Air Commando!: 1950-1975 - Twenty-five years at the Tip ... - AFSOC

TIGERS AND EAGLES
A-26s of the 606th "Lucky Tigers" Air
Commando Squadron (later 56th SOW)
line the PSP ramp at NKP, Thailand,
awaiting their night missions. (ACA
collection)
The Propeller vs_ Jet Controversy
When Thailand's politics couldn't allow
U.S. "bombers" to operate from its soil,
the re-designation of the "B"-26 to an "A"
(for Attack) helped solve the problem. By
any name, it was a lethal strike craft, as
seen from the front in this photo of an
Open House display at Hurlburt Field.
(ACA collection)
arly as 1966 both the "Visitor" and "Home" teams
(the United States Air Force and North
Vietnamese Army respectively) had already
defined the rules of a savage and still growing
contest along the length of the Vietnam/Laotian border.
Victory would be defined by the answer to one and only
one question: Would North Vietnam's all-critical logistics
lifeline to South Vietnam, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, remain
in operation or be closed? Only the pricetag for victory
was left to be determined, and both "teams" were pulling
out all the stops for this contest of wills.
The North Vietnamese had no higher priority than
keeping open their complex and camouflaged network of
roads and bridges that made up the Trail. The United States
Air Force 18 was committed to closing the Trail with a
massive interdiction campaign that would ultimately
surpass all bomb tonnage delivered by American airpower
=,.. _ _, in any previous world war.
The North Vietnamese Army and Laotian Pathet Lao
would also attack northern and western areas of Laos, protecting the Trail by destroying
the only potential ground threat to its survival, General Yang Pao's Hmong tribesmen.
Both to avoid allied airpower, and to reduce observation of its continuously growing traffic
flow, the North Vietnamese would ultimately move almost totally to night use of the Trail.
Responding to the North Vietnamese game plan, the Air Force began planning to move
its limited night attack resources within striking range of the Trail. To carry the brunt of the
night interdiction campaign, as well as support Yang Pao's irregulars, the Air Force was
counting on a strong showing from the Air Commandos' propeller-driven, "junkyard air
force".
Putting muscle behind the plan, HQ USAF directives in mid-1966 sent a menagerie of
"Air Commando propellers" to Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Air Base (RTAB), overlooking
18
The U.S. Navy was a major partner in this effort as a number of excellent history books will
testify.
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