Valor Friday

Born to Croatia immigrants in 1922, Michael Novosel’s life is an incredible story several times over. His mother spoke only Croatian and his father Croatian, German, and English. Croatian was thus the family language, with Michael not learning English until he started primary school. As a boy, one of the few joys or luxuries he enjoyed during the Great Depression was regularly watching the Pittsburgh Pirates play baseball.

Born, raised, and educated in Etna, Pennsylvania, Novosel enlisted into the US Army Air Corps on 7 February 1941 when he was just 19. Novosel said that he enlisted for the potential education benefits. As to why he chose the Air Corps over the other branches? Well, they advertised a lot on the radio. They also advertised the many technical trades they would teach young men.

Novosel had an interest in flying, but thought his chances of ever becoming a pilot to be slim. At the time, the Air Corps required at least some college education to become an aviation cadet. With no formal education, the young Novosel didn’t get his hopes up. He did take the exam anyway, to see if he could qualify. The results were that his Pennsylvania education had sent him into the world with the knowledge equivalent to those with two years of college. Though a quarter inch short of the 5’4″ minimum height requirement, some sweet talking and he passed the physical. He was now an aviation cadet.

As the Air Corps expanded into the Army Air Forces later that year, Novosel was still undergoing initial training. He finally was commissioned and earned his pilot’s wings 15 December 1942 as a pursuit (i.e. fighter) pilot. With his short stature he was well proportioned for the small fighter aircraft of the pursuit squadrons.

Novosel described his flight training as being very austere and unforgiving. Learning how to fly in the open-cockpit monoplane PT-19 trainer, cadets had to pick it up fast. The wartime pacing left no room for error. Pilot candidates were expected to solo by the time they got 12 hours logged and graduated each of the three phases in the program at 60 hours.

In the year since the 7 December 1941 Pearl Harbor Attack, which had thrust the US into the Second World War, the military was undergoing a massive transformation. In 1940, the Army had 269,000 men on active duty. In 1941, with the federalization of the National Guards, that number swelled to 1.5 million. By the end of 1942 it was 3 million. By 1945 it was more than 8 million.

The job of training all these new soldiers fell largely to those who came just before them in training. Novosel fell into this category. The experienced NCOs and officers were needed at front line units. Novosel meanwhile had enough experience to train more pilots, which meant he was an instructor for much of the war.

Training aviators on the AT-6 Texan at Laredo Army Air Base, Texas, he then trained in piloting the venerable B-24 Liberator heavy bomber. By December 1944 he had logged more than 800 hours flying the B-24 in support of aerial gunner training.

With experience in the B-24, B-17, and by his reckoning all of America’s operational bomber aircraft of the war, Novosel was sent to conversion training for the ultimate bomber of the war, the B-29 Superfortress.

Completing his B-29 qualification, Novosel went to New Mexico where the aircrews were organized, assembled into squadrons, groups, and wings, and then deployed to the Pacific Theater. Novosel and his B-29 crew left in July 1945 to join the war.

Flying out of Tinian Island with the 58th Bombardment Wing (Very Heavy), Novosel’s late arrival in the theater meant he only logged four combat missions before Japan’s surrender ended the war. Just after the end of the war, he twice dropped food packages on Allied prisoners of war being held in Japan.

Missions for B-29 crews in the theater were long, usually running about 15 hours. Novosel said that his longest mission was 17 hours and 10 minutes. This late in the war, Novosel said he never took fire from any enemy aircraft, but he did take sporadic and ineffective fire from Japanese anti-aircraft artillery.

At the Japanese surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945, Novosel piloted a B-29 as part of a 462-ship fly-over of USS Missouri. He next took command of the 99th Bombardment Squadron (Very Heavy) and remained in the Pacific until 1947.

Shortly after the war, Novosel was conducting a check ride with another pilot. The officer was currently a co-pilot, but was looking to be signed off on the tasks to be rated as pilot in command. They were over Tinian Bay and conducting a chandelle maneuver. This is a very tight 180 degree turn (at minimum radius turn for the plane) combined with pitching up to gain altitude. It’s a fairly standard operation that, because the aircraft will end the maneuver at near stall speed, shows mastery of piloting the airframe.

As they were completing the turn and rise in altitude, a burst of flak hit 500 ft in front of them. Just then the tail gunner reported a flak burst 500ft behind them. They were getting shot at by our own Navy. Novosel immediately un-assed the area, bringing his four-engined bomber into a steep dive to gain speed.

Looking down, Novolsel saw a US aircraft carrier group. Apparently one of the escorts was shooting at them (more effectively than the Japanese had, Novosel said). Using him for some sort of target practice, the ships again hit him with two flak bursts to the front and rear at distances of about 500ft. He decided he’d exact his revenge on the aircraft carrier (USS Bonhomme Richard, CV-31) by landing on its wooden deck and making “a dent in it.”

Coming down to near sea-level altitude, Novosel circled his lumbering bomber around the carrier as if in a landing pattern. He lowered his flaps and landing gear and made for a landing approach.

The B-29 is several times larger than anything designed for a carrier deck (even today on our larger supercarriers). Earlier in the war General Jimmy Doolittle and his Raiders flew modified B-25 two-engine bombers off a carrier (though they never had any intention of landing on the carrier). The B-29 is about four times as large.

As he was approaching the carrier at landing level, Novosel realized that his aircraft was just too big. He would hit the ship’s tower with his wing. An Essex-class fleet carrier like Bonhomme Richard was 98ft wide at the top deck and the B-29 had a 141ft wingspan. He broke off his landing pattern, but not before scaring the shit out of all the sailors on deck who stood frantically waving “no” to the approaching behemoth.

Remaining in the Air Force after it became a separate branch of the service, Novosel was next assigned to Eglin AFB in Florida. He served here as a test pilot of B-29s. Marrying Ethel Graham in 1948 (a former corporal in the WWII Marine Corps), he left active duty in 1949 and transferred his commission to the Air Force Reserve.

The following year, when North Korea invaded the South, he was among the myriad of personnel recalled to active duty. With the rank of Major, he was sent to the Air Command and Staff School instead of into combat or training duty. He again left active duty for the reserves in 1953 at the end of the war.

While with the Air Reserve, Novosel was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1955. He found work as a commercial pilot and instructor with Southern Airways, but felt the call to active military duty. In 1963, as US involvement in Vietnam was gaining attention and increasing in volume, he tried to move his commission to the active duty Air Force.

When the Air Force told Novosel that they didn’t have any room for field grade officer pilots, the 41 year old approached the Army. They would take him, but not as a lieutenant colonel. Novosel resigned his Air Force commission in 1964 and accepted an appointment as a warrant officer in the Army.

The Army trained Novosel to fly the venerable UH-1 Huey helicopter. The Huey was so ubiquitous during the Vietnam War it is essentially synonymous with the conflict. He would go on to fly more than 2,500 missions in Vietnam during two year-long tours there.

Novosel was assigned to the medical evacuation (MEDEVAC) role within Army Aviation. Their radio call sign was “Dustoff”, with Novosel specifically going by “Dustoff 88.” During his tours he would provide evacuation flights for nearly 5,600 people. His first tour was with the 283rd Medical Detachment while his second was with the 82nd Medical Detachment. Typical staffing for a medical detachment’s air element was 12 pilots and six helicopters.

Dustoff pilots and crews were known for being a little crazy. Their job required them to fly into on-going battles to retrieve and evacuate the wounded. This meant they often flew right into the enemy fire. Of the 5,200 or so rotary-wing aircraft the US Army would lose in Vietnam, the Huey alone accounts for more than 2,900 losses, more than all of the other airframes combined.

On 2 October 1969, after Novosel and his crew had already been flying missions for seven hours, an urgent call came in. A group of South Vietnamese (RVN) soldiers was surrounded and heavily embattled by several thousand North Vietnamese (NVA) and Viet Cong (VC) near the Cambodian border. Novosel answered the call, though there was little more information than that they were needed.

Once arriving on station, Novosel made contact with the command and control aircraft loitering overhead, leading the operation. Three companies of RVN troops were attacking a suspected Viet Cong stronghold. The intelligence had apparently been wrong, as the force they came up against was much, much larger than anticipated.

The commander on the ground had called a retreat, but only after the lead element of his formation had been cut off. Those men had been left to their own devices as the rest of the task force left them behind. This retreat had begun about 0800 hours. It was now 1600 hours. The men of that lead element were not going to be able to hold out much longer, and it didn’t look like ground forces would be able to relieve them.

Novosel’s mission was to extricate those troops. After their hours of fighting, all of them had been wounded. What the command and control team didn’t tell Novosel was how dangerous the airspace had been all day as the battle unfolded.

Earlier in the efforts to rescue the trapped men, several US Air Force F-100 Super Sabre close air support aircraft had attacked the NVA and VC positions. All of them had been hit by .50-caliber anti-aircraft fire. Meanwhile, Army helicopter gunships had also been deployed to provide covering fire. One of those aircraft was shot down.

The downed gunship had been recovered by a Chinook helicopter before Novosel’s arrival, so there was no indication as he came in over the battle just how much danger he was in. All Novosel knew was that the friendly forces were surrounded and they were all injured, so he was going in.

Novosel’s first two approaches were both turned away by heavy enemy fire from every direction. Unable to safely land, Novosel took a different approach. He flew low, skimming the tops of the blades of grass, and flew slowly in the direction where he suspected the RVN men were. He surmised their location by watching where all the enemy fire was going. His tactic worked.

His plan was to have the wounded stand up and load into his helicopter as it drove past, like a street car. It worked. As he flew over the friendly positions the men would hop up, and the Huey’s crewmen would grab hands, arms, and whatever else and hoist the men aboard. The entire time they’re doing this, the helicopter is drawing enemy fire from literally every direction.

With a load of about nine or ten RVN troops, Novosel flew them to a nearby Special Forces camp. The trip took about ten minutes one-way. At the camp, he quickly got more fuel, and then without a second thought returned to the hellscape to rescue more troops. Novosel made three such trips in total, returning each time with about ten men. This took about two and a half hours, flying into more and more enemy fire on each trip. The entire time Novosel and his crew were without any supporting fire except for the besieged men he was aiding.

Despite taking many hits to the aircraft, there was no critical damage and none of Novosel’s crew had been hit. As they would approach the friendly position during that late afternoon they were turned away another four times overall by heavy enemy fire, but circled around and came in again undaunted.

On the final trip, with darkness setting in, as they had finished loading and believed they had everyone out, one of Novosel’s crew told him they saw a friendly soldier waving a rag. They had overflown the man, so he was behind him. The quickest way to get him would be to hover backwards, then pull him aboard. Novosel says in hindsight, this might have been an enemy ruse, but at the moment he thought it was just one more RVN soldier they didn’t want to leave behind.

As Novosel stopped and prepared to move backwards, a VC soldier with AK-47 in hand popped up out of the grass about 30 yards directly in front of him. The man began to empty his rifle at Novosel directly and specifically.

The bullets ripped through the windscreen of the helicopter, impacting all around Novosel. He was hit, but not critically. Some of the enemy rounds hit the armor plating of his seat, just inches to either side of him. Novosel’s hand took one bullet fragment, causing him to let go of the aircraft’s cyclic (flight stick). Another one hit him in the boot. This caused an instinctive flinch where he pulled that foot up and pushed his other leg out.

Let’s take a moment to explain helicopter control systems. Particularly at a low altitude hover, the balance of the three controls is paramount to remaining airborne. First, the cyclic controls the overhead rotor and is how the pilot balances the aircraft. The collective is the throttle, controlled by the other hand. It controls both how much thrust the engine produces as well as how much “bite” the rotor’s blades take out of the air. To combat the helicopter’s natural tendency to spin in the opposite direction of the main rotor’s movement, the tail rotor pushes against that yawing (left/right movement) energy. The tail rotor is controlled by the foot pedals.

Novosel’s wounding in the hand took his hand off the balance control at the same time his feet also induced an unplanned yaw. With his years of experience and thousands of hours of flight time, Novosel’s instincts save him and all the men aboard his aircraft. As the nose swings to one side, rises sharply, and they’re moments away from a crash, he pulls hard on the collective. This adds power and rapidly lifts the aircraft, preventing a wreck.

As the aircraft jerked around, the soldier they were pulling aboard slipped from the grasp of Novosel’s crew. Luckily for him, he landed on the Huey’s skid and so didn’t fall back to the ground (and the waiting arms of the VC). The evasive maneuver has put the helicopter now about 60 feet in the air.

As Novosel later recalled, “and that was the end of the mission.” He notified his crew he’d been injured, giving control to his co-pilot. They returned to the safety of the base where his wounds were tended to.

Novosel had rescued 29 men in total. All of them were wounded. By some miracle, two more RVN troops from the encircled force walked out of the jungle unharmed the next morning. They’d been able to avoid the enemy somehow. Aside from those two, Novosel had rescued them all.

The RVN soldiers he rescued had been through hell. They held out for more than eight hours, completely surrounded, and outnumbered. Novosel recalled the wounds he saw on these men. One who ran to jump aboard had been eviscerated, and was holding his own intestines in with an arm. Another they grabbed had lost a hand. A third man had somehow survived being shot right in the mouth, turning his face into what Novosel said looked like “dog meat.” Thanks to Chief Novosel, they survived.

Novosel would receive the Medal of Honor for his insane heroics and airmanship that day. How he would hear about that award is itself a great story.

While stationed at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, Novosel had a son. Giving the boy his own name, the junior Novosel would grow up around the military and aviation. The minute he graduated high school in 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War, he enlisted into the Army at age 19.

Michael (Jr.) would follow in his father’s footsteps and go through Army Aviation training to become a helicopter pilot, earning his wings and warrant on 15 December 1969. This was 27 years to the day that his father had earned his pilot wings.

Michael (Jr.) would immediately volunteer for Vietnam, where his father was currently on deployment. When he arrived in-country he requested to be assigned to his father’s unit, the 82nd Medical Detachment. With the elder Novosel’s approval, father and son would serve together in war. Though common in earlier wars, this was unheard of by 1970. Especially in such a small unit where Novosel and Michael (Jr.) constituted 1/6th of the assigned aviators.

When Michael (Jr.) had arrived to the unit, he walked up to his old man and said, “Hello, Dad.” To which the elder Novosel dressed him down. “I’m his superior, he’s not supposed to do that, ‘hello Dad.’ So I told him around here I’m not your father, you know.”

Novosel, a long-time instructor of pilots, would even fly with his son on occasion since he was the unit’s training officer. As his training officer, Novosel gave Michael (Jr.) his “dollar ride” (an aviation term for an aerial tour essentially), his auto-rotation check ride (a test of his knowledge of emergency procedures), and his final “in-country” evaluation. These were needed so that the new aviator could prove himself capable of flying into combat. Novosel didn’t give his kin any special treatment, but the young man passed without issue.

Novosel took leave around March 1970 and returned home. While there he received a letter from his son, still in Vietnam. In that letter, his son advised him he’d been recommended for the Medal of Honor. This might be the first or only time that a man hears from his son the gossip that General Abrams (commanding general of American forces in Vietnam) had sent an officer to investigate and take statements. Returning to Vietnam, Novosel continued to fly missions (even with his son as his co-pilot, though they kept that to a minimum).

In March 1970 Novosel and Michael (Jr.) were each flying in support of different ground units. They were in different helicopters, about 15 miles apart. In communication with each other on secondary radio frequencies, it was a normal day of rescuing wounded soldiers by flying into enemy machine gun fire.

It was then that Novosel heard a radio call that would normally chill a man’s spine, but in this case was especially alarming. Michael’s (Jr.) aircraft commander called into the radio, “May Day, May Day, We’ve been hit, We’re going down.”

Despite possibly listening to the final moment’s of his son’s life, Novosel kept his calm. He talked to the command pilot over the radio as they relayed their situation. Novosel heard that they’d been hit in the fuel cell, were losing fuel fast, and their hydraulic system had been blown out. He told them to find a fortified location, or at least one that looked fortified.

They relayed to Novosel that they saw a village nearby and were aiming for that. With their hydraulics inoperable, Novosel describes the peril they were in. He said, “It’s not a deadly situation but it’s a ticklish situation. It takes the strength of two damned gorillas to control this bird with the hydraulics gone. And so he and Mike, Jr. were fighting this thing to keep it under control. And they finally made it down to a safe area. And, of course, I told them I’d be right down to pick ’em up, which–I did.”

With assurances that the crew of the other aircraft had survived the landing and were in a safe location, Novosel completed his current mission and then flew to rescue his son and his son’s crew.

When asked if he had to get permission, Novosel gives the most “Vietnam Dustoff pilot” answer imaginable. “No! You don’t have–you don’t ask anybody anything,” He says. “We never asked anybody for permission to do anything. If we did anything that was not proper, we just didn’t tell anybody.”

Novosel’s immediate reaction to being the rescuer of his son, who was forced down in combat, was to tell them that he was “a little bit displeased that I had to take time from my work to go help them out, you know. And I said you owe me a beer.”

A week later, Novosel’s helicopter was shot down. Landing in a place of safety, another 82nd Medical Detachment helicopter came in to pull him and his crew out. That crew included Michael (Jr.). In a week both father and son had been shot down and were rescued by each other. It’s probably never happened before and is highly unlikely to ever happen again.

As for his son’s skill at rescuing, Novosel said, “I was not pleased at the manner in which they performed because they made me…Whenever I saved them or rescued them I landed right next to ’em. They didn’t have to walk hardly any distance. But when they came to pick me up, they landed their helicopter a hundred yards away, and I had to negotiate a hundred yards of rice paddy that was up to three feet deep, a chore in itself. So I was a little bit displeased. And I told the aircraft commander, Rex Smith I was…showing my displeasure and I wasn’t getting any sympathy from him. So then I leaned into my son, I says, ‘That’s a heck of a way to treat your father.’ He said, ‘Don’t forget, around here you’re not my dad.’”

Both Novosel and his son completed their tours. The younger Novosel rescued some 2,500 men in his year in Vietnam in more than 1,700 missions. When his father’s tour ended in July 1970, he flew him to the embarkation base and took on his father’s callsign “Dustoff 88.” Junior retired as a Chief Warrant Officer 4 in 1991.

Speaking about his father’s service, Michael (Jr.) said, “I missed my father so much growing up that I decided to do what he did,” Michael Novosel Jr. said. “He is a war buddy.”

The senior Novosel continued his Army career after the war as well. In 1971 he received the Medal of Honor from President Nixon in a ceremony attended by, among others, his son and Army Chief of Staff General Westmoreland.

He was, for a few years, the chief pilot for the Army’s parachute demonstration team the Golden Knights. Novosel, by now into his 50s, would occasionally jump with them to maintain proficiency.

Novosel’s later assignments were to the Warrant Officer Career College and Warrant Officer Candidate School. He was the senior WO for the latter at the time of his retirement as a CWO4 in 1985. He was the last WWII pilot still on active duty in flight status. He’d logged more than 12,400 hours flying, with more than 2,000 hours logged in combat. He had been a military aviator for more than 42 years.

In retirement he wrote his autobiography Dustoff, The Memoir of an Army Aviator. In 1992, he was among World War II veterans who marched in Red Square for Russia’s Victory-in-Europe Anniversary Parade. He remained active in the veteran community.

In November 2005 at the age of 83, Novosel was diagnosed with recurrent cancer. Undergoing treatment at Walter Reed Medical Center, he initially seemed to be improving, but ultimately succumbed to the disease in April 2006. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

In an interview later in life, Novosel was asked about what he gave up to go to Vietnam. He said, “I lost my commission. You know, most people start off as warrant officers that ended up retiring as a lieutenant colonels or colonels. I started off as a lieutenant colonel, nine years in grade, ended up as a warrant officer. And that’s what I retired as. And, like I said, it’s a very convoluted story in how all this happened, but that’s just the way it happened. And I have no regrets, none whatsoever.”

Novosel’s gravestone at Arlington National Cemetery lists his Medal of Honor, his three wars, and his retirement rank of CW4. It ends simply with the epithet “A good soldier.”

Category: Air Force, Army, Historical, Medal of Honor, Valor, We Remember