Night Hawk Missions

There were several Night Hawk missions in SEA, I know that there was one that had been operating longer than ours in the 25th Div flying out of Cu Chi for instance. The mission was simply to deny the enemy freedom of movement at night. We did that by patrolling corridors of movement, trails, rivers, roads, etc. and shooting any military unit encountered either upon clearance from Lai Khe Hq or immediately in "free - fire" areas. The weapon was a UH-1H with two 7.62 mini-guns and coaxially mounted crew served starlite scopes with xenon lamps. We flew blacked out at 500' agl and 50 knots (higher or faster made the observer sick) scanning with the scope. At target aquisition and clearance to fire the observer either hit the target with the light or fired a tracer into it, whereupon the gun opened up. There was an identical set-up on each side of the aircraft, two each observers, gunners and pilots, and a pot full of ammo. The thing was overloaded from take-off to landing, regardless of how many rounds fired or lbs of fuel used. I think I accumulated about 750 hours of night flying and a good chunk of it was that mission. Sorry, I didn't take pictures and don't have any orders from that time, It was a while back you - John, "Night Hawk 6"