Pilot in Vietnam who led daring rescue dies
The call came over the radio on the Cobra attack helicopter: return to base to resupply. The gunship’s ammo was almost exhausted. Fuel was running low.
The Cobra’s commander, 1st Lt. Larry Taylor, flicked off the radio. He had made his decision. Somehow, he would attempt to rescue four members of a U.S. military reconnaissance team surrounded by guerrillas allied with North Vietnam near the village of Ap Go Cong, northeast of what was then the South Vietnamese capital, Saigon.
He turned on the Cobra’s lights to draw fire away from the recon unit, pinned down in a rice paddy. The gunship had only two seats, pilot and co-pilot. Even if he managed to reach the four Army rangers, they would have to hang on to whatever they could grab to be flown to safety.
“Before I started the approach in, I thought, ‘This is a good idea,’” he recalled. “And when I got about halfway through it, I thought, ‘What the hell am I doing?’”
The nighttime gambit on June 18, 1968, became one of the Vietnam War’s most daring airborne rescues and, 55 years later, brought him the Medal of Honor after a long campaign to recognize the mission with the military’s highest award for valor.
In September, President Biden presented the medal to the former Army aviator, who retired at the rank of captain. He was 81 when he died Jan. 28 at his home in Signal Mountain, Tenn.
Two AH-1 Cobra gunships were dispatched on a moonless night to aid the reconnaissance patrol. “The fortunes of war had turned against us that night. We were in a Custer-like situation,” one of the rangers, Sgt. David Hill, recounted to Stars and Stripes. The Cobra crews pinpointed Hill and the others by having them radio just one word — “now” — when the helicopters flew over their location.
The two Cobras then made strafing runs for the next 45 minutes, skimming just above the jungle canopy, to try to push back the 100 or so guerrillas, known as the Viet Cong.
Over the radio, Taylor heard that commanders had scrapped a rescue mission using a UH-1 “Huey” helicopter because of the high risks and relentless Viet Cong fire. That meant the recon team had to either manage an escape on their own or face almost certain death. Taylor directed the other Cobra pilot to fire his remaining rounds on the eastern flank of the guerrillas and then return to base closer to Saigon, now known as Ho Chi Minh City.
At the same time, Taylor and his co-pilot, Chief Warrant Officer James Ratliff, blasted the western side of the battle zone with whatever ammo they had left. When they were out, Taylor used the Cobra’s landing light in attempts to fool the guerrillas into thinking that the gunship was still making attack runs.
The ploy worked long enough to give the reconnaissance scouts time to make their way to a place near the Dong Nai River, where there was room for the Cobra to touch down for just a moment. The rangers were told they had 10 seconds to make it to the Cobra. “Within two seconds … they were hanging on,” he said in an interview with NBC News last year. Covered in mud, Hill and another man straddled the Cobra’s rocket pods; the two others coiled themselves around the landing skids. Never had any such rescue been tried with the newly introduced Cobras.
They reached a landing zone with the Cobra’s fuel tanks nearly empty. The gunship had 16 bullet holes. Remarkably, no one aboard was hit. The rangers scrambled away from the helicopter. The blades churned and Taylor and his co-pilot were set to leave. They exchanged salutes with the four men they rescued, and then the Cobra was aloft and racing back toward base with the fuel that remained.
In addition to his wife, Toni Bechtel, survivors include two sons from his first marriage and five grandchildren.