On March 29th, 1972 an AC-130A gunship from the 16th Special Operations Squadron (SOS) based in Thailand was shot down over Laos with all 14 crew members lost. It was the first of four aircraft and three air crews lost during that difficult year. I arrived in that same unit shortly after the last one went down. This post is my way of commemorating the 50th anniversary of that terrible event. In fact, the whole terrible year.
I wrote a book a few years ago about the events of that year. It is a relatively unknown story – one reason I wanted to write it – but also so full of terrible and sad ironies that I felt I had to write it.
Some very brief excerpts from the book.
Bad Moon Rising: 1972 – Year of Blood and Tears for the 16th SOS
- - - - - How the Story Began - - - - -
Assuming you were alive then, what were you doing in 1972?
It was a time of great music like “Horse with No Name” by America, “American Pie” by Don McLean, "Heart of Gold" by Neil Young, "Listen to the Music" by the Doobies and who can forget "Smoke on the Water" by Deep Purple?! (Not to mention countless Three Dog Night songs.) And the Movie, “The Godfather” came out.
1972 was the longest year ever – really. It was a leap year which is when a second is added - except in ‘72 TWO seconds were added making it the longest year by actual time ever. (For some young men those two extra seconds maybe proved to be too little – or perhaps too much.)
The first inklings of Nixon's Watergate scandal were starting to trickle out of D.C.
Also at that time, the war in Vietnam was still struggling on. It was an election year and the Nixon administration was having all sorts of secret negotiations with the North Vietnamese trying to figure out how to slowly back out the door of the morass that was the war in South Vietnam. The count of combat troops was down to around 24,000 from over 500,000 a few years earlier. After over ten years and 58,000 American men and women lost, it seems that we had had enough.
Yet as the politicians tried to tip toe out the front door they needed to leave someone behind to guard the backdoor. Among them was the U.S. Air Force including the men of the 16th Special Operations Squadron (16th SOS).
An Epiphany – or Dumb Luck?
Young Men Never Die.
Twenty-four hours a day they walk the line
Living up to the reputation.
Assuming the swagger, the hard line,
Their casual indifference to death
“Young Men” Curt Bennett (US Pilot, Vietnam)
Young men never die. Even young men at war (and it is always young men, and now women too, who fight our wars.) I know that’s counter-intuitive but that really is how young men think; they’re just wired that way. We (yes, I was a young man once) know that people die but it’s always some other person, someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing or isn’t fast enough or strong enough or smart enough – or gets some terrible disease. (I suppose our country’s leaders, who need us to fight their wars, depend on our belief in this too.) The rest of us don’t die. Until we do.
Ubon, Thailand 1973 - Crew 29 
Who is that handsome, young blond dude embracing the “big gun?” (And please, no phallic jokes.) Photo courtesy of Michael Amira at Spectre Ass’n (kneeling left front.)
- - - - - The Price of War - - - - -
“Bad Moon Rising”
I see a bad moon rising
I see trouble on the way
I see earthquakes and lightening
I see bad times today
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Somewhere over Laos 1972
AC-130 Gunship Night Fire
The gunship was based at Ubon Ratchathani Royal Thai Air Force Base, Thailand, only a few hundred kilometers west of the Ho Chi Minh Trail here in Laos. Unknown to this crew and the other members of the squadron, the year 1972 would prove to be annus horribilis for them.
In the war in Vietnam, a total of 2460 American aircraft (USAF, US Navy and Marines – plus over five thousand helicopters) were lost in combat; 58,220 Americans and over 1.3 million Vietnamese soldiers were killed, hundreds of thousands of ground troops and pilots had been wounded or taken prisoners in the long years of the war and over 2 million civilians on both sides died. It’s one of the realities, despite our most optimistic hopes, that all men in combat are at risk of losing their life and many do. Yet somehow it only comes home to you when it is YOUR unit and YOUR friends that start to lose their lives. After several years of relatively few casualties it was the 16th SOS’s turn to be bruised by war. It was sent reeling with four aircraft shot down, many others severely damaged and worst of all, some 40 men were lost.
Yet the war went on as they always seem to do.
These incredibly close-knit men did very dangerous work under terrible conditions – as men at war have always done - but simply never gave in. Yet there is always a bill to be paid by such men and in 1972 the bill came due.
A Hint of What was to Come?
Perhaps there was an inkling of the price in Nov ‘71.
The Curse of the Albatross Begins?
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Prometheus - The Beginning of the Sad, Strange Story of Balls 44
Aircraft tail number 55-0044 - Prometheus, to her crew chief and other maintenance folks, was a AC130A Gunship. (To crewmemebers she known as Balls 44.) It was an older “A” model of the venerable C-130 transport, an airplane that was first in use in the early 50’s (and newer versions are still in use today.) Modified and armed with two 40 millimeter cannons and two 20 millimeter rotary cannons, she had various sensors that allowed her to stare in the darkness and see the enemy below. 44, and like her sister gunships, was a tremendously effective weapon.
In November of 1971 she was cruising the notorious Ho Chi Minh Trail with call sign Spectre 21, with her baleful stare seeking targets. The gunships were famous – or infamous depending on your perspective – for destroying the supply trucks by the hundreds. In fact, there was a bounty on the gunships and their crews by the enemy. Suddenly, however, she was no longer the hunter but became the hunted; in an instant she took a tremendous amount of damage from anti- aircraft artillery (AAA) to her right wing and numbers three and four engines – and both lost their propellers. In fact, she almost lost her entire right wing. In addition, a crew member was severely wounded.
All that damage, pain and drama yet the pilots, Captains Baertle and Skinner, brought her back to Ubon with one of the finest demonstrations of airmanship most of us might ever see.
Balls 44 battle damage, Nov 1971
Photo Courtesy of Bruce Hedlund at Spectre Association site
The crew chiefs, Rhett and Combs, (and Tom’s role in our story is not yet done nor is that of 44) and the entire maintenance team at Ubon worked for over two months repairing the damage to Balls 44 including an entirely new right wing and four new engines and in Jan, back to work she went.
Premonition?
The damage was also noticed, however, by some of the aircrew members who went out to the flight line when they heard the plane was coming in very damaged.
The aircraft landed and after it taxied to the ramp we were amazed at the battle damage. It wasn’t just the props that were gone but most of leading edge of the right wing. There was damage to other parts of the aircraft as well – which I recall included one of the engines on the left wing. It was the first serious incident since most of us had been there. My reaction was probably pretty typical – impressed (and somewhat assured) that the AC-130 could survive such extensive damage, but also somewhat shaken by the reality that we were playing a very deadly game. (Jodoin, 2015)
As if to show the intricate dance of irony and fate in the affairs of men, these comments about 44 were written by Capt. Gary Chandler. With these words, he unknowingly had acknowledged that the albatross was still out there somewhere and perhaps waiting for him as well.
- - - - - More Premonitions - - - - -
Don’t Believe in Miracles, Depend on Them”
Laurence J. Peter
The Saga of 56-509
Sometimes Luck is All You Got
It was March 3rd and as sure as the sun sets in the west another Spectre mission was heading to the Trail. 509 was an A model gunship. As is usually the case, even in war, everything is going along normally - until it isn’t. The night sky is suddenly illuminated by AAA fire and equally as suddenly the plane is hit by several 57mm (millimeter) rounds, with one exploding below the booth where the IR operator should be sitting but was occupied by an additional crewmember riding along. The shell actually blew a hole in the floor, almost dropping the seat into the night. At least a couple of other crew members were also injured - but the aircraft was still air worthy.
The pilot and crew were able to nurse the plane back to Ubon while crewmembers in back were said to physically hold the crewmember so that he wouldn’t fall through the hole in the floor.
Hole in the floor of 509 after struck my 57 mm AAA
As luck or fate would have it, the crew member so severely injured - a crew member who any other night would not have been on board - was none other Capt. Gary Chandler who had commented on Balls 44 a few months earlier. While he and the crew of 509 survived their encounter with fate it was, in afterthought, an omen that perhaps things really were changing for the worse for the 16th SOS, a fact to be borne out a short while later.
“There’s no escaping fate, it just keeps going. Day and night it just keeps coming at you”
“Invisible Monsters” Chuck Palahiuk
The Albatross Circles Balls 44 - The Many Tragedies of Spectre 13
Aircraft 55-0044, all patched up after her damage in November, went out on a few more missions with no problems – until the night of March 29. Gunship call sign Spectre 13 – good old Balls 44 – was once again cruising the Trail near Tchepone (Tchepone, Laos, was an important intersection on the trail and was infamous for its danger to gunshippers.) When at about 0300hrs, (from crew chief Tom Combs again,)
“According to the pilots (of F-4 fighters that were escorting Spectre 13), the AC-130 was in a valley a few miles west of Tchepone, Laos. The gunship was working over targets in the area. Visibility was about four miles with scattered clouds at 6,000 feet. The aircraft was illuminated by the full moon to the west, a gunners' moon. Triple-A was moderate, nothing unusual, until the fighter pilots saw a SAM (surface to air missile) launch from their port side. It rose up in an arc headed for the AC-130. As the gunship rolled right to avoid the first SAM, two more were fired at it from different locations. There was no way out! They were bracketed. The escort pilots agreed, he took a hit on the right wing inboard engine and an explosion and fire resulted. As the gunship started to drop down, another explosion occurred and something large and flaming was seen to separate from the aircraft.
"There was no mayday call," said the Phantom pilot.”
A few hours later, I was on the flight line under the lights of the revetment, helping another crew chief work on his airplane. Suddenly, the line truck pulled up to the ramp with a screeching of tires. The line chief saw me and waved me over to the truck.
"Your aircraft is down," he said.
"You mean it’s been hit again?" I asked.
"It's worse than that," he said, "Come with me."
"It was eerie. I can't find the words to describe how we felt. I was hoping it was all a dream and our AC-130 would appear from around the corner, putting an end to all this. John and I realized we were forged together in tragedy. Ours is a bond that will last forever.” (Combs, 3/31/2013, “Aircraft Down” Huffington Post)
One moment a proud airplane and crew in control of their domain and the next at a catastrophic end.
Is it just a coincidence that 44, along with all 14 crewmembers, would be lost so shortly after her earlier near-death experience and with the very same crew chiefs watching over her? Did fate - and the enemy - conspire to bring 0044 back down to earth? Is it also a part of the mystery that she was the first gunship to be brought down by a missile? Gunships had been engaged over the jungles of SEA since 1967 and never been harmed by the dangerous missiles. In the end, perhaps it wasn’t just 0044; maybe it was part of a larger sense of bad karma that caught up to the entire 16th SOS, something that became ever more evident as the terrible year that was 1972 wore on - the year of a bad moon rising.
Sadly, there is more to this story.
Capt Halpin - Tour was over Capt Metzger should have been on flight
(Note: In the book I share the details of extraordinarily ironic and tragic stories of Capt's Halpin and Metzger related to this downing.)
“Men of Action are favored by the Goddess of Luck.”
George S. Clason
Good Luck or Bad? Spectre 22 – You Decide
A Crew Favored by the Goddess . . . But Not Their Ship
It was night time, March 30th just a day after the loss of 44. There is no time for mourning in war, there is just more war to be fought. Spectre 22, tail number 69-6571, one of the new E models was sent out on the nightly hunt for trucks on the Trail near Saravan, Laos. the Big Gun on 571 - 105mm Howitzer cannon - (Note: I give a much more detailed background on the gunship and mission in the book.) It was one of the first in the unit and had actually been on another E model but was switched to 571 not long before the mission because the other aircraft had been damaged by anti-aircraft fire.
(From a crewmember, Sgt. Robert "Jake" Jacobs, a gunner on that aircraft, a long and excellent description of the downing and rescue in the book is excerpted here.)
The aircraft took two direct hits of 57mm; the time was approximately 2200 hours. I felt them hit the aircraft and hesitated for a split second, then grabbed for my chute and put it on. Remember that my parachute harness was already tightened from a few minutes earlier. One round of 57mm struck the aircraft in the belly around the area of the nose wheel. It did not come through the floor of the aircraft, Thank God, probably because the “E” model Gunships have amour plating in their belly and the fact that the Good Lord was watching out for us. The 2nd round of 57mm struck the aircraft in the right wing between #3 and #4 engines around the area of the ECM Pods (Electronic Counter Measure) and this immediately started a fire on the right wing.
As soon as we were hit our pilot, Captain Waylon Fulk obtained a course from our navigator for home and then had a radio “check in” of all the personnel on the crew. After everyone checked in he proceeded to radio a “MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY”! NOTE; all crewmembers safely bailed out.
I mean the U.S. Government stopped the entire air war to concentrate on saving 15 air crewmembers. (who had bailed out) They spent millions of dollars and most importantly all those pilots above me were risking their lives to save me. I actually had tears in my eyes at one moment during the night. This is why I couldn’t quit flying.
“It truly was an Easter egg hunt and with Easter Sunday just around the corner on April 2nd, it was a blessing as well.”
As noted, the rescue of the crew of Spectre 22 was the largest efforts by the rescue forces of the entire war until then. This was due to both the crew’s location as well as the sheer number of crew members that were down at once.
Ironically, two days later their rescue was eclipsed by probably the most famous (and unique) search and rescue of the war, the recovery of BAT 21. The story of Bat 21 was later made into a book and a movie starring Gene Hackman and Danny Glover.
The details of the rescue of Bat 21 survivor, Lt Col Gene Hambleton, while nearly unbelievable is also tragic due to the number of aircraft and men lost in his rescue.
- - - - -The Ironic Tragedies Continue for the 16th SOS- - - - -
"Do you believe that evil and tragedy are always planned? You don’t think Fortune has anything to do with it?"
“The Ferryman” Amy Neftzger
No Respite from Misfortune
After his first aircraft, 0044, was shot down in March Tom Combs had been assigned to Balls 43 and he worked his ass off keeping it in flying condition. Night after night, constant repairs due to enemy fire and just the ravages of time on an old “A” model aircraft needed constant attention but she was in great shape nonetheless.
On the evening of June 18th 0043 call sign Spectre 11 took off after dark as usual. With a crew of 15 she headed east to hunt for trucks. (As an aside, the Watergate break in had occurred the day before on Jun17 beginning in the scandal that would bring down a President. Some said it affected his handling of the war from then on but who knows.)
At approximately 2355hrs she was hit by a shoulder mounted SAM and was struck in the right wing near the number 3 (inboard) engine. At first the aircraft Commander, Capt. Paul Gilbert, rang the emergence egress bell – the warning to bailout. He and the co-pilot apparently did their best to hold the aircraft steady so the crew could jump but 43 was mortally wounded. The F4 fighters escorting her saw what appeared to be the right wing and tail come off the plane and it spiraled into the jungle below but not before three crewmembers either jumped or were blown out. The three survivors were quickly recovered in relatively good shape; all others were lost.
(Note: Yet more tragedy with this loss hits Capt Lang Metzger whose personal pain was mentioned in shoot down of Balls 44.)
War is young men dying and old men talking. You know this. Ignore the politics.
King Odysseus to Achilles, movie “Troy”
The Rest of 1972
The war struggled on through the rest of the summer. The secret talks – that weren’t very secret – between Nixon and Kissinger and the North Vietnamese struggled on as well. America wanted out, Nixon wanted out, even the North Vietnamese wanted out. Eventually Nixon made some deals with the North Vietnamese, deals that, when the details of which got out, were totally unacceptable to the South Vietnamese (they accused Nixon of lying. Can you imagine that?) In any event, starting in October things began to go south in the negotiations leading up to furious bombing of North Vietnam with Operation Linebacker II. Some said it was done to appease South Vietnamese President Thieu’s temper tantrum, some said it was to punish the North and force them back to negotiations. Does it matter?
The operation started in mid-December and ended on Jan 15th and apparently was a success – if you can call an operation in which the air force lost fifteen B-52’s, two F-4s, 2 F111s, one RB-66 and HH 53 rescue helicopter a success. In addition, the navy lost two A-7’s, two A-6s and one F-4.
The two parties signed a peace agreement ending the war in Viet Nam on Jan 27th, 1973. (Although war continued in Cambodia for several more months including combat missions for Spectre.)
Unfortunately, a little too late for Spectre 17.
Hope you got your things together
Hope you are quite prepared to die
Looks like we’re in for nasty weather
One eye is taken for an eye
“Bad Moon Rising,” Creedence Clearwater Revival
Bad Moon has Risen
The war may almost be over – I’m pretty sure most of the crews in the 16th SOS thought so too – but until it was there were missions to be flown. Aircraft 0490, Spectre 17- an A model – took off around 6PM on the night of Dec 21st for another sortie over the Trail. The crew was augmented by an additional three men making a crew of 16.
(Note: This is another excerpt of an excellent 1st person description of events.)
In my conversation with Willie (Sgt. Richard “Willie” Williams, a gunner on the crew and one of only two survivors) he pointed out how fast everything had happened: take off at 6:00, fired on by AAA at 7:00 and he was on the ground not far from the crash site at 7:30. He and his fellow survivor were picked up by about 9:30.
We all know that things happen fast in life – especially in war - but by any standard this is extraordinary.
As noted, the regular crew of Spectre 17 was augmented that night by three additional members: Maj Paul Meder, a new IR sensor operator who was along on an orientation ride, Maj Frank Walsh, an F4 pilot who was along to observe the F4/gunship tactics and Sgt. John Winningham, an evaluator along to check out the student I/O Stevens. Each of these men, on any other night, would not be aboard Spectre 17. Each, on any other night, might be in control of their own destiny (as much as any man can.) Or perhaps their destiny simply found them.
One final, tragic note that if written for a movie might not be believed; Maj Walsh’s wife arrived at Ubon the next day for a brief holiday visit. The wing commander greeted her with the terrible news in person.
Something else to think about . . .
Gunship officer crewmembers would fly between 120 and 150 combat missions in their one-year tour with enlisted guys often flying many more (and also several tours, mostly because they were crazy!)
“Only the dead will know the end of war.”
Plato
War, for those who survive it, is a life changing event. For some it makes them a better person, yet others it destroys. And as for me? I can only say that learning about these men and writing this story simply made me appreciate, once again, how fortunate I have been doing the things I have done, the places I have been and the long and happy life that I so far have been able to live.
I am pained, humbled and thankful for their sacrifice - and that of the hundreds of thousands of others who gave their lives in our many other wars.
In order to keep this fairly brief I could not adequately describe the very sad and ironic back stories of each of the aircraft and crews that are lost as well with other interesting information about the aircraft and mission, that year and the Vietnam war in general.
If you're interested in reading the whole book – a very short book – please email me and I will provide a link. If you read it I hope you find it interesting. More importantly, I hope you gain an even greater appreciation for both the courage and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform in all wars.
As always, thanks for reading.
