Cricket West Operation
submitted by: Alva Leon Matheson
Ned and all,
I can give you a little of the earliest 23rd TASS involvement in CW. So can Dick Strong and Glenn Bremenkamp.
When we first arrived, in the first week of April of 1966 (we three arrived together with Nick Kormanik, in a flight of four from Bien Hoa), Ben Witterman and Intel briefed us. We were to avoid getting involved in the activity that was evident along a line that ran parallel to the Mekong and was near Mahaxey at one point. This was not “our war” and we were not even supposed to ask questions. Of course we still flew near those trenches and other signs of activity coming and going, and the back-seaters we sometimes carried got loud and animated on their little radios when we flew over that area, but no VR and no airstrikes – and no questions. The Royal side of that line was one of the first places I ever got shot at. Just small arms.
For some reason I became the squadron Intel Liaison Officer, and I started to urge Intel to arrange for us to get briefings on CW and what was going on there. The answer was always no. I am only semi-proud of the fact that I had a hand in changing that – at least I precipitated a change that was inevitable. It happened almost by accident.
One day when a couple of us were RTB with our rockets still in the tubes, I was trying to tell my wingman about something I had seen on the ground near the Pathet Lao side of that line. He wasn’t readily understanding my verbal guiding (despite me being a highly expert USAF FAC!) and so I just rolled in and lobbed a smoke into the vicinity. It hit near a stream bank and he then saw whatever it was I was describing. We continued on over the Fence without another thought about
it. Several days later I was in the last pair home for the day. Lt.Col Louie Johnston was in the TUOC (unless this was before the TUOC was built – don’t remember for sure). After my debrief he came over and said something like this: “Billy, you are the last one in the squadron I can ask about this, but did you happen to fire a rocket into Cricket West the other day?” I thought for a moment and said that I had. He was astounded – this is not flattering – he said I was the last one he would have expected to do that! I guess I seemed kind of mild to him or something. Anyway, he and I sweated the arrival of the air attache from Vientiane two days later, supposedly to investigate this crime. It seems my rocket had landed very close to a Royal Lao soldier and the protest was made. I took the opening to point out that we were ignorant of that area and would continue to make errors because they insisted on keeping us that way. Col J told me later that many of those he asked said that while they had not fired the rocket there was little reason why it might not have been them, since they knew nothing about what was going on. The attache never showed up, but soon we got our briefing and before long we were even permitted to lay in some helpful air strikes once in a while.
We used to direct attacks on the caves over in CW later on, sometimes starting fires. One day when I was the ops officer of the day was really busy in CW. Somewhere we got word that they had located a headquarters cave and the Royal Lao were asking for airstrikes. North Vietnam was socked-in, so many flights were available. We were given clearance, probably by 7th AF, but Invert was soon overwhelmed and I took the radio jeep up on Invert’s hill, set the throttle, and played the role of “extra high man” for what must have been hours (this was before there was an airborne Cricket Control on a regular basis). Flight after flight, mostly of F-4s, checked in on our squadron UHF frequency, and I was orbiting them and bringing them in to the high FAC when he said he was ready. We just pounded the hell out of some of those karsts where the headquarters was supposed to be. From where I stood I could see the fighters much of the time, and lots of smoke from their bombs. A few days later they said we had done great damage, killed many enemy, etc. You never knew what to believe, but we were sure somebody had got a pretty good headache from all those 750s.
As to where the area got the name Cricket West, I no longer recall. But I am pretty sure it was after we got there. If you want exact dates for the inadvertant rocket (they called me the Phantom after that), and the heavy bombing I can look them up in my journal one of these days.