The Lost War That Never Was
submitted by: Alva Leon Matheson
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In the early days, the main problems may be said to have been centered on a general lack of willingness to declare a full-scale war on the part of the administration and a lack of preparedness on the part of the military to fight a limited war. The lack led to limitations on: 1.) Human resources; 2.) Equipment; and 3.) Operations. The recollections that follow will generally follow a pattern of grouping into the three categories, all set against a foundation of the political situation, the scenario.
The Scenario
The reader should appreciate that the climate in Southeast Asia was a matter of constant high temperatures, often over 100 degrees, marked only by dry and wet monsoon seasons. Monsoon weather effectively prevented any air actions, since the rain was very heavy and constant for months at a time, usually during autumn.
When Bob Hope did his show at Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Air Base, A.K.A. “Naked Fanny” or simply “NKP”, in the early 1970s, he quipped, “This place is so secret, the planes have to land backwards!”
Later, when I finished a mid-tour Rest and Recreation Leave, R&R, in Hawaii and tried to get a hop back to Thailand. The Air Force travel clerk told me that flights were reserved “for our fighting men in Vietnam, not for tourists”.
NKP was originally set up as a base for rescue operations with older twin-rotor “Pedro” helicopters from Kaman. The base had a radar station, INVERT, to assist. Rescue operations were directed by a C-130 with the call sign of “Crown”. All were part of the 505th Tactical Control Group. The radar was of little use to the FACs, other than for vectoring fighters to the general location of the FACs, since INVERT could not ‘see’ the small airplanes flying at low altitudes, often less than the prescribed 1,500 feet, at distances of almost a hundred miles. FAC navigation was strictly by map reading and pilotage and dead reckoning, since there were no radio aids. The EC-130 Airborne Command and Control Center (ABCCC), “Cricket”, ostensibly coordinated the fighters and also vectored them to the FACs.
I was also involved in several brief operations where I flew from bases in Laos. These were characterized by secrecy that involved having frames on the sides of the O-1s fuselage to hold interchangeable insignia plates for USAF, Vietnam, or Laos, the latter being used during the operations. Civilian clothes were the uniform of the day. Status of pilots was questionable and sometimes referred to as being with the Agency for International Development, AID. Presumably this was due to the White House declaration to the effect that the U.S. did not have any ground troops in Laos.
One should appreciate that the main reason for stationing the organization in Thailand, rather than in South Vietnam, was that the safety and security provided there was much better. When I was stationed in the Mekong Delta area during early 1966, our base was actually attacked by guerrillas. The airstrip was populated with Air Force O-1s, Vietnamese L-19s, and U.S. Navy OE-1s, and was secured by a company of Vietnamese Rangers.
On one occasion, a staff officer visited from Saigon; he insisted that we do a dawn patrol, despite our advice that visibility in the morning haze made reconnaissance impossible. As we mounted the jeeps for the trip to the airstrip, we all loaded ammo into our M-16s. When he asked why we did so, we informed him that the route went by a cemetery where the gravestones made for a perfect ambush site.
The only suspicious event at NKP was when a Nimrod B-26 was shot down while landing. Aerial inspection convinced me that there was at least one gun pit on the landing approach path. However, it was not politic to mention that Thailand was being infiltrated by Communist Intruders, “CIs”.
As an indication of the impact of politics on the overall operation, consider the following. I was first stationed during the winter of 1966 in South Vietnam in the delta region formed by the Mekong River. Since the Mekong meandered from China through Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and South Vietnam, laws and treaties considered it to be an international, that is, neutral, waterway. Personal observation showed that several oceangoing freighters habitually were on the waterway, ostensibly run aground by the tidal shifting. No air strikes could be put on the ships, though it was obvious that they were supplying the Viet Cong guerillas. I was subsequently stationed at bases upriver from the delta, in Thailand, then in Laos. Later, my lead pilot, known for his curiosity, took me on a tour of the Mekong to the headwaters in Red China!
Politics also provided for a bombing halt in the autumn. The North Vietnamese took advantage of this and stockpiled supplies on their side of the Laotian border, ready to be loaded for the nightly delivery runs. I reasoned that, since the fighters rarely knew where they were precisely, they wouldn’t know whether they were dropping in Laos or North Vietnam.
Just over the border, the bad guys stockpiled what looked like a whole warehouse of materiel, presumably to load trucks for their night runs down the trail into Harley Valley. I got miffed at seeing this and being unable to do anything about it. On second thought, says I to me, well, the fighters do not really know where the targets are, so I put in a couple of flights and got good hits and called in the coordinates as being south of the border. Later, I heard murmurs about disciplinary actions, but none was ever taken, so I always felt that was one of my better actions.
Navigating the trusty Oscar One over Laos was a matter of old-fashioned pilotage and dead reckoning, since we had zero navigational aids. On one occasion, I was lead for a tour of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, flying out of Nakhom Phanom RTAB in Thailand. Usually, we would fly as a loose two-ship formation, cruising east for an hour to The Trail, loitering and searching for trucks for an hour, and back in another hour. As the monsoon rain clouds moved in, we had to dodge around or fly over the clouds and storms. When an undercast moved in, we’d search around for holes to peek through. Trying to fly under them was not recommended, since the bottoms often merged with the vapor rising from the jungle. Furthermore, we knew our planes would be easy to spot when silhouetted against the cloud bases. This time we had to go further than usual. In fact, since the undercast rendered the dreaded AAA at Mu Gia Pass impotent, I decided to head northeast into North Vietnam by going over the Pass. After searching for a break in the undercast for a half hour, I finally gave up and decided to RTB. I had an idea of the winds and had been timing our progress by eyeballing the mountain peaks that showed up through the undercast. Actually, the key maneuver was a simple one-hundred-eighty degree turn back to where we started the penetration. After we got back to NKP, I think my wingman may have exaggerated the flight, for, to my, surprise, I found myself being called “Magellan”, which I took as a compliment.
It seems that something must be said about the effect of the secrecy on the overall operation and the training of intelligence officers. The best way might be to simply point out that there appeared to be a great amount of fragmentation and disconnections of intelligence information. Although it was suspected that reconnaissance was being performed by Army OV-1 Mohawks, Air Force RF-101 Voodoos, NRO satellites, CIA U-2s, and various ground teams, there was little being passed on to the FACs or from them.
On one occasion, some staff officers visited from the headquarters of the 7/13th Air Force and told us that they did not have the time to read our Daily Intelligence Summaries, DISUMs. We listened and thought of the blood being shed to produce the reports that were left unread and unused. The same ‘strap-hangers’ also told us that we were requesting the wrong bomb-fuzing timing of a tenth of a second and that such fuzing would only result in a deep hole in the ground, whereas they favored the one-hundredth of a second delay that would shower fragments above the ground. We patiently explained that there were no personnel above ground, other than the expert gunners, during air strikes and that our purpose was to create deep holes in The Trail.
The visitors also informed us that, although we were there to keep the supplies from flowing south, we were mainly in the Air Force, so, if we were in a situation where we had a choice of using either Air Force or Navy fighters to hit trucks, we were to remember that we were in the Air Force. Much of the war was between the services.
Photo intelligence was also lacking. On at least two occasions, the photos provided by headquarters for striking targets showed nothing but jungle, with no landmarks whatsoever. On another occasion, the maps provided showed nothing more than a notation that the area had not been mapped. So, I used a handheld Polaroid camera to photograph the targets. They were useful on one occasion, when I found some trucks. I took their picture, and then when I RTBd to NKP, I gave the photos to the next pair of FACs, who struck the trucks.
Human Resources
The secrecy may have had an adverse impact on the careers of those involved. The Commander, Lt. Col. Johnston, once told us that all of the NKP FACs were handpicked and, in his opinion, “Outstanding” as in Officer Effectiveness Report, OER, jargon. However, for some unknown reason, there were no OERs written. The lack of the reports led to pass-overs for most of the FACs, and in effect, ended their careers in the Air Force.
Some reports indicate that the average age of Air Force pilots in Southeast Asia in the mid sixties was around 36, in contrast to popular conceptions of twenty-year-olds. The NKP FACs seemed to match the reports; I was 36 during my tour.
For me, the first sight of NKP was “déjà vu all over again.” I had been a Plane Captain on the Navy version of the Sandy, the AD-1Q radar countermeasures aircraft. While attending the University of Michigan for Aeronautical Engineering, I flew Gooney Birds on weekends. While I was awaiting a Pilot Training Class in 1955, I worked on the Army L-19 liaison version of the O-1 at the main Army liaison and helicopter training base.
Even with this background, it must be said that the human resources available were, at best, untrained for the mission. I was assigned from a program office for communication satellites, following tours in Air Training Command. Only a brief course of instruction was given to me at a base in northwest Florida; the course was based on traditional Forward Air Control, that is, Close Air Support, CAS, controlling air strikes to support ground operations. There was no training for the interdiction mission or for the surveillance mission that were the main jobs to be done on The Trail. Since there was no classical “Forward Edge of the Battle Area,” or “FEBA,” we made up another acronym to describe our mission of Strike Control and Reconnaissance, “SCAR.”
FAC swere identified in one of two categories: “Class A,” with fighter pilot experience; or “Class B,” without fighter experience (including the author).
Class A FACs were usually preferred and assigned to ground units, especially U.S. forces. Interdiction was usually done with Class B FACs. Many of the FACs that the author flew with were assigned from the Air Force Systems Command and similar non-combat units and so had little combat experience.
I speculated that the lack of qualified FACs was due to the general policy on the part of Air Force and Army decision-makers that emphasis was to be placed on resources to counter the Soviet threat. Strategic bombers and fighters were obviously deemed to be more important than the CAS mission and interdiction missions. One might review the various Air Power demonstrations to assess the emphasis on the role of FACs, i.e., NONE.
The most obvious difference was seen in the simple fact that Class B FACs had little or no knowledge of any of the wide variety of ordnance that the various fighters used. It was necessary for them to learn on the job, or at the bar in the evening. There was no descriptive literature available at the base. One can imagine the confusion and inefficiency that resulted during air strikes, when the attacker informed the FAC that he had “A-1s” or “High Drags” or such. The FAC had no idea of what they were talking about in terms of effects, accuracy, or general configuration and had to either ask or wait and see what happened when the ordnance hit the ground. More later about this in the section on Equipment. Likewise, the few Class A FACs in the 23rd were able to judge winds and give the fighters aiming corrections in mils, an art that was beyond the Class B FACs’ abilities.
Many of the pilots were “jet jockeys” who had difficulty learning how to fly the old-fashioned piston-and-propeller airplane with “the nose wheel at the wrong end.” I had a background in Piper Cubs and Aeronca Champions, as well as taxiing Navy planes. I was quite amused at the antics of the jet jockeys as they ground looped their way down the taxiways! Because I had thousands of hours in piston engine aircraft where cruise control, a combination of fuel mixture control, propeller speed, engine speed, and aircraft speed and configuration, was emphasized to conserve on fuel I had no difficulties, but the jet jockeys had to learn on the job.
Many, if not most of the fighter pilots were relatively untrained for the interdiction role with intense antiaircraft artillery and small arms gunfire. Bombing accuracy was generally poor. On one occasion, I controlled four fighters against an open road with zero AAA. Even in this “no threat” area not one bomb hit the road! On another occasion, where the road was on a hillside, the fighter lead over-ruled my directions to bomb above the road to create a landslide and chose to bomb along the road. He tried to lecture me about Gaussian distribution patterns; however, the theory failed in practice and there were no hits.
On another occasion, a FAC was controlling four Navy fighters; I was appalled to hear that they set up a rectangular bombing pattern just like they would on a bombing range in the desert stateside, after the FAC had briefed them that there was active 23 mm in the area. They dutifully set up a standard run as if they were in a landing pattern, despite the FAC’s protestations. The third plane coming down the chute to the target literally disintegrated under the hail of gunfire. I have no idea whether or not the fighter pilots had been briefed on the deadly intensity
of concentrated fire from a complex of six 4-barrel 23 millimeter ZSU-23 cannons. Apparently not. Experienced pilots flying F-100s in South Vietnam used the “wheel” attack pattern whereby the planes fly an orbit around the target and attack from random directions.
The ABCCC folks sometimes seemed unaware of the threat and directed that air strikes be put in against AAA sites. The FACs knew full well that such attacks would be deadly and flatly refused to control them
No discussion of spotting would be complete without consideration of the specifics of spotting. For spotting trucks on The Trail, a unique technique was called “getting the eye.” This referred to the highly specialized method whereby the spotter learned all about the natural flora and foliage so as to know exactly what looked natural, then, by the process of elimination, learned to see what was un-natural. This often required weeks of acclimatizing and several frustrating flights with the old heads. In my case, it was a matter of combining the usual seeing with “The Eye,” plus some Extra-Sensory Perception. Using “The Eye” required staring for a period of several seconds, which then required slow flying.
My concentration on spotting and hitting targets almost did me in. On one occasion, I attempted to see sideways beneath the trees and, at the last split-second, looked forward to see a huge rock outcropping directly in my path. Only a maximum-performance climb saved me! This kind of climb also served me on another occasion. I found a truck in the open and the bomb loads of three flights of four fighters were expended on it to no avail. This chagrined FAC ( me!) was determined to disable the truck with my remaining rockets. So I put them into the truck’s radiator from a height of about 50 feet. While congratulating myself on my superb accuracy I then noticed the 300 foot tall trees in my path and executed “the climb.” Target fixation was not in the FAC curriculum, but it should have been!!
Survival training was provided to all of the pilots assigned to Southeast Asia. Unfortunately, in my case, this consisted of Winter Survival Training in the Rocky Mountains in January and February. The skill acquired in snowshoes was of little use in the jungle. Then they told me that there were no slots available for “Jungle School” at Clark AB in the Philippines. This had a significant adverse impact on my morale, since all of the missions involved a risk of survival in the rain forests, not snow covered mountains. The rain forest, per se, posed a unique problem. The mahogany and teak rain forests were made of huge trees that towered hundreds of feet. Those who were unfamiliar with the growth and relied on their memories of stateside trees suffered optical delusions. On one occasion, a fighter pilot called to say that he had spotted a group of crates near a grove. I hurried to the site, only to find a village of regular-sized houses and informed the fighter pilot that the “crates” and trees were about three times the size he expected.
While the O-1 was not a “rocket,” its capabilities could be “explored.” A couple of the things that I did were:
While in training, being fresh from a course in Flight Test, I explored the performance envelope by decreasing airspeed until my plane was literally falling straight down. I was surprised to find that flight control was adequate.
While returning from The Trail on a boring day, I performed a slow roll, which surprised my wingman who thought I had been hit by ground fire and was losing control!
Lastly, while trying to out-climb the huge tropical clouds over The Trail, I recalled an anecdote by Eddie Rickenbacker. The World War I Ace wrote that he had gotten his Spad up over 20,000 feet. I reasoned that the O-1 had the same weight and power as a Spad and so climbed until I, too, had topped 20,000 feet. Needless to say, the clouds were higher than I was at 20K and I ran out of airspeed and ideas at about the same time, and, then fell into the clouds, and had to do an IFR letdown until I popped out the bottom.
A very important factor in our survival was good equipment and great maintenance. The maintenance and ground support guys lived in the same conditions that we did...miserable. Suffice to say that the non-air-conditioned huts and the noise from electrical generators were debilitating. I lost about 30 pounds during my tour. The isolation was broken only by a monthly three-day trip to Bangkok and rare trips to other FAC bases. My primary diversion was designing airplanes.
The Equipment
The aircraft stationed at NKP were a collection of obsolete prop planes from bygone days and a few rescue helicopters. The ramp held a couple of dozen Cessna O-1Fs’, flown by us FACs. There were also a few Douglas A-1 Skyraiders known by their call sign “Sandy” who escorted the rescue helicopters, the “Jolly Greens.” Occasionally, a Douglas EC-47 “Gooney Bird” stopped by. These were venerable C-47s, modified for electronic reconnaissance.
Later on, in 1966, some North American A-26s (call sign Nimrod) arrived; The A-26s had been remanufactured and re-designated as B-26s, where the ‘B’ stood for Bomber; however, since the diplomatic situation precluded stationing Bombers in Thailand, they were re-designated as “Attack” planes; A-26s. Modern Martin B-57
jets (US redesigns of the originally British Electric Canberra) were sometimes available from their bases in the Philippines. The Nimrods filled a large gap in that there were no strike aircraft dedicated to attacking The Trail.
The O-1s were usually flown in an overweight condition, due to the added weight of the rocket racks and radios. The high temperatures and humidity also degraded engine performance significantly.
When I first arrived at NKP, the O-1s were painted in various camouflage schemes. The reader can imagine what happened when a FAC would call the fighters and ask if they could see the little camouflaged plane from two or three miles up against a jungle background. On one occasion, a fighter rammed one of our FACs.
Ed. Note: The FAC, Karl Worst, was run over by an F-105, he was the first Nail FAC to be lost. The Karl Worst Memorial Chapel at NKP was named in his honor. The solution was simple, to re-paint the aircraft in a gray color with white wings.
While O-1 FACs in South Vietnam carried corks for sealing small bullet holes in their fuel tanks, we had self-sealing tanks; however, the modification did decrease the room for fuel. There was no armor on the plane. Contrariwise, the FAC sat surrounded by fuel near his head, a battery between his feet, and grenades hanging at his back. I augmented my personal armament of an M-16 and USAF .38 caliber revolver with a Smith & Wesson .45 caliber revolver and hand grenades. While I experimented with firing my M-16 “out the window,” it was my opinion that it was highly ineffective, but it made me feel better!!!
The radio under the seat offered some protection and on one occasion I was handed a bullet by my crew chief. It had been lodged there! Other hits that I remember were a single bullet in the tail while in the delta and a 23 mm shell beneath the door on The Trail. I only wore my parachute on one occasion, which was when I had a headquarters “strap-hanger” riding along as passenger. I preferred the added freedom of movement for spotting. I preferred the idea of dead sticking the O-1 into the jungle to hanging defenseless under my parachute canopy over the Trail.
The engines were maintained with regular non-detergent oil. On one occasion, I was sent to another base. I had the regular oil aboard and admonished the ground crew to use it. The next morning, I was chagrined when the crew told me that they had saved my oil and used their detergent oil instead. The next week, I was working air strikes on The Trail and pulled off a marking pass only to find that the propeller pitch control was stuck in the low RPM mode. Later, I found that the engine oil was also used for controlling the propeller and that the detergent oil had loosened the dirt that had accumulated for years and deposited it in the prop controls. Sweating it out during the return trip at barely flying speed, I arrived at NKP only to find that the plane wouldn’t slow down as usual. I sideslipped the bird in to land. After parking, I was accosted by the Flying Safety Officer and chewed out for doing acrobatics on final approach!
The O-1’s armament was four marking rockets with white phosphorus warheads. On a rare occasion, these were in short supply, so High Explosive Anti-Tank (HEAT) rockets were used. With the use of the HEAT rounds, ground fire increased, so their use was abruptly terminated. The smoke grenades were used on rare occasions.
The aiming system for the rockets was primitive and ineffective at the beginning. Calibration procedures consisted of inserting brooms into the rocket tubes on either side of the plane, under the wings. A string was then run between the brooms and a grease-pencil mark was made on the windshield where the string crossed over it. The rockets often were several hundred yards from the aim points. The effect of this was that the FACs used two rockets to mark a target and then hoped to find the target somewhere between the smokes. I was appointed as Maintenance Liaison Officer and discussed the problem with Captain Sanford “Sandy” Kozlen. I recommended that all of the rocket racks be moved so as to be precisely aligned with the factory breaks in the wing skins between the inner and outer panels. The maintenance troops made the modifications and the results were very good. I was rewarded by putting two of my Willie Petes into the cab of a truck from a distance of almost a mile away after we had completed aligning the tubes!
As the action continued through the spring and into summer, more and more AAA was moved into The Trail. The red areas on our charts denoting fly-high zones where we were to stay above 5,000 feet grew larger and more numerous. Binoculars were issued so we could see better, but they were hard to hold still enough to use. Amber sunglasses were found to be very good; however, the experts stateside said our perceptions were all in our minds and that they would not help. Evidently, their school book learning did not explain that the amber lenses would work effectively to help open the irises and so transmit more light and that the tinting would help differentiate between fresh foliage and camouflage foliage.
The ‘tip of the spear’ was the fighters and their ordnance. The bomb shortage that, according to Mr. McNamara, did not exist, affected operations to the extent that the 750 pound bombs were too small to do much, especially when fast-
fused. On one occasion, we had experimental napalm with fins that were put on a suspected truck park. They were accurate and resulted in many secondary fires from what was apparently a fuel storage area. The preferred ordnance was the 3,000 pounder delivered by the Navy. It was quite a sight to see a diminutive A-4 “Scooter” drop an A-1 bomb; it looked like the airplane split in half, since the bomb was so big, relative to the small plane. They were particularly useful for clearing a large area during hunts for bulldozers used for road repair. By way of contrast, I had two strikes in South Vietnam with Navy planes – one was an A-3 “White Whale” that carried only a single 1,000 pound bomb; the other was a flight of Crusaders with only four Zuni rockets each. The targets were of the notorious area type, that is, rice paddies. Later on, much larger bombs were used.
The strike aircraft were viewed and evaluated carefully by the FACs. On one occasion, ABCCC provided me with a pair of F-104 Starfighters. I assumed that these sleek Fighter Interceptors with no visible means of support (very short wings) would be too fast to do any good. To my surprise, the pair hunkered down and hit like pros.
The Operation
The 23rd TASS’s FAC mission (highly classified in those days) was to interdict the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos that provided supplies to North Vietnamese troops and Viet Cong guerillas in South Vietnam. It was usually referred to as simply, “The Trail”. This was a misnomer, since The Trail was actually a network of many roads, often obscured by the tropical jungle canopy that provided a virtually solid cover for truck traffic.
FAC missions typically consisted of flying out for an hour, reconnoitering or striking for an hour, then returning for an hour. This provided a reserve of about a half-hour for contingencies such as weather problems.
The FACs were sent into Laos to find trucks on The Trail and control air strikes to destroy them and crater the road. The strike planes were usually fighters returning from raids into North Vietnam. No strike aircraft were dedicated to The Trail and the returning planes were often low on fuel and ordnance, often with as little as five minutes of playtime (time on target before RTB). The litany of conversation between the FACs and the fighters took a few minutes. Fighters would describe their fuel state and ordnance briefly, and then the FACs would describe the target, location, winds, AAA, and recommended egress. After the strike, the FACs would give the fighters the all- important Battle Damage Assessment, or BDA, that constituted the official report of the strike. Back at NKP, a detailed intelligence debriefing was done to go into the DISUM.
On one occasion, a team of Operations Analysis folks from a well-known ‘think tank’ visited NKP and interviewed the FACs. After hearing our complaints, they asked what the overall percentage of success was perceived to be. We replied to the effect that it was about 98%. They seemed surprised that we would gripe so much when we appeared to be doing so well, by their standards.
The main contribution of the pilots was to form a Tactics Panel, so that the old heads could evaluate and recommend new tactics to improve our performance. The primary recommendation was to attack choke points where the network narrowed down to a single road, usually at a pass through the mountains. The intent was to rotate the strikes between the various points, code-named Alfa, Bravo, Charlie and so on, so that, as the A A A was brought into any point, the strikes were moved on to another point. The tactic worked very well and traffic was stopped cold for several weeks. Later on, headquarters concentrated only on Bravo and turned it into a moonscape of craters. This was ineffective, since the traffic simply moved to another branch of the network. The choke point tactic was later named the Momyer Choke Point Tactic, in “honor” of the Commanding General of the 7/13th Air Force.
The main tactical problem was to optimize, within the constraints of the scenario, the human resources, and the equipment, including the fighters, the time for surveillance of The Trail. I chose to use techniques that minimized fuel consumption, especially flying slow at low power. In practice, I commonly patrolled at airspeeds of only 70 to 90 knots. Partial wing flap settings were used to enhance control. Often times, I flew into the wind to minimize my speed over the ground so as to provide more time for scrutinizing the jungle for hidden trucks and equipment.
Later on, the FAC job was augmented with jet aircraft, the “Fast FACs.” A former A-1 pilot, Woody Bays, opined that, as slow as an A-1 was, 140 knots, it was still too fast to provide enough time for spotting in the jungle. Therefore, one can conclude that camouflaged targets required very slow flying. The Army OV-1s had side-looking radar; however, I’m unaware of the effectiveness of the system.
The high point of the mission occurred in the spring of 1966, when the spotters and fighters stopped the flow of war materials to the south for several weeks. Not without losses – Aviation Week magazine reported that there were 12 fighters lost in “Harley Valley” in 1966. U.S. aircraft were notorious for lack of armor, in stark contrast to planes that were designed for the job (as an example, the Russian Stormovik of WWII had over a ton of armor; in one action, Stormoviks destroyed over 200 tanks out of 300). The valley was named after Capt. Lee Harley, a FAC who, along with Airman Guillet (his backseater), was shot down there in 1966 by the vicious anti-aircraft batteries. Of the two dozen FACs stationed at NKP during my tour, six never returned from their missions, for a loss rate of 25%. One night at the bar, we figured the odds of finishing the tour were less than 50-50. I flew about 280 combat sorties. Of these, over forty were flown over North Vietnam; this qualified me for a curtailment of my tour of two months.
I flew one sortie into Harley Valley that was memorable, if not embarrassing. Wingman “Ace” Taylor was briefed to carefully note the AAA sites locations while low lead (me!) attracted fire. The routes were carefully preplanned to take advantage of terrain masking during egress. The entry to the Valley was made to the sound of the AAA (it was like being in the center of a boiler factory!). I quickly exited, with a huge sigh of relief. On the way out, with adrenaline still pouring, I spotted a white cylinder lying on a hillside. Later, at the intelligence debriefing, the interrogator questioned what it was. They agreed that it must have been a SAM site. Later recce revealed it was only a jettisoned rocket pod. No hits on targets by FACs with our Willie Petes were reported or recorded, since we were not authorized to self-expend!!
We always flew in two-ship combat formation, one low for spotting and one high for protection. The theory was that, if low lead took fire and was lost, high back up would call for air strikes and clobber the offending AAA site. At one time, headquarters tried to persuade us to fly singly. The boss flew out (his only sortie while I was there) to assess the situation and ended up on the ground. Fortunately, he was only partway out to The Trail, so the Jolly Greens were able to get him back. His report emphasized that he only made it back because he had a wingman.
The reader may wonder how the FACs managed to stay alive when the fighters were being shot down all around them. I am proud to say that I never lost a fighter and never lost a FAC. I attribute this to the wise advice provided by the old heads. We FACs quickly learned to constantly jink and never fly a predictable flight path. We constantly flew an erratic, random flight path of various turns and short climbs and dives. When fire was attracted, I immediately pitched over as if I had been hit. A survey of our tactics was conducted by headquarters to learn from the FACs so as to pass them back to the FAC instructors Stateside.
During the summer, the 23rd acquired a photo-processing van. High-grade cameras, of the brand used by the astronauts, were issued to the FACs. This only lasted until the reconnaissance squadrons found out about it and defended their turf by shutting us down.
On one occasion, I took along a photographer to photograph a small dam. Policy was that we could only hit a dam if there were uniformed guards, i.e., North Vietnamese present. After a careful preparatory briefing detailing exactly what was to happen, the pass was made over the dam and the guard was sighted. Unfortunately, the photographer did not take the picture, so we could not strike the dam!
On another occasion, photos were made from a very low elevation above the ground, in mountainous terrain, of an entry to an underground refueling station. These were sent up to headquarters. Several queries were received as to this FAC’s height above the ground when the images were made, to which replies were made referring to the elevation above sea level, not AGL (above ground level)!
On one occasion, I was assigned to operations in Laos. Laotian Operations were usually the responsibility of the 23rd TASS’s brother outfit, the “Ravens,” and the clandestine Air America and Continental Air Services, or CAS. Our introduction to Laotian General Ma was brief and to the point, with the General loudly declaring, much to our consternation, “Me no believe FAC!” We were informed later that a Laotian FAC had controlled a strike that had napalmed the general’s own troops the week before.
Our mission turned out to be dropping leaflets to warn the Pathet Lao that a surprise attack on an airfield would be held within the week. My lead, Capt. Ken Millay, lost his plane on take-off due to contaminated fuel. Later on, I almost lost my plane during a heavyweight landing into an airstrip that had a very large rock outcropping at the end of the runway. My wingman, Capt. Hatfield, helped me salvage the plane and limp back to NKP for repairs
I know some guys only know me as the FAC who crashed in Laos. Actually, there were two crashes. Ken Millay lost power on take-off from a remote site and left his bird there. I was leery of the fuel they put in our birds ‘cuz I saw how they floated the barrels off of barges. I checked the strainer drains for water and found a bunch. I warned Ken to check his, also, but he demurred. Oddly, his last words before take-off were, “If I don’t make it, you keep on going home.” I watched as his engine quit and he crashed into the trees at the end of the runway, then, after I saw him signal he was OK, as he instructed, I took off over the wreckage and went back to LS54, Luang Prabang.
My hard landing at “20 Alternate” wasn’t near as bad as Ken’s. My “excuse” was that I ran into a bad combination of factors. I had taken on a full load of fuel at “Skyline,” about five minutes from 20A and a back-seater with his personal armor (to protect his jewels). 20A is rather unique in that the runway is bent in the middle and has an outcropping of karst about 100 feet high at one end.
On the fateful day, the last half of the runway was under construction and the traffic pattern was loaded. I was #2 behind Hatfield Brubeck and slowed to land behind him on the first half of the runway. I found a new and nasty trick in the Oscar One’s bag of tricks when I dropped full flaps and pulled the throttle to idle to drop it in prior to jazzing the power for round out. I didn’t know how fast the heavy bird would drop and was too slow to get the power back in for flaring. The hard landing bent the gear and didn’t do the prop much good. When all the dust settled, my passenger got very irate about ever flying in an O-1 again. The locals gathered around, ready to strip the bird as they usually did, but I was determined to take it back to NKP.
When I checked out the bird, I found that the right brake wasn’t working. We asked for and got a copy of the maintenance manual, but the landing gear section only described how to wash it. I found out later that the fluid is to be added to the slave cylinder rather than the master. I tried to gradually add power while turning and finally got airborne. The trip back was flown very slowly, since the bird vibrated above 80 knots. I was feeling stupid, but the boss said that it seemed to him that bad things only happen to guys who are really active – gave me a boost.
The maintenance troops were great. They replaced the engine, landing gear, bent wing and horizontal stabilizer, and put in several reinforcing stringers along the fuselage where it was bent. They would call in that the bird was OK to go every evening and then down for parts every morning until it was fixed. Only cost me two cases of beer...and no aircraft accident or loss!
On another occasion, I was assigned to the notorious Khe Sanh to assist in a rescue operation. As an indication of the conditions, three points are offered. First, the FACs who were stationed there kept their planes in revetments to avoid mortar shells. Second, they made Temporary Duty trips (TDYs), to NKP to get out of their cave quarters that were flooded knee-deep with water. Third, upon going to hit the sack, I was admonished not to shoot the rats. When I awoke in the middle of the night, I first imagined that my pet dog was sleeping on my stomach. Upon waking more, I recognized the red eyes of the creature. To this day, I have no idea how I exited my bunk and ended up in the middle of the runway.
The Nimrods (A-26 aircraft) arrived towards the autumn and declared it was their mission to clean out all of the caves. We listened in disbelief and tried to convince them it was an impossible mission, because there were literally hundreds of miles of caves at the foot of the limestone karst outcroppings. The caves afforded great protection for the enemy. One cave was particularly difficult to hit because it was at the foot of a cliff that rose about 3,000 feet straight up, so pilots could not dive in close enough for accurate bombing and still have room to pull up safely. We rode “shotgun” with them in the flight engineer’s seat behind and between the pilots to check them out on The Trail.
On one occasion, I flew with a Nimrod when the clouds formed a solid undercast. He surveyed the mountain tops protruding through the clouds and calculated an attack plan. The Nimrod flew a certain heading and descended at a certain rate until the plane broke out under the clouds. This theoretically resulted in their being perfectly lined up for firing into the target cave. Although I was highly dubious, the crew performed the maneuver perfectly and, as predicted, they broke out with the cave dead ahead, looking right at the A A A site. Unfortunately, when the pilot pressed the trigger, nothing happened. After pulling up, it became obvious that the Master Arm Switch was in the SAFE position!
When it came time for recognition, the ‘gongs’ or decorations, were pinned on by former Flying Tiger Major General Bruce Holloway, who likened the FACs to the famous WW II outfit. A quarter century later, the same outfit, the 23rd TASS, or Tactical Air Support Squadron, flew OA-10 ‘Warthogs’ in Desert Storm.
At the beginning of my tour, I read about the twin-turboprop counterinsurgency airplane (later designated the OV-10A Bronco) that was designed by two U.S. Marine Majors. The report indicated that the planes were to be sent to SEA for FAC use. They made some calculations about the performance and concluded that the plane was too heavy for the short wings and so could not fly less than 140 knots. They reported their findings up channels. Later, I read that the plane was being re-designed with longer wings (40’ vs. the original 20’).
I provided an end-of-tour report that covered many of the deficiencies and offered suggestions for correcting them. One significant contribution that formed part of the report was a study of acoustic surveillance titled, “Big Ears.” The essence of Big Ears was based on the conclusion that all of the targets were hard to find under the dense jungle canopy, but emitted loud noises. Big Ears therefore was to use directional microphones mounted on the O-1s or similar quiet aircraft and flight maneuvering to locate the targets. I was familiar with the Silent Sam project conducted at Wright Field that used a Cub with a large four-bladed propeller and mufflers. Eventually, TAC picked up the project. The end result was a system that used air dropped acoustic sensors and converted Beechcraft Bonanza electronic aircraft (QU-22B, Call sign Vampire) to monitor The Trail; however, the system did not provide for the immediate strike control that O-1s or similar quiet aircraft would have provided. I was informed that the Bonanzas were designed for unmanned operations; however, the Thai Government disallowed operation of unmanned aircraft, so pilots had the onerous task of flying orbits for long periods of time. The quiet aircraft aspect was later developed as the Lockheed YO-3 that was used by the DEA, but without any acoustic sensors.
All in all, I still feel that my FAC experiences were the highlight of my USAF career and I especially enjoyed flying the Bird Dog. Whenever I see one at an air show, I still feel the urge to climb into the cockpit and reminisce. Personally, I feel I grew to maturity in many ways, to put it mildly. As for the mission, I once asked a fighter pilot how he would compare a FAC-directed strike with one without a FAC. He replied that the FAC- directed strikes were generally twice as effective as those without a FAC. And, of course, the camaraderie of flying with what I consider to be the best of the best was the frosting on the cake. The overall effect of our efforts to reduce the flow of war materials to Vietnam and improve the odds for the men there made it all worthwhile.