Jim,

I have it agree with you. When the 361st arrived at Holloway in the later part of 1968 most of us were amazed at the fire power that the Cobras could bring. The problem with the cobra was the same as everything the army developed. One size does not fit all.

The cobras had great fire power to provide close support to troops on the ground. The tactics which they used worked quite well for this job. The problem I saw was they tried to use these same tactics while trying to provide cover support for assaults and extractions. I remember heading into a landing zone on a LRRP extraction. The bad guys were chasing this team and we had one chance at pulling them out. I remember seeing their strobe light as we headed in and then looking up to see our cover 500-800 feet above us. At that point, the security blanket which was in the form of the Croc nose art that had covered my skinny, scared butt so many time before wasn't there. We hit the LZ and the LRRP broke cover towards our ship. I was grabbing the first arm to pull them into the ship when the first AK-47 went off. The first rounds torn into the tail boom. A life time passed before the rocket impacted into the tree line. We made it out a little worse for ware. To say the least, my crew was not happy about the whole thing. Don't ask Baby Huey what he thinks of them.

During our time in the Plei-Trap, I think our losses would have been greater without the cover that the C-Models and our Crocs gave us. It was a great feeling to head into a landing zone and look out my door and see that Croc 50 feet above me and slightly behind us. Plus when you add in guys like "Waldo", "Pig-Pen", "JC" and others up front with their finger on the trigger of the rockets or mini-guns and some of the guys in back like Bilbee, Wessmann, Joker hanging out on the skids with their sixties ready to go.

All I can say is "Thanks Bell Helicopter for a great machine and thanks to the guys that covered my butt during my first tour."