25 April, 70. BuNo. 152567, YK-16 that I had named "The Phoenix II."  It was also the aircraft that I had my confirmed shark kill painted on, and same aircraft that took fire and crashed on August 7th, killing Lt. Gillies and Sgt. Seymore. Cpl Blaylock who was crewing my aircraft that night.

Mission # was 41.  I believe it was in the vicinity of BT001510.  I believe it to have been on the river between Hoi An and the An Hoa combat Support Base.  There was a place on that river that was called Football Island.  More of a sand bar than an island.  We had been dispatched on an emergency medical evacuation to a hot LZ.  We were the lead aircraft in a flight of two flying at a low level, only a few feet above the water. and at high speed to avoid ground fire.  Inbound to the LZ both 50 caliber machine guns were returning fire as we were receiving small arms fire from both sides of the aircraft.

Pilot was so low and so fast he didn't see the dike that was coming up.  I remember it to be about about 8 feet high.  When we hit it the aircraft jerked and pitched vilenetly.  We completly ripped the left main landing gear from the aircraft, ripped the fuel cell open, broke the fuel jettison tube open, and broke the hydralic brake line.   I remember the pilot telling us that we almost augered in.  Fortunately, he controlled the aircraft.  We gained alltitude, declared an emergency and passed the information and location over the radio.

The aft ramp area of the aircraft was filling up with fuel.  It was decided to fly back to base, and I stood by the rear of the aircraft with a fire extinguser (Like that was going to do any good if it ignited).  We ended up flying the aircraft back to Marble Mountain, and made a sucessful emergengy landing with all the crash crew equippment waiting for us.  We ended up setting the left stub wing down on a rolling dolly, and if I remeber right it had a matteress on it.

The picture below is the aircraft with the metal shop and hydralic shop NCOIC's looking it over.  I wish I knew all the names, but I really don't recall any one on that mission.  My pilots, my gunners, my corpsman, or even the men in the picture with me.  Terrible to not remember them all.  I was told later that our chase aircraft went into the hot zone and got the medical evacuees out.