Early Covert Action on the Ho Chi Minh Trail

 | Vietnam  | 0 comments  | Print This Post  | Email This Post

The next day, three more teams — Nos. 2, 3 and 6 — filed into a single C-47 and headed for Laos. They floated to earth over the same drop zone that had been used the previous day. Shortly thereafter, two additional teams — Nos. 7 and 8 — parachuted to the south of the first four. After the group was resupplied by parachute drop, the commandos divided up and began patrolling in different directions. The operation took place during the rainy season, which complicated movement for the troops and apparently reduced Communist trail activity in Laos to a minimum. ‘We had very little contact,’ summed up Lieutenant Dang Hung Long, the Team 6 commander.

After almost three months, the teams regrouped and made their way overland to the South Vietnam border. Already, elements of the two airborne ranger companies had been flown to Kontum, where they were aided by USSF medical NCOs Paul Campbell and Ray James, recently arrived on temporary duty from Okinawa. From Kontum the troops were trucked to a border outpost near the village of Ben Het. Once there, Captain Hoi — commander of the first company — took a 90-man column into Laos to link up with the four northern intelligence teams and escort them home. At the same time, a second ranger task force moved across the border to rendezvous with the two southern teams. One week later, all the commandos and rangers were safely back at Ben Het.

Back in September, meanwhile, Major Kinh had opened a second Typhoon operational zone just south of Tchepone. Because of some earlier concern that the South Vietnamese C-47s were not hitting their correct drop zones, two teams — Nos. 5 and 10 — were shuttled to Takhli Air Base in Thailand and loaded aboard an Air America Curtiss C-46. The U.S. crew, it was felt, could insert them with more precision. Such sentiment did little to reassure the commandos. ‘They were packed in pretty tight,’ recalled Miles Johnson, one of three American jumpmasters on the flight. ‘We taped cardboard over the windows so we could turn on the cabin lights to calm their nerves.’

While the C-46 circled south of Tchepone, the two teams jumped above a small hill near the village of Muong Nong. Everything did not go smoothly. One of the commandos seriously injured his back upon landing. Establishing radio contact with headquarters, his teammates called for a medical evacuation. This resulted in a flurry of activity in Saigon, since at that time Typhoon had only been authorized to make fixed-wing flights for cross-border work. They had not been authorized to use helicopters. In the end, however, the CIA’s deputy station chief granted them permission. A South Vietnamese Sikorsky H-34 went to the rescue.

Ironically, the evacuation placed the rest of the commandos in great danger. In the process of investigating the chopper landing, Communist troops located and attacked both teams, capturing a medic from Team 5 in the process. Fleeing without their radio, the rest of the commandos managed to reach the safety of the South Vietnamese border outpost at Lao Bao.

For the next round of Typhoon, the CIA and PLO decided in November 1961 to re-establish a presence in the southern zone near Attopeu. For added punch this time, Team 4 would infiltrate with a platoon from the 2nd Airborne Ranger Company. Back to using South Vietnamese aircraft, the combined force jumped near the banks of the Se Sou. After hiding a bag of rice near the drop zone, the troops began to conduct short patrols in various directions. Unlike on the earlier Attopeu foray, when there had been little evidence of the enemy, the Communists were more in evidence this time. ‘There were punji sticks set up near the drop zone,’ recalled Team 4 commander Cam Ngoc Huan. ‘We could see cooking fires and other activity around.’

Foul weather made resupply drops difficult. When the team members returned to their original rice cache, they found it had been spoiled by rodents. They decided to head for the airfield at Attopeu, in the hope of getting food from the local Lao garrison. Along the way, the South Vietnamese troops came upon a village and placed it under observation. They saw some soldiers milling around and guessed from their uniforms that they were Royal Lao troops. That put the commandos more at ease, but they spent the night hidden in the nearby jungle.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to

Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Historical Conflicts, Vietnam War