Inside the Airborne Command Post, part 8

Air Force, Army, Marines, Navy

Listening to every transmission from 35,000 feet

Episode 8.

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.

Click Here:  The audiobook is now available.