Operation Ivory Coast
Encyclopedia
Operation Ivory Coast was a failed rescue mission conducted in North Vietnam
during the Vietnam War
by United States Special Operations Forces
and other elements of the U.S. Military.
On November 21, 1970, a joint
United States Air Force
/United States Army
force commanded by Air Force Brigadier General LeRoy J. Manor
and Army Colonel Arthur D. "Bull" Simons landed 56 U.S. Army Special Forces
soldiers by helicopter in the Sơn Tây
prison camp located only 23 miles (37 km) west of Hanoi
, North Vietnam
. The mission's objective was the recovery of 61 American prisoners of war
thought to be held at the camp, situated in an area where 12,000 North Vietnamese troops were stationed within 5 miles (8 km). The mission failed when it was found during the raid that all the prisoners had been previously moved to another camp.
The specially selected raiders extensively trained and rehearsed the operation at Eglin Air Force Base
, Florida
, while planning and intelligence gathering continued from May 25 to November 20, 1970. Despite the absence of prisoners, the raid was executed with a high degree of success, incurring only two minor casualties and the loss of two aircraft, one of which had been part of the plan from the start. Criticism of intelligence failures to determine that the camp was empty of U.S. POWs, both public and within the administration of President Richard M. Nixon, led to a major reorganization of the United States intelligence community a year later.
, suspected since late 1968 of being a prisoner of war
camp, contained 55 American POWs, and that at least six were in urgent need of rescue.The USAF intelligence unit was the 1127th Field Activities Group, Fort Belvoir
, Virginia. On May 25 the unit met in the Pentagon
with BG Donald Blackburn
, Special Assistant for Counterinsurgency and Special Activities (SACSA) to report their findings. Blackburn was responsible directly to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
and had also been the first commander of the covert Studies and Observation Group in Vietnam.
Blackburn immediately met with General Earle G. Wheeler, the JCS Chairman, to recommend a rescue of all the POWs at Sơn Tây. To study the feasibility of a raid, Wheeler authorized a 15-member planning group under the codename Polar Circle that convened on June 10. One of its members was an officer who would actually participate in the raid as a rescue helicopter pilot.LTC Warner A. Britton was a career rescue expert, having begun his 26-year career in World War II as an OA-10 (USAAF variant of the PBY Catalina) pilot in the Thirteenth Air Force
. While he had limited experience flying the HH-53, he had commanded two rescue squadron detachments in Vietnam. The study group, after a review of all available intelligence, concluded that Son Tay contained 61 POWs.
When Blackburn's recommendation that he lead the mission himself was turned down, he asked COL Arthur D. Simons on July 13 to command the Army's personnel, and selected Eglin Air Force Base
as the training site.Schemmer states that Fort Bragg
, North Carolina, was their base of choice, but that the commander of the Special Warfare Center refused their request of a specific secure location. However, Gargus (pp. 10-11) stated that Simons was not named as deputy (to take advantage of his unique position in selecting the best leaders for a ground force) until after Manor had been selected to command the mission, and that it was Manor who chose Eglin, the "ideal training site for the joint raiding force."
and brought together a 27-member planning staff that included 11 from the prior feasibility study.
Simons recruited 103 personnel from interviews of 500 volunteers, most Special Forces personnel of the 6th and 7th Special Forces Groups at Fort Bragg
, North Carolina
. USAF planners selected key Air Force commanders, who then picked personnel for their crews. Helicopter and A-1 Skyraider crews were put together from instructors at Eglin and personnel returned from Southeast Asia. Two crews for C-130E(I) Combat Talons
The "MC-130" designation for the Combat Talon did not appear until 1977. were assembled from squadrons in Germany and North Carolina.None of the flight members had flown together as crews before training began. All were then asked to volunteer for a temporary duty assignment without additional pay and without being told the nature of the rescue mission.Among those who entered North Vietnam, only four Army and eleven Air Force officers (all members of the planning group) had advance knowledge of the target. Because of Eglin's proximity to Cuba
, many members believed the target was there. 103 Army and 116 Air Force personnel were selected for the project, including ground force members, aircrewmen, support members, and planners.Schemmer's list includes 4 USAF pararescuemen in Thailand who were added after JCTG deployed but did not train in Florida; all aircraft support personnel who deployed; a small team from AFLC
who maintained voice radio jamming equipment installed in the A-1s; and technical representatives of Texas Instruments
for maintenance of the terrain following radars because of the low mean-time-between-failure rate of its APQ-115 (Thigpen, 2001, p. 39).Gargus's list includes the 14 HC-130 crewmen (omitted by Schemmer) who did not train in Florida. The 219-manCPT Nina Gusev, an intelligence officer with the 388th Tactical Fighter Wing, was added to the planning staff in Thailand and was the only woman involved in the mission. task force planned, trained, and operated under the title of the "Joint Contingency Task Group" (JCTG).
The planning staff set up parameters for a night-time raid
, the key points of which were clear weather and a quarter-moon at 35 degrees above the horizon for optimum visibility during low level flight. From these parameters two mission "windows" were identified, October 18–25 and November 18–25. Training proceeded at Eglin using a replica of the prison compound for rehearsalsThe often-made assertion that the mockup was taken down during the day and reassembled at night to avoid detection by Soviet spy satellite
s is a myth. While the geometry and dimensions of the prison compound were exact in the mockup, and it had been built of two-by-four studs and strips of cloth to facilitate such disassembly, the mockup was too crude, and blended too well with roads and other features already present, to be identified as Sơn Tây. However, to satisfy security concerns, aerial photographs were taken to be certain of that conclusion. Similarly, reports that full-size trees were uprooted and relocated to exact locations are also in error. Even were such a labor-intensive idea not outlandish, the probable loss of the assault helicopters during practice would have canceled the mission. and a five foot-by-five foot $60,000 scale table model (codenamed "Barbara") for familiarization."Barbara" was named for Barbara L. Strosnider, a GS-6
administrative assistant in the USAF Directorate of Plans who transcribed plans for both the feasibility and planning groups.
Air Force crews flew 1,054 hours in southern Alabama
, Georgia
, and Florida
conducting "dissimilar (aircraft) formation" training with both UH-1H and HH-3E helicopters at night and at low-level (a flight profile for which procedures had to be innovated by the two selected crews), and gaining expertise in navigation training using FLIR, which until Ivory Coast had not been part of the Combat Talon's electronics suite. A vee formation in which the slower helicopters drafted in echelon slightly above and behind each wing of the Combat Talon escort aircraft was chosen and refined for the mission.
Special Forces training began September 9, advancing to night training on September 17, and joint training with air crews on September 28 that included six rehearsals a day, three of them under night conditions. By October 6, 170 practice sessions of all or partial phases of the mission were performed on the mockup by the Special Forces troopers, many with live fire. On that date, the first full-scale dress rehearsal, using a UH-1H as the assault helicopter, was conducted at night and included a 5.5-hour, 687 miles (1,105.6 km) flight of all aircraft, replicating the timing, speeds, altitudes, and turns in the mission plan. The rehearsal spelled the end of the option to use the UH-1 when its small passenger compartment resulted in leg cramps to the Special Forces troopers that completely disrupted the timing of their assault, more than offsetting the UH-1's only advantage (smaller rotor radius) over the larger HH-3. Further dress rehearsals and a total of 31 practice landings by the HH-3E in the mockup's courtyard confirmed the choice.
On September 24, Manor recommended approval of the October window to US Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, with October 21 as the primary execution date. However at a White House
briefing on October 8 with National Security Advisor
Henry Kissinger
and General Alexander M. Haig,Also present were Blackburn and LTG John W. Vogt, Jr.
, Director of the Joint Staff
and Blackburn's boss. Schemmer (1976), p. 113. Kissinger delayed the mission to the November window because President Nixon was not in Washington and could not be briefed in time for approval of the October window. This delay, while posing a risk of compromising the secrecy of the mission, had the benefits of additional training, acquisition of night-vision equipment, and further reconnaissance of the prison.
Manor and Simons met with the commander of Task Force 77, Vice Admiral
Frederic A. Bardshar
, aboard his flagship
USS America on November 5 to arrange for a diversionary mission to be flown by naval aircraft.America was about to rotate home and would be replaced by the Ranger. Because of policy restrictions of the bombing halt then in place, the naval aircraft would not carry ordnance
except for a few planes tasked for Search and Rescue
.
Between November 10 and November 18The Special Forces personnel arrived in Thailand at 03:00 November 18, which was 15:00 in Washington D.C. the JCTG moved to its staging base at Takhli Royal Thai Air Force Base
, Thailand
,Takhli, once a major F-105 Thunderchief base, was about to deactivate, and was chosen both for that reason and the presence of a secure complex formerly used by the Central Intelligence Agency
. and began studying the weather. On November 18, Typhoon Patsy
struck the Philippines
and headed west towards Hanoi. Weather forecasts indicated that Patsy would cause bad weather over the Gulf of Tonkin on November 21, preventing carrier support operations, and then converging with a cold front coming out of southern China, cause poor conditions over North Vietnam for the remainder of the window. The presence of the cold front, however, indicated that conditions in the objective area on November 20 would be good and possibly acceptable over Laos for navigation of the low level penetration flights. A reconnaissance flight on the afternoon of November 20 by an RF-4C Phantom carrying a weather specialist confirmed the forecast.The specialist was LTC Frank A. Ross, of the 10th Weather Squadron, who was a qualified fighter pilot. Manor authorized the advancement of the mission date by 24 hours.
On November 18, President Nixon approved execution of the mission, and the final phase, Operation Kingpin, began. The fifty-six Special Forces troopers selected to conduct the raid were flown on the evening of November 20 by a conventional C-130 Hercules
from Takhli to their helicopter staging base at Udorn RTAFB
. The Special Forces were organized into three platoon
s: a 14-man assault group, codenamed Blueboy, which would crash-land within the prison compound; a 22-man support group, Greenleaf, which would provide immediate support for the assault team, and a 20-man security group, Redwine, to protect the prison area from NVA reaction forces and provide backup support if needed for either of the other two groups. Simons (using the call sign Axle) accompanied the Greenleaf group, while the ground force commander, LTC Elliott P. "Bud" Sydnor, Jr. (Wildroot), was with the Redwine group.Simons' "official" role was deputy commander of the Joint Contingency Task Group.Major John Waresh, co-pilot of A-1E Peach 01, also states that Simons' callsign was Axle. Schemmer (p.91), however, asserts that Wildroot was Simons' call sign, and (p. 169) implies that recorded radio traffic of the mission confirms this. However the traffic from Blueboy to Wildroot that Schemmer refers to was not ascribed by him to any individual by name but to the "ground commander," who was Sydnor, not Simons.
The 56 raiders were heavily armed: 51 personal sidearms, 48 CAR-15
carbines, 2 M16 rifle
s, 4 M79 grenade launcher
s, 2 shotguns, and 4 M60 machine gun
s. They carried 15 Claymore mines, 11 demolition charges, 213 hand grenades, and were equipped with a plethora of wire cutters, bolt cutters, axes, chain saws, crowbars, ropes, bullhorns, lights, and other equipment (much of it acquired from commercial retail sources) to execute the mission. The ground force was also equipped for voice communications with 58 UHF
-AM
and 34 VHF
-FM
radios, including a survival radio for each individual soldier.There were two AN/PRC-41 sets for UHF air-to-ground communication, ten AN/PRC-77 sets for directing air strikes, 24 AN/PRC-88 "squad radios" for communication within and among the groups, and 56 Air Force AN/PRC-90 survival radios pre-set to SAR
frequencies. During training, each of the 92 radios had a backup set, plus 50 additional sets for redundancy, with Schemmer noting the force was as well-equipped in communications as a battalion of infantry.
One hundred sixteen aircraft (59 Navy and 57 Air Force) participated in the operation, with 28 aircraft (crewed by 92 airmen) assigned direct roles in the target area.Aircraft assigned to the USAF support force included two HC-130P helicopter refueling and command aircraft (Lime 01-02), twelve KC-135 tankers (refueling tracks Orange and Lemon), two EC-121T airborne early warning aircraft (Frog 01-02), two RC-135M Rivet Card/Combat Apple ELINT aircraft, and one KC-135A Combat Lightning radio relay plane (Luzon). A T-39 Sabreliner
, three C-130 Hercules airlifters, and a standby SAR force of two HH-53s and four A-1 Sandys rounded out the Air Force participants. The USN provided ten A-6 Intruder
s and 27 A-7 Corsairs in multiple roles including aerial refueling, six F-4J Phantom and six F-8J Crusader
fighters, two E-1B Tracer airborne early warning aircraft, one KA-3B Skywarrior
tanker, and six EKA-3B Skywarrior tanker-ECM
aircraft. The 59th naval aircraft was an EP-3B "Bat Rack" Orion from the VQ-1 detachment at NAS Agana
, Guam
. A 60th scheduled aircraft aborted before launch from Ranger. Not included in these totals are a C-123 "Candle" flare ship and an EC-130 ABCCC
aircraft, Alley Cat , that diverted from other Laotian missions to aid the SAR, two C-141 Starlifter
s staged at Udorn to transport critically ill POWs, nor the UH-1H transported from Florida to Thailand with the JCTG. Two C-130E(I) Combat Talons, modified in August with the temporary addition of forward looking infrared
(FLIR) sets borrowed from another classified C-130 program,The FL-2B FLIRs were obtained from the 1198th Operational Evaluation and Training Squadron
, Norton AFB
, California, which used them in "Project Heavy Chain". were assigned to navigate the mission. One was to lead the helicopter "assault formation" (Cherry 01) and the second, as a backup, to escort the A-1 "strike formation" (Cherry 02).The formation designations were those used by the JCTG. Because of the variances in cruising speeds between the helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, the forces flew separate routes, with the faster strike formation trailing the helicopter formation by several minutes and zig-zagging across its route. Each Combat Talon crew cross-trained to assume the role of the other, but the assault formation was required to have a navigation leader with four fully functioning engines all the way to the objective.
The 28 aircraft with direct roles were:
(+12 Eastern Standard Time
). aircraft began leaving five bases in Thailand and one in South Vietnam.Takhli (C-130E(I)), Korat (EC-121, F-105G), Udorn (helicopters, HC-130,F-4), Nakhon Phanom (A-1), U Tapao (KC-135), and Danang (EKA-3). Cherry 02, the Combat Talon escort for the A-1 strike formation, took off from Takhli at 22:25, but Cherry 01 had difficulty starting an engine and took off 23 minutes late at 23:18. Cherry 01 adjusted its flight plan and made up the time lost at engine start.
At 23:07 the HC-130P aerial refuelers (call signs Lime 01 and Lime 02) took off from Udorn, followed by the helicopters ten minutes later. Shortly after midnight, the A-1 Skyraiders lifted off four minutes early from Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Air Force Base
under clandestine, blacked-out conditions. The helicopters encountered thick clouds over northern Laos
at their refueling altitude and climbed to 7000 feet (2,133.6 m) AGL (Above Ground Level) to refuel from Lime 01 on the flight plan's fourth leg. Lime 01 then led them to the next checkpoint for handoff to Cherry 01 at 01:16.
The formations flew roughly parallel tracks that crossed Laos to the west of the Plain of Jars
before turning northeastward. Both formations flew twelve planned legs. The flight path was a corridor 6 miles (9.7 km) wide, for safe terrain clearance in the event of formation breakup or a helicopter’s loss of drafting position. The Combat Talon navigators were tasked with keeping the formations on the centerline of the corridor. The pilots of both formations required a flight path of descending legs, each approximately 1000 feet (304.8 m) above the terrain in the mountain valleys, because the HH-3E had difficulties in climbing while in formation. The Combat Talon C-130s experienced sluggish flight controls at the required airspeeds, and the A-1s were hampered by their heavy ordnance loads.
The slow speeds required for the formations (105 knots (57.2 m/s) for the helicopters and 145 knots (78.9 m/s) for the A-1s) degraded nearly all modes of the Combat Talon’s AN/APQ-115 TF/TA navigational radars. The Terrain Following mode computed changes in altitude only to a programmed minimum airspeed of 160 knots (87.1 m/s), well outside the parameters of the mission. The Terrain Avoidance mode, adapted from the AN/APQ-99 terrain avoidance radar of the RF-4C photo reconnaissance aircraft, was distorted by the nose-high attitude dictated by the slow speeds and would no longer display hazardous terrain directly in front of or below the Combat Talon’s flight path. The Doppler radar
, used to calculate wind drift and ground speed
, often had to use information in its computer’s memory because of processing lapses. While the ground-mapping radar, correlating landmarks shown on maps to radar returns, was not affected, the jungle
terrain did not provide easily identifiable points. All of these handicaps were overcome with the external pod installation of FLIR, which readily identified the rivers and lakes used as turning points.
The assault formation approached from the southwest, using the clutter returns of the mountains to mask them from radar detection, while U.S. Navy aircraft launched at 01:00 from the aircraft carrier
s USS OriskanyCVW-19 (NM) embarked. Aircraft from VA-153, VA-155, VF-191
, VF-194
, VAQ-130
, and VAW-111 participated. and Ranger
CVW-2
(NE) embarked. Aircraft from VA-25
, VA-113
, VA-145, VF-21
, VF-154
, VAQ-134
, and VAW-111 participated. in the largest carrier night operation of the Vietnam War.Hancock
, CVW-21 (NP) embarked, had arrived on the line that day and provided only two EKA-3B tanker aircraft of its VAQ-129
detachment to the diversion. Both staged before the raid to Danang Air Base, where TF77's Skywarriors were based during their carriers' rotations. Oriskany launched 25 aircraft and Ranger 26. Starting at 01:52, twenty A-7 Corsairs and A-6 Intruder
s, flying in pairs at stepped-up altitudes to deconflict their flight paths, entered North Vietnamese airspace on three tracks, dropping flares to simulate an attack. The last track also dropped chaff to mimic the mining
of Haiphong
harbor. Over the Gulf of Tonkin, twenty-four other aircraft in thirteen orbits provided support and protection.An additional support aircraft, an A-7 scheduled to be the last of six SAM suppression aircraft, was a deck abort aboard Ranger. The operation prompted a frantic air defense reaction at 02:17 that provided a highly effective diversion for the raiders and completely saturated the North Vietnamese air defense system.
Both Air Force formations, over a period of thirteen minutes, were unavoidably and separately exposed for several minutes each to an early warning radar located at Na San
, North Vietnam, 30 miles (48.3 km) to the north, because the flight tracks had to be routed around uncharted mountains. Neither formation was detected, possibly because of the diversion. The rescue forces entered the Red River valley at 500 feet (152.4 m) AGL to find conditions clear and visibility excellent. The helicopter formation reached its Initial Point (20 kilometers—12 minutes flying time—from Son Tay) with the A-1 strike formation two minutes behind, as planned. The HH-3E assault team helicopter had flown formation just behind and above the left wingtip of Cherry 01, drafting on the leader to gain the additional airspeed
needed to bring its cruise airspeed safely above the stalling speed
of the Combat Talon. Two of the HH-53s and Cherry 01 accelerated and climbed to 1500 feet (457.2 m) AGL while the four assault helicopters broke formation and descended to 200 feet (61 m) in single file, timed to land forty-five seconds apart.
s on the prison's guard towers, Cherry 01 successfully dropped one of two planned napalm
ground markers as a point of reference for the A-1s, then departed the area to orbit over Laos.
The assault helicopters in single file encountered winds that caused them to break formation 150 yards (137.2 m) to the right of their intended track. The pilots of the gunship helicopter, Apple 03, preceding the others, observed a compound nearly identical to the prison camp in size and layout (previously labeled a "secondary school" by intelligence sources) and steered toward it, followed by the assault lift force. However, Apple 03 recognized the river next to the actual location and corrected their flight path. Banana, carrying the Blueboy assault team, descended on the wrong location and found the expected courtyard to be much smaller than required and the treeline enclosing the compound rather than tracking through it. By then Blueboy, as previously rehearsed, was firing its weapons from all openings in the HH-3E. Bananas pilots recognized the error, applied power, and quickly passed north to the actual target.
Despite the error, and trees taller than briefed that forced a steeper descent, the assault team crashlanded into the courtyard of Son Tay prison at 02:19Gargus has a detailed timeline, all times based on the time of the Alpha execute code (02:18). with all weapons firing. Although one raider, acting as a door gunner, was thrown from the aircraft,1LT George Petrie landed on his feet near the east gate, which was his personal assignment to secure. the only casualty was the helicopter's flight engineer, whose ankle was fractured by a dislodged fire extinguisher.The casualty was Air Force TSG Leroy Wright, who continued his participation despite the broken ankle and received the Air Force Cross for his effort. Army Captain Richard J. Meadows
used a bullhorn to announce their presence to the expected POWs while the team dispersed in four elements on a rapid and violent assault of the prison, killing guards and methodically searching the five prisoner blocks cell by cell.This assault phase confirmed 42 North Vietnamese killed at the prison site by cross-checking individual Blueboy and Redwine personnel accounts at debriefing. All other counts are estimates.
At 02:19, Apple 01 (after observing Banana fire on the site) landed the Greenleaf support group outside the south side of the secondary school, thinking it to be the target prison compound. Unaware that it was 400 meters from the objective, it lifted off to relocate to its holding area. The "secondary school" was actually a barracks for troops,Traditionally, the troops are identified as Chinese or possibly Russian (Schemmer, pp. 171 and 214). However, one raider states they were NVA (Buckler, interviewed Vietnam magazine June 1997--see external links), while another (Powell, also linked) asserts that their nationality was never determined. and alerted by Bananas aborted assault, opened fire on Greenleaf as two of its elements assaulted the compound. The support group attacked the location with small arms and hand grenades in an eight minute firefight, after which Simons estimated that 100 to 200 hostile soldiers had been killed. Two A-1s supported Greenleaf with an air strike using white phosphorus bombs on a wooden footbridge east of the area. Apple 01 returned at 02:23, and by 02:28 the support group had disengaged under fire and reboarded the helicopter for the short movement to the correct landing area.Schemmer noted that Apple 01 made three combat assault landings in nine and one half minutes. The disengagement was supported by fire from the team's M-60 machine gun, which used all tracer rounds to intimidate the opponents.
The pilot of Apple 02LTC John V. Allison. observed the errors in navigation by the helicopters in front of him and made a hard turn towards the prison. He also observed Apple 01 unload at the secondary school and initiated Plan Green, the contingency plan for the loss or absence of Greenleaf. The Redwine security group, including ground force commander Sydnor, landed at 02:20 outside Son Tay prison and immediately executed the previously rehearsed contingency plan. In the meantime Cherry 02 arrived with the A-1 force, dropped two more napalm ground markers, and created other diversions to disguise the target area by dropping MK-6 log flares and battle simulators at road intersections that North Vietnamese reaction forces might be expected to use. Cherry 02 then orbited in the area as on-call support for the ground teams.
After a thorough search that included a second sweep ordered by Meadows, Blueboys three teams found that the prison held no POWs.Meadows himself did not enter any cellblock but coordinated his team from the center of the courtyard. Meadows transmitted the code phrase "Negative Items" to the command group.Sources are near-unanimous that the code was "items", not "packages". Pathfinders clearing the extraction LZ blew up an electrical tower that blacked out the entire west side of Son Tay including the prison area. At 02:29 Sydnor ordered the A-1s to attack the vehicle bridge over the Song Con leading into the area and three minutes later called for extraction by the HH-53s, idling on the ground in a holding area a mile away. Before the first helicopter arrived, a truck convoy approached the prison from the south, but was stopped by two Redwine security teams that each fired an M72 light antitank weapon
into the lead vehicle.The convoy was engaged separately by the teams, four minutes apart.
At 02:28 Cherry 02s radar navigator noted that Fan Song
search radars for North Vietnamese surface to air missiles were active. SAM launches at the F-105 Wild Weasel
force began at 02:35, with at least 36 missiles fired at the rescue forces.Participants anecdotally put the number of SAMs much higher, with three or more in the air continuously for eleven minutes. One F-105 was briefly enveloped in burning fuel by a near-miss at 02:40 and returned to base. Its replacement was severely damaged six minutes later by another SAM. 20 other SAMs fired at Navy aircraft all missed. Two MiG-21
interceptors on alert duty at Phúc Yên Air Base
were never given permission to launch despite several requests to do so.
The HH-53s returned singly, and Apple 01 landed at the extraction LZ first, at 02:37. It lifted off with its passengers at 02:40, followed a minute later by the landing of Apple 02, which departed at 02:45. Apple 03, the last aircraft out, was cleared to leave its holding area at 02:48. The raid had been executed in only 26 minutes,Raid time calculated from 02:19 (first landing) to 02:45 (last extraction). well within the planned 30-minute optimum time. Although at first it was feared one raider had been left behind, all the troopers were accounted for. One Redwine trooper had been wounded in the leg and was the only casualty to hostile fire on the raid.SFC Joseph M. Murray was hit from behind as he prepared to grenade the first structure he encountered after debarking Apple 02. His assailants were killed by team leader MSG Herman Spencer.
By 03:15 the assault formation was out of North Vietnam, and landed back at Udorn at 04:28, five hours after launch. The crew of the damaged F-105 was compelled to eject over Laos
thirty minutes after being hit when it flamed out in sight of its tanker from lack of fuel.The F-105G lost was Firebird 05, s/n 62-4436, nicknamed Fat Fanny. Lime 01, refueling at Udorn, took off using the call sign King 21 to coordinate the Search and Rescue (SAR)
effort, while Lime 02 refueled Apple 04 and Apple 05 to extend their flight time. Supported by a C-123 Candlestick
flare aircraft diverted from its station on another mission, a SAR force was launched, and when its Sandy A-1s arrived from Nakhon Phanom to cover the pickups, Apples 04 and 05 each recovered one of the downed airmen at first light after three hours on the ground.
The mission was deemed a "tactical success" because of its execution, but clearly involved an "intelligence failure
". The 65 prisoners at Sơn Tây had been moved on July 14, probably due to the threat of flooding, to a camp 15 miles (24.1 km) closer to Hanoi that the POWs dubbed "Camp Faith".Thigpen notes, however, that the senior POW in North Vietnam, Air Force MG John Flynn, contends that the move was due to construction at the camp to improve its security, after which the prisoners were to have been returned. Although relatively near Sơn Tây, the risk of disastrous consequences from lack of reconnaissance, planning, and rehearsing precluded a switch of targets at the last minute. A mission with Camp Faith as the objective required a lengthy delay for a new window of acceptable conditions, Moorer advised Nixon at their November 18 meeting that the next window would be in March 1971, four months hence. which increased the chance of security compromise and further withheld personnel and equipment from their parent commands. New reports of increasing numbers of deaths among POWs argued strongly against such a delay. The raid went as planned in the event the renewed activity at Sơn Tây noted in aerial reconnaissance photos taken November 13 involved POWs.
Although the mission objective involved an intelligence failure, the gathering of accurate intelligence for the operation, in both quality and quantity, was remarkably successful. The failure lay in "compartmentalization" of the information and isolation of the JTCG from "the normal intelligence flow". As a planner and participant stated in his history of the operation: "The raid was allowed to take place because those who had the correct intelligence information were not aware that someone was contemplating a POW rescue."
Further, by the time intelligence regarding the moving of the prisoners was received, prompting the Defense Intelligence Agency
to do an intensive overnight re-analysis of all of its data, the day of the operation had already arrived because of the 12-hour time difference with Southeast Asia and the 24-hour advancement of the operation due to Typhoon Patsy. When a final meeting with Defense Secretary Melvin Laird took place at 05:00 (Washington D.C. time) to determine if the mission should proceed, its launch was less than five hours away. There was no consensus on the reliability of the data, and Blackburn was strongly predisposed to go ahead. One military analyst observed that as a result, the highest-level decision-makers succumbed to the phenomenon of "groupthink
".
,DSCs were awarded to Simons, Sydnor, Meadows, MSG Thomas J. Kemmer (Blueboy), SFC Tyrone J. Adderly (Redwine), and SSG Thomas E. Powell (Greenleaf). Schemmer (1976), p. 259. five Air Force Crosses
,AFCs were awarded to MAJ Herbert D. Kalen (Banana), LTC Warner A. Britton (Apple 01), LTC John V. Allison (Apple 02), MAJ Frederic M. Donahue (Apple 03), and TSG Leroy M. Wright (Banana). Schemmer (1976), p. 260. and at least 85 Silver Star
s, including all 50 members of the ground force who did not receive the DSC.The likelihood that more than 85 Silver Stars were awarded as a result of Kingpin is due to an apparent incomplete listing by Schemmer of SS recipients. He lists all of the crew members of Cherry 02 but only two members of Cherry 01. His list of helicopter crewmen omits the seven who were added to the mission at the last minute from units already stationed in Southeast Asia. Likely these are omissions in research and those 17 crewmen were also awarded Silver Stars, making 102 total. Manor received the Distinguished Service Medal
.
The successful demonstrations of joint operating capability in Ivory Coast and Kingpin were, in part, a model for the creation of a joint United States Special Operations Command
in 1987.
Sơn Tây raider Apple 1 HH-53 68-10357 was subsequently converted to MH-53M Pave Low standard, served in Bosnia and Iraq and was finally retired in 2008 after 38 years of service. It is now on display in the Cold War Gallery of the National Museum of the United States Air Force
in Dayton, Ohio.
However, as a result of the raid, the North Vietnamese consolidated their POW camps to central prison complexes. An area of the infamous
"Hanoi Hilton
" formerly housing civilian and South Vietnamese prisoners became "Camp Unity," a block of large communal areas housing 50 POWs each. After their repatriation
, many POWs said that being in close contact with other Americans lifted their morale, as did knowledge of the rescue attempt.Schemmer devotes an entire chapter to the positive effects of the raid on the prisoners' situation. Some POWs said that food, medical care, and even seemingly basic things like mail delivery vastly improved after the raid.
The Defense Department conducted an investigation into a possible breach of security as the reason behind the movement of the prisoners, and concluded that none occurred. The intensity of the criticism, and leaks of information including reports of the operation, caused the Nixon Administration to reorganize both the military communications network and the government's intelligence apparatus.
North Vietnam
The Democratic Republic of Vietnam , was a communist state that ruled the northern half of Vietnam from 1954 until 1976 following the Geneva Conference and laid claim to all of Vietnam from 1945 to 1954 during the First Indochina War, during which they controlled pockets of territory throughout...
during the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
by United States Special Operations Forces
United States Special Operations Forces
United States Special Operations Forces under United States Special Operations Command are active and reserve component forces of U.S. Military...
and other elements of the U.S. Military.
On November 21, 1970, a joint
Joint warfare
Joint warfare is a military doctrine which places priority on the integration of the various service branches of a state's armed forces into one unified command...
United States Air Force
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
/United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
force commanded by Air Force Brigadier General LeRoy J. Manor
Leroy J. Manor
Leroy Joseph Manor was a United States Air Force Lieutenant General who began his career serving as a P-47 fighter pilot in World War II, and in numerous command positions during the Vietnam War era...
and Army Colonel Arthur D. "Bull" Simons landed 56 U.S. Army Special Forces
United States Army Special Forces
The United States Army Special Forces, also known as the Green Berets because of their distinctive service headgear, are a special operations force tasked with six primary missions: unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense, special reconnaissance, direct action, hostage rescue, and...
soldiers by helicopter in the Sơn Tây
Son Tay
Sơn Tây is an urban district and city in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. It was the capital of Son Tay province before merging with Ha Dong province in 1965...
prison camp located only 23 miles (37 km) west of Hanoi
Hanoi
Hanoi , is the capital of Vietnam and the country's second largest city. Its population in 2009 was estimated at 2.6 million for urban districts, 6.5 million for the metropolitan jurisdiction. From 1010 until 1802, it was the most important political centre of Vietnam...
, North Vietnam
North Vietnam
The Democratic Republic of Vietnam , was a communist state that ruled the northern half of Vietnam from 1954 until 1976 following the Geneva Conference and laid claim to all of Vietnam from 1945 to 1954 during the First Indochina War, during which they controlled pockets of territory throughout...
. The mission's objective was the recovery of 61 American prisoners of war
Prisoner of war
A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
thought to be held at the camp, situated in an area where 12,000 North Vietnamese troops were stationed within 5 miles (8 km). The mission failed when it was found during the raid that all the prisoners had been previously moved to another camp.
The specially selected raiders extensively trained and rehearsed the operation at Eglin Air Force Base
Eglin Air Force Base
Eglin Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base located approximately 3 miles southwest of Valparaiso, Florida in Okaloosa County....
, Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
, while planning and intelligence gathering continued from May 25 to November 20, 1970. Despite the absence of prisoners, the raid was executed with a high degree of success, incurring only two minor casualties and the loss of two aircraft, one of which had been part of the plan from the start. Criticism of intelligence failures to determine that the camp was empty of U.S. POWs, both public and within the administration of President Richard M. Nixon, led to a major reorganization of the United States intelligence community a year later.
Polar Circle
The concept of a rescue mission inside North Vietnam began on May 9, 1970. An Air Force intelligence unit concluded through analysis of aerial photography that a compound near Son TaySon Tay
Sơn Tây is an urban district and city in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. It was the capital of Son Tay province before merging with Ha Dong province in 1965...
, suspected since late 1968 of being a prisoner of war
Prisoner of war
A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
camp, contained 55 American POWs, and that at least six were in urgent need of rescue.The USAF intelligence unit was the 1127th Field Activities Group, Fort Belvoir
Fort Belvoir
Fort Belvoir is a United States Army installation and a census-designated place in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. Originally, it was the site of the Belvoir plantation. Today, Fort Belvoir is home to a number of important United States military organizations...
, Virginia. On May 25 the unit met in the Pentagon
The Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...
with BG Donald Blackburn
Donald Blackburn
Brigadier General Donald C. "Don" Blackburn was a United States Army Special Forces officer, best known for his significant command and developmental roles in the U.S. Army Special Forces. He was also the commander of the highly classified Studies and Observations Group from 1965-66...
, Special Assistant for Counterinsurgency and Special Activities (SACSA) to report their findings. Blackburn was responsible directly to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is by law the highest ranking military officer in the United States Armed Forces, and is the principal military adviser to the President of the United States, the National Security Council, the Homeland Security Council and the Secretary of Defense...
and had also been the first commander of the covert Studies and Observation Group in Vietnam.
Blackburn immediately met with General Earle G. Wheeler, the JCS Chairman, to recommend a rescue of all the POWs at Sơn Tây. To study the feasibility of a raid, Wheeler authorized a 15-member planning group under the codename Polar Circle that convened on June 10. One of its members was an officer who would actually participate in the raid as a rescue helicopter pilot.LTC Warner A. Britton was a career rescue expert, having begun his 26-year career in World War II as an OA-10 (USAAF variant of the PBY Catalina) pilot in the Thirteenth Air Force
Thirteenth Air Force
The Thirteenth Air Force is a numbered air force of the United States Air Force Pacific Air Forces . It is headquartered at Hickam Air Force Base on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. 13 AF has never been stationed in the continental United States...
. While he had limited experience flying the HH-53, he had commanded two rescue squadron detachments in Vietnam. The study group, after a review of all available intelligence, concluded that Son Tay contained 61 POWs.
When Blackburn's recommendation that he lead the mission himself was turned down, he asked COL Arthur D. Simons on July 13 to command the Army's personnel, and selected Eglin Air Force Base
Eglin Air Force Base
Eglin Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base located approximately 3 miles southwest of Valparaiso, Florida in Okaloosa County....
as the training site.Schemmer states that Fort Bragg
Fort Bragg (North Carolina)
Fort Bragg is a major United States Army installation, in Cumberland and Hoke counties, North Carolina, U.S., mostly in Fayetteville but also partly in the town of Spring Lake. It was also a census-designated place in the 2010 census and had a population of 39,457. The fort is named for Confederate...
, North Carolina, was their base of choice, but that the commander of the Special Warfare Center refused their request of a specific secure location. However, Gargus (pp. 10-11) stated that Simons was not named as deputy (to take advantage of his unique position in selecting the best leaders for a ground force) until after Manor had been selected to command the mission, and that it was Manor who chose Eglin, the "ideal training site for the joint raiding force."
Ivory Coast
The second phase, Operation Ivory Coast, began August 8, 1970, when Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, the new J.C.S. Chairman, designated Manor as commander and Simons as deputy commander of the mission task force. Ivory Coast was the organization, planning, training, and deployment phase of the operation. Manor set up an Air Force training facility at Eglin's Duke FieldDuke Field
Duke Field , also known as Eglin AFB Auxiliary Field #3, is a military airport located three miles south of the central business district of Crestview, in Okaloosa County, Florida, United States-Units:...
and brought together a 27-member planning staff that included 11 from the prior feasibility study.
Simons recruited 103 personnel from interviews of 500 volunteers, most Special Forces personnel of the 6th and 7th Special Forces Groups at Fort Bragg
Fort Bragg, North Carolina
Fort Bragg is a major United States Army installation, in Cumberland and Hoke counties, North Carolina, U.S., mostly in Fayetteville but also partly in the town of Spring Lake. It was also a census-designated place in the 2010 census and had a population of 39,457. The fort is named for Confederate...
, North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
. USAF planners selected key Air Force commanders, who then picked personnel for their crews. Helicopter and A-1 Skyraider crews were put together from instructors at Eglin and personnel returned from Southeast Asia. Two crews for C-130E(I) Combat Talons
MC-130 Combat Talon
The Lockheed MC-130 is the basic designation for a family of special mission aircraft operated by the United States Air Force Special Operations Command , a wing of the Air Education and Training Command, and an AFSOC-gained wing of the Air Force Reserve Command...
The "MC-130" designation for the Combat Talon did not appear until 1977. were assembled from squadrons in Germany and North Carolina.None of the flight members had flown together as crews before training began. All were then asked to volunteer for a temporary duty assignment without additional pay and without being told the nature of the rescue mission.Among those who entered North Vietnam, only four Army and eleven Air Force officers (all members of the planning group) had advance knowledge of the target. Because of Eglin's proximity to Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
, many members believed the target was there. 103 Army and 116 Air Force personnel were selected for the project, including ground force members, aircrewmen, support members, and planners.Schemmer's list includes 4 USAF pararescuemen in Thailand who were added after JCTG deployed but did not train in Florida; all aircraft support personnel who deployed; a small team from AFLC
Air Force Logistics Command
Air Force Logistics Command was a United States Air Force command. Its headquarters was located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio...
who maintained voice radio jamming equipment installed in the A-1s; and technical representatives of Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments Inc. , widely known as TI, is an American company based in Dallas, Texas, United States, which develops and commercializes semiconductor and computer technology...
for maintenance of the terrain following radars because of the low mean-time-between-failure rate of its APQ-115 (Thigpen, 2001, p. 39).Gargus's list includes the 14 HC-130 crewmen (omitted by Schemmer) who did not train in Florida. The 219-manCPT Nina Gusev, an intelligence officer with the 388th Tactical Fighter Wing, was added to the planning staff in Thailand and was the only woman involved in the mission. task force planned, trained, and operated under the title of the "Joint Contingency Task Group" (JCTG).
The planning staff set up parameters for a night-time raid
Night combat
Night combat is combat that occurs during the hours of darkness. It is distinguished from daytime combat by lower visibility and its reversed relation to the Circadian cycle. Typically combat at night is favorable to the attacker, with offensive tactics being focused on exploiting the advantages...
, the key points of which were clear weather and a quarter-moon at 35 degrees above the horizon for optimum visibility during low level flight. From these parameters two mission "windows" were identified, October 18–25 and November 18–25. Training proceeded at Eglin using a replica of the prison compound for rehearsalsThe often-made assertion that the mockup was taken down during the day and reassembled at night to avoid detection by Soviet spy satellite
Spy satellite
A spy satellite is an Earth observation satellite or communications satellite deployed for military or intelligence applications....
s is a myth. While the geometry and dimensions of the prison compound were exact in the mockup, and it had been built of two-by-four studs and strips of cloth to facilitate such disassembly, the mockup was too crude, and blended too well with roads and other features already present, to be identified as Sơn Tây. However, to satisfy security concerns, aerial photographs were taken to be certain of that conclusion. Similarly, reports that full-size trees were uprooted and relocated to exact locations are also in error. Even were such a labor-intensive idea not outlandish, the probable loss of the assault helicopters during practice would have canceled the mission. and a five foot-by-five foot $60,000 scale table model (codenamed "Barbara") for familiarization."Barbara" was named for Barbara L. Strosnider, a GS-6
General Schedule
The General Schedule is the predominant pay scale within the United States civil service. The GS includes the majority of white collar personnel positions...
administrative assistant in the USAF Directorate of Plans who transcribed plans for both the feasibility and planning groups.
Alabama
Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
, Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
, and Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
conducting "dissimilar (aircraft) formation" training with both UH-1H and HH-3E helicopters at night and at low-level (a flight profile for which procedures had to be innovated by the two selected crews), and gaining expertise in navigation training using FLIR, which until Ivory Coast had not been part of the Combat Talon's electronics suite. A vee formation in which the slower helicopters drafted in echelon slightly above and behind each wing of the Combat Talon escort aircraft was chosen and refined for the mission.
Special Forces training began September 9, advancing to night training on September 17, and joint training with air crews on September 28 that included six rehearsals a day, three of them under night conditions. By October 6, 170 practice sessions of all or partial phases of the mission were performed on the mockup by the Special Forces troopers, many with live fire. On that date, the first full-scale dress rehearsal, using a UH-1H as the assault helicopter, was conducted at night and included a 5.5-hour, 687 miles (1,105.6 km) flight of all aircraft, replicating the timing, speeds, altitudes, and turns in the mission plan. The rehearsal spelled the end of the option to use the UH-1 when its small passenger compartment resulted in leg cramps to the Special Forces troopers that completely disrupted the timing of their assault, more than offsetting the UH-1's only advantage (smaller rotor radius) over the larger HH-3. Further dress rehearsals and a total of 31 practice landings by the HH-3E in the mockup's courtyard confirmed the choice.
On September 24, Manor recommended approval of the October window to US Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, with October 21 as the primary execution date. However at a White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
briefing on October 8 with National Security Advisor
National Security Advisor (United States)
The Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, commonly referred to as the National Security Advisor , serves as the chief advisor to the President of the United States on national security issues...
Henry Kissinger
Henry Kissinger
Heinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger is a German-born American academic, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and...
and General Alexander M. Haig,Also present were Blackburn and LTG John W. Vogt, Jr.
John W. Vogt, Jr.
General John William Vogt, Jr. was commander, Allied Air Forces Central Europe, and commander in chief, U.S. Air Forces in Europe at Ramstein Air Base, Germany.-Biography:...
, Director of the Joint Staff
Director of the Joint Staff
The Director of the Joint Staff is a three-star officer who assists the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff with the management of the Joint Staff, an organization composed of approximately equal numbers of officers contributed by the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force, who have been...
and Blackburn's boss. Schemmer (1976), p. 113. Kissinger delayed the mission to the November window because President Nixon was not in Washington and could not be briefed in time for approval of the October window. This delay, while posing a risk of compromising the secrecy of the mission, had the benefits of additional training, acquisition of night-vision equipment, and further reconnaissance of the prison.
Manor and Simons met with the commander of Task Force 77, Vice Admiral
Vice Admiral
Vice admiral is a senior naval rank of a three-star flag officer, which is equivalent to lieutenant general in the other uniformed services. A vice admiral is typically senior to a rear admiral and junior to an admiral...
Frederic A. Bardshar
Fred Bardshar
Vice Admiral Frederic Abshire Bardshar was an American World War II air ace, who later became Commander of United States Navy Task Force 77 and Carrier Division Five during the Vietnam War.-World War II:...
, aboard his flagship
Flagship
A flagship is a vessel used by the commanding officer of a group of naval ships, reflecting the custom of its commander, characteristically a flag officer, flying a distinguishing flag...
USS America on November 5 to arrange for a diversionary mission to be flown by naval aircraft.America was about to rotate home and would be replaced by the Ranger. Because of policy restrictions of the bombing halt then in place, the naval aircraft would not carry ordnance
Aircraft ordnance
Aircraft ordnance or ordnance is weapons used by aircraft. The term is often used when describing the weight of air-to-ground weaponry that can be carried by an aircraft or the weight that has been dropped...
except for a few planes tasked for Search and Rescue
Search and rescue
Search and rescue is the search for and provision of aid to people who are in distress or imminent danger.The general field of search and rescue includes many specialty sub-fields, mostly based upon terrain considerations...
.
Between November 10 and November 18The Special Forces personnel arrived in Thailand at 03:00 November 18, which was 15:00 in Washington D.C. the JCTG moved to its staging base at Takhli Royal Thai Air Force Base
Takhli Royal Thai Air Force Base
Takhli Royal Thai Air Force Base is a Royal Thai Air Force facility. It is located in Central Thailand, approximately 144 miles northwest of Bangkok in Takhli district, Nakhon Sawan Province, near the city of Nakhon Sawan.- Units :...
, Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
,Takhli, once a major F-105 Thunderchief base, was about to deactivate, and was chosen both for that reason and the presence of a secure complex formerly used by the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
. and began studying the weather. On November 18, Typhoon Patsy
Typhoon Patsy (1970)
Super Typhoon Patsy was the twenty-seventh named storm, twelfth typhoon, and seventh super typhoon of the 1970 Pacific typhoon season....
struck the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
and headed west towards Hanoi. Weather forecasts indicated that Patsy would cause bad weather over the Gulf of Tonkin on November 21, preventing carrier support operations, and then converging with a cold front coming out of southern China, cause poor conditions over North Vietnam for the remainder of the window. The presence of the cold front, however, indicated that conditions in the objective area on November 20 would be good and possibly acceptable over Laos for navigation of the low level penetration flights. A reconnaissance flight on the afternoon of November 20 by an RF-4C Phantom carrying a weather specialist confirmed the forecast.The specialist was LTC Frank A. Ross, of the 10th Weather Squadron, who was a qualified fighter pilot. Manor authorized the advancement of the mission date by 24 hours.
Special Forces
On November 18, President Nixon approved execution of the mission, and the final phase, Operation Kingpin, began. The fifty-six Special Forces troopers selected to conduct the raid were flown on the evening of November 20 by a conventional C-130 Hercules
C-130 Hercules
The Lockheed C-130 Hercules is a four-engine turboprop military transport aircraft designed and built originally by Lockheed, now Lockheed Martin. Capable of using unprepared runways for takeoffs and landings, the C-130 was originally designed as a troop, medical evacuation, and cargo transport...
from Takhli to their helicopter staging base at Udorn RTAFB
Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base
Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base is a Royal Thai Air Force base, the home of 2nd Air Division/23rd Wing Air Combat Command.The 231 Squadron "Hunter" is assigned to Udorn, equipped with the Dassault/Dornier Alpha Jet-A.-History:...
. The Special Forces were organized into three platoon
Platoon
A platoon is a military unit typically composed of two to four sections or squads and containing 16 to 50 soldiers. Platoons are organized into a company, which typically consists of three, four or five platoons. A platoon is typically the smallest military unit led by a commissioned officer—the...
s: a 14-man assault group, codenamed Blueboy, which would crash-land within the prison compound; a 22-man support group, Greenleaf, which would provide immediate support for the assault team, and a 20-man security group, Redwine, to protect the prison area from NVA reaction forces and provide backup support if needed for either of the other two groups. Simons (using the call sign Axle) accompanied the Greenleaf group, while the ground force commander, LTC Elliott P. "Bud" Sydnor, Jr. (Wildroot), was with the Redwine group.Simons' "official" role was deputy commander of the Joint Contingency Task Group.Major John Waresh, co-pilot of A-1E Peach 01, also states that Simons' callsign was Axle. Schemmer (p.91), however, asserts that Wildroot was Simons' call sign, and (p. 169) implies that recorded radio traffic of the mission confirms this. However the traffic from Blueboy to Wildroot that Schemmer refers to was not ascribed by him to any individual by name but to the "ground commander," who was Sydnor, not Simons.
The 56 raiders were heavily armed: 51 personal sidearms, 48 CAR-15
CAR-15
The Colt Automatic Rifle-15 Military Weapons System or CAR-15 was a family of AR-15 and M16 rifle–based firearms marketed by Colt in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Due to their compact size, the short-barreled Colt Commando and XM177 versions of this family continued to be issued to the U.S...
carbines, 2 M16 rifle
M16 rifle
The M16 is the United States military designation for the AR-15 rifle adapted for both semi-automatic and full-automatic fire. Colt purchased the rights to the AR-15 from ArmaLite, and currently uses that designation only for semi-automatic versions of the rifle. The M16 fires the 5.56×45mm NATO...
s, 4 M79 grenade launcher
M79 grenade launcher
The M79 grenade launcher is a single-shot, shoulder-fired, break-action grenade launcher that fires a 40x46mm grenade which used what the US Army called the High-Low Propulsion System to keep recoil forces low, and first appeared during the Vietnam War...
s, 2 shotguns, and 4 M60 machine gun
M60 machine gun
The M60 is a family of American general-purpose machine guns firing 7.62×51mm NATO cartridges from a disintegrating belt of M13 links...
s. They carried 15 Claymore mines, 11 demolition charges, 213 hand grenades, and were equipped with a plethora of wire cutters, bolt cutters, axes, chain saws, crowbars, ropes, bullhorns, lights, and other equipment (much of it acquired from commercial retail sources) to execute the mission. The ground force was also equipped for voice communications with 58 UHF
Ultra high frequency
Ultra-High Frequency designates the ITU Radio frequency range of electromagnetic waves between 300 MHz and 3 GHz , also known as the decimetre band or decimetre wave as the wavelengths range from one to ten decimetres...
-AM
Amplitude modulation
Amplitude modulation is a technique used in electronic communication, most commonly for transmitting information via a radio carrier wave. AM works by varying the strength of the transmitted signal in relation to the information being sent...
and 34 VHF
Very high frequency
Very high frequency is the radio frequency range from 30 MHz to 300 MHz. Frequencies immediately below VHF are denoted High frequency , and the next higher frequencies are known as Ultra high frequency...
-FM
Frequency modulation
In telecommunications and signal processing, frequency modulation conveys information over a carrier wave by varying its instantaneous frequency. This contrasts with amplitude modulation, in which the amplitude of the carrier is varied while its frequency remains constant...
radios, including a survival radio for each individual soldier.There were two AN/PRC-41 sets for UHF air-to-ground communication, ten AN/PRC-77 sets for directing air strikes, 24 AN/PRC-88 "squad radios" for communication within and among the groups, and 56 Air Force AN/PRC-90 survival radios pre-set to SAR
Search and rescue
Search and rescue is the search for and provision of aid to people who are in distress or imminent danger.The general field of search and rescue includes many specialty sub-fields, mostly based upon terrain considerations...
frequencies. During training, each of the 92 radios had a backup set, plus 50 additional sets for redundancy, with Schemmer noting the force was as well-equipped in communications as a battalion of infantry.
Aviation support
T-39 Sabreliner
The North American Sabreliner is a mid-sized business jet developed by North American Aviation. It was offered to the U.S. Air Force in response to their Utility Trainer Experimental program...
, three C-130 Hercules airlifters, and a standby SAR force of two HH-53s and four A-1 Sandys rounded out the Air Force participants. The USN provided ten A-6 Intruder
A-6 Intruder
The Grumman A-6 Intruder was an American, twin jet-engine, mid-wing attack aircraft built by Grumman Aerospace. In service with the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps between 1963 and 1997, the Intruder was designed as an all-weather medium attack aircraft to replace the piston-engined A-1 Skyraider...
s and 27 A-7 Corsairs in multiple roles including aerial refueling, six F-4J Phantom and six F-8J Crusader
F-8 Crusader
The Vought F-8 Crusader was a single-engine, supersonic, carrier-based air superiority jet aircraft built by Vought for the United States Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps, replacing the Vought F7U Cutlass...
fighters, two E-1B Tracer airborne early warning aircraft, one KA-3B Skywarrior
A-3 Skywarrior
The Douglas A-3 Skywarrior was originally designed as a strategic bomber for the United States Navy and was among the longest serving carrier-based jet aircraft in history. It entered service in the mid-1950s and was retired in 1991...
tanker, and six EKA-3B Skywarrior tanker-ECM
Electronic countermeasures
An electronic countermeasure is an electrical or electronic device designed to trick or deceive radar, sonar or other detection systems, like infrared or lasers. It may be used both offensively and defensively to deny targeting information to an enemy...
aircraft. The 59th naval aircraft was an EP-3B "Bat Rack" Orion from the VQ-1 detachment at NAS Agana
Naval Air Station Agana
Naval Air Station Agana is a former United States Navy air station located on Guam. It was opened by the Japanese Navy in 1943 and closed in 1993. During and after its closure, it was operated alongside Antonio B. Won Pat International Airport.-History:...
, Guam
Guam
Guam is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States located in the western Pacific Ocean. It is one of five U.S. territories with an established civilian government. Guam is listed as one of 16 Non-Self-Governing Territories by the Special Committee on Decolonization of the United...
. A 60th scheduled aircraft aborted before launch from Ranger. Not included in these totals are a C-123 "Candle" flare ship and an EC-130 ABCCC
Lockheed EC-130
The Lockheed Martin EC-130 series comprises several slightly different versions of the C-130 that have been and continue to be operated by the U.S. Air Force and, until the 1990s, the U.S...
aircraft, Alley Cat , that diverted from other Laotian missions to aid the SAR, two C-141 Starlifter
C-141 Starlifter
The Lockheed C-141 Starlifter was a military strategic airlifter in service with the Air Mobility Command of the United States Air Force...
s staged at Udorn to transport critically ill POWs, nor the UH-1H transported from Florida to Thailand with the JCTG. Two C-130E(I) Combat Talons, modified in August with the temporary addition of forward looking infrared
Forward looking infrared
Forward looking infrared cameras, typically used on military aircraft, use an imaging technology that senses infrared radiation.The sensors installed in forward looking infrared cameras, as well as those of other thermal imaging cameras, use detection of infrared radiation, typically emitted from a...
(FLIR) sets borrowed from another classified C-130 program,The FL-2B FLIRs were obtained from the 1198th Operational Evaluation and Training Squadron
1198th Operational Evaluation and Training Squadron
The 1198th Operational Evaluation and Training Squadron was a unit at Norton Air Force Base, San Bernardino, California from 1965 to 1972 which conducted the initial testing of C-130 Hercules transports modified for special operations under the project names of Thin Slice and Heavy Chain which led...
, Norton AFB
Norton Air Force Base
Norton Air Force Base is a former front-line United States Air Force facility located east of downtown San Bernardino, California in San Bernardino County.-Overview:...
, California, which used them in "Project Heavy Chain". were assigned to navigate the mission. One was to lead the helicopter "assault formation" (Cherry 01) and the second, as a backup, to escort the A-1 "strike formation" (Cherry 02).The formation designations were those used by the JCTG. Because of the variances in cruising speeds between the helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, the forces flew separate routes, with the faster strike formation trailing the helicopter formation by several minutes and zig-zagging across its route. Each Combat Talon crew cross-trained to assume the role of the other, but the assault formation was required to have a navigation leader with four fully functioning engines all the way to the objective.
The 28 aircraft with direct roles were:
| # | |Type | |Radio call sign | |Parent Unit | |Kingpin task |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | C-130E(I) Combat Talon MC-130 Combat Talon The Lockheed MC-130 is the basic designation for a family of special mission aircraft operated by the United States Air Force Special Operations Command , a wing of the Air Education and Training Command, and an AFSOC-gained wing of the Air Force Reserve Command... |
Cherry 01–02 | 7th SOS 7th Special Operations Squadron The 7th Special Operations Squadron is an active flying unit of the United States Air Force. It is a component of the 352d Special Operations Group , United States Special Operations Command, and is currently based at Royal Air Force base RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk, eastern England.-Mission:From... , (Det. 2 1st SOW 1st Special Operations Wing The 1st Special Operations Wing at Hurlburt Field, Florida is one of two United States Air Force active duty Special Operations wings and falls under the Air Force Special Operations Command .... ) |
rescue force navigation, airborne command, and target illumination |
| 5 | HH-53C Super Jolly CH-53 Sea Stallion The CH-53 Sea Stallion is the most common name for the Sikorsky S-65 family of heavy-lift transport helicopters. Originally developed for use by the United States Marine Corps, it is also in service with Germany, Iran, Israel, and Mexico... |
Apple 01–05 | 40th ARRS 40th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron 40th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron was a helicopter rescue squadron of the USAF active during the Vietnam War.-History:... (3rd ARRG) |
support teams lift (01, 02), gunship (03), and POW extraction (04, 05) |
| 1 | HH-3E Jolly Green Sikorsky S-61R The Sikorsky S-61R is a twin-engine helicopter used in transport or search and rescue roles. A developed version of the S-61/SH-3 Sea King, the S-61R was also built under license by Agusta as the AS-61R... S/n 65-12785, one of 50 HH-3Es converted from CH-3B and C models for SAR. |
Banana | 37th ARRS 37th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron 37th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron was a rescue squadron of the USAF active during the Vietnam War.-History:On 8 January 1966, the 37th ARRS was activated at Danang Air Base operating 5 HU-16s on loan from the 31st ARRS and the 33rd ARRS and with a Detachment at Udorn Royal Thai Air Force... (3rd ARRG) |
assault team lift |
| 5 | A1-E Skyraider A-1 Skyraider The Douglas A-1 Skyraider was an American single-seat attack aircraft that saw service between the late 1940s and early 1980s. It became a piston-powered, propeller-driven anachronism in the jet age, and was nicknamed "Spad", after a French World War I fighter... |
Peach 01–05 | 1st SOS 1st Special Operations Squadron The 1st Special Operations Squadron is part of the 353d Special Operations Group at Kadena Air Base, Japan. It operates MC-130 Combat Talon II aircraft providing special operations capability... (56th SOW 56th Fighter Wing The 56th Fighter Wing is a United States Air Force unit assigned to the Air Education and Training Command's Nineteenth Air Force. It is stationed at Luke Air Force Base, Arizona where it also is the host unit.... ) |
close air support Close air support In military tactics, close air support is defined as air action by fixed or rotary winged aircraft against hostile targets that are close to friendly forces, and which requires detailed integration of each air mission with fire and movement of these forces.The determining factor for CAS is... at objective |
| 10 | F-4D Phantom | Falcon 01–05, 11–15 | 13th TFS 13th Fighter Squadron The 13th Fighter Squadron is part of the 35th Fighter Wing at Misawa Air Base, Japan.-History:The 13th flew antisubmarine patrols in the Gulf of Mexico from, June–August 1942 and served as an operational and replacement training unit from, April 1942–October 1943... , 555th TFS 555th Fighter Squadron The 555th Fighter Squadron is part of the 31st Operations Group at Aviano Air Base, Italy. It operates F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft conducting an air superiority mission.-Mission:... (432nd TRW 432d Wing The 432d Wing is a United States Air Force unit assigned to Air Combat Command, stationed at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada. The group operates unmanned reconnaissance aircraft which provide real-time reconnaissance, surveillance, and precision attack against fixed and time-critical targets... ) |
high altitude target area MiG Mig -Industry:*MiG, now Mikoyan, a Russian aircraft corporation, formerly the Mikoyan-Gurevich Design Bureau*Metal inert gas welding or MIG welding, a type of welding using an electric arc and a shielding gas-Business and finance:... combat air patrol Combat air patrol Combat air patrol is a type of flying mission for fighter aircraft.A combat air patrol is an aircraft patrol provided over an objective area, over the force protected, over the critical area of a combat zone, or over an air defense area, for the purpose of intercepting and destroying hostile... in two waves |
| 5 | F-105G Wild Weasel III Wild Weasel A Wild Weasel is an aircraft specially equipped with radar seeking missiles, and tasked with destroying the radars and SAM installations of enemy air defence systems.... |
Firebird 01–05 | 6010th WWS 17th Weapons Squadron The 17th Weapons Squadron is a United States Air Force unit, assigned to the USAF Weapons School at Nellis AFB, Nevada.The squadron traces its lineage to the United States Army Air Service 17th Aero Squadron. The 17th Aero Squadron was activated in August 1917 and earned 13 Campaign Streamers in... The 6010th Wild Weasel Squadron was formed 1 November 1970 from aircraft and crews of the inactivating 355th TFW at Takhli. (388th TFW 388th Fighter Wing The 388th Fighter Wing is a United States Air Force unit assigned to the Air Combat Command Twelfth Air Force. The unit is stationed at Hill Air Force Base, Utah.-Mission:... ) |
high altitude target area surface-to-air missile Surface-to-air missile A surface-to-air missile or ground-to-air missile is a missile designed to be launched from the ground to destroy aircraft or other missiles... suppression |
Penetration into North Vietnam
Beginning at 22:00,All times are UTC+7UTC+7
UTC+07:00 is an identifier for a time offset from UTC of +07:00. In ISO 8601 the associated time would be written as .Also known as Indochina Time , it is used in:-As standard time :*Australia...
(+12 Eastern Standard Time
Eastern Standard Time
Eastern Standard Time may refer to:*North American Eastern Time Zone, UTC-5*Australian Eastern Standard Time, UTC+10*An album by Hip Hop group Kooley High...
). aircraft began leaving five bases in Thailand and one in South Vietnam.Takhli (C-130E(I)), Korat (EC-121, F-105G), Udorn (helicopters, HC-130,F-4), Nakhon Phanom (A-1), U Tapao (KC-135), and Danang (EKA-3). Cherry 02, the Combat Talon escort for the A-1 strike formation, took off from Takhli at 22:25, but Cherry 01 had difficulty starting an engine and took off 23 minutes late at 23:18. Cherry 01 adjusted its flight plan and made up the time lost at engine start.
At 23:07 the HC-130P aerial refuelers (call signs Lime 01 and Lime 02) took off from Udorn, followed by the helicopters ten minutes later. Shortly after midnight, the A-1 Skyraiders lifted off four minutes early from Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Air Force Base
Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Air Force Base
Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Navy Base , formerly Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Air Force Base, is a Royal Thai Navy facility used for riverine patrols along the Mekong River. It is located approximately 365 miles northeast of Bangkok, 9 miles west of Nakhon Phanom city in Nakhon Phanom Province in the...
under clandestine, blacked-out conditions. The helicopters encountered thick clouds over northern Laos
Laos
Laos Lao: ສາທາລະນະລັດ ປະຊາທິປະໄຕ ປະຊາຊົນລາວ Sathalanalat Paxathipatai Paxaxon Lao, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south and Thailand to the west...
at their refueling altitude and climbed to 7000 feet (2,133.6 m) AGL (Above Ground Level) to refuel from Lime 01 on the flight plan's fourth leg. Lime 01 then led them to the next checkpoint for handoff to Cherry 01 at 01:16.
The formations flew roughly parallel tracks that crossed Laos to the west of the Plain of Jars
Plain of Jars
The Plain of Jars is a megalithic archaeological landscape in Laos. Scattered in the landscape of the Xieng Khouang plateau Xieng Khouang, Lao PDR, are thousands of megalithic jars...
before turning northeastward. Both formations flew twelve planned legs. The flight path was a corridor 6 miles (9.7 km) wide, for safe terrain clearance in the event of formation breakup or a helicopter’s loss of drafting position. The Combat Talon navigators were tasked with keeping the formations on the centerline of the corridor. The pilots of both formations required a flight path of descending legs, each approximately 1000 feet (304.8 m) above the terrain in the mountain valleys, because the HH-3E had difficulties in climbing while in formation. The Combat Talon C-130s experienced sluggish flight controls at the required airspeeds, and the A-1s were hampered by their heavy ordnance loads.
The slow speeds required for the formations (105 knots (57.2 m/s) for the helicopters and 145 knots (78.9 m/s) for the A-1s) degraded nearly all modes of the Combat Talon’s AN/APQ-115 TF/TA navigational radars. The Terrain Following mode computed changes in altitude only to a programmed minimum airspeed of 160 knots (87.1 m/s), well outside the parameters of the mission. The Terrain Avoidance mode, adapted from the AN/APQ-99 terrain avoidance radar of the RF-4C photo reconnaissance aircraft, was distorted by the nose-high attitude dictated by the slow speeds and would no longer display hazardous terrain directly in front of or below the Combat Talon’s flight path. The Doppler radar
Doppler radar
A Doppler radar is a specialized radar that makes use of the Doppler effect to produce velocity data about objects at a distance. It does this by beaming a microwave signal towards a desired target and listening for its reflection, then analyzing how the frequency of the returned signal has been...
, used to calculate wind drift and ground speed
Ground speed
Ground speed is the speed of an aircraft relative to the ground. Information displayed to passengers through the entertainment system often gives the aircraft groundspeed rather than airspeed....
, often had to use information in its computer’s memory because of processing lapses. While the ground-mapping radar, correlating landmarks shown on maps to radar returns, was not affected, the jungle
Jungle
A Jungle is an area of land in the tropics overgrown with dense vegetation.The word jungle originates from the Sanskrit word jangala which referred to uncultivated land. Although the Sanskrit word refers to "dry land", it has been suggested that an Anglo-Indian interpretation led to its...
terrain did not provide easily identifiable points. All of these handicaps were overcome with the external pod installation of FLIR, which readily identified the rivers and lakes used as turning points.
Aircraft carrier
An aircraft carrier is a warship designed with a primary mission of deploying and recovering aircraft, acting as a seagoing airbase. Aircraft carriers thus allow a naval force to project air power worldwide without having to depend on local bases for staging aircraft operations...
s USS OriskanyCVW-19 (NM) embarked. Aircraft from VA-153, VA-155, VF-191
VF-191
VF-191 or Fighter Squadron 191 of the United States Navy was established in 1943 and disestablished in 1978. A second squadron, bearing the same designation was established for a short time again between 1986 and 1988.-History:...
, VF-194
VF-194
Fighter squadron VF-194 Red Lightnings was an aviation unit of the United States Navy. It was established in 1952 and disestablished in 1978. It was reactivated for a short time again between 1986 and 1988.-Squadron linage:...
, VAQ-130
VAQ-130
Electronic Attack Squadron 130 , also known as the "Zappers", is an EA-6B Prowler squadron of the United States Navy based at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island. Part of Carrier Air Wing 3, the Zappers deploy aboard the . VAQ-130 is the oldest electronic warfare squadron in the U.S...
, and VAW-111 participated. and Ranger
USS Ranger (CV-61)
The seventh USS Ranger is one of four Forrestal-class supercarriers built for the US Navy in the 1950s. Commissioned in 1957, she served extensively in the Pacific, especially the Vietnam War, for which she earned 13 battle stars. Near the end of her career she also served in the Indian Ocean and...
CVW-2
Carrier Air Wing Two
Carrier Air Wing Two is a United States Navy aircraft carrier air wing based at Naval Air Station Lemoore. The air wing is attached to the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln .-Mission:...
(NE) embarked. Aircraft from VA-25
VFA-25
Strike Fighter Squadron 25 is a United States Navy strike fighter squadron based at NAS Lemoore. Its current tail code is AA, its callsign is Fist, and it flies the F/A-18C Hornet.-Squadron insignia and nickname:...
, VA-113
VFA-113
Strike Fighter Squadron 113 Stingers is a United States Navy strike fighter squadron based at Naval Air Station Lemoore, California....
, VA-145, VF-21
VF-21
Fighter Squadron 21 Freelancers was an aviation unit of the United States Navy originally established in 1944 as VF-81. It was disestablished in 1996.-History:...
, VF-154
VFA-154
Strike Fighter Squadron 154 , also known as "City Dump" throughout the Vietnam War, is a United States Navy strike fighter squadron stationed at Naval Air Station Lemoore. The "Dumpers" petitioned to have their call sign changed in the late 1970s to the Black Knights, and were granted the change. ...
, VAQ-134
VAQ-134
Electronic Attack Squadron , also known as the "Garudas", is an United States Navy EA-6B Prowler squadron based at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island. VAQ-134 was one of only four expeditionary Prowler squadrons in the U.S. Navy...
, and VAW-111 participated. in the largest carrier night operation of the Vietnam War.Hancock
USS Hancock (CV-19)
USS Hancock was one of 24 s built during World War II for the United States Navy. The ship was the fourth US Navy ship to bear the name, and was named for John Hancock, president of the Second Continental Congress and first governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts...
, CVW-21 (NP) embarked, had arrived on the line that day and provided only two EKA-3B tanker aircraft of its VAQ-129
VAQ-129
Electronic Attack Squadron One Two Nine is the United States Navy and Marine Corps' only EA-6B Prowler and EA-18G Growler training squadron. Known as the Vikings, they are a Fleet Replacement Squadron, or FRS, and are charged with training all EA-6B and EA-18G aviators and developing standard...
detachment to the diversion. Both staged before the raid to Danang Air Base, where TF77's Skywarriors were based during their carriers' rotations. Oriskany launched 25 aircraft and Ranger 26. Starting at 01:52, twenty A-7 Corsairs and A-6 Intruder
A-6 Intruder
The Grumman A-6 Intruder was an American, twin jet-engine, mid-wing attack aircraft built by Grumman Aerospace. In service with the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps between 1963 and 1997, the Intruder was designed as an all-weather medium attack aircraft to replace the piston-engined A-1 Skyraider...
s, flying in pairs at stepped-up altitudes to deconflict their flight paths, entered North Vietnamese airspace on three tracks, dropping flares to simulate an attack. The last track also dropped chaff to mimic the mining
Naval mine
A naval mine is a self-contained explosive device placed in water to destroy surface ships or submarines. Unlike depth charges, mines are deposited and left to wait until they are triggered by the approach of, or contact with, an enemy vessel...
of Haiphong
Haiphong
, also Haiphong, is the third most populous city in Vietnam. The name means, "coastal defence".-History:Hai Phong was originally founded by Lê Chân, the female general of a Vietnamese revolution against the Chinese led by the Trưng Sisters in the year 43 C.E.The area which is now known as Duong...
harbor. Over the Gulf of Tonkin, twenty-four other aircraft in thirteen orbits provided support and protection.An additional support aircraft, an A-7 scheduled to be the last of six SAM suppression aircraft, was a deck abort aboard Ranger. The operation prompted a frantic air defense reaction at 02:17 that provided a highly effective diversion for the raiders and completely saturated the North Vietnamese air defense system.
Both Air Force formations, over a period of thirteen minutes, were unavoidably and separately exposed for several minutes each to an early warning radar located at Na San
Na San Airport
The Na San Airport is an airport in Son La, Son La Province, Vietnam....
, North Vietnam, 30 miles (48.3 km) to the north, because the flight tracks had to be routed around uncharted mountains. Neither formation was detected, possibly because of the diversion. The rescue forces entered the Red River valley at 500 feet (152.4 m) AGL to find conditions clear and visibility excellent. The helicopter formation reached its Initial Point (20 kilometers—12 minutes flying time—from Son Tay) with the A-1 strike formation two minutes behind, as planned. The HH-3E assault team helicopter had flown formation just behind and above the left wingtip of Cherry 01, drafting on the leader to gain the additional airspeed
Airspeed
Airspeed is the speed of an aircraft relative to the air. Among the common conventions for qualifying airspeed are: indicated airspeed , calibrated airspeed , true airspeed , equivalent airspeed and density airspeed....
needed to bring its cruise airspeed safely above the stalling speed
Stall (flight)
In fluid dynamics, a stall is a reduction in the lift coefficient generated by a foil as angle of attack increases. This occurs when the critical angle of attack of the foil is exceeded...
of the Combat Talon. Two of the HH-53s and Cherry 01 accelerated and climbed to 1500 feet (457.2 m) AGL while the four assault helicopters broke formation and descended to 200 feet (61 m) in single file, timed to land forty-five seconds apart.
Combat assault
Cherry 01 transmitted the execute command "Alpha, Alpha, Alpha" to all aircraft as it overflew the prison and dropped four illumination flares, then performed a hard turning descent to 500 feet (152.4 m) to drop two battle simulatorsBattle simulators were firecrackers encased in plastic sleeves and attached to a droppable pallet. south and southeast of Sơn Tây. After Apple 03 made its strafing pass with side-firing minigunMinigun
The Minigun is a 7.62 mm, multi-barrel heavy machine gun with a high rate of fire , employing Gatling-style rotating barrels with an external power source...
s on the prison's guard towers, Cherry 01 successfully dropped one of two planned napalm
Napalm
Napalm is a thickening/gelling agent generally mixed with gasoline or a similar fuel for use in an incendiary device, primarily as an anti-personnel weapon...
ground markers as a point of reference for the A-1s, then departed the area to orbit over Laos.
The assault helicopters in single file encountered winds that caused them to break formation 150 yards (137.2 m) to the right of their intended track. The pilots of the gunship helicopter, Apple 03, preceding the others, observed a compound nearly identical to the prison camp in size and layout (previously labeled a "secondary school" by intelligence sources) and steered toward it, followed by the assault lift force. However, Apple 03 recognized the river next to the actual location and corrected their flight path. Banana, carrying the Blueboy assault team, descended on the wrong location and found the expected courtyard to be much smaller than required and the treeline enclosing the compound rather than tracking through it. By then Blueboy, as previously rehearsed, was firing its weapons from all openings in the HH-3E. Bananas pilots recognized the error, applied power, and quickly passed north to the actual target.
Despite the error, and trees taller than briefed that forced a steeper descent, the assault team crashlanded into the courtyard of Son Tay prison at 02:19Gargus has a detailed timeline, all times based on the time of the Alpha execute code (02:18). with all weapons firing. Although one raider, acting as a door gunner, was thrown from the aircraft,1LT George Petrie landed on his feet near the east gate, which was his personal assignment to secure. the only casualty was the helicopter's flight engineer, whose ankle was fractured by a dislodged fire extinguisher.The casualty was Air Force TSG Leroy Wright, who continued his participation despite the broken ankle and received the Air Force Cross for his effort. Army Captain Richard J. Meadows
Richard J. Meadows
Major Richard J. Meadows was a U.S. Army Special Forces officer who saw combat in U.S. wars from Korea to the Iran Hostage Rescue mission in 1980. He was a pivotal player in the creation of the modern U.S. Army Special Forces....
used a bullhorn to announce their presence to the expected POWs while the team dispersed in four elements on a rapid and violent assault of the prison, killing guards and methodically searching the five prisoner blocks cell by cell.This assault phase confirmed 42 North Vietnamese killed at the prison site by cross-checking individual Blueboy and Redwine personnel accounts at debriefing. All other counts are estimates.
At 02:19, Apple 01 (after observing Banana fire on the site) landed the Greenleaf support group outside the south side of the secondary school, thinking it to be the target prison compound. Unaware that it was 400 meters from the objective, it lifted off to relocate to its holding area. The "secondary school" was actually a barracks for troops,Traditionally, the troops are identified as Chinese or possibly Russian (Schemmer, pp. 171 and 214). However, one raider states they were NVA (Buckler, interviewed Vietnam magazine June 1997--see external links), while another (Powell, also linked) asserts that their nationality was never determined. and alerted by Bananas aborted assault, opened fire on Greenleaf as two of its elements assaulted the compound. The support group attacked the location with small arms and hand grenades in an eight minute firefight, after which Simons estimated that 100 to 200 hostile soldiers had been killed. Two A-1s supported Greenleaf with an air strike using white phosphorus bombs on a wooden footbridge east of the area. Apple 01 returned at 02:23, and by 02:28 the support group had disengaged under fire and reboarded the helicopter for the short movement to the correct landing area.Schemmer noted that Apple 01 made three combat assault landings in nine and one half minutes. The disengagement was supported by fire from the team's M-60 machine gun, which used all tracer rounds to intimidate the opponents.
The pilot of Apple 02LTC John V. Allison. observed the errors in navigation by the helicopters in front of him and made a hard turn towards the prison. He also observed Apple 01 unload at the secondary school and initiated Plan Green, the contingency plan for the loss or absence of Greenleaf. The Redwine security group, including ground force commander Sydnor, landed at 02:20 outside Son Tay prison and immediately executed the previously rehearsed contingency plan. In the meantime Cherry 02 arrived with the A-1 force, dropped two more napalm ground markers, and created other diversions to disguise the target area by dropping MK-6 log flares and battle simulators at road intersections that North Vietnamese reaction forces might be expected to use. Cherry 02 then orbited in the area as on-call support for the ground teams.
After a thorough search that included a second sweep ordered by Meadows, Blueboys three teams found that the prison held no POWs.Meadows himself did not enter any cellblock but coordinated his team from the center of the courtyard. Meadows transmitted the code phrase "Negative Items" to the command group.Sources are near-unanimous that the code was "items", not "packages". Pathfinders clearing the extraction LZ blew up an electrical tower that blacked out the entire west side of Son Tay including the prison area. At 02:29 Sydnor ordered the A-1s to attack the vehicle bridge over the Song Con leading into the area and three minutes later called for extraction by the HH-53s, idling on the ground in a holding area a mile away. Before the first helicopter arrived, a truck convoy approached the prison from the south, but was stopped by two Redwine security teams that each fired an M72 light antitank weapon
M72 LAW
The M72 LAW is a portable one-shot 66 mm unguided anti-tank weapon, designed in the United States by Paul V. Choate, Charles B. Weeks, and Frank A. Spinale et al...
into the lead vehicle.The convoy was engaged separately by the teams, four minutes apart.
At 02:28 Cherry 02s radar navigator noted that Fan Song
Fan Song
The Fan Song is the NATO reporting name for a series of trailer-mounted E band/F band and G band fire control and tracking radars for use with the Soviet SA-2 Guideline surface-to-air missile system.- Description :...
search radars for North Vietnamese surface to air missiles were active. SAM launches at the F-105 Wild Weasel
Wild Weasel
A Wild Weasel is an aircraft specially equipped with radar seeking missiles, and tasked with destroying the radars and SAM installations of enemy air defence systems....
force began at 02:35, with at least 36 missiles fired at the rescue forces.Participants anecdotally put the number of SAMs much higher, with three or more in the air continuously for eleven minutes. One F-105 was briefly enveloped in burning fuel by a near-miss at 02:40 and returned to base. Its replacement was severely damaged six minutes later by another SAM. 20 other SAMs fired at Navy aircraft all missed. Two MiG-21
Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21
The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 is a supersonic jet fighter aircraft, designed by the Mikoyan-Gurevich Design Bureau in the Soviet Union. It was popularly nicknamed "balalaika", from the aircraft's planform-view resemblance to the Russian stringed musical instrument or ołówek by Polish pilots due to...
interceptors on alert duty at Phúc Yên Air Base
Phuc Yen
Phúc Yên is a town district of Vinh Phuc province in the Red River Delta region of Vietnam. As of 2003 the district had a population of 83,352. The district covers an area of 120 km². The district capital lies at Phuc Yen....
were never given permission to launch despite several requests to do so.
The HH-53s returned singly, and Apple 01 landed at the extraction LZ first, at 02:37. It lifted off with its passengers at 02:40, followed a minute later by the landing of Apple 02, which departed at 02:45. Apple 03, the last aircraft out, was cleared to leave its holding area at 02:48. The raid had been executed in only 26 minutes,Raid time calculated from 02:19 (first landing) to 02:45 (last extraction). well within the planned 30-minute optimum time. Although at first it was feared one raider had been left behind, all the troopers were accounted for. One Redwine trooper had been wounded in the leg and was the only casualty to hostile fire on the raid.SFC Joseph M. Murray was hit from behind as he prepared to grenade the first structure he encountered after debarking Apple 02. His assailants were killed by team leader MSG Herman Spencer.
By 03:15 the assault formation was out of North Vietnam, and landed back at Udorn at 04:28, five hours after launch. The crew of the damaged F-105 was compelled to eject over Laos
Laos
Laos Lao: ສາທາລະນະລັດ ປະຊາທິປະໄຕ ປະຊາຊົນລາວ Sathalanalat Paxathipatai Paxaxon Lao, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south and Thailand to the west...
thirty minutes after being hit when it flamed out in sight of its tanker from lack of fuel.The F-105G lost was Firebird 05, s/n 62-4436, nicknamed Fat Fanny. Lime 01, refueling at Udorn, took off using the call sign King 21 to coordinate the Search and Rescue (SAR)
Search and rescue
Search and rescue is the search for and provision of aid to people who are in distress or imminent danger.The general field of search and rescue includes many specialty sub-fields, mostly based upon terrain considerations...
effort, while Lime 02 refueled Apple 04 and Apple 05 to extend their flight time. Supported by a C-123 Candlestick
C-123 Provider
The C-123 Provider was an American military transport aircraft designed by Chase Aircraft and subsequently built by Fairchild Aircraft for the United States Air Force...
flare aircraft diverted from its station on another mission, a SAR force was launched, and when its Sandy A-1s arrived from Nakhon Phanom to cover the pickups, Apples 04 and 05 each recovered one of the downed airmen at first light after three hours on the ground.
Intelligence controversy
Intelligence Failure
Intelligence Failure is the eighth studio album of the actor Viggo Mortensen and seventh with the avant-garde guitarist Buckethead, released on 2005. The album combines traditional and original compositions, as well as clips of public speeches, most notably of George W. Bush and members of his...
". The 65 prisoners at Sơn Tây had been moved on July 14, probably due to the threat of flooding, to a camp 15 miles (24.1 km) closer to Hanoi that the POWs dubbed "Camp Faith".Thigpen notes, however, that the senior POW in North Vietnam, Air Force MG John Flynn, contends that the move was due to construction at the camp to improve its security, after which the prisoners were to have been returned. Although relatively near Sơn Tây, the risk of disastrous consequences from lack of reconnaissance, planning, and rehearsing precluded a switch of targets at the last minute. A mission with Camp Faith as the objective required a lengthy delay for a new window of acceptable conditions, Moorer advised Nixon at their November 18 meeting that the next window would be in March 1971, four months hence. which increased the chance of security compromise and further withheld personnel and equipment from their parent commands. New reports of increasing numbers of deaths among POWs argued strongly against such a delay. The raid went as planned in the event the renewed activity at Sơn Tây noted in aerial reconnaissance photos taken November 13 involved POWs.
Although the mission objective involved an intelligence failure, the gathering of accurate intelligence for the operation, in both quality and quantity, was remarkably successful. The failure lay in "compartmentalization" of the information and isolation of the JTCG from "the normal intelligence flow". As a planner and participant stated in his history of the operation: "The raid was allowed to take place because those who had the correct intelligence information were not aware that someone was contemplating a POW rescue."
Further, by the time intelligence regarding the moving of the prisoners was received, prompting the Defense Intelligence Agency
Defense Intelligence Agency
The Defense Intelligence Agency is a member of the Intelligence Community of the United States, and is the central producer and manager of military intelligence for the United States Department of Defense, employing over 16,500 U.S. military and civilian employees worldwide...
to do an intensive overnight re-analysis of all of its data, the day of the operation had already arrived because of the 12-hour time difference with Southeast Asia and the 24-hour advancement of the operation due to Typhoon Patsy. When a final meeting with Defense Secretary Melvin Laird took place at 05:00 (Washington D.C. time) to determine if the mission should proceed, its launch was less than five hours away. There was no consensus on the reliability of the data, and Blackburn was strongly predisposed to go ahead. One military analyst observed that as a result, the highest-level decision-makers succumbed to the phenomenon of "groupthink
Groupthink
Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within groups of people. It is the mode of thinking that happens when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without...
".
Recognition of participants
For their actions, members of the task force received six Distinguished Service CrossesDistinguished Service Cross (United States)
The Distinguished Service Cross is the second highest military decoration that can be awarded to a member of the United States Army, for extreme gallantry and risk of life in actual combat with an armed enemy force. Actions that merit the Distinguished Service Cross must be of such a high degree...
,DSCs were awarded to Simons, Sydnor, Meadows, MSG Thomas J. Kemmer (Blueboy), SFC Tyrone J. Adderly (Redwine), and SSG Thomas E. Powell (Greenleaf). Schemmer (1976), p. 259. five Air Force Crosses
Air Force Cross (United States)
The Air Force Cross is the second highest military decoration that can be awarded to a member of the United States Air Force. The Air Force Cross is the Air Force decoration equivalent to the Distinguished Service Cross and the Navy Cross .The Air Force Cross is awarded for extraordinary heroism...
,AFCs were awarded to MAJ Herbert D. Kalen (Banana), LTC Warner A. Britton (Apple 01), LTC John V. Allison (Apple 02), MAJ Frederic M. Donahue (Apple 03), and TSG Leroy M. Wright (Banana). Schemmer (1976), p. 260. and at least 85 Silver Star
Silver Star
The Silver Star is the third-highest combat military decoration that can be awarded to a member of any branch of the United States armed forces for valor in the face of the enemy....
s, including all 50 members of the ground force who did not receive the DSC.The likelihood that more than 85 Silver Stars were awarded as a result of Kingpin is due to an apparent incomplete listing by Schemmer of SS recipients. He lists all of the crew members of Cherry 02 but only two members of Cherry 01. His list of helicopter crewmen omits the seven who were added to the mission at the last minute from units already stationed in Southeast Asia. Likely these are omissions in research and those 17 crewmen were also awarded Silver Stars, making 102 total. Manor received the Distinguished Service Medal
Air Force Distinguished Service Medal
The Air Force Distinguished Service Medal was created by an act of the United States Congress on July 6, 1960. The medal was intended as a new decoration of the United States Air Force to replace the policy of awarding the Army Distinguished Service Medal to Air Force personnel.The Air Force...
.
The successful demonstrations of joint operating capability in Ivory Coast and Kingpin were, in part, a model for the creation of a joint United States Special Operations Command
United States Special Operations Command
The United States Special Operations Command is the Unified Combatant Command charged with overseeing the various Special Operations Commands of the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps of the United States Armed Forces. The command is part of the Department of Defense...
in 1987.
Sơn Tây raider Apple 1 HH-53 68-10357 was subsequently converted to MH-53M Pave Low standard, served in Bosnia and Iraq and was finally retired in 2008 after 38 years of service. It is now on display in the Cold War Gallery of the National Museum of the United States Air Force
National Museum of the United States Air Force
The National Museum of the United States Air Force is the official museum of the United States Air Force located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base northeast of Dayton, Ohio. The NMUSAF is the world's largest and oldest military aviation museum with more than 360 aircraft and missiles on display...
in Dayton, Ohio.
Impact of the raid
Criticism of the raid, particularly in the news media and by political opponents of the Vietnam War and the Nixon Administration, was widespread and of long duration. Not only was the failure denounced as the result of poor or outdated intelligence, but charges made that the operation caused increased mistreatment of the prisoners.However, as a result of the raid, the North Vietnamese consolidated their POW camps to central prison complexes. An area of the infamous
Infamy
Infamy, in common usage, is notoriety gained from a negative incident or reputation . The word stems from the Latin infamia, antonym of fama ....
"Hanoi Hilton
Hanoi Hilton
Hỏa Lò Prison, later sarcastically known to American prisoners of war as the "Hanoi Hilton", was a prison used by the French colonists in Vietnam for political prisoners and later by North Vietnam for prisoners of war during the Vietnam War....
" formerly housing civilian and South Vietnamese prisoners became "Camp Unity," a block of large communal areas housing 50 POWs each. After their repatriation
Repatriation
Repatriation is the process of returning a person back to one's place of origin or citizenship. This includes the process of returning refugees or soldiers to their place of origin following a war...
, many POWs said that being in close contact with other Americans lifted their morale, as did knowledge of the rescue attempt.Schemmer devotes an entire chapter to the positive effects of the raid on the prisoners' situation. Some POWs said that food, medical care, and even seemingly basic things like mail delivery vastly improved after the raid.
The Defense Department conducted an investigation into a possible breach of security as the reason behind the movement of the prisoners, and concluded that none occurred. The intensity of the criticism, and leaks of information including reports of the operation, caused the Nixon Administration to reorganize both the military communications network and the government's intelligence apparatus.
External links
- Son Tay Raider Association
- Rescue Attempt: The Son Tay Raid, exhibit page at National Museum of the United States Air Force
- Interview with Sergeant Terry Buckler About the Son Tay Prison Camp Raid During the Vietnam War, republished from Vietnam Magazine, June 1997 Sgt. Buckler was a radio-telephone operator (RTO) with the Redwine group and the youngest participant
- Account by Thomas Powell for The Patriot Files SSgt. Powell was an M60 machine gunM60 machine gunThe M60 is a family of American general-purpose machine guns firing 7.62×51mm NATO cartridges from a disintegrating belt of M13 links...
ner with the Greenleaf group and was awarded the DSC. - Son Tay: A Story of Success, VietnamGear.com, republished from Behind the Lines Magazine, July 2005. The article asserts that an American-led MACV-SOG reconnaissance mission took place prior to Kingpin, that the troops in the secondary school were Chinese special operations instructors known to be present, and that both sides classified that information.
- Color map of Son Tay raid, National Museum of the United States Air Force
- Son Tay Raid - military topographical mapsheet
- Operation Kingpin: The Son Tay Raid at specialoperations.com
- Lt. Col. Mark Amidon (USAF), "Groupthink, politics and the decision to attempt the Son Tay rescue." Parameters US Army War College Quarterly, Autumn 2005. Opinion piece analysis of Kingpin decision-making
- "Son Tay Raid MH-53M Pave Low IV Retired", Small Wars Journal
- The Son Tay Raid November 21, 1970
