Colonel siry, thank you no your time. It was a pleasure, thank you. Lets take a look at some of the interviews in the collection at the west point center for oral history. This is stephen, he served as a helicopter pilot during the vietnam war. Its april 11th, 2016. Im in savannah, georgia, with steve dara, major retired from the u. S. Army. My first name is stephen, stephen and my last name is darrah, darrah. Lets provide a framework for this decision this afternoon. Take us from your Early Childhood right up through west point and into the army and through your army career. Okay. Look at more detail later. I was born and raised in providence, rhode island. Born february 25th, 1943. I graduated from school in 1961 and and went to the military academy in july of 1961. And while i was at the military academy, i fought the Academic Department on a daytoday basis. Played a little squash, played a little tennis and was delighted to finally graduate. I was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the infantry. What the Airborne Ranger school, as did most of my classmates at the time, and was assigned to the first of the 502nd battalion in the 102nd Airborne Division in fort campbell, kentucky, first assignment. Spent a year and a half there and decided i wanted to go to flight school. Decided i wanted to fly rather than walk. In 67 i went to flight school, finished that up in september of 67, went to vietnam on my first tour in october of 67 to the first cav. Coming back a year later i went to fort rucker, did the advanced course, went back to vietnam for about seven months or so. Units were standing down and i had to rotate through a number of units before i had the requisite amount of time to get back. Reassigned to fort benning, and i resigned and left the army in new years eve of 1974. Lets go back and spend a little time prior to west point. What was it that motivated you to choose west point. Thats kind of interesting, fred. Theres a program on television at the time called west point. I really thought these guys with all these uniforms on and so forth looked pretty sharp. And they had an in with the ladies and so forth. I thought, gee, that would be a good way to go do that. So i applied through the normal process of getting an appointment through our congressman in rhode island, a guy named amy feran and did the testing and all the rest of that. And i actually turned out to be a fourth alternate, meaning there was a principle and three guys ahead of me. I thought, well, this wasnt going to happen. And actually, id been accepted at duke and i was going to go to duke and do a premed course there. I then i got a letter, youve got an appointment. I said sure, why not. So i showed up. And thats what basically why i went to west point. And how i wound up there. You said you played a little squash and a little tennis, you played a lot of squash and a lot of tennis. Yeah, i played four years up there with each. Now, you played against navy in squash and tennis. Yes. How did you do . Never lost. Our team never lost, i never lost. We had i dont remember if we played them, but the three years we played them, at the varsity level, we beat them every year. That was the highlight of my athletic career. You graduated, and commissioned in the infantry. Decided you wanted to fly instead of walk. This was kind of interesting. When i was with the first of the 502nd, theres a gentleman there named junior gasbard. He passed away a number of years ago. He was an aviator, also the officer of representative for the tennis team when i was up there. He and i used to play tennis every once in a while. We got the discussing one day i was on orders to go to vietnam with the third brigade. And he was with the first cav in 1965 when they were first together. One of the first aviators. He said you ought to consider going to flight school. You can fly over that stuff and not walk through it. I thought, hey, thats a good idea. I decided to go to flight school, applied and started in fort walters, texas, spent four and a half months there and then four and a half months at fort rucker. This is rotary. Thats correct, yup. Why did you choose helicopters instead of fixed wing . I had this desire, not sure why, fred, but i wanted to fly gun ships, i had seen pictures and videos of them, i wanted to fly something i could shoot back, not just be shot at. At that point in time the gunship development with bell was starting, and they were hanging gun systems, if you will, on the old b and c model troop carrying helicopters. In my last week at fort rucker, they asked if anybody would be interested in taking a weeks transition course into gunships. I said yeah, id like to do that. We went out and fired the systems and so forth. I really liked it. What was a gunship at that time . It was a helicopter that had four people in it, a pilot and copilot, gunner and crew chief. These were b and c models, first early models bell developed. They were originally used for troop carrying, and resupply, and so forth. Somebody got the idea, well sanction gun systems on them, mini guns on them, m16 systems, which are four m16 machine guns, two rocket pods and so forth and then modify the interior in such a way, shape or form that you carry the ammunition and all that. They were the first, if you will, helicopter gunships that were developed. They had some of them, i think, in 1966 and late 65 is when they first came out. You were in one of the first models . They had evolved if you will at the point in time i got there in 67. They had gone through a period of evolution, if you will, with certain improvements, blades. That was what you were going to fly. Thats what you flew in first cav. Thats correct. You come to vietnam. Tell us about that transition. When i first came to vietnam, i was assigned to the i dont know what it was down in they said they said what do you want to do . I said i wanted to fly helicopter gunships. Who do you want to fly with . The first cav. My orders were go to be assigned to the first cav. They said what unit do you want to be in. I said one of the either one is good for me. They assigned me to d company, 229th, assault helicopter baa tan tallon as platoon leader of third platoon. I arrived in october 10th or 11th or 12th, around that time frame, and took over that platoon. Whats a platoon . About 28 to 30 men, door gunners, crew chiefs, officer pilots, commissioned officer pilots. And five to six helicopters, five to six gunships. And what would be a normal week for you . What would some of the assignments youd be doing . We provided basically armed escort for a variety of different things. It could be a combat assault consisting of six troopcarrying hel helis for example, or escorting a medevachelicopter. Resupply stuff. If the helis were resupplying and they needed an escort, we would take two gunships out and escort them to do that. We also did a number of escorts for what we call longrange reconpatrol insertions. That was something that was done on a regular ongoing basis. And that consisted basically of a team of anywhere from five to six men. And they would be inserted into a particular area, and they would stay there for whatever the time that they could stay there doing reconnaissance work, mapping data, so on and so forth. We would escort the aircraft to put them in. When it came time to get them out, we go escort them out. Escorting the whole way. Thats correct. We never carried troops. You said these were m16, you had m16 on there . There was a number of different varieties of gun systems on the old b and c model helis. One was an m16 system, it had four m16 machine guns, two on each side, and two nineround rocket pods, one on each side. Plus the door gunners had somewhere around 4,000 rounds of door gun ammunition split between the two of them. So you had guns that you could use as a pilot . Thats right. The pilot that sat in the left seat was the aircraft commander, and he would actually fire the what we call the gun systems, the mini guns or the m16. And the pilot in the right seat, the copilot, would fire the rocket pods. You had the capability of changing that over if something happened to one or the other of those individuals in the aircraft. That was normally the way we divided up the responsibilities. What was your First Experience in combat in that situation . I was assigned the way it worked is that when you went to the d company, the 229th, you flew with an experienced aviator for a period of time. Then that aviator would say whether he thought you could be an aircraft commander or not. If he didnt think you could be an aircraft commander you stayed a peter pilot or you were reassigned some place else. Hay had a warrant officer named john mituski who was the best facility id ever seen in my life. I flew with him about three months. I became an aircraft commander fairly quickly after i got there. He and i clicked together. So we flew a variety of different missions. To answer your question, the one name that sticks out in my mind is one of the things we used to do was fire fly missions at night. We were in the bong song area. There was a river that ran down through there. Our base was close to the coast. That night we would fly three of four missions, checking the river out. We had a slick, a troopcarrying helicopter that had a search light system on it in one of the doors and he would fly slowly down the river with a search light checking the river out. We would fly back out 50 to 100 feet up behind him. If he got shot at, then we could protect him to get him out and so on and so forth. We also had a chase bird, another heli that flew higher in case somebody got shot dun and had to be rescued. What i distinctly remember, the first time, this happened quickly after i got there, the second fire fly mission we flew. And at the time there was a rej meant of north vietnamese that were coming from the north across that river going south and the cabin interpretcepted t. They were trying to break out of whatever cabin they were in contact with. They had a number of 50 caliber aircraft guns. What i distinctly remember was the first time i saw a tracer round from a 50 caliber at night. And i remember i was flying the helicopter, mituski was sitting next to me. I saw this green thing coming up, vertically, very slowly. It had some sort of light. Suddenly it turned and came towards us and just accelerated right by us. And about the time it turned, miteski said break right, break right. I was so transfixed on that softball, that green big softball that was coming up in the air that he finally had to take the stick and bang it off to the right so we broke out of the way of that thing. That was the first time i had seen a large caliber tracer round at night. Saw a lot of them before we went back home. I remember that distinctly. And did you have Laundry Service next day . Not that time. There were other times we did though, yes. Yeah. So you were in a number of those situations . You said you were involved during attack. One of the things that and i was very fortunate in this regard. In december of 68, first of all let me just say we probably flew on average anywhere between 140 to 200 hours a month. There was supposedly a limit on how much flying time you could actually fly. Those limits really werent enforced that much. And depending upon the activity that was going on, we would fly as much as, if it was a busy time, as much as 200 hours in a months time period. So you could be flying every day. Thats correct, and you could fly seven to eight hours a day, and you could fly at night also. In december of 1967 i was selected, myself and one of my warrant officer pilots were selected to go to the cobra transition course, the ah 1 g cobra had been developed by bell. Bell helicopter, which has designed and developed all i say not all, but the majority of the helicopters that were in service in vietnam at the time. Decided at some point in time, not sure exactly when in the middle of 1967 to develop a purposely designed gunship. And the prototypes for this were finished in im going to say maybe september, fred, and then they starts manufacturing and sending to vietnam. The first ones arrived in late september, early october. And they were part of what they called a new Equipment Training Team found in the saigon, where they actually brought pilots in, crew chiefs and door gunners from flying the older helicopters, bell helicopters in and actually trained them. There was a big difference between this cobra and the gunships we were flying, the b and c models i mentioned. One, there was only two pilots, they sat in an dem, one in the front, one in the back. The aircraft was designed in such a way that it had a much higher cruising speed. The b and c models, we could cruise, if we were loaded, somewhere around 70, 75 knots. The cruiser would run 145 knots. In the gun range, you could take it up to about 100 knots indicated before things started to get shaky inside the helicopter. A toeb cobra you could take up to 110 knots. The gun systems themselves on the cobra were designed for it. It could carry much more ammunition, many more rockets, hea heavier payload, and had about the same station time, about two hours of the full load of fuel the b and c models had. The great thing about it was it had a width of 36 inches. As long as you kept that width, pointed at what you were trying to go after, you had a very small for somebody to shoot back at you. It had better armament protecting the pilots, and it could take a lot of damage before they actually gave up the ghost, so to speak. And you were the only gunners . And the interesting thing about this, this was a bit of a problem. The crew chief and door gunners had been flying, getting flight pay, going out on missions, could see what was going on and so forth, had their own helicopter they were responsible for, and now that they were being asked to do is just to maintain a helicopter and not fly it. And psychologically that became it didnt become. It could have become a big problem. And thank god for these young kids and okay, fine, we cant fly, well maintain it and make sure youre safe when you fly. I kept a c model gunship in my platoon, supposed to turn them all in. I kept them there so we could get these guys out and put them up in the air and let them see whats going on, where we were flying and so on and so forth. But it was a bit of a change for them. The rest were cobras . Thats correct, we had five cobras. You were a platoon leader for six months. Yes. And then you became i was assigned as the assistant s3 in battalion. What was your job then . Planning operations, taking information on available assets we had to be able to assign to supporting combat assaults, interfacing with, you know, infantry battalions and the regiments and so forth, providing what they needed for various operations. It was just a Tactical Operations planning on a daytoday, week to week basis. But you stayed in the air . I continued to fly with my platoon. I was asked to come back and fly by the Company Commander there at the time as well as the guy that took over for my standpoint as a platoon leader. I came back and flew with these guys on a regular basis. For another platoon leader . Thats correct, yeah. You were under his command at that point . Well, actually, it was kind of interesting because what they did is they let me plan and lead the missions that did this platoon. Which i was fine with. I enjoyed the flying. I was very close to the guys that were in that platoon, both the enlisted and the warrant officers and the commissioned officers. And one of my objectives when i was there, personal objectives was i wanted to make sure i did everything i could to bring everybody home. And i was successful in doing that. In flying its interesting that it doesnt take much to make a mistake. And somebody get hurt very badly or get killed. One of the things that we always stressed, and that i always stressed with these guys is certain fundamentals about thinking before you do something. And safety was a big, big part of what we did. And it was not that safety aspect out when youre running a mission, but a safety aspect when you came back, how you refueled, how you rearmed, how you cleaned them, so on and so forth. One of the things i was asked to do because this was kind of a bible with me, if you will, was come back and maintain that dialogue, and maintain that environment with the guys that were actually still in the third platoon. Which i did, and enjoyed doing it. Just to back up a minute, on the cobra transition, it was interesting. When i was asked to go down there, actually i wasnt asked to go down there, i was assigned to the threeweek course. I had never been to the saigon. So this warrant officer Jack Gallagher and i went down there, spent three weeks learning how to fly and shoot and of forth. When we came back, the first six cobras that came in country, three went to the 334th playboys down south, around saigon, and the other three came up to my platoon. Whats playboy . It was a call sign. They were a Gunship Company also down in the southern part of vietnam. And so we actually had the three of the first six cobras that came in country, came to my platoon. And it was just before or just after tet started. We flew those continuously through the time frame i was there until i came home in october. What were your observations as a soldier, going through that vietnam experience during tet . You were right there in the midst of it. What was your impression of the way the war was being waged at that point . You know, i didnt have a sense, fred, because a a large sense of how the overall tactical stuff was going on. We got the stars and stripes with and we could read what was going on. We were so focused on what was going on in our unit with us, in our helicopters, in our units that we were supporting, and normally we would support one Slick Company, which was three different platoons of troopcarrying helicopters and they in turn would be supporting one battalion. Always thing that were going on at tet at the time, the blockage of nva positions, the cavs, they were not involved in way itself, that was the marines that were involved in that, but our world was a fairly small world. And i dont remember having any sense at all about what was going on overall with the war, how the war was being waged. Of course, we Read Everything about what happened in tet after it actually happened. I was if kwang tree when that went on, late january, early february of 68 i think it was. The vietnamese took over the town of kwang tree. And we actually had moved up there, my platoon moved up there with a Slick Company to support the first of the 12th of the cav three days before this started. And the first of the 12th was supplying the perimeter defense, if you will, for the troop carrying helicopters and my gunships and so forth. So it was what i remember about that time is that th