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00:00American fighter pilots found it extremely difficult to distinguish between friend and
00:11foe in the jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam. To cut through the fog of war, hundreds of
00:20facts scoured the countryside in lightweight, unarmed aircraft, pinpointing enemy positions
00:25with target marking rockets and directing follow-on airstrikes. The facts never attracted
00:31as much attention as the pilots of fast and powerful fighter bombers, but much of the massive
00:37air war in Southeast Asia would have been impossible without their daring support.
00:55Few air combat missions could be as dangerous, demanding and potentially heartbreaking as the
01:16missions of forward air controllers in Vietnam. The ability of fighter bomber crews to independently
01:23provide close air support proved to be extremely difficult. Firefights often broke out at close
01:31range between small American patrols that became intermingled with the elusive Viet Cong beneath
01:37dense triple canopy jungle. The facts mission was to quickly make sense of the situation from above
01:45and to call in airstrikes in support of the men below. A job he had to do with nothing more than a few
01:51radios, a few target marking rockets, and a lot of guts.
02:01I can only describe it as sheer chaos. And usually the forward air controller got called when everything
02:08was going steadily downhill. And the army would try and control what they're doing with their command
02:13and control helicopters. And then when they get into it and they just find out, oh, there's too much in
02:18here. We needed heavier firepower. They can't handle it with the gunships. They can't handle it with
02:21artillery or they can't find the friendlies. That was the biggest problem was under the jungles. Nobody
02:27knew where anybody was. Remember, we didn't have satellites and GPS, global positioning systems or
02:35anything like that. You know, this was technology. This was reading a map and locating somebody on the map.
02:39And the maps were old. A lot of the maps we used were from the French.
02:46The pressure was enormous. Time was of the essence. But every decision a FAC made could have meant the
02:52difference between life and death for men on the ground. The experience of the fighter bomber crews,
03:00the capabilities of their aircraft and ordnance, and the exact positions of friendlies were just a few of the
03:06factors that had to be considered before a strike could be called in. To make matters worse, FACs often
03:14had to immediately weigh the risk of over-responding to frantic calls for help against the risk of losing
03:21men because of their own inaction. Sometimes they wouldn't tell you how close it was. They would just
03:29say bomb the target because they were in such dire straits that they needed air support and they needed it now.
03:34So you would ask them, you know, how close is this to you? They would say, don't worry about it.
03:39Just don't worry about it. Just put the bombs down.
03:45FACs performed several critical missions in Vietnam, but none were more important to the pilots
03:51than close air support. Many not only knew the troops they supported, they actually became close friends with them.
03:59The bonds formed with members of US Special Forces teams were especially intense. FACs assigned to
04:11these elite units lived with and regularly assisted the same small reconnaissance patrols day after day.
04:17John Flanagan, fact for Project Delta, a unit that routinely inserted small teams into extremely hostile areas to spy on enemy activity.
04:30I knew them all by first name. I could recognize them. Their voices over the radio. You know,
04:37I know who they were. Although we used, you know, official call signs, but I, you know, I had a beer with
04:42this guy. I knew his wife. I knew his children. I knew his girlfriend. I knew, you know, everything,
04:46where he was from. So it became a very, very personal, uh, type of war.
04:50FACs were terrified of losing the men they were assigned to support. They had a front row seat above
04:58the action and would do everything in their power to prevent such a haunting scenario.
05:04But their unique role routinely propelled them straight to the heart of some of the worst situations imaginable.
05:10No one is more aware of this fact than John Flanagan. On December 2nd, 1966, he was called out to assist a
05:22last ditch effort to recover a Delta team that had accidentally been inserted into Laos.
05:33No fighter support was available. But when Flanagan finally pinpointed the team's position,
05:39the situation appeared secure enough for one of Delta's helicopters to attempt a rapid pickup.
05:48The North Vietnamese, they waited well-disciplined troops. They waited until the helicopter just
05:53got into the hover and they opened up. And it was an ambush. They'd sucked the helicopter in an ambush
05:59and they started transmitting on the radio. We're taking fire. We're taking fire. And I could hear the
06:03slugs from the AK-47s. I could hear them hitting the helicopter. You could hear them going through the
06:07metal. And then you hear the door gunners with their M60 machine guns firing back, hammering back.
06:12And I got on the radio. I said, get out of there. Get out of there.
06:17Such desperate situations drove Flanagan and many other facts to risk everything.
06:23They knew they were the lifeline, the last ray of hope for panic-stricken men on the ground.
06:28But so did the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. And when it became clear that the pilots of these
06:36strange little planes were much more than just casual observers, the slow-flying facts became a prime
06:43target. Pilots took every precaution they could to survive. Most routinely radioed ground units with
06:53the hope that if they were shot down, someone would be able to reach them before it was too late.
06:59Others packed a small arsenal of weapons just in case they had to shoot their way out.
07:06But these measures ultimately did little to reduce the dismal loss rates that facts suffered in Vietnam.
07:13Typically, people went out and were never heard from again. Or went out and got hit and went down.
07:27And we knew where they went down. But it was such a hot area. By the time we got there, they were dead.
07:33People who lived by the rules usually made it home okay. At least when you tried to do something extra.
07:45Sometimes because you were trying to help somebody else on the ground. Or were trying to show off.
07:52Or were doing something else stupid. That's when people would get hurt.
07:55The complex saga of forward air controllers in Vietnam had a relatively simple beginning.
08:07In the summer of 1963, a single FAC unit, the 19th Tactical Air Support Squadron,
08:14was formed at Ben Hoa Air Base just outside the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon.
08:19The squadron was part of a broader American effort to advise and assist Vietnam
08:24in combating communist guerrillas known as the Viet Cong.
08:29The FACs were equipped with several Cessna O-1s, small lightweight spotter planes known as bird dogs,
08:36that carried nothing more than a few radios and four target marking rockets.
08:48Their mission was to train South Vietnamese pilots to perform reconnaissance,
08:52mark ground targets, and direct air strikes in support of government forces on the ground.
09:05Initially, the pilots were to remain in country for no more than a year while training was completed.
09:11But American forward air controllers remained in Southeast Asia for much longer,
09:21and the scope and breadth of their mission expanded dramatically.
09:24In the spring of 1965, President Lyndon Johnson began deploying large combat units to Vietnam.
09:38The first Marines landed at Da Nang in March.
09:41By the end of 1966, more than 385,000 men were stationed throughout the country.
09:47As the buildup escalated, American forces began to regularly engage Viet Cong elements in vicious firefights.
10:03To support increased combat involvement, Johnson deployed hundreds of fighter aircraft to South Vietnam
10:09throughout 1965 and 66.
10:12Their primary mission was to provide close air support for U.S. patrols that came into contact with guerrilla forces.
10:22President Johnson decided the commitment to escalate the war in 1966.
10:28So the war came from being a Vietnamese war with American support to an American war fought in Vietnam.
10:34So with that, with the conventional forces coming into it, so came the air power, the jet fighter bombers.
10:42So they found out that here you had 450 knot fighter bombers trying to find targets in a close air support
10:48environment with friendly troops and said, how are we going to do this?
10:52And this is where the forward air controller really came into his own,
10:55because he was the go-between between the ground forces and the fighter bombers.
11:00Three more tactical air support squadrons were activated by the Air Force in the spring of 65
11:09to keep pace with escalating tensions.
11:15Many other facts also began flying for the U.S. Army, Navy and Marine Corps,
11:19and for various South Vietnamese and Australian units.
11:23The limited range of the bird dogs forced most of the pilots to operate on their own,
11:28from hundreds of rough, unfinished airstrips scattered throughout the country.
11:33But the basic components of their missions were largely the same.
11:42The number one priority for all FACs was responding to emergency calls from troops in contact.
11:48Once overhead, the FAC built a mental picture of the situation below by radioing ground commanders
11:57and carefully circling in for a closer look.
12:00At the same time, he began to search for the best form of available fire support.
12:08FACs could control several types of firepower, including helicopter gunships and land and sea-based artillery.
12:14But their primary resource was air power — Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps fighter bombers
12:22that staged from bases in South Vietnam and Thailand, and from carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin and the South China Sea.
12:34To request an air strike, FACs radioed the nearest Direct Air Support Center, or DASC.
12:39DASC controllers could launch a flight of alert fighters that were already armed,
12:45had their engines running, and often even had their pilots strapped in.
12:49Or they could divert a flight that was already airborne.
12:55But in especially critical situations, many FACs simply bypassed official command altogether.
13:01You could have bombs on the target in as little as three minutes, five minutes.
13:09I mean, I've had it that close. I got in real trouble, and I needed it.
13:13And I almost — well, a couple times I did, I stole the fighters.
13:16You know, I knew what their strike frequency was, and I got on it, and I just stole them from another
13:20forward air controller. I mean, you improvise. I said, yeah, my trouble's worse than yours.
13:24We'll sort out the paperwork later.
13:28It was surprisingly easy for fighter-bomber crews to accidentally respond to radio transmissions
13:34from one FAC while rendezvousing with another, a situation that could lead to disaster.
13:40Most FACs devised a variety of methods, such as rocking their wings to visually confirm their identity.
13:483-5, are you going to left-hand on it?
13:49Uh, negative. I just go straight ahead. I'll go to a left-hand over now.
13:54Okay, we got you inside.
14:00The FAC immediately contacted any fighters that responded to determine the number and type of
14:05aircraft available, their ordnance load, and the amount of time each man could remain on station.
14:13At the same time, they tried to remain in contact with tactical air control personnel
14:18and to pinpoint the positions of friendly forces below.
14:21So there's the forward air controller with three radios to which we can monitor all three of them at
14:28once. We can only transmit on them one at a time. So you're trying to fly the airplane, keep track of
14:34what's going on, and then flipping the wafer switch to select which radio you were going to transmit on.
14:40And you know, sometimes you'll forget to switch it, and you're talking to the ground guys, and then all of a
14:44sudden, uh, fighters will come up, and you'll forget to switch frequency, and the ground guys get
14:50confused. And then, and then, uh, the real part of it starts the adrenaline pumping is when the ground
14:56guys get on there, and they start saying, uh, we're hit, you know, can you get us out of here? And you hear
15:01nothing but hand grenades and automatic weapons. I mean, your radios are just filled with the static, uh, of
15:06automatic weapons, uh, M60 machine guns, uh, M16 rifles, and you can always pick out the sound of an AK-47.
15:13You know, when you start hearing the enemy's weapons on your radio, you know you've got problems.
15:22FACTS often asked ground commanders to pop a canister of colored smoke to confirm their location.
15:28But the tactic had to be used cautiously, as the smoke also provided better reference for enemy gunners.
15:36To make matters worse, the Viet Cong frequently tried to deceive the facts into directing
15:42airstrikes against friendly positions.
15:47You never wanted to ask the friendlies to pop a particular kind of smoke, because if the enemy
15:52can hear that, and they listen to our radios, then if you say, hey, give me yellow smoke, well,
15:56then the enemy pops yellow smoke, too. Well, which one is it? So we would ask the friendly forces to pop
16:01smoke, and then once they would pop a smoke, we would say, okay, I have your green smoke,
16:06and they'd say, Roger, where are the green smoke? So now I know where they are.
16:10Once a FACTS had a comprehensive picture of the situation below,
16:14he rolled in to mark targets with white phosphorus rockets known as Willie Peets.
16:20Okay, keep me aside. I'll go up here. I'll mark the target if you're ready.
16:27This was by far the most hazardous point in a FACTS mission.
16:31Once enemy forces realized that a FACTS had spotted them, they usually turned their guns
16:36on the vulnerable pilot to prevent him from spreading the word. The chance that they would
16:41actually find their mark increased dramatically as the pilot dove steadily toward their position,
16:46and then struggled to climb out of the area. As soon as a FACTS had laid down some smoke,
16:55he began to brief the fighters on how the strike should proceed, painting a detailed image of the
17:00target area, the desired strike headings, and the intensity and location of enemy fire.
17:05I'd like the first spot just north of my smoke, about 100 meters in, so just a couple of different widths.
17:19Okay. You still have my smoke? I got your smoke still, right?
17:24One of them, two-one set up, I'm hot. In pairs. Two running.
17:31Ah, looks pretty good. I'd like you to keep your pass as steep as possible,
17:37and be especially vigilant for helicopters.
17:39The FACC 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,
18:01a critical factor in determining just how close bombs could be dropped to friendly positions.
18:09When you're working your fighters around friendlies, you keep them under much tighter control.
18:16You watch every time they roll in.
18:18In many cases, if they didn't look right, you would tell them to go through dry.
18:22And let's set it up again. Let's do it right this time.
18:27These types of weapons are extremely destructive.
18:30And as an example, with a 500-pound bomb on Mark 82, generally you wanted to have your friendlies at least 200 meters away from them
18:37because of the concussive blast of that.
18:40I mean, it'll take out your eardrums, definitely, when those bombs go off.
18:44Other types of ordnance that we would use, like napalm, you're going to get a splash effect from that,
18:48and you don't want to hit your friendlies with that.
18:50We had another weapon that we would use called cluster bomb units, or CBUs.
18:55And you would drop a bomb, a big clamshell would open, and you'd have hundreds of little bomblets that would float to the ground
19:01and explode over a wide area. Great for blowing up trucks and guns, but real danger surround people, okay?
19:17Nothing was more rewarding for forward air controllers than the response they got from troops that had been saved by close air support.
19:24John 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.
19:40Flanagan was overhead and in contact with the frantic patrol leader within minutes.
19:44The guy was obviously very frightened, I mean, because his words ran together, his high-pitched tone of his voice, and you go, oh boy.
19:53So here's a case where you've got to take control of the situation and find out where he is, where the fire is coming from,
19:59get the fighter bombers on the target, and this one was pretty close.
20:03We were working about 50 to 100 meters, some friendlies.
20:06And as soon as we put that first can of napalm in there, it just changed.
20:11All of a sudden he comes, yeah, that's great, go get him, right on, more, more, more.
20:20The timely and accurate support of forward air controllers frequently turned the tide of battle in seconds,
20:26saving the lives of countless American and allied infantrymen.
20:30Things did not always go as planned, and many close air support missions ultimately ended in tragedy.
20:36But the willingness of facts to risk it all earned them enormous respect from American forces throughout Southeast Asia.
20:52Additional aircraft were needed to perform vital forward air control missions as the Vietnam War intensified and expanded.
20:58Plans for a faster, more heavily armed plane were initiated in 1964, but the new breed of aircraft wasn't available until 68.
21:11An interim solution was found in the Cessna O2 SkyMaster, another off-the-shelf civilian plane that was pressed into military service in 1967.
21:20The speed of the SkyMaster's push-pull engine system allowed facts to rapidly respond to more distant emergencies and to better survive in high-threat environments.
21:33It also carried more marking rockets, a small amount of armor, and a communication and navigation package that enabled distant fighters to quickly determine the facts' exact position.
21:44Despite 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.
21:58Next to supporting troops in contact, the FAC's most important mission was conducting visual reconnaissance.
22:04Hundreds of FAC's systematically patrol specific sectors throughout the countryside each day in an attempt to track down the elusive Viet Cong.
22:18We 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.
22:31I got to know it real well where the fire bases were.
22:34And 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.
22:42You know, all of a sudden the laundry starts turning up on the line in somebody's backyard.
22:47And we say, well, wait a minute, that laundry hasn't been there.
22:50Oh, and you go down, you take a closer look. One look, all right?
22:53You don't go back because then they'll have the guns out waiting for you.
22:56One look and you say, wow, there's a lot of male pajamas hanging on the line.
23:01And you hadn't seen any males in the area.
23:03Well, you knew that a Viet Cong unit was transiting the area.
23:07Many FACs actually dropped down to treetop level to troll for enemy fire when something suspicious caught their eye.
23:16During this risky maneuver, the pilot literally tried to lure the Viet Cong into firing on his aircraft so that they would expose their positions.
23:26FACs could immediately request a flight of fighter bombers when a major target was uncovered.
23:33But most of their reconnaissance was combined with other forms of intelligence to establish targets for pre-planned airstrikes.
23:40The pre-planned strike would be requested through the Army channels, and it would be from the day before.
23:52And it would go through this intricate network, through the direct air support center to the tactical air control center in Saigon.
23:58And then all the colonels would sit around, and they'd go, oh, we're going to have the big war.
24:02And 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.
24:09And they would assign the fighters, say, OK, tomorrow at 10 o'clock, you're going to go to this place.
24:14And this fighter mission at 11 o'clock goes here and so on down the line.
24:18And here's the forward air controller.
24:20And so they'd match up with the forward air controller, so the strike would be good.
24:23You know, nice to make a nice orderly battle, right?
24:25You say, OK, you guys are, you know, you, Viet Cong, you have to attack at 10 o'clock, right?
24:29Because that's when we have our air power.
24:31Yeah, OK.
24:32There was often nothing of value left in the target area by the time a pre-planned strike could be launched.
24:39But frag orders generally required the pilots to carry out the strike, regardless of what they found when they returned to the area.
24:49Dave Albenson clearly remembers the frustration he felt during one such mission,
24:54when he decided to closely inspect the target for a pre-planned strike well in advance of the fighter bomber's arrival.
25:01I went down and looked, and it was a very precise location of a bend in the river.
25:13And there was nothing there.
25:15There was, there was, there was no hooch.
25:19There was no path.
25:21There was no evidence of any activity whatsoever.
25:25And I called back in.
25:27Are you sure this is the location?
25:28Yes.
25:29So the fighter showed up and I sent him home.
25:33I said, we don't have anything here.
25:35Have you got a second location for us?
25:37No.
25:38This is it.
25:39This is the only location.
25:40I sent him home.
25:41Well, 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.
25:50And, uh, it was very clear to me that, uh, there were consequences for not going by the book.
26:00As 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.
26:13The VC became renowned for their ability to conduct hit-and-run raids and to melt back into the countryside.
26:27The enemy forces were just absolutely tough.
26:32Remember, we were fighting on their terrain, in their jungle, uh, their environment.
26:38The local Viet Cong knew every trail, knew every ambush site, every way station, uh, everything.
26:45So we were, you know, very much at a disadvantage.
26:48Trying to use air power against small groups of men on the ground who can bury themselves in and escape, uh, is the wrong tool for the job.
27:04That's all there was to it.
27:06The Viet Cong became extremely adept at evading U.S. air power.
27:13But they were equally committed to combating it.
27:16They knew that at close range, a single shot could send the pilot of even the most sophisticated strike aircraft to a fiery death.
27:28Very determined people.
27:30We got into some, uh, air strikes and gunfights down in, uh, near Song Bay.
27:35And we kept dropping bombs on them, and they stood down there with impunity and just kept firing right back at us.
27:40We 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.
27:46The low, slow-flying facts were constantly in danger of being struck by what became known as the Golden BB.
27:56A single lucky shot that could end a pilot's life without warning.
28:00The simple old bird dog could actually withstand a significant amount of battle damage.
28:07But its thin skin afforded absolutely no protection for the pilot.
28:12A basic flak vest was all they really had, and every pilot quickly learned how best to put it to use.
28:21So, you know, if you were on the ground in a forward art, you know, when I was controlling, I'd wear the flak vest.
28:28But in the airplane, you didn't wear it. You sat on it.
28:31Because if you were going to get hit, it was going to come up through the floor or anything like that.
28:35There was no armor plate in there or anything in the old ones.
28:37It was just very thin aluminum. There was nothing in the seat.
28:39So we used to put it under the cushion, and we used to sit on our flak vest.
28:42Get the biggest size possible, believe me.
28:44FACTS often operated in pairs to discourage enemy forces from firing on them, and to facilitate rapid recovery if one was shot down.
28:55Many developed a weaving flight path, where neither their heading nor altitude remained stable long enough for enemy gunners to draw an accurate lead.
29:05But the limited capabilities of the bird dogs, and even the more powerful Skymasters, were no match for the increasingly capable and better armed communist forces that emerged throughout the region.
29:18Hundreds of FACTS were shot down, some repeatedly, and at least 219 were ultimately lost in action.
29:26FACTS operations in Southeast Asia took a gigantic leap forward in 1968 with the introduction of the North American OV-10 Bronco.
29:44The Bronco was the first aircraft actually designed with FACTS missions in mind.
29:49It 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.
30:00It was also equipped with cutting-edge instruments that allowed crews to fly at night and in bad weather,
30:06with five powerful radios that enabled them to communicate directly with virtually anyone,
30:11and with up to 28 marking rockets that dramatically increased the amount of time they could remain airborne before having to rearm.
30:20But the most significant improvement was the addition of armor plating and ejection seats,
30:25key features that vastly improved the odds that a FACTS would be able to survive.
30:32The Bronco's arrival provided a major boost to FAC operations in country,
30:37but its increased capabilities had a far greater impact outside of Vietnam altogether,
30:42in another, even more intense battle that had already been raging for several years,
30:47the battle to close the notorious Ho Chi Minh Trail.
30:51The Ho Chi Minh Trail became a critical supply line for communist forces operating in South Vietnam.
31:04The 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.
31:17As the war escalated, North Vietnamese troops developed the trail into a complex road network that could handle large convoys of trucks.
31:26The network became much more advanced than anyone had anticipated.
31:30By 1967, communist convoys were delivering 60 tons of food, weapons and ammunition a day to hundreds of small units in the countryside.
31:47In the spring of 1965, the U.S. launched a massive interdiction campaign against the trail,
31:59in an attempt to halt the flow of men and supplies pouring into South Vietnam.
32:04By early 1966, more than 100 strike sorties were being flown against the trail each day.
32:10Initially, reconnaissance and strike control for the campaign were performed by fax-flying O-1s and O-2s from Air Force squadrons operating in South Vietnam,
32:30and from a newly created squadron that was stationed at Nakhon Phanam Air Base in Thailand.
32:40But mountainous terrain and increased anti-aircraft fire along the trail began to take a serious toll on FAC operations.
32:49The long-awaited arrival of the more capable Bronco significantly boosted both the effectiveness and morale of FACs who fought in the deadly campaign.
33:00We would go out every day with photographs that we would try to use to find the trucks.
33:06We had sensors that we had placed all over the trail called Igloo White,
33:10and 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,
33:19and then we would try to find those trucks.
33:21And then a lot of times we would just visually find the trucks just through looking through binoculars, you know, looking at the ground.
33:27And we used to call it busting trucks. We're going out to bust trucks.
33:32The North Vietnamese Army became extremely adept at camouflaging weapons, supply caches, and truck depots.
33:39As in South Vietnam, the effectiveness of enemy camouflage forced the FACs to search for key indicators rather than for the targets themselves.
33:52The North Vietnamese were very good, excellent at camouflaging things, but the thing that they never covered was their tracks.
34:01And 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.
34:08And I became very adept at being able to follow a series of tracks into an area that was then perfectly camouflaged,
34:15and I would attack that area and blow off the cover, and sure enough, there would be something of value down there.
34:21FACs were able to ferret out and direct strikes against thousands of extremely lucrative targets.
34:28But such a piecemeal approach appeared to have little impact on the massive flow of men and supplies pouring southward.
34:35As a result, many pilots began to develop new interdiction tactics on the fly in a desperate attempt to shore up the failing campaign.
34:50There was the road itself.
34:52We would try to literally break the road.
34:54We 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.
35:02I mean, it was not unusual when we would go in on an airstrike and blow huge holes in the road.
35:08Literally, as the dust was clearing, the enemy troops would be out there with shovels filling in the holes again.
35:14There was just no way you could stop them.
35:20To make repairs more difficult, FACs often tried to create choke points in areas that were heavily traveled but that could not be bypassed.
35:35We would take a specific place that was hard to repair, and we would just constantly bomb it.
35:40And the same thing, they would be back in opening it very quickly.
35:45So we would target their road repair equipment.
35:47We would go after bulldozers.
35:48We would go after truck raiders, stuff like that that we would see down there.
35:53In time, many of the pilots concluded that the flood of men and supplies was simply unstoppable.
36:07They would float supplies down the rivers.
36:09So we would try to observe the rivers and watch for supplies moving that way.
36:14And then later in the war, they'd even built pipelines down through there to pipe fuel and stuff like that.
36:20And we would try to find the pipelines and bust those.
36:22And it was just a constant, constant ongoing battle.
36:26As the campaign to close the trail expanded and intensified, so too did North Vietnamese efforts to defend it.
36:38More faster firing and larger caliber anti-aircraft weapons began to line major infiltration routes and potential choke points.
36:46Forward air controllers faced the greatest risk of being hit by the withering barrages of fire, but they still felt a tremendous amount of responsibility for the fighters they controlled.
36:58Before 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.
37:08We would brief the fighters, hey, if you're hit, go here, try to bail out here.
37:16And I would try to show them where that was.
37:18I 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.
37:24If an airplane is damaged, it's on fire, they only have seconds to eject.
37:28The mere presence of a forward air controller provided strike crews with a tremendous sense of security.
37:37Every pilot knew that if a man did go down, the FAC would do everything in his power to get him out alive.
37:52In 1971, a modified version of the Bronco promised to increase both the safety and potency of FAC missions.
38:01Fifteen aircraft were modified to carry an internally mounted night sensor, a precision navigation device known as LORAN, and a laser target designator.
38:11The system, known as Pave Nail, completely revolutionized FAC operations.
38:19For 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.
38:31The Pave Nail system allowed crews not only to see moving targets at night, but to actually pinpoint them for destruction with a new generation of laser guided munitions.
38:44This was the beginning, really, of a revolution in aerial warfare, if you will, because we began to use precision guided weapons.
38:53And we found, though, that through the use of the laser guided bombs, we could literally tuck bombs into caves.
38:58Because what we would do is we would laze the target with our laser guidance, say about 50 meters short of the target, and the bomb would fall and guide on that position.
39:07And we knew about how long it would take for the bomb to fall from the airplane down to the ground.
39:12So 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.
39:20And the bomb, of course, would try to follow the guidance and it would literally tuck and go into the mouth of the cave.
39:27The addition of the OV-10 and the Pave Nail system represented the peak of FAC capabilities in Southeast Asia.
39:45But 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.
39:54They operated under the call sign Raven.
39:58Their mission was to support indigenous forces in a massive CIA-backed campaign to prevent the North Vietnamese Army from invading the Kingdom of Laos.
40:08The presence of American military personnel in what was known as the Other Theater was officially denied by three separate White House and Pentagon administrations.
40:20It 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.
40:30So when we flew, we flew in civilian clothes, if you will, blue jeans and this type of stuff.
40:36And 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.
40:42In fact, though, we were assigned to the embassy in Vientiane and we worked directly with the various commanders throughout Laos.
40:51Only the most accomplished and daring FACs were invited to take part in the Raven's covert campaign.
40:58The pilots largely operated on their own, conducting every type of FAC mission imaginable from dozens of extremely rough remote airstrips located throughout Laos.
41:13Up there, we could end up doing anything literally on a moment's notice.
41:17One mission, we would be working troops in contact, closer to support with them.
41:21Another 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.
41:31Occasionally, we'd be up talking to long range ground teams that were out watching the trails, doing stuff like that.
41:37So you never knew what you were going to be doing day to day.
41:40Some days, we'd just be out looking for targets. There's not much going on.
41:44And in other days, we'd be in the thick of a huge battle.
41:47American airmen had to abide by increasingly complex and at times, incomprehensible rules of engagement as the war in Southeast Asia progressed.
41:59The Ravens also were supposed to abide by specific rules governing air combat in Laos.
42:05But in reality, they operated with almost complete autonomy.
42:11When I was up as a Raven, we were the rules of engagement.
42:16I remember one day in particular, there was a new guy up working Northeast to me.
42:21And he tried to put in an airstrike and he obviously did not know what he was doing or where he was and was not following the proper procedures.
42:28So I just came up on the radio and I said, this is Raven 2-5. This is my sandbox. You will not drop. Acknowledge.
42:35And they didn't drop because it wasn't clear where they were, what they were bombing or what they were doing.
42:40And so there was always that risk of killing friendlies or, you know, or in some cases, just indigenous people that were friendly to us that we just wanted to try to leave alone.
42:50Few statistics were kept on the Ravens' clandestine operations.
42:55But it is clear that they suffered one of the highest loss rates of the entire conflict.
43:01Some have speculated that nearly half of the pilots never made it home.
43:08The close bonds the pilots formed with Laotian ground forces contributed to the problem.
43:13The Ravens lived and worked closely with these men and were willing to take enormous risks to come to their aid.
43:20I knew these people. I knew who they were. And some of them, after Laos fell to the Communists, made it to the United States.
43:30And, you know, we had formed some friendships based on all of that.
43:33But it became very personal sometimes working with these guys.
43:36And a lot of times, if the weather was bad and the fighters couldn't get in to work with us, I'd take off.
43:42And instead of carrying smoke rockets on my old one, I'd carry high-explosive rounds.
43:46I'd take eight high-explosive rounds and I would go out and I would be my own fighter aircraft.
43:53Close air support remained the most important mission for every FAC who served in Southeast Asia,
43:59whether he took part in the covert war in Laos, flew missions against the trail, or worked in South Vietnam itself.
44:09And at no time were these missions more personal, more rewarding, and potentially more heartbreaking
44:15than when the FAC had established close ties with the very men he was trying to help.
44:20No one is more aware of this fact than John Flanagan.
44:24He lived with and regularly supported the same small reconnaissance patrols from Project Delta, day after day.
44:31And he will never be able to forget the terrible chain of events that took shape on December 2nd, 1966.
44:39Two days earlier, a six-man team from the elite Special Forces unit had been mistakenly inserted into Laos.
44:46The patrol had already come into contact with North Vietnamese regulars.
44:50Three of the men were wounded, one seriously.
44:57Flanagan was called out to help locate the men and to coordinate a last-ditch recovery effort.
45:03The weather was deteriorating, and no fighter support was available.
45:08To make matters worse, the helicopters were running dangerously low on fuel.
45:14A critical but fateful decision had to be made.
45:17I had to expedite things, and I probably made a tactical mistake, and I asked the team to throw smoke.
45:26And so, because we needed to get the helicopters in there fast, and they dropped the smoke.
45:30And I had gone over the team before that.
45:33No ground fire.
45:34Absolutely no ground fire.
45:35I looked right down at them.
45:36I was at about 50 feet.
45:37Saw their face.
45:38They kind of waved.
45:39And nobody shot at me.
45:41Absolutely no one.
45:42It was just, and I looked around.
45:43I said, oh, okay.
45:44I don't see anybody.
45:45And so then they brought the rescue.
45:48They picked up a helicopter in.
45:49And the North Vietnamese, they waited, well-disciplined troops.
45:53They waited until the helicopter just got into the hover, and they opened up.
45:58And it was an ambush.
45:59They had sucked the helicopter in an ambush, and they started transmitting on the radio.
46:03We're taking fire.
46:04We're taking fire.
46:05I could hear the slugs from the AK-47s.
46:07I could hear them hitting the airplane.
46:08The helicopter, you could hear them going through the metal.
46:11And then you could hear the door gunners with their M60 machine guns firing back, hammering
46:15back.
46:16And I got on the radio.
46:17I said, get out of there.
46:18Get out of there.
46:19And the helicopter started to lift off, climbed them at 300 feet, and then just nosed over
46:24and plunged into the jungle.
46:26A big fireball.
46:27There was four Americans, the helicopter crew, plus the Special Forces medic that was on board.
46:32It just perished right there.
46:35And in the meantime, the team on the ground, they said, in fact, please help us.
46:39We're hurt bad.
46:41So I went in there, making like I was going to have an airstrike.
46:45Firing rockets, throwing stuff out the window to try and distract the North Vietnamese to think
46:51that there was an airstrike coming, because they'd run and hide.
46:54I started firing the rockets in there, and I couldn't even get my rockets to go off, because
46:57I was so close that the rockets didn't go far enough to arm.
47:01So I had nothing but a high-speed spear.
47:04So I withdrew to try and see, you know, what could I do?
47:07I called Hillsboro, which was the Air Force Command, the C-130 that was over the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
47:14They were up around 15,000, 18,000 feet.
47:16And I said, Hillsboro, I need some A1s, fast.
47:19I got to get, I got people that are dying, and we're going to lose them.
47:23And they said, sorry, we don't have anything.
47:26There's nothing flying.
47:27We just can't get them in.
47:29And so that's the tragedy.
47:31I mean, I knew it was over then.
47:33The tears just rolled out my face.
47:35I said, God, I don't, you know.
47:41So I flew back over to where the team had been.
47:44I looked down, and nobody shot at us.
47:47I was surprised.
47:49But there was no equipment there.
47:51There was just trampled grass, no bodies, nothing.
47:54I was surprised.
47:59Forward air controllers played a critical role in the war in Southeast Asia from the beginning until the bitter end.
48:05In fact, much of the massive, multifaceted American campaign would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible,
48:13without their most unusual and daring form of support.
48:16The fact that two of the 12 Air Force Medal of Honor recipients in Vietnam were FACS attests to the skill and courage needed to perform their incredible missions.
48:29The FACS were a step in the appropriate direction in trying to bring air power to bear where it could be effective.
48:37But 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,
48:54to accurately identify, pinpoint, and bring air power to bear on a ground target.
49:07The FACS have never enjoyed the same recognition and glamour as the pilots of fast and powerful fighter-bombers.
49:14But their missions are dignified by the tremendous amount of risk that they faced each day,
49:20and by the admiration of thousands of pilots and infantrymen who may never have made it home alive without their support.
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49:41Get your voice and see and look, part of what?
49:43So let me know that!
50:02I'm, I'm!