to the aircraft, the Special Forces team had already set up a perimeter. Nobody gave the order. They just did it.
The pilots’ skill and nerve saved us. So did luck. We were still climbing, still low, when the engine let go. A few minutes later, at cruising altitude, this story would have ended differently.
Another lucky day in Vietnam.