Down and Dirty: First FAC Combat Mission

submitted by: Alva Leon Matheson


In May of 1972 I volunteered to return to Vietnam in an O-2, nine months after completing a one year tour as an F-4 aircraft commander flying out of DaNang. The North Vietnamese had invaded South Vietnam and FACs were sorely needed. I flew two rides with an instructor, doing both close air support and interdiction missions, attempting to stem the tide of the communist forces invading the South. I received training in preparation for my check ride while flying actual combat missions. My third ride was a check ride and I was signed off as a fully qualified combat FAC.
The next morning I checked in for my assignment. I was to fly to a mountain jungle location where the day before a helicopter dropping off a Special Forces team next to a Montagnard village came under heavy fire. It had to take off immediately, leaving one team member behind on the ground outside the village in enemy territory. My mission was to see if I could make radio contact with him, check on his condition and try to affect a rescue plan.
I was to rendezvous with two helicopter gunships and one slick Huey helicopter. Two A-1s were on strip alert to support this mission in case we picked up heavy resistance.
I was immediately stunned by the responsibility I would have on my first mission. The life of the Special Forces man was in my hands; do a good job and he might live, mess it up and he would probably die a horrible death at the hands of the enemy.
We had a complicated system for selecting the proper radio frequency for authentication; of course they changed it every few hours. I did not expect someone under extreme stress to get it right a day later.
I arrived in the area, rendezvoused with the helicopters as planned, made a radio call, and said a quick prayer to hear an answer. Immediately I got an answer with the correct call sign and authentication. He was alive, uninjured and not captured.
He reported that several hundred North Vietnamese soldiers had surrounded the friendly village and were shooting mortars and machine guns into it. Close examination revealed that there was only one place to affect a pickup so I encoded the location and passed it on to him and requested that he move to that location. His reply was awesome: “That’s what I figured out yesterday. I’m at that location now; I moved last night.”
We were getting .51 caliber machine gun fire from a location overlooking the village; the pick- up would have to be made from one spot on the road that ran into the village. That particular spot was not in the field of fire of the machine gun; it was blocked by trees. While on the road the helicopter would not be exposed to the gun-fire, but getting out would be a problem; the helicopter would be a sitting duck. Enemy soldiers with AK-47s were on both sides of the road next to the pickup area and were very close to the survivor.
I called for the launch of the A-1s but was told they had been assigned another mission by higher headquarters and would not be available. Great, now what! There was no one to ask what to do, no one to even get any advice from. It was my problem and I had to deal with it.
My O-2 was loaded with fourteen 2.75 inch WP rockets so I decided to try to take out the .51 caliber machine gun with my rockets. I made 10 hot passes in an attempt to destroy the gunner. Every time I pointed the nose of my aircraft at him he would start shooting at me. I shot back.
I told the helicopter gunships to start working the tree lines while avoiding the area where the survivor was. While the .51 caliber was busy with me the gunships were able to work over the enemy troops with the AK-47s. The gunships ran out of ammunition and fuel and had to leave the area. The slick Huey that was to make the pick up was really hurting for fuel and wanted to leave the area. It was do or die time.
I informed the survivor of our situation and he said, “I’ll still be here tomorrow.” I didn’t think so. Desperate, I made one more rocket pass on the gun. I had four rockets left and as I rolled in on the gun I cleared the helicopter in to make the pickup.
I told the survivor to pop smoke and shot three rockets so that they would impact between the gun and the helicopter to blot out the view of the gunners. I started to pull off when the tracers from the .51 caliber switched from me to the chopper. I went throttle idle, hard rudder, and executed a hammer-head stall and dove back at the gun to fire my last rocket.
This time I could get low before I fired and maybe hit him. I can still visualize the two gunners looking the other way as I fired my last rocket. It missed them by about 15 feet, impacting on the outside edge of a dirt embankment they had built around the gun. They came back on me, firing tracers that went just above my left wing. They had missed me yet again. While they were shooting at me the survivor was picked up.
The helicopter had arranged to have a refueling point established 20 miles down the road; they landed and refueled, took off and got the survivor to safety. My first mission as a combat FAC was down and dirty and very personal.
The responsibility that I felt as a FAC and the quick thinking required under severe stress and constantly changing conditions was more demanding than most of my 243 combat missions as a fighter pilot.