Blue Sixteen

submitted by: Alva Leon Matheson


In the late spring of 1969 I was flying O-2 FAC missions from the 23 TASS OL-1 at Ubon. The weather was the typical monsoon season, overcast with layers of clouds intermittent all way to the ground. I was in my assigned area conducting some VRing southeast of Tchepone when “Hillsboro”, Airborne Command and Control Center (ABCCC), called me on the radio and asked if I could take a pop-up flight whose primary target had been scrubbed after takeoff due to bad weather.
I had just noticed three trucks on the move – guess the gomers didn’t think anyone would be flying in the soup that day – so I told Hillsboro “absolutely – send them to me.” The clouds seemed to know that I needed an opening to work so in the next few minutes, and just as the fighters came up frequency, the clouds parted. I knew that visibility would allow them to attack the target.
When the fighters checked in on my frequency (the exact Navy Call Sign escaped me years ago) it was: “Blue Lead...Toop...Treep...Forp ...Fife...all the way to Sixteen.” This Navy flight had 16 A-7s looking for a target, and was almost “Bingo” on gas. I quickly marked the lead truck, got out of the way of the 16 ship descending wheel “one-pass-haul-ass” deliveries, and was even able to give the wingmen corrections off the preceding bomb impacts. After the last A-7 came off and the flight called Winchester, I went in to assess the BDA. The lead two trucks were on fire and the third looked damaged with its contents all over the road!
Just as quickly as the clouds had made an opening so that I could work that flight of 16, they sensed that we were done and everything returned to broken/layered/overcast within minutes.
We did good work that day!