FACing
submitted by: Alva Leon Matheson
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Although the FACs had numerous special assignments their main mission was to find enemy targets and destroy those targets by identifying them for the fighters and bombers assigned to them by the Airborne Command and Control Center (ABCCC). To mark these targets the FAC would fire a white phosphorous rocket in the vicinity of the target, instruct the strike aircraft where the target was positioned from the FACs smoke and would clear the aircraft in “hot” on each pass. The term “Hit My Smoke” was used when the FAC’s rocket would hit the target.
Once the aircraft had dropped its munitions the FAC would clear the next aircraft in “hot” to strike the target until either the aircraft were out of munitions or the target was destroyed. After the strike aircraft had gone back to home station the FAC stayed in the area to do a bomb damage assessment (BDA). This doesn’t sound like it is too difficult until you realize that while doing these maneuvers the FAC is being shot by 12.7 mm, 23 mm, 37 mm or 57 mm guns or a combination of all these guns during most of the time they were flying over the target. You could tell the pilots who had the “Right Stuff”; they were the ones who volunteered to take the most dangerous missions and were successful in completing their mission at whatever the cost was.
I was lucky in that I hadn’t been hit once during a combat mission until after flying over the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos for about three months. I was flying a mission over a portion of Laos on the borders of South Vietnam and North Vietnam called “Four Alpha” which was the most densely defended area we flew over. Four Alpha was where North Vietnam, South Vietnam and Laos borders joined. During one of my passes I was hit by a 37 mm shell that froze one of my engine props in the unfeathered position. That wouldn’t have been so bad but the maintenance people at Nakhon Phanom (NKP), our home station, decided to safety wire our centerline tanks as we had been ejecting so many of them after getting hit. Well, I soon discovered an OV-10 does not fly too well with a full centerline tank and an unfeathered prop. When I was hit I was about 5,000 feet indicated altitude and was losing about 150 ft per minute. The mountains around me were about 6,000 feet high so the only escape I had was to fly down the Ho Chi Minh trail in the valleys and pray. Luckily I had just gotten to the area a few minutes prior and hadn’t turned the centerline pump off yet, which meant the fuel was being pumped overboard after the main wing tank was full, so I was in effect “dumping fuel” from the firmly attached 230 gallon centreline drop tank! However, I couldn’t maintain level flight until I was less than 1,000 feet above the ground, which was not a good place to be when one is directly over the Ho Chi Minh trail. The NVA didn’t even come close to hitting me on my route back – it might have had something to do with the fact that I was so low that the trees got in their way!
It seemed like an eternity until the A-1E Sandy’s showed to escort me back to NKP. They were a wonderful sight to behold. It was at this moment that I knew I was one of those pilots who craved doing something dangerous even if it meant increasing the probability of losing my life. I liked my work!
My profile fitted a lot of FACs from 1969– 1975. Strategic Air Command and Military Airlift Command started to send pilots to fighter type aircraft for one-year assignments to Vietnam, as they were running short of fighter pilots. About eight months prior to reporting to Vietnam, I received a change in orders to report to Cannon AFB, NM to attend a three month (90 day fighter pilot wonder school) flying the AT-33 for familiarization in delivering weapons (bombs, rockets and strafing). We were given one week of Ground School, which consisted of performance capability and safety procedures for the AT-33. The next week, after being taught to taxi the aircraft, we were cleared for some solo training flights in the pattern as the AT-33 only had one seat. After an ordinance class, which taught us the capability of various munitions used in Vietnam, we were cleared onto the Whiteman Range to practice strafing, dropping 500 pound bombs and firing practice rockets.
After a little over 50 hours of flight time we were actually getting pretty good at finding and hitting the targets. The only incident we had was when one of the upcoming FACs bit one of the other pilot’s wife, Paula, on the rear end during a get together one evening. We had a close group but that got a little too close. All was forgiven though and a good time was had.
Next we reported to a three-month Forward Air Controller (FAC) school in Ft. Walton Beach, Florida, flying OV-10s to learn the responsibilities of a FAC. The first two or three weeks consisted of OV-10 ground school and Air Controller School. After that we flew over 50 hours flying simulated Forward Air Controller missions consisting of strafing, bombing and launching white phosphorus rockets and directing simulated strikes using other OV-10 aircraft as the combat aircraft for striking the targets.
The OV-10 was an excellent aircraft for the FAC as it was maneuverable, had great visibility and had armored plating in the bottom to protect the pilot. After we flew we would meet as a group at Bacons by the Sea for raw oysters and beer.
Again we had no aircraft incidents but everyone was starting to anticipate what it would be like in actual combat and the wives were starting to realize they would not see their mate for at least a year and maybe never again.
It was now February 1970 and I was due to arrive in Vietnam by mid-March. En route to Vietnam I attended the three week Jungle Survival School at Clark AB, Philippines. After a short survival course we were positioned in the jungle by helicopter. We then spent the next three days in the jungle learning first hand how to survive. We ate snake, edible plants and rainwater collected in the tree leaves. The last night we were simulating an escape and evasion condition. I had split off from the rest of the group and hidden under some fallen bamboo trees. The Air Force hired Negrito natives to search and find us. They would receive $5 for every person they found. I had buried myself under the bamboo and at about two or three in the morning I heard something approaching me. I lay there waiting, thinking that it was a Negrito searching for me. It came right to me and pressed on my leg! Thinking that “I’m caught now” I kicked out with my leg quickly, to at least scare him, and make him “earn” his reward! To my surprise it was a “Pack Rat” about eight or nine inches tall and 12 to 15 inches long. I didn’t know who it scared most – the Rat or me! We both jumped straight up!
The next stop was Bien Hoa AB, South Vietnam for a three-week indoctrination course at FAC-U. The Base hadn’t been mortared for a couple of months, but our first night the North Vietnamese decided to welcome the new FACs by putting a couple of mortars just outside our barracks.
After experiencing the night life of sleeping through mortar attacks under the bed with an M-16 and a helmet on, I decided I’d rather spend my combat time getting shot at during the day and not at night, so I volunteered to fly out of Nakhon Phanom (NKP), Thailand with the NAIL FACs.
I became NAIL 21.
I had no idea that the next year would be packed with action and flying the best mission in the Air Force at the time. The Nails flew over the Ho Chi Minh trail most every day where there were over 1,500 guns along the trail. The Nails were incurring the loss of about one aircraft shot down per month though we managed to get all but eight of our fellow pilots out over the year of my tour. I was told that the NVA had a $10,000 bounty on our heads “dead or alive,” which meant we got shot at every flight we flew over Laos. One of the capabilities our OV-10s had over the in-country birds was that we carried four 7.62 mm guns with 2,000 rounds and had high explosive rockets to go along with our Willy Petes.
The experience over the trail, when I had my engine shot out (recounted above) was the first time I realized my passion to live on the edge. So for the rest of my tour as a FAC I fed this passion by volunteering for all the special missions that came my way.
During the fourth month of my FAC tour I flew with Air America out of Udorn, Thailand to cover for the mission previously flown by the in country “Raven” FACs. The Ravens consisted of FAC pilots who would put their commission on hold while flying missions under the control of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). They actually lived in Laos and flew O-1s, Porters, Helio Couriers and T-28 aircraft in support of the Laotian military. Five of the Raven’s were killed in one week and it took about six weeks to train a new Raven FAC for the mission. So they painted an OV-10 plain gray with no markings and I, Nail 21, locked up my I.D. card and moved in with the Air America pilots at Udorn, Thailand. We supported General Vang Pao’s mission in Laos.
This was a low level mission with lots of strafing and intelligence gathering. During one of my missions in support of Air America as a “Rent a Raven” FAC, I was flying cover for some Laotian ground troops at very low altitudes (100 to 1,000 feet). I kept seeing what looked like bugs flying past the windscreen. I couldn’t figure out what it was until I heard the sound of impacts on the side of the aircraft and realized it was 7.62 and 12.7 mm rounds hitting my aircraft! Needless to say I jinked (quickly changing heading and altitude to avoid tracking and leading by enemy gunners) a little harder from then on! After I recovered from that mission the crew chief said he counted around 80 unauthorized holes in my OV-10! During my two months of flying out of Udorn my aircraft took 309 bullet holes, mostly 50 Caliber. I thought this was still a piece of cake compared to the explosive rounds of the 23 mm, 37 mm and 57 mm weapons being experienced each day over the Trail.
Zip Gun FAC
Next came the peaceful part of my tour. I was selected, as the Forward Operating Location (FOL) Commander of a unit flying over Cambodia – and my new call sign was Zip Gun 21. We had to set up operations out of U Tapao, Thailand, which was a familiar place to me as I had had two Young Tiger tours there in KC-135s. In fact my old Wing Commander at K.I. Sawyer, B/Gen John Hinton, was then the Wing Commander at U Tapao. This made it easier for me to set up operations. We were able to have our own approaches; HF radios, access to the photo lab, and air-conditioned quarters.
Our AO (Area of Operations) covered the western half of Cambodia, mostly taking pictures with our hand-held 35 mm cameras and assisting the Cambodian military to find the NVA. We flew low-level altitudes, sometimes too low. One picture I took was from ground level into the back end of a Pepsi Cola truck to see what he was carrying. He was carrying armed Cambodian troops! Luckily they were friendly!
We flew down rivers below the tree canopy that covered all but about 100 feet of the middle of the river. It was much like flying down a tunnel! We found several NVA camps on the riverbanks this way. They weren’t quite as friendly as the guys in the Pepsi Truck!
Being the OL commander, I always took the first flight, that way I could observe what was going on during the entire day and not worry about getting ready to fly. I had “Doc” Roberts fly the second sortie and we had a routine of changing positions over a train full of refugees, which ran from Cambodia to Thailand the same time every morning. We would fly on the opposite sides of the train just high enough to see each other and when we would get abeam of each other we would do a “roll” to the other side. Sometimes it would cause someone to fall off the train as they thought our OV-10s might hit the train.
My most memorable flight out of U Tapao was on 4 July 1970. I had spent the early evening at a USO birthday party, which served leftover Italian food from the NCO club because I had the first flight the next morning I didn’t have anything to drink “of course.”
When I woke up I had the G.I.s... but decided I could handle it. WRONG!
I arrived at the squadron to find that a Second Lieutenant Intel Officer wanted to ride along (it was his first flight in any small airplane). We took off and when I climbed over the first mountain range I started to get fierce cramps, so I tried to let the gas out...but was presented with more than air!
I asked the Lieutenant if he had ever flown before and he said “no,” so I taught him on the spot! I showed him how to keep the bird straight and level in case I had any more severe cramps at low level (we usually flew at 500 feet). Well, I started getting more cramps and you guessed it – I soiled my flight suit! I started to turn back home but a Cambodian out of Battam Bang called and transmitted a message from the Cambodian President – it read something like this:
“This day, your independence day, we the people of Cambodia are being invaded and fired upon by the enemies from North Vietnam and to survive we need your bombs to keep them out of our country...”
Then he gave me some coordinates to check out as the NVA were shelling a small town to the East of their position. We took a look and sure enough about 50 NVA were shelling a small town from a fence row about a half-mile away.
Of course we couldn’t strafe them, “Officially”, but I made a couple of low passes, which for some reason made them run from their position! Now we had been out there for about three hours with a flight suit full of effluent (my own!) and I had a very sick Lieutenant in the back seat. It was time to go home!
I flew back to base and raised the canopy as soon as possible. The only thing that kept me going was the thought of my son, Rick, who ran around the yard with a full load in his diaper for hours while playing. If he could do it, his dad, Zip Gun 21, could do it too!
When we shut down the crew chief saluted and started to come up the ladder. I told him to get two ropes. The crew chief didn’t get it until he poked his head into the cockpit to un-strap this now VERY embarrassed FAC. As he turned white, I said, “now that you know I shit my pants will you get me two ropes?”
The crew chief couldn’t find any rope so he took his shoelaces off and handed them to me so I could tie my pant legs at the knee to keep the remainder of the effluent from running down my legs. The Lieutenant did the debriefing while I went to my trailer to take a 30 minute shower. My parachute harness never did smell quite the same ever again!
In August, I returned to NKP from U Tapao, and was checked out as an instructor pilot, performing Stan/Eval functions, and teaching the new pilots the ins-and-outs of the Trail and how to strafe, find targets and direct the air strikes.
Denny Crouch and I were the OV-10 evaluators and we were also roommates. Denny and I had the privilege of flying some sorties in formation with official Air Force photographers in each aircraft taking moving pictures of each other putting in air strikes to document the FAC mission.
A routine day was to fly, debrief, lay out in the sun reflecting on the day, starting a fire to cook Australian steaks and boil dehydrated shrimp, have a couple of six-ounce glasses of gin or vodka for 15 cents, go to bed and get ready for the next day.
Prairie Fire
During this time I also was checked out on the Prairie Fire mission, which supported the Green Beret “Heavy Hook operation.” On the Prairie Fire missions we would carry a Green Beret in the back seat and we would check out teams that had been infiltrated into enemy territory.
The team would be made up of one Green Beret with six-eight NVA deserters or other indigenous troops. Their job was to hide in the jungle sabotaging trucks and capturing the enemy to gain intelligence. One morning I was scheduled to fly one of these missions but couldn’t fly. Bill Sanders, Nail 44, took my place with Al Mosiello in his back seat. While over the Ho Chi Minh trail they got hit by a Stella shoulder fired surface to air missile. Bill was killed instantly and Al ejected and was successfully rescued. Though I knew this wasn’t my fault, I have always felt guilty that it wasn’t me flying that airplane that day.
As I mentioned earlier, the 23d TASS lost an average of one aircraft per month, but we only lost eight of the pilots. Overall during the war 64 OV-10 aircraft were lost with 43 fatalities and five prisoners of war (POWs), 102 O-2 aircraft were lost with 84 fatalities and 2 POWs, and 178 O-1s were lost with 93 fatalities and 1 POW.
Missions of note that I was involved in included: the Prairie Fire mission in support of the then classified “Heavy Hook” program; on-scene commander for Search and Rescue missions; implanting “Sensors for the “Igloo White” program on major roadways going into North Vietnam; the “Pave Way” program – operating hand held laser beams to guide the two & three thousand pound Pave Way bombs on target; and reconnaissance of Western Cambodia flying out of Ubon, Thailand with the call sign of SPIKE (one of them will tell their story).
On another Prairie Fire mission, Al Mosiello (my Green Beret Heavy Hook rider in the rear seat) and I went on our usual low level observation flight to check out the Special Forces team on the ground in the mountain range just north of the Ho Chi Minh trail. The team had been discovered by the North Vietnamese and was under attack. We called for tactical air but none was immediately available so we used local T-28s (either Lao or Raven) along with our own Tiny Pistol (7.62 mm machine guns) to keep the enemy from overrunning their position until we could
get some fighter aircraft with napalm to do the job properly. It took about 30 minutes to get the napalm dropped then a rescue team from NKP (a Knife HH-53 and four A-1s) arrived to exfiltrate the team. The team was able to bring back some of the NVA with them to interrogate for more information. The Heavy Hook team had been out in the field for more than 10 days and was happy to get back with only a few wounds.
I was then invited to go with this team for a little R&R in Bangkok! We stayed at the Special Forces hotel (Roma Hotel). Only Special Forces and associates stayed there for a good reason. For example, one night we were having a few beers reminiscing about some of our missions when one of the guys missed his “girl friend for the night.” One of the guys with him told him she had gone upstairs with another Special Forces troop. He immediately got up and went to his room to find it locked from the inside. Realizing his Special Forces buddy and his girl friend were in HIS room, he pulled out his pistol and shot the lock open. Went into the room and picked the girl up and threw her out the third story window. The girl survived! When we got back from the R & R trip, Capt Taylor, one of their commanders, told him he was lucky the pool was there to catch the girl. The Special Forces soldier responded with “what pool?”
Another occasion that demonstrated the attitude of the Heavy Hook soldier was when we invited them into the NKP Officers Club for dinner one night. They had Kobe beef on the menu and a stripper for entertainment. As we entered the dining room a Second Lieutenant was having dinner alone and was eating a thick juicy Kobe steak. One of the Heavy Hook Sergeants went over and asked the Lieutenant how his steak was, and before he could answer the Sergeant picked the steak up with his hands and took a big bite out of it, put the steak back on the plate, walked over to our table, sat down “hey, this is a great steak, glad you recommended it” and ordered a Kobe steak for himself.
The Lieutenant didn’t say a word, just finished his meal and left.
The Heavy Hook Nails also had a special “CIA approved identification card” and a black jeep that all security police (both civilian and military) knew and recognized. So, occasionally we would stray across the Thailand/Laotian border to experience the nightlife and buy gold on the Laotian side. If the Air Force had ever found out we would have been “burnt toast”. But it gave us the freedom to roam the country that no other organization had except the Air America employees and CIA agents themselves.
One of the FAC pastimes were games like ‘Dead Bug,’ ‘Carrier Landings,’ and ‘Last to Dance on the Bar’ to determine who would buy the next round of drinks.
When someone yelled “Dead Bug” the last person to fall off their chair or barstool backwards and hit the floor with all arms and legs waving in the air would buy the drinks (injuries were frequent).
Ed. Note the injuries were so severe and frequent from this pastime that the rules were modified so that not just anyone could say “Dead Bug.” The “Hammer” was issued to the last loser and a specific ROE was issued. Like everything else in the USAF even the “Deceased Insect” became regulated!
Carrier Landings required more planning to execute: You would put beer on a 10 foot table or plank, two pilots would twist a table cloth so that when the pilot doing the Carrier Landing dove on the table from a running start they would catch his legs which should have been in a perpendicular position keeping him from flying off the end of the table or plank (of course, if the pilot made a bad landing or approach, or if the arrestor crew felt like it) they would lift the table cloth and he would fly off the end of the table on to the floor).
Ed. Note. In later years with more time on our hands the Nails fabricated a Carrier Deck outside the Nail Hole...complete with approach lights...and the table cloth arrestor cable was replaced with a fire hose...which allowed formation landings, and...a wet over run!
Then there was “The last one to tap dance on the bar is queer!” When this was yelled everyone would leap up on the bar and flail around (the last one up bought the drinks).
Though these were childish games, it kept our minds off the events of the day, which included being shot at and sometimes hit, a near miss with one of the fighters we were controlling, losing an aircraft, occasionally along with one of our fellow pilots.