Ash Cutchin

STAFF REPORT

Ash Cutchin, of Southampton County, modestly stated that his personal Vietnam War story is not very interesting or impressive, but others would correctly note that he accumulated a remarkable variety of experiences in a very short period of time.

“I had only four months remaining of my three-year commitment the day we departed California via a troop ship in May 1966,” he stated. “I was one of 33 pilots in my unit, the 183rd Reconnaissance Airplane Company.”

He noted that it took 29 days for them to cross the Pacific Ocean, and they landed in Vietnam on June 6, 1966, near Cam Ranh Bay.

“Incidentally, that was the very same day I was scheduled to join American Airlines in Fort Worth as a new-hire pilot,” he said. “I was very worried that once I arrived in Vietnam I would be extended and have to serve a full year there, ruining or at least delaying my planned airline career.”

In Vietnam, he was based at Ban Me Thuot, a small city out in the Central Highlands, north of Saigon and near the Cambodian border.

“We flew about 90 to 100 hours per month, mostly dawn patrols and dusk patrols,” he stated. “Our main targets were North Vietnamese units working their way south along the meandering Ho Chi Minh Trail. Those NV units often walked at night and hid in tunnels during the day, but we could often spot their cooking fires or smoke at dawn as they made their breakfast above ground.

“After we located them, we requested air strikes, and usually a pair of F-4s or F-100s, or sometimes A-1 Skyraiders, arrived on station and dropped napalm and 500-pound bombs on the enemy after we marked the target with our white phosphorous rockets,” he continued. “Sometimes we killed as many as 60 to 100 enemy soldiers and a lot of trees.”

He noted that one day he crashed his plane on a narrow, paved road while attempting to land and retrieve some damaged radios from a ground unit. Another time he responded to a panic call from a U.S. adviser whose South Vietnamese infantry unit was being bombed by its own South Vietnamese Air Force planes — an incident of friendly fire.

“I flew a tight circle about 300 feet above the unit, and the offending pilots saw me and flew away,” he stated. “We never did find out if they were punished. Fortunately, I was on-site before they killed anyone. For that action I was awarded an Air Medal with ‘V’ for Valor.”

Cutchin avoided major injury during his service in the war, but he did experience significant loss, as three pilot friends perished.

He had flown about 300 hours during the summer of 1966, and as his Date of Rotation to Stateside approached, his commanding officer called him in to ask why he wanted to resign his reserve commission and become a civilian.

“When I told him I had already been accepted by American Airlines and had interviews scheduled with five other airlines as soon as I got home, he said, ‘Lieutenant, if I had had the same opportunity when I was a young officer, I’d have done the same thing. Get out of my office and go home. Good luck,’” Cutchin recalled.

Cutchin arrived at Travis Air Force Base in California on Sept. 7, 1966.

He interviewed with several more airlines and ultimately chose Pan Am, starting there in October 1966.

“I was transferred to JFK in 1971 and continued with Pan Am for 25 years, until Dec. 4, 1991, when they closed the door,” he said.

SUBMITTED PHOTO Ash Cutchin, now 81, served as a pilot in the Vietnam War during the summer of 1966 and was awarded an Air Medal with “V” for Valor.

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