I was born and raised in providence, rhode island, 1943. I graduated from Providence Country Day School and went to the military academy in july of 1961. And while 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, and i was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the infantry. I went to Airborne Ranger school, as did most of my classmates at the time. I was assigned to the first of d battalion at fort campbell, kentucky. That was my spent in a year and first. A half there and decided i wanted to go to Flight School, and i was on orders to go to the third brigade and decided i wanted to fly rather than walk, so in 1967, i went to Flight School and finished in september of 1967. Went to vietnam on my first tour in october of 1967 to the first cav. Came back a year later and did the advance course and back to vietnam for about i think it was seven months or so. Units were standing down, and i had to rotate through a number before i had time to get back. I was reassigned back at fort benning with the 197th light infantry brigade. And i resigned and left the army in, lets see, it was 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 . Is kind ofat interesting, because the was a program on the television at the time called west point, and i thought these guys with the uniforms on looked pretty sharp. They had an in with the ladies and so forth the way the shows were, and i thought that would be a good way to do that so i , applied through the process of getting an application in rhodeur congressmen island and did the testing and all of that, and i actually turned out to be a fourth alternate, meaning there was a principal and three ahead of me. So i thought well this isnt going to happen. Actually i got accepted at duke , and i was go to do a premed course there. About two weeks before i got a letter saying you got an appointment. Be at west point at such and such a date if you accept and so on, and i said sure, why not. I showed up. That is basically why i went to west point and how i wound up there. You said you played a logical squash and tennis. Stephen yes, i played four years up there. With each. You played against navy at squash and tennis. Stephen yes. How did you do . Stephen never lost. Our team never lost. I never lost. I dont remember if we played them as plebes but the three years on the varsity level we beat them every year and last year we shut them out, which was the first time between army and navy in squash. That was the highlight of my athletic career if you will. , you graduate from west point and you are commissioned in what branch . Stephen infantry. Flyou decided you wanted to instead of walk. Stephen this is kind of interesting. When i was with the first of the 502nd there was a gentleman named junior gaspard. Unfortunately he passed away a ago, but heyears was an aviator and also was the representative or the tennis team, and we used to play tennis once in a while. We got to discussing one day that i was on orders to go to vietnam and with the third brigade and 101st and was with the first cav in 1965. When they were first put together, he flew with the first aviators. He said you ought to consider going to Flight School. He said you can fly over that, you dont have to walk through it. I thought that is a good idea so i decided to guy and spent i think it was four and a half months at fort texas then 4 1 2 at fort rucker. There is rotary . Stephen that is correct. Yes. Why did you choose helicopters . Stephen i had this desire, and i am not really sure why, fred, but i wanted to fly gun ships. I had seen pictures and videos and i wanted to live something that i could shoot back with rather than just be shot at, and at that point if time the gun Ship Development with bell was starting and they were hanging gun systems if you will on the old b and c model helicopters in my last week at fort rucker they asked if anybody with be interesting in a weeks transition course into gun ships. I said yes. I would like to do that so we , flew the system and i liked it. Fred what was the gun ship at that time . Stephen a gun ship was a helicopter with four people in it, pilot, copilot, and chief and another, and they were b and c models the first bell had developed and originally used for troop carrying and resupply and so forth and somebody got the idea lets put some guns on them mini , m16, four him 16, two pods, and and two they carried ammunition. They were the first helicopter gun ships that were developed. They had some i think in 1966, late 1965 when they first came out. Fred so you were in one of the first models of this . Stephen they had evolved to the point when i got to my unit in october of 1967, so they had gone through a period of evolution with certain improvements. Rotor blades, tail rotors, structural things and so forth. Fred that is what you were going to fly and you went to the first cav. Stephen yes. You come to vietnam, and tell us about the transition. Stephen i first came into vietnam, i was assigned to the i dont know what it was but they said what , do you want to do. I want to fly helicopter gun slips with the first cav. He said ok, fine. , my orders were to go to anke and be signed. When i got this and he they said when i got this, and they said what units, i said you can have two gunships. One is 227 and 229. Either one is good. They signed me 20 d company 229 assault helicopter battalion as platoon leaders of first platoon. I arrived in about october 10 or 11 and took over that platoon. Fred what is a platoon . Stephen about 28, 30 man. Door gunner, crew chief. Warrant officer pilots. Commissioned officer pilots. And five to six helicopters, gun ships. Fred and what would be a normal week for you, some of the assignments . Stephen we provided basically armed escort for a variety of different things. It could be a combat assault consisting of six troop carrying hueys, for example or it could , be escorting a medevac helicopter into someplace with a hot l. Z. And they needed Fire Suppression so the helicopter can medevac folks who have been wounded. We supplied stuff. If the hueys are resupplying somebody and they need an escort because of conditions on the ground and so forth we would , take two gun ships out and escort them to do that. We also we did a number of escorts for what we call longrange recon patrol and that was done on a regular ongoing basis. 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 they could stay there, doing reconnaissance work, mapping data, so on and so forth. We would escort the aircraft that put them in, and when it came time to get them out, we would escort them. Fred you would escort them the whole way. Stephen that is correct. We never carried troops. Were m16,aid these you would have m16s on them . Stephen there were a number of varieties of gun systems on the old b and c model hueys. One was m16 with four machine guns two on each side and two nine round rocket pods. One on each side. That was the arming. Plus the door gunners. They had somewhere around 4,000 rounds of door gun ammunition split between the two of them. Fred so you had guns that you could use as far as a pilot . Stephen that is right. The far side of left seed was aircraft commander , and he would fire what we call the gun systems, many guns or m16 and m60s and with the rocket pods but you had the capability , of changing that if something happened to one of those individuals in the aircraft. That was normally the way we divided up the responsibilities. Fred what was your First Experience in combat in vietnam . Stephen i was assigned the way it worked when you went to the 229th, you flew with an experienced aviator for a period of time. Then that aviator would say whether he in turn thought could you could be an aircraft commander or not. If he didnt think you could you could be an and or craft commander, you would stay of what we would call a peter pilot or reassigned someplace else. And i had a warrant officer name joined moteski who was the best pilot ive ever seen in my life and i , flew with john for about i guess about three months. I became an aircraft commander fairly quickly when i got there but we clicked together , and we flew a variety of different missions. To answer your question, the one thing that sticks out in my mind one of the things we used to do is fly firefight missions at night. There was a river that ran down through the area and our fire base was close to the coast. And at night, we would fly three to four missions, checking the river out. We would have we called it a slick, two pairing helicopter with a searchlight system in one of the doors, and he would fly slowly down the river with a searchlight, checking it out, and we would fly 50 to 100 feet above him so if he got shot at we could protect him to get him out and so on and so forth, and we also had a chase bird, as we would call it. That was another louie that fly much higher in case somebody got shot down and they had to be rescued. What i distinctly remember, and this happened fairly quickly once we got there, the second the regiment of north vietnamese were coming from the north across the river going south, and the captain intercepted them, and they were trying to get back to the south and break contact with whoever they were in contact with, and 50calibernumber of antiaircraft guns, and what i distinctly room ever is the first time i saw a tracer round from a 50 caliber at night. And i was flying the helicopter and pateski was sitting next to me, and i saw this green thing come up, and it looked like it was coming up vertically, very slowly, and it looks like it was some sort of like suddenly appeared, and it turned and came towards us and just accelerated right by us, and about they time it turned, he said, rake right, so fixedht, and i was on that softball, that green, big softball that was coming in the air, he finally had to take the stick and bank it. That was the first time i had seen a large caliber tracer round at night. I saw a lot of them before we went back home but i remember , that distinctly. Fred and did you have Laundry Service the next day . Fred and did you have Laundry Service the next day . Stephen no, not that time. But there were others we did. Fred you were in a number of those situations. You said you were involved during tet. Stephen yes. One of the things that is i was very fortunate in there regard. In december of 1968, we probably flew on average anywhere between 140 to 200 hours a month. There was supposedly a limit of how much flying time you could actually fly. Those limits really were not 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. Fred you could be flying every day. That is correct. Seven or 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 was developed by bell. Bell helicopter, which designed and developed not all but the majority of the helicopters that were in service in vietnam at the time, decided that at some point in time i am not sure what exactly this was in 1967 to develop a purposely designed gun ship. And the prototypes for this work finished in im going to say it may be september, and then they started manufacturing them and sent them to vietnam. The first ones i think arrived in vietnam in september, early october. They were part of a new equipping Training Team down in saigon where they actually , brought pilots in, crew chiefs and door gunners from flying the older bell helicopters in and actually trained them. There is big difference between cobra and the gunships we were flying, the b and c models i mentioned. One only two pilots in tandem. One in front and one in back. And the aircraft was designed such a way it had a much higher cruising speed. The b and c models, we could cruise, loaded, around 70 to 75 knots. The cobra was about 145 knots. On a gun run the b and c models depending on angle of attack of course. You could take it up to about 100 knots indicated before things started to get real sinky. The cobra was 210 knotts. The gun systems themselves on the cobra were designed for it. They could carry much more ammunition, many more rockets, heavier payload and had about , the same station time, about two hours with a full load of fuel that the b and c models had. The great thing about it was that it had a width of 36 inches. So as long as you kept that width pointed at what you were trying to go after you had a small , silhouette for somebody to back at you. It had better armament inside protecting the pilots and could take a lot of damage before it actually gave up the ghost, so to speak. Fred you were the only gunners . Stephen this is the interesting thing about this. This is a bit of a problem because the crew chief and door gunners had been getting flight pay and going out on missions, could see what was going on and so forth had their own , helicopter they were responsible for. Now what they were being asked to do is maintain a helicopter and not fly it. Psychologically that became didnt become it could have become a big problem. Thank god for the young kids. They said, ok, fine. We cant fly. We will make sure you are safe when you fly. I kept a c model gun ship in my platoon. We were supposed to turn them in. I kept one there just so we could get these guys out and once in a while put one up in the air and let them see what is going on and where we are flying and so on and so forth but it , was a bit of a change for them. Fred the rest were cobras . thats correct. Stephen five cobras. Fred so you were a platoon leader for six months . What was your job then . Stephen Planning Operations taking information on available , assets that we had to be able to assign to supporting combat assaults and independent facing with battalions and providing for them providing for them. It was a Tactical Operations planning on day to day and week to week basis. Thread but you stayed in the air . Fred but you stayed in the air . Stephen i continued to fly with my platoon. I was asked to come back and fly by the Company Commander. Fred you were under his command . Was kindactually, it of interesting, because they let me plan and lead the missions that this platoon was doing, which i was fine with. I enjoyed the fly. I was very close to the guys in the platoon, both enlisted and warrant officers and commissioned officers. And one of my objectives when i was there, personal objective, i wanted to make sure i did everything i could to bring everybody home. And i was successful in doing that. In flying, it is interesting that it does not take much to getsa mistake and somebody hurt very badly or gets killed, and one of the things that we always stressed and that i 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 when you are running a mission but as a safety aspect when you came back, how you refuel, rearm, what you do with the helicopter, how you clean them, so forth. So 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 that environment with the guys that were 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, i was not asked, i was assigned for the threeweek course, and i had never been to saigon, and there was a fire base and so forth, so this warrant officer and i went there and spent three weeks learning to fly and shoot the al1 z. When we came back, the cobras first six that came into the country three went to the 334 , playboys down south and other three to my platoon. Fred what is a playboy . There that was their callsign, a Gunship Company in the southern part of vietnam. We had the three of the first six cobras that came in country came to my platoon and it was , just after tet started. We flew those continuously through the time frame that i was there until i came home in october. Thread what were your observations as a soldier and going through tet,vietnam experience and that you were in the midst of that . What is your impression of the way the war was being waged . Stephen well, i did not have a sense, fred, because a large sense of how the overall tactical was going. We got stars and stripes and we could read that. But we were so focused on what was going on in our unit with us in our helicopters and our units that we were supporting, and oneally, we would support Slick Company, which was three different platoons of two carrying helicopters, and they, in turn, with support one battalion, so all the things that were going on at tet, the belongs of people they were not involved in we inch. That was the marines that were involved in that, but our world was a pretty small world, and i dont remember having any sense at all about what was going on in the overall war how the war , was being waged. Of course we Read Everything , about what happened in tet after it actually happened. I was in quang tree in late january and early february of 1960 yet, i think it was, because they took over the town of quang tree. Had moved up there. My platoon had moved up there with a Slick Company to support the first and 12th of the cav about three days before there started. The first and 12th were supplying the perimeter defense , if you will for the troop , carrying helicopters and my gun ships and so forth. So it was what i remember about that time is that the weather was absolutely awful. It was the start of the monsoon season and we had ceilings of , about 200 feet before you got in the clouds. You had visibility of about a half mile. Sometimes the ceiling was 100 feet, and to fly in that weather was difficult. If you cant see any more than a half or a quarter of a mile further than where you are flying, and you are flying at 100 to 140 knots you had to be , pretty damn careful about what you were doing. The work we did during that time frame, a lot of it was predicated solely on how the weather was. Could we get out, could the medevacs get out, could the troop carrying helicopters get out and can the , resupply stuff get out . It