The Illustrated Chickenhawk/ 01 Hilltop LZ

Vietnam prints by Robert Mason
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Hilltop LZ at the north end of Bong Son Valley, February, 1966
That's the FM radio antenna on the left. We're ready to land in the circle of flattened grass. A grunt dropped off on a previous Huey is waiting for his comrades on our Huey. The next Huey, Yellow 3, has just dropped off 8 grunts and is taking off. Yellow Two and Yellow One are circling back to the Rifle Range.

We sometimes flew up here with empty ships, shooting cover fire, etc. land and take-off. The NVA couldn't tell if we'd dropped soldiers or not, so they would have to assume that we had. These phantom units kept them in the valleys and and moving into ambushes we'd established earlier. This did not happen often, but when it did, it was spectacular. The 229th AHB helped trap a battalion of NVA in this way.