Word: choppered
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...from where? The air raid on Tan Son Nhut was soon followed by a rocket and artillery bombardment. The rockets killed two Marines: Lance Corporal Darwin Judge of Marshalltown, Iowa, and Corporal Charles McMahon Jr. of Woburn, Massachusetts. Two Marine helicopter pilots also died on April 29 when their chopper crashed into the sea near an aircraft carrier taking part in the evacuation: Captain William Craig Nystul of Coronado, California, and First Lieutenant Michael John Shea of El Paso, Texas. They were the last four Americans killed in action in Vietnam...
...April 29 to almost 8 a.m. on the 30th. Pilots flew for 10 to 15 hours straight; each trip took about 40 minutes in the air and 10 to 15 minutes on the ground loading up. Marine Captain Glynn Hodges landed at the embassy in midafternoon; his H-53 chopper was too big to perch on the roof, so it came down in the compound. "My troops couldn't believe the scene," says Hodges. "People were climbing fences. It was bedlam. We were afraid of the crowds. We had to wear gas masks, though we saw only smoke...
Though the first loads from the embassy were mostly Vietnamese, more and more Americans came out as the evacuation progressed. Snepp caught a chopper out at 9 p.m. on April 29. His description: "The roof of the embassy was a vision out of a nightmare. In the center of the dimly lit helo-pad, a CH-47 was already waiting for us, its engines setting up a roar like a primeval scream. The crew and controllers all wore what looked like oversized football helmets, and in the blinking under-light of the landing signals they reminded me of grotesque insects...
...flight out, Snepp saw "fiery stitching in the plastic window across from me" and realized it was ground fire. "The chopper groped for altitude as the motors wailed in protest. A small radar screen behind the pilot's seat began pulsing with a pale green glow, converting the navigator's face into a ghoulish mask. For three or four minutes the tracers continued reaching up for us, slowly burning out as they fell short ... I thought to myself, How absurd. To be shot down...
Yurman said yesterday that his investigation is only in the preliminary stages. It may be weeks before investigators can finally locate the problem with the chopper...