Blind Bat, Yellowbirds, Willy the Whale
"Night Intruders" on Uncle Ho's trail
Introduction
The December 2004 edition of Military Officer magazine summoned all former Blind Bats to Biloxi, Mississippi, from April 28-30, 2005, for a "Batfest" reunion. "Blind Bats"? What?
Well, that's what I wanted to know.
The journey to learn about the Blind Bats is a journey back through history to the beginnings of the Vietnam War, to a time when secretive, covert US military operations were going on with a greater assortment of oddball aircraft and daring crews than you can shake a stick at.
Blind Bat is the callsign for C-130A Hercules flareships that lit up the skies of the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos and southern North Vietnam. During the early years, the Blind Bat flew with two B-57 bombers, callsign either Yellowbird or Redbird, and a Marine Corps Douglas EF-10B Skynight fighter aircraft reconfigured for an electronic countermeasures (ECM) mission, redesignated the F3D-2Q, and redesignated again the EF-10B, "Willy the Whale."
The scenario was this.
The foursome of "Night Intruders" (shown in the Keith Ferris art piece at the opening) flew into North Vietnam and Laos searching for enemy supply convoys on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Blind Bat did most of the spotting, dropped flares to light up that entire portion of the trail where she found targets, Willy the Whale jammed any fire control radar that might pose a threat to the flights, and the Yellowbirds-Redbirds dove in to destroy the targets.
This is one view of northern Laos. Left center, you see a village huddled on the flank of a ridge. This kind of geography surrounds a broad plain, known as the Plain de Jars, or PDJ. This particular shot is close to the Chinese border.
At the time, and for many years thereafter, the Night Intruders conducted very secret American operations. Initially, CIA operatives were giving the orders, sending the Night Intruders up to northern Laos to interdict North Vietnamese supplies as they crossed into Laos. Politically, their operations were secret, for a wide variety of legal and practical reasons, not the least of which was that American aircraft were coming perilously close to China.
Starting in 1965, these missions began flying more to the south, away from China, into North Vietnam and the eastern stretches of Laos, known as the Panhandle.
It's important, especially for younger readers, to understand the history of this war's origins. The following are highlights from that history that impacted the Blind Bat operation directly.
Air power
From Eisenhower through Kennedy, air power dominated the US commitment to Indochina. With Eisenhower, the US had just emerged from a major ground war on the Korean peninsula, and there was little stomach for another. Ground forces were used in the early days of the Vietnam War, but only to assist the South Vietnamese in taking the fight to the enemy. It was not until Johnson that ground forces came to dominate the commitment, supported by a significant commitment of air power.
Secrecy
Kennedy was very public about his moral commitment to freedom in Vietnam, but held everything very close to the chest about his resource commitment. Kennedy's war in Vietnam was a secret war, run without Congressional approval and without any detailed knowledge of the American people, at a time when most Americans worried deeply about the spread of communism and all-out nuclear war with the Soviet Union. A lot of the secrecy continued into the Johnson administration, until the ground force commitment had grown so much that dead and wounded soldiers began to stream home.
Ho Chi Minh Trail
The Ho Chi Minh Trail to move supplies into South Vietnam through Laos became the logistics lifeline for the North Vietnamese and Vietcong enemies operating in South Vietnam. US policy was to make this logistics flow the number one target, in part because it was felt air power could stop the flow, in part because the flow had to be stopped for South Vietnamese ground forces to prevail. Communist forces had been using what was then known as the Truong Son Route since at least 1959 to infiltrate men and materiel through Laos into South Vietnam. Not only was it a lifeline, but it also served as a basing area and a sanctuary in Laos for staging operations into South Vietnam. While the trail was America's number one target early in the war, it was the highest national priority for the North Vietnamese throughout the war. They made an enormous, incalculable investment in it, most especially in terms of human resources.
Night operations
The architects of this supply line understood they had the cover of a dense, seemingly impenetrable jungle. There were only two sections of the trail that were easily visible from the sky. The enemy knew that a thick jungle canopy would not be good enough. They needed the additional cover of night.
It is with this background that in late 1964 a detachment of C-130A aircraft from the 21st Troop Carrier Squadron (TCS) equipped with aluminum flare launchers and wooden bins for flares left home base at Naha, Okinawa and arrived at Da Nang Air Base (AB), South Vietnam, affectionately known to the troops who lived there as "Rocket City." The base was close to North Vietnam and the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
The C-130s came to Vietnam to support air interdiction missions against the truck resupply efforts from North Vietnam into South Vietnam, through Laos, against the now-famous Ho Chi Minh Trail. Their mission was to spot truck convoy targets at night, alert attack aircraft, and dispense flares to illuminate the target area so the attack aircraft could find and strike their targets. Officially, the C-130s were assigned to the 6315th Operations Group in Naha, Okinawa, Japan and were designated as troop carriers. At that time, the 6315th was made up of the 21st Troop Carrier Squadron (TCS), 35th TCS, 817th TCS at Naha, and the 815th TCS at Tachikawa AB, Japan.
The 21st TCS is a particularly interesting outfit, a study unto its own. Its crews, along with aircraft and crews from the other squadrons, flew the flareships out of Da Nang.
The 21st TCS represented the kind of secretive military employments that were a hallmark of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.
In 1958, the USAF decided to establish a C-130A squadron at Naha Base, Okinawa, to support classified missions for the CIA. The 21st TCS moved from Tachikawa, Japan, to Naha for that purpose. From 1959 -1960, and from 1961-1962, CIA Air America crews flew 21st TCS C-130As to Tibet to airdrop supplies to Tibetan guerrillas. The aircraft were flown from Naha to Takhli Royal Thai Air Force Base (RTAFB), stripped of all markings, and then flew across Burma to Tibet. After returning to Takhli, the markings were reapplied, and the aircraft then returned to Naha.
Then, in August 1960, four C-130As were transferred to a special detachment within the 21st TCS, which in 1961 came to be known as "E-Flight," to fly special supply missions to Laos, Tibet, and over China, the latter missions air dropping agents into China. These aircraft were later transferred to Takhli RTAFB, where Air America crews flew supplies to Laos and ferried Thai Army troops into Laos to fight against the Pathet Lao, thought to be communist guerrillas.
In sum, the 21st TCS was mightily involved in secret operations throughout Southeast Asia. Let's return to the Blind Bat mission.
Go to Blind Bat C-130 flareship
Click to zoom graphic-photo
