Sikorsky H-34 Choctaw: Vietnam War’s Unsung Hero?

[Snake45]

VIETNAM WAR’S UNSUNG HERO?​

Come on, everyone knows it was the Huey.

No, the key word in that sentence is "unsung," and I think the H-34 probably wins that.

 

[CAPMARINE276]

No, the key word in that sentence is "unsung," and I think the H-34 probably wins that.

My friend was 1/7 CAV in Nam, made many LZ insertions. UH-1s

 

[USN CPO RETIRED]

Hello all, here is today's article posted on TheArmoryLife.com. It is titled “Sikorsky H-34 Choctaw: Vietnam War’s Unsung Hero?” and can be found at https://www.thearmorylife.com/sikorsky-h-34-choctaw/.

Reading this article on the H-34 and seeing the photos brought back many memories for me. My first navy duty assignment was aboard the USS IWO JIMA LPH2. I worked the flight deck as a blue shirt aircraft handler. This was during Vietnam 1967-1968. I was aboard the Iwo when those shipboard photos were taken. I can remember scrambling around the flight deck getting the H-34’s in position for launch full of Marines during an amphibious assault. Upon recover of those warbirds we had the task of unloading casualties from those same helos we launched earlier. The H-34 was a stalwart of an aircraft constantly going and coming without faultering. I spent my whole career working with various helos but I will always remember the H-34 as my introduction to the world of helicopters. The aircraft that many said was incapable of flight.

 

[USMCVet]

The UH-34D ("Dog") will always have a place in my heart: they carried me to Phu Bai to start my time in Vietnam, carried me into LZs on operations, brought us our mail and resupplied with chow and ammo and carried away our casualties. I learned that they always came for us, no matter what. Late one very dark night when we had two casualties who needed an emergency medevac, a UH-34 arrived over us and we marked the only place we thought was large enough for him to land - a small clearing among a tightly jungled area of tall trees. We marked the LZ with flashlights shielded by C-Ration cans taped to the front keep the beams from being visible to the enemy. That Marine crew landed in the total dark, rotor tips just grazing the branches, and got our wounded away.
When it was my turn on May 13th, 1967, a UH-34 from HMM-361, Pilot 1st Lt. Leland McDonough, came and got me out of a very hot zone - taking fire from both sides - and saved me and the two other Marines wounded with me.
God bless the crews who flew those things and the crews who maintained them.
LtCol Forrest R. Lindsey USMC (ret)

 

[USMC6094]

My Economics teacher was a Sea Horse, that's the Navy/Marine vernacular for them, pilot.

The British truly brought them to thier full potential, in the form of the Wessex.
True, they were great within their performance envelope, but the evolution of the helo passed them by.

 

[USMCVet]

The H-34 became seared into my young brain in April 1965, with the Larry Burrows cover story "A Ride on Yankee Papa 13" in Life magazine. Twenty years later I hunted down a copy of that issue in an antique mall, and I still have and cherish it to this day, nearly 40 years later.

That April 16th 1965 issue of Life is what caused me to join the Marines 6 weeks later and I was in country 8 months later. I remember thinking "I'm not better than those guys". I ended up spending 27 years in the Marine Corps.