Blind Bat, Yellowbirds, Willy the Whale
"Night Intruders" on Uncle Ho's trail
Blind Bat C-130 Flareship
As is often the case for American military forces when they are called to war, there was a lot of jury-rigging to get these aircraft prepared. The aluminum flare launchers were aluminum trays manufactured in the sheet metal shop back at Naha, Okinawa. Wooden bins were also home-made and strapped to an empty air drop pallet. The bins initially held magnesium flares, like the Mark VI (MK VI) flare left over from WWII.
Here you see a Blind Bat crew setting the fuses on their MK VI flares. The likelihood is that this crew unloaded the flares, each of which weighed about 27 lbs., from an ammunition truck, carried them into their C-130, and placed them in these home-made wooden bins. The crew is now setting the fuses. Later, this crew will fly the 8-10 hour mission, with a pre-brief before, and a post-mission brief after. Since it was a night mission, they then got to go to bed in often 90-100 degree weather and try to get some sleep. You had to be in good physical shape to do all this. Fatigue was a problem with which the crews had to contend.
Let's describe how the crews matched themselves with this jury-rigged equipment to get the job done.
This is a Blind Bat crewman, John Tweedie, following a mission over Laos in 1965. You can see he is sitting on the flare dispenser. My guess is that all those white "strips" by his feet are the lanyards that activated the flares as they left the aircraft.
Loaders would remove the flares from the wooden bins and put them in the aluminum tray. A crewmember known as the "kicker" would place his feet over four flares, two under one foot, two under the other. The pilot might then order: "Two at four seconds on my call for twelve flares."
The first kicker would reach down and put his hands on the first two flares under his left foot. At the command "execute," he would push out the first flares with his hands, count 1001 and 1002, then push out the two flares from under his right foot. Then the next kicker would go through a similar sequence until 12 flares were dropped about two seconds apart in a string. Each flare was attached to a 24-inch lanyard.
On the way out, the lanyard would jerk away from the flare, and the fuse would start to burn internally. Based on how the fuses were set, the ignition charge would pop, a chute would deploy, and the magnesium flare would begin to burn as it fell gently to the ground. As each kicker pushed out his flares, a loader would put new flares in each slot under his feet. God help them all if the pilot went into a tactical turn to avoid artillery while all this was going on.
The crew in the back had to be in pretty darn good shape, not only to handle the rigors of holding and kicking the flares during the mission, but it also had to unload them (about 27 lbs each) from the ammunition trucks, set the fuses, load them onto the plane, and then night load them into the racks for kick out.
Remember, these fellows flew at night, not during the day.
The target detection system initially consisted of the crew's eyeballs and, after a few weeks of operational experience, a set of binoculars. Only later would some night vision equipment come their way.
As one would expect, there were no operating procedures.
I read one account by Sam McGowan, then a loadmaster, and now a well-published source of information for the Blind Bats, that said the crew arrived at Da Nang in the morning, spent the day drawing up flight plans, and flew into North Vietnam that evening. And oh yes, the aircraft arrived at Da Nang shiny silver, and within hours of arrival had been painted over black.
There is precious little information to describe the flare missions during their operations out of Da Nang. Perhaps this is due to the cloak of secrecy that covered its operations. To this day, some crewmembers don't want to reveal anything about their missions at all.
What I do know, however, is that 1965 saw the tempo of US operations in Vietnam increase dramatically, and I expect that the C-130 flare dropping business was buzzing. Attacks against US forces increased, and so did the number of US troops sent to the region.
The USAF implemented its “Rolling Thunder” campaign of systematic bombing of North Vietnam.
The nickname "Rolling Thunder" was given to all air strikes, armed reconnaissance, and photo reconnaissance against specific targets and lines of communication (LOC) in North Vietnam.
North Vietnam was divided into route packages, numbered as shown on the map, with aircraft assigned to each package to perform their missions. Rolling Thunder was a phased campaign that politicians hoped would intimidate the North Vietnamese into peace negotiations. The strategic targets of Hanoi and Haiphong harbor, indicated by the two circles on the map, were off-limits, which many viewed as a significant mistake by Washington in this war.
Flights over Laos were over northern Laos called the Barrel Roll, and over the panhandle called Steel Tiger. Most of the missions over Barrel Roll were to support Royal Laotian Army and indigenous Hmong troops battling against communisr Pathet Lao and North Vietnames troops fighting to overthrow the Royal Laotian Government.
US “Steel Tiger” operations over the panhandle of Laos were to locate and destroy enemy forces and materiel being moved southward at night into South Vietnam. Infiltration along the Ho Chi Minh Trail had increased substantially. Bridges, road and rail junctions, truck parks, and supply depots were all primary targets. All of these events placed great emphasis on the employment of flare-dropping operations.
C-130 flareship operations out of Da Nang generally consisted of a four-ship formation. A single C-130 would lead, a pair of B-57s, known as Yellow Birds or Red Birds, would tag along, and a Marine EF-10 Willy the Whale electronic countermeasures (ECM) aircraft would accompany the group. Every single night from 1965 through the end of 1966, this kind of formation would head out of Da Nang into North Vietnam, as far as to Hanoi on occasion.
I could not find a photo of a C-130 Blind Bat flare drop. This is a time-lapse AC-47 "Spooky" gunship, which is flying a circular route and firing downward, creating a cone-like effect. To the left, you see flares dropped by the gunship, which gives you a sense of the concept and the illumination they can produce.
This is another time-lapse photo. What you see here are flares and traces over an Army camp at Phan Thiet in 1968. I believe the traces are from a Cobra helicopter gunship providing base defense. But again, this is the kind of thing the Blind Bats and colleagues would see all the time, except often those traces were coming up at them.
The C-130 would search for truck convoys and illuminate the target area, the EF-10 would jam enemy radars, and the B-57s would attack the targets, often as dive bombers to increase accuracy. I have been told that on occasion, especially in the early stages of operations, two C-130s would have to go in because the WWII vintage MK VI flares being employed did not have a long enough burn time. The first C-130 would drop 12 flares at 4-second intervals, then the second would follow the same pattern. The end result was that combined, they could light up the trail very well in the area in which they were operating.
I should pause here and introduce you to the B-57 and EF-10.
Go to B-57 Canberra Yellow Bird-Red Bird
Click to zoom graphic-photo
