Jim Hooper

A Hundred Feet Over Hell Jim Hooper

The Catkillers of the US Army's 220th Reconnaissance Airplane Company patrolled northern I Corps and the DMZ. Their area of operations extended from the South China Sea to Laos, into North Vietnam and down to the A Shau Valley. In 1968-69 it was the most violently-contested real estate on earth. They flew what were arguably the longest sustained combat missions of any aviation unit during the Vietnam War. Their unarmed and unarmored, single-engine Cessna O-1 Bird Dogs, capable of no more than 100 knots at full throttle were from a by-gone era but were pressed into service as the aerial eyes and ears for Marine and Army infantry units in close contact with communist forces. In order to call in accurate artillery fires and control air strikes they had to fly within the effective range of range of every enemy weapon on the battlefield . Of the eleven Army Bird Dog companies spread along the length of South Vietnam none flew over a more lethal terrain than the Catkillers. To save the lives of fellow Americans, they violated international treaties, disobeyed orders about minimum altitudes in a combat zone and took off in weather conditions that kept other aviation units on the ground. Bullet holes in their tiny airplanes never stopped the "Myth Makers" taking off the each morning fully aware that the enemy was waiting for them.