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Re: (Airlifters) 44 Years Ago
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Sam McGowan
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Nov 22, 2008 10:54 PST
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Actually John, I did. A long time ago I wrote a full manuscript of my experiences in the Air Force from basic training through the day I drove out of the main gate at Dover. But I thought about it and decided the story really wasn't about me, but was about the mission. I suggested to my friend Bob Dorr that he write a book about the troop carrier mission and he came back and said "why don't you do it?" I had given Bob some information for a book he wrote on the air war against North Vietnam. I got a clearance to go into the Air Force historical records since I spent a lot of time in DC but then I found out that Ray Bowers had written the official history of the tactical airlift mission in SEA and it was about to be published. I put a letter in AIR FORCE magazine asking for C-130 veterans to contribute and heard from a number of people such as John Butterfield, Frank Gawell and Dan Reider (who I finally met in 2005 just before he passed away a few months later.) I soon had enough material that I didn't have to go into the archives, which was probably a good thing since a lot of things were still classified at the time and they would probably have blacked out my notes. One particular treasure was the account about the role the C-130 crews played in the POW release in Hanoi since it had never been made public.
I wasn't happy with the title the publisher gave and there are some errors in the finished product, namely in terms of some aircraft numbers. I used a list I found at the USAF Museum and Lars Olausson's material, which was less complete then than it is now.
All in all, though, I was pretty pleased with the finished product. I did have one problem though. Presido Press put out a book about the same time by Moe Morrison called C-130, the Hercules and even though it was totally different from mine, it got wider notice. Mine was in B. Dalton but a lot of other bookstores didn't carry it. It sold about 2,500 copies and they're pretty hard to find now, and if you can they can cost a bundle.
Sam
----- Original Message -----
From: John Reves
To: airli-@topica.com ; Herkybirds ; 464th TCW ; tctaam-@troopcarrier.org
Sent: Saturday, November 22, 2008 10:40 AM
Subject: Re: (Airlifters) 44 Years Ago
Qute a yarn, Sam, and very interesting. You should make an account of all your experieces and memories in book form.
Meanwhile, happy T day everyone!!
John
----- Original Message -----
From: Sam McGowan
To: Herkybirds ; Airlifters ; 464th TCW ; tctaam-@troopcarrier.org
Sent: Friday, November 21, 2008 8:42 PM
Subject: (Airlifters) 44 Years Ago
Today is November 21. Forty-four years ago I was a young Airman Second Class loadmaster trainee at Pope AFB, NC. A little over a week earlier I had laid awake late on Saturday night listening to the Grand Old Opry on my transistor radio in my room in the aircrew barracks until the wee hours of the morning. I was in the 779th TCS but lived in an 778th room along with Carl Edison and Charles Zelinski. They were both TDY to France and I had the room to myself.
I had barely gone to sleep when the alert siren started going off and the telephone down the hall started ringing. I jumped out of bed and into my flight suit and grabbed my mobility bag and headed for the squadron. I don't remember for sure how we got there, but I imagine a bunch of us jumped into Paul Thompson's Ford. Since it was Sunday morning rather than a weekday, we had a pretty good idea the alert was for real even though we'd been having practice alerts in anticipation of the wing's upcoming ORI for some time.
As soon as we got to the squadron we started on the callout list. Since we lived in the barracks onbase we were the first to arrive, along with a few younger officers who lived in the BOQ. I was still in student status and was on a crew made up of students. When I called the engineer assigned to our crew, Don Mayer, he accused me of playing a joke on him! Like a lot of other people, he'd stayed late at the club on Saturday night and was barely asleep when I called. It took a couple of calls before I finally convinced him it was for real.
During a practice alert once everyone had assembled the wing command post would eventually call down and cancel the alert and everyone would be released. This time was different. Instead of sending everyone home, crews were sent to the flight line and assigned to airplanes. It had become pretty obvious that the wing was really going somewhere this time and most of us had a pretty good idea where. For several weeks the newspapers had been carrying stories about the hostages held by Simba rebels in the Congo, and we assumed the alert had something to do with that.
Once the squadron realized the alert was for real, the senior loadmaster, TSgt Virgil Nelson, went to the squadron commander, Lt. Col. Gibney, and asked that the student loadmasters be assigned to crews to go on the mission. Col. Gibney thought about it but decided it was against regulations since no one knew where the crews were going and we weren't designated as combat ready. The regs were clear that only qualified aircrew members designated as combat ready were allowed on combat missions. (As it turned out, some of the other squadron commanders interpreted the regs differently and some of our buddies in the other squadrons did go out with crews with instructor loadmasters.)
Those of us who hadn't gone felt sort of left out as every airplane on the base - literally - departed for parts unknown. The only airplanes that didn't go were the ones in maintenance. The flight line was practically deserted, as was the squadron. After a few days the CTU decided to send out a navigational training mission to Bermuda with one of the airplanes that had been in periodic maintenance. There wasn't a single qualified loadmaster left on the base but someone, I don't remember who, decided that since I was on flying status and a qualified C-130 aircraft mechanic, I got fly as scanner. It was the first time I ever went out by myself as part of a flight crew.
The alert was on Sunday morning the week prior to Thanksgiving week. The entire wing had departed on a classified mission and no one knew where they had gone. We thought they had headed for Africa to drop the 82nd, but as it turned out, 464th airplanes were scattered all over the Atlantic and Europe, where they went to replace the Pope rotational squadron at Evreux, France which had actually been assigned to a rescue mission.
The Pope rote squadron did fly the mission on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I won't go into the details here. If anyone wants to read about it, go to my home page at www.sammcgowan.com/home.html and click on the Airlift History link and you'll find a link to an account of the mission.
We found out either later that day or the following morning that our guys had dropped Belgian troops on the airport at Stanleyville and as the word spread around the base, pandemonium broke out. The only time I had seen such excitement had been one night in the base theater when we were watching the first movie to be made about Vietnam - it was actually made in Vietnam - and a formation of C-123s had dropped ARVN troops to rescue the hero. Talk about proud! There is a web site called Talking Proud but they don't even know what the word really means!. That had to have been the most exciting day in troop carrrier history, at least in the post-World War II period. Our very own guys, our friends and instructors and in my case, my roommates, had flown a heroic mission and had saved the lives of people who had been held hostage simply because of the color of their skins.
When the newspapers came out the following day, the excitement turned to a dark mood as a general feeling of hatred toward our brothers in MATS emerged. The New York Times and other papers had carried headlines that read "MATS RESCUES HOSTAGES!" Bullcrap! Those airplanes weren't MATS!! They were TAC C-130Es assigned to the 464th Troop Carrier Wing - OUR WING! MATS played no role whatsoever. And in truth, MATS hadn't. Although the airplanes and crews were TDY to 322nd Air Division which had recently transferred to MATS, they had been sent on a mission for USAFE and once they reached Africa, they came under the control of Strike Command, of which Tactical Air Command was one element. Even the 5th APS loadmasters and combat controllers and 322nd AD command personnel who had gone on the mission had switched to Strike Command control for the mission. We were not just mad, we were incensed! We were so incensed that Charlie Watkins, an engineer in the 776th, called up a the Pentagon and blessed out a general. I'm not sure where Charlie was when he made his call. I don't think he was at Pope but was somewhere out on the road and made his call on the AUTOVON line.
On Thanksgiving Day we found out that our guys had done it again that morning while we were still sleeping. They had dropped the Belgians at Paulis and effected another rescue. That was just icing on the cake.
A few days later the crews that had gone out started coming back in, and we started hearing stories about things that had happened. One was about a friend ours in OMS named Slackerman who had run afoul of the new line chief TAC had sent down to Pope from Lockbourne to straighten out flight line maintenance. The OMS troops called him Be No, because the first thing he had told him was that "there will be no 3-day passes," "there'll be no more time-off," etc. and etc. "until maintenance is straightened out." I don't remember what Slackerman had done or if he had already lost his stripes or if he lost them for what he did, but he came into the open bay barracks where they all staying at a base somewhere, possibly Lajes, and pissed all over Be No Young! Another story was how the guys who flew the mission hadn't had a bath in days and when a thunderstorm came up, they all stripped off their flight suits and fatigues and ran out naked into the rain with bars of soap for the bath they'd had since they left Ascension Island on the way to Africa.
I'd like to have been a fly on the wall in the Officers and NCO Clubs at Sewart and Langley to hear the conversations there about what the Pope crews had done. The Sewart and Langley guys were the C-130 vets, but Pope had only had Herks for less than two years. The 464th had kicked off the Vietnam War with their C-123s with assistance from the Sewart C-123 squadron (which transferred to Pope.) Now they had flown a spectacular headline making mission in Africa.
Regardless of what folks thought at the other TAC bases - and the MATS bases for that matter - there is only one word to describe the emotion at Pope and it is spelled P-R-O-U-D!
Sam McGowan
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