Working with the Eliot FACs

The Eliot FACs were assigned to the 24th Special Tactical Zone (STZ), which included Plieku and Kontum. They were Sector or ARVN but didn't directly support any specific ground units.

One of the interesting things about their patch is that it seems to have been designed by someone who actually had some artistic skill or a sense of graphics design. It is also not a true embroidered patch, but a silk-screened picture on cotton cloth. The house in the patch is typical of those on the hillsides in that part of the highlands, and I remember seeing that style of houses dotting the hillsides flying the 50 miles or so from Kontum up to the Dak Poko Valley during the sieges of Dak Seang and Dak Pek in April 1970.

I went TDY to Kontum in April 1970 to help control air strikes around Dak Pek and Dak Seang during the month long battle there. I lived with the Eliot FACs and kept my O-2 at the Kontum City Airport.

It was good flying and I got the chance to control beaucoup air strikes in the Dak Poko Valley--most of them troops in contact. It was not uncommon to control 12-15 sets of fighters during a four-hour mission over the Special Forces Camp at Dak Seang. At times there would be as many as five simultaneous air strikes--controlled by five FACs--going on within two to three miles of Dak Seang.

It was so congested that Headquarters 7th AF even sent 'high' FACs to orbit over Dak Seang at 10,000 feet to act as a mini-ABCCC controllers to parcel out the constant stream of F-100s,F-4s, and A-1s that came into the Dak Poko Valley. As soon as the flight you were working went 'Winchester' (Ed Note: Winchester = out of ordinance) you would call the high-FAC and tell him you were ready for another set of fighters and the high-FAC would clear the next set out of the fighter orbit and hand them off to you. It worked smoothly and there was no chance the NVA was going to ever win that battle.

The F-100s from Tuy Hoa and Phan Rang were turning so rapidly that it was not uncommon to work with the same call sign and flight lead twice during one FAC sortie. Voice recognition and target familiarity made briefing simple. At times it was no more than. "Remember the target you worked 90 minutes ago? Well, we're still hitting the same one."

I remember once working a TIC about 500m from where another FAC was working his own TIC. We talked to each other on FM while talking to the fighters on UHF and coordinated it so our fighters were making head-on passes, but rolling off the perch in sequence so there would be only one on final at a time. Mine were coming from the east making left breaks, and his were coming from the west making left breaks. Once we got it synchronized, it worked like a champ--but it was something we never learned at Hurlburt and Holley Fields.

During the Dak Seang/Dak Pek battles we typically flew two, four-hour missions one day, and a single four-hour mission the next, and kept repeating that cycle unless someone got sick or hit.

My longest mission in the O-2 was over Dak Seang. I was the on-station FAC and couldn't leave until replaced. My replacement didn't show, and didn't show, and I kept watching the fuel gages go down. Finally, I just had to leave and head back to Kontum--stupidly over-flying a perfectly good airstrip at Dak To. I landed at Kontum 6.1 hours after takeoff. After I shutdown, I climbed up on the wing and looked in the tanks before the crew chief refueled. I could see or feel no fuel. (I had been only minutes from flaming out.)

The FACs and the AC-119s provided 24-hour coverage over Dak Seang and Dak Pek during April '70. The AC-119s covered the camps at night, and the FACs during the day. The first FAC to arrive in the morning would get a target brief and update from the last AC-119 to leave, and the last FAC over the camp at sunset had to stay on station until the first AC-119 showed up.

The Dak Seang/Dak Pek battles were some of the most intense--but enjoyable--flying I did in Indochina. Out of my entire AF career, those three weeks in April '70 are still one of the highpoints. I was a 23 year old lieutenant doing what I had been trained to do, doing it well, and seeing direct results. The highlight came towards the end when I got to meet a Special Forces grunt in the hospital at Kontum whose life I had saved. He was leading a patrol on the hillside north of the Special Forces camp and was about to be overrun by a squad of NVA when I put in a flight of A-1s about 25 meters in front of his position. In fact, he was wounded while I was talking with him on FM just before the A-1s showed up. I still vividly remember his voice at the instant he got hit, and the sounds of all the incoming AK-47 rounds coming through his radio handset whenever he keyed his microphone.