I 
119TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION H. R. 5939 
To award a Congressional Gold Medal to United States Marines who served 
as part of helicopter support missions in the Vietnam War. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
NOVEMBER 7, 2025 
Mr. DAVIS of North Carolina (for himself and Mr. MURPHY) introduced the 
following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Financial Services 
A BILL 
To award a Congressional Gold Medal to United States Ma-
rines who served as part of helicopter support missions 
in the Vietnam War. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘USMC Helicopter Sup-
port in Vietnam Congressional Gold Medal Act’’. 
SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
(a) By the end of the war in Vietnam in 1975, there 
had been approximately 391,000 U.S. Marines and 10,000 
Navy Corpsmen who had served in Vietnam. Out of all 
of these men it is estimated that roughly 90 percent of 
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them served in either the First or Third Marine Division, 
while the remaining 10 percent served in the First Marine 
Air Wing (1st MAW). 
(b) The 1st MAW itself consisted of both fixed-wing 
and helicopter (rotary) Marine Air Groups (MAG), and 
over 60 percent of the Marines and Corpsmen who served 
in the 1st MAW were assigned to the MAG. 
(c) During Vietnam’s 13 years of war the 1st MAW 
saw 25 of its helicopter squadrons deployed to Vietnam, 
and by January 1968 there would be 11 squadrons flying 
in the country on any given day until mid-1971. 
(d) The first Marine helicopter squadron to be de-
ployed to Vietnam was HMM-362 on April 15, 1962. 
Their mission in Vietnam was to both advise and train, 
transport troops, passengers, and cargo, and to provide 
aeromedical support to the troops of the Army of the Re-
public of Vietnam (ARVN). 
(e) 5 months later, at the request of the United 
States Military Assistance Command in Vietnam, and with 
the Marines having much more capable aircraft and in-
strument-qualified pilots in country, the squadron that re-
placed HMM-362, HMM-163, was relocated to the airfield 
in Da Nang. 21 days later, tragedy struck when one of 
their helicopters flying on a medical support mission 
crashed into a mountainside due to a mechanical problem, 
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killing 7 of the 8 men aboard. The casualties would in-
clude the first Navy Corpsman, first Navy Flight Surgeon, 
and the first Marine aircrew members to die in Vietnam. 
(f) 1 year later while flying on a search and rescue 
mission, 2 helicopters from yet another Marine Squadron, 
0 HMM-361, collided in mid-air while trying to avoid 
ground fire, killing 12 men. The casualties in this mishap 
included the first Hispanic, and the first African-Amer-
ican Corpsmen to die in Vietnam, as well as another Navy 
Flight Surgeon and 9 Marines. 
(g) In March of 1965, upon the orders of President 
Lyndon Johnson, 3,500 Marines of the 9th Marine Expe-
ditionary Brigade made an amphibious landing on Red 
Beach, 9 miles north of Da Nang, making them the first 
United States combat troops to be deployed to Vietnam. 
With their arrival came the need for a much larger, and 
more diverse system of helicopter support. 
(h) By the time the last United States Marine ground 
troops were pulled out of Vietnam, the number of Marines 
having served in the country was estimated to be between 
81,000 and 85,000. It was because of who and what they 
were, that they were tasked with conducting both large 
and small scale ground operations, search and destroy 
missions, counterinsurgency operations in both rural and 
urban settings throughout the 10,540 square-miles of 
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what was known as the ICTZ, or the I-Corps Tactical 
Zone. 
(i) Comprised of the perhaps the 5 most hotly-con-
tested provinces in all of South Vietnam; Quang Tri, Thua 
Thien, Quang Nam, Quang Tin, and Quang Ngai, the Ma-
rines often found themselves engaged with the enemy in 
places whose names became synonymous with the horrors 
of the war. These were places like Khe Sanh, Hill 881S, 
Mutter’s Ridge, The Rockpile, Dong Ha, Con Thien, A 
Shau Valley, Phu Bai, Hue, Marble Mountains, Hill 55, 
the Que Son Mountains, LZ Baldy, LZ Ross, An Hoa, 
Hoi An, Liberty Bridge, Chu Lai, and Go Noi Island. 
(j) These became the very places where Marine heli-
copter aircrews flew into, and always hoped that they 
would leave again. And not fearing to do so, some of these 
places became the same places where the Marines decided 
to establish some of their helicopter bases. 
(k) From these bases the helicopter aircrews would 
support those on the ground by flying large troop inser-
tions or extractions, as well as large civilian relocation. 
They also inserted or extracted small reconnaissance 
teams, flew life-saving medical evacuations or participated 
in search and rescue missions, delivered much needed am-
munition, food, water, medical supplies, or mail from home 
which to those on the ground proved crucial because it 
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impacted both their morale and emotional well-being. 
Other missions flown were because someone needed an 
overhead escort, aerial reconnaissance, target spotting, a 
night time flare drop, or because a VIP needed to be flown 
around. 
(l) No matter what the mission was, or who it was 
for, or where it was needed, there were always great risks 
involved. It might be from the automatic weapons or small 
arms ground fire, mortars, rockets, landmines in the land-
ing zone, RPG’s that the enemy used, or perhaps because 
of something as simple as a barbed wire entanglement or 
a triple canopy forest. Mountains, the weather, pilot error, 
a mechanical, electrical, or fuel problem, basically you 
name it and it could kill you. But the aircrews flew any-
way. 
(m) There was one mission flown by helicopters, how-
ever, that not only carried these same risks, but was also 
known by intelligence and the aircrew members themselves 
to be much more of a prize target to the enemy, the 
Medevac. 
(n) Flown by an exceptionally skilled, calm, decisive, 
dedicated, compassionate and both physically and mentally 
resilient crew consisting of a pilot and co-pilot, crew chief, 
two gunners, and a skilled combat-trained Navy Corps-
man, they were ready to fly anywhere and anytime, 7 days 
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a week. Of note is the fact that the corpsman and gunners 
all volunteered to fly medevac missions. 
(o) These medevac aircraft were normally accom-
panied by a ‘‘chase’’ ship (minus a corpsman) that shad-
owed them, and 2 gunship escorts that would accompany 
them into what many aircrew members described as ‘‘hell 
and back’’. 
(p) This ‘‘medevac package’’ of 4 helicopters and 
their crews demonstrated the foresight that the Marines 
had put into these packages in that they were strategically 
located throughout the ICTZ and were always ready to 
go. To have such a package on standby and already in 
place when a mission was called was considered better 
than trying to piecemeal one at the last minute, thus en-
dangering the life of a casualty. Bullets could kill, but so 
could a delay in launching. 
(q) Medevac helicopters often flew into some of the 
most formidable, dangerous, and hostile environments in 
all of Vietnam. And as a result of where they went, and 
what they were doing, there would be 26 Medevac Corps-
men who were killed in the line of duty. 
(r) There were however, times when a medevac heli-
copter was not readily available, which in time served as 
the impetus for creating a plan where another nearby heli-
copter that was already tasked with another type of mis-
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sion would be re-tasked to conduct the much needed evac-
uation instead. This was what the aircrews considered to 
be a ‘‘flight of opportunity’’. 
(s) Those who were being evacuated were usually 
United States Marines, South Korean Marines (ROKs) 
ARVN Troopers, or the occasional Vietnamese civilian 
who was sick, wounded, or oftentimes deceased. Some 
evacuees were carried on, while some walked on, and there 
were also those who had to be hoisted up into the heli-
copter in a stretcher, or on a jungle penetrator. In any 
case, because the pilots were always aware of the ‘‘golden 
hour’’ they would often inform the corpsman in the back 
how soon it would be until they would touch down. 
(t) Depending on the circumstance of the evacuation, 
the evacuee or evacuees would either be flown to the 700- 
bed Naval Support Activity hospital in Da Nang, or to 
whichever United States Navy hospital ship like the 750- 
bed Repose, or the 786-bed Sanctuary, either which was 
in the Da Nang harbor at the time. Sometimes it was to 
either the 1st or 3rd Medical Battalion, or the civilian hos-
pital in Da Nang. It is difficult to forget that amongst 
all of the other missions that the aircrew members flew, 
those were those missions that carried the bodies of many 
of the 18,844 Marines and 645 Navy Corpsmen who lost 
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their lives in Vietnam. These missions would take them 
directly to Graves Registration. 
(u) The aircrews believed that those who were on the 
ground expected helicopter support, that they needed heli-
copter support, and because of this, they made sure that 
they received helicopter support. 
(v) There was a saying that went that those who flew 
did so ‘‘outside the wire’’ while those who never flew 
stayed ‘‘inside the wire’’. These were those young men, 
who in their own specialized way, supported both those 
Marines who flew and those Marines who were out in the 
bush. 
(w) These were the forgotten heroes of the 1st MAW. 
They were the men who maintained, serviced, and repaired 
the helicopters, fueled them and armed them, worked in 
air traffic control, maintained the runway, the hootches, 
the admin buildings, the clubs, cooked the meals, did the 
paperwork, studied the intelligence, worked in base secu-
rity, drove the vehicles on and off base, and like the chap-
lains, prayed for everyone. 
(x) By the end of the war, the Marines would lose 
280 of their helicopters and 845 of their helicopter crew 
members and passengers in Vietnam. Not quantified any-
where, however, is the exact number of those Marines on 
base who were killed and did not fly. 
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(y) The helicopter aircrews of the 1st MAW who flew 
in Vietnam between 1962 and 1975 transported more 
than 3,210,000 troops and passengers, flew more than 
1,600,000 various sorties, delivered more than 338,000 
tons of cargo, and medically evacuated approximately 
189,000 patients. 
(z) But it was the former Commandant of the Marine 
Corps, General Leonard F. Chapman, who best summa-
rized what helicopter support meant to the Marines on the 
ground in Vietnam when he stated that ‘‘When a Marine 
in Vietnam is wounded, surrounded, hungry, low on am-
munition or water, he looks to the sky, he knows the chop-
pers are coming’’. 
SEC. 3. CONGRESSIONAL GOLD MEDAL. 
(a) PRESENTATION AUTHORIZED.—The Speaker of 
the House of Representatives and the President pro tem-
pore of the Senate shall make appropriate arrangements 
for the presentation, on behalf of Congress, of a single 
gold medal of appropriate design in honor of the Medevac 
Marines and Navy Corpsmen of the Vietnam War, collec-
tively, in recognition of their heroic military service, which 
saved countless lives and contributed directly to the de-
fense of the United States. 
(b) DESIGN AND STRIKING.—For purposes of the 
presentation referred to in subsection (a), the Secretary 
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of the Treasury (referred to in this Act as the ‘‘Sec-
retary’’) shall strike a gold medal with suitable emblems, 
devices, and inscriptions, to be determined by the Sec-
retary, in consultation with the Secretary of Defense. 
(c) UNITED STATES NAVY MEDICAL DEPARTMENT 
MUSEUM.— 
(1) IN GENERAL.—Following the award of the 
gold medal in honor of the Medevac Marines and 
Navy Corpsmen of the Vietnam War, the gold medal 
shall be given to the National Museum of the United 
States Navy, where it will be available for display as 
appropriate and available for research. 
(2) SENSE OF CONGRESS.—It is the sense of 
Congress that the National Museum of the United 
States Navy should make the gold medal awarded 
pursuant to this Act available for display elsewhere, 
particularly at appropriate locations associated with 
the Vietnam War, and that preference should be 
given to locations affiliated with the National Mu-
seum of the United States Navy. 
SEC. 4. DUPLICATE MEDALS. 
The Secretary may strike and sell duplicates in 
bronze of the gold medal struck under section 3, at a price 
sufficient to cover the costs of the medals, including labor, 
materials, dies, use of machinery, and overhead expenses. 
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SEC. 5. STATUS OF MEDALS. 
(a) NATIONAL MEDAL.—Medals struck pursuant to 
this Act are national medals for purposes of chapter 51 
of title 31, United States Code. 
(b) NUMISMATIC ITEMS.—For purposes of section 
5134 and section 5136 of title 31, United States Code, 
all medals struck under this Act shall be considered to 
be numismatic items. 
SEC. 6. AUTHORITY TO USE FUND AMOUNTS, PROCEEDS OF 
SALE. 
(a) AUTHORITY TO USE FUND AMOUNTS.—There is 
authorized to be charged against the United States Mint 
Public Enterprise Fund such amounts as may be nec-
essary to pay for the costs thereof struck under this Act. 
(b) PROCEEDS OF SALE.—Amounts received from the 
sale of duplicate bronze medals authorized under section 
4 shall be deposited into the United States Mint Public 
Enterprise Fund. 
Æ 
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