My Shootdown
submitted by: Alva Leon Matheson
I still didn’t have the correct orders I needed to get to DaNang and my O-2A, so I called first to the office that issued my original orders stating that I was to report to Vietnam. Someone there said, “Sure, we’ll take care of it.”
Then I decided I’d better call the FAC outfit I was supposed to go to, the 20th TASS. The operations officer there, a Major Carmen Anillo, said, “Don’t go there, go to ‘Happy Valley’ and get your in-country FAC orientation flying training there. I’ll call them right now and tell them to expect you and to train you, even though you don’t have the right orders.” Major Anillo’s positive approach convinced me that I had to follow that man’s directions if I was going to be a FAC. I left Clark a very well trained survivor.
The arrival in Saigon was uneventful, but I remember a very silent group of airmen and soldiers on the plane. We were looking everywhere for the enemy that would start taking pot shots at 200 plus unarmed passengers. That night I experienced my first mortar attack. I was initiated.
Then came a quick, one-day personnel-in- processing and briefing at some huge auditorium where they told us to look at the person to your right and to your left. “Statistically, one of you will receive a bullet hit in your aircraft.” The man to my left was one of the guys that was involved in the three-way aircraft switch back in the States, and he now had my original O-2B assignment.
I boarded a C-130 and headed for Happy Valley. There I flew a few missions, experienced two or three more mortar attacks, and saw our retaliatory effort via a “Spectre” gunship, an AC- 130 with a cannon and high-powered 7.62 mm machine gun.
After three days of flying over safe areas, (that’s why they called it ‘Happy Valley’) to prove we could fly the aircraft and handle the mission, we were off to our final destination.
I still was without proper orders, but said I was headed for DaNang per Major Anillo’s previous verbal instructions. Nobody ever looked at my orders, or if they did, it was just to insure that I had some.
I arrived in DaNang 1 January 1969. Shortly after I arrived, I received a Red Cross notification that my cousin, Russell Townsley, had just died of Cystic Fibrosis at age 21 – the full life expectancy at that time for someone with that disease. Russell was almost a brother to me, as we were raised together for a while during some of my high school and later years. The Red Cross asked if I wanted to go all the way back to Massachusetts. I was deeply saddened, but elected not to go back as we all had known the end was near.
Now, those in charge said I had to wait for my real orders to come before they would actually send me into real combat. I finally flew my first mission on 11 January 1969.
In the FAC business, we needed about 50 hours or more of real combat flying with a seasoned CTIP in the right seat before they would allow us over the HCM Trail on our own. Each mission in the O-2A could last up to 4.5 hours.
I flew with different CTIPs, but on 18 January, my seventh flight day, I was scheduled with Major George Blair. After the standard briefings, I went to get my gear and parachute and head for the plane. The parachute specialist in the Life Support Shop wished me “Good luck” on my way out. For some reason I retorted, “You don’t need good luck if you’re good, just a little luck.”
We crossed over into Laos about 20 minutes after takeoff, at about noon or a little thereafter. I picked up an in-flight briefing from the ABCCC and the Covey FAC coming off station. Covey was our squadron call sign and I was Covey 264. The FAC coming off mentioned some trucks stuck in the mud around “the old man’s head.” This comment referred to a bend in a small river that looked a lot like a profile of Ziggy, a cartoon character current at the time, with only one long strand of hair coming out the top of his head. It was southeast of Delta 45, and was one of the many major HCM Trail reference points we used on our maps.
I found the two trucks, one of which appeared stuck in the river ford. I called the ABCCC for a strike flight. While we waited, we looked for other targets of opportunity in the area, but found none. The fighters, a set of F-4s, showed up very shortly, low on gas. I went to work, directing them to put their bombs on the two lone trucks, and blew them to smithereens.
We had a tendency to fly in left turns during the strike control portion of flight, because in the O-2A, the FAC sat on the left side of the cockpit. When there was someone in the right seat, it was even more likely we’d be in left turns because of vision restriction to the right. I out-briefed the fighters as I turned to the right away from the target.
My CTIP, Major Blair, said, “Let’s go back and take another look.” As I turned back to the left we were hit. It felt like the plane hit a large air pocket, or a very concentrated puff of air that pushed up on the back end of the plane. There was not much sound with the hit. Kind of a “woomp.”
The aircraft immediately went into a slow flat left spin. I switched to Guard frequency and called “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday!” Then I went into that slow motion world often experienced in a survival situation – the Air Force later gave it a name – temporal distortion, or TD. I had been in TD once before while spinning out in my 1968 Mustang on a new, rain-slicked road, and three times since in other aircraft incidents.
I looked over at Maj. Blair and saw that we both were desperately trying to recover the aircraft. It was not responding and the spinning was becoming faster and faster. We were pointing downward, straight at the ground. I looked forward and could see exactly where we would crash. We were still about 3,500 to 4,000 feet up, but going straight down fast.
The emergency procedure called for at this point was to remove the right hand door of the aircraft and jump out. My part in that procedure, when there were two people on board, was to reach behind the right seat passenger and unlock the door with my right hand. The right seat passenger was briefed to pull a foot-long red lever by his right knee rearward about six inches to remove the door’s hinge pins. Then he was supposed to hit the door with his shoulder to send it flying. I unbuckled my seat belt, while George, that’s what I call him now, pulled on the lever and pushed the door out. I remember reaching to start to undo his seat belt, but his own hand beat me to it. I can remember the whining or screaming of the plane as it gained airspeed. I can remember George going out and hearing a “thunk” sound. I dove out and down to avoid the wing strut.
I was outside the airplane and free-falling. I reached immediately for my ripcord and pulled. In my slow motion, temporally distorted mind, nothing was happening. I pulled some more, and then, using both hands, I pulled again. I remember the ripcord coming out about two feet. The Life Support parachute people said it couldn’t be done, but I definitely remember about two feet of cable in my hand.
I felt the “whuump” of my chute opening. My TD ended with the opening of the chute. I looked up quickly to check the canopy, and I remember hearing the plane crash while I was looking up. I looked down and watched George’s chute fully open and then collapse just as fast as you’re reading this sentence. I watched him land 15 feet to the left of the crashed and burning O-2A. I then realized there were rifles shooting, and it was probably at me. I tried to swing in my chute because I still had about 1,000 feet to go. I swung for all I was worth. I don’t know if it really worked, but I wasn’t hit, so I guess it did.
I later decided that George had briefly knocked himself out when his head hit the wing strut while diving out of the aircraft. He thought it hard to believe, but afterwards, when I told him about his chute opening and immediately closing from my vantage point, he had to concur.
I crashed through a tree and scraped my right knee and leg a little. I finally landed 15 feet or so to the right of the aircraft, in an area of light vegetation made up of young trees and bushes, not jungle as one might imagine. I was still hearing the gunfire. I released my snaps. My chute was stuck in the tree, so my trained instruction to bury it was abandoned in a flash.
I started running away from the rifle fire. I was taking the path of least resistance, a well used path, and “Sam,” who was now perched on my shoulder, told me to get off that well-worn path. All of his training was as fresh in my mind as it could be. I came to a spot where the path went left, up away from a stream, so I stopped, turned right and jumped across the stream. I remember leaving a footprint in the muddy water of the far side of the stream, but thought that it would soon fill in with water and lose its shape. Nevertheless, I worried about it for hours. I went about ten or fifteen feet up a little hillside and found a small bush. It might have been big, but it felt like a small bush. It wasn’t more than three feet high. But, it was time to stop moving, or so “Sam” whispered in my ear. Live or die, this was my spot.
I can remember my main thoughts were about my grandmother. She was well into her 70’s, and she and I were very close, as I would stay with her often during summer vacations, sometimes for months at a time. She had lost her oldest son, Harold Townsley, a B-24 Liberator navigator in WWII somewhere in the Mediterranean or Atlantic. I hoped she wouldn’t lose me too.
My new helmet was white in color and I had on a gray flight suit, not the green one later adopted. I could only be thankful it wasn’t orange like my hair. I pulled out my survival knife and quickly dug a hole to bury my helmet upside down. I grabbed the loose dirt, spat on it to make mud, and started rubbing it on my face and in my hair. I had a nice new, shiny, gold Cross ballpoint pen in my left sleeve shoulder pocket. I threw that in the hole. I had Lawrence of Arabia’s book, “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” in my right calf pocket. I had enjoyed the movie and wanted to read his Book. I threw that in the hole with my helmet. I had a blank check or two with my ex-wife’s and my name and address on them. I ate them. This all seemed to happen within 20 or 30 seconds.
I could hear the enemy gathering around the aircraft wreckage and lots of talking. I had only gotten about 50 yards from the aircraft. Then the gunfire started again. They were shooting randomly around the woods. Bullets were ticking the leaves and branches all around me. This lasted about five minutes, then nothing, except their occasional talking. If I could hear them talking in a normal voice, I knew they could hear me make any sound. I was on my stomach with my face turned to the side and I just froze in place.
Then the first ant made his presence known to me, then hundreds, probably thousands. They were crawling all over my body. Everywhere. They got in my ears and nose and eyes. Repeat, everywhere. I could keep my mouth closed, but I had to breathe carefully through my slightly opened mouth so I could exhale forcefully through my nose to keep them out of there. The ears and eyes didn’t bother me too much, as I had to concentrate on my nose. This went on for about two or three hours, at least it seemed that long. Again, “Sam” jumped up on my shoulder and reminded me that ants were a good source of protein. I ended up eating several by crushing them with my lips or teeth. There was no taste, and I have no regrets.
Then I heard aircraft overhead. They had to be ours. We had total air superiority, except for the occasional loss due to ground fire, like me. The closer they got, and the louder they got, the more I thought I could risk getting on my survival radio. Every once and a while I could see an aircraft off to the west. They were A-1 Skyraiders. The noise would be close for a while, then drift away, and then come back again. I pulled out my survival radio, the PRC-46, if I recall correctly.
When I turned it on, I could not keep the volume low enough to suit me. “Sam” reminded me of the rubberized speaker cover and how we had been trained to use it. This cover had a listening tube, so that when you wanted to listen you would just place the end of the tube in your ear, and when you wanted to talk, you would hold down on the mic button, lift the speaker cover and speak into the microphone, which was also the speaker.
When I first turned on the radio, I could hear conversation going on between George and the lead A-1E, “Sandy 01” the call sign of all SAR lead aircraft. I was listening to their conversation, but I was still afraid to speak, when I heard George tell the Sandy that Covey 264 was dead. George thought, since I had to follow him out the right side door of the O-2A, and since he only had minimal time in the chute, my chute could not have had time to open.
I overheard the Sandy ask George one of his survivor verification questions, “What is your favorite drink?” George replied, “Bourbon and water,” but I distinctly remembered him ordering a bourbon and ginger the night before. I was worried for us. I thought he was providing the wrong answers, and I needed to correct the impression that I was dead!
I tried to butt into the conversation with my callsign, but I was being ignored, or I wasn’t being heard because of my whispering. I continually tried to butt in, but when they initially heard me, they thought they were being “spoofed” by the enemy. Barely whispering, I used a few very choice, very American words to let Sandy know that Covey 264 was very much alive and kicking. He began to believe me, and when I heard him ask Hillsboro Control to pass the verification data on me, I knew I was making progress.
My verification question came in from Sandy, “What’s your favorite pie?” I answered, “Aunt Martha’s Apple Pie.” I heard Sandy tell the ABCCC, “Hillsboro, we have two.”
After that, all the radio conversation started sounding like it was working in our favor, but I had trouble holding the tube to my ear to listen, then lifting the rubber cover containing the tube to talk. I could still hear the enemy talking, so I knew they could hear me talking. I then tried talking into the tube by talking into my closed fist holding the tube outstretched. It was a much quieter way to talk. “Sam” hadn’t taught me that, but it worked – not well, but it was readable to the Sandy and that’s all I cared about. They started teaching my trick at survival school soon thereafter.
As the afternoon wore on, I had gotten across to the Sandy that I wasn’t very far from the downed aircraft. The enemy would occasionally fire randomly into the woods around me, and then there would be silence. “Sam” told me they were setting up to shoot at the Jolly Greens when they came in for the final phase and when they were most vulnerable. I passed the word to Sandy that the “bad guys” are only about 50 yards from me, and probably set-up someplace around my aircraft. Apparently Sandy had located George by one method or another.
Around 1700 I heard a helicopter. Sandy 01 briefed me to listen up on the radio, and on his command I was to direct the Jolly Green to my location. Jolly Green was 200 yards to my west when I first saw him and immediately the gunfire erupted. I saw the Jolly Green pull up and away with one of those very brave PJs hanging from the penetrator cable. I later learned that that chopper received about 50 small caliber bullet hits. I was commanded to silence; so I couldn’t ask anything, just listen. More time passed, and in came a second Jolly Green. I never looked up to see this one. This time they did not send down an airman, but George was able to hook himself to the jungle-penetrator seat at the end of the cable.
Sandy then said, “Covey 264, start talking.” I sat up from my cover behind the bush and took the cover off my radio speaker. The wind began rushing my way as I successfully directed the second Jolly Green towards my position. When he got about 20 yards away, the gunfire opened up again and he pulled up and away. I later learned he received about 50 hits, too. George later told me his side of the story, and it made me shiver just to imagine being in there with all those bullets flying around inside.
Shortly, there was silence again. I had placed the cover back over the speaker and was just listening to the radio. Daylight was beginning to fade. I heard Sandy say, “Sandy flight, go channel two.” Right then, I knew they were going to have to leave me behind. They didn’t have any more choppers available and it was getting dark. Sandy Lead came back up Guard and said, “Covey, we’re going to have to go. You need to dig in and be quiet. Do you have your survival equipment?”
I said, “I’m OK, I’ve got the works.” He answered, “Understand you’ve got the works. Okay, we’ll see you in the morning. Stay off your radio and your signal to come back up in the morning will be a Misty (F-100) going afterburner overhead.” I replied, “Roger, I’ll see you then.”
I immediately thought to myself, probably because I came from a military family and had been a Marine enlisted man before transferring to the Air Force, “I’m a soldier, some of us make it and some of us don’t, but I’m going to try till I die.”
The area became deathly silent as I waited to see what was going to happen next. It was getting darker, but I could still see 100 yards if I tried. I put my head down as I heard the enemy, either Pathet Laos or NVA, begin talking and walking along the path I had first taken. I think three to five men, but I wasn’t looking, passed within 15 yards of me. To this day I feel like one of them was arguing that there was still one guy out here and the others were saying, “No, no, there were only two chutes and they brought in two choppers, so that means they got both of them out.” Then the first guy would argue again and they would put him down again. I remember being glad he wasn’t persuasive. Nobody looked for me from that point on.
I had a good place to hide and I wasn’t going to move from it. I now had to pee. I sat up and unzipped my flight suit but found it very difficult to pee because after a moment a puddle would form, and that meant noise. I’d have to stop, let the water become absorbed in the ground, and begin again. You might laugh at my paranoia about making noise, but I didn’t want to make even the slightest sound, and every little sound I made was magnified by the jeopardy I felt. This noise problem became more apparent as I began unwrapping all the survival equipment in my survival vest. Most of it was wrapped in a kind of waxed paper. As I tried to unwrap it, I definitely was making too much noise. I had to proceed so very slowly as I got out my signaling mirror, my smoke flares, my spare radio battery, my orange signaling panels, my luminous compass, and my tracer signaling bullets. It was night, so I decided to load my .38 caliber revolver with the signaling bullets. I set everything around me so I knew where it was as darkness settled over the woods. It became pitch black and I literally could not see my hand in front of my face. I could see some stars straight above.
As the night wore on I concentrated on the continuous noises I could hear. First was the encampment of the soldiers who had just walked by my position. All I could figure about this was that there must have been several more soldiers there. Then I could hear some trucks driving close by and parking someplace to my north- west, then those drivers walking and talking their way towards the encampment. Then I heard this sound of what I later described as a lasso or rope in a clothes dryer going ‘ka-lump, ka-lump’, steady and continuous, all night long.
“Sam” had taught me about my luminous compass. But, only two things were luminous on it; a dot on the north end of the floating pointer and a dot on a turnable dial cover. Each click of the dial cover represented either two or three degrees of the compass. I knew then that if I aligned the dots to begin, I would be pointing north or zero degrees. As I counted the clicks of the dial’s cover dot around to the east, I determined the lasso noise was coming from 100 degrees at about 200 meters, probably somewhere along the stream that I crossed earlier. It was later pegged to be an ammunition factory. I kept clicking to the south and southwest and determined the encampment was about 190 degrees from my position at about 75 to 100 meters. Finally, I clicked off the trucks’ parking area, which I determined to be about 300 meters at 300 degrees.
Later that evening, I heard a distant rifle shot. Then, a little bit later, one sounded closer, and then another, closer still. Then a plane flew by overhead. It took me a couple of times to realize that this was their way of signaling ahead in the Laotian countryside that a plane was coming into their area. The third plane that flew over lingered a while and I watched a 37mm AAA open upon it. I only heard the airplane as they always flew with all external lights out so as not to make it easy for the enemy gunners. The sound of its engines changed pitch back and forth, so I knew it was dodging bullets. I had something else to click off with my handy compass. Especially since this was the 37 mm that probably shot me down, or so I imagined. It was about 100 meters southwest of where I figured the encampment to be. I went over the numbers and burned them into my memory. After that, I didn’t have anything to do.
I got out the orange panel and rolled it up and put it under my head and I rested. I actually fell asleep just listening to the noises around me. Suddenly I was awakened by two voices getting closer and closer. I was on my back, so I turned my white, partially muddied face away from them and held my breath. These two soldiers or villagers casually passed three feet from my head and didn’t see me. It was so dark I wondered how they could walk so without flashlights, but they did, and I was thankful once again. I lay back again and rested some more. I knew I was on a path, but I couldn’t bring myself to move. I didn’t know where I’d be going, and I’d survived two close calls so far.
Sometime later in the night as I was laying there, something started pulling at my hair. It startled me awake. Whatever it was, I presume a rat or some other rodent, scurried away, making so much noise that it scared me again. I lay back down and I could hear the rodent approaching again, and again it started pulling at my hair. I decided to let it pull away as long as he would remain quiet. This lasted about 20 minutes. The rest of the night was generally uneventful, except for the occasional noise of the 37 mm AAA, the continual noise of the factory, and conversation over at the encampment.
Morning came slowly, and my confidence began to wane as I could again see – and be seen. I lay there and heard an O-2A overhead. I figured it was looking for me, but I needed to conserve my radio batteries. I figured there wasn’t anything they could do for me without the Sandy and the Jolly Green contingent on station, so I waited. Well, little did I know that Russ Howard, Covey 256, was supposed to locate me for my squadron, the 20th TASS that morning. But, that wasn’t what I had been told, and I needed now to believe that Sandy Lead would do what he said he would.
Finally, an hour after sunrise, after I heard other aircraft flying around, an F-100 Misty finally went afterburner overhead. I popped up on my radio and Sandy Lead said, “Where have you been, sleeping?” I replied, “Actually yes, and I’ve got several targets here for you.”
“What’s your situation, Covey?”
“I’m fine. From my position, I’ve got a factory at 100 degrees, 200 meters. An encampment at...” and I kept ticking off the targets.
“Slow down, slow down, Covey. Did you say a factory, like manufacturing plant?”
“Affirmative.”
“Okay, start over to make sure we have these.”
So I listed the targets again, now speaking through the tube all the time. I would just speak louder when the planes were overhead.
“Covey, it looks like we’ll have to work out here for a while before we pull you out.”
“Roger. Let me know when you’re ready.”
“Okay,” said Sandy, “now what I want you to do is turn off your radio for ten minutes and then come back up and listen. Check in briefly then go back down for another 10 minutes. We’ll do that until we’re ready to pick you up. Are you injured?”
“No.”
“Okay, shut down ten.”
“Roger.”
After a couple of check-ins, Sandy started working over the area with several sets of F-4s and A-1s. I just lay back down and listened gratefully as the bombs hit the ground around me.
Then suddenly, (seems like everything happened suddenly) a WP rocket hit very close to me. The fireball was coming right at me in the air, and dissipated just ten feet over my head. I jumped on the radio and hollered “Knock it off, knock it off. That last Willy Pete was too close to me.”
“Covey, are you all right?”
“Yes, it’s just that that last Willy Pete was about ten feet from me.”
“Okay, Okay, we need to reconstruct exactly where you’re at.”
I pulled out my signaling mirror. I didn’t want to sit up and expose myself, so rather than aiming the signaling mirror as was intended, I had to use the nearby leaf concept. The only direction I could see the Sandys was to the west. I raised the mirror upwards. The sunlight was coming in from the east. I found a leaf to my west and concentrated on getting the sun’s reflection on that leaf. When a Sandy flew near the leaf, I would move the sun flash back and forth onto the Sandy and back to the leaf. After about five minutes of this, the Sandy asked, “Are you hearing gunfire, or is that you with a mirror.”
“That’s me with a mirror.”
“Okay, Covey, you can stop now, we have you pinpointed.”
They worked over the area for about three hours, and I would faithfully pop up on the radio every ten minutes. No one was looking for me, so I would shut back down for another ten minutes.
“I need you to move away for a couple of minutes so I can listen.”
“Okay, we’ll fly away for two minutes and then come back.”
“Roger.”
“After two minutes I came up and told them I didn’t hear anything but the CBU still going off to the east.”
“OK, Covey, we’re coming in with “Salad.” This was the code word for CS type tear gas. “Do you know what I’m saying and will you be able to handle it?”
“I know, and I’ll be fine.” While in the Marine Corps, during ACT we had to stand in an enclosed shed full of tear gas without masks and sing the Marine Corps Hymn and then be called out alphabetically. Out of 50 Marines, my name, Townsley, got me out with only about three guys left inside. When I got outside I was fine except for the tears and a very cleared out sinus system.
So the gas came down, and soon I could hear the Jolly Green approaching. I used my radio to vector him to my position. I watched the penetrator begin to come down as he got nearly overhead. But then he started heading east, dragging the penetrator with him. I got up with my pistol in one hand and radio in the other and I started running after that penetrator. I ran back past my crashed aircraft and finally caught up with the penetrator, pulled down the seat and gave the thumbs up as I had been trained to do. I started going up, but the cable had been so twisted in the previous dragging maneuver that I was spinning very fast all the way up into the Jolly Green. I watched for some enemy to pop out of the woods, but wasn’t sure I’d be able to hit him spinning the way I was.
When I got inside the Jolly Green, everybody was crying, and a combat photographer was trying to take pictures of me, but he was crying too. They slowly peeled the pistol out of my hand and unloaded it. They laid me on a cot and covered me with a blanket. They knew I’d start shivering from my adrenaline rush. They weren’t wrong. I soon started shaking and could not bring it into check for about 15 minutes. I’ve got a picture of me finally relaxed, with cigarette in hand.
When I got in to NKP, Thailand to debrief with the intelligence folks, I found out I had been declared MIA, and that my wife and parents had been notified. Also, that I couldn’t have a beer until after I’d seen the doctor, and that they never laid CBU down on the target to the east of my position, or anywhere else for that matter. Those were secondary explosions I had heard, they told me. When I arrived back at the 20th TASS, four days later, George greeted me and we sat down and exchanged what happened to us, trying to make the stories match up and make more sense.
My squadron commander asked me if I wanted a command post job. I said, “No, I’ve got to get back on that horse.” My nickname thereafter was “Cowboy,” until I assumed the “Blister” nickname when Army Sergeant John “Blister” Grant died as a mercenary in South Africa in the early 80s. Grant was someone I’d flown several Prairie Fire Special Operations missions with over Laos. He was my favorite SOG/Prairie Fire observer. He loved war. He had been in Vietnam four years when I met him and had been in six “non-landings” in helicopters and airplanes.
The Air Force Times used to have a section called, “Stake Your Claim.” The guys in the squadron submitted my name as “The only Air Force second lieutenant to be shot down and rescued in Southeast Asia.” I never heard of a counter claim, and I don’t know if it’s really true or not.
Some sergeants from Clark AFB’s PACAF Jungle Survival School came to DaNang especially to debrief me. “Sam” wasn’t with them, but they promised to pass the word that I felt him perched on my shoulder. They took back one of my hats with the second lieutenant bar on it and nailed it to their “Successful Recovery Board” with my name attached. For years thereafter I would have guys tell me “my story,” as they remembered it, and that my second lieutenant hat was still the only second lieutenant hat on the board.
“Oh, you’re the guy who left the footprint in the riverbank,“ they would tease.
“Well, yeah, but they started using cloth instead of waxed paper to wrap your survival gear because of me, and also you learned something new about the PRC-46. Why do they teach that footprint thing?”
“Because it was a mistake.”
“Hell, getting shot down was the mistake!”