TBS 2-67 Cruisebook_Updated_7Jan23

Stories‐Air America
Air America...Another Short War Story by Bill
McBride (Mostly True)
Late July, 1967, Phu Bai Combat Base, Vietnam
My admiration and respect for the Air America guys goes back to
a single flight I made out of the little airstrip at Hue in late July,
1967. I was a platoon leader with A Company, 3rd Reconnaissance
Battalion at the time, and had been assigned a (last minute)
mission out in the A Shau Valley..very little notice, very little time
to prepare.
Normally (what was normal?) we tried to get an overflight of our
mission areas a few weeks prior to the actual patrol in order to see
the "lay of the land" and spot possible insert/extract landing zones,
alternates, etc. We usually did this well in advance of the actual
mission, and tried to cover a lot of other areas so as not to tip off
the NVA as to exact insertion location. The urgency of the A Shau
mission didn't permit this.
The day before I had spent a couple of hours in the air in an Air
Force 01 observation plane. We crisscrossed the southern part of
the Valley for half an hour or so....at 5000 feet. This might have
been great for the longevity of the plane and pilot, but I couldn't
see anything on the ground that I needed to see from that
altitude...I tried to convince the pilot to get down there in the trees
and he wouldn't do it...Didn't want to draw fire....which is exactly
what I wanted us to do...(no death wish here, but it sure would
have saved a few lives in the coming days).
When I got back from that flight, I bitched to the C.O. and
Operations Officer that the overflight had been a waste of valuable
time and that I still didn't have an LZ or alternate that I could
use..other than landing smack in the middle of the Valley floor. He
said he' d see what he could do. That night the C.O. told me to head
back up to Hue at first light (we were at Phu Bai) and check in at
the Operations shack for another flight. I figured it was going to
be more of the same but it was my only hope.
The next day (I think it might have been 30 or 31 July..not sure)
while still dark, I drove up to Hue. We were on the road before the
morning road sweeps by the engineers looking for mines, etc and I
was a bit tense...soon calmed by the fact that there were lots of
farmers and others on the road ahead of us.
When I got to the Ops building I noticed a weird (to me) looking
plane on the tarmack out front, along with a couple of 01E and
02's. No markings that I remember. Inside the shack, bs'ing with
the flight ops guy was a short dude (being a short dude myself
these things count) wearing jeans and cowboy boots (actually, I
didn't notice the cowboy boots until the flight was over)..and a
CAR­16 slung over his shoulder. I checked in with the ops guy
and the guy in jeans intro'd himself and said I'd be his "customer".
We sat down and he pulled out his map and asked where I wanted
to go....of course he had the exact map sheet right in front of me. I
*KNEW* when I saw that he was using 1:50K maps that this was
going to work. The Air Force pilot was using a 1:250K map which
was probably great for flying but had no detail of any use to me. I
matched my map with his, he scribbled a few marks on his and
A‐48