TFA: A Duck in the Weeds!
submitted by: Alva Leon Matheson
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At the time (Jan 68 – Jan 69) I was assigned as the FAC liaison to TFA. What a great job for a young 27 year-old captain! I had my own jeep, my own desk, and my own pass to gain admittance to the TFA compound and reported directly to General Willie P. McBride. I even taught his secretary – the only round eye woman on the base – to play Chess! The Air Force officers assigned to TFA were all great guys who were deeply committed to the project. I spent many hours with them listening to the sensors talk and helping to plan missions. They were always asking me to smuggle them on board my airplane so they could see the trail for themselves. Pictures just never did it justice, they wanted to see the object of all their labor. Of course, because of their clearance and what they knew they couldn’t go and of course it never entered my mind to take them. Besides, how do you smuggle a Lieutenant Colonel on board an O-2?
Well, you arrange a pickup behind the maintenance hangar, which as it turned out was pretty easy. Nobody saw it or if they did it was just another piece of activity going on and they never gave it another thought. Off we went, this colonel and I, over the river and to the woods, err...trail. We spend a good deal of time at 6,000 feet from Mu Gia to Tchepone to Khe Sanh. I really gave him the full tour!
As we turned for home, with no warning whatsoever the front engine quit. Maybe we had descended a little below 6,000 feet so that the pictures would be a little clearer, but certainly we were well above any daytime threat altitude. I tried all the O-2 emergency procedures but nothing would get that puppy started.
At 5,000 feet, just south of Tchepone, the best we could do was a 300 to 500 feet per minute rate of descent. It reminded me of my first F-4 assignment at Mac Dill, AFB in Florida. Our targets were in Cuba with no refueling provisions. The plan said we would flame out well south of the Florida Keys! Well, no refueling here for my O-2, so it looked like we would crash 50 or so miles east of the Mekong River (The Laos/Thailand border), in Indian Country!
A fine fix – here we are, tooling west along Route 9, losing about 500 feet per minute, me with a passenger who is not supposed to be with me – at least so I thought (seems he was smarter than I was and had the flight cleared with his superiors!!). When we declared an emergency with Cricket (ABCCC) they informed me that all the airpower in Southeast Asia was on call and ready for our support. Several months prior I had been involved in a rescue of a downed Navy pilot (Streetcar 304) and had seen first hand the effort our military would put forth to effect a rescue. I told them I needed a runway or we would have to land on Route 9. I had over-flown an abandoned airstrip south of Route 9 about 50 miles east of the Mekong River, so I planned to take a look as we were now down to about 2,000 feet so we were running out of airspeed, altitude, and ideas.
The airstrip looked short, almost overgrown, and who knew what sort of obstructions existed. However, right there in front of us was an exposed straight runway that looked far better than what Route 9 offered. The O-2 was never designed to be a short field type aircraft, particularly when the pilot comes in hot and high. Putting the gear down was supposed to help but when we finally touched down in the weeds, which were at least ten feet high, we were still whistling Dixie.
Unlike an ejection from a fighter (very little time to think!! ), a semi-controlled crash landing allows a person time to experience the ultimate sensations and I can tell you there were certainly a lot of mixed emotions. Besides trying to “fly right” – what could I do? What didn’t I do that I could have? God bless Lt. Col. F., he just shut-up and let me fly...although we did talk about our escape plan.
One hundred miles an hour does not seem very fast when landing on a runway – on an uncontrolled, abandoned, grown-over and short piece of dirt however, things happen very fast. No matter, we stopped, albeit sideways and after a pretty rough trip, unhurt but not sure of the ‘friendly’ situation.
About the time we realized all was okay, a Jolly Green touched down about 100 feet away and we hauled ass. Oops, I forgot my kit – ran back to the O-2 and got it – and ran back to the Jolly. As it turned out the area was so safe they were to get a chopper in the next day and haul the O-2 back to NKP !!! Just another day in the life of a FAC !
In December of 1995 my wife and I returned to SEA and visited both NKP and Route 9 all the way to Tchepone. I looked hard for the airfield but couldn’t find it. Nakhom Phanom on the other hand was no longer a sleepy little river town. It is now a hustling bustling large city, relative to what it was in that long past “war.” It has now been two generations and to find anyone who remembered the Air Base, and spoke English, was tough. The airport was the Air Base then. There are still a few pieces of PSP left (very few) and what used to be TFA is now only a clearing in the jungle. They have even torn up the footprint, or cement foundation.
As an afterthought...a comment about the “next day.” No matter what happened that day, the next day was always a normal day. The war went on, normal missions were flown and yesterday was history – except TFA issued an edict – no more observer flights!