Flew B-29 and UH-1 In Combat; Medal Of Honor Recipient

Retired Chief Warrant Officer Mike Novosel died last Monday, April 2, at Walter Reed Army Hospital. Novosel fought his battles with time, and with colon cancer, with the same doughty strength that he brought to fights against Japan, North Korea, and North Vietnam, but this last battle was one that courage alone could not win.

Novosel's courage brought him the nation's highest award for valor, when President Nixon hung the white-starred blue ribbon of the Medal of Honor on Novosel's neck on June 15, 1971.

Novosel, a medevac pilot with the 82nd Medical Detachment, received the medal for an incredible rescue mission, where he drove his helicopter into a fireswept field of elephant grass over, and over, and over again, despite wounds in the right leg and hand, to rescue 29 SOuth Vietnamese soldiers. He didn't think it was that big a deal to rescue 29 men on one mission. "There were days I rescued 50 to 60 lives at a time," he told the Army's Soldiers magazine in 2003.

"None of us cared about getting medals," the pilot remembered. The 82nd Med Det had only six aircraft and 12 pilots, and they were constantly on the go. "We were too fatigued to think about recognition."

Novosel wasn't supposed to be in the Army in Vietnam. He wasn't even supposed to be in the Army. He was supposed to be in the Air Force. Indeed, he WAS in the Air Force, and was a Lieutenant Colonel, when he asked for a flying assignment. The USAF had too many reserve officers at the time, and Novosel was "over the hill" at 47.

Novosel pointed out that he had far more flying hours than any regular USAF officer. He joined the Army Air Corps  as an air cadet in 1941, and went on to fly piston and jet bombers. He flew B-29s from Tinian in World War II, bombing Tokyo and participating in the overflight of the surrender ceremony on the USS Missouri. He also became one of the Air Force's first helicopter pilots. Couldn't they find a use for all this experience? Nope. They told him to fly a desk, or else.

They weren't expecting him to read "or else" as "join the Army." Novosel quit his civilian job as an airline pilot (for Southern Airways), walked away from his Air Force Reserve desk job, and volunteered for the Army Warrant Officer Flight program, which, under the pressures of Vietnam, had no age limit at the time (1964).

Novosel expected his tens of thousands of house in piston planes, jets and helicopters would be put to use training new pilots. Instead, the Army had a near bureaucratic collapse over what to do with this unique aviator. It sent him to rotary-winged aviator school at Ft. Rucker, where officers hastily arranged a simple procedures-standardization and checkride qualification for him, before sending him where all high-functioning misfits in the Army eventually wind up -- Special Forces. Novosel flew for the 6th Special Forces Group before getting orders to a combat assignment in Vietnam.

He took pride in his assignment as a medevac pilot, saving lives, and was anxious enough to return that he staved off a medical retirement for glaucoma, getting a waiver and treatment instead for what was usually a career-ending condition for a military aviator.

It was on his second tour in Vietnam, flying UH-1D and UH-1H helicopters, that Novosel conducted the Medal of Honor mission. During that same tour, he served with his son in the same unit, and they actually managed to rescue each other after separate shootdowns, seven days apart, in 1970. Mike Jr. has been in training at the time of his father's Medal of Honor mission. He is also a retired warrant officer, and operates the Flight Line Cafe just outside Eglin AFB in Florida.

The senior Novosel retired from the Army in 1984 with 44 years' service. He wrote the book, "Dustoff: The Memoir of an Army Aviator." One of the main streets on Ft Rucker is named for him.

Michael J. Novosel, whose middle initial did not stand for anything, was born in Etna, PA in 1922 and lived in Enterprise, AL just outside the Army's aviation training nexus at Ft Rucker, at the time of his death. He's survived by sons John and Michael J., Jr., daughters Patti Clevenger and Jeannie Vineyard, and brother Frank. He will be buried on April 13 in Arlington National Cemetery, where his wife Ethel is already interred.

Oh, yes, one last thing. He really wasn't supposed to be in the Air Corps, or the Air Force, or the Army, at all. You see, Mike Novosel was 5 feet 3 3/4 inches tall. The minimum height was never lower than 5' 4" -- but somehow Novosel got in anyway.

Some men just stand taller than their height.

FMI: www.cmohs.org, www.army.mil/cmh/mohviet2.htm