One in a million.

Thirty-six years ago, I was the first Cobra Pilot to shake the hand of a surviving Cobra Pilot who lost his tail rotor assembly while on a Hunter-Killer mission in South Vietnam. It was a hot, humid day at Quan Loi. I was an in-country trained Cobra maintenance officer for A Troop 3/ 17 Air Cav and Operation Lam Son 719 had been underway for weeks. The siren went off, which meant one of our Helicopters was down. I ran to the command bunker to see if it was a Cobra. Sure enough, it was 202, piloted by Rick Norman. The second half of the Hunter-Killer team, flying an OH-58, was circling the downed Cobra and reported, “He crash landed in a small clearing 20 miles north of An Loc.”