Sunday newspaper story below. Ron Inlow's picture in color, front page center. Photos follow in a couple of days.
Ron Inlow walked into a local store to buy a newspaper and a cup of coffee, and the lady beind the counter said, "It's you! You're on the front page of the paper!" Ron didn't know it. He bought an extra copy, brought it back to his wife.
She sent him straight back to the store for 6 more copies to take home to their kids.
Rick Chesson, another pilot of this ship, also came in from Louisville with his wife, lovely people. He was the one who named the ship "Peacemaker" and painted the name on the helicopter.
As usual, writer was half right about almost everything, but tried hard.
Inlow had just fueled up, had the presence of mind to hit the master elec switch between the time the main rotor separated and before the impact. No fire. When the first friendly (LOH crew chief) got to him, he was in a puddle of JP-4. The peter pilot was about 75 feet from the ship, broken back, had propped himself up and was taking pictures of the wreck when they got to him.
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VFW Post dedicates Cobra, honors crew
09/07/2003
By MATTHEW HIGBEE
Staff Writer
EAST HAMPTON -- Vietnam pilot Ron Inlow looked at the helicopter mounted on the lawn in front of Veterans of Foreign Wars Post No. 5095 and considered himself a very lucky man. Thirty-three years ago he was flying this same war machine 25 miles northeast of Saigon when its 48-foot rotary blade broke off.
"They think the transmission froze up," Inlow said of the explanation later given to him.
The 56-year-old from Hillsboro, Ohio was an honored guest on Saturday at the VFW’s dedication of the AH-1 Cobra helicopter, named The Peacemaker. Propped above the ground like a B-movie monster mosquito, the hunk of green metal was the occasion for an emotional ceremony that turned out over 1150 veterans and family members scathed by war.
An hour before the dedication, Inlow recounted his last mission in now retired Cobra. It was 1970, and he was flying back to Bear Cat, the base camp for B Troop, at the end of a long day. Trouble started at 1,500 feet.
"We heard a loud bang and the aircraft twisted," he said.
Wrestling with the controls, Inlow tried to stabilize the chopper as he dropped down for an emergency landing. The last thing he remembers was the massive propeller twisting off at 100 feet.
"That’s when you become a rock," he said.
Fortunately, the craft had enough forward momentum to withstand impact without cracking up. After crashing into a rice paddy, Inlow and his co-pilot were rescued by soldiers from B Troop, or "Bravo Troop." The two men woke up in a hospital several days later. Inlow had five "messed up vertebras" and 58 stitches over his right eye; his co-pilot had one injured vertebra.
"That was the end of my Vietnam experience," he said, as dozens of veterans wearing patches with their troop numbers milled about the VFW hall parking lot.
Until he got a call from the East Hampton VFW post four months ago, Inlow had assumed that his old chopper was rusting on a scrap heap. After its crash, however, The Peacemaker was shipped back to the U.S. and rebuilt for 30 more years of service. In 2000, it was retired at FortDrum in New York.
Post No. 5095 had originally wanted a Huey helicopter to decorate its front lawn, but the U.S. Army had none to give. The military did, however, have a few Cobras on hand, said VFW member Mike Stark.
"We said, "Gee, I guess we’ll have to take that," he said of their decision two years ago to accept The Peacemaker.
He had no idea how much that twist of fate would mean for resident Harry Breski. Standing several yards away from Stark, Breski was showing an enlarged photograph the same helicopter to Rick Chesson of Louisville, Ky. Chesson, who toured Vietnam from 1966-1969, served in B Troop with Breski’s older brother, Joseph.
Joseph Breski never came home. Harry was 13 years old when the two military men came to his house to tell his parents.
"I didn’t get it," he said. "I didn’t know he could get killed. I thought it was just like when he was going to flight school."
In the past 10 years, he started looking up other members of B Troop who might have known Joseph. He began corresponding with four or five veterans, including Chesson. When Breski learned about the Cobra coming to the local VFW hall, he remembered a photo of a helicopter snapped by his brother shortly before he died. By pure coincidence, it was The Peacemaker, the same helicopter that Chesson had not only flown, but christened.
"I thought about how it was making peace, in the way that law and order was brought to the West," Chesson said on Saturday.
Several minutes before, after several years of emailing back and forth, Chesson and Breski had met for the first time.
"I told myself I wasn’t going to do it, but I did. I broke down," said Breski.
To contact Matthew Higbee, call (860) 347-3331 ext. 223, or email mhigbee@middletownpress.com.
©The Herald 2003