It was past midnight one June night in 1968, and two aviators had fallen in hostile territory in North Vietnam. Cmdr. Clyde E. Lassen flew over a steep, densely forested mountainside, searching for them.
As enemy fire roared around him, he used flares to navigate his helicopter between two trees to reach his fallen aviators. But the last of his flares dwindled and, cast in darkness, he hit a tree and began to plummet.
He corrected and tried again – another failure. Now, his fuel supply was tanking, and enemy fire was still whirring past him, his aircraft significantly damaged. He couldn’t regain a flare, so finally, he made a risky choice: He turned on his landing lights, revealing himself to the enemy, and landed. The surviving aviators scrambled inside his aircraft and they took off, dodging fire as they went.
Lassen returned to safety with just enough fuel for five more minutes of flight.
A helicopter memorializing Lassen, who received a Medal of Honor for his service, was mounted at the gate of Naval Air Station North Island on Jan. 11. It will be dedicated at 10 a.m. on Jan. 25 in a ceremony that will be livestreamed here.
Although the aircraft on display isn’t the one Lassen flew for his mission, it is painted in the Lassen Medal of Honor color scheme to commemorate his actions. Its restoration was completed at the USS Midway Restoration Hangar.
The project was donor-funded and overseen by the Naval Helicopter Association Historical Society. Bill Personius, the organization’s president and a retired captain for the U.S. Navy, said it is important to preserve stories from the past.
“History is important, and so is learning from it and keeping it alive,” Personius said in a past interview. “That information is slipping away, and I hold very dearly the fact that these guys had combat time and an experience that not everyone has had – thank goodness – but we have to preserve it and make sure it’s captured someplace for our youngsters to learn from it.”
