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I spent twenty years in the Air Force, but only one year of that time was spent in a "war environment." That was the year I was in Thailand. I was an Air Traffic Controller at a base named Nakhon Phanom, often referred to as NKP (GIs being GIs, it was also called Naked Fanny), in the northeast corner of the country. I use the phrase "war environment" advisedly because I was simply not aware of any threats to the base or it's population. I don't know how I could have been so dumb. Looking back, I can see all the daily events that point to a threat, but just never put 2 and 2 together.
For instance, every evening, just after sunset, we would launch an H3 helicopter. The call sign was Knife 47, and it's mission was night reconnaissance. It flew all night. It had a very large spotlight aboard, and it flew around the perimeter of the base shining the light down, looking for intruders. I had never seen them actually find an intruder, so I assumed that someone was being overly cautious.
We had a locker in the control tower that had M16s, ammo, flack vests, and helmets. They must have been there for us to use in case anyone came through the perimeter. I just assmued that they were "left overs" from a bygone era, having nothing to do with any present danger. Come to think of it, the tower would have been a good place to shoot from, but would also have made a good target for the bad guys.
We launched many combat missions every day. Every flight that departed NKP headed east, in the direction of "neutral" Laos. I assumed that they were overflying Laos, and heading for the northern part of South Viet Nam, where the war was. I have recently learned about the "secret war" that was waged in Laos. Specifically, that NKP's main effort was against the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos, trying to stop the flood of supplies to the Viet Cong. It was heavily defended.
Every day our Forward Air Controllers (FACs, Call Sign Nail) would depart and head east. Their mission was to locate the bad guys and direct air strikes against them. It was one of the hairiest jobs over there.
We had A-1 aircraft assigned, also. They were developed for the Navy in WW II. They were large single engine aircraft that could carry all kinds of ordnance. They flew slow, and were perfect for their mission, which was to get the bad guys.
As a tower controller, I saw many aircraft come back from their missions with battle damage emergencies. We also had many others who were not assigned to the base land there with similar emergencies. Emergency aircraft will almost always land at the nearest airport. If NKP was the nearest airport, their battle damage must have occured in Laos. I never realized that at the time.
Search and Rescue (SAR) was another very important mission carried out from NKP. When the call came in that somebody had been shot down the Jolly Green H53s and Sandy A-1s would get involved in a hurry. In the tower we knew we were in for a hectic day. The bad guys would try to do everything humanly possible to shoot down the rescue aircraft, while our guys would do everything humanly possible to get the downed pilot out of there alive. These circumstances made for numerous battle damage emergencies. Also, our pilots would stay on the scene until they had either expended all ordnance or used all their available fuel. That meant that an aircraft returning to NKP would only have enough fuel to get there. You really had to plan your traffic flow to make sure they landed on the first approach, because there would not be a second approach.
Our aircraft were involved in many SARs. We would often get calls from pilots who had been rescued by our SAR forces, requesting a "high speed pass" to salute our guys. Of course, us ATC pukes could not approve a high speed pass, since that was an aerobatic maneuver. But we could clear aircraft for a low approach, and advise the pilot that his airspeed was his business, since he was responsible for the safe operation of that aircraft. That gave the pilot license to do pretty much as he pleased. The end result was a low approach that almost always missed the runway and came over the ramp, at a safe speed that always seemed a lot faster than normal.
Once we had an F-105 making a pass to salute the Sandy's and Jollies, and the guy had to bail out a half mile on final. The aircraft took out a guard tower and machine gun post, and the Jolly Green was picking the pilot up again. I would imagine there was a red face at the O club that night.
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