The Pathet Lao Navy
submitted by: Alva Leon Matheson
The FAC was excited. He didn’t want to let them know that he had spotted them, so he continued down the river until he was out of sight. We assumed that the boats were waiting for dusk or nighttime to head out and would stay put until we could send up some T-28s. Ed Gunter, the Raven that had spotted the Barges, came running into the AOC shouting that he had some boats cornered on the upper Nam Ou, and we could still get them all if we hurried.
We went to a map and located the target area and Ed briefed Tia Vant, the Lao Flight Leader, what was out there. It was late in the day and the Lao pilots had already flown twice, but Tia Vant said if I would go then so would he. Ed took off and headed back to the place where he saw the boats under the trees.
We took off and turned to a heading that would take us to the area where we would rendezvous with the FAC. Our flight of two T-28s was cruising at 5,000 feet when, lo and behold, one of the big boats had already departed and was headed down the river. The FAC reported that he had a boat heading South cutting a big V in the water. Lead reported that we had the boat in sight and told me to take him. I ran the prop up to 2,400 RPM and armed the bombs. I rolled in with my attack coming from behind the boat. I dropped a 500 pound bomb and pulled off left.
I looked back over my left shoulder and saw my bomb explode unscorable at six o’clock but right in the middle of the river. To myself I said, “Man that was horrible.” In my excitement and haste, I had forgot to put in the mil setting for dive-bombing. I attributed it to my excitement and “Buck Fever” from seeing that big boat out in the open. But everything worked out fine. Seeing that bomb go off behind him, shook the hell out of that Barge Captain because he started to “S” back and forth from one side of the river to the other.
When Tia Vant rolled in to attack, the Captain aimed the Barge for the shoreline and beached it. The boat was now a sitting duck. Red Lead’s bomb was a near miss that damaged the boat.
My second bomb was a shack and blew the hell out of the Barge. It must have been carrying ammo because of the large secondary explosion that resulted. This was too easy. We radioed our Raven to go find us another one.
Gunter reported that the Barge we sank was not the one he had seen earlier, because he found his Barge still under the trees where he first saw it. We caught up to him and began circling the area. He rolled in to mark the target with a Willy Pete rocket because he didn’t think we could see it hidden under the trees. He more than marked the target, he fired a perfect strike that started a large fire in the middle of the Barge. This time we found out that the barges were equipped with a stinger. This one had a 12.7 mm heavy machine gun and the gunner appeared to know how to use it. I called out to Ed warning him that he was taking ground fire from the gun as he pulled off from his pass.
We dropped the remainder of our bombs. They were close but no cigar. All we had left were rockets. We made a couple of passes firing our rockets. We completely covered up the Barge with debris and pieces of foliage. That Barge just sat there up against the bank burning fiercely from the initial rocket hit. That gunner was one of the bravest guys that I have ever seen as he kept firing at each T-28 as the aircraft made its attack. The tracers were pretty but not very effective.
We left the Barge burning under the trees. I guess we will have to give our Raven a probable on this one, as it was his marking rocket that started the fire and we couldn’t hit it with both hands. We started home down the river, and passed the beached boat still burning on the shoreline. We were feeling good about our success in our first encounter with the Nam Ou Barges. This was only the first of many good missions we flew seeking out the big boats and sending them to Barge heaven.
In the following weeks we regularly flew river patrols late in the day just before dark. This seemed to be the time that the Barges liked to come out for their run down the river. We were averaging three or four Barges destroyed a week. Eventually, the Barges gave up trying to run our river gauntlet in the daylight, but we felt that they were still operating and we were exploring other means to get them.
To see if we could outwit the Barge captains, we shifted our tactics to dawn patrols. The Barges were out and we had some success, but they soon stopped running at all in the daylight. The Air Force had read our reports and offered to help. They thought that mines might be the answer. We got a FRAG approved for the F-4s to drop MK-6 mines into the Nam Ou. We mined a ten-mile stretch of the river between where we saw the first Barge and where I dropped the unscorable at six o’clock bomb.
I heard somewhere that there were communication intercepts indicating the supplies were having difficulty getting down river because of strange explosions that were destroying the Barges. All of a sudden the Nam Ou had gained some very bad spirits.