Son Tay Raid: American POWs in Vietnam Were Not Forgotten, Revised Edition

Chapter Two: Raid Training and Planning

] 20 [ ] Chapter Two [ Raid Training and Planning Preparation for the Son Tay raid was very challenging for both Army and Air Force participants. It demanded very rigorous training for the Special Forces and required highly unusual formation flying for the Air Force crews. Mission planning and training had to overlap because many plan details depended on the results of experimentation with unconventional tactics that had not been attempted by anyone before and on lessons learned during this process. Experienced airmen had to fly under conditions that would test the design and operational limits of their aircraft. There was utmost emphasis on secrecy and ground and air operations safety. Only the Joint Contingency Task Group planners knew the mission ’s purpose. The rest of the raiders were kept in the dark about the intent of the super-secret project for which they had so eagerly volunteered . Eglin Air Force Base, Florida Eglin AFB was an ideal training site for the Son Tay raid. Located on the Emerald Coast in Florida’s northwestern Panhandle, its 724-square-mile area had numerous ranges for conducting military exercises and for testing all types of weapons. It had several auxiliary airfields, two of which were fully operational air bases. Auxiliary Field Number 3, north of Eglin Main, was better known as Duke Field, and Auxiliary Field Number 9, to the west, was called Hurlburt Field. Eglin Main was the home of the Air Force Systems Command’s Armament Development and Test Center, which was responsible for the development and testing of new weapons. It also housed the headquarters of Brigadier General Manor’s Air Force Special Operations Forces Command and the Air Force Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Training Center that trained Jolly Green Giant helicopter crews for service in Southeast Asia. Hurlburt Field was the home of the 1st Special Operations Wing, training and planning ] 21 [ which possessed a variety of propeller-driven aircraft. Air Force and foreign pilots trained there for assignments in the Vietnam War. This versatile Special Operations Wing was also the parent wing of the MC-130E(I) Combat Talon Detachment 2 that was based at Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina. Due to the weapons development, testing, flying training, and military exercises, Eglin was a very busy place where one could encounter transient personnel from all services. Everyone was there working on something special, and all those special assignments were shrouded in various degrees of secrecy. Consequently, everyone there was used to minding his own business and not questioning occasional unusual events or the presence of military visitors from other service branches. In such a vast military installation, Ivory Coast training did not become conspicuous to enemy agents who lurked around popular soldier hangouts or to the Soviet trawlers in the Gulf of Mexico that conducted surveillance of everything that generated an electromagnetic signal. We had our own counterintelligence people who monitored all our activities, ensuring that we kept the nature of our mission well concealed. Army Special Forces Col. Bull Simons did not waste any time in preparing the Special Forces training site. He formed a troop detachment and dispatched an advance party to Duke Field to make arrangements for billeting and training space for just over one hundred men. An excellent complex with six barracks, a dining hall, a small Base Exchange, and a rather ominous beer hall had just become available. It was used during the summer as a training camp for Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps cadets. Bull’s Green Berets would be well isolated there from the daily activities of Eglin AFB and would live in proximity to several training areas their mission required. The support staff whom Bull Simons picked to run the training facility were just as superb as the men who would lead the troops in the raid. They were men who knew him and would readily follow him without asking probing questions. He already knew five men from Fort Bragg who served with Frisbie’s planning group. All were respected members of the Special Forces community. He would keep them on for continuity of effort . Maj. James H. “Jim” Morris, who had served with Simons in Laos the son tay raid ] 22 [ and masterminded the ground assault plan with Sydnor and Meadows, became his detachment’s plans officer. Because he was in on every aspect of planning and training, he also qualified as...