The Ravens: The True Story of a Secret War (10 page)

The pilot of a single-engine plane is always alone, with only his skill and resolution to fall back on. Once airborne he can rely on no general to lead him, no colleagues to give him advice, and there are no comrades-in-arms to help bolster his courage in critical moments. In battle he has only his airplane to rely on.

It is bad enough to fly into combat, prepared to be shot at, without having to cope with the constant subconscious fear that the engine might quit. So the message which went down to the embassy in Vientiane, in a hundred different forms, was always the same in essence: Give us some support or we are going to kill ourselves.

It was ignored, and the Ravens awaited the inevitable. It happened at Na Khang, when the enemy were almost drawn up to the perimeter of the airfield. Tom Shera had just taken off in a U-17, a Cessna 185 modified by the Air Force to carry rockets. Pilot and passenger sat side by side, which made it a difficult plane to FAC out of. Shera had a Thai mercenary in the passenger seat and intended to fly north. He began to lose power almost immediately after takeoff, because of fuel contamination, and knew that he would never make it over the ridgeline.

The strip at Na Khang was in a bowl, and Shera tried to bring the plane around full circle to land but didn’t make it. The plane stalled, the left wing tip touched the ground, and the U-17 crashed into a minefield, snapping off both wings and the tail. Miraculously, swamp vegetation eight feet deep absorbed the shock of the crash and the plane hit no mines. The Thai became hysterical and Shera had trouble making him understand they could not move a single step from the plane.

The minefield into which they had crashed had originally been laid by the French in the 1930s, reseeded by the Japanese in the ‘40s, mined again by the French in the ‘50s, and mined yet again by the Americans in the ‘60s. The pattern was entirely haphazard, and no one knew where early mines had been laid, except when an occasional drunken villager strayed from the path and set one off. Shera waited, bruised and shaken, until an Air America helicopter came to pull them out.

He was given the next day off, which he spent resting quietly in the hootch at Alternate. Meanwhile, maintenance crews were instructed to run every drop of gasoline through chamois in an attempt to sieve out the dirt and rust. The usual complaints were made to the embassy and 7/13th Air Force at Udorn.

The next day Shera was back in the air. This time he took a single round through the cowling, which went into the engine and knocked a lead off a spark plug. The engine began to vibrate, the plane lost altitude, and Shera was forced to make a crash landing. He was shot at all the way down, but managed to slam the aircraft onto a seven-hundred-foot strip scratched onto the top of a ridgeline.

It was a short, rocky downhill strip, meant only for the use of Air America’s fleet of STOL (short takeoff and landing) aircraft. The landing had been difficult; takeoff would be well-nigh impossible. An Air America helicopter flew in with a flight mechanic, who fixed the damage done to the O-1’s engine. All loose parts, including the radios, were stripped from the plane to make it lighter. Shera pointed the aircraft downhill and had Meo soldiers hold on to the struts and tail until he had revved the engine to full power. He signaled to the Meo to let go, roared down the strip until he had run out of runway, lowered the flaps, and staggered off across the trees under enemy small-arms fire.

In World War I the saying was that a man twice burned was finished. In the Raven program, Shera was given a week off. This was considered just long enough for a pilot to pull himself together - any longer might result in a permanent loss of nerve. Shera, understandably shaken after two bad crashes in as many days, went down to Bangkok to recuperate.

* * *

The crashes had brought the Ravens’ dissatisfaction to a head, and they were in open rebellion against the ‘Downtowners,’ as they contemptuously called the embassy staff. The air attaché’s office was forced to act. They created a new position - Head Raven - in the hope of bridging the ever-widening gap growing between embassy staff and policy, on the one hand, and the Ravens and the war on the other. It was hoped that a Raven with a staff position would know the realities of the job and also command the respect of the FACs.

The man picked for the job was Tom Richards, who had joined the Air Force to keep warm. Originally a ground-pounding grunt in the Army, he had fought in some of the worst campaigns of the Korean War and worked his way up to first sergeant. One day, sitting in a freezing foxhole waiting to storm a position across the valley, he watched the planes roll in on their target. The sun was beginning to come up, but it did nothing to relieve the aching cold Richards had felt in his bones for months. ‘If those guys get killed, at least they’re warm,’ he thought. ‘They’re going to go back to Japan, they’re going to drink a martini, sleep in a comfortable bed tonight, and fly back to the war tomorrow. If I get killed my body will be frozen solid in some dirty hole.’ He decided right there and then to go back to college and join the Air Force. A passion for flying developed later.

Richards
looked
like Steve Canyon. Tall, trim, and handsome, he radiated command presence and led by example. He had cut his teeth as a Raven during a six-month period in Pakse, in the Laotian panhandle in the south. Pakse had the reputation of being a country club, a quiet area where the corrupt and ineffective Royal Lao Army and Air Force allowed the enemy easy pickings. Richards, using the cover of a civilian engineer, joined one other FAC and three mechanics in civilian clothes. The first thing he did was to write to a friend, Dale Richardson, stationed in Vietnam as a FAC with the 101st Airborne, to volunteer for the program and join him in Laos. Together they worked at taking the war to the enemy.

Richards found the situation in Military Region IV ‘loose.’ The Royal Lao Air Force had a wing of T-28 fighters on the base, but the major in charge flew only when he felt like it. Richards would plan a mission and lead the fighters to a target, only to watch them bomb miles away if they even suspected the presence of anti-aircraft guns. Sometimes he would arrive on the flight line in the morning to find that no one had shown up. When the commander finally arose from his bed at 10:00 he explained that one of his pilots had come to him the previous night and related a dream. Buddha had told the pilot in the dream that the following day was particularly unlucky for flying. The mission commander had thanked the pilot and given the order: ‘No fly today.’

The Lao preferred to use the most expensive ordnance, ordering CBU-25 canister bombs as often as possible. It was a weapon which needed to be delivered in a low-altitude dive, but the Lao pilots dropped it from a great height and brought the empty canisters back to sell the aluminum, having already snipped off the umbilical cords to sell the wire. With uncommitted commanders and lazy fighter pilots, it was only natural that the local Backseaters were equally ineffective. It was exactly the opposite to the situation in MR II, where the Meo fought so hard.

‘The Lao Air Force used military aircraft to ferry passengers and refugees for money, to haul gold and opium,’ Richards said. ‘I just had no respect for them at all. I did my own thing. I was not there to help that establishment. I felt a lot of sympathy and compassion for the people, especially the Meo in the mountains battling against unbelievable odds.’

Richards recognized a situation where the rules made no sense, and did not hesitate to break them. ‘Theoretically you were supposed to have a Laotian in the backseat to validate targets. They were a pain in the ass. If you went low they panicked. If you got shot at they went absolutely crazy. So I never took one. I got to know the country better than they did anyway.’

Ravens were absolutely forbidden to fly the T-28 in combat, but with the Royal Lao Air Force in bed at worst and ineffective at best, Richards broke that rule too. He would find a target in the O-1 Bird Dog only to have the Lao refuse to hit it. He would then return to base, climb into the T-28, and fly out to bomb it himself.

The enemy were everywhere and were used to passing through Military Region IV with impunity. Richards found whole truck convoys on the edge of the Trail, and boats loaded with supplies on the rivers. Targets he hit would blow for half a day. Later he would return in an O-1 to make a bomb damage assessment. ‘I ran the air war in southern Laos. I could do almost anything I wanted to. The CIA took good care of us. Anything you asked for, they would provide. Ordnance came out of the embassy, shipped in by Air America. After Vietnam the freedom was unbelievable.’

Once Richards became Head Raven he went wherever the action demanded, flying support in battle and filling in for anyone on leave. Things began to change. As a result of lobbying the air attaché’s office constantly, maintenance began to improve and more planes were promised. The Ravens began to believe they had someone batting for them.

The CIA personnel could be very good but suffered from an excessive leaning toward the clandestine. As close as Richards worked with them, they rarely confided in him, and it seemed that intelligence was a one-way street. They received information without ever giving any back. At the office in Fakse - a big operation run by Dave Morales, a hard-drinking paramilitary officer with a taste for pornography, whose boast was that he had been present during the assassination of Che Guevara - CIA personnel covered all the papers on their desks every time Richards walked in. ‘It’s nothing personal - just policy,’ a CIA officer explained.

Richards put up with it for two months before his patience ran out. ‘The next time you do that - cover a paper on the desk when I come into this office - I’m through working for you.’

One of two things happened to Ravens, as they logged an increasing number of combat missions and took their share of groundfire: they became either overcautious or reckless. The first merely made them ineffective, but the second risked their lives. The inclination to duel with a gun in a fixed position, or settle a score after their aircraft had been peppered with ground fire, led them to take risk after risk. Sam Deichelman became one of the worst offenders. Richards thought he was becoming too blasé and had reached the point where he believed himself immortal. Ironically, Deichelman’s first intimation of mortality came when he was behaving himself and flying at what was considered a safe altitude.

It was just one of those things. His plane took the Golden BB. Pilots knew from experience that it was possible to fly directly through a cloud of flak or a hail of small-arms fire at point-blank range and come out unscathed, and also possible to be cruising far from the enemy at five thousand feet and be killed by a single stray round - which they called the Golden BB. It was part of their folklore and contributed to their fatalism. They might not have respected the Lao who refused to fly on a certain day for superstitious reasons, but they understood him.

Deichelman had flown his C-130 out of Vietnam over the Trail at night as a Blindbat pilot at ridiculously low altitudes and never taken a hit. Then, flying over Route 4, southeast of the Plain of Jars, accompanied by Vong Chou - yet another close relative of Vang Pao - they took a single round. The shell ripped through the skin of the plane, hit Vong Chou in the arm, and came out of his chest, slamming into the bulkhead and missing Deichelman’s head by a hairbreadth. Vong Chou was critically wounded, and losing blood fast. Deichelman immediately turned the plane around and raced home.

The single shell had left two terrible wounds in Vong Chou’s arm and chest, and his chances of survival seemed negligible. But he survived the trip, and for the next three days Deichelman was at his side, willing him to live. The Back-seater, perhaps sensing his friend’s anguish, pulled through against all odds.

Deichelman was shattered by the experience. He somehow felt that he should have taken the round, as commander of the aircraft, and he suffered agonies of guilt. All attempts to reassure him were futile.

He now entered a highly dangerous phase. He had cheated death and dodged the Golden BB, but it had wounded his friend, and he felt honor-bound to embark upon a course of reckless revenge. He was still badly shaken, but undeterred in his resolve to fly in combat as soon as possible.

In the circumstances, the air attaché’s office thought it wise to remove him temporarily from the picture. The Air Force had agreed to give the program another O-1, and Deichelman was chosen to return to South Vietnam and ferry it to Laos. In September he left for Bien Hoa, where his younger brother was stationed. He planned to spend a few days of leave with him and then bring the O-1 back.

Deichelman reached Vietnam without incident, and the brothers enjoyed a pleasant reunion. He mentioned a desire to see the great Cambodian lake of Tonle Sap, an illegal but easy detour on the journey back. He boarded the new Bird Dog and took off from Bien Hoa and beaded back toward Laos. He was never seen again.
[21]

Sam Deichelman’s disappearance was deeply mourned at Long Tieng and cast a pall over everyone who knew him. Among those it affected most was Art Cornelius, who had regarded the blond surfer with such skepticism when they had met. That first impression had soon changed, and an easy, respectful friendship had followed.

Cornelius admired the man as a first-rate pilot and FAC, but especially for his humanity. He had seen his friend’s genuine compassion as he played with the village children, and his anguish as he sat with Vong Chou, the wounded Backseater. It was difficult not to be attracted to Deichelman’s obvious honesty, good-hearted openness, and warmth.