J. T. Smith

SEA Recolections

During the "Cold War," I was assigned to the 963rd AEW&C (Airborne Early Warning & Control) Squadron of the 552nd AEW&C Wing at McClellan flying "Connies" (RC-121Ds). I averaged the regulation maximum of 110 hours per month keeping our western borders under constant surveillance lest the Russians try anything stupid. During the Cuban missile crisis (DEFCON II), the Wing was at max effort, keeping all five stations from Baja to the Aleutians online 24/7. When I wasn't flying or in crew rest, I sat alert. The Wing deployed several birds to Florida to track the recce flights, but I did not get to go. Shortly thereafter, we started getting levies for guys to go on 179-day TDYs to Viet Nam flying C-123s in support of Operation Mule Train.

I got my notification as expected, but--surprise!--it was for a 1-year PCS rather than a TDY. After going through C-123 transition at Pope in the late Spring of 1963, I became the first PCS C-123 jockey to arrive "in country," assigned to the 310th TCS at Tan Son Nhut. We lived in a hotel in Cho Lon and rode a gray Navy-operated bus to and from work each day. Most of the time, it was dark when we went to work and dark when we came "home." There was no need for an alarm clock, because the pre-dawn sounds and odors rising from the open-air market behind the hotel were enough to wake the dead. I remember that '59er Al Waters had a room on the same floor as mine, but his room was on the street side rather than the market side; so, I guess he needed an alarm clock. The only other USAFA-types I remember seeing were Don Wolfswinkel who was a flying O-1s out of Bien Hoa and Nels Delisanti who was also assigned to the 310th..

Our missions initially were limited to trash hauling to air patches small (1500-ft dirt/PSP) and large (Da Nang, Bien Hoa, Nha Trang, Pleiku, Vung Tao, ... ) and to training drops for the ARVN paratrooper school. The latter were always interesting missions. These so-called "training" jumps were in reality full-fledged combat jumps, because the VC always managed to know when and where they were to occur in spite of our efforts to keep them "secret." We suspected the little guys who swept out the Operations Office at night were VC spies who knew how to interpret the grease-pencil boards showing the crew assignments for the next day. In any case, the VC were always waiting for the hapless ARVN trainees. Consequently, the ARVN troopers from their first jump onward always showed up with full combat gear, ammo, and rations (a sack of rice and a live chicken or two).

In those days, "tactical airlift" was still under TAC. Consequently, "formation" meant real formation–three-ship elements in a V with supposed wing-tip and nose-to-tail clearance. However, because of the small drop zones, the ARVN usually asked us to keep things as "tight" as possible to prevent their troops from drifting off into the woods and certain slaughter. On one occasion, I got in a little too tight for the jump master in the lead bird. He aborted the first pass, because he was afraid his troops would hit my left wingtip when they exited the jump door. It wasn't that close, but it certainly wasn't wing-tip and nose-to tail Kosher. Actually, it worked out better for the troops on the second pass, because the VC were just about out of ammo by then and had been chased into the woods by the troops from other elements who did jump on the first pass.

One day's trash hauling mission was less than routine. On 1 November '63, I was returning to Tan Son Nhut from a run to Nha Trang and Pleiku, when "Paris" (the Command Post) called asking for my fuel state. I replied that I had about 2 hours remaining. They told me to divert to Vung Tao, refuel, and wait for further tasking. When I inquired as to why (I know–stupid question) they said that Saigon was under air attack. A look toward the horizon confirmed that several columns of smoke were rising. The Coup against Diem had begun.

Eventually, our missions were expanded to include resupply drops to isolated outposts as the VC became more and more aggressive. Then one day several of us were called into Ops following our missions. The subject of the meeting was how we could safely dispense flares. There were several crude initial trials to include having the Loadmaster simply pitch one out the door while holding the arming lanyard. That proved to be unsatisfactory, because occasionally a flare would "kick back" and land on the floor of the aircraft--on one occasion armed and "ticking." Eventually we designed a launch rack made of sheet metal that was installed in the gap between the cargo ramp and the partially open cargo door. The lanyards were attached to the five-point quick releases scrounged from some ARVN parachute harnesses, and the flares were ejected using a shovel handle. The shovel was there to scoop up any "hot" flare and pitch it out. The initial prototype had four tubes, but that was really more than was needed in that we seldom kicked out more than one flare at a time.

As soon as we figured out how to dispense flares with a degree of safety and precision, our mission expanded to providing flare support for night strike operations by the A-1s and B-26s out of Bien Hoa. The crew complement was usually two pilots, a flight engineer, a Loadmaster, and a VNAF FAC who sat at the navigator's station with a portable PRC 27 radio to communicate with the ground. When a strike was requested from the ground, the FAC would direct us to the area by pointing to a spot on the map. Once in the area, he would establish contact with the requestor (usually a village chief). Each village had a rotatable "fire arrow" used to indicate the direction from which the bad guys were approaching. The target then became, "so many meters in the direction of the fire arrow." We would relay this information to the leader of the strike mission who would acquire the target visually and tell us what his attack axis would be. We would then set up our pattern and start illuminating the target.

After some experimenting, these missions were typically flown with the flare birds at or above 4000 ft AGL. This put them up high enough to be relatively safe from ground fire and keep them out of the way of the strike birds. Timing delays on the flare chutes and ignition squibs were adjusted for the drop altitude to provide optimum ground illumination for the strike birds. Typically, the flare bird would fly a racetrack pattern oriented 90 degrees to the strike birds' attack path. The timing of the pattern was such that the next flare would ignite just before the preceding one burned out.

At this time during the early days of the war, we were getting a lot of guys coming out of the training pipeline who were just out of the back seat of B-47s. They were by then senior Captains and Majors with a lot of hours but just enough stick time to meet their 60-1 minimums. It fell to us "veteran" 1st Lieutenants the honor of "babysitting" these new guys who by virtue of their rank were destined to be aircraft commanders right out of the chute. Most of the time this was a pain in the butt, but once in a while it became the source of some fun.

One evening I was paired with a shiny new Major fresh out of C-123 transition. Since the flare mission was one for which they had not received any prior training, it was decreed that these new guys would ride shotgun for at least one mission before being allowed to fly one as aircraft commander. So I got the rare chance to fly left seat that night to show this fellow the ropes. About an hour after dark, we were scrambled for fighter support. We were directed to a village near the Mekong where there was some VC activity. Upon our arrival and initial set up, we began our illumination of the target as usual, with me explaining everything as we went along. I noticed that on each of our inbound turns for the flare passes there were muzzle flashes and tracers coming up from a bush on a small island in the middle of the river. I pointed this out to the new fellow by reversing the direction of my inbound turn so that he was on the "down side" of the airplane. Since this was the first time this guy had ever been shot at, he was not too comfortable at being on the "close" side of the aircraft and asked that I return to the standard left-hand racetrack. I complied and then asked him if he wanted me to take the shooter out since it made him so nervous. He asked how I intended to do that, and I replied, "with a flare, of course." He looked rather startled and then said, "yeah, right."

So, I said, "OK, watch this." I called back to the Loadmaster and told him to rack up an extra flare for the next pass and to set the delays so that the chute would pop and the flare would ignite just above the ground. Mind you, at this point, I was just BSing the guy and really had no expectation that anything meaningful would come of the whole thing. Just having the fellow on, so to speak. As I rolled out of the inbound turn on the next pass, I said to the Loadmaster, "ready, ready, ready, kick it." The Loadmaster called, "flare away," and I put the bird in a steep turn to the right, telling the dubious right seater to watch that bush. I kept the wingtip on the bush, and surely enough the flare ignited and immediately fell into the bush, setting it ablaze. I don't know whether I actually got the little SOB, but that 2-million-candlepower flare at least played hell with his night vision. The muzzle flashes and tracers didn't appear any more after that. The fellow was truly impressed, and I just smiled and never let on that it was pure luck rather than exceptional skill that prevailed that night. The next mission, he was in the left seat.

We also had a one-, sometimes two-, plane rotation to Don Muang Airport in Bangkok, Thailand to support operations that were ramping up there. We flew ad hoc missions to places like Udorn, Udon Thani, Khon Kaen, Chiang Mai, Takhli, Korat, and Nahkon Phanom (the old dirt strip; the new runway was just being carved out of the jungle by the CBs). We normally stayed for 2 weeks before being relieved by the next aircraft and crew. It was during one of these rotations that we woke up one morning at our hotel to learn of President Kennedy's assassination. The hotel staff and our "permanent" cab driver, Mr. Suwat, were all most thoughtful and expressed their sorrow at our loss. I think they were as stunned as we were.

It normally took about 4 hours to fly from Saigon to Bangkok using an over-water route that took us well south of Cambodia. On one such flight, the monsoon rains had started, and we were in heavy rain for nearly the entire flight. The C-123 had a strong tendency to leak in the rain. Water entered the air intake for the cabin heaters which were on the ceiling just forward of the wing box. With the rain we experienced that day, the heater drains were overwhelmed, and water was literally pouring out of the heaters and onto the cargo floor. We had passengers that day, and they improvised tents by draping tarps and ponchos over the static-line cables to keep the water from falling directly on them. As the rain continued, the water began to accumulate on the cargo floor, and it eventually became rather deep.

Up front, we noticed that it was increasingly difficult to maintain a level attitude as the water sloshed fore and aft on the floor. Eventually, it got so bad that it was taking nearly the full elevator travel to maintain even a semblance of level flight. At that point, we had only one choice. We slowed to 115 knots and had the Loadmaster lower the ramp to be level with the rest of the floor. This time, when the nose came up, we just let it climb. The water rushed out the back with a big swoosh, and all was well again. We buttoned up and continued on to Bangkok. We had to repeat this "aircraft flushing procedure" every half hour or so, and by the time we got to Bangkok we had the cleanest cargo floor in the fleet.

I'm not sure what it is about Thailand, but I had two instances of blower-clutch failure there. The first was at Udon Thani on our first day out for that rotation. There was no reliable land-line communication from there to Saigon; so, we had to contact Tan Son Nhut by HF radio using a relay through the only station we could talk to, MacDill in Florida. It took 'em over a week to get us a new engine; so, we had a lot of time to sit in the air-conditioned Air America club, drink iced tea and play darts. When the engine finally did arrive, we had to change it ourselves, because "they" weren't smart enough to send any maintenance people and equipment along (and, yes, we weren't smart enough to ask). We got just a bare engine: no starter, no alternator, no pumps. We had to scrounge all of that stuff off the old engine before we could hang the new one on the airplane. We borrowed some stands, hoists and tools from the Air America guys there, and we changed the engine on the parking pad. It took is 3 or 4 days. Basically, we spent the whole rotation on that one mission.

The second blower clutch went out on a later rotation as we were attempting to depart Takhli. This time we had good communications available, but before we could tell anyone in Saigon about our problems, we got the word that there had been an accident in one of the hangers and a young maintenance guy had been pretty well crushed by a collapsing rack or stand. He was in critical condition, and the local medics weren't equipped to deal with that sort of injury. They asked me if we could take him to Bangkok for treatment. We told them that we only had one good engine and part of another, and that put the airplane on a "red X." They told us that the kid would die if we couldn't help; so, we got rid of that red X and cranked her up after they had offloaded all of the cargo and told the passengers that they would be staying a while at Takhli. Fortunately, Takhli had a nice, long runway to handle the F-100s . After a quick runup, we rolled with both engines at field barometric and slowly lumbered down the runway, adding power on the good engine as speed gave us enough rudder effectiveness to keep the nose straight. It took a lot of that runway to get up to lift-off speed, but we got her up and clean with room to spare. We got the kid to Bangkok, and he made it. That made taking chances and bending the rules worthwhile as far as we were concerned. Oh, yes, we 'discovered'that bad blower clutch on post-flight runup at Don Muang.

Actually, I only did 9 months of a 12-month tour, and the last 2 months were spent in the right seat of the VC-123 known as the White Whale. The Whale was a plushed-up version of a C-123 that had never seen tactical duty. It may have come from the purely logistical fleet at Hamilton. It was there to serve as in-country transport for VIPs (principally, General Harkins and, then, General Westmoreland). It had a somewhat-insulated compartment with "business class" seating for eight. In the back was a palette of less-comfortable airline seats for about a dozen or so. The skin and props were polished and the top was painted white, not unlike the VIP birds at Andrews. The airplane also had a DECCA navigation system in it, with a redundant map display in the VIP compartment. One of my principal jobs was to make sure the DECCA pointer agreed with our actual map position (just in case the VIP was map reading?).

The aircraft commander was a Captain who had been at Hamilton. He had buckets of hours in the C-123; however, he had never been tactically qualified. Give him a 10,000-ft runway, and you would never feel the wheels touch. Give him anything less than 5000 ft, and he was a nervous wreck but still got it on the ground without incident. Anything shorter than that, he was truly scary. My alleged job was to keep us out of trouble in this latter situation. The only problem with that plan is that nobody told him, and he would only let me fly the airplane if we didn't have any passengers on board. For missions into a short field, this proved to be rather exciting.

On one such mission, we were transporting several State Department folks and some Viet Nam government officials to inspect some project at a little town in the Delta. The airport for said town was a 2000-ft PSP strip with a road and power line at one end and the town graveyard at the other. To keep from scaring the hell out of the locals in the town, the only usable approach was over the power line and toward the graveyard. On the first pass, the "boss" used only normal flaps, was too hot, and floated the length of the runway before going around (right over the rooftops of the little town–that woke 'em up for sure, and the crowd started gathering).

On the second pass, I persuaded him to use full/assault flaps, but he was still too hot and long; so, around we went again. I asked him to let me land the thing, but he refused. Instead he told me to "talk him through it." This I did, and I got him on final high enough and slow enough for a decent approach over the wires, but since he was not used to that rate of decent he misjudged the flare, and we slammed onto the mains with a bone-jarring impact that launched us immediately back into the air. I assumed that he would go around, but instead he grabbed full reverse. This time we hit on the nose wheel first, but we got the mains on the ground with about a fourth of the runway left.

I hammered the brakes, started the flaps up, and hoped the antiskid would work. As the props threw their normal dust cloud forward to engulf the cockpit, I saw the graveyard fence getting awfully close. We came to a stop with the props still in full reverse, and I had to wrestle the throttles away from him to get them back in forward pitch and at idle. When the dust cleared, the pitot tubes on the nose were sticking through the graveyard fence, and what had to have been the whole town was standing there agape. I shut down the engines, and told the Steward to open the door to let the passengers out. They got off shakily and shook hands with the town dignitaries waiting to greet them. By then the "boss" was out of the airplane. He asked when the party would be ready to depart. They said, "thank you, but we will make alternate transportation arrangements." One good thing about this was that with an empty airplane, I got to fly left seat on the way home.

There were many more incidents flying the Whale. Since it was the only "shiny" airplane in country, everyone knew that it was for somebody special. As a result, it collected more bullet holes than everything except the Ranch Hand spray birds. To protect it when there was an inordinately important passenger list going into what might be considered high-risk airfields, we had fighter escort (usually A-1s and T-28s out of Bien Hoa). One such mission was a multi-destination mission for which the passenger list included Hubert Humphrey, Henry Cabot Lodge, Robert McNamara, and most if not all of the three-and-four-stars in the theater. It took four stars or better to get into the VIP compartment and two stars just to get on the airplane. One of the VIP-compartment passengers was the then Commander of South Viet Nam's Air Force, Nguyen Cao Ky. (Known to us as simply "General Ky."More Nguyens there than Smiths here, I suspect).

Ky usually traveled with an entourage and a security force of ARVN/VNAF troops. There was no room for such folks on the airplane, but to make him feel better, they were allowed to board through the front door and disappear into the aft section. Once back there, the Loadmaster / Steward not-so-politely ushered them out the back door and onto Ky's Gooney Bird parked nearby. The Goon took off before us and landed far enough ahead at the next place so that the entourage and security force were there ready to greet Ky when he got off the airplane. This charade was repeated at each place throughout the day. I suspect Ky knew what was going on, but he never said anything.

Another interesting trip in the Whale was to take General Westmorland and his family to Da Lat for their wedding anniversary. The flight was uneventful until we approached Da Lat. The town is in a valley surrounded by mountains. The mountains were obscured by clouds as we approached; so, we flew a big circle looking for a break in the clouds. There was no break, and the clouds were building rapidly in the afternoon heat. The AC conferred with the General, explaining that we would have to punch through the clouds (yes; we were, as always, operating VFR--regardless of the weather) and that it might get a bit rough while doing so. The decision was made to go ahead, because a big party had been planned with lots of VIPs in attendance. So, we climbed to what we figured would be a safe altitude and told the steward to make sure that everyone was strapped in tight. We then headed for what appeared to by a 'light spot'in the darkening cloud wall. We entered the clouds at about 8,000 ft. We almost immediately were in a generally rising column of air with moderate turbulence. It took less than a minute to break through into the clear at about 11,000 ft--quite an elevator ride. We descended into the valley and landed at the Camly airport. When the General and his family emerged from the VIP compartment, the front of his shirt and trousers were wet with a red-tinged stain. The steward had apparently given the General's son a cup of Koolaid or the like, and when we hit that cloud wall, the contents of the cup launched into the air, floated across the table and landed on the General. Needless to say, he was not particularly happy when he got off of the airplane to be greeted by local dignitaries, but he still invited the entire crew to the anniversary party.

After Nam, I was originally assigned to C-130s at Pope, but an enroute change sent me to Hurlburt and the 317th Air Commando Squadron of the 1st Air Commando Wing to instruct in the SEA C-123 transition school and fly tactical missions. We had a lot of fun in, then, Col. "Heinie"Aderholt's Flying Circus. We flew nap-of-the-earth (50 ft AGL day; 200 ft AGL night), made all sorts of air drops including Low-Altitude Parachute Extraction System (LAPES) and Parachute Low-altitude Aerial Delivery System (PLADS), made assault landings day and night, and made simulated rescue pickups using the Fulton Recovery System. I even got "that close"to landing a C-123 on an aircraft carrier (they scrubbed the project after we were airborne and headed toward Pensacola bay for the first actual landing). Flying the C-123 was, without question, the best 5 years of my flying career.