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The HORRORS of Dustoff Medevac Crews | Unbelievable true stories | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: The HORRORS of Dustoff Medevac Crews
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The "Dust Off" program in the Vietnam War revolutionized battlefield medical evacuation using helicopters, saving countless lives by drastically reducing response times, despite crews facing extreme danger and high casualty rates.
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Why were medevac helicopters in Vietnam
over three times more likely to get shot
down? Why did one out of every three
crew members become a casualty even
though in theory they were
non-combatants? This is the story of
Dust and why it turned into one of the
hardest and most dangerous roles of the
entire war. The Vietnam War was unlike
any other war the United States was in.
Yes, they saw jungle warfare during the
Second World War in the Pacific, and
they did have similar experience from
the Korean War, but Vietnam was still
something new in terms of terrain, and
especially the scale and intensity of
combat. Thick, triple canopy jungles,
marshy plains, and steep mountains were
simply impossible for any vehicle. And
where there were some roads, it was hard
to protect them from enemy ambushes.
They still were far from the patrols or
bases where casualties were most likely
to happen. Because of that, helicopters
were the most suitable tool for waging
war there. And of course, the best way
to quickly fly out wounded soldiers
directly to the evacuation hospitals.
This concept was first tried out in
Korea, but Vietnam would be remembered
for it, and you'll soon understand why.
In April 1962, the 57th Medical
Detachment was deployed to Vietnam with
five UH1 Huey helicopter ambulances, and
they were about to be tested on a new
scale. They soon got their famous
nickname dust off. Coined because
helicopters approaching to pick up the
wounded would touch down for a brief
moment while casualties were loaded and
the rotor wash would kick up clouds of
dust. At first it was just informal, but
it was then officially accepted as a
call sign. Each dust off helicopter was
manned by a crew of four consisting of
the pilot and co-pilot and then in the
back a medic and a crew chief. Most of
them were in their early 20s, many
barely out of training before being
thrown into daily combat rescues. So
they had to learn almost everything on
the go. Pilots had to use challenging
tactics to avoid fire, like low-level
flying, corkcrew descents into hot
landing zones, or one skid landings on
slopes or rice patties, and of course,
flying at night with flares. Major
Patrick Brady, for example, once pulled
a clever trick when a unit with many
casualties was pinned down in a valley
and under heavy mortar fire. He ordered
them to prepare the wounded on the north
end of the strip and have them ready to
be loaded. He then landed on the south
end and waited until the enemy could
zero the mortars on him. When they
started firing, he scooted to the other
end, picked up the wounded, and got out.
Early in the war, American ground
presence was still small, and the
majority of heavy fighting was done by
the South Vietnamese army supported by
the United States. So, most of the
patients at first were ARVN troops or
even civilians caught in crossfire. But
this soon changed as American ground
units arrived and the war intensified.
Tactics and procedures were still being
tested and worked out, but the concept
was more than promising. A soldier could
be on the operating table in under 30
minutes after being wounded, which was
unheard of and set a completely new
standard in war history. Before this,
evacuation was done mostly by ambulance
cars and before that on horsedrawn
carts. Now being flown out to the
hospital was something entirely new.
Actually, statistics say that dust offs
on average delivered the patient in 33
minutes from injury to hospital and the
chance of survival of those delivered in
that time was 99%. During the Vietnam
War, the concept of the golden hour was
born, which became the goal medevac
crews aimed for, as within this time
window, the chances of survival were the
best. However, it would not be all nice
and easy, and dust off crews paid for
that survival rate with a far higher
chance of being shot down, especially
when the enemy decided not to respect
the big red cross that was supposed to
mark helicopters as non-combatant. Here,
we have to mention Major Charles Kelly,
who largely shaped the dust off units
and himself became a dust off legend. He
was determined never to leave casualties
behind, no matter how great the danger
was for them. He had several extreme
close calls in his missions where he did
everything to save the wounded and
completely disregarded his own safety
until one day on July 1st, 1964, he flew
his dust off into heavy enemy fire to
save a wounded American adviser and
South Vietnamese troops. Ground forces
advised him not to attempt landing as
fire was too heavy. But Kelly refused
with the answer that became famous and
the motto of dust off units saying,
"When I have, you're wounded." Moments
later, one bullet hit Kelly directly in
the heart while he was at the helicopter
controls. He managed to hover the
helicopter for a few seconds before it
pitched over and crashed, but his crew
somehow survived. He was postumously
awarded the Distinguished Service Cross,
and he set the standard for what dust
off crews were soon about to do, never
refuse the mission, and always put the
safety of the wounded first. Now, it was
recognized that this was the best way to
evacuate the wounded. And because they
were very soon in high demand, the
United States command began deploying
more dedicated medical helicopters.
Tactics were also getting improved, like
the most important equipment innovation,
the rescue hoist. At first, the
helicopter could only evacuate the
wounded where it could actually land.
And this was difficult to do in the
jungle. So, to avoid forcing troops on
the ground to find a landing zone every
time they had a casualty in heavy
terrain, Dusts would hover over the
jungle and lower a rescue hoist.
However, this at first came with a wide
range of problems until the so-called
forest penetrator was developed. The
initial hoist models jammed or even
snapped cables during lifts, as if the
day for the casualty could not be bad
enough already. Instead of a canvas
stretcher, the forest penetrator was
made in the form of a slender metal seat
that could glide between branches and
was much more effective. Hoists were
difficult to work with for the entire
war, but they did save thousands of
lives. The biggest problem with them,
however, was that statistically they
were seven times more likely to get shot
up during hoist extractions because the
helicopter was staying still and
hovering above the trees, making it
clearly visible to anyone on the ground
and very vulnerable even to small arms
fire. Early 1965 then marked a turning
point in the Vietnam War when the
Vietkong launched a major attack on PLU.
The United States answered with air
strikes and within a few months,
American ground combat units went from a
few thousand to over 180,000. As the war
was now in full swing, the dust offs
were about to be needed more than ever
and also targeted more than ever. They
would soon be racing from one mass
casualty incident to another as large
battles erupted. By late 1967, over 100
medevac helicopters were in Vietnam, and
the stage was set for the most
challenging year of the war. At peak,
dust off units flew up to 400 missions
per day across Vietnam. When the massive
Tet offensive was launched in January
1968 and communist forces attacked
cities and bases all over South Vietnam,
dust offs were about to face their
biggest test until then. The sheer
number of casualties was overwhelming.
And these were not just wounded American
soldiers. Dust offs were evacuating
allied South Vietnamese troops and the
unfortunate civilians caught in the
crossfire. They were landing in narrow
streets during urban fighting or in
unpredictable landing zones in the
jungle and often under heavy enemy fire.
For example, in just 12 days during the
communist offensive, dust offs evacuated
over 8,000 casualties with only 64
helicopters, out of which 40 were hit by
enemy fire. Crews worked in 12-hour
shifts, and it was not rare that they
were flying the whole time, refueling
hot and touching down, only to load and
unload the wounded. Nurses in evacuation
hospitals would hand them sandwiches or
cookies through the window to eat
mid-flight, as sometimes there simply
was no time, and with not enough
helicopters or crews, they had to keep
flying. The cumulative stress of such
operations was unimaginable. And Dust
offs actually had the most severe cases
of PTSD. Just seeing so many horrors on
so many levels was breaking the human
mind. We can't describe it here in
detail, but we'll just say that they
would land their helicopters in shallow
rivers to wash the inside. And we'll let
your imagination do the rest. The year
1969 was the peak of dust off
performance. During this year alone,
more missions were flown and more
patients moved than in any other year of
the conflict. Dust offs usually took two
patients on the same trip, but in
desperate cases, which were not so rare,
they overloaded their birds with
hundreds of pounds of weight they were
not designed to carry. Pilots were
fighting to keep the helicopter
airborne, as they would say, bunny
hopping it to build translational lift
to stay in the air. In one chaotic
evacuation, a dust off Huey meant for 11
passengers max, somehow lifted off under
fire with 32 panicked ARVN soldiers,
most of them not even wounded, clinging
to the helicopter just to get away from
the firefight. One disturbing thing was
that Vietkong and North Vietnamese often
tuned in on American radio frequencies,
making so-called ghost calls to request
artillery on American positions or to
lure in dust off helicopters. Learning
from captured Americans or listening to
radio traffic, they would request a dust
off in English exactly the same way as
an American unit would. So dust off
crews were not always sure who was on
the ground until they were well within
rifle range. When a dust off approached,
the pilot would request the ground unit
to pop smoke to locate them. And
sometimes the ground unit would call the
color of their smoke. Soon there would
be a couple of smokes in different
places, meaning the enemy was listening
and trying to confuse and lure the dust
off to the wrong landing zone. The dust
off pilot then would tell the ground
unit to pop smoke without saying the
color. And once he saw it, he would ask
if it was the right one. Now, you may
wonder why they were attacked, even
though they were marked with the red
cross, which should not have been
targeted under the Geneva Convention.
Well, here's the thing. Under the Geneva
Convention, medical vehicles are
protected only if used exclusively for
medical purposes and not flying over
enemy held areas without prior
agreement. With Vietnam being a war
without front lines or any standard
rules, this was impossible to fulfill.
So, the Red Cross wasn't protecting
them. Besides that, given the fact that
the United States used Agent Orange and
carried out questionable bombing
missions, it was somewhat understandable
that the other side wasn't following
those chivalry rules of war. Dust offs
were supposed to be unarmed, but since
their red cross was ignored, they
usually carried personal weapons. In
some cases, they even stripped down the
crosses and added machine guns for
protection during missions in areas
deemed too hot. One bizarre thing was
that wounded captured enemies were
sometimes evacuated together with
American soldiers and treated the same
way, despite having been in combat
against them only moments before. During
this time, Dust received its first Medal
of Honor, the highest military award in
the United States. Major Patrick Pat
Brady performed an extraordinary series
of rescues, extracting the wounded
stranded in a minefield and under heavy
sniper fire. When previous medevac
attempts failed, he volunteered to go
in, flying into the minefield and even
activating a mine with a rock thrown by
rotor wash that damaged the helicopter.
Brady limped back to the nearest base,
jumped in a second helicopter, and
continued his mission, flying directly
into combat over and over again. Then,
when the second helicopter was badly
shot up, what do you think he did? He
found a third one and continued flying
dust off. By the day's end, he and his
crew had saved 51 heavily wounded men,
extracting them literally from the
firefight. Not long after that, Chief
Warrant Officer Michael Novacell earned
his Medal of Honor. He was actually a
Second World War bomber pilot who came
out of retirement to fly dust offs in
Vietnam alongside his son. when he
received a call that a pinned down unit
had many wounded. The 47year-old pilot
made over 10 extremely dangerous
extractions in a 2 and a half hour
period, evacuating group after group of
wounded while taking heavy fire. By the
time he was done, he had saved 29
soldiers while his helicopter was
riddled with bullets and flying
basically on Michael's sheer will and
skill. Now, I think when talking about
dust off, we have to mention evacuation
hospitals as well as they were a very
important chain link in saving the
wounded. The wounded would be delivered
here first to be stabilized and then
from there they'd go to hospitals best
suited for the type of their injuries
and the operations needed. I'll tell you
something taken from a book I highly
recommend, Home Before Morning by Linda
Van Devanta. She was a nurse in an
evacuation hospital in Vietnam and she
described her job firsthand. How
everything looked when dust offs would
fly in with mass casualties. Her
descriptions are hard to read and really
explain the horrors of war in a way we
can't even mention here on YouTube
without the video being taken down. The
thing that hit me the most, however, is
how sorting out patients looked when
dust offs would arrive. In cases of mass
casualties, like during bigger
engagements, tens of critical patients
would arrive within minutes, sometimes
up to two or 300 in a single day, with
dust offs waiting in line to touch down
and unload what Linda called damaged
human cargo, then flying back directly
into ongoing battles for more. Now,
because they didn't have the resources
and time to treat all casualties equally
at once, and some required immediate
help to survive, patients were sorted
upon unloading into three categories.
The first was immediate, meaning these
patients had a chance to survive, but
only if helped right away. They were the
ones going on the operating table first.
The second group were called delayed,
those who could wait, like patients
without major bleeding or injuries that
weren't life-threatening at the moment.
The third group were expectants. These
were not completely beyond help, but
they had such slim chances of survival
that helping one of them would take the
time needed to save several patients
from the immediate group. So, they were
given pain relief and literally left to
die without any help besides some
comfort in their last moments. This was
standard procedure when mass casualties
reached the base. And no matter how
disturbing it sounds, it was simply the
way to give the most people a chance to
survive. And keep in mind, those medical
workers literally had to play God,
deciding who'd go in which category.
This is something they had to live with
for the rest of their lives, and it's
described in detail in that book that
you should read only if you have a
strong gut. Linda also told how barely
21-year-old kids were flying DustF
helicopters, sometimes even shot and
refusing help, taking barely airworthy
birds back into combat to save as many
people as they could. A lot of them she
never saw again. During the war, Dust
offs evacuated around 900,000 casualties
in Vietnam. And before you start doing
the math, interestingly, roughly half of
that number were Vietnamese soldiers or
civilians. Dust crews paid a big
sacrifice, but as you just saw, they
saved hundreds of thousands following
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