Photo Recce Mission
submitted by: Alva Leon Matheson
modified with the Yankee Extraction system. John Garrity rode in the back seat with me in the Guppy. Jim Walls, a long time Air Commando and friend, came up from Vientiane to fly as my wingman. I added three more T-28s with crews of my choosing. I selected one of my Ravens, Ed Gunter to fly flak suppression with Walls. I had a lot of confidence in Ed, and I was to fly a lot of missions with him over the next few months. Lieutenant Tia Vant, a Lao Flight Leader, and one other Lao pilot would make up the rest of the flight.
Our plan called for me to fly very low with the left wing into the side of the mountains to the East of the route. This put the river between me and the road and put me on a southerly heading. This would also allow me to use the right oblique camera. The covering aircraft would fly to my left and at a higher altitude that would be determined after we arrived in the area. The four covering T-28s would each be armed with six pods of flechette rockets for flak suppression. They would only be used in case we were fired upon.
Weather forecast in the area of the road was questionable. An 8,000 foot broken to overcast ceiling covered the area of our planned operation. The terrain elevation along the route was in the 5,000 foot range. We talked it over. John said he didn’t know when we could get clearance to get the RT-28 back in country. We decided the mission was a go as we didn’t want to send the Guppy back unused. I briefed the flight and made sure that everyone knew what the routine would be when we started the photo run. I covered the route of flight into the area and how we would egress from the target. The covering aircraft were to keep a sharp eye out for any indication that we were being shot at and to warn me as quickly as they could with the words, “Triple-A, Triple-A. Triple-A!”
My flight of aircraft arrived in the target area, and we circled east of the intersection of the road at Moung Sai. The cloud base was at 8,000 feet. I went to a point north and east of the road and began a letdown that would put me in the desired position with my wing towards the mountain. I set the speed at 250 knots and lined the aircraft up parallel to the road and turned on the vertical and the right oblique camera. Jim Walls and Gunter had taken a position high to my left, but the two Lao pilots were high and to the right of the road.
This was not where I wanted the little guys, but it was too late now to start over. We continued down the road with no interference from any of the gun positions that we had seen in the area and the cameras were clicking away. I turned the vertical camera on because John had seen construction on some of the ridgelines and perhaps it would show up in the pictures.
When we approached the end of the road, Garrity asked if I could go back and get a picture of the bridge construction we had passed a while back at the juncture of the road heading to the Northwest.
In my best overconfident voice, I said, “Sure thing,” and turned the Guppy back around to the North. I then turned to a westerly heading, aimed at the bridge, and turned on all the cameras. I thought my best chance of getting good pictures of the bridge would be with the forward oblique camera.
Flying directly toward the bridge, I was distracted by what I thought was the map I had placed on the glareshield flapping from the air coming through an air vent up front. Wrong! The distraction was large softball-size red projectiles flying pass the aircraft and canopy on both sides. At the same instant, Jim called out: “Triple-A, Triple-A, Triple-A and lots of it.”
My heart leaped to my throat. My first instinct was to roll the aircraft inverted and pull it down towards the river and push the throttle through the firewall and get all the speed I could. The RPM was already at 2,400 and the old bird really wound up, I think I saw 300 knots. I rolled out of my escape maneuver with my knees shaking and proceeded to get the hell out of Dodge. I planned to keep it as low as I could without hitting something.
As I screamed down the river with the prop in the water, I looked back over my shoulder and saw that a T-28 had rolled in and fired his rockets. I believe to this day that Ed Gunter probably saved my life by firing at that triple-A battery and distracting it because at this point all of the guns had stopped firing. Jim in his wisdom pulled straight up and through the clouds. The two little guys chattering unintelligibly started attacking everything in sight. Jim said that when he broke out on top, flak bursts were going off all over the place. After firing off his rockets, Ed chased me down the river and joined up just as we reached the Mekong.
I turned towards home with Gunter on my wing and set the engine power to a climb setting. I leveled off at 7,500 feet just below the clouds. We never made contact with Jim or the two little guys until we arrived back at LP. We all deplaned and met on the ramp where we checked over the airplanes. Miraculously, no aircraft took a hit and the mission had left us soaking wet and exhausted. Ed came up to the group and laughingly said he saw his whole life pass before his eyes. He was sure that I was a goner. It seems as though my cat still had at least one of its nine lives left.
Gunter said he could hardly make out the shape of my aircraft in that sea of red coals and tracers. He said he just pointed the aircraft towards the area where the 57 mm fire was coming from and fired all of his rockets.
As we walked across the bridge in front of the AOC, I asked Garrity what he thought. He said that he thought that any further missions would be without him. We immediately curtailed further activities for the day and invited all our troops and the little guys to join us for beers at the Bar at the bridge. We had several beers and relived the mission with the guys from Udorn, each time being thankful that we hadn’t lost an airplane. John and the pilots from Udorn left the next morning. John said he would let us know when we could come down and see the pictures.
Our good luck with the Chinese Road finally ran out on an overflight of the road in March 1970. I lost a T-28 and one of my pilots (Lt. Liao), to the 57 mm, while flying at 10,000 feet on the way to support Lima Site 118A. Another T-28 in the flight was also hit with what I think was a 37 mm in the right flap/baggage compartment while trying to cover the downed aircraft. This happened two days before I was scheduled to leave LP to go home. After my first tour, I had been reluctant to fly the support missions for Nam Yu because I felt jinxed. Lt. Liao was never recovered.
In September 1969, after much prompting, the Embassy finally agreed to allow us to take out some of the huge supply areas we had seen getting bigger and bigger in the Nam Beng valley. Obviously, they were there for only one reason – to extend the road further south. The Thais were already nervous as the road was getting closer and pointing directly at Thailand.
We had been requested by AIRA to develop a targeting plan that would include a description of the targets, a listing of the coordinates and what ordnance we proposed to use. We took the plan to the Embassy where we briefed the Station Chief and the head Political guy for the Embassy. CAS had no problems with the targeting but the political guy stripped away about half of the targets we had identified. Jerry Furche was the Raven that would coordinate the airstrikes and be the FAC in charge of the operation. The mission was a complete success and the BDA was awesome. There was only one problem, it seems that the Embassy had some Recce imagery that showed collateral damage to parts of one of the villages that was not on the target list. The Embassy wanted Dave’s scalp, but the CAS guys went to bat for him. They said that they had changed the target list to include the structures destroyed.
After the dust settled, all the Intel types reported that all construction activity had stopped along the Beng valley. They found no evidence that the Chinese made any attempt to replenish the supplies that we had destroyed. I believe that they were fearful that more airstrikes were imminent.
At last my TDY was coming to an end, but I was getting some pressure from my CAS guys to see if I could get an extension. Finally I gave in and told them that I was agreeable if they could swing it with my bosses. My CAS guys at LP asked Pat Landry (CAS mfwic for Laos), who was a personal friend of Secord and Aderholt, to see if SOF would consider an extension of my TDY for another 179 days. Aderholt agreed, and I was set for another dry season. I was actually pleased with the extension as I still had a lot of things that I wanted to get done, and now I had the time.