These Vietnam Hueys flew with rocket launchers painted like beer cans

The Vietnam War was a wild time, and the last war in which American citizens were drafted. Young men were pulled out of school, out of work, or right after high school graduation to go to Vietnam. They brought with them their love of beer—some remembered home by painting their helicopter rocket pods in the shape of the beer they left behind.

“We were young guys,” said Jim Koch, a former pilot in a battalion whose UH-1s took to the skies over Vietnam with oversized Coors and Budweiser cans on their sides. “At 21, I was one of the older pilots. Most of our crew chiefs and door gunners were 18 or 19 years old. So we weren’t really adults yet. In fact, most of us still aren’t adults today.”

Koch, whose call sign was Stallion 505, was assigned to the 92nd Assault Helicopter Company during the Vietnam War. The 92nd was formed at Fort Carson, Colorado, where pilots and crews were fans of Coors beer, a favorite brewery in the state at the time, based in Golden, which was not widely available in the country.

For missions, the 92nd crews flew two versions of the Huey—unarmed or “slick” ships, flying under the call sign “Stallion,” and the heavily armed gunship versions, flying as “Sidekicks.” Among the armaments on the Sidekicks were the M159 or M200 rocket pods, each holding 19 2.75-inch rockets.

The launchers were also, the crews soon realized, strikingly shaped like beer cans, and what better way to paint your helicopters in Colorado to look like Golden’s elixir? Or, as Koch put it, “Well, we were young and wild guys, and it was our favorite beer.”

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One of the 92nd’s crew chiefs, Tom Tucker, had an artistic streak. In the air, Tucker would eventually receive the Distinguished Flying Cross for a mission in which his crew provided close air support to a long-range reconnaissance patrol that was ambushed by a much larger enemy force near An Khe, Vietnam. During the mission, Tucker marked an enemy position with smoke, called in multiple strafing runs, and directed rocket attacks on a bunker he spotted.

However, as crew chief of Sidekick 113, he decided to paint an accurate image of his favorite beer on the rocket launchers.

Tucker died in 2016, but Koch interviewed Tucker before he passed away. He said Tucker had sent a message to his father at home to find out exactly what colors of paint he would need to finish his masterpiece.

“His father contacted the Coors company and they gave him that information. He sent the paint to Vietnam and Tom painted his pods,” Koch said.

Seeing the Coors cans on missions became a source of comfort to the pilots of the 92nd. Koch was a Stallion pilot who flew without weapons and required gunboat escorts for most of his missions.

Depending on operational needs, Koch didn’t always have his Sidekicks, and helicopters from other units helped escort them. But it was always a good feeling, Koch said, to see the Coors rocket pods, because he knew right away that they were his men.

“We knew each other. We knew how our guys would operate because we trained together,” Koch said. “Sometimes when you were working with other units, they might do things a little differently than we did. So yeah, it’s always nice to have your own guys.”

Shortly after Koch returned to the US, however, he received word from the unit that the Sidekicks pilots had a problem with their helicopter and would have to jettison the rocket launch to return to base.

“The Coors cans were lost on a mission. They had to cut them because they were having problems with the power supply to the plane,” Koch said. “That’s the most important thing you have to do. You have to throw away anything hanging off the side, so the Coors got lost somewhere in the jungle over Vietnam.”

But that wasn’t the end of the beer can-themed rocket pods. Denny Turner, a Stallion pilot, arrived in Vietnam in late 1968 after Koch had returned to the United States. He saw that some new rocket pods had arrived and offered to paint them after talking to his gun crews. Some of the gun crews were Budweiser fans, however, and that was the theme he chose.

And he knew his paint.

“I purchased paint and brushes from the Cam Ranh Bay Base AFEX and Hobby Shop,” Turner told Koch during an earlier interview. “The white one-part epoxy background was spray painted and the red and blue lettering and graphics were hand painted with oil-based hobby enamels over the white. A few careful top coats of clear satin acrylic spray sealed it all in.”

In 2005, more than 30 years after the 92nd Attack Helicopter Company returned home, the 92nd held a reunion in Manitou Springs, Colorado. Peter “Pete” Coors, the great-grandson of Coors founder Adolph Coors, donated enough beer for the reunion to fuel the Vietnam veterans.

Coors even had a special surprise for Tucker, the artist behind the Coors-themed rocket launchers.

“At the reunion, Tom Tucker was still alive, and one of our guys worked for Coors, and he took him to Golden to meet Pete Coors, who was the boss of the Coors company,” Koch said. “Pete had a beautiful black leather jacket with the Coors emblems on it, and he gave it to Tom Tucker. That was just a cool thing.”

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