The Ether Zone: U.S. Army Special Forces Detachment B-52, Project Delta

by Morris Ray

  In the impending darkness, Doney and his team crawled away from the enemy’s encampment, evading small groups of scattered NVA soldiers. After he figured they were far enough to safely do so, he called for extraction, “Get us the hell out of here.” A helicopter had been circling, waiting for their call, and within a few minutes they acted. As the pilot brought it down on their orange panel, the jungle erupted with a barrage of automatic fire. The chopper pilot, oblivious to the metallic sounds thumping against the thin skin of his helicopter, focused on landing the craft without shattering a propeller blade against a tree. Finally, he managed to get low enough to pick them up; they’d been crouching nearby, returning the enemy’s fire. Despite the heavy fire, the pilot continued to hover, holding it steady until Doney and his entire team were safely aboard, then pulled pitch and shot away.

  “Joe Alderman was riding shotgun on the chopper that day,” Doney said. “I remember that he grinned as he gave me his hand and pulled me inside. I was never so happy to see anyone in my entire life.”

  That day, they counted thirty-two bullet holes in the helicopter. Once more rescued from certain death, any one of them could have sent it crashing to a fiery end. Doney doesn’t recall the name of the young pilot, but offered that he was just one of many who had put his life on the line for the recon teams.

  “Two operations and two near misses—it’s going to be one hell of a year,” Doney reflected on the ride back.

  His team hardly had time to eat a hot meal before they were heading back again—into the same area. Command needed to assess the previous bombing run damage and to engage the enemy further if they persisted in hanging around. No one knew the territory as well as Team-1; they’d been there—they’d go back. This would be an extremely dangerous situation and they knew it. The air strike had dispersed the enemy, permeating the dense jungle with small groups. In every aspect, this mission would be far worse. Before, they had some idea of the enemy’s proximity, now they had no such information. The dispersed NVA units might be anywhere, and this time those guys would be mad as hell. This time they’d be anticipated, and if captured, they could expect little mercy.

  Team-1 jumped off the chopper skids as it hovered four-feet above a small thick bamboo clearing, fading into the vegetation before the pilot could take off again. Once airborne, the pilot and his crew remarked that the team had already disappeared into the jungle as if ghosts; they couldn’t even be detected from the air. Using only hand signals and facial expressions to communicate, Recon-1 traveled slowly and silently toward the river, expecting to come under fire from a hidden enemy at any moment. Suddenly, the point man signaled and the entire team dropped as though a single entity. He indicated he had the river in view. Crawling closer, they watched in amazement as rafts loaded with dead and wounded carried scores of earlier casualties down river.

  “Just seeing all those dead and wounded...that we’d been responsible for, quietly floating down the river...washed over me with mixed feelings. I just couldn’t put any more air strikes on them that day,” he said quietly. “I had to let them go...let them retrieve their dead.”

  Doney, recalling that event from forty years earlier, filled with emotion, his voice fading as he softly said, “Hitting them again, that way...that wouldn’t have been a very nice thing to do.”

  Doney served a year with Delta before returning to the States. He shared his feelings; they were similar to what others who had served felt. Landing in San Francisco, he was shocked by the venomous hatred the anti-war groups displayed toward their country’s returning military. They seemed to believe that the returning soldiers were to blame for the country’s failed policies. Simply wearing a uniform in public was sure to invite a confrontation, particularly when traveling through an airport or train station. Many Delta soldiers chose not to wear uniforms when traveling. After a year or more of operating in a stressful combat environment, they weren’t quite sure what their reaction might be if accosted by some pimply-faced college kids who had never been out of the United States.

  The obnoxious protesters and a general disrespect for the military weren’t the only changes that required getting used to. There had been a cultural shift during their absence—the hippies, flower children, free-love fests and men with long hair traipsing about in tie-dyed trousers. Many soldiers hadn’t been exposed to any of this and were agog at the spectacle. On his first trip to Saigon, prior to his departure for the States, Gary Nichols was riding in a rickshaw with SFC Donald (D.J.) Taylor, trying to adjust to the swarming masses after a stressful year in the jungle, when he noticed some skin-tight jeans and long black hair ahead of them.

  “DJ, look at that babe! Now, that’s a nice ass,” he remarked.

  With an embarrassed half-grin, DJ responded, “That’s not a babe, Gary. That’s a guy. All the guys wear their hair long now.”

  Nichols stared in disbelief as they passed the subject of his admiration, and sure enough, it was a guy. Sullen and pensive, he stared from his side of the rickshaw as they rode in silence, and then quietly said, “It was still a nice ass.”

  Whether it had been the difficulty of trying to come to terms with civilian attitudes, or that they just longed to be with the brothers they’d left in harm’s way, many soldiers who came home following a Project Delta tour returned within only a few months—victims of a war that tugged at their memories. Doney was no exception. He’d spent barely three months with his family before returning in early 1967 for a second year-long tour. The mantra was the same as that repeated by an old recon man as he sipped a drink with a buddy in the Delta Club at Nha Trang, “When I’m here, all I can think about is being home...and when I’m home, all I think about is being back here.” This feeling continued to haunt many Vietnam vets, years after the war ended.

  Lieutenant Colonel John Hayes was the Delta CO during Doney’s second tour; MAJ Chuck Allen, the Deputy Commander/Operations Officer. Allen immediately sought Haye’s permission to use Doney as his Operations NCO, and he was approved. The most experienced recon man was always the Recon Section Leader, and Doc Simpson long had held that position. But following his departure in a few months, Doney would take over.

  Although his heart remained with the guys out on recon, his new job gave him the opportunity to make some improvements. Within the week, Delta set up the FOB at Phu Bai, and then he asked Gary Nichols to visit the 1st Air Cav with some good whiskey to trade for some of the Cav’s new aluminum rung, steel-cable ladders. Once that mission had been accomplished, James Lee Coalson and Paul Spillane figured a way to attach them to a Huey Slick. The innovation was a success; everyone agreed it undoubtedly saved many lives. Doney also saw an opportunity to convert the old hand-loop of the current McGuire Rig into a “slip-loop”; it slid over a man’s wrist, then his weight kept him from falling out even when wounded. In March 1969, Doney served a third tour in Vietnam, conducting recon operations with MACV SOG. During this time he collected and compiled “Tips of the Trade” about recon operations. Joe Alderman updated them just before Delta’s closing in 1970; many of them are still in use. In 1989, he returned to Vietnam again, but this time to Hanoi, to locate American POWs and MIAs.

  * * * * * *

  Today, Norm Doney resides in Oregon, and although his hearing and once sharp eyes are failing, he remains actively involved in the POW/MIA quandary, critical that the country he and others valiantly fought for fails to honor its missing Vietnam Vets and unresolved POW/MIA issues.

  ELEVEN

  A Different Breed

  AS AN ORGANIZATION, PROJECT DELTA WAS a marvel in its efficiency and operational methods; perfected, smooth, it remains the model for many Special Forces classified projects. When a mission was tasked, the advance party’s first troops established the FOB; its Tactical Operations Center (TOC), Intelligence (S2), Operations (S3), Supply (S4) and Communications Center. Teams didn’t deploy with the FOB, remaining instead at Nha Trang until called for by number, and then only two teams at a time reported for their m
ission briefings. By the evening, the teams pre-planned their mission, re-packed rucksacks, checked weapons and munitions (all kept in their rooms), tested radio equipment and packed extra batteries. The following morning those alerted would load onto a Vietnamese C-47 cargo plane for the flight to the FOB. The USSF and VNSF team leaders would receive detailed briefings at the TOC, be given final mission instructions and link-up with their over-flight pilot. Within the hour, the over-flight recon would take off with the team leaders and primary/alternate routes chosen, along with primary/alternate LZs.

  Once the recon leader returned, the team refined their plan, rehearsed immediate action drills and tactical movement, briefed-back the Commander and his staff, and then waited for last light—and infiltration. After insertion, the operation continued until the mission was completed, or until the team was compromised by enemy contact. From experience, they learned they had to extract the team as soon as possible once the enemy discovered them, as their adversaries would quickly attempt to surround, annihilate or capture them. After extraction, the team would be taken directly to the TOC for debriefing by the Commander or Operations Officer. Once debriefed, they would load onto the Vietnamese C-47 for the flight back to Nha Trang. From start to finish the process was smoothly orchestrated; there wasn’t a moment wasted.

  According to Charlie Beckwith, “My Delta guys are the most professional combat soldiers I’ve ever seen. Now, if I could get away with locking them up in a cage when they’re not in the field, commanding them would be a piece of cake.”

  Beckwith’s remarks were well-founded. Delta personnel, particularly those in Recon, tended to raise a little hell during “stand down.” If something didn’t happen, it was probably more because someone hadn’t yet thought of it, than lack of restraint. Most Project Delta commanders understood the wildness was just a safety valve for built-up combat stress, and precisely what made them so daring in the field; therefore, they overlooked most of the shenanigans and tried to protect them against the conventional hierarchy’s ire.

  Andre “Saint” St Laurent, a young, capable, well-liked French-Canadian, had seen the feisty men in their green berets a few years earlier and hadn’t rested until he’d been accepted and made it through their training. However, once in Vietnam, his life seemed a bit too tame on a regular Special Forces A-Team, so when he began to hear rumors about Project Delta—whatever it was—he wanted to be part of it. The evening before he was to report for his assignment with Project Delta, he went to a Nha Trang off-limits hotspot and “kicked up.” An MP squad raided the place, and later he was accused of dismantling most of them. Hauled in and written up for drunk and disorderly conduct in an off-limits establishment, he reported to Charging Charlie the following morning, hang-dogged, bruised and hung-over.

  Properly humbled, he said, “I guess you won’t want me in the Project now, right, Sir?”

  Beckwith grinned. “You’re exactly what we’re looking for. Those MPs said you kicked their asses pretty good.”

  The unspoken policy was “Raise hell if you want, but be prepared to pay when the time comes.” Most believe it was either Doc Simpson or Wiley Gray who started to make the teams conduct a forced road march around “Stink Village” with rocks in their rucksacks to dry them out and get them into shape for their next mission. Stink Village was a small settlement just beyond Nha Trang’s city limits. Its major enterprise was nuoc mam, a savory sauce produced by rendering liquid from decaying fish. In the hot sun, the potent smell traveled a great distance—hence Stink Village. To any man suffering an affliction of too much booze and late night hell-raising, the stench would make the most ardent partier heave his guts before completing the road march. Still, no one really felt the marches to be a serious deterrent to their fun, and the partying never noticeably let up during a Delta stand-down.

  * * * * * *

  The first two FAC pilots attached to Project Delta were Air Force Captains Kenneth Kerr and Jim Ahmann, both TDY from the 19th TASS. In June 1966, 1LT Carlton Skinner replaced Ahmann. Another early FAC pilot assigned to Project Delta was USAF Captain John F. Flanagan. Flanagan, author of Vietnam Above the Treetops, recalled, “When the secret CIA/Special Forces projects of Omega and Sigma were formed, Skinner left to fly for one of them, leaving only one FAC pilot to support Delta. For several months that was just me because we didn’t like to use TDY FAC personnel for Delta’s operations; the learning curve was just too steep.”27 Flanagan, who replaced Kerr in April 1966, retired as an Air Force brigadier general.

  In November 1966, CPT Charlie Swope arrived just before Delta was slated to kick off a large operation near the Special Forces base camp of Khe Sanh. Swope was shot down and killed one month later while supporting the operation; Recon men Bott and Stark also lost their lives. Sergeant Irby Dyer, B-52 medic, was also killed along with the entire recovery chopper crew when the helicopter was shot down while trying to rescue Bott’s surrounded recon team. Sergeant First Class Arthur Glidden, along as an observer in CPT Swope’s 0-1F aircraft when it went down, is listed as KIA. This had been only Swope’s fifth mission. Sergeant First Class Tom Carpenter led a small force to retrieve the bodies of Swope and Glidden.

  All FAC pilots had to have at least six months tenure in-country to volunteer for Delta, and then had to pass muster by the Recon Section after their initial “wet-run” operation. One FAC pilot was fired because the recon guys said, “He’s nuts. He’s going to get himself—or some of us—killed.” Their phraseology might have been a bit more colorful, but that is the gist of their comments. After Swope and Glidden died in the crash of Swope’s plane, Al Groth replaced Swope as Delta’s second FAC, and would later be awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery.

  But a new change in policy was in the works for the FACs supporting Delta. The Air Force hierarchy decided that Delta operations were far too dangerous for only one pilot to fly, and to do so was tantamount to attempting suicide. Thereafter, two FACs were to be in the air whenever Delta was supported. In July 1966, USAF Captain Ralf Miller was assigned as Delta’s second FAC. He served a full year with distinction and, on several occasions, with extraordinary bravery.

  Delta had the highest in-country priority for fighter support of any combat unit, since most missions were classified as “immediate in nature” As a result, Delta’s close-air support remained some of the best. One primary reason was that the FACs could call for and approve air strikes on their own, without interference from the chain of command. As Flanagan put it, “What Delta wanted, Delta got.” This policy undoubtedly saved many U.S. and Vietnamese lives. It remains a long-standing Special Forces operational concept.

  Delta’s Air Force attachments were quality men who risked their lives whenever Recon or Ranger operations were underway. Beyond FAC pilots, the Air Force also provided a Tactical Air Control Party (TACP) consisting of two officers, one or two enlisted radio operators (ROMADS) and a communications jeep with FM, VHF, UHF and a powerful HF/SSB (single side band radio). Airman Rudy Bishop, AF ROMAD, was assigned to Project Delta for most of its existence. Unlike some aviation support elements Delta periodically used, the FACs and their support personnel lived with and were integrated into Project Delta, deploying to the FOB each time Delta elements went to the field. The desperate calls over their radios for help weren’t just nameless voices; these were men the FAC pilots and ROMADS knew intimately. Delta’s FAC pilots braved enemy gunfire on countless occasions to get them safely out of harm’s way; a young ROMADS Airman would be sitting in the back seat every time.

  In mid-1966, Airman Alfred Montez was assigned to the Tactical Air Control Party at Project Delta Headquarters in Nha Trang. Upon his arrival, he was given two sets of jungle fatigues, a handgun, and canvas jungle boots. Familiar only with Air Force personnel, he was shocked by the Special Ops guys. At the airstrip, a mean-looking, muscle-bound sergeant picked him up in a battered jeep and told him to report to the gentleman in charge of supply for the rest of his equipment. The stocky sergeant des
cribed the unit supply sergeant as a happy, very gentle E-7. Arriving for his new issue of clothing, Montez said he was met by a blond, shirtless, loud, vulgar sergeant who “made my asshole pucker up.” According to Montez, the big guy spoke to him harshly, as if he already disliked him intensely, though they’d never met. The big blond guy contemptuously tossed him a rucksack, three sets of tiger fatigues, a knife, machete, web belt and harness, two canteens with covers, field bandages, four ammo pouches, poncho and liner, field sweater and two floppy hats. Blondie’s snarled advice had been, “Take good care of it. I’ll expect it all back in the same condition when you leave—that is, if you don’t get killed.”

  When Montez reached his room, he discovered his new roommate had dumped all his stuff onto the floor—all except for his rifle.

  “Who the f_ _ _ are you going to kill with that?” Herb growled at him.

  It seemed everywhere Montez went someone wanted to bust his balls. Finally, he ran into an honest-to-god Air Force man, 1LT John Flanagan. Even Flanagan’s demeanor seemed abrasive. He wondered if the Army might rub off on him, too.