FACing Good Time
submitted by: Alva Leon Matheson
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After survival training at Stead and FAC school at Hurburt I departed for Vietnam, via the Philippines. The jungle survival school started on Monday and I arrived on Thursday. So another FAC and I went to Manila on a Philippine bus with the chickens tied on top. On Monday we reported to the survival school, only to be told that FACs were needed right now and to take the next plane out.
I reported to FAC headquarters in Saigon and was assigned to a special mission. I would be stationed at Khe Sanh in the northern (I Corps) part of the country. Having never heard of the place, I was not impressed either positively or negatively. My next stop was DaNang, which was our home base (Khe Sanh was considered TDY). We spent a few days there getting a local checkout and taking care of our paperwork.
Briefing for my first checkout mission, another FAC in the room was on his last mission. By the time we took off, we heard on the radio that he had decided to play it safe and fly higher than normal. He was involved in a mid-air collision with an F-4. (Which, I am sure, many FACs would agree was one on the biggest hazards of FACing.)
After the checkout, I flew to Khe Sanh and met the Army commander. He proceeded to tell me that 10,000 VC who were planning to attack at any minute surrounded us, and within 30 minutes 85% of us would probably be dead! He then planned to call for napalm strikes on the camp and kill the rest us!
I hadn’t even been in country a week. I was not ready to hear this, and needless to say, I wasn’t exactly comfortable with the situation. After another week, the situation had deteriorated further, to the point that we went to Hue to spend the night. We would fly back to Khe Sanh each morning, fly our missions and return to Hue at night. After a week of this routine, we had become conditioned to the point that we moved back to Khe Sanh.
The threat was still there, and the Green Berets at Khe Sanh decided that they needed all the help they could get, even Air Force personnel. To prepare us they checked us out on the 57 mm recoilless rifle (I quickly learned that the back end was as lethal as the front end). I was assigned to stand at one end of a trench leading to the center of the camp and to shoot anyone coming in. Luckily, I was never called on to do that. They also checked us out on the mortar. To put a shell on our perimeter the tube had to be pointed almost vertical (the perimeter was about 100 yards away). When the mortar fired, the shell could be tracked visually to quite a height and then visual contact would be lost. We had to wait for it to hit only 100 yards away and hope the wind decided not to blow in the wrong direction.
To get to our quarters at Khe Sanh, we climbed down into a mortar pit and entered a tunnel in the side. The tunnel led to a room that was about 10’ X 10’, where five Air Force pilots slept under ground. In the tunnel was a metal tube about 1.5 inches square and about 10 feet long. I was informed that it was filled with explosives to be used to cut a hole in the concertina wire for us to get out when the camp was overrun. Oh joy!
The first night there I had to relieve myself and so I went searching for the latrine wearing only under shorts, shower clogs, and a flashlight. It was between the inner and outer rolls of concertina wire. When I started back to the tunnel, I couldn’t find the passage through the wire. Having just been briefed that we would be attacked any minute, I was in a heck of a predicament, armed with only a flashlight. Fortunately, I found my way back to the bunker.
On one of my first nights they showed movies on the side of one of the buildings. I thought, why not? I don’t remember the feature, but I do remember that it was pitch black and I was surrounded by so called friendly Vietnamese. After a few minutes I said the heck with this and went back to my underground sanctuary.
We had two revetments at Khe Sanh that were dug into the ground to protect two of the airplanes. The ramps leading down had about a 30 degree angle, and required that we put chains around the landing gear and use a truck to slowly lower the airplane so that it wound up below ground level.
When the C-123 mail plane came in, it landed uphill, rolled out to the end, turned around, threw the mail on the runway, and took off. The pilot then called on the radio to tell us that we had mail waiting on the end of the runway.
Calvin Anderson also flew out of Khe Sanh. He told me that he once spotted a .50 caliber gun emplacement just off the trail. He shot a smoke rocket at it, but missed and hit a fuel truck parked nearby. The truck blew up and took out the gun. Is that skill or luck?
I had been told in Saigon that the Khe Sanh mission required a top-secret clearance. Since I only had a secret clearance they supplied me with the necessary forms, which I tried to fill out while at Khe Sanh. A few details were not immediately available, but I did the best I could and took the forms to DaNang the next time a plane had to go in for its 100 hour inspection. I dropped the forms off at the Air Police section. The sergeant started giving me a hard time because the forms were not as complete as he would like. I thought, here is a sergeant giving me, a captain, a hard time. If I don’t fill out these forms properly I can’t go back to Khe Sanh. It just doesn’t compute. I told the sergeant to shove the forms and walked out. When I checked into my next assignment in the states, they told me, “You have a top secret clearance.”
After leaving the Air Police station, I walked to Personnel and was stopped by a lieutenant colonel for not wearing a hat. I apologized and explained that we weren’t used to wearing hats at my station. He said that I must live in a pigpen, and I said, “Yes sir, that’s about it.” My reply made him mad. Then I got into a borrowed jeep and was promptly stopped by the Air Police. The AP’s informed me that the jeep was dirty and would have to be washed. With that, I said the heck with the whole thing and got in my airplane and flew back to Khe Sanh.
The force at Khe Sanh consisted of a Green Beret A-Team, a USSF SOG (Studies and Observations Group) detachment, two hundred CIDG (Civilian Irregular Defense Group) troops, five Air Force pilots, three Air Force mechanics,an Air Force intelligence sergeant, and an Air Force radio operator. There were no US Marines there at that time.
We worked closely with the SOG troops, who were very special, highly trained and capable. I am proud to have been associated with them. They would go into known VC areas with 11 man teams and observe and gather intelligence for a few days. We flew over the area as part of our regular mission and established radio contact. If they got into trouble, we notified their home base, they got helicopters on the way, and then we requested fighters to help neutralize the area. Occasionally, the SOG team members would get in the back seat and fly with us. I mentioned to one that I was very impressed with their bravery and wouldn’t do what they did. He replied that I was wrong; he was out there with ten of his buddies, who would protect him. He thought the crazy guy was the one flying that little airplane all by himself. I still believe I was the one who was right.
More than once, when the SOG team leader checked in, I could hear him panting as he ran through the jungle, shouting on the radio that the enemy was on his tail. And to come get him out! I would then put the wheels in motion for an extraction. We never lost anyone while I was there.
One day we were returning from a mission over Laos in a 2-ship formation. We got a call from “Elephant” which was a Laotian camp just across the border. They requested that I go to a certain set of map coordinates and if, “You see someone – shoot him.” I was not sure what I was supposed to shoot him with, but I went. I didn’t find anyone, but while I was scouting, the pilot in the other plane, Salty Dog Harrison, decided to practice his smoke grenade dropping accuracy. As soon as the smoke grenade left the window “Elephant” was on the radio shouting, “Hound Dog, Hound Dog why for you dropped smoke? We friendly, no shoot, no shoot!” Everyone in Vietnam knew that smoke usually marked the beginning of an airstrike. Fortunately we were able to calm him down. And we were very careful after that about where we dropped our smoke.
When I first started FACing at Khe Sanh, our call sign was Hound Dog. After about two months, I was transferred to Dong Ha and the call sign was changed to Covey. I kind of liked the Hound Dog call sign and hated to lose it. Plus, as Hound Dogs we had a nifty shoulder patch with Snoopy on it.
At Dong Ha our mission was flying over North Vietnam. The living conditions were slightly improved in that I moved above ground level to a tent. I also felt much more secure because we were surrounded by U.S. Marines. We always flew in pairs, as we had done at Khe Sanh, which meant we took off together, flew together across the river, and kept in radio contact while spotting and then joined up for the return home.
Our Commander, Colonel Abersole, flew up from DaNang to see how things were going. He flew one mission over the North and came back with four feet of his right wing blown off. He approached the runway at a 40 degree angle, but couldn’t make the left turn to line up. He chopped the power just over the runway. With loss of power, the aircraft rolled to the right and crashed. He was not badly hurt, but the aircraft was totaled. He never came up again. General Momeyer, the commander of the 7th Air Force, came up to Dong Ha to observe our operations and to talk to the twelve pilots there. After listening to some of our stories, he stated that this was a politician’s war and was going to be won at political tables. We should not take any chances, just serve our year’s tour and go home. These were shocking words to troops who were out trying to win the war and help the Marines in any way possible, who were in serious combat every day. He was probably right, but it was a heck of a way to motivate troops and fight a war.
Jim Kirwin, who also flew out of Dong Ha, was a bit of a wild one. He went out on patrol with the Marines one night to see what it was like. He also landed on a road in North Vietnam to say that he had been on the ground in North Vietnam. One day he and I had the same mission. We separated over North Vietnam and I soon got a call to join him. He had seen the enemy firing at him but couldn’t see where the fire was coming from. He wanted me to look for muzzle flashes while he attracted the fire. As he buzzed the general area of the guns I could hear them fire but I couldn’t see any muzzles flashes. Jim decided to try another run. Once again I could hear the guns but could not see the muzzle flashes, but I noticed that Jim was flying kind of funny. I managed to join up on him and saw an eight-inch diameter hole in the top of his wing. He was all right except for his aileron cable, which had been cut. He managed to get back and land with no problem.
Someone got the bright idea that we should go out looking for trucks at night. They sent us two starlight scopes. We flew with one pilot in the back seat with the starlight scope, who looked for trucks driving down the trails toward the south. We found them all right, but the fighters couldn’t hit them.
One night I was in the front seat with Bob Mouw in the rear seat, and he spotted a truck. The fighters were an hour away, so I buzzed the truck while Bob kept him occupied with his M- 16. As I turned to come around for another pass, I flew over another trail with another truck. He saw what was happening to his buddies, so he stopped. We kept them both cornered for an hour and then a flight of F-4s showed up, but they couldn’t hit the trucks. By then we had been up for almost four hours, so we went home. The trucks were gone the next day.
Flying at night over North Vietnam was just plain hazardous. When we took off, the Marines would announce they were firing artillery for five to 10 miles in an arc from 270 degrees clockwise to 090 degrees, which included our route. Fortunately, no one was ever hit. Once north of the river separating North from South Vietnam, we had to be careful of fighters doing their own scouting. The place was very crowded at night.
One night, we were returning home about daybreak. Gary Sheets was in the front and I was in the back. It seemed to be the perfect time to check the lead of my M-16, which was loaded with tracers, so I cut loose at a tree trunk. Trouble was, I forgot to tell Gary. He heard the automatic fire and saw the tracers between the airplane and the ground. Totally surprised, he reacted rather strongly, and he has never forgiven me for not warning him for what I was about to do.
When we rolled in to mark a target we tried to start as slow as possible. Otherwise the speed gained in the dive would cause us to skid because of the torque offset built into the rudder. We also wanted to dive as steeply as possible to improve our accuracy. One day as I was putting in a flight of B-57’s I got the nose up a little too much and stalled. The airplane went into a spin. I quickly recovered with the nose down on the target and fired the rocket. The B-57 pilot exclaimed that he had never seen a plane turn that fast. I didn’t have the heart to tell him it was an accident. I just let him think it was part of my normal tactics.
When we first arrived at Dong Ha, the runway was dirt. When the C-130’s landed they created a dust storm that played havoc with our engines and caused them to use oil. One day, Bob Mouw developed zero oil pressure as he was returning home. Fortunately, he made it back. In so doing, he found that if he reduced power and lowered the nose the oil pressure would drop if the quantity were getting low, even though the pressure was good in level flight. So we all started reducing power and lowering the nose every hour to check our oil quantity. We called this the Mouw-Mouw check. It saved my bacon on a later occasion.
We were chalking up missions over the North, thinking that it would reduce our tour, because 100 missions over North Vietnam constituted a complete tour. But when we got to 80 missions, 7th Air Force said, “No credit for the 80 missions, but we could not fly any more missions over North Vietnam.” I was then reassigned to Nha Trang.
On the way through DaNang, I met the crews of the ABCCC control ship, call sign Hillsboro. They said they could arrange an assignment for me to fly with them, and I accepted. I flew one mission and became bored. I called a fellow FAC, John Hanna, who was at Kontum with only a month to go on his tour. He was getting nervous that he might not make it. We agreed to swap assignments. We didn’t talk to anyone else, we just made the agreement between us and I went to Kontum. Later, in Saigon, the FAC commander chewed me out for swapping jobs without permission.
At Kontum we had it made. We lived in an Army compound in real quarters. No more tents. The army even apologized because Calvin Anderson and I had to share a room.
The airport was across town from the compound. The Army said that a sniper occasionally took shots at them driving through town. So with typical Air Force logic, I asked, “Why not go out and get him?” They replied, “Why? He has never hit anyone and if he were taken out, the VC might replace him with someone who could shoot.” That was typical Army logic!
To get back and forth between the compound and the airport, we used the Army’s jeep. They soon let use know that we should get our own. So I called DaNang. Assigning us a jeep was no problem. Getting it to us was. They suggested that it be dropped off at Pleiku and that I could then drive it to Kontum. That was a free vacation trip I immediately declined.
We were also supporting SOG teams out of Kontum. One day I called the leader of a team that had just been inserted the day before. He told me in a low voice to get them out.
So I called the support Hueys standing by at Dak To and got them on the way. Not knowing the exact location of the team, I started an S search pattern right on the treetops. Suddenly I heard a succinct radio message from the leader that simply said, “don’t piss.” I then had them located.
The trees were so high that the slings on the Hueys couldn’t reach the ground. By then a flight of F-100’s had arrived with 500 pound bombs.
Remembering the spot, I dropped smoke and had the F-100 blast a hole in the trees to allow the Hueys to get below the treetops. I still have a hard time believing we actually pulled this off without injuring anyone.
In a few minutes the team was in the clearing and the first Huey was on the way in. The Hueys didn’t have hoists, so the team strapped into slings three at a time. They were then flown, hanging under the helicopter, to a clear field about five kilometers away where the Huey landed and got them inside.
On the last lift out, the team leader, strapped into his sling, caught his apparel on a long vine. It was trailing below him, but he continued firing his machine gun back at the ground without interruption. Those SOG troops were really tough. My hat is off to them.
While I was at Kontum, Gary Sheets went to Saigon to tell the brass what a rotten deal we had gotten for not having our missions over North Vietnam count. After a month at Kontum, I got a call that said I could get four months off my tour for my 80 missions over the North, or do 20 more missions over North Vietnam and go home. I chose to go back to flying over North Vietnam.
Just before I left Kontum, the SOG group offered to take us up for five parachute jumps out of a helicopter and give us jump wings. I had always wanted to jump out with a parachute and found it very tempting, but I was more interested in completing my 100 missions over North Vietnam and going home.
By now it was November of 1966 and things were heating up over the North. On one of my missions, I noticed things looked different but couldn’t put my finger on it. I started scouting at about 500 feet. Suddenly I looked down and there was a quad .50 Cal. pointed at me, but they did not fire. Why, I shall never know. It still makes me nervous when I think of those guns pointing at me just 500 feet below.
I looked straight ahead and hightailed it out of there. I then climbed to 5,000 feet and called for fighters. When the fighters arrived, the gunners starting shooting at me. Fortunately, they all missed, but I can testify that the tracers were going by me even at 5,000 feet.
I completed my 100 missions over North Vietnam and also had 100 missions over Laos. On my last mission I called the tower, (Dong Ha had gotten a tower and aluminum planking on the runway) and asked for a 360 overhead pattern. Getting clearance, I put it on the deck over the end of the runway, executed a loop and landed out of the bottom of it. I didn’t tell them I meant a vertical 360 overhead. A perfect ending to my tour.