The C-123K
Q. How many combat hours or sorties did you log in the C-123K? Any other aircraft?
A. About seven hundred and fifty combat hours. We didn’t count sorties. I also logged combat time in the C-5 during Desert Shield and Desert Storm.
Q. The aircraft has somewhat of a reputation for being a rugged, versatile airframe. What were its strengths and weaknesses, especially as it related to your mission?
A. The C-123 saved my life, so I have nothing bad to say about that great warhorse. From Flying Through Midnight: “The C-123 has the heart and soul of a ‘Hog.’ If Harley-Davidson had built just one airplane, this would be it. Tough-looking. Durable. Raw power. Kick-ass reputation. A brawler that can take a beating and win. Works great with half the parts missing. Slow as hell off the line, but great top-end performance. A tank with wings. ‘Electra Glide in Black.’”
Q. If you could add one feature or capability to the aircraft, what would it be?
A. Easy: weather and terrain-mapping radar.
At War
Q. What percentage of your missions from NKP were ‘Candlestick’ missions?
A. One hundred per cent. We did nothing else.
Q. Tell us a little about a typical mission…did you have many specifically-tasked sorties, or was it more of an on-call, roving, ‘road recon’ type of task?
A. We prowled the Ho Chi Minh Trail for enemy trucks to bomb. As my sponsor Wiley explained, “When we spot a convoy, we drop three ground-burning markers off to one side of the road to mark the position. The jungle is so thick, the drivers can’t see them. Then we’ll set up a left-hand orbit over the target, call in fighters, and give them bombing instructions reference our ground marks. Then we sit back and watch the fighters blow the crap out of everything.”
Q. How were flares deployed? How many were carried? Was there a set number of flares dropped over a target? A procedure for how targets were illuminated?
A. Two loadmasters called “rampers” balanced on the knife-edge of our cargo door drawbridged open to the night sky deployed flares and marks via a home-built chute. And we carried both flares and ground marks. I don’t remember how many, but enough. We’d drop three flares to light a group of “good guys,” or three ground marks ahead of a convoy. We attacked one convoy at a time, but there might be twenty-five or fifty trucks.
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Lt. Col. John Halliday (USAFR, Ret.)
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