Listening to every transmission from 35,000 feet
Episode 12.
2:30am. “Pull back by the normal plan” is broadcast by Lt Colonel Sydnor to begin withdrawing all troops from the Son Tay POW camp. The HH-53 helicopters Apple 1 and Apple 2 are called back in to extract the Green Berets.
2:31am. The F-105s launch the first two Shrikes against the four active Fan Song sites near Son Tay. Within the next six minutes, there are seven active Fan Song radars identified: four are at the Red River and three more are slightly north of that. Four of these seven are “hot” at any given moment.
If not for my headphones, the sound inside the RC-135M cabin is the same sound we all know from commercial flights. But when I’m tuned in to a SAM site and we’ve cleaned up the signals electronically strong and clear, I’m right inside the enemy’s control van, even knowing the number of people by their different voices. I picture that it’s probably dimmed lighting, like our cabin, with operators at their workstations. Their dark screens are lit up with bogeys, a rotating radar sweeping around their screen. The launch control officer is much like our AMS, professional, yet still having a personality, growing in excitement as their prey approached closer and closer to their claws…
Early in the war, the NVAF could shine on our aircraft and track all they want with impunity, launching their missiles at the optimum time, tracking for results and even launching again right away.
Later, however, the Americans developed anti-radar missiles like the Shrike that is riding the Fan Song radar signals down to the radar itself and knocking out SAM sites right now. As a result, the NVAF are forced to turn on their radar sparingly and only at great risk to themselves.
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.