LT Hugh Mills earned three Silver Stars, three Bronze Stars, four Distinguished Flying Crosses, and the Legion of Merit during three tours as a combat helicopter pilot in Vietnam. Mills was shot down sixteen times and thrice wounded in combat. He flew 3,300 combat hours in OH6A and AH1G helicopters.
The Hughes OH6 Light Observation Helicopter (LOH) was affectionately known as the Loach by all who encountered it. Looking much like a giant angry bumblebee, the Loach was fast, nimble, and crashworthy. Improved versions soldier on as MH6 and AH6 Little Birds with the TF160 Night Stalkers today.
The OH6 was supplanted in US military service by the Bell OH58. Though entirely different designs both of these aircraft shared a common engine. I flew OH58’s myself, but we all mourned the passing of the Loach. It was a massively better aircraft.
For operations in Vietnam, the Loach was typically flown single pilot. In helicopters, the command pilot sits on the right. Behind the pilot also on the right was a crew chief armed with an M60 belt-fed machinegun. The crew chief also had access to a variety of smoke, frag, and white phosphorus grenades. Counterbalancing the two-man crew on the other side of the aircraft was typically an M134 minigun in an XM27E1 mount along with its 2,000-round ammunition load.
The M134 minigun was an electrically-driven 7.62x51mm Gatling gun featuring two different rates of fire. Pulling the trigger on the cyclic stick partway back ran the gun at 2,000 rounds per minute. A full pull resulted in 4,000 rpm. In Vietnam, the gun was typically aimed by means of a simple grease pencil mark on the Plexiglass bubble.
A Hunter Killer team consisted of a Loach flying extreme low level while a Cobra gunship trailed behind at 1,500 feet or so to provide fire support. These aircraft were in constant radio communication. The scout crew would identify targets and then break off to allow the Snake to engage with rockets, miniguns, and automatic grenade launchers.
The use of helicopters in combat was pioneered during the Vietnam War. Aviators like LT Mills figured it out as they went along. The end result was some of the grittiest combat in the history of modern warfare.
War Story
It was the summer of 1969 and LT Mills was on a routine trip to Dau Tieng for a briefing with the Brigade S3 operations staff. In the back of his Loach was Jim Parker, his regular crew chief. Paul Fishman flew the Cobra gunship that was his cover. None of the American aircrew were looking for trouble, so Mills was enjoying a little vigorous NOE (Nap of the Earth) flying.
NOE is the reason God made combat helicopters. NOE in an Aeroscout aircraft means tearing along five feet or so off the ground sans doors following the contours of the ground while maneuvering to avoid obstacles. The biggest difference between NOE flying back then and the same thing in my day was that, thanks to night vision goggles, we could also do it in the dark.
As LT Mills popped over a modest treeline he happened upon an NVA heavy weapons platoon. All involved were comparably surprised. It was on.
Mills opened up with his minigun. AK47 fire rose up from all directions while Jim Parker engaged NVA troops with his sixty. The end result was unfettered chaos.
As the NVA soldiers ran for cover a pair of them charged down a paddy dike. The rearmost soldier had a large black rice-cooking pot affixed to his back. Mills aligned his Loach with the running man, centered his grease pencil mark on the pot, and squeezed the trigger on his cyclic. His minigun buzzed out a burst that passed through the closest soldier and killed the man running ahead of him as well.
The Gun
Richard Jordan Gatling was trained as a physician but never practiced medicine. He was by profession an inventor, contriving designs for an automatic seed planter, a screw propeller, a steam tractor, and an improved toilet, to name but a few. What most ties him to history, however, was the multi-barrel gun that will forever bear his name.
Dr. Gatling envisioned his weapon as a mechanism to depopulate battlefields. He rather naively believed that by providing armies with such efficient weapons fewer troops would be needed, and overall casualties from both combat action and disease would therefore be minimized. The reality was obviously not quite so tidy.
In July of 1893 Gatling was awarded a patent for an electrically-powered version of his gun. This weapon sported ten barrels chambered in .30 Army and was driven by a belt drive attached to an electric motor. This gun ran at around 1,500 rounds per minute.
Developed in 1963, the GE M134 minigun was an evolutionary development of the M61 Vulcan 20mm aircraft cannon. Featuring six 22-inch barrels and chambered in 7.62x51mm, the M134 could cycle reliably at rates up to 6,000 rpm. The gun weighed 85 pounds and was 31.5 inches long. Some 10,000 miniguns were used during the Vietnam War.
In the late 1990’s Dillon Aero purchased several used miniguns from a foreign user and upgraded the design. Designated the M134D, these modernized versions found an enthusiastic home with the Army’s TF160 Special Operations Aviation Regiment. These weapons are widely used on AH6, MH60, and MH47 aircraft today. Dillon miniguns have since been exported to dozens of friendly countries as well.
The Rest of the Story
Mills darted his Loach back and forth around the little clearing, engaging NVA soldiers as they scattered. His crew chief did the same thing until his M60 ran dry. At one point Parker had to get Mills to level the wildly maneuvering aircraft so he could get a clear shot without perforating his own rotor blades.
As Parker’s gun fell silent, Mills lined up on another target and squeezed his trigger. His only answer was the spinning barrels of his Gatling gun, its ammo supply exhausted. Parker then engaged the remaining NVA with his personal M16 and finally an Ithaca pump-action 12-gauge shotgun he kept underneath his seat.
Mills carried an M1911 .45 on his belt and a .357 Magnum Colt Python in a shoulder holster. Steadying the collective with his left knee he flew the aircraft with his right hand while shooting his Python left-handed out of the right door of the aircraft. He expended all six Super Vel Magnum loads before finally breaking clear to make room for the hungry Cobra orbiting above.
Fishman rolled hot with his Snake and blew the treeline to pieces with 2.75-inch rockets. He punctuated his run with flechette warheads. These diabolical monsters flew a set distance out from the aircraft before bursting automatically with a visible puff of red smoke. At that point the warhead released a thick cloud of 1,180 pressed steel darts.
These flechettes look like finishing nails with little stabilizing fins pressed into their rear ends. Thousands of these tiny darts would absolutely shred soft targets in the manner of a gigantic shotgun. Ouch.
A replacement Hunter Killer team was soon on station allowing Mills and Fishman to return to base at Phu Loi. Once Mills landed his Loach he took stock.
The aircraft had been hit a total of twenty-five times. The airspeed indicator and altimeter were both blown away. The armor plate underneath Parker’s seat stopped two rounds, while Mills’ seat armor caught several as well. Five rounds passed through the Plexiglas canopy, two perfed the tail boom, and three bullets ventilated the rotor blades.
One AK slug passed all the way through the engine compartment, miraculously missing anything vital. One round tore the op rod off of Parker’s M60 and left a half-moon crescent in the bottom of the barrel. Between Mills’ minigun, Parker’s -60, and their personal weapons the two men had expended several thousand rounds in less than 120 seconds of frenetic combat.
ARP (Aero Rifle Platoon) grunts subsequently inserted via UH1 Hueys and swept through the area. They cataloged 26 KIA and captured a pair of POWs, recovering a large number of AK47 rifles, a 60mm mortar, a pair of Russian pistols, and an SGM heavy machinegun. They also came back with a cooking pot sporting some twenty-four 7.62mm bullet holes.
LT Mills’ combat memoir Low Level Hell is one of the most compelling accounts of modern combat I have ever read. The prose reads like an action novel, and it is chock full of gun stuff. The details about the weapons they carried, captured, and wielded from their aircraft are worth the read, while the gripping nature of the action is red meat to guys like us. The book is available on Amazon.
We have discussed aviators’ personal weapons in Vietnam here before. Here’s the link.
Mills’ original Loach, Miss Clawd IV, is on permanent display in the US Army Aviation Museum at Fort Rucker today.
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Winchester model 70 carbine
A new law in San Jose, Calif., mandates that all city gun owners own insurance covering costs related to accidental gunshot injuries or deaths.PHOTO: /ASSOCIATED PRESS
Dave Truslow, a San Jose, Calif., tech-industry retiree and firearms instructor, recently started storing his collection of more than 100 guns out of town because he wanted to get ahead of a new city law requiring him to carry liability insurance for them.
“I decided I did not want to be required to comply with this,” Mr. Truslow said of the law, which went into effect Jan. 1.
San Jose’s law, the first of its type in the nation, mandates that gun owners in the city of nearly one million have insurance covering costs related to accidental gunshot injuries or deaths. The law doesn’t require policies to cover criminal misuse of firearms.
The law was pushed by former Mayor Sam Liccardo after a series of mass shootings in the area. Mr. Liccardo, a Democrat who recently stepped down due to term limits, said he thinks the law ultimately will result in insurers offering lower premiums to gun owners who safely store and handle their firearms, much like auto insurers give discounts for good driving.
Former San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo says he began to push for the insurance law after mass shootings in the area.PHOTO: HAVEN DALEY/ASSOCIATED PRESS
“Just as insurance was a mechanism to dramatically improve road safety . . . insurance with guns could similarly have that effect,” Mr. Liccardo said.
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Gunowners who object to the law, including Mr. Truslow, said they already took safety measures such as keeping their firearms in safes. City officials should spend more time focusing on fighting gun violence, he said.
Gun-rights groups filed lawsuits in response to the ordinance last year before it went into effect. A federal judge tossed out the suits but said that some of the claims could be refiled because the complaints had been drafted before the U.S. Supreme Court decided an important Second Amendment case last summer known as New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen.
In that case, the Supreme Court threw out New York’s restrictions on carrying concealed weapons in public, a decision that since has been invoked by judges in striking down several firearm restrictions.
In response, gun-control advocates in state and local governments have looked toward new approaches that could hold up in court. California last year passed a law allowing individuals to sue gun makers over violations of the state’s gun restrictions, basing on a Texas law allowing private individuals to sue to enforce abortion restrictions.
New Jersey Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy in December signed a law akin San Jose’s insurance law, which requires at least $300,000 in insurance coverage related to injury, death, or property damage for people with permits to carry guns in public.
The San Jose law applies to all gun owners, regardless of whether they carry them in public.
Chuck Michel, president of the California Rifle & Pistol Association, said his organization is preparing new legal challenges to San Jose on Second Amendment grounds. “This is just a way to make it too costly to own a gun,” Mr. Michel said.
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A city spokeswoman didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Advocates on both sides of America’s gun-rights debate say they are watching the San Jose law closely. The measure’s success or failure could determine whether such laws are adopted elsewhere.
A California state lawmaker has proposed a bill to require gun-liability insurance statewide.
Obtaining the insurance required by San Jose likely won’t be difficult for most people, said Janet Ruiz, a spokeswoman for the Insurance Information Institute, an industry trade group. Most homeowners- and renters-insurance policies cover the type of liability described in the new law, she said.
A vigil at San Jose City Hall in 2021 honored victims of a shooting.PHOTO: AMY OSBORNE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
A few insurers offer stand-alone gun-liability policies, but most don’t, according to the institute.
Mr. Liccardo said the law doesn’t call for San Jose’s police department to proactively check whether people with firearms have insurance. But gun owners will be required to carry proof of insurance with their firearms much as drivers do, he said.
As one example, he said officers could check if they responded to a domestic violence call and a gun was present. Those not in compliance face fines of up to $1,000.
Accidental shootings accounted for 1% of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The number of accidental shooting deaths ticked up in 2020, but in general has been falling for decades, according to the CDC.
Write to Zusha Elinson at zusha.elinson@wsj.com
The Nazis are history’s archetypal villains.
The Nazis are undeniably fascinating. Those guys were just such scum. Human history is dirty with tin-pot dictators who coveted something and were willing to commit genocide to obtain it. The Nazis, however, truly industrialized the process.
The death camps were models of efficiency. Over the course of some 12 years, the Nazis systematically murdered 17 million people. That works out to around 1,400 souls per day.
It’s honestly tough to comprehend the scale. That’s like murdering every man, woman and child in New York City twice. Or killing my small Mississippi town 630 times over. What I have always found most intriguing, however, is how Hitler convinced so many people to be complicit with his outrage. One psychopath is a statistical inevitability. A whole culture full of them is a terrifying anomaly. While all Germans obviously didn’t support the Final Solution, you’ve got to admit that plenty of them did.
I would assert that the Germans in 1943 were not really fundamentally different from us today. To believe otherwise would be intrinsically racist, and racism is today’s unforgivable sin.
If we presume that this particular population was no different from that of any other comparably industrialized society, how then did they come to build these massive institutional death factories? They kept shoving human beings into them right up until we forced them to stop. Such a sordid outcome has to be due to some diabolical combination of nature versus nurture.
The Germans were indeed suffering in the lead-up to WWII. A historically proud people, they found themselves economically crushed international pariahs in a world trying desperately to claw its way out of the Great Depression. That this was a self-inflicted wound would be an easy thing to argue. However, theirs was an undeniably sordid lot.
Into this dark state of institutional hopelessness stepped Adolf Hitler — a former Austrian Corporal-turned-failed artist with an undeniable gift for oratory. His MO was timeless. Hitler convinced the German people that their problems were not of their own making. It was the Jews and similar so-called untermenschen who were responsible for their misery. Once things got ramped up, it was a short hop to the death camps. But there had to be something more.
It is one thing to sit in a board room and conjure up these satanic schemes. It is quite another to actually pull the trigger or throw the lever. Heinrich Himmler purportedly visited a death camp but once and was rendered physically ill by the experience. How, therefore, did the Germans find enough people willing to do those ghastly jobs?
We are not ourselves somehow innately immune to such darkness as this.
It behooves us to be ever vigilant as a result.
I would assert that this was perhaps easier than you might think. I assume that every advanced society has its own ready pool of potential death camp guards. Under the right circumstances, these people are normal citizens, living out their lives in peace as productive members of society. Under the wrong circumstances, they slip into their snazzy black uniforms and torture people to death en masse. You have likely met a few of these people. You might even be married to one.
Think back to the college professor who enjoys toying with your future. Your grade will determine whether your life succeeds or fails. When discussing the problem, you don’t get sympathy, support or understanding. The person across the desk is intoxicated by power and clearly enjoys it. Then there’s the traffic cop who pulls you over and obviously revels in the position of unquestioned authority.
Some institutions stratify people into two categories. You are either one of them or you are everybody else. The military was like that to a degree. Once people are properly stratified, it is not an impossible chore to take it to the next level.
The world is dirty with these people. Positions of authority attract them. Government bureaucrats, politicians, and folks in similar positions of extreme authority are susceptible. You just have to know where to look.
Now make no mistake, the overwhelming majority of law enforcement officers, college professors, and even politicians are not potential homicidal maniacs. They are altruistic good folks just making their way in the world. However, you can indeed see the outliers if you look for them. I personally find it easier to tolerate some of the world’s more abrasive personalities within this context. When I grow inevitably frustrated, I sometimes mutter, “Death camp guard” to myself. I find this cathartic.
Ruminations
The overarching point is this. We are intrinsically no better than the Nazis, the Soviets, or Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. Additionally, just because somebody wears a uniform, possesses a laminated ID card, or attended some kind of special school doesn’t make them any more morally laudable than the rest of us. The Founding Fathers knew this. That’s why those brilliant old guys crafted the Bill of Rights as they did, to keep the potential death camp guards peacefully in their place.
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Very nice!
