When Ted Moore and Glenn Woods Shot Down A Biplane From A Huey Helicopter in Laos

 

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/an-aerial-combat-first.html?chrome=1

The year was 1968. And Operation Thunder – the aerial bombing of military targets in North Vietnam – was in full swing. These bombing raids were having a crippling effect on the North Vietnamese war effort, and the North Vietnamese Army commanders decided it was time to do something about it.

The target of the North Vietnamese strike was Lima Site 85 on the border between Laos and North Vietnam. This site was situated on top of a 5,800-foot karst mountain jutting out of the jungle. Because of its sheer cliffsides the site was accessible only by aircraft, or by foot up a steep single-file, winding trail on the mountainside.

Captain Ted Moore and crewchief Glen Woods were inbound to site 85 in their unarmed Air America Huey helicopter to bring ammunition supplies to the site. They could hardly believe their eyes when they saw the biplane attacking Site 85.  Moore stating that it “looked like something out of World War One.”

Realizing that his chopper was faster than the AN-2s, Moore decided to give chase, and Woods got his AK-47 ready for combat. It didn’t take too long for the Huey to catch up to the slow, unwieldy biplanes, and soon it was in striking distance of the rearmost AN-2.

Because the rearward visibility of the AN-2 is severely limited, the pilot of the biplane didn’t realize the Huey was upon him until it was far too late. The downwash from the chopper caused the upper wing of the biplane to stall out, and it began to drop. In desperation, the pilot tried to lower his speed – but there was no getting out of this, because the Americans weren’t quite done with the attack.

As Moore pulled in closer to the floundering biplane, Woods leaned out of the helicopter and emptied his AK-47 into the cockpit, wounding or killing both the pilot and the copilot. That was that;

One of the planes caught fire and crashed into the jungle below. The other flew beneath the helicopter and slammed into a mountainside, Moore said. Americans salvaged electronics from one of the crashed planes. "They reverse-engineered the stuff, and that allowed American planes to know when the MIGs were headed in for an attack," Moore said. "That saved a lot of American air crews. I think that's the best thing that happened." 

The Huey veered back toward Laos, and the other biplanes escaped into North Vietnam. This strange aerial victory would prove to be unique in the history of aerial combat – it was the first and only time a helicopter had taken out a biplane. It was also the first recorded air-to-air victory for Air America.

Ted Moore also helped rescue thousands of civilians in Laos in March 1968, picked up downed American pilots and delivered and picked up CIA teams that were infiltrating positions along the Laos-Vietnam border.