HONOR FLIGHT VETERAN #1: [00:00:00] And you have low, low altitude airways, Victor Airways.

HONOR FLIGHT VETERAN 2: [00:00:04] Yeah.

HONOR FLIGHT VETERAN #1: [00:00:04] Where’s the Victor come from? What’s it mean? How they come by that?

HONOR FLIGHT VETERAN 2: [00:00:08] I don’t know.

HONOR FLIGHT VETERAN #1: [00:00:10] Well anyway…do you, know?

HONOR FLIGHT VETERAN 2: [00:00:13] Well, let’s ask somebody else. Yeah. I mean, what difference does it make? Well.

HOST: [00:00:18] These are US Navy, HAL-3 Seawolves. Many of these guys haven’t seen each other since they left Vietnam, but you’d never know it. They pretty much pick up right where they left off

HONOR FLIGHT VETERAN #1: [00:00:29] Anyway,they were VFR is what it stood, you know.

HONOR FLIGHT VETERAN 2: [00:00:32] No, it’s it’s. No, it doesn’t…

HONOR FLIGHT VETERAN #1: [00:00:36] ….Make up your own story then.

HONOR FLIGHT VETERAN 2: [00:00:37] No no no.

HONOR FLIGHT VETERAN #1: [00:00:39] Victor Airways…

HONOR FLIGHT VETERAN 2: [00:00:40] You asked me!

HOST: [00:00:40] It’s late September and I’ve traveled with 85 Seawolves on an honor flight from San Diego to Washington, D.C. After a morning of touring various memorials, we’ve just arrived at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. In just a few minutes, we’ll walk down to The Wall where 44 Seawolves are listed among the fallen. It’s a little unusual for an honor flight to be made up entirely of Vietnam veterans, and unheard of, I’m told, for the flight to be full of veterans from a single unit. It’s not the first time the Seawolves have blazed a new trail. Their very existence as a unit was a first in U.S. Naval history. And yet to this day, very few people have ever heard of them. Today we bring you the first of two episodes about the Navy’s first ever Light Helicopter Attack Squadron, the most decorated squadron in the history of US naval aviation, forefathers to every Navy attack helicopter squadron that followed. And still, after 50 years, the most extraordinary group of Vietnam War badasses you’ve never heard of. But ask a Navy SEAL or a River Rat who served in the Mekong Delta between 1966 and 1972 about his heroes, and odds are the Seawolves will be at the top of that list.

“SCRAMBLE THE SEAWOLVES”: [00:01:57] They were the heroes of my youth and have remained there my entire life.

HOST: [00:02:06] Stick around. From the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Founders of the Wall. This is Echoes of the Vietnam War. I’m your host, Michael Croan, bringing you stories of service, sacrifice, and healing from people who still feel the impact of that conflict… Nearly 50 years later. This is Episode 40: “Seawolves.”

JEFF ARBALLO: [00:02:52] I was going to get my car fixed one day, and I’m sitting down next to a gentleman and he, him and I start having a conversation and he asked me what I did. And I told him, oh, I do film, documentary, action sports.

HOST: [00:03:08] That’s Jeff Arballo. His regular job is shooting the pro surfing tour. But he and his wife, Shannon, the daughter of a Seawolf, also made a feature length documentary called “Scramble the Seawolves.”

JEFF ARBALLO: [00:03:20] And then, um, I said, I’m actually doing one on Vietnam right now. And he said, oh, I used to work with the Navy SEALs. I used to train them. I was like, wow, that’s interesting. And he said, but now I’ve retired from that, and I’m a history professor and my specialty is Vietnam. And I said, oh, well, then if your specialty is Vietnam, then you must know who the Seawolves are. And he said, oh yes, a submarine group. And I said, no, no, they’re the Navy’s first helicopter attack squadron. They’re called the HAL-3 Seawolves. And he looked at me and he said, no, the Navy never had a helicopter attack squadron. And I said, yes, they did. And he goes, no, they didn’t. I said, yes, they did. And he said, well, who do you think knows better me, the history professor, are you the filmmaker? And I said, well, I’m about to give you a history lesson.

HOST: [00:04:16] Jeff pulled out his phone and showed this history professor, this Vietnam War specialist, this former trainer of Navy Seals, the five-minute trailer to “Scramble the Seawolves.”

JEFF ARBALLO: [00:04:28] He watched it, his jaw dropped, and he said, I’m embarrassed because I don’t know who these guys are. And I should kno,w because this is my specialty. So, you know, it was a it was a good lesson for him. And it was an awakening for me, too, because and let me realize how nobody really knows who the Seawolves are.

HOST: [00:04:49] So who are these guys? Seawolves. And why are they so unsung? By 1965, communist forces had established supply routes into the Mekong Delta. The river and its tributaries formed a vast network of interconnected waterways that were perfect for moving and distributing munitions and supplies to the Viet Cong. That year, the Navy began limited Riverine operations meant to uncover and disrupt those supply lines, with close air support from the Army’s 145th Combat Aviation Battalion. This “Brown Water Navy” quickly proved its effectiveness, emboldening the brass to go full scale with mobile riverine operations in the Mekong Delta. As good as the Army’s helicopter gunship pilots were, and by all accounts they were very good, they were not trained to scale up to the Navy’s expanded mission. They lacked the instrument training to fly at night or in bad weather, and they had no training at all when it came to landing on or taking off from moving watercraft. The Navy needed its own close-air support for Riverine Operations with mission specific training and capabilities. Some 2,000 naval aviators and sailors answered the call for volunteers, and on April 1st, 1967, the HAL-3 Seawolves were officially established in a commissioning ceremony at Vũng Tàu Air Force Base. By August of that year, the Seawolves were operating eight detachments, or DETs, of two helicopters, each scrounging and refurbishing equipment cast off by the Army. The Seawolves spent the next five years providing close-air cover for patrol boats, inserting and extracting SEAL teams, and evacuating wounded service members, usually under heavy enemy fire. The squadron was decommissioned in March of 1972, having flown more than 120,000 combat sorties. While most military units have a home base in the United States. Fort Hood for the First Cavalry. Camp Pendleton for the 3rd/7th Marines. The Seawolves were stood up in Vietnam and stood down in Vietnam. If you didn’t know them then, you probably haven’t heard of them since. How obscure were they? Obscure enough that a history professor specializing in the Vietnam War didn’t know of them, and neither did Melanie Taitano, whose own father had been a Seawolf.

MELANIE TAITANO: [00:07:38] My dad was always happy, always smiling.

HOST: [00:07:42] Melanie Taitano known affectionately as “Mel” to her friends.

MELANIE TAITANO: [00:07:46] Every opportunity he had, he would take us to Disneyland or Knott’s Berry Farm or, you know, um, just always laughing, always very sociable, very happy.

HOST: [00:07:59] Mel spent 20 years as a military spouse. Her husband retired nine years ago, and yet she looks young enough to get carded at the liquor store. She’s petite and quiet, with an inner peace that washes over you the minute you meet her. But you figure out pretty quickly that beneath her serene smile is enough energy to power a civilization and enough passion to nourish it. Mel’s father, Anthony Rosario, was a mustang, which is someone who enlists in the military and then rises through the ranks to become an officer, as opposed to someone who enters the military with the commission. He retired from the Navy at the rank of lieutenant.

MELANIE TAITANO: [00:08:38] And, uh, you know, as a little girl, you don’t really realize, you know, “oh, my Dad’s, that’s my Dad’s job. He’s in the Navy.” But I remember one day it was my birthday and I was in elementary school, and, um, you know, he came and surprised me. He brought cake, but he was dressed up for me. Um, that’s the kind of guy that he was, um, dressed up in his white military uniform to drop off cake for me and my friend, you know, my entire class and brought me flowers. And that was the first time I, I looked at my Dad and thought, wow, my Dad’s a hero. You know, that was the very first time I saw my Dad as a hero. He never spoke about, you know, his his tour in Vietnam. Um, all I knew was he did two tours in Vietnam. Um, and growing up, I wasn’t, you know, um, I wish I would have talked to him more about his service, um, asked him questions, but he never really spoke about it.

HOST: [00:09:56] As a Navy brat, Mel had grown up with a deep-seated connection to the military community. As an Army spouse, she volunteered as a family readiness group leader, taught martial arts to active-duty soldiers and their dependents, and was active in her church.

MELANIE TAITANO: [00:10:12] I’ve just always been involved and I loved the entire camaraderie, the military community just being involved.

HOST: [00:10:21] As her husband’s military retirement drew nearer, Mel began to worry about how she would handle the transition to civilian life.

MELANIE TAITANO: [00:10:28] And so his last duty station, his last assignment was at San Diego State, and he taught ROTC there, and I thought, gosh, he’s getting ready to retire. And I was really trying to convince him to stay in longer. I, just ’cause I just loved the military. I was a Navy brat. I was like, Stan, come on, what’s another ten years?

HOST: [00:10:53] It didn’t work. Mel’s husband retired, and for the first time in her life, she found herself on the outside, not even looking in. She knew she needed to find a way to reconnect with the military community. She just didn’t know how exactly. One night, Mel and her husband watched a documentary called “Honor Flight” about the nationwide nonprofit network whose mission is to celebrate America’s veterans by organizing trips to the national memorials in Washington, D.C., all arrangements made and all expenses paid.

MELANIE TAITANO: [00:11:24] I think we watched it On Demand. I forget where we watched it, and I thought, that’s what I need to do. So after we watched the little documentary, um, I googled it, found a hub in San Diego, and I kept calling the number. I’m like, I just got to be involved. So I was very persistent.

HOST: [00:11:48] Her persistence paid off. Mel soon got started as a volunteer for Honor Flight San Diego. She quickly rose to become a team leader, and not long after that she was asked to join the board. She’s held a position on the board ever since. For the first several years of Mel’s involvement, Honor Flight San Diego focused its efforts on World War II and Korean War vets. About three years ago, the organization started planning its shift to Vietnam War veterans. It was around that time that Mel and her husband first saw Jeff and Shannon Arballo’s documentary, “Scramble the Seawolves.”

“SCRAMBLE THE SEAWOLVES”: [00:12:24] In the first year, the Seawolves would log 16,000 flight hours and 11,000 combat missions. The Seawolf gunners needed to find a new way of shooting the guns. After ruining several tail rotors….

MELANIE TAITANO: [00:12:37] My husband and I were watching it and we thought, wait a minute, because I had a Ziploc bag of all of these old photos… And so we recognized some of the scenes in the documentary, went to the my closet, pulled out the the big Ziploc, dumped ’em on the floor, laid ’em out. Sure enough, my Dad had the patch and, uh, the PBR, pictures of the PBR’s pictures of the the Huey, um, called up.

HOST: [00:13:12] So you watched the documentary? You had no idea that your father had been part of that? No. When you watched it?

MELANIE TAITANO: [00:13:19] I did not.

HOST: [00:13:20] As you were watching, it?

MELANIE TAITANO: [00:13:21] As I was watching it then, um, it was my husband first who said, “hey, wait a minute”… You know, went to go get the pictures. Sure enough so I, you know, I called up my Dad, I’m like, Dad, we just watched “Scramble the Seawolves.” How come you never said anything about you being a part of this incredible squadron? You guys were badass, you know, um, I knew he was a door gunner, but, you know, I didn’t really know what that actually entailed. Um, until I watched the documentary.

HOST: [00:13:58] To make a long story very short, and at the risk of overlooking the heavy contributions of several other key players, that, in a nutshell, is how Honor Flight San Diego’s first all Vietnam flight, came to be made up entirely of Seawolves, a chain of contact that started with a Seawolf named Joe Crutcher, passed through his daughter Shannon and her husband Jeff onto Mel Titano and the crew at Honor Flight San Diego, and eventually led me here the San Diego airport where the Seawolves are about to depart for BWI. Sadly, Anthony Rosario is not among us. He passed away on Easter Sunday 2019, not long after Mel and her colleagues started planning this honor flight. After a short break, we’ll take a closer look at what makes the Seawolves so special. We’ll hear from veteran pilots, door gunners and maintenance crew. And I’ll introduce you to my new buddy, Don Morgan, known to his Seawolf brothers as “Tex.”

TEX MORGAN: [00:15:09] Well, I got to Ben Tre, I gathered up everybody that I could find from Texas, and I said, which one of you guys has got the nickname Tex? And this one guy says, I do. And I said, not anymore. I’m the biggest Texan here, and that is my name. And you’re going to have to figure out a different one. And I was Tex from that point forward.

HOST: [00:15:30] All right, don’t mess with Texas. Stick around.

HOST: [00:15:53] In our last episode, “Every Picture Tells a Story,” we introduced you to Steve Delp and his wife Annie, who together made a significant contribution to completing our Wall of Faces. And we told you that Annie has spent the last two years living in a memory care facility. We have a very sad update to that story. One week after the episode was published, Miss Annie passed away. Our hearts are full of love for Steve and his time of grief, and of eternal gratitude and admiration for Annie. She left a mark on everyone she ever met and will miss her terribly.

HOST: [00:16:33] Our goal here at Echoes of the Vietnam War is to capture and share the personal stories of Vietnam veterans and the people who loved them. As the host and producer of this podcast, I try to intervene as little as possible and then only to help move the story along or to give it context. In other words, when veterans share their stories with us, we share them with you. Given the fog of war and the 50 years that have passed in the meantime, we don’t expect every memory to be perfect. Errors can happen through commission or through omission, but so far we haven’t had anybody try to deliberately mislead us or hide the ball. That said, we do make an effort to get the facts right and to differentiate between facts and opinions. But we don’t have the kind of fact-checking process that you’d expect to find at a news outlet or a publisher of history books. And because I’m not a military veteran myself, I don’t always know when a clarification is needed. For example, in Episode 32, “Top Gun: Call Sign Wildman,” we featured an interview with Denis Faherty, who talked about his experiences flying in jet fighters in Vietnam. Well, Captain Faherty was actually a naval flight officer or a radar intercept officer, not a pilot. In other words, he rode in the back seat, not in the front seat. And if that’s still not clear enough, let me put it another way: he was Goose, not Maverick. In the episode. I failed to make that clear. On top of that, some of my edits probably made the line even blurrier, since the F-4 can’t operate effectively without both Maverick and Goose, it never occurred to me that the distinction was an important one. A listener who is also a Navy fighter pilot in Vietnam, has since set me straight. And accordingly, we will add a clarification to the front end of Episode 32. I want to be crystal clear about one thing: Captain Faherty in no way tried to pass himself off as Maverick. Any appearance to the contrary is our fault, not his. And all of us here at Echoes will try to do better in the future. Now back to the episode.

HOST: [00:19:10] Designed from the get go as a quick reaction force, the HAL-3 Seawolves could go from a dead sleep to in the air and shooting in less than three minutes. When SEALs and River Rats got into heavy trouble, they’d radio “scramble the Seawolves,” and know that salvation was minutes away. Getting the squadron from inception to peak performance took a ton of courage, an ocean of sweat and endless ingenuity. There was no playbook. The Seawolves developed their own tactics based on what the mission required, whatever was necessary to protect the Riverine forces on the ground. Aside from administrative staff, there were three main jobs in the squadron: the pilots, the door gunners, and the maintenance crews, known as maintainers. Bob Britz was one of the first pilots to join HAL-3 after its formation.

BOB BRITZ: [00:20:26] I was there in June of ’67 to, uh, May of 1968. So the squadron actually was formed and finalized three weeks after I, after I had arrived in Vietnam. I learned how to fly jets, i learned how to fly the cargo planes and patrol planes… But I got into a helicopter and I couldn’t keep it at ten acre field. And, uh, it was it was such a challenge that it was so much fun. In fact, the instructor looked at me and says, “Hey, Bob, I got a family, you know?” No. So, uh, I fell in love with the challenge of flying helicopters.

HOST: [00:21:07] In five years, the Seawolf pilots never turned down a mission. They took off completely overloaded with ammo and fuel. They navigated in the pitch dark and the driving rain. They screamed along at treetop level to wherever the birds and the guns were needed. Here’s a clip from the documentary “Scramble the Seawolves.”

“SCRAMBLE THE SEAWOLVES”: [00:21:27] These Guys were trained to land on a carrier deck in the dark, in pitching waters, in the rain. They had the best experience, best training.

“SCRAMBLE THE SEAWOLVES”: [00:21:38] Our pilots and co-pilots, they were gods. They could put us in and out of places and do things that any civilian pilot would probably mess their britches.

HOST: [00:21:53] Maybe. But every pilot I talked to said that the real badasses of the outfit were the door gunners. Seawolf door gunners had a reputation for being especially fearless, but most of them will tell you that they were plenty afraid. Leaning out the door of a fast moving aircraft under enemy fire, you’d have to be crazy not to be afraid. Maybe some of them were crazy, but they also trusted their pilots and felt a strong sense of duty to the guys they were protecting on the ground. This being the first squadron of its kind in the Navy, the gunners found themselves devising techniques, tools and tactics that were tailor made for their unique mission, which might have subtle but critical differences from one detachment to another. This made training for door gunners kind of a bespoke deal.

GARY ELY: [00:22:42] The training you got once you went on a detachment, basically was to make the other guys on detachment that are doing the same thing, you were comfortable that you were going to be able to fly in the other door with them without, uh, without any difficulties.

HOST: [00:22:57] Gary Ely was a door gunner with the Seawolves in 1970 and 1971. In fact, it was Gary who trained Mel’s father, Anthony Rosario, to do the job, and the two of them flew together often. Mel calls him “O Dad,” which is her shorthand for “Other Dad.”

GARY ELY: [00:23:15] It was a senior gunner who was basically assigned to be able to train a new guy coming aboard, and during that period of time, you flew every day. You just kind of, you done everything with your new gunner until he was up to speed and ready to fly on his own, uh, during scrambles and any other operations that they had had to go into. Uh, and it usually took, uh, on, on Detachment Nine, uh, depending upon the skill and how, how quick these guys learned, it would take anywhere from two weeks to a month before they would, uh, uh, turn them loose as a stand-on-their-own gunner.

HOST: [00:23:54] Because of their unique mission requirements. Seawolf door gunners might have to fire in any direction at any time. For example, the gunner in the port side door might have to fire across and under the tail or the nose of the aircraft at a target on the starboard side, and vice versa. Seawolf door gunners invented new ways of mounting their guns, feeding them, firing them, and managing spent shells, which is no small matter for a gunner who might routinely fire 5 to 7,000 rounds on a mission. But the gunners did whatever it took to keep their barrels hot, to get the guys on the ground out of trouble. They were pure fury because, as one of the gunners in the documentary put it, if they weren’t shooting, people were dying. Nevertheless, some of the gunners I talked to and some of the pilots I talked to for that matter, said that the real badasses of the outfit were the maintainers. “Magicians,” “Wizards,” “Whiz kids”… These are common terms used by Seawolves to describe the maintainers. They could turn piles of scraps into combat-ready equipment or pull it out of a hat like a rabbit. They didn’t have much choice. The squadron’s Hueys were hand-me-downs from the Army beyond their prime. Beat up, shot up… Basically the ones the Army didn’t want to fly anymore. When the Seawolves maintainers couldn’t beg, borrow or steal parts, they machined them themselves. The maintainers often worked 12-hour days, seven days a week. Gunships would come back from missions with technical problems, electrical problems, mechanical problems, structural problems, or just full of holes. Here’s Tex Morgan again.

TEX MORGAN: [00:25:44] We didn’t have much of a, uh, supply system for, uh, our daily needs. And it was it was not a big deal to, uh, patch up the tailbooms and the cabin skin with epoxy and beer cans. The beer cans were made out of steel back then, not like aluminum as they are now, and two-part epoxy and a beer can cut to the right shape. Uh, we patched holes. Um. We just, we managed to fix – in our own fashion – things that would totally amaze somebody that had to do it strictly by the book. Because a lot of our, a lot of our techniques and, and our adaptations were not by the book. They were by the seat of our pants and, and, uh. Uh, a lot of us were what they call tinkerers. We we’d take things apart to find out why they worked the way they did. And, uh, some of us were fortunate enough to get them back together, and they still worked.

HOST: [00:27:00] Seawolf maintainers found ways they did whatever was necessary to get those gunships into the air and keep them there, because the lives of SEALs and River Rats depended on it.

“SCRAMBLE THE SEAWOLVES”: [00:27:12] They were not rewarded as they should have been. Citations. Awards. I mean, those guys were fantastic.

“SCRAMBLE THE SEAWOLVES”: [00:27:21] They were so important to this squadron. So important. They were the backbone of our squadron.

HOST: [00:27:35] The HAL-3 Seawolves were so essential that SEAL teams would consider delaying or even changing their operations if the Seawolves weren’t available. Sometimes the SEALs were emboldened to take on missions that they wouldn’t otherwise have considered, because the Seawolves would insert and extract them in places nobody else would fly into. One River Rat in the documentary says the mere fact of the Seawolves – just their existence – probably deterred more enemy aggression than we’ll ever know. The Seawolves, in other words, were game changers.

HOST: [00:28:21] San Diego International Airport really knows how to send off a plane full of veterans. It’s going to be a full flight. There are 85 Seawolves, maybe a dozen people from Honor Flight San Diego, a handful of media, including me, and several volunteers known as Guardians, who provide assistance to the veterans who need it. The airport has set up a special security line just for us, very efficient. And from there we’re ushered into a small hallway lined with people on either side who applaud and thank the Seawolves for their service as they pass through. On the other side of this gauntlet of gratitude, the hallway opens into a large private gate slash waiting area where there’s coffee and breakfast sandwiches and pastries. Soon, the Seawolves will board their Honor Flight, an Alaska Airlines charter with “Honoring Those Who Served” painted on the side. It’s the star treatment all the way around. And this is just the beginning.

HOST: [00:29:39] We’ll be back in two weeks with the rest of this story. We’ll take you along as the Seawolves visit Arlington National Cemetery, the Navy Memorial and Museum, Washington Navy Yard, and of course, The Wall. Along the way, you’ll hear more from familiar voices like Tex and Mel, and we’ll introduce you to some fascinating new characters who will share their stories of service, sacrifice, and healing. And the Seawolves will finally, finally, after 50 years, get the welcome home they deserve.

HOST: [00:30:21] We’ll see you then.

No video interviews are available for this episode.