NEWMAN ALLEN TRUMAN

Narrative

At low level, the aircraft struck a wire and pitched up to a nose high attitude. The pilots could not control the aircraft. The tail rotor and skids hit the ground. The aircraft bounced back into the air and ignited. It came to rest on its top left side and burned. War Story: I was with the 173rd AHC at Lai Khe from 4/67 to 12/67. As near as I have been able to determine the passenger KIA's were; LTC Joseph W. Kiernan jr. from Inglewood, New Jersey; LTC. Rodney Howe Smith, Arlington Virginia;MAJ.Millard Leon Treadwell,Ludowici, Georgia; And Sgt.Maj.Terry Martin Rimes, Thomasville, Georgia. I have not been able to find out who the surviving passengers were. At the time of the crash WO1 Newman was flying the aircraft. We were flying low level across rice paddies . There was a tree line ahead of us with aprox. 80 to 100 ft. tall trees and a village inside the tree line. We climbed over the tree line and the power lines were right there in front of us. I yelled over the intercom" Powerlines ahead" . I believe Mr. Newman saw them at the same time and tried to climb over them.Our skids snagged the top wire, stretched it , then I watched the wire break at the tower, and then snap back in on us, into the main rotor, around the fuselage where it punctured the fuel cell . We caught fire right away, the ship was pitching and yawing very severely and started rolling to the left and falling. We rolled inverted, the tailboom hit and we slammed down on the left side rolled inverted again,and stopped. I think the fuel cell exploded then. I was hanging upside down, popped open my harness and fell free, I unhooked the PIO kid who was in my gun well with me and dragged him out, then went back and grabbed the only guy I could see in the fire, a Sgt. and dragged him out then I saw Lt. Cornetts door come off , and he started trying to crawl out and I grabbed him and dragged him out, and the I turned back to get Mr. Newman and it exploded again and there wasn't any thing there , just this huge fire. Lt. Cornett and I ran around to the other side of the fire but there wasn't anybody there. All we could see were flames. We went back around to the other side and moved the 2 injured passengers over to the base of a tree on the edge of the graveyard that we had crashed in, checked them both over to see how badly hurt they were and then looked for weapons, as we had lost ours in the crash except for Lt. Cornett's .38. I am going to end this now even though there is quite a bit more. This is the first time I have gone back and really picked through all the details in 31 years and it is still pretty intense. Once again I thank you for your time and info, and I hope I haven't overloaded you with too much of this story. I look forward to talking to you again . Doug From: "Doug Ward" Sep 1998