‍Blind Bat, Yellowbirds, Willy the Whale

‍"Night Intruders" on Uncle Ho's trail

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‍Blind Bat on Uncle Ho’s Trails

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‍Everyone involved with the Ho Chi Minh Trail had a very tough job. The North Vietnamese transportation system was manpower-intensive and primitive, yet quite effective. US bombing it caused hardship on the enemy, but bombs could not close the trail.

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‍During 1965 and 1966, American air operations against the trail were a top priority. We'll show you three photos, two of a location called "Foxtrot," which was not frequently attacked (a decision was made to attack only certain sections of the trail where planners thought they could get the best bounce for the ounce), and the third of "Alpha," which as you will see was persistently attacked.

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‍This area of the trail was known as "Foxtrot,” which was not frequently attacked. The photo was taken in January 1966. The road comes down from the top (north) on the west side of the river. Shortly beyond the bottom of the picture, the road meets up with Route 9 and heads east through Tchepone, Laos, a major North Vietnamese logistics center.

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‍This is Interdiction Point Alpha in central Laos. Experts tell me that there is a fresh bomb crater on the road just below the center of the picture. However, trucks had already driven over the fresh dirt between the two segments of the road, now covered by the debris.  This illustrates that closing the road with general-purpose bombs was almost impossible unless the road had to pass between tight confines forced by karst, steep mountains, and rivers. After 10-20 trucks had packed down the earth alongside the crater, a new segment of the Trail had been created, and it was as if the crater had been a near miss instead of a direct hit. In addition, thousands of laborers supported the Trail. They would come out almost immediately to move aside downed trees or fill in minor craters—photo and interpretation presented by Jimmie Butler.

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‍It is clear from reading accounts of prisoners and defectors that the US attacks against the Trail made life very miserable for those charged with moving those supplies and repairing the Trail. That said, this transportation system was a top priority for the North Vietnamese as well, so as time went by, they devoted more and more firepower to defending it, they developed increasingly more sophisticated techniques and tactics, either to hide, or to repair, or to counter incoming attacks, and they kept feeding the Trail with more and more supplies and more and more people.

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‍Sam McGowan speculates that the North Vietnamese understood the role being played by the flareships in their early days.

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‍He has noted that on July 1, 1965, an enemy mortar and sapper attack against Da Nang AB appeared to have been aimed at the three C-130 flareships parked on the ramp. Two aircraft were destroyed, and a third was damaged. These were the first C-130 aircraft ever lost to enemy action.

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‍Air interdiction of the trail had a higher priority than going after strategic targets in North Vietnam so that the flareships could move farther away from North Vietnam. They were transferred to Ubon Royal Thai Air Force Base (RTAFB) in Thailand. This air base was located in eastern Thailand and is shown on this map.

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‍This was the home of the famed 8th Tactical Fighter Wing (TFW), the “Wolf Pack," mostly F-4 Phantoms, but the base also hosted several tenant units well-suited to combat operations against the Trail. It was a safer place to be than in Vietnam. Ubon was strategically located for attacking the Ho Chi Minh Trail, situated close to the Laotian border (40 miles away) and near the Trail itself. 

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‍Memories vary, but the crews operated 6-8 Blind Bat C-130A aircraft flying four missions every night from Ubon.

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‍When the flareships moved to Ubon, they formally took on the callsigns Blind Bat and Lamplighter. Blind Bat missions operated against the trail in Laos while Lamplighter missions continued into North Vietnam. C-130 operations in North Vietnam became increasingly more difficult as North Vietnamese air defenses improved, and in 1967, Lamplighter had to stop going into the North.

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‍Another change occurred with the move to Ubon. Now the Blind Bats started going out on their own. The Airborne Battlefield Command and Control Center (ABCCC), also a C-130, was on station, one over southern and another over northern Laos 24/7. The ABCCC would allot a certain number of strike sorties to the Blind Bats using whatever aircraft were suited to the task and available.

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‍By 1966, the trail's defense had increased substantially, and certain strategic sections were heavily defended, first by non-radar-controlled guns, like the 37 mm, then by radar-controlled guns, including the 57 mm and even the 85 mm.

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‍This daylight picture shows some of the 130 trucks photographed on February 9, 1967, just north of the border with Laos in the Mu Gia Pass on the Ho Chi Minh trail. Note, this is a daylight photo, and there are 130 trucks in the wide open. Why? Because President Johnson declared a truce during this period, and the North Vietnamese took advantage of these truces to move as much equipment down the trail as they could, in violation of the truce. 

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‍McGowan tells us that enemy flak was the most significant threat, most especially in and around the Mu Gia Pass along the North Vietnam-Laotian border, and the city of Tchepone in Laos. As a general rule, the pilots and navigators worked to stay clear of these guns, but this was an inexact science. Blind Bat crews saw their share of shooting, and pilots did a lot of rockin' and rollin' to avoid the flak. If you recall the flare kicking sequence, you can understand how the kickers and the loaders could be bounced around the rear of the aircraft when they were trying to kick flares and the pilot was trying to avoid flak.

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‍The Mu Gia Pass provided the primary routing for the roads that made up the Ho Chi Minh Trail. It has been described as the "most dominant geographic feature of the panhandle region." North of it, Route 15 meandered and wound its way through the upper level of the Annamite Mountains. Near the border, it dropped into a narrow canyon leading to a lower valley on the Laotian side. The pass itself presented the North Vietnamese with the threat of getting their convoys all boxed in if anything went wrong for them. It was a classic choke point. That is one reason it was so heavily defended.

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‍Not only did the Blind Bat crews have to find targets that had the cover of heavy foliage and darkness, but the attack aircraft available to them faced all kinds of restrictions on what they could attack. For example, Blind Bat might spot a convoy, illuminate the area, but by the time the attack aircraft arrived, the trucks had either ducked into a village, sometimes a fake one, or were off-limits to air attack. In addition, attack aircraft could strike targets on the trail only if the target was no more than 100 yards from the trail.

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‍This photo was taken by a forward air controller (FAC) named Jim Roper. It shows the “Falls” choke point on the Ho Chi Minh Trail in southern Laos. Roper said this about this photo: 

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‍"Choke points or IDPs (Interdiction Points) were heavily defended. The Falls had at least a dozen 23-mm and half a dozen 37-mm guns. They were most active at night during the dry season (Nov-April). They would let a maneuvering FAC make a daytime pass overhead at 3500' (and take this photo) because they believed their camouflage to be good.”

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‍The Blind Bats also had to work with different kinds of attacking aircraft, fast movers and slow movers, all of which required different tactics and procedures.

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‍Word on the street is the F4 Phantom, at the time employing dumb bombs, was ineffective against convoy targets, some say grossly ineffective. The F4 employing cluster bombs was more effective; it was like shooting a highly powered shotgun over a large area. These were especially effective at silencing gun emplacements that threatened the Blind Bat and other missions operating in the area. It turns out, and it is an argument for another day, that the "jet fighter leadership" of the USAF did everything it could to advocate the F4 for the mission against the trail. Still, everywhere you go, you find that the A-26 Nimrod was the aircraft of choice among those who flew up there and risked life and limb to find and destroy traffic on the trail.

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‍The Blind Bats much preferred the A-26 Nimrod flying out of nearby Nakhon Phanom RTAFB, Navy-Marine A-4s, and A-1Es. The A-26 was designed for night attacks; it carried a heavy load, often consisting of bombs, napalm, rockets, .50 caliber guns, and flares. Many of them were flown by Korean War vets experienced in the aircraft from that war. It had a good loiter time, could wait for targets to be pinpointed, and then could make some 12 passes over a target to do it in for sure.

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‍By war's end, two Blind Bat C-130s, both from the 41st Tactical Airlift Squadron (TAS), were shot down over Laos, one on May 22, 1968, and one on November 24, 1969.

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‍The grey line from Khe Sanh to Savannakhet is Route 9. Blind Bat 01 was lost in May 1968, near Muong Nong, south of Route 9. The November 1969 mission was lost somewhere near the red dot above Route 9. 

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‍The May 1968 mission, Blind Bat 01, departed Ubon RTAFB. Radio contact was lost while the aircraft was orbiting over Savannakhet Province, Laos, near the city of Muong Nong. There was no indication of trouble at that time. When the aircraft did not return to friendly control, the crew was declared Missing In Action from the time of estimated fuel exhaustion. There was no further word of the aircraft or its crew. 

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‍The November 1969 mission departed Ubon RTAFB on an operational mission over Laos. While orbiting at about 9,000 feet near Ban Bac, Savannakhet Province, Laos, the C-130 was observed to be struck by several rounds of 37mm anti-aircraft fire, burst into flames, crash to the ground about 15 miles west of Ban Talan, and explode on impact. All the crew were declared Missing in Action (MIA). 

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‍When the AC-130 gunship arrived in 1968, our forces had a most effective truck killer. It began to replace the Blind Bats, the latter of which were in many respects the forerunners of the AC-130. Equipment developed for the AC-130 was primarily based on lessons learned from the Blind Bats. The AC-130s, when they arrived, had a Blind Bat "encyclopedia" of knowledge and experience from which their crews could benefit as they went against the trail. The Blind Bat mission was terminated in 1969-70.

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‍Despite all its efforts, and many, many more I have not described, the US was not able to shut down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. There are many who assert the US "lost" the Vietnam War in part because of this.

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‍US military forces, mainly air forces, inflicted severe damage on the resources committed by the North Vietnamese. North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin served on the general staff of the North Vietnamese Army and received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. He has commented this way:

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‍"If (President) Johnson had granted (General) Westmoreland's requests to enter Laos and block the Ho Chi Minh trail (on the ground), Hanoi could not have won the war...it was the only way to bring sufficient military power to bear on the fighting in the South. Building and maintaining the trail was a huge effort involving tens of thousands of soldiers, drivers, repair teams, medical stations, and communication units. Attacks never compromised our operations on the trail. At times, accurate B-52 strikes would cause real damage, but we put so much in at the top of the trail that enough men and weapons to prolong the war always came out the bottom .... if all the bombing had been concentrated at one time, it would have hurt our efforts. But the bombing was expanded in slow stages under Johnson and it didn't worry us. We had plenty of time to prepare alternative routes and facilities. We always had stockpiles of rice ready to feed the people for months if a harvest was damaged." 

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‍This accounting is confirmed by captured Pathet Lao (Communist Laotian) Lieutenant Maniuvan, who traveled the trail and remained in the Tchepone area throughout most of 1966. He describes the elaborate logistics system employed on the trail. He also confirms the very high priority the North Vietnamese placed on keeping the pipeline open and active. North Vietnamese planners, no matter what investment had to be made, arranged for increased infiltration, sending in more manual workers, including more women, to construct more roads, repair damaged roads, and clear new trails. This was done despite the urgent need for these workers and the equipment they brought back home.

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‍Lt. Maniuvan told his interrogators that people were the only required line of equipment. Interdict five columns of them, and others would be brought in. They lived under the constant barrage of air strikes, in monsoon rains, with disease, rugged terrain, and meager rations.

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‍All that said, the motto of those workers was: "Better to die of hunger than to die of bombing." 

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‍Go to Blind Bat Forward Air Controller & Flareship

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