Bullet Holes
The skids are steel. The Chinese Communist 51 caliber machine gun bullet pierced the skids as if they were soft thin aluminum like the rest of the Helicopter. We called these bullets helicopter killers.
When you came up against one of these you only had a few seconds the point the gunship at that gun and punch several pairs of rockets then turn quickly to clear the area. If I decided the return I would look at two things; first is the gun destroyed and second, if not then how was I going to fly in behind that gun and kill it?
On one occasion there was a hill behind that gun so I was able to fly into a small valley so the enemy couldn’t see or hear me. When I was even with that gun I pulled back on my cyclic (stick) and used my airspeed to climb up over that hill then point my nose down toward those bastards and punch off two pairs of rockets and destroyed what was remaining of that machine gun nest. All was quiet so I flew over near it and my crew chief said, “Mac those guys were chained to that gun”. We had heard about that method to keep those North Vietnamese soldiers shooting instead of running away. Wow, what an army. Nice to know that your commanders don’t value your life. Ho Chi Minh said, “for every one of my soldiers you kill I will send ten more”.