Vietnam prison raid

A gallant attempt to rescue American POWs

Apart from us, the only people out and about were the crew chiefs. Of course, the wing commander met us; he followed me around asking question after question-none of which I could answer (much to his dissatisfaction!).

Having picked up our flight gear, we went straight to the birds, cranked up the engines and taxied out-no lights and no chatter from the radio, which was not to be used until we were over our destination. Total silence.

Taking off exactly at the second planned, we did a 360 over the base to join up. We were to rendezvous with a C-130 Talon that would lead us, and timing was everything. But there was no sign of it. After two more 360s, we couldn't wait; we were already about 10 minutes behind schedule.

We were somewhat prepared; our backup plan was to navigate ourselves to Son Tay prison camp (North Vietnam) following a planned route and to arrive at the 0200 local time on November 21. But we had agreed earlier that this plan was not viable; we would fly until we got lost, which we knew we would, and would then head straight for Hanoi. From there, we would hold just south of the initial point (IP), which was the Black River straight west of Son Tay, and do our thing at the time over target (TOT). The route was NKP, then straight to Ventiane and due north out of there. We'd then drop to low level and weave through the karst and valleys. We knew this would be impossible at night in A-is. We had a backup rendezvous with the Talon planned over Ventiane, but because we had made an extra 360 over NKP while waiting, we were running late. We had made up some of the lost time, but not all of it, and we hit Ventiane maybe five minutes late. No Talon. We turned north and pressed on.

After passing Ventiane, we saw no lights. It was ink black. And then our worst nightmare loomed: a cloud bank! As I was the leader, I wasn't worried about being hit, but the rest of the flight divided like a covey of quail in God only knows which directions. Pushing it up, I climbed straight ahead and was soon above the cloud. Not an A-1 in sight, and without lights or radio, no hope of joining up again. We were all on our own.

Quite soon, we noticed a light speck far ahead. A star? We watched it for a while and were sure it was below the horizon. No Laotian in his right mind would have a light on, so it had to be something else. A fully loaded A-I is no speed demon, so though we headed straight for it, it took some time to reach it.

Sure enough, it was our Talbi--a tiny white light on the top of its fuselage. Within a few meters of it, we also saw a dim, bluish glow from the open ramp in the rear and two of our A-ls--one on each wingtip. The left one moved out, allowing us to take our place, and within minutes, the other two A-is pulled up. When we were all in place, the tiny light and the glow went out, and the Talon descended into blackness. From there on, it was hold on tightly and follow it as it bobbed and weaved through the hills.

The Talon pilot was topnotch. His power applications allowed our heavy A-is to hang right in there, and the threeday "moon window" we had for this operation allowed good visibility-with one exception. Several valleys were so deep that the moon was of no use to: us. Then, it was like diving into an inkwell, with only a few feet of wingtip visible, courtesy of our own exhaust flame. It was tough.

As we emerged out over the Red River Valley, it was almost like being over Iowa. Hanoi's lights were everywhere. The Talon started to climb and we knew we were approaching the IP, over which we had a controlled altitude. The Talon would be joined by choppers-under us and coming in from a different direction. They should have been slightly ahead of us, but we couldn't be sure everyone was on time. The control time was over the camp so IP times were adjusted to take account of our differing speeds.

Then the Talon transmitted the code word: "Alpha." It was the first sound we had heard on the radio all night. The code was to be picked up by a high orbiting EC-135 over northern Laos and relayed back to wherever. It meant we had crossed the IP. We were two seconds off our planned time, but the closest anyone had done during practice was 10 minutes. (Of course we didn't have Talons for practice.) The Talon then accelerated and disappeared in the night.

The heading to the camp was 091, and trying to reset our DG by a jiggly whiskey compass was an effort in futility. We didn't have the latest high-tech hardware on board; good thing all the towns, cities and roads were lit up. Because of our prior target study, it was like being in our own backyard.

Number five peeled right; he was a backup in case anyone was shot down, and he was to orbit a hill just south of course until called in. The hill turned out to be an army artillery practice range, and they soon started to fire a few rounds, so number five moved-probably closer to the camp; don't know where. It was another example of the brilliant intel we had.