Lt. Col. John Halliday (USAFR, Ret.) Page 8

By SimHQ on July 11, 2006 in _air6, hide

Q. How were targets spotted, and what was the typical time period and procedure for calling in strikes?

A. With our starlight scope. But Laos is a big country. We needed help, so Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara created NKP’s Task Force Alpha (TFA).

Task Force Alpha (TFA)

Wiley explained, “Remember those huge electronic boards from the movie Dr. Strangelove that showed Russian bombers headed for the U.S.? Well, Task Force Alpha is like that but with real-time displays in living color, three stories tall . . . of trucks charging down the Trail.” So when we went hunting, we knew where to look. Fighters loitered nearby with KC-135 air tankers, so were minutes away.

Q. How long were your typical sorties?

A. About four hours over the Trail, then time from, and back to NKP.

Q. What was your normal operating altitude?

A. Ten to twelve thousand feet, unpressurized, slightly hypoxic.

Q. Describe the terrain that you were flying over, and how it helped and hurt your mission.

A. From the manuscript: “Northern Laos defies Darwin. The place is devolving to a more primitive state. There are Komodo Dragons and monitor lizards that can outrun a man and knock him down. Fifty-foot-long pythons that can swallow a man whole. Boas that can squeeze the breath out of a person and save the results for breakfast. Insects the size of your hand armed with inch-long scissor mandibles that can chew a finger off overnight. Really. I’m not kidding. Look them up yourself.”

Q. Talk if you would about the nature of flying over Laos in an undeclared, covert, supporting role to the fight over North Vietnam… were there special considerations that you planned for if downed?

A. The Air Force had no night rescue capability. No crewmember had survived a night bailout in northern Laos. They never made it to the Hanoi Hilton prison. They never lasted till morning. The key reason we carried a gun was to be able to commit suicide.

Q. What was the typical nights’ work? How many trucks or other vehicles would you encounter?

A. We expected to find at least one convoy. But some nights were quiet, like the night of November 6, 1970 when we were simply acting as a night light for a platoon of Lao good guys. But then all hell broke loose.

Q. What was your interaction with GCI while over Laos? How was your place in a nights’ sortie communicated to and from strike aircraft?

A. GCI interaction? None. We flew outside of radar contact, blacked out.

Our place in a strike? We’d spot trucks, then ask Moonbeam for fighters. If they figured our target was a priority, they’d order fighters loitering nearby. As the fighters raced in, we’d drop three ground marks in the jungle ahead of the lead truck, then set up a left-hand orbit so the scope nav could keep the convoy in sight. Once our fighters were six thousand feet above our position and could see our marks, I relayed bombing instructions: “The lead truck is two clicks west of my middle mark. Drop on a north-south run. I’m going ‘Christmas Tree’ (flicking my exterior lights on, then quickly off to avoid getting rammed, yet drawing a barrage of flak). If you have me in sight, you’re cleared in hot.

This wasn’t laser-guided bombing, so we added Kentucky windage till we hit the target. Simple, yet effective. Sadly, Laos today stands as the most-bombed country in history. Lao kids now use those bomb craters as swimming holes.

In the next photo, you’re looking straight down ten thousand feet through our scope hole at bomb craters. Notice no bombs hit the road.