Darrel D. Whitcomb - The Rescue of Bat 21

The Rescue of Bat 21

The latest edition of this work has been brought to publication with the generous assistance of Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest.

Naval Institute Press

291 Wood Road

Annapolis, MD 21402

1998 by Darrel D. Whitcomb

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

First Naval Institute Press paperback edition published 2014

ISBN 978-1-61251-583-0 (eBook)

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Whitcomb, Darrel D., 1947

The Rescue of Bat 21 / Darrel D. Whitcomb

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Vietnamese Conflict, 1961 1975Search and rescue operations. 2. Hambleton, Iceal E. I. Title.

DS559.8.S4W47 1998

959.704348dc21 97-46169

Print editions meet the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Many believe the war in Vietnam was a war without heroes. But that was not the case.

Richard Nixon, No More Vietnams

This story is dedicated to some of those heroes, the ground warriors and air warriors who saw the end of our nations participation in that war. And to all of those who ever strapped into the seat of a jet or recip or helicopter and went out to try to rescue one of their buddies in that wasted effort, especially the Sandys and Jolly Greens.

Most of all, this book is dedicated to the brave crews of Blueghost 39 and Jolly Green 67. Ten men went forth to save one of their own; only one returned. They were brave men. God bless them all.

One of the reasons for the outstanding morale of the U.S. crewmembers was that in the event they were downed, they knew that every possible effort would be made to rescue them. This confidence was a vital factor in maintaining the esprit of air units.

Military Assistance Command Vietnam, Command History

When [the Vietnamese colonel] heard the rescue mission was for one survivor, he held up his finger, and meaning no disrespect said, Just one? We all understood his remark....

Lt. Col. G. H. Turley, The Easter Offensive

Contents

In the classic Japanese novel Rashomon, a tragic incident is recounted several times, each from a different perspective, resulting in a much more comprehensive understanding of what actually occurred. In The Rescue of Bat 21, Darrel Whitcomb has written an American nonfiction version of that classic tale, recounting from several different vantage points the shootdown and rescue of Air Force Lt. Col. Iceal Gene Hambleton, call sign Bat 21 Bravo.

As in the case of the Rashomon incident, on the surface this incident also would appear to be a rather straightforward and well-known adventure story. In fact, such an account was written sixteen years ago by retired Air Force Col. William C. Anderson and made into a 1988 feature movie, Bat 21, starring Gene Hackman, Danny Glover, and Jerry Reed. As Michael Lee Lanning comments in his 1994 Vietnam at the Movies (New York: Fawcett), even though the film is based loosely on the true experiences of LTC Iceal Hambleton... none of the actors is particularly believable.

One reason may be, as Colonel Anderson says in the afterword to his 1980 book Bat 21, although the subtitle reads based on the true story of Lieutenant Colonel Iceal Hambleton USAF, the fact was that for security reasons, certain parts of the story which seemed important to me were still classifiedparticularly certain aspects of the Air Force escape and evasion techniques. Further, I was requested to protect the identity of certain individuals [and as a result] would have to replace them with certain fictions approximate to the truth.

Not only that, taken in all, the actual rescue effort... was so complex, involved so many people, made use of such complex logistics and [in some cases] such exotic technologies that there was a real danger that the central narrative... might be swamped in peripheral detail. To avoid that, Anderson interpolated into the story a fictional character who would perform the roles actually played by a rather populous cast of real people... a representative of all the heroic, unsung forward air controller (FAC) pilots who throughout the long, bitter struggle in Vietnam daily risked their lives for their service and their country.

Appropriately enough, one of those heroic and unsung FAC pilots, Darrel D. Whitcomb, has now written the honest-to-God true account of the Bat 21 rescue operation. From 1972 until 1974, he was a forward air controller in Southeast Asia, directing airstrikes in support of friendly forces in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in action, two Distinguished Flying Crosses, and sixteen Air Medals for his wartime service, Whitcomb knows from firsthand experience the realities of the battlefield. Further, with the passage of time, many of the restrictions on use of classified information that hampered Colonel Anderson no longer apply. Rather than being constrained to avoid the complexities of the rescue operation, he has been able to incorporate those details into his account.

The first three chapters set the stage for this important episode in military history. The situation in South Vietnam in the spring of 1972 was not at all like the picture that most Americans have of the war. Gone was the massive American ground combat presence of the earlier years. Only two U.S. infantry brigades remained in the country, and they were restricted to defending their own base areas. Vietnamization was the watchword: the responsibility for the defense of South Vietnam had been passed to the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam (ARVN). The black-pajama-clad Viet Cong guerrillas were long gone as well, replaced by the regular military forces of the North Vietnamese Army (NVA).

Sensing that victory was at hand, the North Vietnamese Politburo ordered a major multidivision cross-border invasion of the south to administer the coup de grce. In I Corps, the northernmost portion of South Vietnam, four NVA divisions attacked directly south across the demilitarized zone (DMZ) while another two divisions attacked to the east from bases in Laos. Simultaneous multidivision NVA attacks were also launched against Kontum in II Corps in the central highlands and An Loc in III Corps north of Saigon.