Prairie Fire FAC Mission
submitted by: Alva Leon Matheson
While VRing in my trusty O-2, I received a call from the team that they were declaring a Prairie Fire Emergency and needed an immediate extract. They were in a running firefight against an estimated 200 NVA regulars. After copying their coordinates, I headed for their location at my top speed of 100 knots with full pods. Unfortunately, there was cloud cover over their location with about 5,000 foot tops. They estimated the ceiling over them at 500 to 1,000 feet.
I backed off about three clicks, found a sucker hole and went beneath the clouds. I found them at the end of a valley about three miles long and two miles wide. The terrain rose to about 3,500 feet around them. The base of the clouds was about 3,000 feet. A lot of shooting was going on and my presence drew fire from the team to me, so I decided to climb back on top to see what assets were available.
Phu Bai launched all that was available; two slicks and two Huey gunships. Hillsboro informed me that no A-1s were available, and the only thing they had was a flight of Navy A-4s with nape and CBUs, which had been diverted from their original target due to weather. I told him to send them over and gave them a cut off TACAN channel 66.
By then my sucker hole had closed and things were going more sour by the minute. I decided to try one of the more stupid stunts of my tour. The A-4s showed about the same time as the choppers. I briefed them on the situation. The A-4s had just tanked and had about 45 minutes of playtime. The choppers had about the same. The Army pilots were VFR only, but they could fly great formation. They agreed to go into the clouds on my wing to get under the stuff. The Navy said nothing, but agreed to hold until I came back up.
I put two choppers on each wing and down we went based on a TACAN cut. We broke out easily. I stationed them at the far end of the valley and told them to wait. Up I went and explained in great detail to the A-4s how I would like them to do the same thing, but once in the valley to continue to the end and drop everything beyond the smoke the team would throw out.
They agreed to try one time, but said they could only slow down to about 140 knots with gear and flaps hanging. I told them I would climb to about 6,000 feet and come down as fast as possible and they could join on me for the short trip through the clouds. I explained that they must go max power upon release and pull up immediately or risk becoming part of the terrain.
I struggled up to 6,000 feet and pushed the nose of my trusty push-pull over to gain speed. As I started down, I thought, “This is one of the dumbest things you have ever done; the chance of succeeding is about 1 in 5,000.” But being young and impervious to failure, I started down. The A-4s joined, two on each wing, in a tremendous show of faith in their young FAC.
I worked two radios simultaneously; UHF for the fighters, and FM for the team and the choppers. I ordered the team to pop smoke as we entered the clouds. We broke out near the opposite end of the valley and the fighters left me to do their thing. I called the helicopters and we started in for the pickup. The fighters dropped everything and there was a great deal of fire and smoke as they popped back into the clouds. The team broke into the open and one slick dropped in for the pickup. The gunships fired all their rockets and hosed the area with their machine guns. I fired all my Willy Petes into the bad guy positions to further confuse them. We got back above the clouds to find the fighters in an orbit at about 15,000 feet. I thanked them profusely and got their particulars so the SF types could thank them properly.
All team members survived although two were badly wounded. One helicopter took an AK round with no damage. We all took a chance that day, but we saved the lives of five people.
As I look back on that day, it may, or may not, have been the biggest chance I ever took, I’m not sure. In that business, there were a lot of days like that and at the time I just assumed it was another day at the office.
The O-2 worked well for the Prairie Fire mission. I flew that mission for about six months and felt it was the best job I ever had, even though I had 144 missions up North prior to that. We were just a little slow for FACing up North.