Category Archives: Army

Inside the Airborne Command Post, part 3

Air Force, Army, Marines, Navy

Listening to every transmission from 35,000 feet

Episode 3.

At 8:45pm, Brig Gen Manor arrives at the Monkey Mountain Command Post and establishes secure, encrypted communications links with us.  The Green Berets and their aircrews arrive at Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base (RTAFB) to board their mission helicopters and C-130s, all prepped and readied by their maintenance crews. 

Also ready to launch:

F-105s and EC-121s at Korat RTAFB

F-4s at Udorn RTAFB

KC-135s at U-Tapao RTAFB

A-1Es at Nakhon Phanom RTAFB

MC-130s at Takhli RTAFB

General Manor and these soldiers and the mission commanders, and many of the pilots and navigators for these aircrews had been secretly holed up at the CIA compound at Takhli for the past few days in anticipation of President Nixon’s launch order, which came through yesterday.

There is nothing unusual at this time.  I focus on my two screens, black CRTs (cathode ray tubes) with green sine waves.  My controls are dials, knobs, buttons, rollers, and switches.  The modular units before me are functioning well and, in case of equipment failure, they can immediately be swapped out by the AMTs (Airborne Maintenance Technicians).  We are in peak condition.

At 10:25, the MC-130 Cherry 2 takes off from Takhli RTAFB headed to rendezvous with the A-1Es from Nakhon Phanom RTAFB.

At 11:05, the Navy’s EP-3 “Big Look” aircraft arrives on station over the Gulf of Tonkin for electronic warfare during the massive diversionary raid on Haiphong harbor that the Navy will be providing just prior to the Son Tay Raid.

At 11:17, a formation of two HC-130s (Lime 1 and Lime 2) and six helicopters (“Banana” and Apple 1 thru Apple 5) are departing Udorn RTAFB with the 56 Green Berets who will actually set foot on the ground at the Son Tay POW camp.  This begins the three-hour chopper flight that paces the entire mission.  The timing of over one hundred aircraft is built around the smallest slowest aircraft, the crucial HH-3 Jolly Green Giant, code name “Banana,” which will land inside the courtyard of the prison in such a surprise that guards don’t have any time to shoot prisoners.  The planned H-Hour is 0215.

[NOTE:  In his book The Son Tay Raid: American POWs in Vietnam Were Not Forgotten, John Gargus explains that RC-135 Combat Apple missions were America’s means of knowing when radar sites conduct shift change.  They were reliably at 2am.  2:15 was chosen as the H-Hour, when the enemy might be at a minimum level of order.]

At 11:18, the MC-130 Cherry 1 takes off from Takhli RTAFB.  This is the special ops aircraft with unique low-level precision navigation avionics.  It will take over the formation at the North Vietnam border, leading the helicopters to Son Tay and release the flares over the POW camp at the H-Hour.

Our area is kept dimly lit so we operators can optimally see our screens, a surreal green glow on our faces.  Our workstations have a writing table.  I write my notes on our special water-soluble paper—it easily disintegrates in an emergency so as not to compromise classified information.  There are reel-to-reel tape recorders above the workstations to record intercepts of interest to be studied when back on the ground (or reviewed in flight if necessary).

On my CRTs, I clean the scratchy noise fuzz out of the signals, radio waves emanating from SAM sites in the Son Tay Area.  The CRT only shows the top half of the sine wave—that’s all we need.  An AM (amplitude modulation) signal looks like a single vertical spike.  An FM (frequency modulation) signal has a much wider and more active display with lots of spikes.  Tuning for radio frequencies of interest I can tell a lot about what equipment is emitting each signal and its location.  At times, monitoring the display for signal strength, we have the pilot modify our orbit (changing the heading or extending the oval) so as not to lose the signal in the middle of a relevant North Vietnamese military conversation.

See more photos and stories on this website and in Who Will Go, which is just as much to honor the wives and family as the men themselves.

Click Here:  The book.

Inside the Airborne Command Post, part 2

Air Force, Army, POW

Listening to every transmission from 35,000 feet

Episode 2.

Aboard our aircraft are USAF Colonel Norman Frisbie and Lt Col Bill Robinson, an Army Green Beret.  Both these gentlemen, we had never met before.  This was most unusual.  Our missions are Top Secret, Code Word.  We can’t even acknowledge to people what level of code word our missions are—literally, even the code word itself is classified.  These guests must be special. 

For this mission, we knew something was up even at Okinawa, pre-flight.  Our pre-mission crew rest was not normal—it was out of synch and to me it felt like a surprise.  The crews that were assembled for the pre-mission briefing were not our normal crew combinations—in fact, there were two RC-135Ms being pre-flighted and launched, a primary and a backup.  This was an indication to all that something really significant was going to happen tonight.

Now, Colonel Frisbie positions himself centrally among all our battle stations, plugs in his headset, calls our attention to himself, and addresses us all on our intercom.  He introduces himself and proceeds to brief us.  Normally, we’ll “roll” (roll tape on our reel-to-reel to record for later analysis) on every intercept of interest, but he and our AMS (Airborne Mission Supervisor) explain that we are not to waste effort on that tonight.  We shall strictly look for enemy signals that might engage any of the aircraft related to this raid.  We must detect 1.) any references to low-flying aircraft/helicopters 2.) any references to Son Tay [“Sỏn Tây”] and 3.) any references to POWs [“Tù binh”].

Our 6-Op, Bruce McClelland and I look at each other: we are supporting a first-ever POW rescue mission deep in the heart of North Vietnam, near Hanoi.  I don’t know what possibly could have been more exhilarating!  We are ready to help in any way we can.

Colonel Frisbie was a key planner of the raid and is the alternate commander, reporting to Brigadier General LeRoy Manor, the commander of this mission.  General Manor will monitor everything, real-time, at the “Tactical Air Control Center—North Sector” on Monkey Mountain, near Da Nang Air Base.  We are the airborne command post for the Son Tay Raid.

See more photos and stories on this website and in Who Will Go, which is just as much to honor the wives and family as the men themselves.

Click Here:  The audiobook is now here.

Inside the Airborne Command Post, part 1

Air Force, Army

Listening to every transmission from 35,000 feet

Episode 1.

It’s 8pm. We arrive on station above international waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. We are a 30-man team equipped with top secret technologies that allow us to see, hear and detect every transmission of voice, radio, code, and radar in North Vietnam. It’s Friday night, November 20th, 1970. The sun set more than two hours ago and we welcome the protection, stealth, and clarity of this darkness. We need to focus.

We are listeners, an overwatch, sentinels spying on our enemy from a Boeing RC-135M, which resembles the Boeing 707. Our dark-lit workspace spans two-thirds of the arching width of the fuselage. The other third is a partitioned aisle way running the entire length of the port side. That allows pilots, navigators, and others without a need-to-know to pass by without disturbing our work. (All have Top Secret clearances, but not all have a need-to-know.) At two places along the fuselage, we have a doorway to that aisle. From the appearance of our battle station, long and narrow, surrounded by metal, plastic, and colored displays, one might imagine us lurking thousands of feet below Mean Sea Level rather than above.

My station desk is referred to as the “11-Op,” responsible for identifying and monitoring every SAM (Surface-to-Air Missile) site in North Vietnam. Working with a wall of electronics before me, I’m facing toward the partition and the left wing. Centrally among my array of controls arranged in modular black boxes, I have two primary screens that empower me with a sixth sense. Last year, The Who produced a song about “That deaf dumb and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball.” Like Tommy, our sight is beyond the limitations of human eyes and ears. Our existence is electronic.

Unhuman oscilloscopes and tones furnish my mind with a visual that no one can ever see with eyes or make sense of with any one set of ears. We 30 are a band of brothers on a man-o-war that together can see through walls, eavesdropping into the very command centers of the enemy. We detect every signal ever used by militaries: AM, FM, LF, HF, VHF, UHF…and others. Our state-of-the-art electrical engineering has quickly cleaned up those signals. We record every signal of interest but sifting through the recordings later is not good enough—we must comprehend now. We are fluent in the Vietnamese language, so we are listening live to the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and Air Force (NVAF) commanders speaking with their staff as well as the controllers in their Air Defense Command throughout North Vietnam. Through our work, vapid, chaotic ether is transformed into humans conversing clearly. We know their thoughts.

Other workstations in our aircraft include “7-Op”, responsible for monitoring all NVAF fighter aircraft, and “6-Op”, monitoring ground vehicle movement along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Each operator has a chair that can be locked in any direction. For takeoff and landing we lock it facing aft. Incorporated into the seatback is a parachute that I’m sitting against. Beneath our seat cushions—and attached to the parachute—each of us has a survival kit which includes a small, personal life raft and a weapon. (The world knows well the horrific torture of American POWs held by the vicious communists. I’m of the mind that if I’m ever shot down and in danger of imminent capture, I’ll save my last bullet for myself.)

Aboard our aircraft are USAF Colonel Norman Frisbie and Lt Col Bill Robinson, an Army Green Beret. Both these gentlemen, we had never met before. This was most unusual. Our missions are Top Secret, Code Word. We can’t even acknowledge to people what level of code word our missions are—literally, even the code word itself is classified. These guests must be special…

A rare photo of the inside the RC-135M. This anonymous Crew Chief is not the author.
The author will be revealed in Episode 20.

See more photos and stories on this website and in Who Will Go, which is just as much to honor the wives and family as the men themselves.

Click Here:  The book.

Gloria goes to the White House…

Air Force, Army, Marines, Navy, POW,

November 25th, 1970, the day before Thanksgiving

…exactly 50 years ago today.

At 10pm, last last night, Tuesday Nov 24th, 1970, Gloria Adderly received a phone call at her home in Fayetteville NC. It was Colonel Bull Simons. He cordially explained that she was needed at the White House the next day. Her husband, Sergeant First Class Tyrone Adderly would be receiving a medal from the President of the United States. There was one problem: SFC Adderly was busy with debrief and preparations for this White House event, so he was not going to be able to come home to get his dress greens. All he had was the same fatigues he’d lived in for the past 3 months during the secret preparations for the Son Tay Raid.

Gloria was in the middle of her Thanksgiving preparations, but she immediately had to focus her mind on gathering all the correct uniform items for Tyrone to look the best he ever had: Tyrone was going to be in the White House. –personally meeting with the President of the United States. –on national television!

“OK, I’ve got to remember it all: Service coat. Trousers. Shirt. Tie. Army Tie Clasp. The correct belt. Name tag. Low quarters. Current shirt decorations. Current service coat decorations. Collar insignia. Rank. Are the blue shoulder cords appropriate for this ceremony?”

It’s crucial that America’s citizens have confidence in their military–that means we’ve got to look professional. Gloria made America proud. She is a wise woman: she had always taken a lot of photos and those photos now came in handy. She got the entire uniform correct.

Early the next morning Wednesday November 25th, 1970, she boarded a T-39 VIP “Lear Jet” at Pope AFB and was flown to Andrews AFB, MD. The aircraft taxied to a spot in front of the Base Operations building where there’s a “red carpet” painted on the concrete leading to the door of Base Ops. A blue staff car pulls up to the aircraft. Gloria and Tyrone meet and are given an opportunity to change him into his formal uniform at Base Ops. They are then driven directly to the White House’s East Appointment Gate, where they flow right in to enter at the East Wing.

There, Gloria and Tyrone talk in the Blue Room with Colonel Bull Simons’ wife Lucille, Brigadier General Leroy Manor’s wife Delores, and USAF Tech Sgt Leroy Wright and his wife Shirl. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Thomas Moorer is there, meeting each of them. Wives of POWs are also there–this is for them more than anyone. The Blue Room is in the center of the White House and has the famous balcony where Presidents overlook large gatherings on the South Lawn.

They are soon ushered the 40 feet down the hall to the East Room, where nearly 200 people are gathered. The President’s cabinet members, the Chiefs of Staff of the military branches, and the national print, radio, and television press crowd the room. Gloria and the other spouses sit in reserved seats in the front rows.

At the end of this magical day, Tyrone and Gloria fly home to Fort Bragg.

Now is the time for Thanksgiving.

See more photos in Who Will Go, which is just as much to honor the wives and family as the men themselves.

Click Here:  The book.

The Green Berets arrive home…

Air Force, Army,

…exactly 50 years ago today

Landing at Pope AFB, NC, a couple of days later was a very happy time. It was happy for the Raiders and for all the people awaiting us: family, friends, and the Army support personnel there to process us back into our normal world at Ft Bragg.

In fact, for me personally, that is the most memorable moment. It was not the training or the day of the launch or the landing at Son Tay. For me, it was the landing at Pope AFB. I will never forget what I witnessed that day. I was a single guy, so a couple of my buddies came to pick me up. But, standing there on the flight line, when I looked around at the men unloading from the airplane and I saw their wives and children running out to meet them, it really hit me.

The Bull had warned us that we had a 50/50 chance of not coming home—a 50/50 chance of this moment never happening. If there had been a security breach, it was unlikely that we could have been rescued. These warriors had laid their lives on the line to rescue fellow warriors.

Master Sgt Joe Lupyak (Redwine) with his family.
Staff Sgt Lawrence “Tiny” Young (Redwine) and his family.
Photos provided by George G. Petrie

Read the Raiders’ stories, in their own words, and see more photos in Who Will Go.

Click Here:  The book.