Raven 28 Long Tieng, Mar 1970-May 1970
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
John Fuller, Raven 28 Long Tieng, Mar 1970-May 1970 It would be a bad two months for those flying near Long Tieng. The North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao had moved south to the other side of Skyline Ridge. Sam Thong and almost every site north had been overrun. Ground fire, weather, and the demands of flying long hours were as bad as ever. Maybe it was just that the bad phi, bad Hmong spirits, had been hiding and now showed up with a vengeance. At the end of March 1970, two Ravens took off from Vientiane, headed north for Long Tieng, and disappeared. That was the day before I showed up. Then an Air America C-130, making a routine descent through the weather into Long Tieng, crashed into Phou Bai mountain, killing all six onboard. They impacted just below the 9,250-foot peak. At the end of April, two more Ravens took a 37 mm round through the wing of their U-17, could not keep flying, and crashed just east of the Plaine des Jarres. They could not be recovered. One month later, I was shot down, picked up by an Air America Huey, and medevacked to the States. The only one lucky enough to make it home. Prologue “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” Winston Churchill I arrived for Project 404 at Udorn Air Base, Thailand, in March 1970. I had just completed eight months flying from Pleiku AB in Vietnam with the 20th Tactical Air Support Squadron (TASS), call sign Covey. We “crossed the fence” daily into southern Laos. Our primary mission was Steel Tiger, the southern part of the US interdiction program on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The overall process seemed to be that the Soviets provided all the trucks in the world to the North Vietnamese, who then dispersed and sent them south through the many capillaries of the Trail. The USAF, Navy, and Army would then wander purposefully through the night, trying every type of technology the US could think of, to find and blow up each individual truck, soldier, or local civilian pressed into service hauling material south to the fight. I flew the O-2 on those nights, with a navigator in the right seat, hanging his head almost out the open window with an AN/PVS 2 Starlight scope. Most of the “navs” were senior to us young pilots; they deserved a medal for just strapping in with us. We droned through the night, searching for trucks, which were difficult to find even on a good night. The AAA (antiaircraft artillery) was pretty easy to see, however, as it tried to find us. Bernard C. Nalty wrote at the end of his book, The War Against Trucks: Aerial Interdiction in Southern Laos 1968-1972, that “without precise knowledge of the carefully concealed network of roads and trails, pipelines and streams, the Air Force in Southeast Asia could not direct its weapons, many of them ill-suited for the job at hand, against North Vietnamese troops and supplies in southern Laos or assess accurately the damage that was done. In short, the airmen spent almost five years and billions of dollars trying with courage, determination, and ingenuity to do the impossible.” He failed to mention the people who lost their lives in this pursuit, but I get his point. No source I am aware of estimates we ever stopped more than 15 percent of material flowing south. In August of 1969, John LeHecka and I first flew into Pleiku in a Covey O-2 sent to get us at DaNang, the 20th TASS headquarters. We were each on our first operational assignment. My personal call sign became Covey 579; his became 580. John had a few years on me, as he had spent a tour in the Peace Corps near what is now Bangladesh. He was married, and was a bit more settled than most of us first lieutenants. About five months after arrival, and after logging many night hours, we were selected at nearly the same time to fly the Prairie Fire (PF) mission, supporting long-range reconnaissance patrols (LRRPs) near the trail structure in Laos. It was Covey’s most demanding mission; not everyone was asked to join the program or opted in when asked. I don’t know how, but we had made the cut. It was very very Top Secret, since we would be putting American troops on the ground in Laos, which President Nixon adamantly denied. Maybe nobody told him. Prairie Fire pilots would fly with an experienced “Covey Rider” in the right seat. He was typically an Army Special Forces NCO or junior officer who had several tours in Vietnam running the LRRPs into Laos, North Vietnam, and Cambodia. We controlled Army UH-1 Hueys and AH-1 Cobras, Vietnamese H-34s, call sign Kingbee, and USAF A-1s during insertion and extraction of these teams. Teams consisted of about three Americans and nine indigenous Montagnards or Vietnamese or covertly imported Chinese Nungs. “Typical” Prairie Fire team. Fourth from left is Ken Bowra, with whom I served at JSOC in the mid-80s. Ken retired in 2003 as a major general. Snake eater does good! These Americans were assigned to the Studies and Observation Group (SOG) and were some of the toughest, most resourceful, and highly decorated soldiers in the war; we respected them highly. Consequently, we engaged in some high-risk flying for them. The teams conducted reconnaissance along the trail, captured prisoners, and on occasion their Bright Light teams were inserted to find downed airmen or missing team members. When the country is in danger, the military’s mission is to wreak destruction upon the enemy. It’s a harsh and bloody business, but that’s what the military’s for. As George Orwell pointed out, people sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. Adrian Grenier Some of these special operators went on to found the Army’s Tier One special operations counterterrorist unit. Others, like Ken, become “plank holders” at the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), serving in the initial four years of its existence. I’m a “plank holder” myself, but I’m not even in the same species as these guys. I’ll carry their water any day. John L. Plaster, a Prairie Fire veteran, has written several books describing the Prairie Fire program. One of his books, Secret Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines with the Elite Warriors of SOG, describes my friend John LeHecka’s last mission. On that day, January 10, 1970, John and I flew together to Kontum, a forward operating base for the teams. John was scheduled to fly a mission with Covey Rider “Haymaker.” Years later I learned his name was James “Sam” Zumbrun, a sergeant first class, on his third tour. He had already received the Silver Star, three Bronze Stars, and three Purple Hearts. All the PF riders wore sterile fatigues, as did the troops we inserted. PF Coveys quickly learned their call signs, but little personal history, or even their real names. I stayed at Kontum Ops that day and they flew in support of a company-sized Hatchet Force near the tri-border area, where Cambodia, Laos, and South Vietnam meet. I was in the Tactical Ops Center (TOC) when a team on the ground relayed that Covey 580 had crashed near their location. The Army put a small team into the crash site. It appeared that John had been shot and neither he nor Haymaker could recover the aircraft before crashing. The recovery team had difficulty removing them from the wreckage, but eventually returned John, and later Haymaker, to Kontum. I remember the body bags on the Ops Center concrete floor, while we tried to continue the necessary business of the moment. It’s hard to even imagine in my comfortable life today. John’s body was returned to Pleiku and properly processed before being flown home. Flying in the war “across the fence,” aircrews who crashed were rarely recovered. I doubt John’s widow Charlotte and family took much comfort in John’s rapid return. What none of us knew at the time was that some “recoveries,” when they did happen, wouldn’t happen until over 40 years later. I went back to flying Prairie Fire in southern Laos and occasionally Cambodia. The best strafing I ever saw was from an F-4 out of Thailand. Our team was on the run and I got an F-4E, call sign Gunfighter, overhead within minutes thanks to Hillsborough, the Airborne Command and Control Center (ABCCC). It or its nighttime equivalent was airborne over southern Laos 24/7. We couldn’t see the team’s exact location due to the triple-canopy jungle, and the team was running too hard to use a mirror. They did tell us their general direction of travel. The team leader threw a smoke can over his shoulder and kept on running. As soon as we saw his smoke, I cleared Gunfighter in, perpendicular to the team’s reported direction of travel. It worked and they broke contact. BUT, given the vagaries of smoke rising through dense jungle, the possibility for miscommunication, and the physics of spewing 20 mm high explosive rounds at the rate of 100/second from treetop level at 450+ knots made the whole enterprise pretty sketchy – For Emergency Use Only. Judging by the three helmets, and the attitude, I suspect I was headed on a routine administrative run to DaNang.