| Jan. Edit: "The past actually happened but history is only what someone wrote down." - A. Whitney Brown The seminal moment for all of 1971, the single event which at the time and today holds the most interest among Tigers that year was the January 2, combat loss of Tiger 02 and subsequent SAR of Harvey Wier and Rayford "RK" Brown. And on January 3rd, the night of the SAR recovery, the 34th TFS also lost a crew on a night mission in Laos (see Bill Meeboer's recollection). Guys remember it and they relate events around that date to nail down when other events occurred. The silence about that SAR seminal event from either aircrew has caused many to fill in the blanks by relating their own actions in support of rescuing both Harvey and RK. Much of what has been written within this manuscript has either been verified by or documented by the Official History of the 388th TFW as reported in Quarterly 388th Tactical Fighter Wing Reports to 7th AF Headquarters in Ton Son Nhut and/or via 388th TFW Commander's After Action Reports. Yet amazingly, the single most significant and poignant events of 1971 are totally missing from any of the above Official Reports. It is as if neither loss ever happened. And in fact the January through March 1971 Quarterly Report boldly states, "No aircraft were lost due to combat during the period." So much for the credibility of authoritarian sources and official reports of the time. The Wing Historian under Wing Commander, Colonel Irby Jarvis, was a SSgt. Larry B. Hawkin. These major omissions create some doubt of the veracity of events recorded "officially" and leaves the memories of the pilots and backseaters who lived them of even greater importance. (D-Bell)
The northern part of Laos, Barrel Roll, was overcast with stratus and the tops were low. The solid overcast didn't seem to be more than 1,000 to 1,500 feet thick. I
don't remember anything remarkable about the period leading up to the first refueling.
We had flown directly from Korat to the Barrel and were just cruising around looking
for a workable area anywhere in Barrel Roll. For F-4s to drop their bombs we needed
no more than scattered clouds up to about 10,000 ft. All the Air Force fighters
had to be able to visually acquire the target before dropping their bombs. Let me explain this. 7th Air Force would issue a fragmentary order each day. This order was referred to as the "Frag". It had sections for each unit's taskings. Each task or flight had a line or two that would give ordnance loading, number and type of aircraft; refueling time and off-load for the flight from a specific tanker track; and a time on target or rendezvous with a particular Forward Air Controller - FAC. This process was referred to by the crews as being "fragged". The term "hits or hitting" came from when aircrews shared a bottle at a social event and if you wanted a bit more scotch in your glass you asked for a "hit". When a fighter would intercept and join into formation with a tanker and then take on fuel we referred to it as "hitting" a tanker, a KC-135. In our case it was the Orange Anchor refueling track north of Udorn RTAFB, located in north central Thailand, and south of Ch 108, a TACAN located on top of a mountain in central northern Laos. We were configured with two rocket launchers, each with seven Willy Petes -White Phosphorus 2.75 inch folding fin aerial rockets, 620 rounds of 20mm High Explosive Incendiary (HEI) in the nose gun, and two 370 gallon external wing tanks. F-4s burned 17 gal/min at .85 mach cruise and more than 10 times that amount in afterburners. These external fuel tanks would usually go dry 20 minutes after takeoff because of the fuel consumed by start, taxi and take off. On our first refueling we filled-up to "no flow". The F-4 could signal the tanker through the boom that it was full and that turned off the refueling pumps on the KC-135 resulting in "no flow", and then the pilot punched the Air to Air Refueling disconnect button to release the boom from the refueling receptacle. If you were not fragged for enough JP-4 - Air Force grade jet fuel, to go to "no flow" the boom operator could read the pounds of fuel that he had transferred. After tanking we proceeded northeast to the PDJ, Plain de Jars, which was a relatively flat area that years of war had left a no-mans-land covered with bomb craters and pock marked with CBU, cluster bomb unit, scars. We found a hole in the thinning overcast and got underneath. I estimated the cloud bases were still 1,500 to 2,000 AGL - above ground level, maximum. We passed "Roadrunner Lake", yeah, it looked like a roadrunner's profile on the map, and headed for the gap in the mountains that indicated where Route 7, a major line of communication, LOC, left the PDJ and entered the mountains. From there Rt 7 wound east to North Vietnam. Our intent was to determine if interdiction point SC900 was passable again after previous bombings. The mountain tops were not obscured by clouds. Our speed was somewhere on the north side of 480 knots, all we could get in military power - maximum power without using afterburner. The gunners would not hear us coming for very long. About 1445 local time we noticed that the cold weather of the night before had caused all the leaves to fall off all the potted plant camouflage on the truck- hiding revetments - bunkered stalls, along Rt 7. The limbs were barren and there were miles of revetments. I suggested to Harvey Weir, my pilot, aka Tiger 02 Alpha, that we have Bullwhip, the RF-4C out of Udorn, run a strip photo. He concurred so I got out my big 1:50,000 map book from beside the seat and opened it. It filled the entire front of the cockpit. I started reading a set of start and stop UTMs, metric meter grids used by the Army and Frag to designate targets down to the nearest 10 meters, to Bullwhip over the radio. While doing this I called Harvey off a rocket pass for a "known 37mm gun site" that we were going to fly over if we continued the pattern. He tapped the afterburners - moved the throttles outboard and forward to engage the afterburners, and started a repositioning turn under clouds. I struggled to get the coordinates transmitted intelligibly to Bullwhip against the constant G forces. To keep our position close enough to maintain sight of the target area we had to make a level turn with 60-70 degrees of bank pulling 2-3 times our body weight. I didn't understand why he wanted to shoot a Willy Pete just to make a puff of white smoke. We had no fighters and it would be dissipated long before Bullwhip would be on scene. However, I failed to object to the pass. This was a Lieutenant mistake distinguishing between brave and stupid. About this time Harvey asked, "Which one?" meaning which revetment to shoot at. I switched from looking out the side to out the front. I answered, "We're too low." He had managed to position our jet into a 20 degree rocket pass under a 2,000 ft cloud layer and as I looked past the side of the top of his ejection seat and out the front I could see that the trees had leaves. Harvey began an immediate pull to just slow on the AOA indexers. The F-4 had angle of attack, AOA, indexer lights used to obtain the optimum/maximum lift AOA. There were four of the lights, two on either side of both cockpits, and each consisted of an up and a down chevron and a circle. Too high an AOA gave a down chevron, slightly high gave you a down chevron and a circle, etc. etc. Too high of an AOA meant you were too slow on landing. I can still see the bright red segmented circle with the inverted chevron over it as the indexer light glowed brightly under the dimness of the overcast. This indexer light was located directly in my line of sight when peering through the hole between the canopy bow and the front ejection seat. Harvey immediately eased up to the "on speed" donut and I felt the aircraft mush with a 15+ degree nose up angle of attack. We had 300-320 knots and were very heavy, perhaps still feeding the external fuel tanks. Jettisoning the tanks and rocket pods would have been a good idea at this point but it did not occur to either of us. There was a vertical karst - jagged nearly vertical limestone mountain, ahead now and there was no way we could clear it. We had been on a south to north pass perpendicular to Rt 7 and aimed at a revetment on the north side of Rt 7 and on the west side of a small pork chop shaped valley. Harv had rolled right and moved over into the valley. Time was slowing down. I thought about an F-4, call sign Falcon, that had just landed the week before with the backseater having ejected for unknown reasons. We were still mushing but now level and just above the trees. There was still no way to make the turn to get over the karst growing larger rapidly in front of us. The thought went through my mind, "Will the radar come to me or will I go to the radar?" I started pulling the lower handle out of its bracket. Suddenly I was tumbling and disoriented. The chute opened smoothly and I automatically looked up to check the canopy per my jump training at Ft Benning five years earlier. I was surprised there were several blown panels in a white and orange parachute. Whattt? I thought it was supposed to be Olive Drab. I felt the survival kit deploy and suddenly to my left there was a large and greasy black-orange fireball. I thought to myself that at least the jet was not going home without me and I had made the right decision. I did not know if Harvey had gotten out or not. Before I could look back from the fireball rising from two thirds of the way up the karst I was hung up just under jungle canopy. No feet together toes on top of each other, chin tucked in and arms crossed over my chest like they taught me at jump school. My parachute canopy and survival kit were snagged across the top of the jungle canopy. I was hanging in the clear about three feet from the 8-9" tree trunk. My sunglasses and oxygen mask were still on. It was just like the Jungle Survival movie I had watched at Clark. I immediately heard yelling and firing around me but I didn't see anyone or hear any rounds hitting in my tree. I pulled on one riser a couple of times to swing to the tree trunk. The shooting and yelling continued from the south based upon my orientation to the eastern ridgeline behind me. My weight was still in the harness with my legs wrapped around the trunk of the tree. The lack of hearing and vision from the helmet were making me claustrophobic. I decided to drop my helmet while I shinnied down the tree. In survival school they had cautioned us to be sure to keep our helmet for the recovery. It would provide needed protection during the ride up to the chopper. I carefully determined the uphill side of the tree, reached my helmet out as far as I could and released the chin strap. The helmet fell and grew smaller. It was still falling. "Damn, this tree is much taller than I thought." I heard the helmet hit the ground and roll down hill but I could not see it. More shooting and yelling going on. I disconnected my parachute by holding the tree with one arm and my legs and releasing the Koch - (pron. Coke) quick release, fittings with my free hand. I was still restrained by the survival kit. I pushed the left side release and it swung clear. I was still caught by my tree lowering device. One hundred and fifty feet of nylon strap was stored in my lumbar pad and fed under my arm to the hardware on the front of my parachute harness. It had snagged as I came through the tree canopy and started to play out. I considered again the tree lowering device but decided it would take too long to untangle. I had climbed many trees as a kid on a rural Oklahoma farm and this would be a lot easier with my G-suit and gloves on. I easily slipped out of my harness and evaluated the mini survival kit in a small pocket in the back of my harness and decided it would not be needed. Granddad Martin had told me that the fish wouldn't bite if I talked, so I knew the fishing was not going to be any good with all the shooting and yelling going on. I shinnied down the trunk with G-Suit and gloves. This was fun. Not even a raspberry. I stopped at the foot of the tree and took off my four leg restraint garters from the Martin Baker ejection seat. I decided to keep my G-suit because of the time it would take to move all the water bottles and stuff from the pockets to my flight suit. I replayed in my mind the Jungle School movie of the pilot wandering off leaving a trail of equipment. That was a good flick. Once cleaned off, I pulled my camo golf hat out of my G-Suit pocket, since there was no trace of my helmet. I still had my corrective sunglasses on. You see I was a product of the Air Force policy to hire the visually handicapped as Navigators. I oriented myself. I got out my radio and established contact with Bullwhip on Guard - the 243.0 MHz frequency dedicated for emergency use. "Tiger 02 Bravo is down in a ravine two or three valleys west of SC900E and he is uninjured." I heard a momentary emergency beeper from Harvey. I stowed my radio, got my .38 revolver out, and climbed NE away from Rt 7 and toward the military crest -1/3 of the height of the hill below the crest, of the east side of the valley. I tried to put some immediate distance between me and my orange and white parachute strung out across the top of the jungle canopy. After moving about 20 yards along the contour of the very steep hill I came to the edge of what I thought was a partially overgrown slash and burn clearing. It would not provide adequate cover for moving so I turned right and climbed uphill toward the military crest. I was moving carefully to be quiet and not to leave a trail of broken foliage. Ahead I saw a limestone out-cropping about three and a half feet tall with vines hanging over the front. It was undercut enough that you could not look over the top and see into it. The slash and burn area made for a great field of fire. I had my .38 caliber revolver with five rounds loaded. Those guys with fully automatic AK-47s were not going to have a chance. I figured I had two rounds each for two Pathet Lao soldiers and one for me. I'd heard that Raven 23's body had been found skinned and his gonads sewn up in his mouth. Raven FACs flew O-1 Birddogs, small single reciprocating engine powered aircraft. They were assigned to a unit at Ubon but left their AF ID cards there and flew in civilian clothes carrying US Embassy ID Cards because "there were no American troops in Laos". They lived and flew out of small strips in their areas of responsibility but mainly at the secret base, Long Tiene, or also known as Alternate or 20A. I was not going to be captured alive if I could help it. I had an additional ten rounds of .38 ammunition on my survival vest if I had time to reload. My new home was only about 60 yards from my parachute, 100 yards above the valley floor and well below the crests of the surrounding hills. The valley in front of me was approximately 1 kilometer (km), across - a little more than half a mile. I was about 1 km north of Rt 7. I crawled under the vines and backed up against rock with my .38 out. The shooting and yelling had continued to my left, which I thought was south. We had been bombing the caves on the northeast side of the karst to my back and NE of where the aircraft impacted for the previous week or two so I was sure I would be welcomed by the locals. Concealed behind the vines and radio out of my survival vest, my next call was on 282.8 for any Air America helicopter. However, due to my location down near the bottom of the ridge my radio range sucked. I switched to Guard. Raven 26 immediately answered my call. I could hear his aircraft so I vectored him toward my position and he immediately gained a tally (visual) on my orange and white parachute. After Raven 26 had my parachute in sight I gave him my estimated 60-70 meter distance, NE and slightly uphill from the chute. He told me that he was going to mark my chute with a Willy Pete to confirm my position. Did you know that Willy Pete comes in with a crack - a combination of supersonic travel and a super quick fuse to scatter the white phosphorus above the ground? This was an educational experience since I had not been on this end of a Willy Pete before. I started sharing the direction and estimated distance to the ground fire from my position. I had bailed out at almost exactly 1500 local time. This was the time on target - TOT, or station time, for the Sandys - the generic call sign for fixed wing dedicated SAR aircraft. These same aircraft and pilots sometimes flew under different call signs when not on dedicated SAR missions. Raven 26 was controlling the Sandys, call sign "Hobo", on a different frequency keeping Guard radio channel clear. For this reason and my location I did not hear many radio transmissions except for Raven 26. The Sandys arrived about 10 minutes after Raven 26. They began strafing and attacking enemy ground fire sites under his control. I continued to call out the ground fire to Raven 26. The ground fire was now timed to the arrival of the "Hobos" so I assumed that my importance had decreased a great deal. I was not jealous of the attention being lavished on the Hobos. After several minutes of this I heard a single soldier, as in one and not his/her marital status, hunting through the jungle coming from my east to south and I estimated about 10 yards away. Why do I say hunting? The timing of the steps was crunch - peer, crunch - peer, rather than a normal 100 beat per minute walk. I was sitting in the back of my cover facing west and could not see anything moving. I whispered into my radio to Raven 26 and requested a strafe pass from my parachute up the hill. The crunching of the brush was getting much too loud. The Hobos, A-1s, were configured with 7.62 mini-guns on one stub pylon just for such a situation. Suddenly I was spitting dirt out of my mouth as I heard the crack of supersonic rounds followed in a couple of seconds by the Whrrrrrrrrrmth of the mini-gun. Another teachable moment, I hadn't considered that the bullets get there way before the sound of the gun. Inside my vines I could see three holes in the ground about a foot apart starting just short of my left foot and leading uphill to my right. My "up the hill" and the Hobo's "up the hill" had been about 45 degrees apart. I told Raven what happened. He safed that Hobo up, meaning he had him secure his ordnance and not drop or shoot any more. I didn't hear the bad guy again. I was and remain grateful for that strafe pass even though it was very close. I continued to hear voices to the south, down the valley, and they were joined by more voices coming from the NW up the valley toward where I had seen the fireball. They sounded like they were moving toward my position. Raven 26 obliged my request by having someone lay napalm up the valley just beyond my position. It turned out that this was also the approximate position of Harvey. Some of the napalm got really close to him. After about an hour and a half things began to slow down. I asked Raven 26 how much gas he had because three would make a crowd. He allowed that he had plenty of fuel left. At about 1700 Raven 26 turned the On Scene Commander - OSC, job over to Raven 22, Grant Uhls. Grant was killed two months later. There had now been almost two hours of continuous airstrikes by a variety of fast and slow movers. Air cover had begun within approximately 15 minutes of ejection/crash and this I think prevented an organized search for Harvey and me. Those attacks had also largely suppressed the ground fire except for some random small arms bursts. The sun was low on the western rim of the valley and I had an "ear worm" running in my head. "My bags are packed, I'm ready to go. Taxi's waitin', outside my dooo…" Raven 22 called that they had started the last chance pickup attempt from the SW over Rt 7. Attempted pickup at 1750. Just as I saw the first helicopter in the SAR force coming over the western valley rim he turned back and the sound receded into silence. Raven 22 said both Jolly's took fire and a Parachute Rescue Jumper -PJ, was hit. By 1800L it was dark and the A-1s left. "King", the Airborne Command Control and Communication (ABCCC) C-130, bedded us down for the night and promised a first light effort in the morning. The chill factor went down with the sun. I had been sitting on the damp almost muddy ground, plus I had been hot and sweaty in the backseat of our jet, and I was wet when I jumped. Miserably cold already, I was off to a good start for a long night. It was hungry out, too. A window into the mind. I felt strangely calm after the "King" kissed me goodnight. I had been the whole afternoon. I had accepted the fact that I was already dead and worrying would not change that. No previous aircrew had been recovered alive after spending the night in Laos. In the twilight silence I began reviewing the events preceding going to work that morning. Kathleen, my wife of almost two and a half years had come over to Thailand on a charter DC-8 with 250 other wives a few weeks before. We had a hootch in Nakhon Ratchasima just outside Korat RTAFB. Next door lived our 34th TFS flight surgeon, his wife, and baby daughter. He had a new pair of Lica roof prism binoculars that had the most fantastic clarity and weighed a fraction of what the beat up old artillery spotter glasses we carried weighed. The previous afternoon I had declined his generous offer to let me use them on this flight. That night Kathleen had trimmed my horns back into the quick. That morning she had fixed a big breakfast of fried pork and scrambled eggs. Life was as perfect as I could ask for. I had no regrets. My mind was at ease. My thoughts turned to God at this point. I considered a big prayer; however, I decided I hadn't talked with Him much before and as a stranger I didn't want to piss him off by bothering him now. I decided on just simple thanks for still being there, as I had already wasted several lives that day. Earlier in the quiet after "King" had bedded us down I tried to make a deal with the Devil for hot biscuits and sausage gravy. If he showed up with a plate of 1 ½" tall golden brown biscuits drowned in real sausage gravy, my soul was his. "Mai mi, Kah," No have, sir, as they said in the Officers Club when you asked for iceberg lettuce. The devil couldn't hack it any better than the O'Club at Korat. It was pitch black now and I still had my sunglasses on despite having a clear set in my G-suit pocket. My rationale was I didn't want them to see the whites of my bright blue eyes. I knew they must be open wide. Almost concurrently with darkness I heard a large number of trucks start up. They were all muffled, sounded new. It completely destroyed my visions of a bunch of beat up old trucks struggling down Rt 7. There was a log-floored bridge somewhere nearby and it sounded like a xylophone as each truck crossed it. All the trucks shifted at the same points, as though they knew the route very well. From my position I could not see any lights moving on Rt 7 and I guessed the trucks were on the new "Robin Hood" road a couple of km further south. The truck sounds continued steadily for several hours. About 1900 the sounds of a multi-engine recip - slang for piston reciprocating engine powered aircraft, passed high over me and then died away. I stowed my radios to save the batteries for first light. I didn't want to run out of energy when it counted. Occasionally during the night I heard high altitude multi-engine recips pass overhead, but they sounded so high I didn't think anything of it. It seems to me everyone but me got the word I was supposed to check in with them every hour during the night. The lack of radio contact during the night resulted in me being listed as MIA - missing in action, and having a working radio 3 Jan. The long, long night was beginning. I was lying on my left side to keep my shooting arm free and to keep from making noise I didn't try to move. The valley was over four thousand feet elevation and the sky had cleared. I estimated the temperature in the forties with no wind. I was still damp and getting colder. The cold kept my thirst down and I just nursed my two pint flasks of water from my G-suit pockets. At 2330, determined from my radio-active, glow-in-the-dark, radium filled Navigator's watch, I heard dogs barking. I referred to my survival school training and came to the conclusion that the blood hounds had arrived. My heart dropped. I moved to a sitting position with my back against the wall, my knees drawn up, and my arms on my knees holding the .38 with both hands. I quietly cocked my .38 by holding the trigger down as I pulled the hammer all the way back then releasing the trigger. I was ready for one dog, one Gomer - slang for communist gorillas, and me as necessary. No more barking. Later I heard voices from my back right, NE of me, on the ridge but they seemed to go off to the south toward Rt 7. I still had my .38 out, but returned to lying on my left side with my back to the rock wall. After midnight the truck traffic stopped. I kept the .38 out and my plan was to use cover until I was sure I could take out two of them should discovery be imminent or I was discovered. I planned to reload if possible. I fingered the rounds in elastic loops on the front of my survival vest, noting the direction to slide them out. I mentally rehearsed flipping the cylinder out, dumping the old rounds and reloading the new rounds one at a time so I wouldn't drop one in the dark. I also mentally rehearsed where to shoot myself before I could be wounded and or captured. I decided on under the chin with a 30 to 45 degree upward tilt to cut the brain stem. I figured my worst case would be if they came in with sweeping blind firing because I had no protection from the front but vines. Hide and wait. Did I tell you that it was cold and miserable? I may have nodded off during the night but no real sleep. Mother Nature visited during the night and I fished it out from under my G-suit and took a whiz once. I was sure it sounded like Niagara Falls despite being on my side. Sunday 3 Jan 1971 At 0600 with first light I heard a fast mover - slang for jet fighter as opposed to a slow mover piston engine, fly over but was unable to make contact whispering into my radio. Then I heard a slow mover cross over and head to the SW. I could hear him holding way to the southwest, maybe over PDJ. I could just barely hear him. The weather was hazy clear and 40-ish Fahrenheit. It would turn out this was Raven 26 (Chuck Engle). He said he came over and confirmed the parachute was still there. The fast mover had been Tiger 01 (Bob Jones and Jerry Sullivan) but they had been given a survivor location nearly five nautical miles (nm) east of our actual location. As the first sunlight started to hit the far west hilltops I heard jets and ordnance far to the east. Scud clouds started to form as the sunlight hit the air. My bags were still packed and my radio was on. I heard male Laotian voices coming up the valley from Rt 7. The voices were accompanied by thrashing of the bushes. This was not the "first light pickup" effort that I wanted. I whispered into my radio and Raven 26 immediately answered. Minutes or hours passed and I could not tell the difference. The voices moved closer. The scud clouds had now formed a thin, solid layer at about 1,000 ft above ground level (AGL). I called again and made contact with Tiger 01 at about 0630. I expressed my concern to him with the bad guys in the valley about 20 to 30 yards away hacking my chute and survival kit down out of the tree, saying I might need some assistance. I lost contact as Tiger turned away from my position and headed east again above the overcast. From the debrief I learned that there was a Nail FAC who flew an OV-10 out of NKP and "King" in the area but they were both new to the SAR and also had the incorrect coordinates passed out by intelligence. By 0730 the bad guys had my chute down out of the tree, and not knowing their intentions, I tried to raise someone on Guard. I again made contact with Raven 26 who had been there the previous afternoon and knew just where I was. Since my first contact he had been working in the background asking "King" to make him OSC, but "King" was trying to make the Nail FAC the OSC. This was the situation. When "King" and the Hobos (A-1Es) bedded us down for the night they promised a first light effort. I expected a FAC to be orbiting overhead at sunlight with Sandys on his wing. I got nothing but a Gomer first light effort. I could not talk to the fast-FAC long enough to vector him back to my position because he was so far away. The afternoon before when "King" returned to base, the debriefing resulted in our position being mis-plotted by more than five nautical miles. This had resulted in the jet noise and ordnance I had barely been able to hear over to the east. The next morning "King" could not hear me on the radio nor see my parachute, but he would not let Raven 26 be the OSC. Finally, Raven 26 got tired of listening to me whine and came up on Guard and said that if anybody wanted to play he was going to start another SAR. At this point "King" capitulated and made Raven 26 the OSC. Two Korat F-4s, call
sign "Miller" flight, with pilots Doug Henneman with Ron Akaka in back,
and my roomy George Koch (pron. Cook) with Stan Hancock, from my Navigator School
class, had been holding over the western PDJ. King weather aborted other flights
from Korat and elsewhere, but Miller flight told Raven 26 they were ready to play,
despite the weather and "King." Raven 26 told me to take cover, as he was going to mark the opening of the valley and the location the flight was to drop their ordnance. I was still lying on my left side peering out of my vines at the voices in the valley because with my chute cut down out of the tree I could no longer see any enemy activity. My left leg was completely numb from loss of blood circulation during the night and with the Gomers 20 yards away I was afraid of the noise I would make if I tried to sit up and pull it out from under me. CRACK! CRACK! Raven 26 fired two Willy Petes on one pass marking the play. Suddenly I was looking DOWN on the back of an F-4 with gleaming white Tiger teeth, doing the speed of heat as it passed into a little patch of orange sunlight. That image is still burned into my mind. I was only a couple of hundred feet above the floor of the valley. The F-4E was on the tree tops, banana tree tops. It rubbed off some cans of napalm and stood on its tail and disappeared into the clouds. The second F-4E laid his nape right beside lead's and disappeared vertically with at least a five-or-six-G pull-up. There were no more voices coming from the valley. Instead the morning breeze brought the delightful aroma of napalm cooked bananas to me. It had now been 24 hours since I had eaten and bananas "a la nape" smelled really good. Under the cover of Miller flight's noise I got my fingers into the left knee hole of my G-suit and dragged my floppy paralyzed leg out in front of me and leaned back against the rocks to watch the air show and take my mind off of it. Soon I started feeling a welcome tingling sensation. After two more napalm runs Miller flight switched to Snakeyes, MK-82, 500 lb general purpose bombs with eight foot span metal petals to create high drag to slow the bomb and give the fighter safe fragmentation clearance. I got a little more into the air show and raised up and peered out through my vines. Did you know Snakes go off whooooomp and not boom like in the movies? Neither did I. About 15 seconds after the first explosions I heard this tinkle - tinkle coming down through the trees. Oh shit! That was pieces of the metal petals coming back down. Now I remembered that the casings of the MK-82s are propelled outward and upward as fragments traveling up to 6000 ft per second, twice as fast as a rifle bullet. I got my ass back in my cave and as low as I could get. The SAR had now started. There were continuous air strikes. After about an hour I heard a burst of small arms fire from the west side of the valley that coincided with the arrival of a Sandy, and I relayed it to Raven 26. The Sandys covered the area with ordnance. I listened to chatter on the radio about ground fire along Rt 7 to the southwest. In my humble unbiased opinion the ground fire was pretty well suppressed by 0830. However, while suppressing the ground fire on Rt 7 they discovered the revetments that got me into this mess in the first place and started beating them up with CBUs and high explosive - HE, rockets. Lots of missions went on beating up the area to suppress the enemy ground fire and they talked about using CS - tear gas, along the LOC using code words of course. The after-action report claimed six trucks damaged or destroyed. About 0930 I overheard the Jollys talking about going "Bingo" - reaching a minimum predetermined fuel state that would allow a particular sequence of events or RTB -return to base, in about 30 minutes. And then having to take a couple of hours to go out to the PDJ to aerial refuel off of "King". TWO hours!? Everyone said that it was still too hot for the helos to come in across Rt7 for the pickup. We had been working the area for weeks as Tiger FACs. In fact, we had been beating up the caves on the backside of the hill northeast of where I was hiding. I was sure the enemy loved us over there. I also knew that there was nothing out to the northwest of our position. Rt 7 ran off to the southwest. I came up on the radio to Raven 26 and suggested a pickup from the northwest, ignoring Rt 7. "My bags are packed, I'm ready to go…." Two hours? I was going to miss lunch and that had started to sound important to me. "Taxi's waiting outside your door …." Also, Mother Nature was back violently waving the number 2 card. It turned out that Jan 2nd had been the first full day of operational capability for air-to-air refuelable HH-53, Super Jollys, at DaNang in South Viet Nam. They had launched and hit a C-130 tanker, "King", on the way to the SAR area on Friday afternoon. The local CH-3 Jollys from NKP RTAFB in the NE corner of Thailand would have had to land at a Lima Site, a small fortified landing site held by the Royal Laotian forces and refuel in order to get deep enough to reach me and RTB. We were too far north of the border into Laos for a round trip with any hover time to pick us up. As a matter of fact, on 3 January, Raven 22 and two CH-3 Jollys were deployed to Lima Site 32 only five miles north of the SAR, standing by if needed. The Super Jolly HH-53s were almost three times the size of the mere Jolly Green Giant CH-3s. Slowly things began to get organized. Sandys 4 and 7 dragged down the run-in trolling for enemy ground fire. For the non-fisherpersons, trolling is driving the boat at minnow swimming speed pulling bait or lures. It was clear from enemy fire. By my count I had not heard any ground fire for more than an hour. Two Jollys started in following one of the Sandys and another one S-turning above the formation, and the fast movers started bombing Rt 7 again as a diversion. All of this had been taking place under a 1,500 to 2,000 ft overcast. Raven 26 had been down at 1,000 feet AGL for two hours or more before being relieved by Raven 22 just before the pickup attempt. Just as the A-1 leading the Jollys crossed the western ridgeline he told the Jollys to start slowing down. Then he told Harvey, who was closer to them, to pop his smoke. At about the same time the Raven put a smoke rocket where my chute used to be. I could hear the roar of the three mini-guns on the Jolly over the rotor noise. Orange smoke began to drift up from behind the low ridge to my northwest, and the nose of the Jolly pitched up to what seemed like a 45 degree angle, and it pivoted around the axis of the rotor and put its tail rotor into the vegetation on the steep terrain east of Harvey. He hovered and hovered, the mini-gun on the left side was hosing out toward, but below, my position since I could see the top of the rotor. It turned out that another PJ called the guy and told him to be careful for the survivor. I came out of my cover and was standing there watching the show again when I heard something in the grass in front of me. Fool. I got back into my hole and peered out through the vines. Finally they dragged Harvey out of the jungle canopy trailing a vine. As the Jolly turned toward me Raven 22 told me to pop my smoke. While they were picking up Harvey I prepared my smoke like they taught us at sea survival. I already had the seal broken and ripped the striker wire out of the flare. A tiny wisp of orange smoke about two inches long emitted from the flare…SHAKE IT SHAKE IT they had said. I shook the hell out of it and it began to spew a volcano of orange smoke. The Jolly came to a hover about 50 yards in front of me in the slash and burn clearing with mini-guns still blazing. I waited for it to come to me. In jungle survival at Clark they had said to not try to move to the penetrator. At the debrief I learned that the trees beside my slash and burn area had been so tall, remember the falling helmet, they didn't think the cable would reach me. I had stowed my radio, gun, and camo hat under my survival vest. At this point I threw the "Bullshit Flag" on survival school and came out of my hole, vaulting over large trees felled across the slash and burn area, racing and sliding for the Jolly that was hovering at about the elevation of my hiding place with the penetrator down hill from me. At the SAR Debrief the left side PJ gunner told me that I had startled him when I came flying out of the bushes jumping over logs and racing toward him. He had started to swing his gun my way when he realized I was wearing a flight suit. The terrain was quite steep and the penetrator slid further downhill from me. I grabbed the cable and started pulling it to me. They had left a couple of the petal seats down from the first pickup and they caught on some vegetation. NOT a problem. I was still wearing my sunglasses but knocked them off putting the penetrator strap over my head instead of unhooking it. I picked them up with one hand while holding the penetrator against my butt with the other. Now I grabbed the cable above the penetrator and pulled up and give the PJ a thumbs-up. They had cautioned us at survival school about getting the swivel at the top of the penetrator straight…I pulled up on the cable but failed. As the cable tightened I hugged the penetrator and put my bare head next to the swivel. I know you have this one figured out already. About half way up to the helo the swivel snapped up and bashed me in my left temple. I immediately knew what had happened as I dropped down an inch. I was still hugging the penetrator for dear life and didn't notice how much I was swinging back and forth. The technical term is oscillating, but just the same I was slammed into the bottom of the Jolly so hard that I was dazed a little. No way was I coming off this thing. I held on even tighter. I'm not sure but I think I had reached around and interlocked my fingers behind my back. I was now beside the door and felt the PJ pulling the cable into the door way. He started letting out slack in the cable so my toes came back down to the floor as he pushed me over onto the cool anti-slip grit-coated aluminum floor of the helo. Boy did that feel good. I looked across the helo and saw Harvey wrapped up in a blanket. After evaluating the odds of hitting something critical on the chopper if I shot him with my .38, I just reached over and shook hands. The helo was now climbing and moving forward toward the western ridgeline. I became aware of the roar of the three mini-guns hosing out the sides and back of the Jolly and the horrendous whine of all the gear boxes. There was an extra M-16 lying on the floor and I considered picking it up but decided that an additional 20 rounds from me wouldn't be much compared to the 12,000 rounds per minute combined rate of fire from the three minis. The PJs were hand signaling me to see if I was alright. I gave another thumbs-up. Too bad they didn't have faces at that time. We climbed to 7 or 8 thousand feet MSL- above Mean Sea Level, over the PDJ. Battle damage check showed we had taken one small arms round with no leaks in the fuel or hydraulics or shorts from damaged wires. We joined up with "King" for refueling. The Jolly crew let me ride in the jump seat so I could see out the front. I had not realized how far the refueling probe extended out in front of the Jolly to poke the basket towed by the "King". I was used to the boom being stuck into the back of the F-4 right behind my head. This was more like trying to stick the tip of a cane fishing pole into a tin can in a wind storm. Again for those deprived of pleasant fishing training a cane pole is an inexpensive bamboo pole about 15 feet long and one and a half inches in diameter at the big end and one quarter inch at the small end. It is very floppy and flexible. I thanked the crew over the intercom. Compared with the F-4 it was a long shaky ride back to Udorn. The Jolly crew was just visiting the area so as a local navigator I was able to assist when there was a temporary spatial disorientation discussion between the pilots. There had been two HH-53s, Super Jollys, in the area for the pickup and we were joined on the way home by two CH-3s, Jollys, that had been waiting at Lima Site 32 as backup. Now there was a four ship of Jollys headed for Udorn. We lined up down the runway and the PJs popped smoke to trail behind us. At the runway departure end we slowed and turned back down the taxiway…we couldn't do that with the F-4. We "hover-taxied" back to the ramp and turned into the "Valley." The crew checked in with their Command Post whose call sign was "HoHoHo", of course, and gave their maintenance status. It began to really settle in with that radio call and maintenance status, that things were getting back to normal…I was safe. Then I noticed the group of about 50 people with a fire hose. This would be nice, guys, but I needed to take a dump in the worst way and I was still chilled, but they had earned the privilege of hosing us down. Maybe I could borrow the fire hose if I couldn't hold it any longer. After we were hosed down they gave us hollowed-out pineapples filled with champagne and fragrant leis made of plumeria blossoms for our necks. Then it was off to the hospital for medical clearance. We were checked for dislocations or broken bones and a series of back X Rays because of the ejections. My only visible damage was a couple of lumps on my head. Now we did run into some trouble at the hospital. They insisted against our great protest that we could not take our pineapples with us into the hospital. We and several others explained to them that their rules sucked and would just have to be changed. Didn't work and they took our pineapples. After the medical checks we were taken to the cafeteria for some food. When I started to eat for the first time in 24 hours I was pleased to find that my iced-tea was champagne over ice. Good corpsmen. I was given an autovon - automatic voice network telephone system, patch from Udorn to Tinker AFB to my parents in Oklahoma. Since it had taken the Air Force about 20 hours to notify them I was MIA it was now only a couple of hours after that notification that I called home. Shortly we had a Gooney bird ride back to Korat. After landing we were met on the ramp by the Wing CC and Wing DO for debriefing and a beautiful young lady patiently waiting in the background. My story was that we had pulled to on-speed but didn't have the G-available to turn the required corner. Harv's was a little different. The DO liked Harvey's version better and told the Lieutenant he was dismissed and get the pretty young lady off the ramp. I did. About two weeks later there was a SAR debrief - party, at NKP. Very drunk out. Good food and friends. We had a "Meanest Mother in the Valley" contest which consisted of seeing what one could tolerate eating or drinking. One young NKP Nail FAC burped up his raw egg and was about to be disqualified when he sucked it up out of his cupped hands where he had caught it…we let him stay. There was about a three way tie at this point and I was still in the game. One of the three said he had something and came back with a can of Japanese seaweed. He opened it and the smell was the worst thing I had ever smelled. He was the only one that would touch it. He was declared the winner and summarily thrown outside the party hootch along with his horrible smelling seaweed. There were other people involved in my SAR that need a chance to talk…my family. War is not fought in isolation. First, my wife Kathleen, who was known back then as "Kathy." While I was down she did not cry or break down in public. She conducted herself like the brave soldier she is. I owe her big time for what she has been through over the years. Night range missions after three of our friends were killed in two accidents. Numerous TDY -temporary duty, assignments some up to 179 days, remote tours, and PCS's - permanent change of stations, where I went back to familiar work and she was left alone in many new homes with no friends. Here is her story: A Wife's tale. I've been listening to RK's cassette tape debrief of the SAR on January 2-3, 1971, a Saturday neither of us will ever forget. I went to Thailand to be with RK for the last three months of his tour at Korat. I lived in a compound in town with other American wives, and my best friend there was Karen Stevens, the wife of the squadron flight surgeon. The day was like most others. I planned dinner and was preparing it, and beginning to watch for RK to come home from a day of flying. About the 10th time I made a trip to the window I saw an Air Force vehicle stop in front of the house. Col Jarvis, the wing commander, Capt Stevens, the flight surgeon, and a couple of our friends, my vague memory says it was Stan Hancock and George Koch, stepped out of the car. As they came up the walk and I opened the door my heart was beating out of my chest. The first words out of their mouths were, "RK's plane has gone down, but we've been in contact with him and he's OK. However, we've had to bed him down for the night. We'll pick him up in the morning at first light." What do you say, what do you do when someone delivers news like that? I was stunned, but RK was a fighter WSO, and every day he flew I lived with the unspoken thought that something like this might happen someday. All I could do now was wait. Karen and her husband insisted I go over to their house for the evening, which kept me distracted for awhile, playing with their baby, Claire, and making small talk with some other guests. But when I went to bed I slept fitfully. I had just finished reading the book "Thud Ridge," by Col. Jack Broughton, about F-105 Thunderchief missions over North Viet Nam. No one who had to be left overnight surrounded by communist troops had ever been picked up alive. I tried not to think about that, but concentrated on the fact that there would be a first light pick up. I had visions of RK and his pilot, Harvey Weir, back-to-back fending off the enemy, and that gave me some comfort. The night was the coldest of the year, and I worried that RK didn't have a coat. It was a long night - for both of us. I got up very early to get ready for the return. The squadron commander was wonderful and kept me informed, but as the sun came up and more time went by I became more worried. It wasn't until about noon that word finally came that he and Harv had been recovered, and RK would be coming home to me "as soon as possible." I was allowed to be at the field when his "Gooney Bird" landed at Korat after a physical check-up at Udorn. This was long before cell phones, so the only phone call RK could make from Udorn was on the autovon to his folks in Oklahoma. They had an official visit to tell them that RK was MIA and possibly captured. They told us later that they were looking at a map to see how far RK would have to go to escape when they were called with the good news of his successful SAR. The welcome home was joyful - champagne out of a pineapple, a ride in the EOT chariot - "Snoopy Dog House." There was a big celebration at the Korat O'Club. RK went right back to flying and I went back to watching out the window. A few days after his return, he gave me a card, thanking me for the way I had conducted myself through the ordeal. I didn't do anything unusual, I just took each minute as it came and prayed for strength. That's all any of us can do. (Kathleen Brown) What Kathleen didn't know at the time was that the Wing Commander, Colonel Irby Jarvis, had been looking for a reason to send all the wives back home or to Bangkok at least. Her composure made him change his mind. Since the Air Force thought Kathleen was still with my parents in Oklahoma that was where they delivered the official notification of my loss. Here is my brother's story: From Martin Brown: Sheila, my wife, and I were returning to Oklahoma State University, where I returned to finish after U. S. Army service. We were traveling from Christmas with Sheila's family in Texas and stopped off with my parents in Oklahoma. We had arrived and were relaxing in the evening with my mother, father, and two young sisters when the doorbell rang. In rural Oklahoma, that is an unusual sound. I went to the door and saw two men in Air Force uniforms with a blue official car in the background. I knew well this was not a social call and they did not bear good news. They explained that Lt. Brown had gone down in Laos, he and his pilot were alive and communicating but, they had not been retrieved because of hostile ground fire. The recovery team would try again at first light. They delivered the following telegram: MR
AND MRS BLAIR P BROWN IT IS WITH DEEP PERSONAL CONCERN THAT I OFFICIALLY INFORM YOU THAT YOUR SON 1ST LT RAYFORD K. BROWN IS MISSING IN ACTION IN LAOS. ON 2 JANUARY 1971 HE WAS A NAVIGATOR ON AN F-4 AIRCRAFT ON A SOLO FORWARD AIR CONTROL MISSION. THE AIRBORNE COMMAND POST REPORTED THAT HE HAS EJECTED FROM HIS AIRCRAFT. RESCUE ATTEMPTS HAVE BEEN UNSUCCESSFUL DUE TO HOSTILE GROUND FIRE IN THE AREA. RADIO CONTACT WAS MADE AND YOUR SON STATED HE WAS IN GOOD CONDITION. RESCUE EFFORTS WILL CONTINUE. HE MAY HAVE BEEN CAPTURED. FOR HIS WELFARE IT IS RECOMMENDED THAT IN REPLY TO QUESTIONS FROM PERSONS OTHER THAN YOUR IMMEDIATE FAMILY YOU GIVE ONLY HIS NAME, GRADE, SERVICE NUMBER, AND DATE OF BIRTH. THIS IS THE INFORMATION HE MUST PROVIDE IF CAPTURED. PLEASE BE ASSURED NEW INFORMATION RECEIVED WILL BE FURNISHED YOU IMMEDIATELY. PENDING FURTHER INFORMATION HE WILL BE LISTED OFFICIALLY AS MISSING IN ACTION. IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS YOU MAY CALL MY PERSONAL REPRESENTATIVE AT AREA CODE 512 652-3585. PLEASE ACCEPT MY SINCERE SYMPATHY DURING THIS PERIOD OF ANXIETY. MAJOR
GENERAL R. G. DUPONT They also stated that as soon as there were further developments an officer from Tinker Air Force Base would contact us. The family was agitated to say the least. I started looking up Laos on Atlas maps and thinking about facilitating his retrieval. I was a good infantry officer, on active duty a year before, and somewhat familiar with people in similar situations. There would be details; however, helping remove him from a POW situation seemed a possibility. We, our family in the house at that time, made phone calls, small talk and wondered what the possible outcomes would be. A few hours later, a call from Tinker AFB came. Rayford had been returned to U.S. control in good physical condition and would call us when possible. Later he called and all was well. Our father said, "If I had kept my pants zipped, none of this would have happened." He was a rather plainspoken man. We immediately expressed our appreciation for the Air Force communication system. We also had empathy for families and loved ones of servicemen and women who have had to persevere infinite periods of time without the positive solution for which we were so thankful. When we got back
to OSU I went to the library and did some research. I wrote up an invoice from
the American taxpayers for the price of an F-4 and mailed it to R.K. I also researched
more about the specific location on the Plain of Jars where he had gone down.
I was working with limited information allowed about the event from the Department
of Defense, which was Plain of Jars, Laos and Rayford's mention of nighttime temperatures.
I verified the info when he returned to the States and I had him plotted within
50 miles of the event. (Martin The lone soldier who came down the hill beside me had seen my parachute from the top of the ridge and was making his way toward it. I think the Pathet Lao had heard/seen the attempted pickup on the afternoon of the 2nd and assumed we were gone and that was the reason for no night search. I now think that the talking bunch of soldiers that were coming up the valley was just a bunch of typical GI trophy hunters and they were coming to hack down my parachute. My ego had exaggerated my importance to them. Imagine that. The tankers had been dropping people off further north than they had been dropped off since Linebacker. One flight said they were refueling at 30,000 feet right over the SAR area. Everyone made a tremendous effort. Only King was messed up really badly when the coordinates got mis-plotted by five nautical miles. Only Raven 26 knew where I was. King refused to give up the OSC duty until after the bad guys had come and gone. Had they wanted me friendly forces would not have been a factor. "King's" only positive contribution to the SAR was to refuel the Jollys. Just as we were completing our debrief with the Wing CC and DO, Rancho 01, Major Jim Ayers and Capt Chuck Stratton, stopped to shake my hand on the way out for their night gunship escort mission. They never came back ...crashed and were killed in Laos that night. Turned down Awards and Decorations The unit Awards and Decorations toad - loving term of endearment for a fellow fighter puke - ditto, forced into an administrative additional duty, was doing his job and came to me afterwards. He said he was putting me in for a Purple Heart and Silver Star. The Purple Heart was pretty much automatic because it was just about impossible to eject without some injury. I declined it for the goose eggs on my head and slight loss of height, I preferred they save it for a wounded warrior on the ground in SVN. As for the Silver Star for running SAR…let's read a possible citation to accompany the award: "With complete regard for his personal safety 1st Lieutenant Rayford K. Brown distinguished himself by calling all of his brave friends into harm's way to pull his young ass out of the bushes." I didn't think I wanted that one, either. It is good to be home with my wife of now 43+ years, especially since she is still grateful. What a deal. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Your view point may be different but this is what I perceived/remember from my vantage point. (Rayford "RK" Brown)
Jan Edit: The Wolf FACs helped us with the program Feb, 29 - March 18, 1969, while the 469th TFS was TDY to Ubon due to a runway closure at Korat. The whole time, the 25 TFS "Assam Dragons", formerly with the 33rd TFW, Eglin AFB, hosted us in their ops building as we knew most of them from Eglin. There was no room at the inn (on base) so our whole squadron was paid pre diem to live in a brand new whore house, The UBOL, in downtown Ubon city. Ted Dowd and Doug Silver, Tiger 01 crew, and Al Sickle and Mike Sember, Tiger 02 crew, worked with and flew with the Wolf FACs that month. I told Dowd, I would like to be next and he set me up to attend briefings and debriefings with the Wolves. I also flew a few missions with the "Nail FACs", both the 0-2 and OV-10 guys at Ubon/NKP. Don MaDonna and I were the third crew as Tiger 3. (Tom Briggs) *** Jan Edit: Vientiane. Its area and type of operation in Barrel Roll was broken down in geographic sectors, known as Raven boxes, in which only the Ravens could work. Karl Polifka, who was a Raven at Long Tiene, says there were no ROE while he was there. None. However; the fast-FACs, now Tiger FACs and Laredo FACs, were left with route interdiction north and east of Ban Ban. The ROE still prohibited attacks within a ten mile buffer zone extending from the North Vietnam - Laotian border eastward. Some paid attention to it while others did not in 1969. This "King's X" area was filled with trucks, bulldozers, guns, supplies and troops which could not be attacked by air power. But it was such a preposterous ROE Ravens and the fighter guys just could not follow such idiocy. If the Ravens controlled the strikes, and were willing to take the heat, the fast-FACs were more than happy to accept strike aircraft. Hell-of-a-war; controlled by a US civilian Ambassador to Laos, in Vientiane. Jan Edit: "I was there from April to December 1969 as a Raven FAC. There were no ROE for us. None. The buffer zones were there all the time while I was there, but we ignored them and as long as a fast mover had us running the strike they could blame us if someone asked. The air attaché (AIRA) who was there during my time, Colonel Tyrell, did not get involved. He was replaced, quite deliberately, by a rule-following asshole who was carrying out AF wishes no matter what the situation demanded." (Karl Polifka) *** Jan. Edit: We had guys with little or no adequate air combat maneuvering or in-type aircraft time. As late as 1972, CAT IV pilots with only 26 hours in F-4s were showing up as "experienced fighter pilots". Yet many were "all balls, dick and no forehead" over confident and without training. The Air Force was still using antiquated WWII and Korean War "fighting wing" tactics. Fighting wing put a wingman in a forty five degree cone behind a flight or element leader. This denied effective use of both radar systems for weapons delivery and search patterns, weapons, and visual mutual support. It resulted in many wingman losses as the protection afforded the lead was basically a "sponge" for enemy missiles from his six o'clock. The "tactic" ranked up there with the insanity of the ten mile buffer zone "King's X" in northern Laos. What made sense in WWII and Korea, when fighters had no air-to-air radars or advanced weapons systems, were still being employed by the REMF clinging to the long since obsolete and irrelevant tactics of their generation. (D-Bell) *** Jan
Edit: The 388th reactivated its Tiger FAC section on 10 February to provide strike
control for U.S. interdiction strikes against enemy logistics operations in the
Steel Tiger region of Laos. An average of six Tiger FAC sorties were flown daily
until the suspension of operations on February 22 when all acts of force were
terminated in Laos at 0500Z. *** Jan Edit: The '73 Tigers were a different group than the real Tiger FACs before us. We were more of a team chosen for special missions which changed drastically from one day to the next. The areas assigned to us to VR switched almost daily not allowing the scrutiny as in the past. We were also picked out by the squadron scheduler to provide crews for Route Pack VI Hunter-Killer missions, but flew mostly in Steel Tiger and Cambodia. The politics changed quickly denying us flights over South Vietnam and working very close to the Borders. The rush of flying these missions was off-set by the awesome responsibility of having to make decisions about what rules of engagement were on that particular day at 500 knots and 100 feet. The ROE seemed vague and changed so often from "the tablets brought down from Mount 7th Air Force" we just said "fuck it - nail it", because who could possibly interpret or understand that gobblity-gook. We all did the best we could, inverted doing a Tiger 3 to 5 G weave, up-side down while flipping through a huge 1 to 50,000 scale FAC map book. Let's see, a truck in the trees, within 500 feet of a category "B" LOC - line of communication, not within 12,000 feet of a category "C" population center, and it is the second Thursday of the month, five hours before sunset"…OK, Cricket- ABCCC, give me some strike fighters." And we let First Lieutenant Backseaters (WSOs) make that call at 9 miles per minute. Sure, sign me up. I'm tired of "Combat Sky Pukes" and C-130 Gun-ship escorts. (Rob "Sneedo" Sneed) *** Jan Edit: The Tiger FAC Hunter-Killer missions in were always flown in flights of two F-4E's - - one low aircraft acting as the FAC and one escort flying above to provide cover and to strike targets identified by the lead. Tigers were configured with two CBU-52 canisters and two LAU-68 rocket pods, while the escorts were configured with 12 MK-82 (500 pound general purpose) or seven MK-83 (1,000 pound general purpose) bombs. The Tiger missions averaged about 4.5 hours for each sortie, just as before, with two in-flight refueling per mission. History, Ibid. *** Jan
Edit: Tiger missions generally started at Stoeng Treng or Kratie, Cambodia, and
continued along the roads and rivers searching for lucrative targets. In May strikes
caused the enemy to change his tactics revealing that NVN land and water routes
into the Republic of Vietnam were being used, bypassing routes previously used.
The termination of USAF activity in RVN after the ceasefire accounted for the
change. Truck and water traffic remained at a low level in June, but air strikes
against the traffic were increased to discourage any future increases in the use
of the Cambodian logistic supply lines. *** Jan
Edit: These missions were not a favorite for the heavily loaded "escorts"
or the "killers". For one thing when the Tiger leads no longer carried
CBUs, the trailing F-4E's had a very high fuel flow rates and used much more fuel,
due to their significantly greater weight and drag. While the Tiger lead was far
much streamlined with only two LAU-59 rocket pods and 7 rockets loaded in each
and two external fuel tanks. The wingman carried typically 12 MK-82 500 pound
bombs and the same wing tanks making them heavy, and fugly - fat and ugly. And to make matters worse, the dedicated tanker for Tiger was at 28,000 ft., far too high for bomb laden wingmen to reach without using four times as much fuel in afterburners as the Tiger FAC leader. Where the Tiger FACs loved it, the wingmen hated it and left the wingmen to ponder, "Whatever happened to wingman consideration, a time honored responsibility and tradition of flight leadership?" The Tiger FAC lead wanted wingmen to save their bombs for the second and third sessions in case of lucrative targets. The wingmen wanted to dump their loads as soon as possible. Mutually opposing objectives set up by poor planning and weak leadership, or a lack thereof. Then there was the matter of call-signs. The Tiger FACs each had their own Call sign. Tiger 01, the most senior and generally the most experienced…leader. Tiger 02 was next based upon longevity as a Tiger, or I suppose since this group was chosen all at the same time, I guess the next highest rank or date of rank or they drew straws? Individual Tiger call signs was traditional for Tiger FACs since 1971, and was good since fast-FACing was a single-ship mission. But with two aircraft it was a mess. The wingman became "Tiger 02 Bravo". For a decade or more the terms Alpha and Bravo traditionally had been used to identify the front pilot (Alpha) and rear seat occupant (Bravo) for SAR missions and in general. But now, Tiger 02 had two descriptions; Tiger 02 - his personal call-sign, and Tiger 02 "Alpha". While Tiger 02 Bravo, the wingman, also had multiple different identifiers; Tiger 02 Bravo "Alpha" - wingman pilot, and Tiger 02 Bravo - Bravo - wingman backseater. Confusing, and showed a further lack of mature leadership and competent decision making. Whether this was some Wing REMF idea or it came from the Squadron or lower, this bunch was truly a different breed of cat from the previous Tiger FACs. Every warrior I knew would have stood up and told whoever was responsible for that trash where they could stuff it and refused to allow it to continue. But times had apparently changed and many who were hanging on at the end of the war probably did not want to make waves less their careers suffer. (D-Bell) *** Jan Edit: In Charlie Price's backseat, I added a Major Bob Dowden per Rob Sneed. Thanks Rob… *** Jan Edit: "Sneedo" Vignettes One day we dropped in to checkout the area in Cambodia where the Michelin rubber tree plantation was located. A Wolf FAC had been working the area so we checked in with him and the Wolf said, "I got a tank parked along Route whatever it was… While we pushed it up and began our join-up with Wolf, I flipped through the huge book of 1 to 50,000 maps. The Wolf FAC says "I'll mark the target for you." So he shoots a "Willy Pete", hits a tree and the white phosphorous smoke rolled under the tank. Wolf calmly said, "The tank is right above my smoke." He was probably on Cold Mic and laughing his ass off. Monkey Mountain break-down We were right next to the South Vietnam border where the latest ROE prohibited us from flying or attacking targets. We had strike fighters stacked up big time and were killing lots of trucks and supplies, just having a great day. The pace was so intense there was no time to assess BDA so we didn't pause or even try. We just kept on killing the enemy and his equipment and supplies. About the fourth or fifth set of fighters we look up and see Monkey Mountain - a prominent hill, which was well inside SVN. We called off the air request and headed home where we plotted all the BDA right on the road which was also the border between Laos and SVN and call it a good day. Not so fast! The DO, Col. Chico Solis had us standing at attention in his office. Our actions had reached him before we had even landed. All I can recall of the ass chewing was …. "LT Sneed, If I you're your name one more time, good or bad, you are on the next Clong flight out of here". It was just another day in my off crammed with a huge map book, at 540 knots, pulling 5 Gs, upside down making State Department decisions. Screw them all, kill all of the Commie bastards and let God sort out the BDA, I say. (Rob "Sneedo" Sneed)
Jan Edit: The final nail in Tiger FAC's coffin Air activity in Cambodia in general, was increased in June. As a result, the Tiger FACs assumed a greater role in air control activities, greatly alleviating ABCCC controller's problems. However, on June 16th, General John W. Vogt, Commander, USSAG/Seventh Air Force, terminated the Fast-FAC programs declaring: "The recent surge of incidents and losses experienced by the fast-FAC program is unacceptable. Comparing the high risks involved with the current results obtained leads to the conclusion that continuation of the pro9gram is not warranted. Effective immediately, the fast-FAC program is terminated. Call signs of Wolf, Tiger, Laredo and Owl will be retired." History, 388th TFW, April-June 73, Vol. I, Pgs 41-43 *** Under the Future/anthology of fast-FACs, Killer Scouts, and Hunter Killer teams Colonel Grady Morris, the Deputy Commander of Operations, wrote in his 1970 End-of-Tour Report: "The prime value of a fast-FAC is the flexibility derived from a "fast mover." Speed and range permits Tiger to cover large areas in the minimum of time compared to a "slow mover." Also the fast-FAC has a greater survivability rate. One of the greatest advantages of a fast-FAC is not always applied, that is to brief, work and debrief with crews from his own Wing. To effectively utilize the fast-FAC all efforts should be made to insure the FAC will work with the maximum number of flights from its own Wing. This is not to imply that all FAC's are not good, but that the inherent "Esprit de Corps" is enhanced, and constantly working with pilots who you live with, brief with, fly with, etc. provides a greater knowledge of target areas, more effective strikes, destruction of the enemy and more effective communication in the target area. I believe the fast-FAC
program should be developed in all Tactical Fighter Wings to include manning and
aircraft. This should not be restricted to only those Wings in Southeast Asia,
as the probability of similar guerilla wars in other areas of the world are much
greater than that of an all out nuclear war. Such a [program would provide a ready
resource of fast-FACs which could be used as required world wide." Twenty-one years later Col. Grady Morris proved himself an oracle… |