For educational purposes
High technology did not play the major part in Southeast Asia that may have been expected.
Rather, it was back to basics, the guerrilla activity of the Viet Cong produced a need for low flying, slow speed, durable aircraft for the Counter-Insurgency or COIN role.
The Air Force created Foward Air Controllers (FACs) to guide and control air strikes on enemy positions In the jungles of Vietnam.
Flying in their light propeller-driven aircraft - 0-1 Bird Dogs and 0V-2 Skymasters until the purpose-designed aircraft, the twin engine Bronco, was rushed into service.
High technology did not play the major part in Southeast Asia that may have been expected.
Rather, it was back to basics, the guerrilla activity of the Viet Cong produced a need for low flying, slow speed, durable aircraft for the Counter-Insurgency or COIN role.
The Air Force created Foward Air Controllers (FACs) to guide and control air strikes on enemy positions In the jungles of Vietnam.
Flying in their light propeller-driven aircraft - 0-1 Bird Dogs and 0V-2 Skymasters until the purpose-designed aircraft, the twin engine Bronco, was rushed into service.
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LearningTranscript
00:00American fighter pilots found it extremely difficult to distinguish between friend and foe in the jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam.
00:24To cut through the fog of war, hundreds of FACs scoured the countryside in lightweight, unarmed aircraft, pinpointing enemy positions with target-marking rockets and directing follow-on airstrikes.
00:40The FACs never attracted as much attention as the pilots of fast and powerful fighter bombers, but much of the massive air war in Southeast Asia would have been impossible without their daring support.
00:54The FACs
01:01New World War II
01:20Few air combat missions could be as dangerous, demanding and potentially heartbreaking as
01:26the missions of forward air controllers in Vietnam.
01:29The ability of fighter bomber crews to independently provide close air support proved to be extremely
01:36difficult. Firefights often broke out at close range between small American patrols that
01:44became intermingled with the elusive Viet Cong beneath dense, triple canopy jungle.
01:50The FAC's mission was to quickly make sense of the situation from above and to call in
01:56airstrikes in support of the men below. A job he had to do with nothing more than a few
02:01radios, a few target marking rockets, and a lot of guts.
02:07I can only describe it as sheer chaos. And usually the forward air controller got called when
02:17everything was going steadily downhill. The Army would try and control what they're doing
02:22with their command and control helicopters. And then when they get into it and they just
02:25find out, oh, there's too much in here. We needed heavier firepower. They can't handle it
02:29with the gunships or they can't handle it with artillery or they can't find the friendlies.
02:34That was the biggest problem was under the jungles. Nobody knew where anybody was.
02:38Remember, we didn't have satellites and GPS, global positioning systems or anything like that.
02:45You know, this was technology. This was reading a map and locating somebody on the map.
02:49And the maps were old. A lot of the maps we used were from the French.
02:56The pressure was enormous. Time was of the essence. But every decision a fact made could have meant
03:02the difference between life and death for men on the ground. The experience of the fighter-bomber
03:09crews, the capabilities of their aircraft and ordnance, and the exact positions of friendlies
03:14were just a few of the factors that had to be considered before a strike could be called in.
03:22To make matters worse, FACS often had to immediately weigh the risk of over-responding
03:27to frantic calls for help against the risk of losing men because of their own inaction.
03:36Sometimes they wouldn't tell you how close it was. They would just say,
03:39bomb the target, because they were in such dire straits that they needed air support
03:44it now. So you would ask them, you know, how close is this to you?
03:47They would say, don't worry about it. Just don't worry about it. Just put the bombs down.
03:55FACS performed several critical missions in Vietnam, but none were more important
04:00to the pilots than close air support. Many not only knew the troops they supported,
04:07they actually became close friends with them.
04:14The bonds formed with members of U.S. Special Forces teams were especially intense.
04:20FACS assigned to these elite units lived with and regularly assisted the same small reconnaissance patrols,
04:26day after day.
04:27John Flanagan, fact for Project Delta, a unit that routinely inserted small teams
04:33into extremely hostile areas to spy on enemy activity.
04:37I knew them all by first name. I could recognize them, their voices over the radio.
04:47You know, I know who they were. Although we used, you know, official call signs,
04:50but I, you know, I had a beer with this guy. I knew his wife. I knew his children.
04:53I knew his girlfriend. I knew, you know, everything, where he was from.
04:57So it became a very, very personal type of war.
05:00FACS were terrified of losing the men they were assigned to support.
05:06They had a front row seat above the action and would do everything in their power
05:10to prevent such a haunting scenario.
05:13But their unique role routinely propelled them straight to the heart
05:17of some of the worst situations imaginable.
05:24No one is more aware of this fact than John Flanagan.
05:27On December 2nd, 1966, he was called out to assist a last ditch effort
05:33to recover a Delta team that had accidentally been inserted into Laos.
05:43No fighter support was available.
05:45But when Flanagan finally pinpointed the team's position,
05:48the situation appeared secure enough for one of Delta's helicopters
05:52to attempt a rapid pickup.
05:54The North Vietnamese, they waited, well-disciplined troops,
05:57they waited until the helicopters just got into the hover,
05:59and they opened up.
06:01And it was ambush.
06:03They had sucked the helicopter in an ambush,
06:04and they started transmitting on the radio.
06:06We're taking fire, we're taking fire.
06:07And I could hear the slugs from the AK-47s.
06:08I could hear them hitting the helicopter.
06:09You could hear them going through the metal.
06:10And then you could hear the door gunners with their M60 machine guns firing back,
06:11hammering back.
06:12And I got on the radio and I said, get out of there, get out of there.
06:27Such desperate situations drove Flanagan and many other FACs to risk everything.
06:33They knew they were the lifeline,
06:35the last ray of hope for panic-stricken men on the ground.
06:41But so did the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese.
06:44And when it became clear that the pilots of these strange little planes
06:48were much more than just casual observers,
06:51the slow-flying FACs became a prime target.
06:56Pilots took every precaution they could to survive.
07:01Most routinely radioed ground units with the hope that if they were shot down,
07:05someone would be able to reach them before it was too late.
07:09Others packed a small arsenal of weapons,
07:11just in case they had to shoot their way out.
07:16But these measures ultimately did little to reduce the dismal loss rates
07:20that FAC suffered in Vietnam.
07:26Typically, they went out and were never heard from again.
07:32Or went out and got hit and went down.
07:37And we knew where they went down,
07:39but it was such a hot area, by the time we got there, they were dead.
07:44People who live by the rules usually made it home okay.
07:51It's when you tried to do something extra.
07:55Sometimes because you were trying to help somebody else on the ground,
07:59or were trying to show off,
08:02or were doing something else stupid.
08:04That's when people would get hurt.
08:05The complex saga of forward air controllers in Vietnam had a relatively simple beginning.
08:17In the summer of 1963, a single FAC unit, the 19th Tactical Air Support Squadron,
08:24was formed at Ben Hoa Air Base just outside the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon.
08:28The squadron was part of a broader American effort to advise and assist Vietnam in combating communist guerrillas known as the Viet Cong.
08:36The FACs were equipped with several Cessna O1s,
08:43small, lightweight spotter planes known as bird dogs,
08:47that carried nothing more than a few radios and four target-marking rockets.
08:50Their mission was to train South Vietnamese pilots to perform reconnaissance,
09:03mark ground targets and direct air strikes in support of government forces on the ground.
09:07Initially, the pilots were to remain in country for no more than a year while training was completed.
09:21But American forward air controllers remained in Southeast Asia for much longer,
09:31and the scope and breadth of their mission expanded dramatically.
09:35In the spring of 1965, President Lyndon Johnson began deploying large combat units to Vietnam.
09:48The first Marines landed at Da Nang in March.
09:51By the end of 1966, more than 385,000 men were stationed throughout the country.
09:57As the build-up escalated, American forces began to regularly engage Viet Cong elements in vicious firefights.
10:13To support increased combat involvement, Johnson deployed hundreds of fighter aircraft to South Vietnam throughout 1965 and 66.
10:21Their primary mission was to provide close air support for U.S. patrols that came into contact with guerrilla forces.
10:32President Johnson decided the commitment to escalate the war in 1966.
10:38So the war came from being a Vietnamese war with American support to an American war fought in Vietnam.
10:44So with that, with the conventional forces coming into it, so came the air power, the jet fighter bombers.
10:52So they found out that here you had 450 knot fighter bombers trying to find targets in a close air support environment with friendly troops.
11:01And they said, how are we going to do this?
11:03And this is where the forward air controller really came into his own, because he was the go-between between the ground forces and the fighter bombers.
11:10Three more tactical air support squadrons were activated by the Air Force in the spring of 65 to keep pace with escalating tensions.
11:21Many other facts also began flying for the U.S. Army, Navy and Marine Corps, and for various South Vietnamese and Australian units.
11:32The limited range of the bird dogs forced most of the pilots to operate on their own from hundreds of rough, unfinished air strips scattered throughout the country.
11:43But the basic components of their missions were largely the same.
11:53The number one priority for all facts was responding to emergency calls from troops in contact.
11:58Once overhead, the FAC built a mental picture of the situation below by radioing ground commanders and carefully circling in for a closer look.
12:09At the same time, he began to search for the best form of available fire support.
12:15FACs could control several types of firepower, including helicopter gunships and land and sea-based artillery.
12:24But their primary resource was air power, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps fighter bombers that staged from bases in South Vietnam and Thailand, and from carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin and the South China Sea.
12:39To request an air strike, FACs radioed the nearest direct air support center, or DASC.
12:50DASC controllers could launch a flight of alert fighters that were already armed, had their engines running, and often even had their pilots strapped in.
12:59Or they could divert a flight that was already airborne.
13:01But in especially critical situations, many FACs simply bypassed official command altogether.
13:11You could have bombs on a target in as little as three minutes, five minutes.
13:18I mean, I've had it that close.
13:20I got in real trouble, and I needed it.
13:23And I almost, well, a couple times I did, I stole the fighters.
13:26You know, I knew what their strike frequency was, and I got on it, and I just stole them from another forward air controller.
13:31I mean, he improvised.
13:32I'd say, yeah, my trouble's worse than yours.
13:34We'll sort out the paperwork later.
13:36It was surprisingly easy for fighter-bomber crews to accidentally respond to radio transmissions from one FAC while rendezvousing with another.
13:47A situation that could lead to disaster.
13:50Most FACs devised a variety of methods, such as rocking their wings to visually confirm their identity.
13:573-5, are you going to lift that order?
13:59Thank you very much.
14:00Go straight ahead.
14:01I'll go.
14:02You'll lift that order.
14:03Okay, we got you in touch.
14:10The FAC immediately contacted any fighters that responded to determine the number and type of aircraft available, their ordinance load, and the amount of time each man could remain on station.
14:21At the same time, they tried to remain in contact with tactical air control personnel and to pinpoint the positions of friendly forces below.
14:31So there's the forward air controller with three radios to which we can monitor all three of them at once.
14:38We can only transmit on them one at a time.
14:41So you're trying to fly the airplane, keep track of what's going on, and then flipping the wafer switch to select which radio you were going to transmit on.
14:50And, you know, sometimes you'll forget to switch it and you're talking to the ground guys and then all of a sudden fighters will come up and you'll forget to switch frequency and the ground guys get confused.
15:00And then the real part of it starts the adrenaline pumping is when the ground guys get on there and they start saying, we're hit, you know, can you get us out of here?
15:10And you hear nothing but hand grenades and automatic weapons.
15:13I mean, your radios are just filled with a static of automatic weapons, M60 machine guns, M16 rifles.
15:20And you can always pick out the sound of an AK-47.
15:23You know, when you start hearing the enemy's weapons on your radio, you know you've got problems.
15:32FACTS often asked ground commanders to pop a canister of colored smoke to confirm their location.
15:38But the tactic had to be used cautiously as the smoke also provided better reference for enemy gunners.
15:47To make matters worse, the Viet Cong frequently tried to deceive the FACTS into directing airstrikes against friendly positions.
15:55You never wanted to ask the friendlies to pop a particular kind of smoke because if the enemy can hear that and they listen to our radios, then if you say, hey, give me yellow smoke, well, then the enemy pops yellow smoke, too.
16:08Well, which one is it? So we would ask the friendly forces to pop smoke.
16:12And then once they would pop a smoke, we would say, OK, I have your green smoke.
16:16And they'd say, Roger, we're the green smoke. So now I know where they are.
16:19Once a FACTS had a comprehensive picture of the situation below, he rolled in to mark targets with white phosphorus rockets known as Willie Peets.
16:29This was by far the most hazardous point in a FACTS mission.
16:41Once enemy forces realized that a FACTS had spotted them, they usually turned their guns on the vulnerable pilot to prevent him from spreading the word.
16:49The chance that they would actually find their mark increased dramatically as the pilot dove steadily toward their position and then struggled to climb out of the area.
17:02As soon as a FACTS had laid down some smoke, he began to brief the fighters on how the strike should proceed, painting a detailed image of the target area, the desired strike headings, and the intensity and location of enemy fire.
17:18I'd like the first spot just north of my smoke, about 100 meters, that's just a couple of different lifts.
17:29OK.
17:30You still have my smoke?
17:32I got your smoke still, right?
17:34Well, two-one set up, I'm hot, in Paris.
17:37Two, Roger.
17:38You still have a coffee.
17:39That looks pretty good, yeah.
17:40I'd like you to keep your, uh, passes as steep as possible and be especially a beautiful for helicopters.
17:49The FACTS closely monitored every pass the fighters made, correcting any maneuvers that posed a risk to the friendlies below.
17:56They also had to be extremely familiar with the capabilities of different ordnance types,
18:11a critical factor in determining just how close bombs could be dropped to friendly positions.
18:17When you're working your fighters around friendlies, you keep them under much tighter control.
18:26You watch every time they roll in. In many cases, if they didn't look right, you would tell them to go through dry.
18:32Let's set it up again. Let's do it right this time.
18:37These types of weapons are extremely destructive.
18:40As an example, with a 500-pound bomb on Mark 82, generally you wanted to have your friendlies at least 200 meters away from them
18:47because of the concussive blast of that.
18:50It'll take out your eardrums, definitely, when those bombs go off.
18:54Other types of ordnance that we would use, like napalm, you're going to get a splash effect from that,
18:58and you don't want to hit your friendlies with that.
19:01We had another weapon that we would use called cluster bomb units, or CBUs.
19:05And you would drop a bomb, a big clamshell would open, and you'd have hundreds of little bomblets that would float to the ground and explode over a wide area.
19:14Great for blowing up trucks and guns, but real dangers surround people, okay?
19:27Nothing was more rewarding for forward air controllers than the response they got from troops that had been saved by close air support.
19:34John Flanagan clearly recalls the response he got during one such mission, when an eight-man patrol stumbled upon a much larger Viet Cong force and became pinned down by heavy fire.
19:50Flanagan was overhead and in contact with the frantic patrol leader within minutes.
19:54The guy was obviously very frightened, I mean, because his words ran together, his high-pitched tone of his voice, and you go, oh boy.
20:03So here's a case where you've got to take control of the situation, find out where he is, where the fire is coming from, get the fighter bombers on the target.
20:12And this one was pretty close, we were working about 50 to 100 meters, some friendlies.
20:17And as soon as we put that first can of napalm in there, it just changed.
20:22All of a sudden he comes, yeah, that's great, go get him, right on, more, more, more.
20:30The timely and accurate support of forward air controllers frequently turned the tide of battle in seconds, saving the lives of countless American and allied infantrymen.
20:40Things did not always go as planned, and many close air support missions ultimately ended in tragedy.
20:47But the willingness of FACs to risk it all earned them enormous respect from American forces throughout Southeast Asia.
20:54Additional aircraft were needed to perform vital forward air control missions as the Vietnam War intensified and expanded.
21:11Plans for a faster, more heavily armed plane were initiated in 1964, but the new breed of aircraft wasn't available until 68.
21:20An interim solution was found in the Cessna O2 Skymaster, another off-the-shelf civilian plane that was pressed into military service in 1967.
21:33The speed of the Skymaster's push-pull engine system allowed FACs to rapidly respond to more distant emergencies and to better survive in high-threat environments.
21:43It also carried more marking rockets, a small amount of armor, and a communication and navigation package that enabled distant fighters to quickly determine the FAC's exact position.
21:56Despite the advantages, the Skymasters would never fully replace the rugged old bird dogs, which continued to operate alongside the O2 for most of the war.
22:06Next to supporting troops in contact, the FAC's most important mission was conducting visual reconnaissance.
22:15Hundreds of FACs systematically patrolled specific sectors throughout the countryside each day in an attempt to track down the elusive Viet Cong.
22:24We would get real familiar with that particular area. That was my area. I knew all the waterfalls, all the trees, all the mud puddles, and which way the tracks went and where the hooches were in that particular area.
22:42I got to know it real well where the fire bases were. And if we were just going on reconnaissance, we'd go and fly a pattern over that area and look for any instances of change from the last time we were there.
22:52You know, all of a sudden the laundry starts turning up on the line in somebody's backyard.
22:58And we say, wait a minute, that laundry hasn't been there.
23:00Well, you go down, you take a closer look, one look, all right, you don't go back because then they'll have the guns out waiting for you.
23:06One look and you say, wow, there's a lot of male pajamas hanging on the line.
23:11And you hadn't seen any males in the area. Well, you knew that the Viet Cong unit was transiting the area.
23:17Many FACs actually dropped down to treetop level to troll for enemy fire when something suspicious caught their eye.
23:26During this risky maneuver, the pilot literally tried to lure the Viet Cong into firing on his aircraft so that they would expose their positions.
23:35FACs could immediately request a flight of fighter bombers when a major target was uncovered.
23:43But most of their reconnaissance was combined with other forms of intelligence to establish targets for pre-planned air strikes.
23:54The pre-planned strike would be requested through the Army channels, and it would be from the day before.
24:02And it would go through this intricate network, through the direct air support center, to the tactical air control center in Saigon.
24:08And then all the colonels would sit around and say, oh, we're going to have the big war.
24:13And they'd decide, and they'd start allocating, because the missions, they'd call frag orders, had to go back out to the fighter bases.
24:20And they would assign the fighters, say, okay, tomorrow at 10 o'clock, you're going to go to this place.
24:25And this fighter mission at 11 o'clock goes here, and so on, down the line.
24:29And here's the forward air controller. And so they'd match up with the forward air controller, so the strike would be good.
24:33You know, nice if you've got a nice orderly battle, right?
24:35You say, okay, you guys are, you know, you, Viet Cong, you have to attack at 10 o'clock, right?
24:39Because that's when we have our air power. Yeah, okay.
24:43There was often nothing of value left in the target area by the time a pre-planned strike could be launched.
24:49But frag orders generally required the pilots to carry out the strike, regardless of what they found when they returned to the area.
24:58Dave Albinson clearly remembers the frustration he felt during one such mission,
25:04when he decided to closely inspect the target for a pre-planned strike, well in advance of the fighter bomber's arrival.
25:14I went down and looked, and it was a very precise location of a bend in the river.
25:23And there was nothing there. There was, there was, there was no hooch, there was no path, there was no evidence of any activity whatsoever.
25:36And I called back in, he shared, this is the location, yes, da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
25:41So the fighter showed up and I sent him home. I said, we don't have anything here.
25:45Have you got a second location for us? No. This is it. This is the only location. I sent him home.
25:50Well, I was, you know, when I got home, within two hours, I was in a brace in front of a colonel's desk for second-guessing the frag.
26:00And it was very clear to me that there were consequences for not going by the book.
26:10As the war progressed, many facts concluded that it was going to be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to combat the Viet Cong's guerrilla tactics with air power.
26:23The VC became renowned for their ability to conduct hit-and-run raids and to melt back into the countryside.
26:36Enemy forces were just absolutely tough. Remember, we were fighting on their terrain, in their jungle, in their environment.
26:49The local Viet Cong knew every trail, knew every ambush site, every way station, everything.
26:56So we were, you know, very much at a disadvantage.
26:59Trying to use air power against small groups of men on the ground who can bury themselves in and escape is the wrong tool for the job.
27:15That's all there was to it.
27:17The Viet Cong became extremely adept at evading U.S. air power, but they were equally committed to combating it.
27:27They knew that at close range, a single shot could send the pilot of even the most sophisticated strike aircraft to a fiery death.
27:35Very determined people. We got into some airstrikes and gunfights down near Song Bay.
27:45And we kept dropping bombs on them, and they stood down there with impunity and just kept firing right back at us.
27:50We put 500-pound bombs on them, and they'd line up and open up on the next airplane that came in with their .30 calibers.
27:57The low, slow-flying facts were constantly in danger of being struck by what became known as the Golden BB.
28:07A single lucky shot that could end a pilot's life without warning.
28:14The simple old bird dog could actually withstand a significant amount of battle damage.
28:19But its thin skin afforded absolutely no protection for the pilot.
28:25A basic flak vest was all they really had.
28:28And every pilot quickly learned how best to put it to use.
28:32You know, if you were on the ground in a forward art, you know, when I was controlling, I'd wear the flak vest.
28:39But in the airplane, you didn't wear it. You sat on it.
28:41Because if you were going to get hit, it was going to come up through the floor or anything like that.
28:45There was no armor plate in there or anything in the old ones.
28:47It was just very thin aluminum. There was nothing in the seat.
28:49So we used to put it under the cushion, and we used to sit on our flak vest.
28:52Get the biggest size possible, believe me.
28:56FACTS often operated in pairs to discourage enemy forces from firing on them,
29:01and to facilitate rapid recovery if one was shot down.
29:05Many developed a weaving flight path where neither their heading nor altitude remained stable long enough for enemy gunners to draw an accurate lead.
29:13But the limited capabilities of the bird dogs, and even the more powerful Sky Masters, were no match for the increasingly capable and better armed communist forces that emerged throughout the region.
29:28Hundreds of FACTS were shot down, some repeatedly, and at least 219 were ultimately lost in action.
29:36FAC operations in Southeast Asia took a gigantic leap forward in 1968 with the introduction of the North American OV-10 Bronco.
29:51The Bronco was the first aircraft actually designed with FAC missions in mind.
29:59It had two powerful engines that allowed pilots to fly at much higher speeds and altitudes, and a unique tandem seating arrangement that afforded exceptional visibility.
30:09It was also equipped with cutting-edge instruments that allowed crews to fly at night and in bad weather,
30:16with five powerful radios that enabled them to communicate directly with virtually anyone,
30:21and with up to 28 marking rockets that dramatically increased the amount of time they could remain airborne before having to rearm.
30:28But the most significant improvement was the addition of armor plating and ejection seats, key features that vastly improved the odds that a FAC would be able to survive.
30:43The Bronco's arrival provided a major boost to FAC operations in-country, but its increased capabilities had a far greater impact outside of Vietnam altogether.
30:53In another, even more intense battle that had already been raging for several years, the battle to close the notorious Ho Chi Minh Trail.
31:06The Ho Chi Minh Trail became a critical supply line for communist forces operating in South Vietnam.
31:15The trail was actually a vast network of old footpaths that ran some 1,700 miles from North Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia to the south.
31:28As the war escalated, North Vietnamese troops developed the trail into a complex road network that could handle large convoys of trucks.
31:36The network became much more advanced than anyone had anticipated.
31:41By 1967, communist convoys were delivering 60 tons of food, weapons and ammunition a day to hundreds of small units in the countryside.
31:51In the spring of 1965, the US launched a massive interdiction campaign against the trail in an attempt to halt the flow of men and supplies pouring into South Vietnam.
32:14By early 1966, more than 100 strike sorties were being flown against the trail each day.
32:29Initially, reconnaissance and strike control for the campaign were performed by FACs flying O-1s and O-2s from Air Force squadrons operating in South Vietnam and from a newly created squadron that was stationed at Nakhon Phanam Air Base in Thailand.
32:46But mountainous terrain and increased anti-aircraft fire along the trail began to take a serious toll on FAC operations.
32:59The long-awaited arrival of the more capable Bronco significantly boosted both the effectiveness and morale of FACs who fought in the deadly campaign.
33:09We would go out every day with photographs that we would try to use to find the trucks.
33:16We had sensors that we had placed all over the trail called Igloo White and the sensors would relay information back telling us that a certain sensor string in a certain location would hear five or six trucks passing by and then we would try to find those trucks.
33:31And then a lot of times we would just visually find the trucks just through looking through binoculars, you know, looking at the ground.
33:37And we used to call it busting trucks. We're going out to bust trucks.
33:42The North Vietnamese Army became extremely adept at camouflaging weapons, supply caches and truck depots.
33:49As in South Vietnam, the effectiveness of enemy camouflage forced the FACs to search for key indicators rather than for the targets themselves.
34:00The North Vietnamese were very good, excellent at camouflaging things.
34:07But the thing that they never covered was their tracks.
34:10And we could tell from the air if tracks were new or old just by the way that they degraded the ground or the grass or something.
34:18And I became very adept at being able to follow a series of tracks into an area that was then perfectly camouflaged.
34:25And I would attack that area and blow off the cover and sure enough there would be something of value down there.
34:32FACs were able to ferret out and direct strikes against thousands of extremely lucrative targets.
34:39But such a piecemeal approach appeared to have little impact on the massive flow of men and supplies pouring southward.
34:46As a result, many pilots began to develop new interdiction tactics on the fly in a desperate attempt to shore up the failing campaign.
34:57There was the road itself. We would try to literally break the road.
35:04We would bomb it, crater it and everything so that it was not passable and the enemy would come back in very quickly and repair the road.
35:12And I mean it was not unusual when we would go on an air strike and blow huge holes in the road.
35:19Literally as the dust was clearing, the enemy troops would be out there with shovels filling in the holes again.
35:25There was just no way you could stop them.
35:27To make repairs more difficult, FACs often tried to create choke points in areas that were heavily traveled but that could not be bypassed.
35:40We would take a specific place that was hard to repair and we would just constantly bomb it.
35:50And same thing, they would be back in opening it very quickly.
35:55So we would target their road repair equipment.
35:57We would go after bulldozers, we would go after truck graders, stuff like that that we would see down there.
36:02In time, many of the pilots concluded that the flood of men and supplies was simply unstoppable.
36:17They would float supplies down the rivers.
36:19So we would try to observe the rivers and watch for supplies moving that way.
36:24And then later in the war, they'd even built pipelines down through there to pipe fuel and stuff like that.
36:30And we would try to find the pipelines and bust those.
36:33And it was just a constant, constant ongoing battle.
36:41As the campaign to close the trail expanded and intensified, so too did North Vietnamese efforts to defend it.
36:48More faster firing and larger caliber anti-aircraft weapons began to line major infiltration routes and potential choke points.
36:57Forward air controllers faced the greatest risk of being hit by the withering barrages of fire.
37:02But they still felt a tremendous amount of responsibility for the fighters they controlled.
37:09Before a strike commenced, the FAC made sure the crews knew exactly where the nearest divert base was and what they should do if a crisis developed in the target area.
37:19We would brief the fighters, hey, if you're hit, go here, try to bail out here.
37:26And I would try to show them where that was.
37:28I would say, if you need to bail out immediately, go west of the river or go to the high ground to the north, because they may not have much time.
37:35If an airplane is damaged, it's on fire, they only have seconds to eject.
37:38The mere presence of a forward air controller provided strike crews with a tremendous sense of security.
37:47Every pilot knew that if a man did go down, the FAC would do everything in his power to get him out alive.
37:54In 1971, a modified version of the Bronco promised to increase both the safety and potency of FAC missions.
38:12Fifteen aircraft were modified to carry an internally mounted night sensor, a precision navigation device known as Loran, and a laser target designator.
38:21The system, known as Pave Nail, completely revolutionized FAC operations.
38:28For years, the North Vietnamese had largely operated on the Ho Chi Minh Trail at night, when the cover of darkness allowed massive convoys to travel with almost complete impunity.
38:41The Pave Nail system allowed crews not only to see moving targets at night, but to actually pinpoint them for destruction,
38:49with a new generation of laser-guided munitions.
38:54This was the beginning, really, of a revolution in aerial warfare, if you will, because we began to use precision-guided weapons.
39:02And we found, though, that through the use of the laser-guided bombs, we could literally tuck bombs into caves,
39:08because what we would do is we would laze the target with our laser guidance, say about 50 meters short of the target,
39:15and the bomb would fall and guide on that position, and we knew about how long it would take for the bomb to fall from the airplane down to the ground.
39:22So just a few seconds before impact, we would then move the crosshairs on the laser system up to the mouth of the cave, or just above it.
39:30And the bomb, of course, would try to follow the guidance, and it would literally tuck and go into the mouth of the cave.
39:37The addition of the OV-10 and the paved nail system represented the peak of FAC capabilities in Southeast Asia.
39:56But a small group of elite combat pilots continued to fly the simple old bird dogs in a top-secret campaign throughout most of the war.
40:05They operated under the call sign RAVEN.
40:09Their mission was to support indigenous forces in a massive CIA-backed campaign to prevent the North Vietnamese Army from invading the Kingdom of Laos.
40:19The presence of American military personnel in what was known as the Other Theater was officially denied by three separate White House and Pentagon administrations.
40:30It was a clandestine program at the time because we were still trying to observe the, quote, neutrality of Laos as dictated under the Geneva Accords in 1962.
40:41So when we flew, we flew in civilian clothes, if you will, blue jeans and this type of stuff.
40:46And we were supposed to maintain some kind of a coverage that we were, in fact, up there working for the forestry agency or something like that.
40:52In fact, though, we were assigned to the embassy in Vintan, and we worked directly with the various commanders throughout Laos.
41:02Only the most accomplished and daring FACs were invited to take part in the RAVENs' covert campaign.
41:10The pilots largely operated on their own, conducting every type of FAC mission imaginable, from dozens of extremely rough, remote airstrips located throughout Laos.
41:23Up there, we could end up doing anything literally on a moment's notice.
41:27One mission, we would be working troops in contact, post their support with them.
41:32Another mission, we'd be out long range, we'd be busting trucks, doing regular interdiction, or going up and supporting an outpost that had been surrounded by bad guys.
41:41Occasionally, we'd be up talking to long range ground teams that were out watching the trails, doing stuff like that.
41:47So, you never knew what you were going to be doing day to day.
41:51And some days, we'd just be out looking for targets. There's not much going on.
41:54And in other days, we'd be in the thick of a huge battle.
41:59American airmen had to abide by increasingly complex and, at times, incomprehensible rules of engagement as the war in Southeast Asia progressed.
42:09The Ravens also were supposed to abide by specific rules governing air combat in Laos.
42:16But in reality, they operated with almost complete autonomy.
42:21When I was up as a Raven, we were the rules of engagement.
42:26I remember one day in particular, there was a new guy up working northeast of me,
42:31and he tried to put in an airstrike, and he obviously did not know what he was doing or where he was,
42:37and was not following the proper procedures.
42:39So, I just came up on the radio and I said, this is Raven 2-5. This is my sandbox.
42:43You will not drop. Acknowledge. And they didn't drop.
42:46Because it wasn't clear where they were, what they were bombing, or what they were doing.
42:50And so, there was always that risk of killing friendlies or, you know, or in some cases,
42:56just indigenous people that were friendly to us that we just wanted to try to leave alone.
43:01Few statistics were kept on the Raven's clandestine operations.
43:06But it is clear that they suffered one of the highest loss rates of the entire conflict.
43:11Some have speculated that nearly half of the pilots never made it home.
43:18The close bond the pilots formed with Laotian ground forces contributed to the problem.
43:24The Ravens lived and worked closely with these men, and were willing to take enormous risks to come to their aid.
43:30I knew these people. I knew who they were. And some of them, after Laos fell to the Communists, made it to the United States.
43:41And, you know, we formed some friendships based on all of that.
43:44But it became very personal sometimes, working with these guys.
43:47And a lot of times, if the weather was bad, and the fighters couldn't get in to work with us, I'd take off.
43:52And instead of carrying smoke rockets on my O-1, I'd carry high-explosive rounds.
43:57I'd take eight high-explosive rounds, and I would go out, and I would be my own fighter aircraft.
44:01Close air support remained the most important mission for every FAC who served in Southeast Asia,
44:09whether he took part in the covert war in Laos, flew missions against the trail, or worked in South Vietnam itself.
44:19And at no time were these missions more personal, more rewarding, and potentially more heartbreaking,
44:25than when the FAC had established close ties with the very men he was trying to help.
44:31No one is more aware of this FAC than John Flanagan.
44:34He lived with and regularly supported the same small reconnaissance patrols from Project Delta, day after day.
44:41And he will never be able to forget the terrible chain of events that took shape on December 2, 1966.
44:49Two days earlier, a six-man team from the elite special forces unit had been mistakenly inserted into Laos.
44:56The patrol had already come into contact with North Vietnamese regulars.
45:00Three of the men were wounded, one seriously.
45:08Flanagan was called out to help locate the men, and to coordinate a last-ditch recovery effort.
45:13The weather was deteriorating, and no fighter support was available.
45:20To make matters worse, the helicopters were running dangerously low on fuel.
45:25A critical, but fateful decision had to be made.
45:31I had to expedite things, and I probably made a tactical mistake.
45:34And I asked the team to throw a smoke, because we needed to get the helicopters in there fast.
45:39And they dropped the smoke, and I had gone over the team before that.
45:44No ground fire. Absolutely no ground fire.
45:46I looked right down at them. I was at about 50 feet.
45:48I saw their face, they kind of waved, and nobody shot at me.
45:51Absolutely no one.
45:53I looked around, and I said, oh, okay.
45:55I don't see anybody.
45:56And so then they brought the rescue pickup helicopter in.
46:00And the North Vietnamese, they waited, well-disciplined troops.
46:03They waited until the helicopters just got into the hover, and they opened up.
46:07And it was an ambush.
46:09They had sucked the helicopter in an ambush, and they started transmitting on the radio.
46:13We're taking fire, we're taking fire.
46:15And I could hear the slugs from the AK-47s.
46:17I could hear them hitting the airplane.
46:19The helicopter, you could hear them going through the metal.
46:21And then you could hear the door gunners with their M60 machine guns firing back, hammering back.
46:26And I got on the radio, and I said, get out of there, get out of there.
46:29And the helicopter started to lift off, climbed them at 300 feet, and then just nosed over and plunged into the jungle on a big fireball.
46:38There was four Americans, the helicopter crew, plus the special forces medic that was on board that just perished right there.
46:45And in the meantime, the team on the ground, they said, in fact, please help us, we're hurt bad.
46:51So I went in there, making like I was going to have an airstrike.
46:55Firing rockets, throwing stuff out the window to try and distract the North Vietnamese to think that there was an airstrike coming, because they'd run and hide.
47:04I started firing the rockets in there, and I couldn't even get my rockets to go off, because I was so close that the rockets didn't go far enough to arm.
47:11So I had nothing but a high-speed spear.
47:14So I withdrew to try and see, you know, what could I do?
47:17I called Hillsboro, which was the Air Force Command, the C-130 that was over the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
47:24They were up around 15,000, 18,000 feet.
47:26And I said, Hillsboro, I need some A1s, fast.
47:29I got to get, I got people that are dying, and they were going to lose them.
47:33And they said, sorry, we don't have anything.
47:36There's nothing flying.
47:37We just can't get them in.
47:40And so that's the tragedy.
47:42I mean, I knew it was over then.
47:44The tears just rolled out of my face.
47:45I said, God, I don't know.
47:51So I flew back over to where the team had been.
47:54I looked down, and nobody shot at us.
47:57I was surprised.
47:59But there was no equipment there.
48:01There was just trampled grass, no bodies, nothing.
48:08Forward air controllers played a critical role in the war in Southeast Asia from the beginning until the bitter end.
48:15In fact, much of the massive, multifaceted American campaign would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible, without their most unusual and daring form of support.
48:26The fact that two of the 12 Air Force Medal of Honor recipients in Vietnam were FACTS attests to the skill and courage needed to perform their incredible missions.
48:39The FACTS were a step in the appropriate direction in trying to bring air power to bear where it could be effective.
48:48But still, in a jungle environment where it's easy to mask your moves and easy to hide, it's very difficult, even with a slow-moving aircraft like an O-1 or an O-2 or an OV-10, to accurately identify, pinpoint, and bring air power to bear on a ground target.
49:10The FACTS have never enjoyed the same recognition and glamour as the pilots of fast and powerful fighter bombers.
49:23But their missions are dignified by the tremendous amount of risk that they faced each day, and by the admiration of thousands of pilots and infantrymen who may never have made it home alive without their support.
49:37The FACTS have never made it home.