Read Online The Ravens: The True Story of a Secret War by Christopher Robbins - Free Book Online
Authors: Christopher Robbins
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It was everything he had hoped for. There had been moments when he had questioned and almost regretted volunteering for the Steve Canyon Program. Those who had stayed in Vietnam had said he was crazy to volunteer for an undefined mission - rumored to have a 50 percent casualty rate - in an unknown location. He was still apprehensive about the type of war that lay ahead, but one day in the secret city had convinced him he had made the right choice. At last he was among a different breed. He had come to the right place and found his own. Reviewing the last six months of his life in Vietnam, he was not sorry he had drawn the Chance card. And at daybreak he would fly into battle.
4. The Sacred Mountain
The mountain of Phou Pha Thi was a sacred place for all of the Meo, revered even by those who had never visited it but only heard the stories told by village elders and holy men. It was also of vital strategic importance to the Americans, who called it the Rock and considered it one of their most closely kept secrets. This powerful combination of sanctity and secrecy attracted the attention of the enemy, and led to one of the most curious battles of the war.
A natural fortress, the Rock was a razorback ridge 5,600 feet high, sheer on one side and heavily fortified on the other. A dirt landing strip seven hundred feet long had been cleared in the valley below, designated on aerial maps as Lima Site 85. The Rock held a number of secrets: three hundred Thai mercenaries and Meo guarded it, while Americans ‘in the black’ - that is, on a clandestine posting - from the USAF and Lockheed Aircraft Systems manned highly sophisticated navigational equipment which not only guided American bombers in northern Laos, but led them directly to downtown Hanoi. [13]
On paper it looked like the ideal spot. It was higher than anything around it and only 160 miles west of Hanoi. Although deep in enemy territory and only twenty-five miles from the Communist Pathet Lao capital of Sam Neua, it was considered impregnable to anything except a massed helicopter assault, which was beyond the enemy’s capabilities.
The Air Force had first installed a tactical air navigation system on top of the Rock in 1966, despite the objections of Ambassador William Sullivan, who thought the installation extremely unwise - an invitation to disaster. The men manning the site were in a location where they could not possibly be rescued if they were overrun, while the Rock’s proximity to the Vietnam border, combined with its role in directing bombing raids on the capital itself, was a constant provocation, possibly even a justification, for an overt North Vietnamese invasion.
In 1967 the Air Force upgraded the original navigational equipment with a much more elaborate system using the latest radar that enabled U.S. aircraft to bomb at night and in all weather; 150 tons of equipment was airlifted in by a top-secret Air Force helicopter unit based in Udorn and code-named Pony Express. [14]
The contingent guarding the Rock was strengthened. The site now needed a weekly resupply of three tons of petroleum products, spare parts, and food and water. The increased activity on the peak provoked the enemy and tipped the balance. They began to feel that the Rock had become important enough to risk an attack.
On January 12,1968, in one of the most peculiar air actions of the war, the North Vietnamese Air Force launched an attack on the site using Soviet-manufactured single-engine, fabric-covered biplanes. These were Antonov AN-2 Colts, which had enclosed cabins and wooden scimitar propellers. The planes dived at the Rock, while the crews fired machine guns out the window and dropped mortar shells as bombs. The outdated, lumbering aircraft were so vulnerable that an Air America chopper took them on. The crew chief fired an Uzi machine gun out the door and shot one down, and the chopper then chased a second until it forced it down eighteen miles north of the site. A third plane
4. The Sacred Mountain
The mountain of Phou Pha Thi was a sacred place for all of the Meo, revered even by those who had never visited it but only heard the stories told by village elders and holy men. It was also of vital strategic importance to the Americans, who called it the Rock and considered it one of their most closely kept secrets. This powerful combination of sanctity and secrecy attracted the attention of the enemy, and led to one of the most curious battles of the war.
A natural fortress, the Rock was a razorback ridge 5,600 feet high, sheer on one side and heavily fortified on the other. A dirt landing strip seven hundred feet long had been cleared in the valley below, designated on aerial maps as Lima Site 85. The Rock held a number of secrets: three hundred Thai mercenaries and Meo guarded it, while Americans ‘in the black’ - that is, on a clandestine posting - from the USAF and Lockheed Aircraft Systems manned highly sophisticated navigational equipment which not only guided American bombers in northern Laos, but led them directly to downtown Hanoi. [13]
On paper it looked like the ideal spot. It was higher than anything around it and only 160 miles west of Hanoi. Although deep in enemy territory and only twenty-five miles from the Communist Pathet Lao capital of Sam Neua, it was considered impregnable to anything except a massed helicopter assault, which was beyond the enemy’s capabilities.
The Air Force had first installed a tactical air navigation system on top of the Rock in 1966, despite the objections of Ambassador William Sullivan, who thought the installation extremely unwise - an invitation to disaster. The men manning the site were in a location where they could not possibly be rescued if they were overrun, while the Rock’s proximity to the Vietnam border, combined with its role in directing bombing raids on the capital itself, was a constant provocation, possibly even a justification, for an overt North Vietnamese invasion.
In 1967 the Air Force upgraded the original navigational equipment with a much more elaborate system using the latest radar that enabled U.S. aircraft to bomb at night and in all weather; 150 tons of equipment was airlifted in by a top-secret Air Force helicopter unit based in Udorn and code-named Pony Express. [14]
The contingent guarding the Rock was strengthened. The site now needed a weekly resupply of three tons of petroleum products, spare parts, and food and water. The increased activity on the peak provoked the enemy and tipped the balance. They began to feel that the Rock had become important enough to risk an attack.
On January 12,1968, in one of the most peculiar air actions of the war, the North Vietnamese Air Force launched an attack on the site using Soviet-manufactured single-engine, fabric-covered biplanes. These were Antonov AN-2 Colts, which had enclosed cabins and wooden scimitar propellers. The planes dived at the Rock, while the crews fired machine guns out the window and dropped mortar shells as bombs. The outdated, lumbering aircraft were so vulnerable that an Air America chopper took them on. The crew chief fired an Uzi machine gun out the door and shot one down, and the chopper then chased a second until it forced it down eighteen miles north of the site. A third plane
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