A M551 Sheridan battle tank being landed using LAPES.
C-130B 61-0967 in the 774th TAS, which suffered an engine failure upon landing at Khê Sanh on Saturday 13th April 1968 and veered off the runway, striking cargo pallets and several vehicles before coming to rest. A fire then erupted.
‘We were up bright and early at 4:00 the next morning for the mission. In the briefing, we and seven other crews were told that we would be dropping CDS loads and heavy equipment in the morning and then return in the afternoon and drop again after C-123s had air landed other equipment. As a result of the damage done to the drop force the previous day, we would be escorted by fighters who were to provide ground attack capability to support us.
‘There would be a radar beacon on the drop zone to help us locate it and drop. The air force had an all-weather drop capability using such a beacon, in which the drop was made with a combination of a distance check mark at two miles as indicated on our airborne radar and a forward and cross-check countdown using the airborne Doppler. The other crews in the formation, which were all Pacific Air Force (PACAF) units, were told to use the allweather system if necessary to complete their drop. Because we were a TAC crew and not PACAF, we were told that we could only drop visually, even though we were also checked out in the all-weather procedures. We just hadn’t been checked out in them by PACAF.
‘As we were pre-flighting the aircraft and getting ready to take off, I paused to consider that I was now, after four years in this war, going to be involved in a combat airdrop in the face of hostile fire that in the past week had shot down one C-130 and damaged over ten. How in the hell did I get myself in this predicament?
‘Fortunately, there was not a long time within which one could contemplate such sentiments. We took off for the mission at 6:25 am and were the number two aircraft in a flight of eight. Each plane took off at fifteen minute increments from the one preceding it and flew north toward the drop zone. When we got close to the A Shau Valley, we made contact with the ALCE at Đà Nẵng. They told us that the valley was weathered in and that the radar beacon on the drop zone was not yet operational. All eight aircraft went into a holding pattern at 500-foot altitude intervals using a bearing and distance off the Đà Nẵng Tactical Air Navigation (TACAN) station.
‘After an hour in the holding pattern, Đà Nẵng informed us that weather in the valley was a broken undercast at drop altitude but that the beacon was now working and the formation was cleared for drops at five minute intervals. The first airplane called back that it was leaving its drop altitude and proceeding to air drop. Five minutes later, we did the same. As we descended toward the valley and the much lower drop altitude, I could see the escorting F-4 fighters far above us and off to the side. They had problems staying with us and providing any kind of covering fire due to our slow (130K) drop airspeed. It was the only view of them that any of us had for the rest of the day.
‘When we departed the orbit and began descending to airdrop altitude, we lost contact with Đà Nẵng; but we switched to another frequency and immediately got contact with the drop zone. My radar was in good condition and I shortly picked up the beacon, which we then used to establish our distance from the drop zone and heading into it. We had descended toward our 400-foot drop altitude above the terrain when the drop zone notified the first aircraft that its drop was half a mile beyond the DZ. Something was evidently wrong, as a CDS drop should be much closer to the desired point of impact than that.
The encirclement of Khê Sanh meant that there was no safe corridor for the transport aircraft to use for their approach. Any descent towards the airstrip attracted heavy fire from enemy weapons, ranging from infantry small arms up to 12.7mm heavy machine guns and larger calibre anti-aircraft cannon. In order to minimise the risks posed by these hazardous conditions, the transport crews perfected the manoeuvre that came to be known as the ‘Khê Sanh Approach’. [you prob won’t get the rest in] A standard landing approach towards a runway would consist of a constant, controlled descent at a shallow angle, but the surrounding hills and risk of enemy fire forced the crews to keep their large, comparatively unwieldy transports at a much higher level for longer in order to stay out of range of small-arms and present a smaller target to the larger-calibre weapons. Then, as the aircraft approached the end of the runway, the pilot would drop the nose and put the aircraft into a steep dive, levelling out only at the very last moment. From here, the pilot could either land or make a very low-level pass along the runway at an altitude of about five feet, dropping the supplies out of the open rear cargo doors along the way. The pilot would then pull up sharply at the far end of the runway and execute a steep climb out of the valley, helped by the fact that the plane was now much lighter, having deposited its load.
A near miss during Operation ‘Niagara’.
‘At 400 feet above ground level (agl), we were in and out of sparse, wispy clouds. It was now after 8:00 am; but due to the mountains surrounding the A Shau, dawn was just breaking. The clouds were thicker below drop altitude and we had only intermittent views of the ground as we approached the drop zone. At two minutes out from drop time, we were level and at drop altitude. We were also on centreline of the radar beacon and moving toward the two mile marker. The CDS load in the back had been unlocked for airdrop and the rear ramp and door were open. So far, we hadn’t seen any visual signs that might assist us in finding or identifying the DZ. We were in the clear at drop altitude, but below us there were still dense, scattered clouds. A dirt road appeared on the ground; but it was gone again, obscured by the clouds.
‘The marker beacon return appeared at the two mile distance on the radar. I turned the Doppler to the preset course and distance module for the airdrop and returned to looking out the window for the DZ. We were one minute from airdrop. I couldn’t see anything on the ground but broken clouds. No DZ. No panel marked impact point. Nothing.
‘The Doppler and the radar indicated that we had reached the desired drop position. I hacked my watch. We could still see nothing as the watch counted down in seconds. Just as the watch reached the point where I must call ‘Red Light’ to terminate the airdrop at the far end of the DZ, Ron Hardy called, ‘Do you see that smoke?’ I looked down and to the right of where he pointed. There was one wisp of coloured smoke among the broken wisps of cloud. ‘Green Light,’ I called. Out goes the load. The airplane, relieved of the several thousand pounds of cargo, surged upward as Daly began to gain altitude and turn to the escape heading.
Supplies dropped by C-130s drift towards men of the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), 101st Airborne Division in the A Shau Valley in April 1968. For nine days beginning on 26 April the C-130s flew 165 sorties and dropped 2,300 tons, most of it ammunition. One Hercules was lost to NVA ground fire and four others received major battle damage. (US Army)
‘I went back to my desk to record the values I had used to estimate the drop and looked in the radar to see where we were, generally. Except for a small hole and a few returns in the centre of the scope, everything else was black. We were on a collision course with something.
‘I threw the radar range out from the five miles it had been set on for the drop to twenty. I turned the elevation of the radar up a degree or two. Normally, the elevation is set a degree or two below the nose of the aircraft. We were in a 100 degree turn from the drop heading, which was near 360 degrees north, to the planned escape heading of 260 degrees. When I reconfigured the radar, the first clear space that I saw on it was near 230 degrees. Everything else remained black, even though we were climbing as best we could. I immediately hit the interphone and said, ‘Joe, climb as quick as you can and turn to a heading of 210 degrees.’ It was evident from my voice tone that we were in deep kimshy, as the Koreans say.
‘Slowly, as if every second were an eternity, we climbed and turned. At last, after what seemed like a millennium, the clear space on the radar began to expand. Now I called for a heading of 200. The clear area was growing greater by the minute as we turned to
ward it. Relieved, I pulled my head out of the rubber cover that surrounded the radar scope and looked up into the cockpit. Weiss was sitting, turned 90 degrees in his engineer’s seat and looking at me with eyes as wide and white as giant sized dollars. Following his eyes, I looked out the cockpit window behind Ron Hardy’s seat. The cloud layer was now below us and straight ahead and on all sides just below was nothing but dense treetops and forest. The right wing looked as if it was 50 feet or so above the top of the jungle and the lateral distance to the jungle also appeared to be 50 feet. Individual leaves and branches of trees could be seen as we turned away from and above a mountainside. We had just missed becoming a permanent navigation aid on the mountain.
‘We flew back to Cam Ranh and landed at 10:35. They had questions about our drop and indicated that it landed long or far beyond, the drop zone. Joe and I testified to the weather conditions and what had happened from our point of view. Ron Hardy swore to everything that we said. Nothing was said as to what happened to the drops of the planes behind us. There had been no reports of aircraft damage or firing from the morning drops. Father Charley had moved out of his spider holes on the approach, or the morning weather had kept him from seeing us as much as it kept us from seeing the DZ.
‘We got new information (weight and chutes) about the load that we were going to drop in the afternoon. Again it was a CDS load, but the weather forecast for the second drop was different from that expected for the morning. We went back to the airplane and got ready for our next sortie. For the afternoon drop, we were again number two in a drop formation of eight C-130s. But ahead of us in use of the A Shau DZ and runway were ten C-123s which were to land and offload palletized cargo. Once the runway was cleared of the C-123s and their loads, we would be cleared to airdrop our CDS.
‘We left Cam Ranh at 25 minutes after noon and proceeded to the orbit point off Đà Nẵng. When we got there, we were directed by the Đà Nẵng ALCE to once again get into orbit with the remainder of the C-130 force and hold with 500-foot separation until cleared to begin dropping. The weather in the valley had deteriorated, even from the broken conditions which had existed in the morning. The C-123s had not been able to land at the scheduled times. When they did begin to land, the third aircraft landed and blew a tyre on the runway. That put a stop to all further landing attempts while a ground crew tried to locate and put a new tyre on the damaged aircraft.
‘We stayed in orbit for an hour. The damaged C-123 was still on the runway down in the valley. Whether they were having trouble getting the load off the aircraft and then changing the tyre or just changing the tyre, we had no idea. We could talk to the Đà Nẵng ALCE, but not to the army in the A Shau. The ALCE could relay anything we had to say to the army and vice-versa, but we could not all communicate with each other. The weather in orbit was broken. We were in and out of clouds 50 percent of the time. The other 50 percent, it was clear at our altitude and for a thousand or so feet below; but below that it was completely undercast.
‘Suddenly, as we turned one corner of the orbit, out of the clouds came an army Flying Crane (CH54) helicopter. He was exactly at our altitude and turned broadside to us. He was there five seconds and probably never saw us; then he disappeared into the clouds and was gone. Ron Hardy immediately contacted Đà Nẵng to tell them that our orbit had been penetrated by a giant helicopter. ‘Roger’ came the reply. ‘Be advised we have no contact with them.’ ‘Roger,’ Hardy shot back. ‘Hope we don’t either.’
A C-130 drops supplies to US Marines at Khê Sanh in April 1968. (USAF)
‘As our second hour in orbit arrived, several of the other C-130s began to call Đà Nẵng and we all could listen in on the conversations. Some of them had heavy equipment loads rather than CDS and thus had different weights and fuel loads than we did. One said that if we didn’t get drop clearance soon he would have to return to Cam Ranh or Đà Nẵng to refuel. The remainder of the C-123s vacated their orbit and returned home due to low fuel. Their part of the mission was over. The ALCE listened to all the comments and said little except that they would pass them on; they weren’t in charge of the airdrop, they were merely its message relay. Although some officer in the C-130s may have outranked anyone else in the formation, neither he nor anyone else was designated in command of the formation.
‘My radar was still working well and from our orbit I had a very good radar picture of the A Shau Valley below. The north and west of the valley were bounded by steep and relatively high karst mountains that rose steeply from the valley floor. As the afternoon wore on, I could see clouds form behind those mountains and slowly build over them. By the third hour in orbit, it was becoming clear that the cloud formations were building and merging and slowly moving over the mountains and into the valley itself. Đà Nẵng ALCE was told of this impending weather, but again it could do nothing more than pass on the message.
On Tuesday 18 April 1968 C-130E 63-7775 of Detachment 1 in the 374th TAW at Tân Sơn Nhứt flown by Captain Donald B. ‘Doc’ Jensen was hit by automatic weapons fire west of An Lộc on approach to An Lôc at 200 feet as it climbed to commence the final run in to drop its load of ammunition to South Việtnamese troops. The FAC was unaware of their mission and told them where to drop their load, by way of an unsecure radio transmission, which could have been picked up by the NVA. They were supposed to follow a B-52 bombing mission, which would have kept the NVA quiet, but they were not told whether that the mission had ever taken place and a two-fighter escort the plane should have had, to protect it from the inevitable heavy ground fire they would attract, failed to materialise. The C-130’s starboard wing caught fire and the load had to be jettisoned. Jensen headed south in the hope of reaching Tân Sơn Nhứt but he had to crash-land the aircraft in a swamp near Lai Khê where all the crew were recovered by Army helicopters.
On 26 April 1968 C-130E 64-0548 commanded by Captain Joseph L. Hannah departed Đà Nẵng Air Base with 14,616 lbs of empty sandbags at 1245 hours for Khê Sanh to perform a free fall Container Delivery drop. Due to rapid fluctuations of the weather during the day, Hannah selected to remain under control of Huế Approach Control and Khê Sanh GCA until visual, then proceed with drop at west end of runway 28. After the arrival of the aircraft, the first GCA was broken off at 7 miles and 4,000 feet due to weather going below minimum. Hannah was cleared to hold at 6,000 feet. After holding approximately 30 minutes, he was advised the weather was improving and was asked if he wished to perform another GCA. Hannah accepted the GCA and was proceeding with a normal GCA until ½ mile from touchdown when asked if he had drop zone in sight. He replied negative. Hannah was told the course was straight ahead (he was slightly below glide path) and shortly thereafter advised he was over end of runway and was asked did he have the drop zone in sight. There was no reply. 64-0548 had impacted about 150 feet short of the approach end of the runway, bounced and slid 800 feet down the runway. The aircraft was completely destroyed by impact and fire. Six of the seven crew sustained fatal injuries and Hannah sustained minor injury.
‘Shortly thereafter, ALCE called and said that the airdrop was cancelled and we should return to Cam Ranh. It had begun to rain in the valley. Nothing further was said of the C-123. As one C-130 left orbit for the return, he called into ALCE and let them know that the entire effort with regard to A Shau had been ‘a Goddamned disaster.’
‘Roger. Copy,’ was the reply. We landed at Cam Ranh at 4:25 and went to dinner and back to our rooms. We hadn’t been shot at or hit, but the day had been a long and unrewarding experience nonetheless.’
The 1st Cavalry Division commander during Operation ‘Delaware/Lam Son 216’ described the Hercules effort as ‘one of the most magnificent displays of airmanship that I have ever seen.’ A rebuilt A Lưới airstrip received its first transport aircraft on 2 May and before heavy rains turned it to mud on the 11th, USAF Caribous, C-123s and C-130s made 113 landings, more than half by the Hercules.
Members of the 101st Airborne Division being evacuated aboard
a USAF C-130 at Pham Thiết Air Base, a coastal port city in Southeast Việtnam.
Equally spectacular was the evacuation of the extremely remote US Special Forces camp (designated A-105J) at Khâm Đức. This mountain post was situated on a narrow plain surrounded by dense forest and the Annamite Mountains, 55 miles west of Chu Lai. The camp had been occupied by US and ARVN Special Forces since September 1963. By the spring of 1968 it was the last remaining border camp in Military Region 1 still in American hands. The camp’s only contact with the main operating bases was by air and had an airstrip that could take C-123s and C-130s. Five miles to the south was a small forward operating base at Ngoc Tavak defended by just over 100 men. In the early hours of 10 May the outpost was attacked by an NVA infantry battalion using mortars and rockets. Fierce fighting continued as night turned into day and two Marine Corps CH-46s were lost attempting to extract the survivors. The North Việtnamese also began a simultaneous mortar attack on Khâm Đức. Reinforcements were brought in by helicopter throughout the 11th despite enemy fire and low-lying fog. The enemy assault intensified in the early-hours of the 12th and the perimeter defences were soon overrun. A massive enemy assault on the main compound started around noon but this was thwarted by accurate and devastating air strikes. However, it became obvious that the situation was hopeless and the decision was taken to evacuate the camp by helicopter and transport aircraft. At first General Westmoreland had decided to reinforce and hold Khâm Đức. Later in the day, it was decided to abandon the base and use tactical transport planes to land and take the forces there to safety. In the confusion caused by the surprise attack on the base and the complete change in the US Air Force mission to save and then evacuate the camp, chaos reigned. Air strikes went ahead as the first C-130 landed during the morning: it received heavy battle damage and left hurriedly, carrying only three soldiers, fuel streaming from holes and tyres ripped to shreds.
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