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.