G.I. JOE INSIDE THE FILECARDS FEATURING ‘AIRBORNE’
Story courtesy of Staff Writer ‘Shaft’
Moving on to the class of 1983 G.I. Joes. I will start with Airborne. He is listed as a “Helicopter Assault Trooper” with a PMS of “Infantry” and a SMS of “Helicopter Gunship Gunner”. First off a “helicopter assault trooper” sounds more in line with air assault versus airborne. Air assault is more or less infantry troops being deployed by helicopter and infiltrating to the combat zone via either the copter landing or by fast roping (or rappelling depending on what era you are looking at). The US Army has two divisions which fall into these categories, the 82nd Airborne Division which is jump ready (and thus soldiers wear the red beret) and the 101st Air Assault Division (which is not a jump ready unit and thus soldiers wear the standard black beret). Airborne seems like he could be either or maybe he attended both the Airborne School (which is indicated on his filecard) and Air Assault School.
Airborne school teaches basic static line parachuting (where a parachute deploys as soon as a person jumps out of a plane). I would think most, if not all, Joes would have Airborne School under their belts so the question remains why would Airborne have a code name of something most Joes have training in? I like to think before he joined the Joes he was an instructor at the US Airborne School, where the instructors are referred to as “Sgt Airborne”. Perhaps this became an easy enough code name for the other Joes to call him.
His filecard indicates he is qualified with the “Hughes Helicopter Chain Gun”, which doing a Google search I was only able to find a reference to the Apache AH-64 chain gun. The Apache did not officially enter into service until 1986 so highly doubtful Airborne would have been “proficient” in it. On top of that he would have had to have gone to Warrant Officer Flight School in order to even be a crewmember of the Apache helicopter and even then he would be a warrant officer and not enlisted.
“Helicopter Gunship Gunner” could have meant he was a door gunner on a helicopter (such as the UH-1 Huey). Nowadays that role is served by two helicopter repairers (15T UH-60 Helicopter Repairer MOS for the Blackhawk helicopters since the US Army upgraded to them). So a modern take on Airborne may be he started as a 15T then re-classed into an 11B Infantryman.
I did some looking on Vietnam War era door gunners and found this tidbit:
It appears that the fourth member of some helicopters was in fact an actual door gunner and not a crew chief (helicopter repairer). There are the pilot, co-pilot, a crew chief and then a door gunner. In the documentary it shows two sergeants (I believe they are from the Infantry branch) attending the door gunners school (which is no longer around). It is very possible Hama had this in mind for Airborne so this would conceivably make Airborne a former Vietnam War veteran. Also his qualification with the M-60 would attest to serving as a door gunner. Yes non-door gunners can qualify with the M-60 but several items on Airborne’s filecard seems to point to a door gunner.
