Contact. Contact. Yellow One Down

Contact. Contact. Yellow One Down. In issue 266 of Wargames Illustrated, we presented a variant of the Flames Of War rules to replay the battle of Ia Drang, Vietnam 1965. This battle has been immortalised in the film We Were Soldiers starring Mel Gibson. Now we present a small scenario pitting one platoon of American Air Cavalry against a battalion of North Vietnamese regulars. Totally outnumbered, they must rely on tactics, firepower, and sheer guts to survive. The scenario is a great way to familiarise yourself with the Ia Drang rules or to introduce new players to the game.

One of the best books I’ve read on the war in Vietnam is Robert Mason’s Chickenhawk. Mason was a pilot with the ‘Preachers’ of 229th Aviation Battalion and flew into Ia Drang amongst other hair-raising exploits. His account of as his first time as the command-ship pilot soon after Ia Drang tells how, describes his memories of coming in to land a platoon on a quiet LZ. “…smoke from the just completed prestrike by our artillery and gunships drifted straight up in the still air. There had to be one time when the prep actually worked and everybody was killed in the LZ. I hoped this might be it.” He was still optimistic as he flared in to land, “Still no return fire. Maybe they were all dead! Could this be the wrong spot?” Then things went wrong.

“My landing was synchronised with the lead ship, and as our skids hit the ground, so did the boots of the growling troops. At the same instant the uniformed regulars from the North decided to spring their trap. … The LZ was suddenly alive with screaming bullets. I was tensed on the controls, involuntarily leaning forward, ready to take off. … I was light on the skids, the troops were out. Let’s go! Farris yelled on the radio for Yellow One to go. They didn’t move.” The rest of the section took off without Yellow One. Yellow Three lost a pilot, crew chief and gunner, but got airborne. Only Mason’s Yellow Two was unharmed, perhaps due to his habit of flying erratically when taking off from an LZ. He summed the mission up with this paragraph.   “Why I didn’t get hit I’ll never know. I must have read the signs right. Right? They started calling me ‘Lucky’ after that mission.”

Mason talks about incredible feats of flying and endurance, bravery and foolhardiness. His stories include flying in and out of hot LZ’s and daring and dramatic rescue missions. These provided the inspiration for the Huey Down scenario. A helicopter has been shot down on the Landing Zone and the grunts on the ground are surrounded and in trouble. The helicopters have to keep the grunts—and their buddies from the helicopter—alive until help can arrive. Chickenhawk, Robert C Mason, Corgi, 1984, ISBN 0978-0552-124195. Download a PDF version of the Huey Down scenario and special rules here...