Burr Smith and One Raven-Burr Smith's War
submitted by: Alva Leon Matheson
The Royal Lao Air Force (RLAF) AT-28 squadron based in Luang Prabang, using the callsign Mustang, provided almost all of the bombing in MR I. Ravens controlled many of the Mustangs’ sorties, and we shared deep kinship with these RLAF fighter pilots. Nearly all of them were executed when Laos eventually fell to the Communists. During my two tours in the Barrel Roll, U-2s and the SR-71s were the only USAF combat aircraft that routinely overflew MR I and the Chinese Road
As the Chinese Road steadily encroached through Laos, the fear grew amongst U.S. planners that it would cross the Mekong River at Pak Beng and construction would continue unfettered to the south toward Thailand. In 1971, a heavy truck could travel on this impressively smooth highway from Moung Sin to Pak Beng in seven hours. Approximately 9,000 Chinese airdefense gunners and road-maintenance personnel manned the system.
Only three Ravens were assigned to Military Region I to handle the defense of Luang Prabang from persistent conventional attacks by Communist forces and to exploit the infinite armed reconnaissance opportunities sprinkled throughout the rest of the Region.
We defined armed reconnaissance this way— you flew around in a random manner until you saw the enemy, then you’d quickly kill him and destroy his assets with your own opportune resources. It was like going on a three-hour hunting trip, as opposed to flying a shorter mission against a planned target. Randomness was how you stayed alive.
Until Burr and I arrived in MR I during late summer of 1971, no deliberate U.S. attempt had been undertaken to thwart Mao Tse Tung’s vision of connecting to Thailand. I was the coincidence. Burr was The Man. He used me like a butcher knife to quietly carve the CIA’s initials in China’s forehead. It wasn’t easy for him. He had to use unconventional means to prevent Chinese escalation in the local area or worse, a disastrous political confrontation between the U.S. and China on a grander scale. In other words, we weren’t going to call in American jet fighters or B-52s.
Burr succeeded with great aplomb as usual. The CIA’s resistance, a la Burr Smith, was sufficiently calculated to convince Mao Tse Tung that China’s best interests would not be served by building its precious road further south than the Mekong River.
After 30 years of retrospect, I believe having to stop construction of the Chinese Road at Pak Beng may have been an acceptable compromise from Peking’s point of view. Chinese forces continued to use Pak Beng as the jumping off point for long-range military forays into northern Thailand. The CIA chased those company-size units all over the Lao countryside. Burr found and kept them under surveillance, and the Mustang Squadron and I harassed them with bombs, rockets and bullets from the sky.
If the Vietnam Conflict somehow had given China a window of opportunity, she quite rapidly could have bridged the Mekong River and finished building the road all the way to the Thai border. Yet, I believe Chinese strategists made a wise choice in letting well-enough alone. A direct conflict with America or its SEATO allies at that sensitive point in time hypothetically could have led to all kinds of international tragedy. By 1972, the United States’ frustration over developments in Southeast Asia might have been described as nearing peak level. Rational decisions were not being made in Washington, D.C.