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Whether taking off or landing, Keys and his Caribou require an airstrip of no more than 300 yds. If there is no strip, Keys takes his potbellied, olive-green transport down to 10 ft., and his crew pushes the steel-encased cargo out of clamshell doors. Says Keys: "We can drop a case of eggs to a Special Forces camp and not break more than a couple." Of his job Keys says, "Somebody's got to do it, and if it helps win this, then I'm happy to be the one."
The Swimmer
LIEUT. COMMANDER CHARLES H. MC NEIL, 30, from Venice, Calif., a Navy pilot assigned to the carrier Coral Sea, recently attacked a North Vietnamese bridge. As his A-4C jet pulled out of its dive, McNeil felt the plane shudder from an antiaircraft hit, heard a fellow pilot's frantic radio warning: "Eject! Eject! Flames on your tail!" McNeil headed for the South China Sea, managed to get just beyond the shoreline before his plane spun out of control. He reached for the ejection rings over his head and yanked hard—but nothing happened. He pulled an auxiliary ejection lever. The canopy sailed off, but McNeil was jammed between the seat and the instrument panel, the upper half of his body outside the plummeting plane. "For a minute," he says, "I thought I was going to be torn in half."
Finally, McNeil popped free and parachuted into the sea—only to be greeted by Communist rifle fire from the nearby beach. He began to swim seaward. His squadron mates zoomed over, made several blazing runs down the beach, and stopped the shore fire. A junk set out from the beach, but was sunk by the jets. Within a short time, an Albatross rescue plane splashed down and hoisted McNeil aboard. But one of the Albatross' engines had been drenched during the landing. Not until a crew man climbed out on the wing and dried the spark plugs by hand could the plane take off.
Taken to Danang, McNeil was treated for bruised thighs and a torn thumb, was guest of honor at a champagne-and-steak dinner thrown by Air Force pilots. Next day he was flown back to his ship, and last week, hobbling painfully about the big carrier, he said: "With a little luck, I'll be flying again in a few days."
The Cargo Carrier
CAPTAIN JAMES A. AYRES, 27, a tall Texan with a wife and three children in Lubbock, pilots an Army C-123 transport plane. He has flown more than 350 missions, averaged more than 100 air hours a month since January.
"These have been the fastest eleven months in my life," he says, "and I wouldn't trade them for anything."
Ayres is a member of the 309th Air Commando Squadron, operating out of Saigon. His missions take him through out South Viet Nam and over Laos. Often behind the controls for seven or eight hours at a stretch, Ayres hauls cargo ("everything from ammunition to pigs") and troops in and out of dangerous jungle strips. His C-123, a juicy target, has been hit three times.