THE PILOT WHO SACRIFICED HIMSELF FOR HIS OBSERVER
On 29 June 1972, Capt. Bennett and his observer were airborne over Vietnam to spot and correct friendly artillery fire.
Bennett soon saw a large concentration of enemy forces massing to assault a small American unit. He called for tactical air support and was told none was available. He then requested indirect fire, and that was refused as well: friendly troops were too close to the target.
Bennett was not going to watch the firefight break out and do nothing. He wanted to help the men on the ground. His aircraft, a Rockwell OV-10, was a lightly armed observation plane built only secondarily for ground attack, but he flew over the enemy troops again and again and engaged them with his machine guns. After four such strafing runs, the enemy began to pull back.
Bennett had just finished his fifth pass when a surface-to-air missile hit his aircraft. He and his observer survived the blast, but the left engine and the landing gear were badly damaged and partly on fire. As the fire spread through the left engine, Bennett realized that an emergency landing at a friendly airfield was out of the question. He told his observer to prepare to eject and was informed that the missile had shredded the man’s parachute.
Bennett’s own parachute was still intact, but he knew his observer would have no chance of surviving an ejection. So he decided to ditch the aircraft in a river, aware that no pilot of this type had ever survived a water landing. The impact sent the plane into a violent skid and crushed the front cockpit so badly that Bennett could not get out.
The observer managed to free himself from the aircraft and was picked up by friendly forces a day later. Capt. Bennett died on impact with the water. He left behind a wife and a child and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for what he did.
Capt. Bennett had a working parachute and still took the risk of dying himself rather than expose his observer to that danger. A brotherhood nobody else understands.
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Image sources:
Cover image: USMC, an OV-10 laying a smoke screen
Image 1: USMC, an OV-10 firing rockets into a tree line
Image 2: Portrait of Steven L. Bennett, USAF