Tim,

I am one of the pilots who flew the snoopy missions several times while in Vietnam. I read Lumpy's description of the action and he is correct, the machine identifies human odors, one of which is urine. The mission is generally flown with two slicks and two or more gunships. The gunships were generally in the air, but not visible to the area where we were flying. Our job was to locate the enemy, and we would generally make only one or two passes through a valley in a single afternoon. We had a lot of area to cover, and most of the areas that we covered were within the range of several artillery sections in the area.

Our missions were generally safer if the enemy did not feel that we were performing a detailed area search for him. The enemy might let a single ship pass through the area every few minutes without taking him under fire, thinking that they were better off if they did not let the air crew know that they were there. But then again we came under fire many times when we were not expecting to be engaged. The areas where we flew were generally densly covered areas where the enemy could conceil his equipment as well as his trail. Well used trails in the open are visible from the air and they usually tried to avoid open areas where they could be seen.

The slick with the snoopy device on it is flying low and relatively fast along the contours of the ground "sniffing out" the enemy. The operator of the detector device has a few code words that he says over the radio as he is reading the instruments. "MARK" and "HEAVY MARK" were the words that I remember right off hand, there were a couple of others but I have failed to remember them. The operator on the Snoopy instrument was the one who called out the readings, and the second slick crew and observers were responsible for marking a map to show the locations of the areas identified by the snoopy operator. The gunships were there to protect the slicks as much as they could, and to attack the enemy if the enemy was in the open.

Otherwise the information would be carried back to the Brigade S-2 (the Brigade Intelligence Section) covering the area where they would initiate action on that area. They could attack with the artillery that was assigned to the Brigade, or with an airstrike from the Air Force which could be anything from a strike from an A1E (a single seat, prop driven attack aircraft) to the B-52's dropping an "Arc Light" (1 or more B-52's dropping 32 tons of 500 pound bombs).

The general idea was to give the impression that the aircraft carrying the snoopy machine was just an aircraft passing through the area at a low level. That generally would not cause a distrubance of the activities of the men on the ground, especially if they felt that were not seen. The places where the HEAVY MARKS were identified would be places where the enemy stayed for extended periods of time. This would be where they might stay for a meal or an overnight stay.

I hope this gives you a better understanding of what the mission of the helicopter crews was. I am glad to see you here on the site, please feel free to ask your questions, all of us are here to help you, it helps us as well.

Dave "Baby Huey" Weissinger