of following Vann's instructions, the command pilot led his helicopters over southern Ap Tan Thoi and along the creek to Ap Bac. The US pilots landed their helicopters west of Ap Bac, where they were hit multiple times by VC machine gun and small arms fire. The five UH-1 gunships strafed VC positions with 2.75-inch rockets but failed to suppress the enemy fire. After South Vietnamese soldiers had disembarked from the helicopters, one CH-21 was too severely damaged to get off the ground. A second CH-21 was sent to rescue the crew, but it too was immobilized as soon as it touched the ground. One of the Hueys returned to pick up the crews of the two downed CH-21s. The main rotor was struck by enemy gunfire as it prepared to land. The aircraft flipped over to the right and crashed. Almost simultaneously, a third CH-21 sustained heavy damage and was forced to land on the rice fields a short distance from the first two helicopters. By 10:30, all the South Vietnamese soldiers who had landed on the field were under heavy fire from inside Ap Bac and refused to move. Sergeant Arnold Bowers, who had ridden in the first crashed helicopter, raced back and forth to rescue injured American airmen. Arrival of the armored personnel carriers After Bowers had attended to the injured men, he borrowed a field radio from the South Vietnamese to coordinate artillery and airstrikes. Later, two AD-6 Skyraiders arrived over Ap Bac and attacked the thatched houses with conventional bombs and napalm. The South Vietnamese soldiers, pinned down on the ground, believed their ordeal was over, so they stood up to see if the VC were retreating from their positions. The VC fired on the exposed soldiers and killed several. Vann then radioed Captain James B. Scanlon—senior adviser to the ARVN 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment—and told him that four US helicopters had either been destroyed or immobilized about southeast of the regiment's position. Scanlon was told to get his South Vietnamese counterpart, Captain Ly Tong Ba—commander of the 4th Mechanized Rifle Squadron, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, to rescue the trapped South Vietnamese company and the helicopters. Ba asserted that he would not take orders from Americans. He also argued that sending the 13 M113 armored personnel carriers through the Cong Ba Ky Canal would enable the VC to retreat because it might take too much