Life and death in Southeast Asia:
a SAR double feature

“Cheating Death: Combat Air Rescues in Vietnam and Laos”

and

“The Rescue of Streetcar 304"

Reviewed by "Bondo" Phil Brandt

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I remember getting the adrenalin-pumping call in the Spring of 1969: at first light on Easter morning my younger fighter pilot brother, Randy, had been plucked out of the Laotian jungle, injured but alive. He owes his life to the same exceptionally brave, selfless “Sandy’s” and “Jollys” whose Search and Rescue exploits are grippingly documented in these two books.

31 May 1968 just wasn’t “Streetcar 304's” day. On his very first carrier-launched combat mission over Southeast Asia, one of the wings of Navy Lt. Kenny Fields’ A-7 was blown off by the high-threat Laotian gun sites he was attacking. He stepped over the side in “Indian Country”, where the fate of captured pilots was known to often be torture and death.

In what then seemed an eternity, Kenny documents his 40-hour, three-day jungle ordeal spent evading Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese regulars as USAF SAR forces valiantly made rescue-after-rescue attempt in the face of withering small arms, ZPU, 37 and 57mm fire.

At sea, the fleet brass impatiently fumed at what to them seemed a no-brainer SAR operation that the Air Force was having trouble pulling off. What they didn’t know was that in the immediate shoot-down vicinity, under the protection of “triple-canopy” jungle cover, were literally thousands of bad guys who were regrouping from their 1968 defeat at the Khe Sanh siege. And, guns, boy did they ever have guns! These guns hosed the A-1 Sandys and Jollys unmercifully, resulting in four additional ejections and seven aircraft lost or heavily damaged, one pilot becoming a POW.

The situation got so bad after two days, 189 sorties and at least two aborted rescue attempts that the only remaining options were to either lay in incapacitating gas or to drop CBUs very close to Kenny’s position, hoping he’d be able to take cover while “Gomer” gunners were dying from thousands of small pieces of shrapnel. A digression: my brother who only flew at night (497th "Night Owls" at Ubon) told me of seeing dozens of guns firing at them in the darkness, and then thousands of CBU bomblets would wink along the ground, enveloping the gun sites. Strangely, the firing then stopped!

Since the SAR forces were not absolutely sure of Kenny’s position, it was feared that they wouldn’t be able to find him, since he’d be incapacitated, too. The close-in CBU drops worked a bit too well, as Kenny was hit by shrapnel in the legs and groin. The battery in Kenny’s radio was running down, and transmissions with the Jolly were fragmentary, but still he didn’t want to “pop smoke” as the Jolly approached his approximate location because he was fearful that the gun threat to the helicopter was still too high. Although weak and blood-soaked, he was finally able to run under the hovering Jolly and get the attention of a gunner who, thinking at first that he was a Gomer, almost fired. Safely back at NKP Air Base in Thailand, Kenny was transported directly to the hospital and, as unlike the case of my brother, never got to party with his rescuers and personally express his thanks for being given back his life.

I feel it’s especially apropos to review these two books together because “Cheating Death” author and A-1 “Sandy” pilot George Marrett was one of the prime Sandy participants in the location and rescue of Streetcar 304. In fact, years later Marrett (as a civilian aerospace test pilot) attended a technical briefing by one each Cmdr. Kenny Fields. George approached Kenny after the briefing and told him that he thought he had known him in the past, but by a different name. Fields mystified countenance changed to a stunned look when George asked, “Were you Streetcar 304?” Fields exclaimed, “Were you there?” Marrett answered that those had been the three longest days of his life.

Although “Cheating Death” covers the rescue of Streetcar 304 in depth, George relates many other equally gripping events in the daily life of the Sandy rescue forces. To these Sandy’s flying the obsolete radial-engined A-1 was more than duty; it was a privilege granted to just a lucky few.

Leaving the Air Force after his A-1 tour at NKP, George went on to a highly successful career as a test pilot. A few years ago he and other ex-SAR members realized a need for a central oral and recorded history repository for past rescues, and the Combat SAR Association was born. Each year the organization holds a reunion at a different location, and various past rescues are briefed by the actual participants. Such was the case three years ago at Moody AFB, Georgia where I was my brother’s guest at the briefing of his rescue by some of the same pilots who had served with George at NKP. It was a humbling experience for this retired TAC aircrew member to meet George and other unassumingly modest airmen who hung it out to perform what has to be the most satisfying of all combat missions: saving lives.

The HH-3 Jolly pilot that picked up Kenny Fields from the “Valley of the Shadow of Death” had participated in other hairy rescues, and, while he was at maximum concentration during the vulnerable hover phase–sometimes lasting five minutes–he would sense a brilliant white aura that seemed to envelope the cockpit. He believes it was a signal from Heaven that his helicopter crew was under very special “protection” and would survive. Would that all selfless SAR forces be so “surrounded”!

Both Highly Recommended.
 

Review Copyright © 2007 by "Bondo" Phil Brandt
This Page Created on 01 June, 2007
Last updated 04 June, 2007

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