To All
Good Sunday Morning August 13 2023.
Special edition
Regards,
Skip
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From Skip
On 13 August 2019 I wrote The List 5071 with the following introduction
This is a special edition of The List to introduce a monumental achievement of two Men. Chris Hobson and Dave Lovelady. In 2001 Chris published a book called Vietnam Air Losses. A definitive account of all the fixed wing losses in the Vietnam War. After talking to the Bear who has used this as a reference in his work On Rolling Thunder and Commando Hunt Dave got a copy of the book as did I and realized what a treasure it was for those who were involved in the war or associated with those who were lost. In collaboration with Chris who has recently spent hours updating portions to go into this site Dave put it all into the searchable site that he is introducing below.
Well Done gentlemen
Regards,
Skip
From Dave
Skip:
The project I've been working on is now finished, and the website is on line for all to use.
As you know, Bear refers frequently to Chris Hobson's book Vietnam Air Losses, and he gave us some ideas on where we could purchase a used copy, since it has been out of print since 2001. I found a copy and was fascinated by the information in it. I was able to contact Chris, who has now retired, and he agreed to update the manuscript with new information and allowed me to put all of it on a website so others won't have to chase down a used copy and pay as much as $896 (actual price for one copy on Amazon) to see what happened to their grandfathers.
I thought the greatest value would be in having a searchable database, so I did that. You can search for a name, day, month, year, military unit, home base (or ship), aircraft type (designation/model or nickname), service, or the disposition of persons (KIA, POW, etc.). On a separate form, you can search the Narratives of the losses by keywords using Boolean search operators (explanation is on the site). So, if you wanted to look up the siege on Khe Sanh or Thanh Hoa, you can use that form. The only things you can't search for that are in the database are the serial number of aircraft or the rank of the persons.
As I write this, there are 3,118 records in the database. A "record" includes all the data on a loss event, which can often mean more than one aircraft. In fact, there were as many as six aircraft involved in a single event, but most often there were only a couple. Individuals in aircraft ranged from one to 30, with a great many with four, six, eight, 16, etc. One record contains a minimum of 13 pieces of data; the maximum contained in a single record was 129 pieces of data. I say this to indicate that I inputted over 100,000 pieces of data into the database, so I suspect we haven't yet found all the errors I made.
Going through that amount of data as quickly as I could over about a month or so gave me some impressions that I'd like to record. These are not statistical analyses; they are simply my impressions as the data passed over my eyes in great volume and quickly:
1. I was amazed at how many pure accidents there were and how many people died in accidents that had nothing to do with enemy action (in the database, those are defined as KWF, or Killed While Flying, as opposed to KIA).
2. I was astounded at the number of aircraft that hit mountain tops in bad weather, killing everyone on board. Such a waste.
3. I was surprised at how slow some units were to heed Lessons Learned, resulting in aircraft being shot down on their 12th pass on the same target at low level, or their tenth or eighth or sixth, etc. In addition, it was clear that small arms fire was nothing to ignore, yet far too many did just that.
4. I was surprised to see how many pilots were hit by bullets or shrapnel, as opposed to aircraft being damaged alone. There are a lot of instances where the pilot had time to eject but was apparently incapacitated. There was a far higher percentage of that than I would have thought.
5. It was interesting that some units (and some ships) had considerably more losses than others at the same time, in the same place, in the same type aircraft, flying the same type missions. Again, my impressions are that comparing sister squadrons might indicate that one lost a great deal more than the other, and the same was true of USAF and USMC squadrons flying from the same base. Some ships had incredible runs of "bad luck" compared to others. In some instances, the types of targets might make some of the difference, but it appears to me that leadership might have played an important role.
6. Both my deployments were during much easier times, so I'm no expert; however, my air wing policy was no multiple runs on the same target and no pullouts below 3,500 feet AGL. We lost only one aircraft (for the entire air wing on two deployments) due to enemy action. Even late in the war, there were still some units that were strafing or dropping napalm at low altitude on multiple runs and getting shot down.
7. The narratives often relate what happened to a survivor (or POW returnee) later in life/career. Many of them became very senior. At one point, Chris comments that getting shot down seemed to be a prerequisite for making high rank. Certainly, we all know that combat experience improves chances for promotion. What I noted was that, early in the war, the losses were very junior aircrew, mostly 1Lt's and Lt(jg)'s. It struck me that so many very young people died. As the war continued, the ranks of those lost (which presumably reflects those that were flying the missions and were not shot down) increases dramatically. I don't recall off-hand any Navy or Marine O-6's being lost, but there are many Air Force O-6's and above, up to and including 2-stars and I believe a three-star. Perhaps some of those were just trying to get their tickets punched for career purposes, and they got bit.
8. Along that same line, there were a great many killed that didn't have to be there. They were flight surgeons or intel officers or even maintenance personnel going along for the ride and getting shot down. Sometimes it happened with experienced aircrew on an orientation flight. I suspect the outgoing FAC was showing the new guy some of the dangerous territory and got hit. A great many disappeared on training flights.
9. I was dismayed to see several aircraft and a number of deaths due to low passes or other "impromptu" air shows. In one instance, on his last flight in theater before shipping home, a pilot was killed, along with his crew, doing that. In another, a C-123 tried to snag a "flag" (reported as lady's underwear) from a flag pole; on the second attempt, they crashed killing all four on board and two Thai civilians on the ground. Wasn't getting shot at enough excitement?
10. I was heartened and encouraged by the incredible acts of bravery and self-sacrifice to save buddies or people they didn't know. MOH's, Navy and Air Force Crosses are always impressive.
11. I was disappointed to see how many aircrew landed safely on the ground after ejections only to be killed by civilians or troops. There were a ton of those, including getting shot while still coming down in a parachute. Personally, I'm not so sure there's any such thing as a non-combatant in a war zone.
12. It should have come as no surprise, but it was, to see how many were known to have been captured yet either died in captivity (known) or simply were never heard of again. Those that we know made it to a prison and subsequently died are listed as "POW – died," whereas those that we know were captured on the ground but never made it to a prison are listed as KIA.
Again, these are my impressions as I entered the data and couldn't help but read many of the stories and circumstances.
As I said on the site, the purpose is: To Preserve and Present What Really Happened for Our Children and Grandchildren.
In addition, the "site is dedicated to those that were lost in the skies over the Gulf of Tonkin, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and on routes to and from the war zone. May their stories never be forgotten. May their families and friends always be proud."
Everyone is invited to see for themselves at: https://www.VietnamAirLosses.com.
Micro
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Micro has sent a few updates over the last couple years and here is the latest.
Today'S Update from Micro 13 August 2023
Skip:
I appreciate you remembering our "birthday" every year, commemorating the beginning of Vietnam Air Losses website at https://www.VietnamAirLosses.com. It has continued as a labor of love. One of the things we had hoped for was for input from people that saw the website, used the database, and either wanted to add detail or correct what we had. Not a week goes by without more inputs or questions or both. It's particularly wonderful when the child or grandchild of someone that was either lost in Vietnam or has since died contacts us either with thanks for the site or questions they need answered. Some have done extensive research while others have just found our site. Occasionally, we've been able to put them in touch with online organizations that have members that knew the deceased relative.
Of course, we love good stories from those that were there. I've been able to remain true to our standards of accepting inputs only from actual participants in an event or an eyewitness, for the most part. We've fudged a couple of times, with appropriate caveats. I don't want Ready Room legend or bar talk to masquerade as history. We get enough of that on television and emails nowadays. I've made it standard that I include the original text in the Narrative and then add the additional input below that. When it's essential, I may make an edit to the facts presented in the original, only if they're clearly inaccurate.
Just recently, I heard (again) from a former POW that had been at a funeral for another POW (both USAF), and he ran into another USAF veteran that had been in the crew of a KB-50J that went down in Thailand. In our database, we often don't have very much detail when everyone aboard survived, and that was the case here. When there were no deaths or serious injuries, often the reporting requirements were less stringent, so the stories have often been lost to history. In this instance, my correspondent was able to track the guy he met through the daughter of the one whose funeral they had attended. He found him in the hospital with a nasty "gut" problem. In the interim, the patient volunteered that his story was published by the Lyon Air Museum (Santa Ana, CA) on their website. It's at this link: https://lyonairmuseum.org/blog/tanker-sabotage/. Strongly recommended reading. I have not yet included this story in our database because I've asked him to verify that the published information is accurate and he'd like it included on our site. He still doesn't know if these guys were headhunters or cannibals or what.
I think I mentioned some time back that we added call signs to the Narratives of losses when we had them. And I included a tutorial on how to search for them at: https://www.vietnamairlosses.com/index.php/searching/call-signs. The information at that link is worth reading just to see the information we uncovered about call signs (Chris Hobson's expertise at work). That whole search started when I heard from a scribe that has compiled all SAR's conducted by HC-7. He and another helo crewman contacted me and asked for call signs. It seems that, often, when they were vectored for a SAR, all they knew was the call sign and perhaps how many souls were on the ground. They didn't know the service, the type aircraft, the home base, the squadron, or anything else that would help them piece things together. I determined that it was just too hard to add a field in the three database tables where it would need to be for call signs and then add the couple of hundred lines of code in the scripts that contain the search mechanism and the presentation of the search results on screen. All that would then need extensive testing to make sure that none of the existing stuff in those scripts was affected. Bottom line is I took another way out. I added the call signs to the Narratives since those Narratives have their own search engine that is a "full-text" search. The tutorial above explains how to use that search form and some of the pitfalls in trying to search for call signs (searching for Yellowbird, for example, will not find Yellow Bird).
We get fact-checked all the time, including the compilation of statistics on the site (such as those at: https://www.vietnamairlosses.com/index.php/statistics/loss-statistics). So far, after going through all the questions, we wind up finding out that what we have is accurate, another tribute to Chris Hobson's exhaustive research and attention to detail. Most recently, a USAF guy that came along a few years after Vietnam has been compiling records of every F-4 lost, and he found that our site was worth using as his gold standard since every time he ran into something different on another site, our information turned out to be the most accurate. That's gratifying. A couple of years ago, I (and our database) helped a retired Maj Gen put together information for the last reunion and dinner for F-105's (their guest speaker was a former Misty driver and Chief of Staff of the Air Force). Amazing stuff.
We were cited in the book Across the Wing by Dan Heller since we were instrumental in his research with lots of correspondence back and forth for a couple of years.
And I think I also reported to you in the spring that I met with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) in Washington where I gave them five USB thumb drives with our database, the search scripts, and instructions on how to use them. When they're in the field, they've been carrying a copy of Chris's book since they don't have access to the internet (or it's blocked by the host country). Now they can use the database without any connection to the internet. They had found that their own database was inadequate (the IT bureaucracy), and they needed the internet for it to run at all. Chris Hobson was surprised to learn that "every desk" at DPAA had a copy of his book on it, or so they told me.
I may have mentioned a connection with the National League of POW-MIA Families where a regional coordinator had met the parents of a company-mate, USNA Classmate friend of mine when he was in high school doing a report on POW-MIA's. He and a retired VADM have now started their own organization named Mission: POW-MIA at https://missionpowmia.org/. I joined as a Life Member. I thought I'd share what he wrote about my friend, who was a USMC F-4 pilot that was lost in the DMZ and has not been recovered yet. He felt compelled last year on the 50th anniversary of his loss to write a letter to my friend, and here's what he said: "I wear your bracelet with honor, your name etched into the stainless steel. I have worn it since I was 17, 'Never Forgetting.' Your Mom gave it to me. I met your Mom and Dad when I was writing a report on POW-MIA's in high school. They welcomed me into their home, sharing stories about you. For over 35 years I kept in touch with her, learning more about what an amazing mother you had. Three years ago I was saddened to learn that she had passed away, on my birthday. I still have her last voice mail message on my phone and play it from time to time to hear her cheerful words. I take comfort in knowing that she is now reunited with you after waiting 47 long years to see you again. 50 years ago her birthday was a Friday, you were lost Saturday, and Mother's Day was Sunday. Just like this year." I read that and related the story at my USNA company's reunion dinner last year. Not a dry eye in the place.
I guess I can say with assurance that having the website has created a roller coaster of emotions and interest. I've learned a great deal I never knew (like reading one of Sam Cox's H-Grams), and I think we've had a positive impact on lots of people. I just have to figure out how we're going to keep it online for the foreseeable future. Website hosting is the least of the issues, of course. It needs someone that can understand how to edit the database, and to do that they will need to understand the architecture and how to work with a database. Any ideas, let me know.
All the best,
Micro
As you all know we continue to publish the url to enter the site at the bottom of the Daily Rolling Thunder section of each list along with the Helo losses.
Between the Bear and Micro I do not believe there has ever been the in-depth history of part of a major conflict like this in our history. Loved ones who lost loved ones have the opportunity learn how , when and where their loved one was lost in a way no other conflict in our history has been documented.
They have closure.
Today's regular list will follow in a couple hours.
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