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WHEN SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES

Before telling this story, it is worth providing some background.

While the normal CS grenade used was a canister type, there was another version available for a while in 1968, when the unit was in the Quang Tri area. Somebody had designed a small grenade the size and shape of a baseball. It had a short plunger at the top that a safing pin went through. When the pin was pulled, the thumb held the plunger down until the ball was thrown. This unit was designed more for a riot situation, and though it did not put out much CS, it contained micropulverized CS that was designed to impregnate and linger on whatever it touched. It's smaller CS crystals made it more potent than the larger granules of the burning canister design.

Not long after this incident, a message was received about a certain lot of these baseball-CS grenades. It seems the manufacturer forgot to install one little ball-bearing in the safing plunger assembly. The result was that you could hold the plunger down with vise grips, and the thing would still go off. In other words, the fuse started burning as soon as the safing pin was pulled.

The lot number on the case the unit was using matched one of the lot numbers in the cautionary message. After this incident the group decided not to bother with the "baseball" grenades, and went back to the canister style.

This particular story concerns Bob Potvin and his gunner, Fliex Quavato. Here is what happened - in Bob's own words:

My observer was holding the grenade. He had pulled the pin and was holding the plunger in with his thumb when it went off. We were intending to throw it into a hooch at the time. I think he was in the process of, or already had, moved his hand out the door when it went off. We talked about it later and decided that he had probably reduced the pressure on the plunger slightly, allowing the plunger to move out just enough to arm the grenade. Fortunately it did no damage to his hand when it exploded.

All I remember was trying to fly into a brown and green haze while coughing and puking. After we got it on the ground, my observer fell out one side, I fell out the other, and puked some more while crawling away from the aircraft.

Meanwhile, WILD THING had landed his aircraft and was standing over us, laughing his ass off, insisting that it was the funniest thing he ever saw. Apparently I had some trouble keeping the green side down while flying sideways. Neither my observer nor I thought it was all that funny.

When we got back to Betty, Ed Holmes also thought the incident was funny. I did not share his view and Ed got a CS impregnated shirt wrapped around his head and "patted aggressively" in response to his laughter. Ed thought I was being just a little touchy about it at the time.

There was a follow-up to the CS problem in the helicopter, and that concerned the poor maintenance guys trying to get the powder out of the machine. They stripped everything they could out of that helicopter, hosed it down and scrubbed the whole bubble. They would dry it out, and try to get someone to fly the thing. Frank Vanatta recalls one very tight circuit he flew after being assured that all the CS powder was now cleaned out of the helicopter. The pylon racers in Nevada would have been proud of him! Ed Holmes and GAUCHO both had similar incidents with that machine.

Pete Anderson made several flights while wearing a gas mask trying to blow the last of the CS out of that helicopter so it could be put back on line. It had just about been agreed that the machine would be permanently assigned to Bob when Pete managed to get the last of the powder out of the cockpit. Even after that, most crews occasionally shed a tear or two when flying that machine.

information supplied by Bob Potvin (HOSS), William Sullivan (GAUCHO), Frank Vanatta (PHANTOM), and Ed Holmes (OX)

compiled by Frank Vanatta and Bob Potvin

Pete Anderson - LZ Betty, 1968       Ready for another flight to air out the OH-13. photo from P. Anderson, sent in by C. Greager