Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire "Flak Traps", Vietnam aviators worst nightmare.

I recently was going through some old letters I had written to my folks back in '69.

My Dad, a sea going Marine had manned a 20 mm onboard CV11 Intrepid during "Divine Wind" attacks in the S. Pacific and asked about us encountering enemy AAA during our CAS missions.

Guess the two tail #'s I crewed as gunner flew under a protection order from above as best as I can call it, having been mostly free of holes not inherent to the airframes for over ten months.

We were lucky compared to other crews I trained with losing several to the NVA's deadly "Flak Traps ". One can't say enough about the courage of our Air Rescue and Recovery troops as well as those that covered their 6..


FLACK TRAPS

By John T. Correll
May 10, 2008

On the afternoon of Nov. 8, 1967, a 12-man team of American and South Vietnamese soldiers returning from a secret road-watch and reconnaissance mission on the Ho Chi Minh Trail was ambushed and mauled by a North Vietnamese Army battalion.

The team was assigned to Military Assistance Command Vietnam’s “Studies and Observation Group.” The name was intentionally vague. MACV/SOG was an unconventional warfare task force that had been conducting cross-border operations in the Laotian Panhandle—where the United States did not admit it had any military forces—since October 1965.

Some contemporary reports give the location of the ambush as Vietnam’s Quang Tri Province, but the actual site was a mountainside, surrounded by dense jungle, a few miles inside Laos. It was not far from the US Marine Corps base at Khe Sanh, which lay to the northeast on the other side of the border.

At first, the soldiers thought they had run into a reinforced company, but it turned out to be the main body of an enemy battalion.

The team leader, a US Army Special Forces sergeant, called for help—just as the North Vietnamese expected him to do. They were setting up what was known as a “flak trap.”

In the Vietnam War, the United States made an unprecedented effort to rescue those shot down or in trouble in hostile territory. The North Vietnamese knew it, too, and took advantage of it. They often held back from finishing off the survivors of a crash or an attack, preferring to use the Americans as bait. Helicopters and other aircraft would be coming soon and the aircraft would make fat targets as they moved in for the rescue.

The first effort to pick up the SOG team was by a South Vietnamese Air Force H-34, escorted by a US Army UH-1B “Huey” gunship. The North Vietnamese held their fire as the two helicopters approached.

The Huey went in first and hosed down the surrounding area with rockets and guns. The enemy guns were silent until the H-34 pulled into position above the hillside and a sudden fusillade blew him out of the sky. The Huey attacked again, and again the ground fire stopped. The Huey pilot decided to try the rescue himself, and his helicopter was promptly shot down as well.

The NVA battalion could have made short work of the beleaguered patrol, but chose instead to wait for more aircraft to be drawn into the flak trap, which was still baited.

The second rescue force got there around midnight. There were two Air Force HH-3E “Jolly Green Giant” helicopters from Da Nang, an Air Force C-130 flare ship, and three Army helicopter gunships.

Flares from the C-130 lit up the whole area and the Hueys pounded the enemy positions with their rockets and guns. The first HH-3E, call sign Jolly Green 29, maneuvered into position on the slope and picked up two American soldiers and three South Vietnamese. However, enemy fire from a nearby ridge took its toll and Jolly Green 29 pulled away leaking fuel and hydraulic fluid and headed for an emergency landing at Khe Sanh, the closest airstrip.

The pilot of Jolly Green 29 advised the second helicopter, Jolly Green 26, to pull out. The ground fire on the mountainside was intense, and the enemy guns were too numerous for the Hueys to suppress. The Rescue Center agreed and told Jolly Green 26 to return to Da Nang although there were more survivors left on the ground.

The pilot of Jolly Green 26, Capt. Gerald O. Young, didn’t like that order. He talked it over with his crew and they all wanted to stay. Expressing the sentiments of them all, the copilot, Capt. Ralph W. Brower, said that “we’re airborne and hot to trot.” Young appealed the order to return and the Rescue Center authorized them to see what they could do.

Young, 37, had a lot of flying experience behind him. He had dropped out of high school and joined the Navy in 1947. In the Navy, he obtained a General Educational Development diploma and got a private pilot’s license. After a break in service, he again joined the Navy. In 1956, he moved over to the Air Force, where he earned his commission through the Aviation Cadets, went to flight training, and became a helicopter pilot. In August 1967, he was assigned to the 37th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron at Da Nang Air Base in South Vietnam. On Nov. 9, Young was on his 60th combat mission.

Jolly Green 26 went in fast, with the gunships strafing the jungle on both sides. It was a tricky hover. Young rested the right main wheel on the slope while holding the other two wheels in the air and avoiding rotor contact with the ground. Brower directed the gunship fire. The pararescue jumper, Sgt. Larry W. Maysey, hopped to the ground and lifted two American sergeants, both of them wounded, up to the flight engineer, SSgt. Eugene L. Clay, who pulled them aboard.

As Young applied power to lift off, enemy troops appeared at point-blank range and raked Jolly Green 26 with automatic weapons fire. A rifle-launched grenade struck the right engine, which caught fire and exploded. The big helicopter flipped over on its back, burst into flames, and crashed down the hillside into a ravine.

17 Hours

Young was suspended by his seat belt, hanging upside down, and his clothing was afire. He managed to kick out the right window, get out of his straps, and reach the ground. He rolled farther down the embankment and beat out the fire in his clothes. The burns already covered a fourth of his body.

He found another survivor, one of the Army sergeants, who had also been thrown clear. He was unconscious. Young put out the fire in the sergeant’s clothing with his bare hands. He tried to reach others in the wreckage, but was driven back by the heat.

About 3:30 a.m., two A-1Es, Sandy 07 and 08, arrived from a base in Thailand to direct the continuing rescue effort. At this point, at least seven Americans and South Vietnamese were still alive on the hillside.

According to Maj. Jimmy Kilbourne, the pilot of Sandy 07, the rescue team could not talk with Young on the radio because there were “three ‘beepers’ broadcasting on the emergency radio frequency, making voice contact with the survivors impossible. … The beepers blocked the voice transmissions.” The scene below was illuminated, Kilbourne said, by the three helicopters, which formed a “fiery triangle” within 100 yards of each other.

Sandy 07, who was directing the rescue team, decided to wait until first light and bring in more Sandys, fighters, and gunships before the next attempt. “The plan,” Kilbourne said, “was to go in early, locate the survivors, and draw enemy fire by flying low and slow over the area.” Sandy 07 would then put fire from gunships and fighters on the enemy positions and “escort the Jolly Green Giants in for the pickup while all four A-1Es formed a firing ‘daisy chain’ around them.”

At daybreak, Young came out of hiding long enough to fire a pen gun flare. He wanted to warn the Sandys that they were circling a flak trap. Sandy 07, making a low, slow pass, saw Young. The Sandys made about 40 passes, “trolling” for ground fire, but drew none.

At 7 a.m., Sandys 05 and 06 relieved Sandys 07 and 08, who were low on fuel. Sandy 05 spotted five survivors near the wreckage of one of the helicopters. Two hours had passed with no sign of the enemy, so the Sandys led Army and VNAF helicopters in for the pickup. They were not fired upon. Apparently, the enemy had pulled back for the night and had not yet returned. Sandy 05 was on the verge of sending in a Jolly Green to pick up Young and the sergeant when the North Vietnamese troops reappeared.

Young saw the enemy force approaching from the south. He hid the wounded man and decided he would lead the North Vietnamese away from the crash site if he could.

Injured and suffering from second and third degree burns, he drifted into shock from time to time. He used his survival maps to cover the worst of his burns.

“When enemy troops approached the crash scene, he led them away from the wounded sergeant hidden in the underbrush,” an Air Force historical summary said. “He took off through the brush, enemy troops following him. Young knew that the only way rescue helicopters would be able to reach the scene and recover any remaining survivors was if they could see and have time to operate without encountering enemy fire. Young was determined to give them that time by luring his pursuers farther and farther from the wreckage. In his condition, that meant almost certain capture or death. After stumbling for six miles, he eluded the North Vietnamese troops in pursuit.”

Young came to an open field, dragged himself out, signaled the helicopters circling overhead, and was picked up. He had been on the ground for 17 hours.

Medal of Honor

Back at the crash site, US and VNAF aircraft pounded the enemy with rockets, cannon, and machine gun fire. The NVA gunners got a piece of Sandy 07—who had since returned and resumed control—and kept on shooting.

Eventually, a 100-man ground party landed, remained overnight, rescued another survivor, picked up bodies, and destroyed ordnance on the Army gunship. The eight helicopters working the extraction had to avoid the flak trap, but they took no more losses.

Accounts vary of how many people got off the hillside. According to an article written in 1969 for Airman, the official magazine of the Air Force, by Sandy 07 pilot Kilbourne, “seven survivors and the remains of six men were recovered.” The bodies of Brower, Maysey, and Clay were not recovered.

Young was treated for his wounds at Da Nang and flown back to the United States for further treatment and skin grafts. He spent six months in hospitals recovering from burns before he returned to active duty.

The Medal of Honor was presented to Young by President Lyndon B. Johnson at the Pentagon, May 14, 1968, in ceremonies dedicating the Pentagon’s new Hall of Heroes. The other members of the Jolly Green 26 crew, Capt. Ralph W. Brower, SSgt. Eugene L. Clay, and Sgt. Larry W. Maysey, were awarded the Air Force Cross posthumously. The four Sandy pilots received the Silver Star.

I have a "Participation Trophy" from a similar but smaller engagement. I was also a secret society member of MACV/SOG and placed small teams on the ground in Cambodia to count trucks on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Most of the time, our "exfils" or extractions of those teams went hot. Sometimes very hot, and often as baited traps. By '71 we no longer used Americans on those teams, but did use South Vietnamese, Montagnards, and even Chinese mercenaries. We carried a "robin" or translator of similar lineage to make communication possible with the team. Possible, but very difficult as often enough the translator could understand what the team said but had little or no ability to explain it to us in English - especially when things got really hot.

Anyway, the same drama play as described above was still going on regularly while I flew that mission. We lost about a third of those small teams. Some during hot extractions, some in botched inserts, and quite a few that we put down - and never heard from again. Hot extractions were often baited traps, either because the NVA had discovered the team but left them as bait or through what we always suspected was leaked intel.

Trolling for ground fire was one of the more effective but "interesting" techniques employed by guys like me in our Cessna SkySmashers.

I remember how these brave men and thousands others were treated after they returned home, makes me want to puke.

It's water down the Mekong long ago.

Brave men!

Having arrived in country on the tail end of the AC-47 missions we were somewhat restricted with a new set of engagement SOP's having lost a number of crews in previous years to the topic of this thread..Our last aircraft lost was Sept of '69 although we continued to fly into early 1970 before transitioning the remaining aircraft to VNAF. .Engagements during this time were solely up to threat assessments by ground commanders for pilots to weigh the risk for fixed wing intervention vs rotary, however many times it required throwing away all protocols committing every available asset to the fight as was presented in this article.

Our security briefs outlined specific details of letters home containing no references to squadrons,locations, air ops or associated info beneficial to the enemy..After going through a pile of letters I found one I wrote several days after our Hill 474 encounter with Jim ET Martin & company..Had to laugh with the vague description I gave of that night's adventure,

Got to dance that dance a few times. It weren’t fun.

Great stories, FlyboyFlem. Thanks for sharing.

My late older brother flew Huey’s in the delta country 69/70.

While duck hunting with him one day, we had several birds come into our set in flooded timber.
We knocked several down, but my brother just watched and was silent.
When I asked him what he thought of that (shooting the birds) he said - “It reminds me of flying into a hot pick up zone”.

I appreciate the OP’s article and really appreciate you VN Veterans 🇺🇸

I like learning first hand, thanks for teaching me.

I was in high school during those ops. I certainly knew the war was going on but I can’t believe I knew so little about what was REALLY going on.

I have a huge amount of respect, more like admiration, for guys like Rocky and Dan who gave us our targeting information. From 20K feet or more in a B-52, the places they worked were just a set of coordinates, or maybe, if we were lucky, a landmark of some sort for the Radar Nav (Bombardier) to aim at. Of course, the 37,500 pounds of high explosives each plane carried could do a massive amount of "urban renewal" if we got enough info to get on target. If it really, unquestionably needed to be destroyed RIGHT NOW, a 3-ship flight would hit the same target. That was 112,500 pounds of "Have A Bad Day" for the other side! We called that a "Gang Bang"!
Jerry

Well, I appreciated what you fellas did. Never once took fire from a grid you fellas sanitized. And I got some laffs now and then when I saw packs and boots/sandals and parts hanging from tree limbs.

Now you guys did it. My memories have been jogged! I have questions. Rocky, I think you have answered a question I have never been able to get answers for.
In the fall of 1968 I flew 40 Blind Bat missions with my crew on C-130's out of Ubon. Of course all of our missions were concentrated on the Ho Chi Minh trail looking for trucks with a starlight scope and furnishing light for the fighter/bomber acft. to destroy the trucks.
The main question is, that before each mission we had an Escape and Evasion briefing showing us the area we would be flaring that night. What got me, is every night we looked at fresh pictures of the area we were going to and what damage had been done the night before or recently. I always wonder who took those pictures. I think I now know or think I know how those people got there etc.
Also, one night when we flew the late mission ( midnight to daylight), we got called to a nearby area (Barrel Roll) I think to flare for some English speaking guys that were surrounded by the enemy. We stayed on station and provided light until we ran out of flares ---300+, 27 lb ,3'ft.magnesium 2 million candle power flares, and were running low on fuel and it was almost daylight. We headed straight back to Ubon in daylight and one of the engines quit, and the low fuel lights were on.
We made it to Ubon on 3 engines and ran out of fuel while taxiing to our parking spot. We all went to the snack bar and had beer and scrambled eggs for breakfast.
So, the main question is, do you know who took the pictures on the ground? Also, years later when I had a gun shop, I met a guy that was a semi professional photographer
and he said he was in the Peace Corp in Cambodia or Laos during the war. I accused him of being CIA or something similar and he wouldn't give me a straight answer.
What do you think?
Sorry about the long post, but I have never met anybody that knows what I am talking about.

Ken Viet Nam --1967-1970 C-130 A's and C-130 E's

It wouldn't surprise me if at least some of those photos came from the SR-71's that "weren't there" for many years at Kadena AFB Okinawa. From 1970-72 when I was on B-52 flying status as an electronic maintenance REMF, we could usually figure out where the SR's were going by how many KC-135Q tankers we launched. If they were headed across several countries and planning to land in Turkey that day, we only launched three tankers. On a local run, with repeated sorties over Viet Nam and areas nearby, we would launch NINE tankers! Getting down low and slow enough to refuel and then getting back up to SAM-proof altitude and speed for another photo run took a massive amount of fuel. The JP-7 that the Blackbird ran and the JP-4 to run the tanker's engines couldn't be mixed. The Q models had special fuel manifolds to keep them separated. I've also got a good friend who flew photo recon in an F-4 as a Marine aviator. His call sign was "N-N"- - - - -"Nutty Ned". I've always believed that anybody willing to strap a blowtorch on his butt and let people shoot at him has got to be a certifiable nutcase- - - - -I'm glad they're on our side!
Jerry

I knew a pilot from my home town that flew KC-135's out of Kadena while I was stationed at Naha. That was in 67,68, & 69.
I do think some of the pictures were taken from the SR-71s. but most of them were ground level with dead drivers in them . Some drivers were chained to the steering column.
There where KC's at CCK when I was stationed there also.

Ken those photos may well have come from a team like those we inserted. In that timeframe, they could have been US Green Berets, with a couple of "little guys" along to interrogate any survivors. In practice, they'd be inserted a few miles away and a couple days ahead of time. Immediately after the airstrike, they'd sneak in, do a Bomb Damage Assessment, take any living prisoner and quickly sneak back to their insert site or a different site for extraction.

In my time there, we no longer used US assets in Cambodia (the Prez had stated firmly that we had no US in Cambodia - but we sure had guys like me OVER it!) I inserted teams of five to seven guys, who then moved to some part of the HCMT to verify it was in use or not at that time. If it was, they collected data, counted trucks, listened to NVA conversations, took photos, but stayed hidden. We would fly cover for them every day, and they'd make interim reports in code to the little guy in my right seat. After a number of says, they'd withdraw to be extracted. That assumes they had not been discovered, of course.

At that point, it became a search and rescue op for me. They'd transmit (in code again) where they thought they were, and I'd have to find them without arousing the interest of the NVA by circling any one spot. Once I did, I'd call in Vietnamese helicopters (the REALLY brave guys in all this) and pick them up. If the NVA got wind of all this and had the team surrounded, it became a flak trap and a firefight. In support of the Vietnamese KingBee helos, we also had Green Hornets from the 20th Special Ops flying twin-engine N-model Hueys as gun ships (rockets and GE miniguns both sides).

Sometimes we got the teams out, and sometimes not. KingBees always took hits in hot extracts, casualties were common, and we lost a couple of them. All of us took hits on some bad ones.

Same here. Didn't like how returning servicemen were treated, although growing up in OK, we didn't have, or at least I didn't see a lot of the morons who were on full display on the coasts.

Thank you all for the work you did and the service to our country.

Hats off to all you guys who went over there. I served but never at the tip end of the spear like you. I am humbled and thankful for what you did.

Rocky we were never worked by any FAC that I recall, maybe earlier in the war but being "children of the night" as we were sometimes called most AAA threats were primarily daylight from mobile ZSU 24's and their 23mm cannons. The big guns 37 & 57 mm were mainly up North around Hanoi...

However, in my experiences we feared small arms AK fire because of our low altitude or an occasional stunt shooter flinging an RPG hail Mary but the deadliest adversary was the 12.7 mm heavy machine guns which could rip you open in a split second..

Gunship missions could be quite boring at times burning up gas and just making yourself know to the bad guys..Case in point we were called in to provide CAS for many special forces base camps at sundown illuminating their perimeters but never firing a shot all through the night..