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LCDR James Collier BUCHANAN DFC
Lieutenant Buchanan, serving with the RAN Helicopter Flight Vietnam fourth contingent, realised that a second patrol boat on which he was operating was disabled and drifting towards the enemy-held shore. The record states: “When the two patrol boats were located the evacuation began while the second boat stood off. Lieutenant Buchanan began the extraction of the crewman. Suddenly, the group came under heavy enemy attack. “Lieutenant Buchanan pressed the skids of his helicopter onto the deck of the vessel and pushed the boat to safety. All the while, his aircraft was receiving heavy automatic weapons and 82mm mortar fire.”
For his coolness, determination and courage under fire in the face of a determined enemy Lieutenant Buchanan was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross presented to him by the Queen at Buckingham Palace. On 4 December 1970 in the U Minh forest, he was engaged in the medical evacuation of a wounded crewmember from a South Vietnamese government patrol boat when the group came under heavy attack. Another patrol boat, 50 m away, explosed due to a direct his by B 40 rocker. Realising the boat with which he was operating was disabled and drifting towards the enemy held shore, Lieutenant Buchanan deliberately hooked the skids of his aircraft onto the boat's superstructure and towed it to a safe area although he was still receiving heavy automatic weapons and 82 mm mortar fire. Lieutenant Buchanan's coolness, determination and courage under fire, enabled his mission to be successfully completed. His daughter Emily said that the original DFC citation was incorrect. "It said he hooked the skids of his helicopter under the rim of the boat and towed it to safety. What he did, he landed on the deck of the ship and then realised the ship wasn’t functioning properly and drifting into the fire from onshore. He spun his helicopter blades faster and tilted them and basically drove the ship away from the shore back into the ocean."
James "Jim" Collier Buchanan was born on August 7, 1943 in Collie, south of Perth in Western Australia to James Buchanan, a coal miner, and Eva (nee Macalear), one of six boys. He joined the RAN in October 1962 as a Midshipman Aircrew Officer and having completed his basic aircrew training at HMAS Cerberus, he became a member of Number 49 RAAF Pilots Course training at RAAF Point Cook. On completion, he was posted to 723 Squadron for Helicopter Conversion Training. He was the last student to do this training on the Bristol Sycamore rescue and training helicopter. This was followed by Wessex Operational Flying School with 725 Squadron and then postings at sea with HMAS Melbourne and ashore at HMAS Albatross with 817 Squadron and included time as Mirror Control Officer, (the mirror was part of an aircraft carrier’s landing aid for pilots) on HMAS Melbourne. He met his future wife, Virginia, when he was based at HMAS Albatross in Nowra and she was working at a motor service station. Emily said: "After seeing him she went home and said: ‘I have met the man I am going to marry.’ Every time he drove into the car yard she would go out and water the flowers, just to be visible. They had their wedding in 1967 with the reception aboard HMAS Melbourne, which nobody ever did.
"When the commanding officer found out about it before the wedding he said, ‘You can’t do it, are you crazy?’ But dad said: ‘It’s all organised, everyone is coming.’ The CO said the only time it would ever be possible was if one of the couple was an orphan, and it turned out my mother was an orphan so it was able to go ahead because of that loophole." In June 1969, two years after the wedding, Buchanan was involved in the rescue operation after the aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne was in collision with the destroyer USS Frank E. Evans of the United States Navy. The two ships were participating in SEATO exercise Sea Spirit in the South China Sea. Evans sailed under Melbourne’s bow, where she was cut in two resulting in the loss of 74 of Evans’s crew. For assisting in retrieving sailors out of the water he was awarded the Commendation Medal by the US Navy. In November 1969 he was selected for Service in the RAN Helicopter Flight Vietnam (RANHFV) 4th contingent arriving in the Republic of Vietnam in October 1970. Once in the country he became the platoon commander of the Second Lift Platoon flying the Iroquois UH-1H "Huey" helicopter and served in theatre between September 1970 and June of 1971. Lieutenant Buchanan flew 840 hours in Vietnam and had his helicopter damaged on several occasions before completing his tour of duty.
He rarely talked of his service in Vietnam until the last 10 years when he would openly discuss it. In an attempt at his memoirs he wrote: "In October 1970 I found myself in Vietnam, deputy commanding officer of the RANHFV 4th contingent. Wow! At that time if you combined the total command time of my commander, a newly promoted Lieutenant Commander, and me, who had once had a couple of months as a squadron senior pilot, our combined total command time would have been less than the command time of any one of the senior officers from the 1st, 2nd or 3rd contingents. And here we were bravely leading our innocents into battle from Dong Tam. "In retrospect I don’t think that either of us fully realised that the fact that the RAAF would not land at Dong Tam, because it was insecure, implied Dong Tam was in the battlefield!" After service in the RAN for 27 years he was with DFAT for 17 years. He was involved with the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) in which Australia in 2003 at the request of the island’s government helped lay the foundations for long-term stability, security and prosperity. James Buchanan spoke several languages as a translator. In 1976 he was made a member of MENSA after completing a test which found his intelligence quotient was in the top two per cent of the population.
He divorced Virginia and remarried in the mid-1990s to Chongchit (Boom) with whom he had a daughter. At 79 years of age, James Collier Buchanan passed away on the 17 February 2023. He is survived by daughters Katherine, Serena, Emily and Jamie from the second marriage. A son, Simon, died at the age of five.
Lest We Forget
Sources:
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On
December 4, 1970, during service with the Royal Australian
Navy in Vietnam, Lieutenant Jim Buchanan was engaged in the
medical evacuation of a wounded crew member from a South
Vietnamese Government patrol boat when the vessel came under
heavy attack from enemy forces.
