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Chapter 1

The Genesis of JUNGLE JIM

The Interview

Would you be willing to fight for your nation in a remote and hostile foreign country and agree to do so knowing that your government may deny that you are a member of the U.S. Military or that you are acting on their behalf?

The year 1961 was in many respects a watershed year for much of this nation. A chain of events was soon to unwind that would radically change the lives of millions of Americans. Indeed, these events and their Aunintended consequences@ were the first small steps that soon would usher in one of the most tumultuous periods of our nation=s history, perhaps second only to the tragic years of the Civil War, 1861-1865, and its aftermath. I was assigned to the USAF War College at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. Early in 1961, the Base Commander phoned me and told me to report to his office that afternoon. This was an unusual request. The War College was not under the jurisdiction of the Base Commander. We were a tenant organization with our own command structure. Further, our Commandant was a general officer, outranking the Base Commander. I was also instructed not to tell anyone of this impending visit.

Upon arrival at his office, I was informed by the Commander that he was instructed by USAF Headquarters (HQ) to read me a series of questions. I was to answer only Ayes@ or Ano.@ I would be given no explanations or expansions of the questions, nor could I request one. If my answer to a question was yes, he would proceed to the next question. If I answered no, the interview would be terminated and I would be dismissed without prejudice. He then explained that a negative response would not be considered detrimental to my career. I was not to reveal the nature of the interview to anyone, and that included my Commander, Brigadier General Richard Carmichael, nor to my family.

I do not recall the exact wording of each individual question, but my recollection of their general context remains vivid. At first, the questions were fairly innocuous; for example, would you be willing to serve for prolonged periods under austere conditions? Would you be willing to serve for prolonged periods separated from your family? Then the tenor of the questions turned more ominous. Would you be willing to engage in dangerous operations fighting for a friendly foreign government at the request of the USAF? Would you fly and fight in situations where you could not wear the U.S. uniform? And finally, would you be willing to fly and fight on behalf of the U.S. government, and agree to do so knowing that your government might choose to deny that you were a member of the U.S. military, or even associated with this nation? Thus, the U.S. government may not be able to provide you with the protection normally given to a U.S. citizen?

This last question also contained a statement to the effect that in the event of my death while fighting out of uniform, the U.S. government would assure the financial support of my wife for the rest of her life, and also provide for the support of my two young sons through college age. Obviously, I answered all questions in the affirmative. Otherwise, I would not be writing these memoirs.

When the formal part of the interview was over, I commented that I was puzzled and even felt somewhat irritated by the nature of these questions. I said that when I took the oath as an officer in the U.S. military, I did so without equivocation or precondition. Further, with the exception of the last question, all the others fell within the purview of that oath, and I did not expect that I would be called upon to reaffirm these commitments while I was on active duty. Later, I found out that this same scenario was played out thousand of times on other USAF military installations throughout the world.

Behind these questions, and unknown to me at the time, lay the fact that the USAF had decided to form a new and highly classified organization. Among the criteria for membership were flying time, effectiveness ratings, type of previous experience, etc.

The interview was the final step in the screening process. Personnel files were reviewed and more than 3,000 officers and higher-ranking airmen were identified for this interview. Following the interviews, about 350 officers and enlisted men were selected as candidates for assignment to the initial cadre of this very unique organization. By the very nature of the interview we all were volunteers. Never before in the history of the USAF, or for that matter the U.S. military, had so many been asked to assume such a great personal risk without the vital protection provided by the mantle of U.S. citizenship.

To fully appreciate the magnitude of the commitment and dedication of these early volunteers to this organization one has only to ponder the vast difference between the conditions these men agreed to and the enticements being offered to today=s pilots to just remain in a peacetime Air Force.

At this writing the Chief of Staff, General Hugh Shelton, has announced that the Air Force is now offering its pilots a bonus of up to $44,000 just to stay in the military for an additional two years. Even with this incentive a great number of pilots who are eligible to resign are doing so rather than extend. We were offered nothing, nor did we ask for anything but an opportunity to serve our nation under the most unfavorable conditions that could be envisioned. These included the possibility of being branded as irresponsible renegades or mercenaries (or something even worse) after being captured or killed, while actually we were fighting for our nation.

A month or so after the secret interview I was again summoned to the Base Commander=s office. I was shown a set of classified orders assigning me to the 4400th Combat Crew Training Squadron (CCTS), at Eglin Air Force Base Auxiliary Field Number 9, more commonly referred to as Hurlburt Field, Florida. The Maxwell Commander then told me that the Air War College Commandant would be advised of my transfer and that I would be released from my present duties immediately. My dependents would not be allowed to accompany me to my new duty station. (Sometime later these restrictions were relaxed and orders were issued allowing dependents to join us.)

At the time the only thing that I could recall about Hurlburt Field was that it was the training site for AThe Tokyo Raiders@ led by General Jimmy Doolittle, who bombed Japan by flying Boeing B-25 Mitchell bombers off a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier during the early stages of World War II. This tidbit of knowledge added to the mystery and intrigue surrounding this new assignment.

Upon arrival at Hurlburt, I was told to report to the Base Headquarters for further instructions. There, I was told to report to a certain building on the flight line. This building was an open-bay type with only one enclosed room, a latrine. It was devoid of chairs, tables, benches, and the like, with one exception. At the far end of the building stood a marvelous and elaborate hardwood desk and console. The incongruity struck me at the time as humorous; it still does. Initially, only three or four people gathered there every morning. We just stood around or sat on the floor and viewed each other with mutual suspicion. No one among us knew what the others knew, nor did we feel free to tell the others what we knew. Among this group was Major John Downing, who was destined to become our trusty Supply Officer; Captain Warren Trent, our Adjutant; and another Lieutenant Colonel, besides myself, Chester AChet@ Jack, who was slated to become our deputy Commander.

Several days after our arrival we were visited by a full Colonel who introduced himself as Ben King, our Commander. He sat at the desk and gave us our respective assignments and very little else. I was assigned as the Operations Officer.  King talked in very general and somewhat vague terms about the organization and our mission. One got the impression that he knew little more about this project than we did, but he wasn=t about to admit it.

* * *

Colonel King=s initial interview was even more remarkable than those of the rest of the members of this very select group. At the time he was stationed at Hurlburt. One morning he had been rousted out of bed in the wee hours by an urgent phone call from Eglin Air Force base about ten miles to the east. He was told to report to a certain building within ten minutes or as soon as possible thereafter. When he arrived, he was told that he was to talk with a senior Colonel from the Air Staff in Washington, who asked him the same questions that I was asked. After answering all of them in the affirmative, he was told to stand by to talk with General LeMay by phone from USAF HQ. Initially, LeMay verified that he was the same King whom LeMay had met during a national skeet match in the early 1950s. This match had been attended by two military teams. LeMay was captain of a Strategic Air Command (SAC) team and King had been a member of a Tactical Air Command (TAC) team. LeMay also asked King if he was the same person whom he recalled as being the Group Commander of a fighter squadron which won the Hughes Trophy in the mid-1950s. In both cases Colonel King replied yes, he was that person.

After this quick and informal screening General LeMay informed Colonel King that he was to be the Commander of this unique tactical organization. Thus, the 4400th Combat Crew Training Squadron was officially born. It seemed to us that there had to be more behind the formation of this organization than what we knew. There certainly was.

The Visitor in Black

When General Curtis LeMay, the Chief of Staff of the USAF, returned from the meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) that morning, he was boiling mad. The CIA had pulled that lousy maneuver on him too many times. LeMay was determined to take the necessary action to prevent this from ever happening again.

About a week or so after we arrived at Hurlburt Field, and while we were gathered for our usual afternoon meeting, doing nothing in particular, we were surprised to see a black Martin B-57 Canberra pull up on the ramp just outside our window. A young Brigadier General who was dressed in a black flying suit, deplaned and entered our building. He introduced himself as General Jamie Goff. He had just flown in from the Pentagon. He asked the whereabouts of Colonel King. We were not sure where the Colonel was. General Goff seated himself on the Athrone,@ as we occasionally referred to King=s desk, and asked us to become comfortable, which translated to sit on the floor with your back against a pillar.

What followed was one of the most remarkable monologues that I had ever heard. What made it even more memorable was the setting. Here we had a USAF General sitting at a plush desk, the only furniture in the building, speaking to a small group of officers gathered at his feet. It struck me somewhat like a father getting ready to tell a strange bedtime story to his children, and indeed a strange tale it was. General Goff started out by saying that he supposed we were wondering what we were doing here and probably also curious about the process by which we were selected. We assured him that this was the understatement of the year. What follows is the essence of General Goff=s story.

The chain of events started several months previously when, during a routine meeting of the Joint Chief=s of Staff (JCS), the chairman turned to General LeMay, then Chief of Staff, USAF, and informed him that he (LeMay) had been tasked by the secretary of defense to make available to the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] a fully sanitized World War II-type aircraft of a certain type for the use of a friendly foreign government. Further, LeMay was given a very short time to fulfill this directive.

When General LeMay returned from the ATank@ (the name given to the room where the JCS meet), he was boiling mad. There were several reasons for his anger and frustration. This was not the first time that the CIA had dumped on him in that manner. LeMay stated in no uncertain terms that he was not going to get sandbagged again by this sort of short order request from the CIA. He then directed the Air Staff to prepare not just one plane for delivery to the CIA but rather a number of different types of World War II aircraft that would be held in ready storage. Then the next time he was tasked to provide an aircraft of this type he would be able to respond immediately and with a minimum of disruption of other activities.

This seemed like a simple, straightforward proposition. However, in the Pentagon, with its large bureaucracy, things are seldom as simple as they seem. All actions, even those coming from the Chief of Staff, must be Astaffed,@ that is coordinated with a number of staff agencies. So it was with the LeMay idea. As this directive progressed through the numerous departments, some staff officer pointed out that the CIA did not have pilots available to ferry these aircraft to their destination so the USAF had better be prepared to also provide a pool of pilots who would have to be retrained in these old aircraft for this purpose. Failing to do so would retain part of the original problem, that is, delivering sanitized aircraft to friendly foreign governments.

Further Astaffing@ developed the thesis that once the aircraft were delivered, the receiving country might not have crews qualified to fly them. Thus, to make the package useable we had better be prepared to train their personnel in the tactical use of these aircraft. Finally, the thought was advanced that the receiving country might not even have an air force. Therefore, we had best provide a complete combat unit that could operate as a self contained fighting force in a foreign country=s counterinsurgency environment. Additionally, the entire unit, and not only the aircraft, must be prepared to operate under a cover of Aplausible deniability.@

There may have been one additional factor in play here although it was not a part of Goff=s narrative. We had just come through the disastrous Bay of Pigs fiasco of 1961.

The CIA had organized and launched a counterrevolutionary force, composed of about 1,500 mercenaries and supported by B-26s, intended to overthrow Fidel Castro. It was expected that when the forces hit the beach there would be a general uprising within the Cuban Military in support of this movement and a quick victory would be forthcoming. However, this was not the case. The Cuban Air Force jets shot down the prop-driven B-26s and the landing force was either captured or killed.

Additionally the role of the U.S. was uncovered in a deniability debacle, which resulted in considerable  embarrassment to the U.S. government. In any event, the U.S. Military, which had not been consulted, became very skeptical of any covert military-type operations involving the CIA.

So there we have it. What started out as a simple idea born out of necessity for a single World War II aircraft had now evolved into a full-fledged Air Force fighting unit, the 4400th CCTS. The entrance interview, the subsequent screening process, and the special training were all intended to meet a worst case scenario in which USAF personnel would be asked to fly and fight for a friendly country without the involvement or the protection of the U.S. government. The name of the game was Aplausible deniability@

* * *

Years later, when I was stationed in USAF Headquarters, my associates would sometimes liken the Pentagon to a large log being carried hell-bent down a torrential mountain stream. As the story goes, the log is carrying 40,000 ants, and each ant thinks that he (or she) is steering. It should also be pointed out that about that time the Army and the Navy were starting to build up their counterinsurgency forces (Special Forces and the SEALS), also in response to Russia=s support of so-called wars of national liberation. It is entirely possible that the Air Staff viewed LeMay=s order as an opportunity to parlay this project into an Air Force counterinsurgency unit, although General Goff in his narrative never alluded to this as a possible motivation.

One can argue if the CIA had not requested this aircraft or if the Air Staff had not attempted to become extremely efficient in responding to anticipated future requests of a similar nature, the 4400th CCTS would not have been formed at that time. Certainly, we would not have organized our unit with the sense of haste and urgency that followed. Thus, it would not have been available for immediate deployment to Southeast Asia shortly after Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev announced his support for so-called wars of liberation.

I do not contend that this sequence of events reflects a miscalculation on the part of the Air Staff due to its desire for Acompleted staff work.@ Rather, I view this as an example of the phenomenon of Aunintended consequences@ that seems to have characterized much of our Vietnam involvement. The reader will find more examples of this phenomenon later in this work. A final irony in this sequence of events was that it now appears that the airplane the CIA had in mind was a C-47 or two to be sent to the Republic of Mali in Africa. Southeast Asia or Vietnam may not have even been Aon the scope@ at that time.

* * *

The original request for General LeMay to produce one or two sanitized aircraft may seem like a simple, straightforward proposition to a person who had almost inexhaustible Air Force resources available to him. However, that is not quite the case. First, one must go to the storage depot for that particular type of aircraft. You then select the best one that you can find and take it out of mothballs. The entire airplane must be gone over, which invariably requires replacing many parts. This, in turn, requires that you search many other craft for serviceable replacement parts.

After you restore the plane to good flying condition, you must then start the sanitization process, in itself is no small task. Every part that has a name, a serial number, a code letter, or any other identifying mark, must have it removed or ground down. In many cases, the part must be removed and disassembled in order to make certain that all numbers are removed. This procedure can disrupt the entire workload of the depot, especially when it is given such a high priority by the JCS. If the aircraft were later shot down while involved in covert operations and traced back to the U.S., LeMay=s neck would be on the block, not the CIA=s.

* * *

For years I harbored a certain amount of self-skepticism about my recall of General Goff=s account of the convoluted evolution of the 4400th CCTS. I suspected that I had misunderstood the General. Although I had served three years on the Strategic Air Command  staff, at that time I had no experience with the workings of the Pentagon staffs. In fact, this account seemed just a little bizarre. However, I was wrong.

My last assignment before retirement was as the Chief of the CORONA HARVEST project, a high-powered study group working at the Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base. We were stationed at Maxwell because it is the repository of Air Force archives. However, we were under the direct supervision of the Vice Chief of Staff, USAF, General John Myers. The purpose of the project was to document and evaluate all aspects of the air war in Southeast Asia. The team was staffed by highly qualified and professional historians, including both military-combat experienced officers and civilian historians, of the caliber of Dr. Robert F. Futrell who wrote many Air Force and air power histories.

When the group had finished its voluminous report covering the early years of the war, having used both written documentation and oral histories, I sent a draft copy to Brigadier General William V. McBride, who during these early years was assigned to a key position on the Air Staff central to these types of activities. McBride confirmed the account laid out in the report with the comment that he didn=t believe any group could capture these seminal events of that area as accurately as the CORONA HARVEST team had.

During the writing of this book I located Major General Goff, now retired, and reviewed the scenario as I remembered it from 37 years ago. Although Goff did not have a clear recall of the specific visit to Hurlburt, he did confirm as substantially correct the version of the evolution of the 4400th CCTS related herein.

Brigadier General Ben King, USAF

A fighter pilot=s fighter pilot.\

Perhaps now is the time to introduce the person whose personality dominates most of this work, Benjamin H. King. This man=s unique brand of leadership permeates this entire story. Sometimes it=s obvious, sometimes it=s subtle, but his spirit is always somewhere behind the thoughts and the words.

Ben King was not only my senior in age but also in wisdom. He was born and raised in Oklahoma and never quite lost the spirit of the free range. More than anything else, a review of his remarkable combat record gives a quite accurate impression of the underlying character of this man.

His first combat tour came during the Second World War. He was assigned to the Pacific Theater flying out of Guadalcanal and up and down the Solomon Island chain. In King=s own words, his first combat mission flying a Lockheed P-38 Lightning was anything but auspicious. His fighter element had located an enemy U-boat that could not submerge. While they bombed the sub, or rather tried to, the crew raked the planes with machine-gun fire. The result was a sort of standoff. King and his buddies didn=t sink the U-boat and it didn=t down any of the aircraft. However, it was probably a victory of sorts for the U-boat, for King had to belly-land his aircraft back at the home base because of battle damage to the landing gear.

It was in the P-38 that Ben King shot down three enemy fighter Mitsubishi Zeros. Most victories in war do not come free, and King=s was no exception. Toward the end of his Pacific tour King was also shot down almost 400 miles deep in enemy-held territory.

After ditching, he spent seven days in a one-man dinghy all the while paddling toward an island 40 miles away. Incidentally, this was one of the first, if not the first successful ditching of a P-38, that had the reputation of converting to a submarine the moment its belly touched water. When he reached the island, he joined six other American pilots who had also been shot down. The island was occupied by about 100 Japanese soldiers who searched day and night for the Americans. After about three months King and three other Americans took off by boat toward U.S.-held territory. After paddling some 70 miles they were picked up at night by a Navy Consolidated PBY Catalina flying boat.

After completing his Pacific tour, King was assigned to a training unit in the States. However, stateside duty was not for this aerial warrior. He immediately volunteered for another P-38 unit that was scheduled to leave for England, and he arrived there in early 1944.

Ben completed his 100-mission tour in P-38s and immediately volunteered for a third combat tour while still in England, this time in North American P-51 Mustangs. A short time later he became the Commander of the 368th Fighter Squadron. It was on this tour that he shot down four German fighters, two Messerschmitt BF-109s and two Focke-Wulf FW-190s. Thus, King joined the exalted ranks of American fighter aces. It is significant that all his aerial victories were against enemy fighters and not the more easily downed transport or bomber aircraft.

After World War II, Ben King followed the usual path of most peacetime pilots who remained in the service. He attended several service schools, held various staff jobs, and commanded several tactical units. King was transferred to Alaska, where he played a key role in constructing Eielson Air Force Base, which he holds out as perhaps his most challenging peacetime assignment. Here we find an Air Force Major, the Commander of a fighter squadron, trying to control 4,000 civilian contractor personnel who were building the longest runway in the world.

 Eventually, King was returned to the States and assigned to one of the early North American F-86 Sabre squadrons. While he was ferrying the last of these newly assigned aircraft to his home station in Maryland on a Sunday morning, the Korean War broke out in 1950. King immediately contacted a friend in the Pentagon and requested a transfer to Korea. Two days later he was on his way. However, what he thought was an en route stop in Japan turned out to be his next duty assignment. A very unhappy USAF Major was retained in Japan as the Commander of a fighter interceptor squadron. The other two squadrons of that group had already left for the war in Korea, and the remaining squadron had to remain in Japan for air defense protection.

When King protested this diversion to his Commander he was told that as soon as he had established four Ground-Controlled Interceptor (GCI) sites protecting Tokyo and had made the system operationally ready he would be released for combat in Korea. This took just three months, and true to his word, his superior arranged for his reassignment to another squadron scheduled for Korea. In the meantime, King was slipping in and out of Japan at every opportunity, going over to Korea and flying combat missions in P-51s belonging to the other two squadrons from his parent group. This Abootleg@ combat operation netted him more than 40 missions. After arriving in Korea, King became the Commander of the 8th Fighter Squadron where he flew additional 226 combat missions in the Lockheed F-80 Shooting Star.

* * *

After returning from the Korean War, Ben King, like many other pilots of that time, continued his military career with a variety of peacetime command and staff assignments, attending military schools and upgrading into new types of aircraft, etc. Since his career had always been oriented toward air defense operations, King eventually wound up at Hurlburt Air Force Base as director of the Joint BOMARC test staff. During that tour King=s team improved the launch reliability of the BOMARC from about 10 up to 82 percent. The Boeing BOMARC CIM-10A was a supersonic surface launched and guided air defense missile that became operational in 1961.

 It was while in this assignment that Colonel King received the early morning call from General LeMay notifying him that he was to be the Commander of the 4400th Combat Crew Training Squadron. This tour again led him directly back into combat in Vietnam in the fall of 1961. A short time after he returned from Vietnam, King was assigned as the Commander of the Combat Application Group (CAG) of the Special Warfare Center. This he considers one of the biggest disappointments of his life. For here he was leaving a combat unit with a great mission and people to match for a newly formed support group. The mission of CAG was to develop and procure equipment for the expanding USAF Special Air Warfare Force.

* * *

However, other events were taking place throughout the world about that time. The predominant one was the Cuban missile crisis in the early 1960s. The Air Commandos were tasked to provide a number of Forward Air Controllers to direct the firepower of the high-speed strike aircraft. Although King was not in a combat element of the Special Air Warfare center, there was little doubt whom Brigadier General Gilbert Pritchard, the Commander of the Special Air Warfare Center, would select to organize and lead this critically important mission.

Thus, King again found himself on the verge of combat. He was given a force of TF-28s and Helio Super Courier U-10s together with their crews and sent to an advanced staging location at Opa Locka in southern Florida. Crews were briefed, targets were assigned, and all were placed on ready alert. Their mission was to locate and mark the Cuban missile sites for the bomb-carrying fast movers (jets). One problem that they faced was that the TF-28 tactical fighters had insufficient range for this mission, considering target loiter time. King knew that the TF-28s pilots would have to rely on a water rescue by the Search and Rescue (SAR) forces to get back to the mainland, but that was part of war. Fortunately, a few hours before the Aballoon was to go up@ the Russian cargo ships turned around and war was averted.

* * *

King had other opportunities for combat operations several years after he left the Air Commando organization and, as might be expected, he grabbed them with gusto. He eventually wound up in Bangkok, Thailand, as the Deputy Director of the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) Advisory Research Project Agency Field Unit. King regarded this assignment as a first- rate boondoggle and he resented it. However, this did offer him another opportunity to join the war effort by occasionally slipping over to Vietnam and flying with the Vietnamese Air Force (VNAF) or going up into Thailand and flying combat missions with his old Commando buddies in their TF-28s or B-26s. Often while other people were taking Rest and Recuperation trips to exotic places, King was spending his R&R by signing up for unscheduled combat flights.

* * *

After returning from the Thailand tour, King (now a Brigadier General) was assigned to the USAF Office of Flying Safety as chief of the Fighter Division. This was toward the latter years of the Vietnam War. Reports were coming back to the States that many of our fighter pilots were not wearing a specially designed fire-retardant NOMAX flying suit, intended to help pilots survive a crash landing. However, many pilots considered the suits too hot for comfortable use in a tropical environment. King saw a final opportunity for one more combat tour.

King assembled a team of officers qualified in all the fighter-type aircraft flying in that Theater and headed west toward Vietnam. His approach to the problem was straightforward. First, he decided to set a personal example by using the NOMAX suit himself. Of course, it took him 35 to 40 combat missions in the North American F-100 Super Sabre and other aircraft before he became completely satisfied that the suits could be worn safely. Having proved his point, General King advised the Wing Commanders that if they did not enforce the directive requiring their pilots to wear this suit, upon his return they would be reported to Air Force Headquarters. That did the trick. The number of pilots killed during crash landings dropped significantly as a result of the additional protection provided by the NOMAX suit. When he had stayed in Vietnam for as long as he thought he could get away with it, King returned to his assignment at Norton Air Force Base, California, where he completed his military career and retired.

Truly, Ben King was attracted to aerial combat like a bee is to honey. Taken individually, each of his many tours is impressive. When considered collectively, they present a picture that very few if any combat USAF veterans, present or past, can match. General King flew nine combat tours that spanned three wars and involved many different type aircraft, while serving in just about every rank between Second Lieutenant and Brigadier General. During his remarkable career of combat flying, King amassed an impressive array of awards and decorations numbering over 35, including a Distinguished Service Medal, a Silver Star, and a host of other awards from both the U.S. and friendly foreign nations.

* * *

Various Air Force publications from time to time contain a list of famous fighter pilots along with their victories in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. All of these airmen deserve the fame and praise that they have receive. However, someday someone will get around to publishing a list of fighter aces who flew the most combat missions, involving the greatest number of wars, over the longest time period. When they do Ben King will be at the top of that list.

Commando Commander Ben King

ABut I wouldn=t say no.@

Ben was a born leader of men. During Commander=s call with all the aircrews assembled, he would sometimes come out with an off-the-wall statement on some mundane subject or other. Nearly everyone knew what he was saying was not in the cards, but still we would all leave the meeting half believing it was true. One of his favorite expressions was, ANow I wouldn=t say no.@ For example, someone would stand up and ask, AColonel, we heard that all JUNGLE JIM crewmen were going to receive an extra promotion. Is this true?@ Ben=s answer would be, AWell, I haven=t heard anything official yet, BUT I WOULDN=T SAY NO.@ Sometimes the pilots would ask outlandish questions just to hear Ben go through that routine. Later when we were over in Vietnam, Captain Dick Tegge wrote a song titled AWell I Wouldn=t Say No.@ (Tegge and his guitar were a morale booster for our troops back in those days.) This was not done out of disrespect for King, far from it. He was universally admired by his men, and when the chips were down you always got straight answers.

King had the rare ability to humble someone without humiliating him. If during Commanders call some pilot stood up and indirectly questioned one of his policies, the Colonel had a stock answer. He would say,

Now Captain so and so, I want you to keep a notebook. In that notebook I want you to list every mistake that you think I have made. Now when you become a Commander, I want you to review that book periodically just to make sure that you don=t make the same mistakes. Oh yes, don=t make any new ones either. Now you will be on your way to becoming the greatest Commander in the history of the Air Force.

Even with King=s occasional reminder that all he could promise us was hard work and little glory, only one officer of the original group requested a transfer. This is a remarkable tribute to both his leadership and the quality of the original men of that unit.

* * *

Colonel King often repeated his philosophy for a successful military career. He was not afraid to stand above the crowd when his principles or core values were involved. He often expressed it this way to me, ABob, I like to keep a balanced personnel file with at least one letter of commendation to balance out each letter of admonition or reprimand that I receive.@ He had lots of both.

Sometimes King came close to the edge and survived. Shortly after General Walter Sweeney took over as Commander of Tactical Air Command, he sent a letter out to all Commanders covering personnel policies. King thought that a few of the items were too rigid for a unique outfit like the Commandos so he arraigned a meeting with Sweeney and told him straight out that he didn=t think that he could continue to command the Commandos under these additional restrictions, and continued to explain why. General Sweeney, a man not easily swayed by arguments questioning his published policies, listened to Colonel King=s explanations and then simply stated that King would return to his unit as Commander, and in those cases where he could follow the policy, he would appreciate it if he would do so.

* * *

King was a fighter pilot through and through. I always suspected that he had a rather low opinion of any pilot who could handle more than one throttle at the same time. I believe that one of the biggest disappointments of his professional life was discovering that this guy Gleason, a pilot with a background in bombers, was to become his Operations officer. Although I could never prove it, I always suspected that many of the Colonel=s early trips to TAC headquarters were for the sole purpose of obtaining a fighter pilot for his Operations Officer.

The closest that I ever came to receiving a compliment from this man was the day after we successfully completed our Operational Readiness Inspection (ORI). As we passed in the Operations office, Ben stopped for a moment and said, ABob, that was a fine show you put on during the inspection. I=m glad that I finally found something that a stupid ass SAC pilot could do.@ (I chose to believe that he intended the remark as a compliment.)

Colonel King reserved his most colorful comments for General LeMay. It was not that he disliked LeMay as a person or as a commander. In fact, he begrudgingly admired him. It was just that he disliked all bomber pilots, and LeMay, as the former Commander of SAC, was the personification of that breed.

I, of course, admire both men immensely. Both were great leaders of men but at different levels. If both LeMay and King were called upon to inspire a room full of aircrew members just before flying a dangerous mission King would win hands down. If, on the other hand, they both were called upon to inspire thousands of airmen, very few of whom they had ever met, and retain that inspiration over long periods of time, LeMay would probably come out first with King not far behind.

* * *

Chapter 2

Training and Aircraft Acquisition

JUNGLE JIM

The anatomy of a very unique military unit.

The 4400th CCTS, as originally composed, was by any criterion a unique organization on a very fast track. Although the operational concept for this unit was not issued until April 27, 1961, orders assigning personnel to the unit were cut a week or so earlier. Our full complement of 32 aircraft did not arrive until the first week in July. Nevertheless, we successfully had completed our Operational Readiness Inspection some two months later. Even before our ORI we had deployed our first detachment overseas. Within two months after we completed our ORI we had a large detachment flying combat in Vietnam. This short synopsis says much about the quality of the initial personnel, both aircrews and support personnel as well as our leadership. Very few, if any newly formed World War II combat units could match that record.

Some very imaginative Headquarters person came up with the project name of JUNGLE JIM. As things worked out this was not a bad moniker. However, after we were at Hurlburt Air Force Base for a short while even the term JUNGLE JIM became classified. On May 24, the Base Commander of Hurlburt wrote a letter to all units instructing them to refrain from using that term in either correspondence or in conversation.

Many elements made up the unique character of this organization. As mentioned previously, the initial cadre had been highly screened by a special Pentagon team. This initial selection had been followed up by a psychological screening, both written and oral of each person. Those who were finally selected were then sent to the Escape-and-Evasion School at Stead Air Force Base, California, which had had all previous restrictions removed on how rough it could treat its students.

JUNGLE JIM had been provided with old and in many cases poorly conditioned aircraft from another war and another era; and then tasked to train and prepare for combat in a wide variety of military and political situations with or without the acknowledgment and support of the U.S. government.

* * *

Our internal training was also intense. Shortly after arrival Colonel King initiated a policy of daily physical conditioning, consisting of calisthenics followed by a one- or two-mile run. Every member of the squadron, clerks as well as pilots, were expected to participate in this routine, usually led by a an unsympathetic jock from Minnesota named Dick Tegge. The unit was equipped with small-arms weapons not previously used or tested by any other U.S. military organization. (Another step on the road toward Aplausible deniability.@) We were also given hand-to-hand combat training. Many were cross-trained for a variety of duties, and in several different types of aircraft simultaneously. (For example, at one time I was qualified and current in five different types of aircraft.)

The FARM GATE detachment of JUNGLE JIM was the first USAF tactical unit to enter combat in Vietnam (and under covert conditions). When we first entered Vietnam we had to provide our own Search and Rescue service as well as our own aircraft security. Aircrews as well as ground crews became guards at night.

All of this internal training served several purposes. First, it helped prepare us for a variety of missions the nature of which could not be precisely forecast. (The more sobering aspects of our recruiting interview were still fresh in our memory.) Second, it infused the unit with an usual sense of cohesiveness and esprit de corps. Colonel King recalls that during his tour as Commander he had a re-enlistment rate among the enlisted personnel of 100 percent C  a rare and perhaps unequaled achievement.

Much of this cohesion was due to the unique brand of King=s leadership. An example of this occurred not long after we formed up. Knowing that a unit of this type would attract a number of adventuresome Afree spirits,@ King took it upon himself to personally visit all of the local law-enforcement agencies. His purpose was to introduce himself to them and to ask them to notify him personally if any of his people were apprehended by their agencies. He gave the police chiefs and sheriffs a vague idea of the nature of our unit and informed them that some of these people might possess very sensitive information. Therefore, he did not want the Military Police or the civilian law enforcement people to interrogate them.

The system worked well. Maybe too well. King was once called out at a ungodly hour to retrieve three of his airmen who were involved in a brawl downtown. After picking them up at the police station and heading back to the base he realized that he recognized only two of the three airmen. He asked the third one who his supervising officer was. With a sheepish grin the man answered that he was not a member of the 4400th, but the word was out that if you got in trouble and wanted a fair shake, tell the police that you were a member of the 4400th and a Colonel named King would get you away from the local constabularies. Offenders of this type were not let off free C far from it. It was just that King would rather administer punishment himself than go through the normal military or civilian judicial system. A few years later, King again ran into the young bogus Commando in Laos where he was serving as an Air Commando FAC. After his previous enlistment in a non-Commando unit was up he went over and re-enlisted in the 4400^th.

* * *

Shortly after I had arrived at Hurlburt it became obvious to me that we had outrun our organizational timetable and would have to wait for the troops to arrive. For the first few weeks or so we would meet once or twice a day and sit around and talk in general terms about mundane topics. No one was sure of what the others knew or what they were told, so we speculated very little about our assignment. King would attend some of these meetings for a short while before he had to leave for other duties.

When Colonel King was selected as the Commander of this unit he was Chief of the BOMARC missile-testing project that was being conducted at Eglin and Hurlburt. Therefore, he still had to take care of some phasing-out duties. Additionally, he would take occasional trips up to TAC HQ, which was designated as our first administrative and operational superior headquarters and this explained the grand desk and console that adorned our otherwise empty barracks. It seemed that King had had that desk especially made for him in the base shops at Eglin, and when he heard that he was to be transferred he had this masterpiece removed from his BOMARC office and squirreled away in this empty barracks so that his BOMARC Test Program successor would not inherit his throne along with his job.

Aircraft Acquisition

The birds start to arrive.

The troops and the equipment, including furniture, began to arrive at Hurlburt, shortly after my arrival. Finally, we were assigned aircraft. At first, we had only the use of a single C-47 borrowed from Hurlburt Field headquarters, then a few T-28s, USAF AA@ models with low-powered engines and two-bladed propellers. It was obvious that the T-28s were not capable of any type of operational flying, so King and the Pentagon personnel began to look around for something more suitable.

Our first choice for a strike aircraft was the Navy Douglas A-1E Skyraider dive bomber. This was a superb aircraft for the type of operation that we envisioned. Additionally, this plane was already in use in a number of small countries and performed well in austere environments. However, at the time the Navy would not release any of these aircraft to the USAF. Remember, at that time we still did not have a specific mission, nor had any country been identified to us that requested our services. Therefore, our priority was not as high as it eventually became. (Several years later, when the Vietnam War really heated up, the Navy was required to relinquish almost their entire A-1E fleet to the USAF.) Failing to get the A-1E, we looked around for some other replacement for the T-28.

Not too far down the Gulf Coast was the Naval training facility at Pensacola, Florida. They were flying a much different version of the T-28, with a larger engine, a three-bladed propeller, a beefed-up landing gear, and a tail hook required for carrier operations. Most important, its wings were stressed to carry external ordnance.

Colonel King pressed to obtain eight of those aircraft on loan from the Navy. In this case, the Navy agreed. Later, that type aircraft and modifications thereof were redesignated the TF-28. This designation more closely described their duel function of both a fighter and a trainer. Indeed, they were used considerably more in the role of a fighter than they were as a trainer. (Hereafter they will be referred to in this work as the TF-28.)

* * *

As time passed and the Air Staff began to get a better idea of our mission, we were assigned one of the highest supply and equipment priorities in the USAF. Eight Douglas B-26s Invaders were removed from mothballs and assigned to the 4400th CCTS. These aircraft had been previously designated the A-26 in World War II and Korea. Finally, we were given 16 C-47s, commonly referred to as  AGooney Birds.@ (Technically, our models were designated the SC-47 because of certain modifications.)

The C-47s were the only aircraft that were specially modified for the type of mission that we eventually would be involved in. And what a modification it was. These aircraft were equipped with extra fuel tanks in the outer wing sections. All the tanks were lined with special sealant bladders intended to withstand small-arms fire without blowing up the aircraft. Additionally, they had a set of loudspeakers built into the belly with their on-board power source,  intended to be used for Psychological Operations (Psyops).

These venerable old aircraft were also fitted with re-enforced sections in the belly to allow for the addition of JATO (jet-assisted takeoff) bottles. The cargo floors were built of unusual heavy material. Finally, the engine oil coolers were moved from the bottom of the engines to a position higher up on the engine nacelles. In this location they created considerably more drag and reduced the airspeed. The purpose of this last modification was to allow for the out-fitting of skis in the event that we were involved in Arctic operations. It didn=t take much imagination to realize that the Air Staff planners were still uncertain about our mission and area of operation. About the only thing they left off were floats.

The result was an aircraft much too heavy to perform very well in rough, unprepared, and remote fields. Another major deficiency was the location of the loudspeakers that were in the belly, slanted toward the rear. This type of installation made them useless for delivering verbal messages to people on the ground because of the Doppler effect. If you circled an area, the speakers were obviously pointing away from the target. If you flew directly over the people, the Doppler effect made your message unreadable, for the sound kept changing pitch as you first approached the target area and then flew away from it.

Months later, when we were involved in Physiological Operations  in Vietnam, with the imagination and ingenuity of people like Master Sergeant George McNamara, our head loadmaster, and our Communications people we were able to remove these speakers from the belly and install them in fabricated free-standing racks. The speakers could then be installed in the main cargo door. Now we could circle target areas to the left and do a passable job of getting a message through to people on the ground. Additionally, now the speakers could easily be removed when we were not on a Psysop mission and save some weight, a very important factor on this much overweight aircraft.

* * *

With our fleet now in hand, we could start a training program. We had no established syllabus or training material to go by so we designed our own. In fact, we had no clear mission statement. We were not even sure what we were headed into. As best we could determine, we were to be some sort of a counterinsurgency unit, sort of a USAF counterpart of the U.S. Army Special Forces. The closest parallel to this type unit was the Air Commando Wing of World War II, commanded by the legendary Colonel Phil Cochran, which had fought in the jungle war against the Japanese in Burma and China. Even here the parallel was not exact. Although the World War II Air Commandos were a composite unit such as ours, they were fighting against a conventional military force, the Japanese army. In the later years in Vietnam and after, North Vietnam (NVN) had entered the war, this would also be the case with us, but that was considerably later than the initial FARM GATE period.

Since the only U.S. military organization that was advertised as having a counterinsurgency capability at that time was the Army Special Forces (the Navy SEALs were still in a pre-operational state), we immediately turned to them for initial guidance. Their Director of Operations, who was my counterpart at that time, was a young Lieutenant Colonel by the name of Art ABull@ Simons. He later became famous for heading the raid against the suspected American Prisoner of War (POW) camp in NVN. We designed our training to meet their needs and in effect became their air arm. This caused some consternation among the so- called purists in both Army and Air Force Headquarters. Army planners strongly objected to this arrangement because it undercut their attempt to obtain separate Army aviation units to support the Special Forces. USAF planners also held strong reservations because they believed that in effect we were being run by the Special Forces.

Nevertheless, Simons and I charged ahead, driven by our more pragmatic instincts. Simons badly needed good air support, both administratively and tactically. The JUNGLE JIM unit badly needed a customer that could use air resources in a counterinsurgency mode and around which we could build a realistic training program. This relationship between Simons and me continued for many years and served both of us well when we commanded our respective counterinsurgency units in Panama; he, the 8th Special Forces Group, and me, the 605th Air Commando Group.

* * *

As we started to gather equipment, we were assigned a high priority. To facilitate this priority we were given a supply expediter JUNGLE JIM. This seemed like a fitting name for an outfit that was rapidly evolving into a counterinsurgency/jungle warfare organization, so it began being used as a general-purpose name for the entire unit as well as a supply identifier. (As stated earlier I will continue to use the term JUNGLE JIM to refer to the initial cadre of the 4400th CCTS that gathered at Hurlburt in the spring of 1961 and FARM GATE to refer to the first detachment of that organization that was deployed to Vietnam in the fall of that year.)

The elements of TF-28 and the B-26 training programs were developed mostly by the flight commanders of those sections, respectively Captain Bill Dougherty and Captain Segal Dickson. Their straightforward training programs qualified the aircrews in these old-time aircraft and retrained them in ground-support techniques. It must be remembered that just about all of these Ajocks@ had come from first-line jet fighter aircraft. Many had not flown prop-driven aircraft since their days as aviation cadets many years ago. The tactics used by high-performance fighters could hardly be applied directly to low-performing prop jobs.

For example, Captain John Rowan had previously flown the Republic F-105 Thunderchief C about the heaviest and most densely constructed fighter in the Air Force. Rowan states that it was known by its pilots as the AF-10 Thud@ because of its hard-landing characteristics. He contended that its most effective use was against enemy tanks where it was employed as a Asquat bomber.@ In this tactic, the F-105 would land behind the tank and taxi up over it, and the pilot would work the landing gear handle up and down rapidly and pound the enemy tank right into the ground. This aircraft was so heavy that, according to Rowan, when a hurricane was headed toward their base in Florida, the Base Commander would order all aircraft except F-105s to deploy inland to prevent them from being blown away. He would then order the 105s to remain on the open ramp to keep the ramp from being blown away.

* * *

The C-47 training conducted under its Flight Commander, Captain Arnold Tillman, was another story. For here we were dealing with one of the essential elements of counterinsurgency/counter-guerilla warfare that requires moving small groups of troops or even single agents around jungle terrain under primitive conditions. We had to develop resupply techniques for both free fall and parachute [para] drops. As in so many other cases, the personnel screening system provided us with some of the best minds that the Air Force had in this area. Master Sergeant McNamara, a loadmaster with great experience and even a greater imagination,  designed tactics for free-falling bags of rice without them breaking open, as well as techniques for safely dropping phosphorous flares out of the cargo door of a C-47. Many people considered loadmasters the Agrunts@ of the aircrews. But in an outfit like ours, which heavily depended on Alash-up and bailing wire,@ improvisations could not have succeeded without them.

We also received some valuable help from outside sources. Notable was the assistance of a TAC HQ staff officer Lieutenant Colonel named Dick Grant. In his younger days Dick was a covert-operations warrior with experience in dropping and recovering agents behind enemy lines in Eastern Europe during and after World War II. One day Dick showed up at Hurlburt with a few Army Special Forces friends that he had picked up at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on his way down. He said that he would like to show us some infiltration/exfiltration techniques with the C-47 that he had used over in Europe. We were eager to accept his offer. We located a large meadow about 20 miles up the highway and not close to any village. We then waited for a moonless night, which wasn=t very long, for Dick had checked the lunar calendar before he had come down to Hurlburt. On the appointed night off we went.

The Special Forces were well-versed on what was about to happen. Six of the Special Forces had taken the bottom out of paper cups and fitted the cups over the lenses of their flashlights. They then formed the two sides of a runway in the center of this meadow, three on either side. As our aircraft approached the field the Special Forces people would point their cup- shielded flashlights in the direction that the sound of the aircraft was coming from. All of our running lights were off, and even the cockpit lights were dimmed. We were pre-briefed on the approach heading and told to land between these two rows of cups, touching down after passing the first two and stopping before reaching the last two. The Special Forces troops would keep the cups pointing in the direction of the approaching aircraft. I decided to try this operation first with Dick as my copilot.

On the first two tries I had no idea how high I was when I passed over the first two cups, so I went around. I was beginning to doubt the feasibility of this operation when Dick asked if he could try one. I was most willing to oblige. Dick came over the edge of the field at about the same height as I did but somewhat slower. When he passed the first two cups he closed the throttles and yanked back on the control column, and we banged into the ground. He slammed on the brakes and did a controlled-ground loop, which he called a 180-degree turn, even before we reached the center cup holders. He then raced back up to the approach end of the field, spun around, jammed forward the prop and throttle controls, and raced toward takeoff. We were on the ground for about two to three minutes C just enough time to drop off or pick up an agent. Now knowing that this operation was possible, I then did a few myself.

I had flown the old AGooney@ off and on for many years, but I had no idea that it would stand this kind of punishment. The next day I had the mechanics check the aircraft for structural or landing gear damage. They found none, so Dick and I acted as instructors while the other pilots went through the same routine. I often thought that the unsung heroes in this operation were the Special Forces troops on the ground. If we had missed the runway alignment they could easily have been chewed up by our propellers. They had been instructed to drop to the ground as a last resort, but even then they could have been hit by one of our landing gears. The problem that they faced was that they didn=t always know where we were. If they panicked and dropped their lights, they were inviting disaster because the pilot would then be disoriented and could easily run over them.

A short time later Colonel King thought that these blackout night landings might also be a desirable tactic for the B-26 aircraft, so off he went to the same field. There were several things that he did not count on. Unlike the C-47, the B-26 has a tricycle landing gear, that required the pilot to raise the nose of the aircraft prior to touchdown, virtually eliminating much of the forward visibility in a blacked-out condition. The B-26 also had a considerably higher landing speed than the venerable Gooney Bird. Finally, the more fragile nose gear of the B-26 was much more apt to collapse if it hit a depressed spot on the sod field than was the more rugged twin main gear of the C-47.

King made one attempt that night and correctly figured that discretion was the greater part of valor and headed back to Hurlburt. Finis the B-26 night-landing program. He figured that he didn=t survive several combat tours in different wars just to end up spattered all over a farmer=s pasture in southern Florida.

I spent a few nights holding those paper cups along with the Special Forces troops. So did most of our pilots. Colonel King had established both by policy and personal example that our people would view these exotic operations from the other guy=s perspective as well as from the cockpit. This was another example of his leadership genius. Finally the permanent job of holding those flashlights were turned over to our Ajack of all trades,@ the loadmasters for our continued training.

* * *

Every combat unit in the USAF had been given an Operational Readiness Test before it was declared combat-ready. After a relatively short training period, an ORI inspection team was sent down from TAC Headquarters. For the aircrew=s inspection, they flew and were graded on a series of missions and a number of functions such as navigation accuracy, bombing accuracy, and para-drops. The ORI team went over all our equipment and supplies in some detail. We passed all tests with no difficulty, primarily because of the high caliber of our personnel. Although this type of operation was new to all of our people, they had the ability to adapt quickly. Another advantage was that the inspection team knew considerably less about what we were doing than we did, so they had to more or less adapt the mission criteria that we gave them. We tried to be fair, however. After all, it was our butts that would be on the line when we entered combat. By that time, it would be too late to realize that we had short-changed ourselves in our training programs.

All in all, this Alashed-up@ outfit equipped with antiquated and retreaded aircraft had flown more than 9,000 accident-free hours during our self training. This statistic, more than any other evidence available, attests to the high quality of the flight crews, Major Rocky Stillwell=s Maintenance crews, and Major John Downing=s Supply people.

Still, we were operating under quite a few waivers C many rather vague, so were applied rather broadly. We were now nominally under TAC, but just about all of our directions came from the Pentagon directly to Colonel King. I always harbored the impression that TAC would just as soon maintain a comfortable distance between itself and that A ragtag@ outfit down at Hurlburt. An example of this was an incident involving a major SAC installation, Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.

One of our C-47 crews with Captains Dick Sanborn and John Conners was flying a low-level navigation mission. To us low level meant something at or below 200 feet. Our guidance was to avoid populated areas as much as possible. For some reason or another, this crew flew off course and found itself flying directly over the center of Barksdale Air Force Base just when the SAC Wing stationed there was launching its Boeing B-52 Stratofortress aircraft under a Unit Simulated Combat Mission (USCM).

To put it bluntly, a SAC USCM is the sine qua non of SAC=s sacred mission of deterrence. The minimum take-off launch of an entire B-52 Wing is the Aproof the pudding@ of this process. It is an extremely impressive sight and culminates two or three days and nights of intensive effort. Many a Wing Commander had his career stunted and his chances for promotion terminated by poor performance on a USCM.

One can only imagine the consternation that resulted when, right in the middle of the take-off sequence, the climax of the USCM, a lone C-47 Gooney Bird came screaming (if you can call 130 knots screaming) across the active runway unannounced at about 200-feet altitude. Adding to the confusion was the possibility that this was another Adirty pool@ SAC Headquarters trick to screw up the USCM so that the Wing Commander=s reaction and response could be observed and graded. The people on the ground may logically have reasoned that no one in his right mind would pull an unauthorized stunt like that.

Sanborn was challenged via emergency radio frequencies by every military tower and FAA station in Louisiana. Sanborn=s answer did little to reassure those on the ground. He merely stated that he was on a classified mission, and if they had any further questions call Lieutenant Colonel Gleason. He gave them my home phone number. A short time later a General from SAC Headquarters ran me down by phone. After he realized that he couldn=t shoot me through the phone hookup, we worked through the problem. I always thought it odd that I never heard a word of that incident from TAC Headquarters. This was another indication that TAC would rather not be reminded of our existence.

I believe that I was the only former SAC officer in the JUNGLE JIM unit at that time, so no one appreciated the humor of that situation as much as I did. I laughed about it (to myself) for weeks, and always thought that this incident was a form of poetic justice for all the miserable hours I spent enmeshed in the tentacles of a SAC USCM during my previous ten years in that command. Of course, Colonel King who, in the tradition of most fighter pilots disdained bombers and all that they imply, merely viewed all of this as great theater.

* * *

During those early days the Maintenance section of the 4400th CCTS also had its challenges. The Maintenance Officer was Major Rocky Stillwell, a taciturn Texan who, true to his Lone Star State heritage, carried in Vietnam the biggest Ahog leg@ sidearm that I had ever seen. It must have been a .45-caliber Magnum plus.

The C-47 and the TF-28 were easily maintained. These aircraft were still in the active USAF inventory, so there were established supply procedures and some logistic tail, that is, there were still some spare parts in the supply system. The B-26 was a different story. The only source of spare parts was in various Abone yards,@ storage areas for old and discarded aircraft throughout the United States, so supply support was sketchy at best. Armament support was even more difficult to obtain. To produce the necessary flying hours to support our training programs took great ingenuity on the part of Rocky, the Supply Officer, John Downing, and their people.

King=s First Bombing Mission

 Bull=s-eye Colonel.

The story of Colonel King=s first practice bombing mission in a B-26 best illustrates these points. One evening early on, when many of our people were still inbound to their Commando assignment, a group of us were sitting around a table in the club when King turned to Warren Trent, the Personnel Officer, and asked him if the Armament Officer had shown up yet. AYou know,@ he continued, Athat guy with the funny name.@ He was referring to Captain John L. APete@ Piotrowski, who was destined to become a four-star General and eventually rise to the position of Vice Chief of Staff, United States Air Force.

Warren replied, AYes Sir, he is sitting right across from you.@ King turned to Pete and told him to come to his office the first thing the next morning, a Friday.

When Pete reported in, he was informed that on Monday morning King intended to fly our first bombing and gunnery training mission in a B-26, and it had better be ready. The Colonel  added that he expected to make good scores. The implication was that Pete had better be sure the nose guns and bomb-aiming systems were working properly. We had the hard-nose version of the B-26 (as compared to the glass-nose version) with eight .50-caliber forward-firing machine guns.

Pete rounded up one or two Sergeants that had also shown up by this time and went to work Afiring in@ the machine guns, aligning the sighting devices, checking out the bomb racks, etc. All went well until he tried to locate practice bombs. There were none to be found on Hurlburt. Eglin, which was our support base about 17 miles down the highway, would not issue any training bombs without a requisition. With the weekend coming up that was out of the question. These practice bombs, nicknamed Ablue blivets,@ were small bombs made of heavy-gauge tin that could be filled with sand to various weights, normally around 100 lbs. They were then fitted with a Aspotting charge,@ consisting of a few ounces of black powder, which detonated on impact so that the Range-scoring Officer could locate and score the impact point.

As it happens, Hurlburt Field is located on the Intracoastal Waterway, where it has a marina the military personnel tie up their privately owned boats. Pete had noticed earlier that many boat owners were using discarded practice bomb cases as anchors and boat hold-downs. He went down that evening and Amoonlight requisitioned@ a number of these bombs for King=s Monday morning mission. However, he could not locate any spotting charges. As a last resort, Pete contacted the Range-scoring Officer and after explaining the situation asked him to simply tell the Colonel that each of his bombs was a near bull=s-eye.

When King flew on that mission no one could see where the bombs were hitting. He could not have seen the impact point even if the bombs had spotting charges, for he would be pulling up and away from the target. All he knew was what the Range-scoring Officer told him after each bombing run. The radio messages from the Range Officer went something like this: AGood bomb ALPHA 1, right on target,@ or perhaps, @You were just five feet short, ALPHA 1, excellent hit,@ and so on. The guns fired okay, and having been an old fighter pilot King scored well on that phase. Also the gunnery scores were honest. Until General King reads this he no doubt believes that his first B-26 bombing mission was one of his best days on the range. It was C  on paper.

The M-16 Rifle 

A Commando first.

Although all the men of JUNGLE JIM had had years of military experience, some going clear back to World War II, we still underwent an additional small-arms training and had to qualify in an assortment of firearms. Once again, we come upon a unique aspect of the JUNGLE JIM experience. In this case it was an event that eventually had an impact on the entire U.S. military. Our story again crosses paths with General LeMay.

Somewhere along the line LeMay, who was a gun enthusiast, had become acquainted with an obscure small-arms company named Armalite that was marketing a new, cheaply priced .223-caliber rifle. This weapon was extremely light, simple to disassemble, fully automatic, fairly durable, and extremely accurate. Although .223 was a smaller caliber than any military weapon at the time, it had an extremely high muzzle velocity, around 3,280 feet per second (compared to the standard Army rifle of 2,700 feet per second). The high velocity imparted a considerable amount of energy to a relatively small slug. In most cases, its knock-down power was considerable in spite of the small size of the bullet.

The Armalite weapon (ARN-15) had a very high rate of fire in the fully automatic mode. A rifleman could carry 210 rounds with the same weight as 80 rounds for the M-1. Significantly, it was not a U.S.-stocked military item, thus it had Aplausible deniability.@ Within a year the Colt Company had teamed with Armalite, and in August 1962, the rifles were issued to the Commandos through normal supply channels. Two Commandos, Technical Sergeant Joseph Labrecque and Staff Sergeant Roger E. Burgress, Jr., were sent to Air Force Marksmanship School at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, to receive training in this firearm. That was several years before it was accepted by the U.S. Army, one year after it was first issued to Vietnam-bound personnel by General LeMay. Somehow, LeMay obtained enough of these purely civilian (not government-issue weapons) to equip all the aircrews of the entire FARM GATE detachment. We were the first U.S. military unit to be so equipped.

As combat airmen, we were more interested in aerial machine guns and rockets than in this little rifle. However, it was a sort of novelty that we liked to show off to visiting dignitaries in Vietnam. A favorite trick was to take two one-gallon cans of stewing tomatoes, place one on top of the other, move back about 100 feet, and fire into the bottom can. We usually did this in front of a large, 20-feet high revetment, a wall that was used to Afire-in@ the machine guns on airplanes. If you placed the tomato cans just right, you could disintegrate the bottom can and the top can would land undamaged on the top of the revetment.

We showed this trick to many visitors, including U.S. Army Generals. Somewhere along the way the Army decided to evaluate the Armalite as a replacement for its much heavier infantry weapons, which resulted in a first-class Adonnybrook@ within the service. Up to that time the Army had developed its combat arms mostly through its Aarsenal system.@ However, the little Armalite (later its designation was changed from the ARN-15 to the M-16) finally won acceptance by all the services and is now the U.S. Army and the U.S. Marine Corps standard infantry weapon.

The first officially recorded use of this weapon in combat involved an Air Commando named Charlie Jones. Charlie was a Combat Controller who was in Vietnam in September 1962. On this occasion Charlie and a few Army Special Forces men were on patrol as advisers to a group of Rhade tribesmen when they became involved in a firefight with a group of Viet Cong (VC). Charlie was the only one with a ARN-15 so they pushed him up front to try out this new toy. In Charlie=s words, he Ahosed down good@ the area where the Viet Cong were located using the fully automatic mode. The VC scattered amid screams and shouts. When Charlie=s group later encountered this same group of VCs their numbers were noticeably reduced. Since this weapon had not gone through the normal testing procedures, many improvements were needed. Several of these were proposed by Charlie Jones and incorporated into future models.

An even more vivid example of this weapon=s firepower occurred about that time. On this occasion, the FARM GATE Detachment was visited in Vietnam by General Pritchard, the Commander of the newly formed USAF Special Warfare Center located back at Hurlburt in the States. He and General John Dunning, who was assigned to the Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) staff, were driving down a back road a few miles from the Commando base when they were fired upon by a couple of hidden VCs. As the Generals jumped from their Jeep, the two VCs left their place of concealment and ran down the road away from them. General Dunning got off a single shot at the fleeing VC. One man fell to the ground face down. When the Generals walked up to the fallen man all they observed was a small hole in his back. When they rolled the man over they saw that his entire stomach cavity was empty and its contents lying on the ground. That incident readily demonstrated the terrific power of that little rifle.

* * *

The adoption of the M-16 as the standard military small arm for U.S. ground forces was one of the most important decisions made by our military as we entered the more intense phase of the Vietnam War. The enemy forces were equipped with the superb Russian-made AK-47. I believe that had our troops still been equipped with their older World War II- and Korean War-type weapons they would have been at a terrific disadvantage and the number of American causalities would have been substantially greater. Even the M-16 with all its attributes seems to be a tad inferior to the AK-47.

Years later when I was back in Vietnam as a Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, Studies and Observation Group (MACVSOG) deputy, I was struck by the fact that a good many of our Special Forces cross-border patrol teams preferred to carry the AK-47. As we had quite a few captured weapons this was a choice available to them. The reason they gave was that the extreme high velocity of the M-16 round would cause it to deflect or disintegrate when it struck even a small twig when fired in an area of heavy foliage. The heavier, slower AK-47-round was not as susceptible to this deficiency.

More Screening

The shrinks arrive B resistance testing.

The screening of JUNGLE JIM personnel had begun with that unique initial interview, but we had two additional screenings, or rites of passage, to complete before our position in the organization would be secured. The first was a no-notice visit from a psychological testing team from the USAF School of Aviation Medicine at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. Each aircrew member, including Colonel King, was given a written battery of tests followed by separate hour-long interviews conducted by two different psychiatrists. These interviews covered all aspects of one=s life, starting almost with his potty training and continuing on to his sex life. It was later explained to me that the reason for this screening was to identify unstable personalities and to isolate those who were more motivated by running away from their present assignment or a bad family situation, than by being inspired to serving their country under the most extreme conditions without any qualifications whatsoever.

After this screening, some of the crew members were released without prejudice and reassigned to stations away from Hurlburt. In looking back on those days, I again express the conviction that the USAF Headquarters staff officers responsible for the creation of this organization had no clear idea of where they were going or just what they were going to do. Thus, they were trying to cover all contingencies and prepare for a worst case scenario.

We were subjected to one other screening of sorts. This was prisoner of war and resistance training conducted by the USAF Survival School at Stead Air Force Base, California. I had been through the Stead Escape-and-Evasion (E&E) course several times as a member of a SAC combat aircrew, and I thought that I knew what to expect. However, this was not the same program by a long shot.

Some years before the formation of JUNGLE JI