American Hero - POW Rescue Mission
HERB KALEN’S PARTICIPATION IN THE SON TAY RAID
The plan was that the helicopters of Apple flight, led by Colonel Frederic M. “Marty” Donohue, would take positions allowing them to train their 7.62 mm miniguns on Son Tay’s guard towers and shred them with fire. Once the assault helicopters of Apple flight had destroyed the towers, Banana l’s pilot, Major Herbert D. Kalen, would deliberately crash-land the Jolly Green Giant in Son Tay’s small courtyard. The plan called for it to be a “gentle” crash landing. Some early-stage concerns had surrounded this part of the mission. Overhead photographs of the prison compound showed a line of trees, estimated at a height of forty feet, along the north side of the courtyard. There were a few other trees along buildings to the east and south as well. After taking measurements, the debate was between using a Bell UH-1 Iroquois, better known under its nickname, “Huey,” or an HH-3 Jolly Green Giant. Though the Huey could easily fit into the space, it could not carry the minimum of fourteen heavily armed men needed for the rescue. The Jolly Green Giant could carry the requisite amount of men, but there was a question as to whether it would fit. Eventually, the decision was made to go with the HH-3 Jolly Green Giant and sacrifice it. It would be deliberately crash-landed in the cramped courtyard— about the size of a volleyball court— and at the conclusion of the rescue, destroyed with special explosive charges. Not long after that decision was made, U.S. Army Brigadier General Donald Blackburn, who as the Special Assistant for Counterinsurgency and Special Activities reported directly to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and was responsible for coordinating everything to do with the rescue attempt, heard that a general officer not connected with the mission but with influence in the Pentagon bureaucracy was concerned about “losing” a Jolly Green Giant. Blackburn arranged a meeting with the officer to forestall any change. During the meeting, the officer expressed his concern that if they destroyed an HH-3 in the mission, they’d lose an aircraft costing almost a million dollars. The officer suggested that Blackburn switch to a Huey, as it cost only about $ 350,000. Outraged, Blackburn refused, and because he had the authority of the office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff behind him made the decision stick.
The interior of the HH-3 was cramped. In anticipation of the crash landing, the sides and floor of the helicopter’s interior were heavily padded, and mattresses covered the floor. Captain Meadows and his team were lying flat on them so that their whole bodies would absorb the impact of the landing. On paper, their portion of the Son Tay mission, code-named Blueboy, looked to some like a one-way ticket into the very prison they were trying to take down. But Meadows had designed Blueboy to be anything but a suicide mission. Blueboy’s arrival had been timed around the prison guards’ schedule. The guards rotated on the hour or half hour. The rescuers wanted to land as close as possible to the quarter hour so that the guards off duty would be falling asleep and the ones on duty would have settled down to another boring shift. Even just one less guard being sharp and alert might well be the difference between success and death.
About three and a half nautical miles from Son Tay, the aircraft separated to assume their positions prior to the beginning of the raid. In the distance to the east, Colonel Donohue in Apple 3 could see the lights of Hanoi. Farther east, flares illuminated the sky over Haiphong Harbor— the U.S. Navy’s diversionary contribution to the mission. At 2: 18 A.M., Cherry 1 began dropping its flares above Son Tay prison and the firefight simulators over the garrison two miles east and south of Son Tay city. Then, just as Colonel Donohue was bringing his Super Jolly Green Giant around to attack the guard towers at the prison, a yellow warning light on his instrument panel began flashing: “Transmission.” His copilot, Captain Tom Waldron, pointed at it in agitation. According to the warning, the helicopter’s transmission was moments away from catastrophic disintegration. But Colonel Donohue was already committed, and the most critical moment of the raid was almost upon them. “Ignore the sonovabitch,” Colonel Donohue told his copilot. Having taken a gamble with one problem, he suddenly found himself having to solve another. His helicopter, code-named Apple 3, had drifted four hundred yards south of the prison. He corrected his flight and spoke into the intercom to alert his gunners manning the Gatling guns on each side of the Super Jolly Green Giant, stating, “Okay, ten seconds and open fire.” Then, with his helicopter hovering in position above the prison he ordered, “Ready— fire!” Within seconds, the northwest and southwest guard towers were annihilated by an almost solid stream of 7.62 mm machine-gun bullets. Additional bursts tore into a nearby guard barracks. As soon as his gunners confirmed the destruction of their targets, Colonel Donohue accelerated and flew to the prearranged holding area nearby to wait out the rest of the mission, all the while watching the yellow transmission light with a mixture of concern and relief. Then Major Herb Kalen bore in with Banana 1 and, as soon as he was over the courtyard, began his controlled crash descent. The helicopter unexpectedly lurched when, just before touchdown, its landing skids snared a clothesline that had been strung across the courtyard. Major Kalen almost lost control of Banana 1. The rotors of the HH-3 slashed into tree branches bordering the courtyard like a giant weed whacker. Abruptly, Banana 1 landed hard on the courtyard ground— harder than anyone expected. A fire extinguisher tore loose from its mounting bracket and hit flight engineer Technical Sergeant Leroy Wright hard enough to break his ankle. Although First Lieutenant George L. Petrie wasn’t supposed to be the first man out of the helicopter, that’s what happened. Having been improperly braced, he later explained that “the crash landing threw me out.” The men picked themselves up and dashed out the rear of the helicopter.
Once he had cleared Banana 1, Captain Meadows knelt, and as the thirteen men in his team fanned out and dashed toward the cell bocks, he lifted a white bullhorn to his mouth, pressed the trigger, and calmly spoke into the mouthpiece, “We’re Americans. Keep your heads down. We’re Americans. This is a rescue. We’re here to get you out. Keep your heads down. Get on the floor. We’ll be in your cells in a minute.” As small arms fire crackled around him, he repeated his announcement. Meanwhile, his radio operator was on the command network to Colonel Simons, stating, “Wildroot [Simons’s call sign], this is Blueboy. We’re in.”
When Apple 1 arrived at Son Tay, ten minutes into the raid, a disturbing reality was beginning to dawn on the raiders: no POWs were in the prison compound. In the minutes immediately after Banana 1 had crash-landed and Sydnor’s Redwine force had breached the walls, Dick Meadows’s Blueboy force had been checking the compound room by room and finding nothing but guards, who were quickly killed. Doc Cataldo had set up a small aid and processing station but had only the crew chief from Banana 1 to take care of. Teams Blueboy, Redwine, and eventually, Greenleaf, killed an estimated total of more than fifty of the Son Tay camp guard force, and an unknown additional amount of North Vietnamese troops around the perimeter of the raid site. When the reality of the situation took hold, Sydnor called “Negative items” over the main radio circuit and ordered the HH-53s to come in and pick them up. As the helicopters landed, the A-1s were called in to make additional strikes around the prison compound, to keep down the heads of any North Vietnamese soldiers still alive. While the Skyraiders did their work, the teams boarded their assigned helicopters and a positive head count was done to make sure nobody had been left behind. With all accounted for, the Super Jolly Green Giants took off and headed back to Udorn. During the flight, the men began to take stock; in twenty-nine minutes on the ground the raiders had suffered only two wounded. One was the crew chief of Banana 1, and the other was a raider who suffered a minor bullet wound. In return, the Kingpin force had killed an estimated two to three hundred enemy troops and, though they didn’t know it, really scared the government of North Vietnam.
In the immediate aftermath of the raid, the entire military and government hierarchy of North Vietnam was thrown into a panic. Initially, they thought the war was about to reach a new level of escalation, one that might even include an invasion. Always concerned that the ponderous giant that they saw in the United States might awaken and use its full power against them, the North Vietnamese politburo viewed the Son Tay raid as a potential threat to them directly. Then, as emotions settled, they began to finally realize the true value of the POWs in future dealings with the United States. Their first move was to gather all the POWs from the outlying camps and put them into the complex of camps in downtown Hanoi. Only there, under the full strength of the air defense “bubble” over the capital city, did the government feel safe from SOF raiders like those who had attacked Son Tay. For the POWs, the raid proved to be a godsend. They were shoved into already overcrowded camps in Hanoi, which effectively eliminated the Vietnamese tactics of torture and isolation. POW morale skyrocketed as news of what had happened at Son Tay spread among the prisoners. Overall treatment of the prisoners improved as well, though diet remained poor up until a few weeks before their release in 1973.