The Essence of Forward Air Controlling
submitted by: Alva Leon Matheson
This story is about one such team that got into trouble somewhere in Laos. It was sometime in July or August of 1969. I had not been a part of the effort to insert them, i.e., they were not one of “my” teams.
It all started with one of the enlisted 20 TASS operations specialists knocking on the door of my BOQ room at about 0400. “Sir, we need you to fly a Prairie Fire (SOG) emergency.” I never turned down any opportunity to fly, especially a Prairie Fire mission. He drove me to Operations, about a mile and a half away.
“There’s a team in trouble in the vicinity of....” (I couldn’t tell you where now, and the area was new to me then). “You’re to take off as soon as possible and to meet up with (I think it was) Nail 08. He’s a night FAC out of NKP (Thailand). He’s not Prairie Fire qualified, but he has contact with a team in trouble.”
I was probably airborne by 0445 or 0500. Shortly after takeoff, I contacted Moonbeam, the ABCCC C-130 that flew the twelve-hour night shift high over Laos. The day shift ABCCC’s call- sign was “Hillsboro.” Moonbeam put me on frequency with the Nail FAC.
“Nail 08, this is Covey 264, inbound your location,” I said.
“Roger, Covey. I’ve been getting this round- eye (no offense meant, but that’s what we called Americans then for some coding purposes) on Fox Mike,” and he gave me the frequency. “He comes up about every ten minutes and just calls for help. He says he’s running, he sounds out of breath, and he wants help. I can barely understand him. He won’t stay on the radio long enough for me to ask him any questions. I have no idea where he is, except that I’m in his area because this is where I stayed once I heard him come up.”
The Nail had literally and figuratively been working in the dark, and his chances of finding the SOG team at night would have been next to impossible. Light was breaking and I could begin to make out terrain features on the ground.
The SOG team leader had a callsign I don’t remember. I’m going to call him Lucky. We seldom used callsigns after the first contact, if contact was continuous. We just talked like we were on a telephone, with none of that, “Over, Wilco, Over and out, and This is...” stuff.
After taking the briefing from the Nail FAC, I told him I would take charge. We soon visually found each other. I came in a thousand feet higher than he said he was. Once we had each other in sight, he passed on-scene control to me.
“I have it,” I said, and we traded holding altitudes.
Somewhere in here, Lucky called and everything went just as the Nail FAC had previously briefed. I tried to talk to Lucky, but he went off line too fast. I got the same mental picture that Nail had briefed. Nail asked permission to stick around for a few minutes to observe, and I agreed.
I called Moonbeam and asked them what firepower was immediately available. Moonbean said they had an AC-119 that was about 15 or 20 minutes from my location. The “Dollar 19,” or “Shadow” as we called them, had three side firing 7.62 mm Gatling guns capable of firing up to 6,000 rounds per minute per gun.
I had seen an AC-130 “Spectre” and an AC-47 “Puff, the Magic Dragon” work out around DaNang at night, so I understood their firepower capability. I also knew they were accurate and that their TIC minimum clearance was 25 meters.
“Bring him on, Moonbeam, I’m declaring a Prairie Fire emergency. See if you can get me some A-1s or “Gunfighters” with “snake and nape” (F-4s with very accurate 500 pound high drag bombs and napalm). Just keep them on alert.”
Lucky came up again. Still, I couldn’t get him to remain on long enough to ask him a question. He was just running and running and wanted help.
I waited and waited, trying every minute or so to contact him. About the time that I figured he would be coming up again, I kept up a steady stream of talk.
“Lucky, Lucky, this is Covey. I need to find you, can you hear my Oscar Duck?” (Our nick- name for the O-2). I kept repeating this, pausing only briefly for him to come up. I was hoping that as he brought the phone-like microphone to his ear, that he would hear me ask him questions.
About this time, Moonbeam came up on “Victor” (VHF radio) telling me that Shadow was coming my way. At the same time, Shadow 21 was checking in on my “Uniform” (UHF radio). We controlled who we talked to on which radio – Uniform, Victor or Fox Mike – with a little turn knob, like on a stove or air conditioner, and we controlled the volume of each radio with smaller turn knobs on that same panel.
Before I could answer either, up popped Lucky. “I think I can hear you, but I don’t know where I am. We’re being chased.” And he was off line again.
Again, I couldn’t get him to answer. While he was talking on FM, I could “home in” on his location via a needle in the cockpit. It didn’t tell me how far away he was, but it gave me a direction. I decided to head in his direction about a mile and take up another orbit. I acknowledged the arrival of Shadow, giving him an “arrive at or above” altitude, and I just acknowledged, “Roger, got him,” to Moonbeam. I was trying to get into my maps to figure out where I was in Laos, but it was taking too much time, and it really didn’t matter for the moment.
Then I started repeating again and again, “Lucky, this is Covey, can you hear my aircraft, and what direction are you running?” After another three or four minutes of continuing to repeat this question, he finally came back, “I hear you louder; I don’t know what direction I’m running.”
I quickly said, “The sun is rising in the east.” He came back, “Oh yeah. Okay, Covey, I’m running south. We’re being chased by at least a company.”
To me, that meant his squad was outnumbered at least three to one, and probably more like five to one, and, once again, that was it for communication for a while.
During this break, I began talking to Shadow and started to tell him my plan. I hoped to try and spot Lucky and go to work for him, but in the jungle coverage I was looking at, I couldn’t imagine how we were ever going to see him. “Once we spot him, let’s remember he’s running south.”
“Roger south, Covey.”
Somewhere in all of the chatter, I gave Shadow the FM frequency so he was listening to everything that was going on between Lucky and me.
Lucky popped up again, “Covey, we’re still running, I can hear you nearly overhead.”
“Pop a smoke, pop a smoke, pop a smoke,” I repeated.
“What? Charlie will see me!” Lucky yelled back.
“Hell, he’s already chasing you so he knows where you are. Pop a smoke, keep running, and when you’re 25 yards south, tell me the color.”
“Shit, here goes. I’m popping and running.”
I asked Shadow to be looking for some smoke coming up through the jungle canopy. He answered, “Roger.”
After about 30 seconds, I saw very dispersed wisps of red smoke coming up through the trees. I started to point it out to Shadow, but he interrupted saying “I got it, Covey.”
A minute later, Lucky came back on and said, “I’m 25 meters south of my red smoke.”
“Roger”
For the next minute, Shadow unloaded about 6,000 rounds into the area of the smoke and a little north of it.
“Shadow, fly off about two or three miles. I’m doing the same. We need him to be able to hear what’s going on down there.”
We waited for what seemed like an eternity. It was taking so long that I thought we had killed the good guys. The seconds ticked away.
The next thing we heard was, “Here’s another red smoke.” Then nothing.
I brought Shadow back over the area. There came the signs of new red smoke through the trees. Then, “Covey, I’m 25 meters south.”
“Shadow, cleared hot!”
“Roger!”
Another minute of hell on earth for the bad guys, whoever they were, and however many of them there were. I then told Shadow to get clear of the area again, and I did the same. He’d already moved away, but I wasn’t watching him.
“Covey, that is shit hot. I don’t hear anything anymore,” came the long awaited radio call from Lucky.
“Good, now what do you want? You want to stay, or you want out.”
“We need to get out. Can you get me to an LZ?”
“Roger, I see one. I’m going over your position high overhead, but offset some. When I tell you, you need to go toward the sound of my aircraft about 500 meters. There’s a good LZ there.
“That’ll take us the rest of the day.”
“That’s the best I see in the area.”
“Roger.”
“I’ll brief the boys back home to be ready with strings later on this afternoon.” That meant I’d debrief the SOG command post to have another Prairie Fire FAC with rescue Hueys and Cobra gunships ready for an extraction. The Hueys would have 100 foot-long ropes (strings) to lower to Lucky’s team to pull or carry them to safety. Sometimes they had to travel many miles dangling from the end of the string.
“Roger, Covey, I owe ya.”
“Me and Shadow. We’ll see you – out,” I replied.
“Shadow, well done. Outstanding how you were on top of everything before I even had to say anything.”
“Roger, good job,” he answered.
“Roger that. Felt good, didn’t it?” “Moonbeam, this is Covey 264 RTB.”
Covey, this is Hillsboro, Moonbeam RTB’d an hour ago. We monitored all. Understand RTB, good job.”
This story, which I’ve told many times, but never in this detail, epitomizes for me the essence of being a Forward Air Controller.
You’re called out of bed to save somebody. Who, what, when, and where? You go out there not knowing much about what’s going on. You don’t know their location, or the terrain elevation. You can’t see either the good guys or the bad guys. You take whatever firepower you can get. And it doesn’t have to be A-1As, or F-4s or F- 105s. You find the good guys and you start shooting, hoping you’re hitting only the bad guys. You hit the bad guys and you save the good guys.
What more could anyone ask for?