[TCTAAmembers] Tctaamembers Digest, Vol 3, Issue 8
DickSell at aol.com
DickSell at aol.com
Sat Nov 22 18:36:08 CST 2008
Sam and members:
My two cents worth.
Sam, I've told you this before, I think. I was on Lt. Gerry Kailing's crew
(C/P Dick Sell, Nav Hugh Dupree, F/E Roy Thompson, L/M Jim Tomlinson) of the
776th TCS out of Pope, on rote duty at Evreaux in October/November 1964. I was
the only one on the crew with a TS clearance. I was called into the Wing
Commander's office one day at Evreaux and asked what happened to some aerial
photos we had taken on a secret reconnaissance mission we'd flown over
Stanleyville (under rebel control) in August when we were on the initial deployment of
JTF-LEO in Aug '64. We had flown a fast trip from Leo (what was it, maybe
500 miles?), over the clouds back to Stanleyville, ducked under the clouds and
did two high speed passes over the airfield and the town, then went back to
Leo. We had a mysterious guy in the cockpit with an Army uniform and Major's
insignia on, but no other identification. He had a large aerial camera, and
loaned me a 35mm SLR camera. We both snapped as many photos as we could of the
Stanleyville area before we left the area. Back at Leopoldville, he took the
cameras and disappeared. So I related all this to the Wing Commander, and he
said don't tell anyone because it was TS. I couldn't even tell Kailing. And
I never heard anything more, until later we heard about Dragon Rouge.
V/R,
STANLEYVILLE, CONGO
Richard (Dick) Sell
Scottsdale, AZ
In a message dated 11/22/2008 4:23:52 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time,
tctaamembers-request at troopcarrier.org writes:
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: (C-130 Vets) 44 Years Ago (Sam McGowan)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 17:23:21 -0600
From: "Sam McGowan" <sammcgowan at troopcarrier.org>
Subject: Re: [TCTAAmembers] (C-130 Vets) 44 Years Ago
To: "TCTAA Members Email Group" <tctaamembers at troopcarrier.org>
Cc: Airlifters <airlifters at topica.com>, 464th TCW
<464thTCW at topica.com>, Herkybirds <Herkybirds at topica.com>
Message-ID: <4CD7ED1A52B8406299B1FAE0B8FBE822 at SamLaptop>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Folks, I stand corrected. Thanksgiving was on November 26 in 1964 and the
Stanleyville mission was flown on the 24th. Paulis was on Thanksgiving Day, the
26th. The alert at Pope was on Sunday, November 15 the week before.
Sam
----- Original Message -----
From: Sam McGowan
To: Herkybirds at topica.com ; TCTAA Members Email Group
Cc: Airlifters ; 464th TCW ; Herkybirds
Sent: Saturday, November 22, 2008 5:11 PM
Subject: Re: [TCTAAmembers] (C-130 Vets) 44 Years Ago
http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/odom/odom.asp
If anyone is interested, here is a fairly recent study on the Congo Rescue
done by an Army officer at the Command and Staff College. Incidentally, my
brother-in-law is a student there now.
Sam
----- Original Message -----
From: Sam McGowan
To: TCTAA Members Email Group
Cc: Herkybirds ; Airlifters ; 464th TCW
Sent: Saturday, November 22, 2008 5:02 PM
Subject: RE: (C-130 Vets) [TCTAAmembers] 44 Years Ago
Ace,
The rote squadron at Evreux was from Pope. We had replaced Sewart several
months earlier. Lockbourne had a squadron of A-models on rotation there too but
they didn't have the range for the mission. Sewart had started a rotation to
Clark or Naha a few weeks earlier after the Gulf of Tonkin episode. Langley
had a squadron at Clark. Either Sewart or Langley had a rotation to the Canal
Zone and Pope had a mission in the Congo as well as the squadron in France.
Lt. Col. Lindsey from the 777th was the squadron commander and Col. Burgress
Gradwell from 322nd Air Division was the mission commander. Col. Clayton
Isaccson was the Strike Command commander in Stanleyville and was in charge of
the LEO force.
If Col. Rush was involved, it was probably with the planning in the Pentagon
or at Langley. TAC or somebody came up with a plan to make a massive drop of
the 82nd at Stanleyville complete with a B-52 pounding but it was ruled out.
The RED DRAGON/DRAGON ROUGE plan was planned by USAFE and the Belgians.
Huey Long's crew flew the lead airplane with Col. Gradwell aboard. All of
the crews were from the 777th and 778th except for one crew which was from the
776th that was at the end of their rotation. Col. Issacson came over in a
TALKING BIRD airplane and that crew may have been from the 314th but I think
they were also from the 464th.
Sam
----- Original Message -----
From: Alfred Bowman
To: TCTAA Members Email Group
Cc: Troop Carrier (Topica) ; Airlifters ; 464th TCW ; Herkybirds
Sent: Saturday, November 22, 2008 4:22 PM
Subject: Re: [TCTAAmembers] 44 Years Ago
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
To: Herkybirds ; Airlifters ; 464th TCW ; 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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