1 - The Black Vault

Chapter 6
The Son Tay Prisoner of War Raid (1970)
Duty, honor, country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what
you can be, what you will be.
—Douglas MacArthur
Operation Polar Circle
By 1970 America’s war in SEA had dragged on
for nearly a decade. Even before the Tet offensive
of January 1968, the American public and many
US politicians had distanced themselves from the
war. Throughout 1969 and into 1970, demonstra -
tions and antiwar protests increased. President
Richard M. Nixon made the decision to expand the
war into Cambodia in the spring of 1970, and the
nation exploded into violence. During the first
week of May 1970, four students were shot and
killed by National Guardsmen at Kent State University.
With a campaign promise to bring American
soldiers home from Vietnam and to end the
war, the president appeared to be expanding the
war rather than ending it. US intelligence revealed
that American POWs, some of them held
for more than six years in the worst of conditions,
were in bad shape and were dying from years of
captivity and torture. Their state of health was no
longer simply declining but was, rather, in a process
of rapid deterioration. 1 America’s POWs were
the one issue upon which all agreed—something
had to be done.
Combat Talon had matured into a highly respected
special purpose weapons system after
four years in SEA and its deployment to Europe.
Four aircraft were assigned to Detachment 2, 1st
SOW, Pope AFB, North Carolina, and supported
initial aircrew training. The 15th SOS had four
Talons assigned and continued to fly SOG-tasked
missions out of Nha Trang AB, Vietnam. The 7th
SOS, also with four aircraft assigned, was supporting
European special operations out of Ramstein
AB, Germany. The Combat Talon fleet, consisting
of 12 total aircraft, was undergoing
various modifications at LAS Ontario, California,
thus leaving the operational units with an average
of three aircraft on the ramp at each location.
The US intelligence community had as one of
its top priorities the identification of POW camps
in SEA. On 9 May 1970 two personnel from the
USAF 1127th Special Activities Squadron (SAS)
(Headquarters Command), Fort Belvoir, Virginia,
identified a possible POW prison compound 23
miles west of Hanoi in a small township called
Son Tay (fig. 27). Col George J. Iles and Col
Rudolph C. Koller, both assigned to the 1127th
SAS, took the information to USAF General
James R. Allen, director of plans and policy,
Headquarters USAF. General Allen validated the
1127th SAS discovery, and on 25 May 1970, he
briefed US Army brigadier general Donald D.
Blackburn, the special assistant for counterinsurgency
and special activities (SACSA) on the Joint
Staff. 2 General Blackburn was intimately familiar
with the plight of American POWs. He had served
in Laos under the White Star program in 1961 and
had been the first commander of SOG from 1965
to 1966. After receiving the initial briefing from
General Allen, General Blackburn wasted no time.
He immediately contacted the chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Earle G. Wheeler, and
arranged to brief him on the newly discovered information.
General Wheeler gave approval for
SACSA to develop a recommendation on how to
proceed. On 26 May 1970 SACSA transmitted a
message calling for a select group of personnel,
sourced from all services, to deploy to the Pentagon
to form a special study group under SACSA.
The small group of 12 personnel convened on the
first Monday of June 1970 to begin planning Operation
Polar Circle. 3
Working virtually around the clock, the small
study group developed options to rescue the
American POWs thought to be held at Son Tay.
The study group also looked at a second site, identified
as Ap Lo, but soon determined that Son Tay
was the compound most likely to contain American
prisoners. On 5 June 1970 General Blackburn
and US Army colonel E. E. Mayer, chief, Special
Operations Division, SACSA, briefed the special
study group’s findings to the Joint Chiefs of Staff
in the tank, and recommended that an in-depth
feasibility study be conducted. The JCS agreed
with the preliminary recommendations of the special
study group, and on 10 June SACSA convened
an expanded 15-man feasibility study
group. For the remainder of the month and into
July, the feasibility study group, chaired by USAF
colonel Norman H. Frisbie, Air Force Plans and
139