A Night Mission
submitted by: Alva Leon Matheson
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By this time I was wide awake and had my feet on the cement floor. While hurriedly getting dressed for flight, I realized that I had been asleep only one hour and that the prospects of getting any more sleep this night was rapidly disappearing. The Army commander of Advisory Team 96, Lieutenant Colonel Penalton, had called an officer’s meeting for 1930 hours the previous evening to discuss Team problems and the meeting had lasted longer than expected. Colonel Penalton had cautioned members to be especially alert as the local VC had been quiet for several days and the intelligence people were reporting that something was stirring. How right they were. Some three hours later the VC were trying to destroy Binh Thuy.
On the way out the door I grabbed my personal .45 caliber pistol, my M-16 rifle, and a bag of loaded magazines. I didn’t know what was ahead, but I was determined to be prepared for whatever.
When I arrived at my jeep, the Army Senior Intelligence Specialist, Master Sergeant Delano, was waiting. He was to be my “backseater.” I had flown with Sergeant Delano twice and had been impressed by his knowledge and demeanor. He carried a Thompson submachine gun, which this night he had slung over his shoulder and in addition he was carrying a 40 mm grenade launcher and a bag of grenades. This was going to be a heavy weight take-off. I was pleased with my passenger, as I knew that he was the most knowledgeable person on the Army Team regarding VC operations. In addition, this early Friday morning of 8 July 1966, I had been flying as a FAC barely one month and I needed all the help I could get.
We tossed our stuff in the jeep and moved out smartly for the airport, which was about three miles across town from Eakin Compound. A quick stop at the radio/intelligence office provided no new information. As we drove through the blacked-out city of Can Tho, the thought crossed my mind that the VC might block the road to the airport and have a trap set to stop the FAC. I had my M-16 beside me in the jeep, however my bag of spare magazines was in the back seat. I made a mental note to not do that again. As it turned out, the trip to the airport was dark and uneventful. When we arrived at the aircraft I could see that the Crew Chief, Staff Sergeant Dale Taft, was already there and had removed the tie-downs and chocks. I asked Dale if the airplane was ready to fly and his reply was, “Yes, sir.” During the time that I had been at Can Tho, Sergeant Taft had proved that he was an outstanding Crew Chief and that if he said the aircraft was ready to fly, you could take that to the bank. He was indeed superior.
Sergeant Delano and I stowed our gear in the O-1 and climbed aboard. After engine start, I immediately started to taxi the short distance to the PSP runway. By the time I had taxied to the take-off point, the engine oil temperature was already in the green so I shoved the throttle full forward and we launched into the black night. Binh Thuy was only 15 miles away so as soon as we were airborne we could see the flares being dropped by a flare-ship. I leveled off at 1,000 feet on the altimeter and headed for the flares. We could see fires burning on the Binh Thuy flight line and hanger row. My radio operator notified me that Binh Thuy had reported that the mortaring had ceased and that the VC were retreating. When we flew into the flare lighted area we could see that this was true. We could see hundreds of small figures in black pajamas fleeing to the Southeast. They looked like black ants moving across the landscape. It was at this point that I became aware of a critical problem. Out of the flare-light and not more than 100 feet directly in front of the aircraft appeared a parachute with an object hanging under it. I immediately put the aircraft into a vertical bank to miss the parachute holding a burned-out flare. No sooner had I straightened up from that near-miss than another one loomed out of the flare-light. After dodging a half a dozen of these burned-out parachute flares I moved out from under the flare area. Any one of these burned-out flares could bring down an O-1 aircraft. The problem was that the C-47 was dropping the flares from too high an elevation and the flares were burning out at 1,500 to 2,000 feet above the ground. The flare-ship was ARVN controlled and was not communicating on the radio channels that I was monitoring. I tried to contact the flare-ship on every channel available to me with no results. I asked my radio operator to determine what channel the flare-ship was working. I needed to have the flare-ship move away from the target area so I could work the two flights of fighters that were stacked above the flare-ship. While I was waiting for the flare-ship to move away, I could see that the VC soldiers running on the ground were dispersing and beginning to disappear into spider-holes or wherever VC go when they want to be invisible.
To further complicate this mission, it must be noted that the O-1 aircraft was not equipped to fly at night. The aircraft instrument lighting was so poor that most pilots elected to not use the installed instrument lights. The instrument lighting consisted of a small fluorescent light mounted on each side of the instrument panel. The fluorescent lights created such strong reflections on the forward windscreen that forward visibility was greatly reduced. When working with a FAC controlled flare-ship, the lack of instrument lighting is not a big problem since the FAC can swing by a flare to check the instruments periodically. The problem arises when the flares cease illuminating due to duds, depletion of flare supply or whatever. When this happens, the FAC finds himself suddenly plunged into total darkness with no visible horizon, no night vision due to working in flare light, and no instrument lights since they were turned-off to decrease the glare. Even the use of a flashlight will delay the return of night vision. While waiting for some way to communicate with the flare-ship, I was able to direct artillery fire on the rapidly departing VC while staying outside of the flare drop area. It was a slow process as only two tubes of artillery were available for this area. The VC were very clever to choose departure routes with limited artillery coverage. My problem with the ARVN flare-ship finally ended when the flare-ship ran out of flares and departed the target area. I had requested the services of a “Puff the Magic Dragon”, a USAF AC-47 Gunship. The request was denied because Puff was busy further north.
One flight of F-100s that had been orbiting had returned to home plate due to low fuel. Fortunately, they were replaced by another flight of F-100s which I now brought down to observe my mark and unload their stores. The second flight that was holding high and dry were prop-driven A-1Es loaded with 500 pound bombs and plenty of fuel. I was working the jets first as they had limited loiter time. The VC were fleeing down both sides of a straight canal that was visible to the fighters. For some reason, the VC helped identify their location by sporadically firing their rifles in the direction of the attacking aircraft and the FAC aircraft. The ground fire looked like blinking Christmas lights strung out along the banks of the canal. The F-100s dropped hundreds of CBU bomblets along both banks of the canal and many of the Christmas lights went out. The F-100s fired out their 20 mm guns and departed the target area. The A1-Es were happy to finally get the opportunity to do something other than fly in circles and watch other fighters do their thing. The A-1Es were carrying 500 pound bombs, which are not ideal for widely dispersed enemy personnel. A few Christmas lights could still be seen and they received the 500 pound bombs. By the time the A-1s had released all their bombs and fired out their 20 millimeter ammunition, daylight was beginning in the east, my O-1 fuel was getting low and all of the VC had disappeared.
Sergeant Delano had fired all of his grenades. We were unable to see any results of the explosions in the shadowy flare-light but we both believed that the grenades helped speed the VC departure. Master Sergeant Delano would be killed two weeks later in an Army Shotgun O-1, brought down by VC ground fire not far from the area of our air strikes. He was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his participation in the Binh Thuy mortar defense. As the FAC pilot, I was also recommended for the DFC, however my DFC fell through the cracks somewhere along the administrative trail and it was never awarded. It was still dark on the ground when we returned to Can Tho for fuel and rockets. We grabbed a quick breakfast and went into the air again for a VR that would continue until well after daylight. No further sightings of VC were made on this mission.