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.

“No Fail” Fridays

[This is the fifth 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 5: 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.

Below are hundreds of reasons for the Raid.

The following is a listing of the US POWs who were in prison on the night of the Raid. However, it’s important to notice that the locations listed reflect those of each POW on November 23rd, 1970, two days after the Raid. Notice that no POWs remain in Camp Faith on November 23rd as the North Vietnamese Army immediately rushed to consolidate all POWs into two camps deep in Hanoi. In fact no POWs remain at any of the outlying camps.

You see, the Son Tay Raid succeeded. It sent the message to the North Vietnamese Government (and the POWs) that America will not let stand the abuse of our countrymen in POW camps.

The list below was made possible only by the solemn commitment made by the POWs to memorize the names of all the other POWs. POWs recited these names upon their return, to ensure an accounting for their brothers, both the surviving and the dead. Some of these men are reading this post today. We rise to honor you today.

“HH” is the Hanoi Hilton. To understand the other POW camps, there are two maps below. The first map shows the outlying POW camps that were used until the Son Tay Raid. The second map shows the POW camps that all the POWs were consolidated into after the Son Tay Raid.

Read stories of many of these POWs, told in their own words, in Who Will Go.

Click Here:  The book.

“No Fail” Fridays

[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.

Read the stories of the Raiders, told in their own words, in Who Will Go.

Click Here:  The book.

With 5 decades of research and fact-finding we can put away some 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.

Thank you to the incomparable John Gargus, Colonel USAF (ret), for his research provided for this article.