Flying into a Firestorm
Marine Sgt. Larry Groah, a door gunner on big transport helicopters, had just returned from a secret mission in September 1970 when he was summoned to the intelligence officer’s desk and handed a piece of paper to read and sign. The 23-year-old sergeant was told that if he ever discussed the mission he would go to prison for 10 years and pay a heavy fine.
The covert mission, called Operation Tailwind, was conducted in Laos by Marine helicopter squadrons, Air Force planes, U.S. Army Special Forces troops and militiamen from nearby Montagnard tribes, an ethnic minority in South Vietnam. Largely unknown for decades, the operation gained notoriety in a June 1998 CNN/Time magazine report that incorrectly asserted the use of an outlawed nerve gas by U.S. troops during Tailwind (see Page 36). After the CNN report aired, the mission was declassified. Groah and others could tell their stories.
Groah was a structural mechanic, or as he called it, a “metal bender,” in Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 463, stationed at the Marble Mountain Air Facility near Da Nang. HMH-463 flew many types of missions, including resupply, troop insertion/extraction and ferrying USO shows to units in the field. Groah was a door gunner on a CH-53 Sea Stallion, the largest helicopter in the Marines’ inventory.
In early September 1970, Groah’s squadron received a “warning order,” a heads-up to get ready for Mission 72, the code for any Marine air mission into Laos. This particular mission’s code name was Operation Tailwind, a ground offensive led by U.S. Army Special Forces with support from five Sea Stallions in HMH-463 and four AH-1G Cobras in a Marine light attack helicopter squadron, HML-367. The Green Berets were based at Kontum, a town in South Vietnam’s mountainous Central Highlands along the border with Laos and Cambodia.
On the afternoon of Sept. 7, Groah’s squadron got the word to “turn and
