A month later, on 18 February, the Marine pilots experienced another of the hazards associated with flight operations in Vietnam while attempting to land troops from the 1st ARVN Division in a clearing about 18 miles southwest of Hue. Five helicopters sustained punctures in the bottoms of their fuselages when they accidentally landed on tree stumps concealed by high grass in the landing zone. One stump caused extensive damage to an aircraft when it ripped into its forward fuel cell. The crew was forced to leave the UH-34D in the field under ARVN protection overnight. The next morning Marine mechanics were flown in from Da Nang to repair the helicopter. Despite several troop lifts involving a dozen or more aircraft, heliborne assault missions did not dominate HMM-162’s operations during the unit’s first three months in South Vietnam. Poor weather conditions over the northern provinces continued to restrict flight operations generally to resupply and medical evacuation missions. Statistics for the first quarter of 1963, for example, indicated that Marine helicopters conducted 6,537 logistics sorties as opposed to 1,181 tactical support sorties. The single most significant incident during HMM-162’s initial three months in Vietnam took place in the second week of March when the squadron suffered its first aircraft losses and casualties. These were incurred during a salvage-rescue attempt in the mountains of northern II Corps. The incident began on 10 March as two Marine UH-34Ds attempted to insert a four-man American-Vietnamese ground rescue team into the jungle about 30 miles southwest of Quang Ngai. The team’s assignment was to locate a U.S. Army OV-1 Mohawk (a twin-engine, turboprop, electronic reconnaissance aircraft manufactured by Grumman) which had crashed, and its pilot, who had parachuted into the jungle. The exact site of the accident had not been located but the general area was known to be a steep jungle-covered mountain, the elevation of which approached 5,000 feet. While attempting to lower search personnel into the jungle by means of a hoist, one of the helicopters lost power and crashed. The ARVN ranger who was on the hoist when the accident occurred was killed but the helicopter’s crew managed to climb from the wreckage shortly before it erupted in flames. The copilot, Captain David N. Webster, was severely burned in the explosion.