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organized air assault formations, even during the high intensity antiaircraft fire of the A Shau Valley. However, more and more helicopters were being flown singly and in pairs without the benefit of detailed pre-flight intelligence briefings on especially "hot" zones and known enemy concentrations. It was particularly hazardous for the many transient aircraft that assumed they were in "safe air" just because they were a few kilometers from a major U.S. installation. Before I left the Division, I initiated a formal study effort to quantify this observation. Unfortunately, this study was never completed.

The second major observation I made in my after action report of 15 July 1968 was the critical problem of protecting the airmobile division's helicopters on the ground. Until one has viewed at first hand the real estate necessary to park approximately 450 dispersed helicopters near their related aircraft maintenance facilities, it is difficult to appreciate the magnitude of this problem. I know that the Marines grossly underestimated our base camp requirements when we moved north into the I Corps Tactical Zone. They just could not believe that we really required the area we had asked for—the equivalent of several major airfield complexes.

Once established, these areas had to be secured. This security was partly obtained by dispersion, construction of revetments, and organization within the landing zone to separate the helicopters from ammunition and fuel storage areas. Security was further enhanced by armed helicopter patrols throughout the night and roving patrols on the ground. The ground patrols had to operate at least to the range of enemy mortar. The security requirements sometimes caused a tremendous drain on combat resources if they were not monitored closely by each tactical commander. However, it was my experience that an airmobile division cannot overlook any detail in the security of its most valuable asset—its helicopters.

My third comment concerned unit integrity. I've described earlier in this study how the 1st Cavalry Division was often "fragmented" to send forces of battalion size and brigade size to other areas of operation. On the surface, it might appear likely that the division could have easily sent a proportionate share of our aviation assets and maintenance to the same operation. As a matter of fact, there was no proportionate share of airlift that automatically went with any brigade or battalion in the division. The division was conceived so that the division commander could vary the amounts of his assets that would be furnished to any portion of his force during an operation. There was no set quota of airlift that was allocated on a daily basis to any unit in the division. When