spartans_in_darkness

"FOP SE6REl'ri'60MINli'O(1
Base (RTAFB) in two C-130 transport aircraft.
They arrived at Udorn RTAFB, where they transferred
to the assault force of helicopters. Along
the flight over Laos, they joined with the A-I
escort aircraft, refueled and rode into Son Tay.
The commando teams hit their targets hard and
fast. While local opposition was quickly suppressed
by weapons teams on the ground, the rescue
teams scurried through the POW holding
areas, intent on freeing the captive Americans.
(U) No one was there. The cells were empty;
in fact, the prison had been deserted for some
time. After about thirty minutes on the ground at
Son Tay, the assault teams, empty handed,
reboarded their helicopters and flew back to
Udorn. There were no losses to the ground
assault teams.
(TSl/SI) The SIGINT system had performed
nearly flawlessly. The route chosen by the analysts,
designed to evade the North Vietnamese
warning system, was not covered by the North
Vietnamese surveillance. It had been estimated
that the assault force could be detected only when
it was about sixteen minutes away from the
prison camp. In fact, it appears that the force's
helicopters and C-130s were never detected at all.
However, the escort aircraft were picked up.
Without the radar warning, the Vietnamese SAM
and AAA reaction to the raid was sluggish; once in
action, however, it managed to down two of the
escorting F-105G (Wild Weasel) SAM suppression
flights. One aircraft erupted into a ball of
flame; the other managed to limp back to Laos,
where the crew ejected safely and was recovered.
10 2
(TS//SI) One incident during the mission was
memorable, especially as a reflection on SIGINT's
ability to monitor in detail the North Vietnamese
reaction. While the raid was in progress, Milt
Zaslow was briefing a select group of Defense
Department officials, which included the secretary
of defense, the chairman of the JCS, and a
whole slew of general staff officers. Just minutes
before the assault team went in, an officer rushed
in to the briefing and announced that the Task
Group commander, General Manor, had issued a
MiG warning.
(TS//SI) Now Zaslow and the NSA analysts
had estimated that DRV would not be maintaining
any jet fighters on night strip alert. This was
based on the disposition of the North Vietnamese
night-qualified pilots, of which none were on
alert. (Hanoi had only fourteen night-qualified
pilots, and of these only two were trained in lowaltitude
combat.) The defense group stared at
Zaslow. "No MiGS," he asserted. After a certainly
uncomfortable five minutes, another officer
entered and canceled the warning. 103
fH'tActually, there had been a MiG warning,
but it had been a case of mistaken identity. The
crew of one of the assault group's helicopters had
observed either the A-lor the F-105 escorts and
mistook them for North Vietnamese MiGs. This
warning was relayed rapidly through the Task
Group's communications. So fast and complete,
in fact, was the warning that within a few minutes,
the A-Is dropped their ordnance in reaction
to the mistaken warning and assumed a defensive
flight formation.l'"
*
P.L. 86-36
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f.S1 Still, despite efforts at painting the raid
with various hues of "success," it was impossible
for observers to avoid asking the main question:
How had U.S. intelligence failed to note the
removal of the POWs from Son Tay There was a
subsidiary question as well: Why had North
Vietnamese moved the prisoners in the first
place In the mission postmortems, the second
question concerned a large segment of the intelligence
community. Many believed that the mission
had been tipped to the North Vietnamese.
ColonelIIbelieved that the visit of an
unident~asian" journalist had spooked
*
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