Blueboy Assault Group’s priority was to gain control of the POWs as quickly as possible. They had to eliminate any chance that the guards might try to shoot the POWs. Captain Meadows was to announce on a bull horn,
“We’re Americans! Keep your head down! We’re Americans! This is a rescue! We’re here to get you out! Keep your head down! Get on the floor! We’ll be in your cells in a minute!”
In the photo below, Capt Dick Meadows has a CAR-15 with an ArmaLite Singlepoint Sight, The Bullhorn, Amber Goggles, The Miners’ Light, PRC-90 Survival Radio, and a knife strapped to his leg.
Read the stories of the Raiders, told in their own words, in Who Will Go.
[This is the fourth in a series. It will be a weekly challenge to historians: The Son Tay Raid was a SUCCESS. No qualifier is appropriate. Over these next few Fridays, I’ll show you why.]
Challenge 4: There is a word that is too often used in conversations about the Son Tay Raid. That word should be banished from any analysis of the Raid. You could say it’s an ‘F-word.’ We will challenge your thinking. It may take some humility to accept the truth. For far too long, the humility requirement has only been one-way. The truth is only revealed when you can take on a more mature mindset.
On this eve of our 2020 election, our nation may feel more divided than ever before.
But it’s not true: 50 years ago, we were as divided as we are today (arguably more).
1968-1970 had seen racial riots in our major cities. Police were being called “pigs.” Socialists and Communists played prominently in the 1968 Presidential election. In 1970 “Global COOLING” was the alarm. The Oil & Gas industry was portrayed as a villain. Celebrities held fundraisers for Black Panther Party who were ambushing police officers with guns and bombs. But in those years, there was much more: Assassinations of MLK and RFK, the Vietnam War, the anti-war movement, Kent State, and Hanoi Jane.
Into this came a heart-warming story of noble men: The Son Tay Raid. No matter your party affiliation, we can choose to acknowledge that President Nixon nobly championed the Raiders. We can all give thanks for Nixon’s honorable commitment to the men of the Raid both before and after.
But this is not about President Nixon—it’s about America…because the American people spoke with unified praise of the Son Tay Raid. After all the finger pointing in Senate hearings, the following resolutions from the sovereign body speaking on behalf of the people of the United States proclaimed the beauty of the Son Tay Raid.
Excerpts from the resolutions of the House and Senate.
Read the stories of the Raiders, told in their own words, in Who Will Go.
With 5 decades of research and fact-finding we can put awaysome of the untruths that abound.
Myth #1: “The North Vietnamese knew we were thinking about rescuing POWs at Son Tay.”
This post is going to be somewhat striking. How often do you get to hear the actual, heartfelt words of a loyal, atheist, Communist General? (His photo is below.)
General Phung The Tai, was the North Vietnamese Deputy Chief of the General Staff at the time of the Raid. He wrote the following comments at age 88 in 2008. He felt compelled to clear the air concerning boastful, untrue stories told by other military members of the North Vietnamese Army. The General’s story was provided by John Gargus as translated by Merle Pribbenow:
“In just two years I will be 90 years old and will have been a Party member for 70 years. I will not be long before I leave this earth to follow Uncle Ho. That is the reason that I wanted to tell people about all of the things that previous books have not been able to discuss about my seventy years of following Uncle Ho and the Party while serving in many different positions and participating in matters that were so secret we were supposed to keep them secret until our deaths.”
“There was an article about the Son Tay Raid by a certain author that claimed that our intelligence obtained advance information about this raid and that this was why we transferred around 100 prisoners of war to another location, and that was why the raid failed to rescue any prisoners. That is bull–it is not true. This raid took us completely by surprise. If we had received advance warning we would have captured several of their helicopters and all of the enemy commandos.”
“When the raid took place, I was away on a working trip to Military Region 4 with Van Tien Dung. Vo Nguyen Giap sent me an urgent message instructing me to return to Hanoi right away and summoning me to come in to brief him on the raid. All I could do when I got there was to hang my head in shame and accept responsibility. I strove to defend myself by saying that we had received not a single report from Department 2 (the Military Intelligence Department) to alert us that this raid was coming.”
“This may have been the most painful, most humiliating incident of my entire military career. For several days after the raid I could neither eat nor sleep. Sometimes I just sat in my office thinking about how almost one hundred American commandos had arrogantly swept through the prison camp…and then had climbed back onto their helicopters and got away scot free – it almost drove me crazy.”
“I gnashed my teeth and pounded my fist on my desk as I told myself, ‘If we had just had some advance warning, we would have gotten all six of their helicopters and captured this entire team of their most elite commandos!”
“However, I told myself that at least it was fortunate that I had transferred the prisoners to another location. If I had not done this, then a thousand years would not have been enough time for me to get over my anger and my shame about this incident.”
General Phung The Tai is no longer with us because he followed his Uncle Ho out of our midst in March of 2015. He was a very devout Communist who followed his Party’s guidelines for constructive self-criticism. His story is convincing. The North Vietnamese had no idea that a POW raid was being contemplated.
North Vietnamese Army Colonel General Phung The Tai retired in 1987. https://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ph%C3%B9ng_Th%E1%BA%BF_T%C3%A0i
Thank you to the incomparable John Gargus, Colonel USAF (ret), for his research provided for this article.
Friday night was our time off. After the first month, almost all our training was at night and, because of the urgency, we trained on Saturdays and even some Sundays.
One day in October, the training schedule posted on the bulletin board at the entrance to the barracks read, “Friday Night Fights.”
Like any military base, our small compound had a bar where we gathered to have drinks and blow off steam. At the bar, there was a jukebox but every once in a while, they would bring in a band. They did that for us about four times, as I recall.
Sometimes, some young ladies would show up. Looking back, many of us now believe that the ladies who showed up were DOD employees there to see if we would divulge any information about what we were doing. I guess they thought that we single young bucks, after drinking a few beers, might have loose lips. Well we might have been young and filled with alcohol, but we kept our mouths shut.
At the bar, most of the fights were guys just popping off steam from the week of training. I do remember a few good fights. One late Friday night, Sergeant Bass got into a fight and it moved outside the bar. Sergeant Bass was one big boy (about 6’3” and 250 lbs) and the last guy I would want to fight. There, outside the bar, he had a knife in one hand just daring anyone to take it away from him.
Well it wasn’t long until a couple of young Air Force Security Police showed up in their little blue jeep. Now, the two of them couldn’t have weighed more than 130 lbs each. Their job was to disarm Sergeant Bass and take him to the Air Force brig. We thought, This should be fun to watch, and it was.
George Petrie, Don “Pete” Wingrove, Tom Kemmer, each from Blueboy Assault Group. Photo at Aux Field #3 around Oct 20th, 1970.
See the conclusion of this Friday Night Fights story in Who Will Go.
[This is the third in a series. It will be a weekly challenge to historians: The Son Tay Raid was a SUCCESS. No qualifier is appropriate. Over these next few Fridays, I’ll show you why.]
There is a word that is too often used in conversations about the Son Tay Raid. That word should be banished from any analysis of the Raid. You could say it’s an ‘f-word.’ We will challenge your thinking. It may take some humility to accept the truth. For far too long, the humility requirement has only been one-way. The truth is only revealed when you can take on a more mature mindset.
28 years before the Son Tay Raiders, the Doolittle Raiders trained at Eglin AFB, at Aux Field #1.
Challenge 3: To use that certain f-word for the Son Tay Raid, you’d have to use that same word for the Doolittle Raid.
The Doolittle Raid’s plan was for the 16 B-25 Mitchell bombers to land in China in friendly territory. After refueling, they would then fly to military bases to return to service.
As it turned out, EVERY aircraft was lost, 3 crewmembers died in the mission, 4 crewmembers were executed by the Japanese, 4 became POWs and 5 were held by the Soviets, …and the Doolittle Raid caused “negligible material damage.”
Doolittle initially believed that these results would lead to his court-martial.
So, given all this, did the Doolittle Raid fail? Of course not. Not when you consider the prioritized list of objectives. The primary objective of the Doolittle Raid was to SEND THE MESSAGE that America can strike the enemy’s capital at will. It was to raise the morale of Americans and strike fear in the enemy.
The secondary objectives included… • Destroy as much of the military industrial targets as possible. • Recover all the bombers and crews to safe areas in China and return to the fight.
In both the Son Tay Raid and the Doolittle Raid, new intelligence received ONE DAY BEFORE THE LAUNCH forced the commanders to make life-or-death decisions in the Fog of War concerning whether to give the GO order. IN BOTH CASES, the commanders relied upon their moral clarity, basing their decision on their highest priorities. In both cases, SENDING THE MESSAGE was the highest priority that made them choose to give the GO. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird’s assessment at Ft Bragg, December 9th, 1970:
“If a similar chance to save Americans were to arise tomorrow, I would act just as I did in approving and supporting the effort at Son Tay.”
With clarity that comes with the passage of 5 decades, we can see that the unseemly public rebukes led by Senators Fulbright and Gore were—at least in great part—motivated by political gamesmanship. To use that certain f-word today is simply playing along with their game.
Raiders trained at a small secluded Eglin Field airstrip (“Aux Field #1”), pushing their bombers to take off within the 450ft of “runway” they would have onboard the carrier Hornet.
