President Joe Biden is awarding the Medal of Honor to an Army pilot from the Vietnam War who risked his life to rescue a reconnaissance team that was about to be overrun by the enemy, facing almost certain death
on Tuesday to a Vietnam War Army helicopter pilot who risked his life by flying into heavy enemy fire to save four members of a reconnaissance team from almost certain death as they were about to be overrun.On the night of June 18, 1968, then-1st Lt. Taylor flew his Cobra attack helicopter to rescue the men after they had become surrounded by the enemy.Taylor, now 81, recalled in an interview last week that he had to figure out how to get them out, otherwise “they wouldn’t make it.
Taylor arrived in minutes at the site northeast of what is now Ho Chi Minh City. He asked the team to send up flares to mark their location in the dark. Taylor and a pilot in an accompanying helicopter started firing their ships’ Miniguns and rockets at the enemy, making low-level attack runs and braving intense ground fire for about a half-hour.
“I finally just flew up behind them and sat down on the ground,” Taylor said by telephone. “They turned around and jumped on the aircraft. A couple were sitting on the skids. One was sitting on the rocket pods, and I don’t know where the other one was, but they beat on the side of the ship twice, which meant haul a--. And we did!”Taylor said he flew hundreds of combat missions in UH-1 and Cobra helicopters during a year’s deployment in Vietnam. “We never lost a man,” he said.
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