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The flight ops clerk woke me at 0500 hours for a 0600 hours launch. Something didn’t feel right. I had a weight on my shoulders, it felt like. I felt like I had the day Johnson had been hit.
“Hey, Linam, the aircraft in good shape?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How do the guns look?” I asked Diedrich.
“They’re good, sir. I replaced feed trays last night and trigger housings as well. Ammo is clean as I just opened the cans. You feel all right, Mr. Cory?” he asked.
“No, I don’t. I just got a feeling. It’s nothing. Let’s crank and get going.”
Bruce Sinkey was my copilot and we were flying in an area that had low vegetation and rice paddies along the river basin. Rice paddies weren’t common up here as the jungle was thick hardwood trees for the most part. The Song Be River meandered through the area. About twenty minutes’ flying time northeast of Song Be proper was an old Special Forces camp known as Bu Gia Map. This camp had been attacked and abandoned back in early 1966, along with a Special Forces camp at Bu Dop, and no one had been back. Both had abandoned dirt runways, and Bu Dop even had the remains of a couple of C-130 transport aircraft that had been hit with mortar rounds during the siege. While flying Night Hawk missions, we had noticed some lights up at Bu Gia Map but didn’t have authority to go there on those missions as both camps were right on the Cambodian border. The camp was located at the maximum range of eight-inch artillery and outside the range of the 105 mm howitzer or the 175 mm howitzer, both of which had a faster rate of fire than the eight-inch howitzer. The first run of the day turned up nothing. No people, no monkeys, nothing. Since the Song Be River came down from the camp, I sat down with the sniffer team when we came back to refuel and eat.
“Hey, guys. Since we didn’t get any hits in this area, what say we fly the road going to Bu Gia Map and see if we can find something up there?” I asked as we opened a case of C-rations for a morning snack.
“I don’t know, Mr. Cory. We’ve never been up there, and it’s really outside our box,” the team leader mumbled.
“Yeah, but we’re not getting anything down here. If we go up there and get some hits, then we will have accomplished something. And if we don’t get any hits, then we just don’t say anything to anyone.”
“Where is Bu Gia Map?” he asked.
I pulled out the map and showed him where a dirt road had once existed that went from Song Be northeast to Bu Gia Map.
“Well, the bottom part of the road is in our area. We could run that again, I suppose,” mumbled the team leader.
“We sure could,” I agreed, thinking that once we were heading that way, well, who knows?
“Okay, let’s run this area around the road.” He pointed at the top portion in our box.
“You got it. Let’s load up.”
We started working the road moving northeast. The road was in the chin bubble, and Linam and Diedrich were on the guns as we were only low-level and sixty knots airspeed. At first we got nothing, and I continued to fly us north.
As we approached the end of the box, the team leader cried, “Max Mark,” and the crew opened fire. Nothing came back at us. I told Lobo to hold off shooting.
“Chicken-man One-Niner, Lobo Three-Eight, over.”
“Go ahead, Lobo.”
“Where you going, Chicken-man? Are we out of the box?”
“Ah, Lobo Three-Eight, as we got nothing in the portion of the box but something right here at the top, I thought we’d move up a bit and see if we can pick something up.”
“Roger, Chicken-man. Lobo is climbing to fifteen hundred feet. Got you covered. Out.”
Lobo wanted to stay out of .51-cal range but still be able to cover us. I could see that coming, but he didn’t object, and so we pressed forward. We hit a couple of more “Max Mark” indicators but took no fire, so Lobo didn’t roll hot. Following on the map while Bruce flew, I could see we were approaching the old camp, which was on the south end of the runway at Bu Gia Map. To the west was a narrow valley about five hundred feet below the old Special Forces camp and runway. I told Bruce to drop into the valley and run it to the north, thinking we might catch someone harvesting rice. The valley was empty. As we reached the end, I said, “I have the aircraft. Take a break.”
“You have the aircraft.” And Bruce pulled out a cigarette.
“Okay, we’re heading back. We’ll go over the camp and follow the road back south.”
Coming around the end of the valley, I climbed up the ridge and popped up looking south right down the runway. On the left, Specialist Linam started shooting. The sniffer team leader let loose with a 40 mm round. Under the bamboo canopy on the edge of the runway was a regular village of NVA soldiers lying around. Some were in uniform, some lying in hammocks, some cooking chow. Tables were made out of bamboo, as were chairs. They were totally surprised, as were we.
“Lobo, on my left in the bamboo. Fire!” I screamed as I increased power and airspeed rapidly, staying low to the ground. I had never seen so many enemy soldiers before. As soon as I spoke, 2.75-inch rockets were slamming into the bamboo as NVA troops ran and dove for cover. Lobo was firing ripple effect, automatically launching twenty-eight rockets with just one pull of the trigger and punching the target. Then his minigun opened on the tree line on my left as we were hauling ass out down the runway. As we cleared the abandoned SF camp and runway, we stayed low-level until we were confident that we could climb to altitude and not get hit by a .51-cal machine gun. But something wasn’t right in the feel of the aircraft. The cyclic felt stiff and was getting stiffer.
“Lobo, Chicken-man One-Niner, over.”
“Chicken-man, Lobo, that was awesome.” The excitement in his voice was noticeable.
