I hear the SAM control officer loudly issue the terminal command: “Phóng!” (Launch!)
Immediately, I hear the actual sound of the SAM missile blasting off—so good is our spy technology aboard our Hognose beauty! Under these circumstances, Hognose is what sexy looks like! The command to launch was clear and then one hell of a roaring sound as the SA-2 missile ignited its huge first stage rocket and took off.
This is the first SAM launch of the night. It’s 1:45am. All SAM activity is in the east, over Haiphong Harbor.
At this moment, far from this launch, the Son Tay Raid assault formation is now sneaking in from the dark western mountains undetected. They are on track to arrive at Son Tay in a half an hour.
We know exactly what that NVAF commander will say if he were to actually achieve a shoot-down of an American aircraft. You would hear extremely excited voices in the SAM van declare, “Tiêu diệt mục tiêu rồi!” (Target destroyed!!) or at other times it might be, “Bắn rỏi tại chỗ!” (Shot down on the spot!!)
[NOTE: In the case of shoot-downs, sometimes the only real status of a pilot is what has been gleaned by 11-Op and 7-Op intelligence. This is extremely valuable to US authorities. You can imagine that families of downed Airmen are thankful for the details we provide them. And our information greatly aids rescues.]
An SA-2.
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.
I press the RECORD button. I steal a glance up at my station’s large reel-to-reel tape, directly over my two central screens. They’re rolling, alright. I quickly refocus my eyes to determine who their bogey is—which blip on my screen. There are several of these Navy aircraft that he could be talking about. He certainly sees quite a few.
Our Navy bogeys are now over Haiphong harbor, within the Fan Song radar’s range. The tempo really picks up.
I hear the SAM control officer call out “Cao độ” (altitude) and the number of feet. I can literally hear multiple voices in the van assessing the situation. Our technology is fantastic. The launch control officer is issuing commands and directing everything among his soldiers in the small control building. I picture him standing—like Colonel Frisbie—over the shoulder of his radar operator.
An SA-2 SAM site commander and his crew. This was painted by a North Vietnamese soldier who manned the SA-2 during the Vietnam War.
An SA-2 Surface-to-Air Missile site.
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.
Colonel Frisbie plugs his headset into my station to listen in.
I roll onto a promising signal. I hear a radar operator in the SAM site van start tracking a target.
We hear, in a clear voice, something like: “Xuất hiện tốp không một, phủỏng vị không chín không, cụ ly bốn mủỏi.”
Translation: “Bogey #1 has appeared, azimuth/bearing 090, range 40 kilometers”.
I press my microphone’s button and report this to my AMS. He reports it on the appropriate frequencies, but I’m too busy to listen to what he does with it.
This hapless NVAF controller has no idea that every word he is saying is immediately being translated and broadcast in English to his executioner, an F-105 thousands of feet over his head.
A North Vietnamese SA-2 SAM operator on his scope and controls (below). The markings are in Russian. You can scroll the view to the left or right by clicking on the image. (Painting by a North Vietnamese soldier who manned an SA-2 site.)
An SA-2 Surface-to-Air Missile. That night of the Son Tay Raid, the Green Berets and the USAF and Navy aircrews saw these terrifying weapons flying.
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.
At 1am, the battle begins. A swarm lights up our screens.
A massive, lethal armada of aircraft is launched by the Navy.
The carriers USS Hancock, Ranger, and Oriskany had staged seven A-3 tankers and electronic countermeasure aircraft at Da Nang AB. All seven now head up the coast to North Vietnam.
From the USS Oriskany: Twenty-five aircraft launch, including an E-1B, eighteen A-7s, and six F-8s.
From the USS Ranger: Twenty-six aircraft launch, including an E-1B, ten A-6s, nine A-7s, and six F-4s.
The NVAF Air Defense Command immediately has startled to life. They’re entirely surprised, confused, and slow to comprehend the enormity.
The first indication I get that a SAM site is active: I hear the enemy’s long-range radar operator calling out targets in Vietnamese. These are Russian-supplied SA-2 SAMs, known as “Guideline” in NATO’s naming system. (The Soviets’ name for it is the S-75 Dvina.) Its long-range radar is known by the NATO name “Spoon Rest” and picks up targets nearly 150 miles away. That gives them the range to watch all of this US air activity in the Gulf of Tonkin—including us.
A Spoon Rest radar system.
Inside a Spoon Rest radar control van.
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.
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.
