Experiences in the Delta

submitted by: Alva Leon Matheson


I was sent to Vietnam from the Pentagon with no known assignment, but with orders to stop in the Philippines for jungle survival school. On arriving at Tan Son Nhut one night, I learned I was assigned to the 505th Tactical Air Control Group. “What was the 505th?” I thought. Well, it had all the O-1s, the FACs, and the Radar Sites. I was assigned as Assistant Operations Officer. Shortly after being assigned there, it was determined by General Momyer that an “in-theater” FAC School would be established at Binh Thuy. My understanding at the time was that he was disturbed about all the operational accidents occurring in Vietnam, including FACs in O-1s, and he thought a FAC school would help. I’m sure there were other inputs resulting in this decision. The 505th called in a number of O-1s from around the country along with FACs with several months experience to be instructors, and established the school at Binh Thuy.
The staff established a curriculum designed to impart the knowledge of the experienced FACs to newly arriving FACs and to stress safety in flying the O-1 at assigned locations. It was determined that I would attend the first class with newly arriving FACs from Hurlburt Field, Florida. I had the additional requirement of getting checked out in the O-1. The 22nd TASS supported the school with maintenance for the O-1s and with other support.
I only remember a couple of things about Binh Thuy. The curriculum included one or two night flights. It soon became apparent that the VC were firing at the O-1s on final, so we were instructed to fly a very high final approach to avoid being fired on by VC on the north side of the Mekong River, which was just north of the base. It was thought unique at the time that this was the only “Air Force School” where you received live ground fire during your training flights.
The other thing I remember is watching the Vietnamese “scramble” for a combat mission in their A-1s. They gathered their gear, strolled out to their aircraft, and leisurely got airborne. I couldn’t equate this with our idea of a scramble, as practiced in SAC, ADC, etc. Then I began to think, “These guys have been flying over here for six or seven years or more, so they might be excused for not taking a “scramble” quite as seriously as we did.
The Commander of the 22nd TASS at that time (July/August 1966) was someone named Jack, and one of the students knew him as “Jumping Jack So-and-So” who was a well known quarterback for Mississippi or Alabama a few years earlier – well known in college football circles, at least in the South.
When I finished the school, I went to Ben Tre, in the Delta, for two weeks of on-the-job-train- ing, so I could become a qualified FAC (but not a Class A FAC for assignment with US troops because that would require that I had been a fighter pilot for a year). There were two FACs there and our call signs were Beaver. All FACs assigned in the delta, or ARVN Four Corps area, had call signs which were water animinals. The airstrip was a mile or two west of the town. They had one or two O-1s and a 55-gallon barrel of gas with a hand pump. You pulled up to the barrel, stood on a stool, and one-man hand pumped the gas while the other held the nozzle and fed gas through a chamois skin, as a filter, into the air- plane. We lived in the army compound in town, where everyone retreated to at dusk when the gates were closed. I never understood why the VC didn’t bother the airplanes. Maybe they were supposed to be guarded by the ARVN. The local French power company provided electricity, for the compound. I was told the Army paid them $25,000 a month for the electricity. We never had a failure.
The #1 FAC there was a tall rangy man with flaming red hair. Do you recall a comic strip in the 40s-50s about a cowboy called Red Ryder? He had a little Indian boy sidekick who carried a bow and arrows, named “Little Beaver.” All the Army troops called the #1 FAC, a captain, Red Ryder. They all called the #2 FAC, a Lieutenant; you guessed it – Little Beaver. There was quite a bit of action in the Delta for the Beaver FACs – sufficient to get me enough OJT to become qualified.
Ben Tre was the town, which was captured by the VC and then recaptured by the ARVN. During the battles the town was pretty well demolished. This was also when a reporter quoted an U.S. Army Captain as saying, “We had to destroy the town in order to save it.” The media and anti-war activists who ridiculed the Army and painted the whole effort in Vietnam as being ludicrous used that quote widely. I personally doubted that the Army officer really said such a thing.
I remember one of my first OJT missions with Red Ryder. He was in the back seat teaching me to direct an air strike. We had A-1s bombing in the vicinity of some hooches and a farming area. I did not have a good perspective on the action yet, and said to Red Ryder as we circled the hooches, “I saw some people running around the farmyard down there.” Red Ryder said, “Those are not people, those are ducks.”