[TCTAAmembers] 44 Years Ago

[Alfred Bowman]

This was an interesting time altogether.  Vietnam was heating up.  MAC,
which tried to snatch the Dragon Rouge glory, was flat on it's butt, not a
lot going for it.  MAC was a good year away from any substantial C-141
capability, C-5 was an arguement for the future, the borrowed C-130Es were
enroute to TAC, and the Shakies were more than worn and tired.  Allbert
Gore, Sr  was hollering about our involvement in SEA and thus ensuring that
a pissed off LBJ would soon announce the immediate closure of Sewart
AFB.   I was bouncing back and forth from Locheed Ontario CA and Sewart for
the Fulton Recovery Test Program, and beginning to feel pretty useless.  HQ
USAF had  directed "minimum contact" between those of us in the program and
our colleagues back home at Dyess, Sewart, and an assotment of SAC bases.
So I had little to do with the happeneings in the Congo.
Actually, there were Sewart crews involved - rote troops in Evreux, and Col
Art Rush, 314th Commander was running a good part of the mission.  For those
who don't know, the Evreux rote squadrons were a Whiz Kids McNamara idea.
By rotating TAC Squadrons into Evreux, the costs of housing, schools,
medical facilities, and other dependent based operations could be reduced.
As to Evreux : The base was a dump.  Housing for the rote crews was just a
small notch better than open bay barracks.  Flying elsewhere was the saving
grace.  The rotation was contiuous.  Squadrons did not arrive in 16 ship
formations. Thus, at any given moment, two or even three stateside wings
could have crews at Evreux.
And some of the support beyond the flight crews worked the same way.
Anyway, the point is that other wings and units were indeed involved in
Dragon Rouge.   Everyone was rightfully proud of what they had done.  It was
a righteous mission.  And, oh yeah, those Belgique Troopers were really cool
dudes.  If they had not done the job they were sent to do (Job # ! - Secure
the airfield), the whole story would have been way different and not
something I would comment on with still a great deal of pride;  even if I
did miss the main show.  That was all of us at our best.

Ace



On 11/22/08, Sam McGowan <sammcgowan at troopcarrier.org> wrote:
>
>  A couple of things have occured to me about those events back in 1964.
> For one thing, the DRAGON ROUGE mission was flown on November 22, 44 years
> ago today. One thing I wonder about is if the other TAC C-130 wings were
> sent out after that alert or if it was just the 464th. As I recall, none of
> the ones at Pope got as far as Africa. Some may not have even left Lajes and
> Harmon. There were some MATS C-124s involved in a peripheral role. They took
> some fuel trucks to Ascension and Kamina. There was also a WC-130 that
> accompanied the mission at least to Ascension.
>
> I can't remember how I came to fly a mission as a scanner before I was
> qualified as a loadmaster, but I know it was because all of the qualified
> loadmasters had gone out in the alert. There were a couple of instructor
> pilots and navigators still there and they put together a navigational
> training mission from Pope to Bermuda and back. Somehow or other somebody
> picked me to fly as a scanner since no cargo or passengers were being
> carried and all I had to do was scan the engine start and make the scanners
> checks during the flight - and heat up the frozen meals. I can't remember if
> there were any other training flights with other guys going or not, but it
> seems to me it was the only mission flown from Pope until the other
> airplanes and crews started coming back. That particular airplane was in
> periodic maintenence when the alert was called or it would have been gone
> too.
>
> Sam McGowan
>
>  ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* Sam McGowan <sammcgowan at troopcarrier.org>
> *To:* Herkybirds <herkybirds at topica.com> ; Airlifters<airlifters at topica.com>; 464th
> TCW <464thTCW at topica.com> ; tctaamembers at troopcarrier.org
> *Sent:* Friday, November 21, 2008 10:42 PM
> *Subject:* [TCTAAmembers] 44 Years Ago
>
>
> Today is November 21. Forty-four years ago I was a young Airman Second
> Class loadmaster trainee at Pope AFB, NC. A little over a week earlier I had
> laid awake late on Saturday night listening to the Grand Old Opry on my
> transistor radio in my room in the aircrew barracks until the wee hours of
> the morning. I was in the 779th TCS but lived in an 778th room along with
> Carl Edison and Charles Zelinski. They were both TDY to France and I had the
> room to myself.
>
> I had barely gone to sleep when the alert siren started going off and the
> telephone down the hall started ringing. I jumped out of bed and into my
> flight suit and grabbed my mobility bag and headed for the squadron. I don't
> remember for sure how we got there, but I imagine a bunch of us jumped into
> Paul Thompson's Ford. Since it was Sunday morning rather than a weekday, we
> had a pretty good idea the alert was for real even though we'd been having
> practice alerts in anticipation of the wing's upcoming ORI for some time.
>
> As soon as we got to the squadron we started on the callout list. Since we
> lived in the barracks onbase we were the first to arrive, along with a few
> younger officers who lived in the BOQ. I was still in student status and was
> on a crew made up of students. When I called the engineer assigned to our
> crew, Don Mayer, he accused me of playing a joke on him! Like a lot of other
> people, he'd stayed late at the club on Saturday night and was barely asleep
> when I called. It took a couple of calls before I finally convinced him it
> was for real.
>
> During a practice alert once everyone had assembled the wing command post
> would eventually call down and cancel the alert and everyone would be
> released. This time was different. Instead of sending everyone home, crews
> were sent to the flight line and assigned to airplanes. It had become pretty
> obvious that the wing was really going somewhere this time and most of us
> had a pretty good idea where. For several weeks the newspapers had been
> carrying stories about the hostages held by Simba rebels in the Congo, and
> we assumed the alert had something to do with that.
>
> Once the squadron realized the alert was for real, the senior loadmaster,
> TSgt Virgil Nelson, went to the squadron commander, Lt. Col. Gibney, and
> asked that the student loadmasters be assigned to crews to go on the
> mission. Col. Gibney thought about it but decided it was against regulations
> since no one knew where the crews were going and we weren't designated as
> combat ready. The regs were clear that only qualified aircrew members
> designated as combat ready were allowed on combat missions. (As it turned
> out, some of the other squadron commanders interpreted the regs differently
> and some of our buddies in the other squadrons did go out with crews with
> instructor loadmasters.)
>
> Those of us who hadn't gone felt sort of left out as every airplane on the
> base - literally - departed for parts unknown. The only airplanes that
> didn't go were the ones in maintenance. The flight line was practically
> deserted, as was the squadron. After a few days the CTU decided to send out
> a navigational training mission to Bermuda with one of the airplanes that
> had been in periodic maintenance. There wasn't a single qualified loadmaster
> left on the base but someone, I don't remember who, decided that since I was
> on flying status and a qualified C-130 aircraft mechanic, I got fly as
> scanner. It was the first time I ever went out by myself as part of a flight
> crew.
>
> The alert was on Sunday morning the week prior to Thanksgiving week. The
> entire wing had departed on a classified mission and no one knew where they
> had gone. We thought they had headed for Africa to drop the 82nd, but as it
> turned out, 464th airplanes were scattered all over the Atlantic and Europe,
> where they went to replace the Pope rotational squadron at Evreux, France
> which had actually been assigned to a rescue mission.
>
> The Pope rote squadron did fly the mission on the Tuesday before
> Thanksgiving. I won't go into the details here. If anyone wants to read
> about it, go to my home page at www.sammcgowan.com/home.html and click on
> the Airlift History link and you'll find a link to an account of the
> mission.
>
> We found out either later that day or the following morning that our guys
> had dropped Belgian troops on the airport at Stanleyville and as the word
> spread around the base, pandemonium broke out. The only time I had seen such
> excitement had been one night in the base theater when we were watching the
> first movie to be made about Vietnam - it was actually made in Vietnam - and
> a formation of C-123s had dropped ARVN troops to rescue the hero. Talk about
> proud! There is a web site called Talking Proud but they don't even know
> what the word really means!. That had to have been the most exciting day in
> troop carrrier history, at least in the post-World War II period. Our very
> own guys, our friends and instructors and in my case, my roommates, had
> flown a heroic mission and had saved the lives of people who had been held
> hostage simply because of the color of their skins.
>
> When the newspapers came out the following day, the excitement turned to a
> dark mood as a general feeling of hatred toward our brothers in MATS
> emerged. The New York Times and other papers had carried headlines that read
> "MATS RESCUES HOSTAGES!" Bullcrap! Those airplanes weren't MATS!! They were
> TAC C-130Es assigned to the 464th Troop Carrier Wing - OUR WING! MATS played
> no role whatsoever. And in truth, MATS hadn't. Although the airplanes and
> crews were TDY to 322nd Air Division which had recently transferred to MATS,
> they had been sent on a mission for USAFE and once they reached Africa, they
> came under the control of Strike Command, of which Tactical Air Command was
> one element. Even the 5th APS loadmasters and combat controllers and 322nd
> AD command personnel who had gone on the mission had switched to Strike
> Command control for the mission. We were not just mad, we were incensed! We
> were so incensed that Charlie Watkins, an engineer in the 776th, called up a
> the Pentagon and blessed out a general. I'm not sure where Charlie was when
> he made his call. I don't think he was at Pope but was somewhere out on the
> road and made his call on the AUTOVON line.
>
> On Thanksgiving Day we found out that our guys had done it again that
> morning while we were still sleeping. They had dropped the Belgians at
> Paulis and effected another rescue. That was just icing on the cake.
>
> A few days later the crews that had gone out started coming back in, and we
> started hearing stories about things that had happened. One was about a
> friend ours in OMS named Slackerman who had run afoul of the new line chief
> TAC had sent down to Pope from Lockbourne to straighten out flight line
> maintenance. The OMS troops called him Be No, because the first thing he had
> told him was that "there will be no 3-day passes," "there'll be no more
> time-off," etc. and etc. "until maintenance is straightened out." I don't
> remember what Slackerman had done or if he had already lost his stripes or
> if he lost them for what he did, but he came into the open bay barracks
> where they all staying at a base somewhere, possibly Lajes, and pissed all
> over Be No Young! Another story was how the guys who flew the mission hadn't
> had a bath in days and when a thunderstorm came up, they all stripped off
> their flight suits and fatigues and ran out naked into the rain with bars of
> soap for the bath they'd had since they left Ascension Island on the way to
> Africa.
>
> I'd like to have been a fly on the wall in the Officers and NCO Clubs at
> Sewart and Langley to hear the conversations there about what the Pope crews
> had done. The Sewart and Langley guys were the C-130 vets, but Pope had only
> had Herks for less than two years. The 464th had kicked off the Vietnam War
> with their C-123s with assistance from the Sewart C-123 squadron (which
> transferred to Pope.) Now they had flown a spectacular headline making
> mission in Africa.
>
> Regardless of what folks thought at the other TAC bases - and the MATS
> bases for that matter - there is only one word to describe the emotion at
> Pope and it is spelled P-R-O-U-D!
>
> Sam McGowan
>
> ------------------------------
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