It started as a mission Neil Sparks (now of Fayetteville) never thought he’d fly. It ended with Sparks earning the Navy Cross, the highest award in the Navy and second-highest award given for bravery and service in the United States.
Sparks knew since he was a young boy growing up in Tulsa, Okla., that he wanted to fly — “probably as soon as I started realizing airplanes,” he said. After three years at Oklahoma A & M College in Stillwater, “I got very anxious to fly,” Sparks said.
He joined the Naval Aviation Cadet Program, and in the spring of 1959, his mother pinned on his wings, and he became a Naval aviator. Although he trained in single, multi-engine, land-based aircraft, he also received helicopter training “because I wanted to fly everything there was,” he said. Throughout his career he held many pilot and instructor licenses. As a helicopter pilot, he deployed on aircraft carriers for three cruises from San Diego. He left the Navy, returning to Tulsa to study aeronautical engineering, and served in the active reserves in Dallas. “One summer, we flew to San Diego,” Sparks related. “Well, something happened out there. I got home and told my wife I wanted to go back into the Navy. “She said, ‘Good. When can we go?’” Recalled to active duty, Sparks immediately deployed to a tactical air control squadron in Southeast Asia. Sparks was on his ship, the USS Valley Forge, in 1964, when the USS Maddox and North Vietnamese Navy battled in the Gulf of Tonkin. After picking up some Marines from Okinawa, Japan, “we immediately went to the South China Sea, off the coast of South Vietnam,” Sparks recalled. He also flew medevac Marine patients off the carrier to onshore hospitals.
Sparks then returned to training to learn to fly the H-3 — the same helicopter used to fly the president, Sparks pointed out — and received assignment to a squadron flying combat search-and-rescue missions.
SEARCH AND RESCUE
“Combat search and rescue is the most demanding helicopter job there is,” Sparks said. “The other is trying to retrieve wounded from a hot landing zone.”
Sparks was serving on the USS Constellation, which held six armored H-3s, seven aircrews, maintenance and support personnel and support when they got the word on July 16, 1967: “‘Pilot down,’” Sparks wrote in his documentation of the mission. “A (F-8) Crusader was shot down on a (surface-to-air missile) during a suppression mission.”
It was too late to rescue him that day, so the mission would fall to Sparks the next day.
The downed pilot, Lt. Cdr. Demetrio “Butch” Verich, 35, was about 20 miles southwest of Hanoi, on a karst limestone ridge.
“But at the base of that hill was a North Vietnamese training camp,” Sparks said. “I thought, ‘He’s not going to be there in the morning. We’re not going to have to worry about this.’”
But soon after dawn, F-8s, A-1s and A-4s arrived at Verich’s last-known location as part of the largest Naval rescue operation of the Vietnam War.
“I later learned it was the whole mission of a ship to get me out of there,” Verich said.
Verich’s location lay more inland than searchand-rescue copters usually flew. Sparks and crew planned to fly around reported anti-aircraft artillery and missiles. From the carrier, they flew 60 miles west, then 100 miles north along North Vietnam’s border with Laos, with escort aircraft for protection.
“We flew as quick as possible across land,” Sparks said. “There was a ridge line I wanted to fly over because there weren’t many people on it. We had M-60 machine guns, but only to keep their heads down.”
Verich fired a flare, and search aircraft marked his position. “Then I had in my mind where he was, and I was going to go in to get him,” Sparks said. “They said, ‘Send in the whirlies.’
“I told my crew, ‘We’re going in to make a pickup.’ We did not take a vote. I told them, ‘Put on your parachutes.’ We climbed to 10,000 feet, and I told everyone on the radio I was heading in.”
In the meantime, Sparks recalled hearing popcorn popping all around the helicopter, later learning it was small arms fire from “hundreds of people swarming, trying to find (Verich).”
“Then, ‘Bang!’ I momentarily lost control,” Sparks continued. His helicopter was hit, but Sparks quickly regained control.
A bullet came through the generator controller, knocking out automatic stabilization equipment, radios, air speed altimeter system, fuel pumps “and a lot of other stuff,” Sparks related.
He recalled his copilot asking, “What are we going to do now?”
“‘We’re still flying. We’ll pick him up,’” Sparks replied, noting that aircraft command was his duty. “Take off your helmet, and use your survival radio to tell them we’re staying.”
After 20 minutes in a hover and three attempts, “the hoist operator said, ‘I got him. Get the hell out of here,’” Sparks said. “But I wanted to make sure we had him in the aircraft. I didn’t want him hanging out there as we flew through the ground fire.
“Then I felt a hand on my shoulder, and heard a voice say, ‘We can go now.’ I pulled power and flew away from the ground fire.”
WAITING BELOW
“I was flying F-8s on a cruise with the USS Oriskany,” Verich said in a phone interview from his home in Laona, Wis. “I had just made commander, although I didn’t know it yet.”
En route to a bombing target, Verich’s plane was shot down by a surface-toair missile.
“They fired nine missiles at me,” he said. “I was the lead plane.”
Verich ejected and had to slip out of his parachute to avoid the fireball that was his airplane, the retired pilot related. He hung in a tree, then fell on his back on the ground. He landed near an anti-aircraft site and took cover, with enemies searching for him into the night.
“At night, I knew I was captured when I heard voices and dogs barking, with searchlights right next to me,” Verich said. “I ran into cover and thought, ‘What am I going to do next?’”
A shipmate made radio contact, calling the downed pilot by name. “Sit tight. We’re coming to get you in the morning.”
The night was so dark, Verich was afraid he’d walk over a cliff. He ejected so quickly, he had no water or survival kit. He sucked water from cracks in rocks.
“At dawn, I could smell cow manure rise with the warming air,” he said. “It was vivid.
“Early in the morning, the helo arrived,” he continued. “The hills were steep, and he had to get low — but not too low.
“After just two passes, the helicopter pilot said, ‘I know where you’re at.’ He was almost eye-level with me. I told him where the ‘Triple A’ was, and he requested a bombing pass at them.
“I saw the crewman almost eye-to-eye with me outside the side door,” Verich recalled. “I had a pencil flare, but I wondered, ‘Should I shoot it? What if they saw the tracer and shot at me?’ I fired it, and that’s what he picked up.”
Sparks was overhead, but he and Verich couldn’t hear each other because the helicopter’s radios no longer worked. Springer and Verich used survival radios, but the rotor blade caused interference.
Sparks’ crew had to feed the hoist line through the jungle — and it wasn’t easy to get to, Verich noted. At first, he was to snap the belt to his parachute harness to be pulled up. Finally, he pulled down just one pedal and put his foot in it.
“I held on with a death grip as it pulled me through the trees,” he said. “It ripped my flight suit.”
“I remember going up to the cockpit, and (Verich and Sparks) just looked at each other.”
After spending the night at the location, Verich knew the lay of the land and the anti-aircraft artillery. At his urging, Sparks turned the helicopter just before catching fire.
“He was pretty cool under fire,” Verich said of Sparks. “He could have left after the second attempt, but he hung around. I’m very thankful for him.”
AFTER THE WAR
“Lt. Cmdr. Butch Verich flew the F-8 Crusader,” Sparks said. “He dodged three missiles before one hit. I didn’t know who he was, other than he had gone with his flight on a bombing mission.
“I flew in because I had a mission,” Sparks continued. “I knew what to do. We’d trained to do this. That was my job.
“These were things we couldn’t train to do, but we discussed them and brainstormed. We had a lot of options, and we knew where to go.”
The men finally met after the cruise and became pretty good friends, Verich said.
Sparks attended Verich’s 80th birthday celebration a few years ago and met some of Verich’s seven children — all who have served in the military — and 20 grandchildren. Verich had gotten married right after his tour of duty.
“His wife said, All this would not be here now if not for you,’” Sparks related a comment that obviously touched him.
Verich retired from the Navy almost 20 years to the day of his rescue.
In his 28-year Navy career, Sparks deployed 10 times on various aircraft carriers, including four times in Vietnam waters flying combat searchand-rescue and support missions. On a fifth deployment, he flew Navy attack helicopters in support of SEALs and River Forces in South Vietnam.
He also served in the European headquarters at London; worked at the Pentagon standardizing publications among various services in the United States and NATO; was promoted to colonel and selected as the first commander of the first squadron assigned to Mayport (Fla.) Naval Station; was a training officer in Quantico, Va.; and spoke around the world as a member of an amphibious warfare presentation team
— the only Navy officer with three Marines.
After three years at Quantico, Sparks left the Navy in 1987 and retired to a motor home with his late wife, Kay, to travel around the country.
Then his son Andy asked him to help start a business here, and today he puts in time at The Home Brewery in Fayetteville.
FAST FACTS
The Navy Cross
The Navy Cross is the highest award in the Navy, given for extreme heroism in a combat situation. The award is the second-highest given for valor in the United States, eclipsed only by the Congressional Medal of Honor. Lt. Neil Roley Sparks Jr. received the award for “for extraordinary heroism in aerial flight on 17 July 1967 as Aircraft Commander of an armored helicopter in Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron TWO (HS-2), during a search and rescue mission over North Vietnam,” reads Sparks’ citation. “… By his courageous actions, exceptional skill and fearless devotion to duty, Lieutenant Sparks prevented the capture by hostile forces of a fellow aviator, thereby upholding the highest traditions of U.S. Naval Service.” For their work on the rescue, Sparks’ crew members earned the Silver Star, third-highest military combat decoration for gallantry in action given to a member of the U.S. Armed Forces. His crew included Lt. J.G. Rob Springer, co-pilot; Petty Officer Al Masingale, hoist crewman; and Petty Officer Teddy Ray, door gunner. And the 300-plus members of the squadron earned the Presidential Unit Citation. The Navy Cross award ceremony was held Nov. 1, 1967, in San Diego, with Sparks’ family in attendance.
GO & DO
Thank A Veteran
Tuesday marks Veterans Day, a federal holiday designed to honor all of those who served this country. Several events locally hope to do the same.
The Veterans Day parade at Chaffee Crossing, a development inside a former military training center in Fort Smith, returns for a third year when it takes off at noon Saturday. The parade starts at the intersection of Ward and Taylor avenues; staging takes place starting at 10 a.m. When the parade ends, a fall festival begins on Terry Street. Information: (479) 434-6774, (479) 452-4554, [email protected].
The Ozark Highlanders Pipe Band, Fayetteville Junior High Band and other performers will accompany veterans during the annual Veterans Day Parade sponsored by the Northwest Arkansas Veterans Day Association. The parade begins at 2:30 p.m. Sunday and takes place on the downtown square in Fayetteville. Children can meet veterans starting an hour before the parade. Information: [email protected].
Runners will take off at 8 a.m. Saturday for a Veterans Memorial 5K race departing from the Fayetteville National Cemetery. Day-of registration takes place from 6 to 7:30 a.m. at the cemetery, and the fee for running is $30. All proceeds from the race go toward the acquisition and clearing of land to allow for cemetery expansion. Information: (479) 871-7478, [email protected].
The Bella Vista Big Band will provide the tunes for the annual Veterans Day Dance, which this year takes place at 7 p.m. Saturday at Riordon Hall in Bella Vista. A dance lesson kicks off the events, and the floor will be open later for dancing to a combination of ballroom, swing and Latin classics. Admission to the dance is $10. Information: 855-8170.
— KEVIN KINDER