03 April 2008
PRIZE CREW
Ownership of the night is the birthright of all Americans, or at least it was in the later days of the last high-octane century. Upon obtaining their driver’s license, the young owned the night.
It would not have occurred to the young Lieutenant Junior Grade to have considered that his first and greatest task was to take it away from someone else. The young man had dark close-cropped hair and an open face that registered concern easily.
He was fresh to Vietnam, newly arrived at Ton San Nhut airbase in a contract airliner that had made the steep decent into the landing pattern to avoid VC gunners.
Stepping down the disembarkation ladder, the smell of Vietnam struck him: even in January, the air was moist, and the familiar smell of partly-burned diesel fuel and decay hung in the air.
He was met by a yeoman from the naval forces HQ and put on a bus with a dozen other reporting personnel to be distributed to billeting.
The next morning he was to report, as his orders directed, to the senior Naval Intelligence Officer in Vietnam.
The office was in the low beige building on the compound that served as Saigon’s Pentagon.
The Navy's operating forces in Vietnam relied on COMNAVFORV's intelligence organization, headed by the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence. The organization was also responsible for fulfilling intelligence requirements of higher headquarters and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Each commander subordinate to COMNAVFORV was responsible for maintaining an intelligence collection organization, and all Navy personnel were expected to report information of intelligence value.
Naval Intelligence personnel were stationed throughout the RVN, including Coastal Zone and Riverine Area headquarters, Coastal Surveillance Centers, some PBR bases and some Sector Operations and Intelligence Centers. An intelligence officer was assigned to the staff of each of the three Navy task forces.
In addition, an intelligence advisor and a counterintelligence advisor were assigned to the Vietnamese Navy. Naval Intelligence Liaison Officers (NILOs) were tasked with providing intelligence to COMNAVFORV and allied naval forces within their assigned geographic areas, which included two dozen towns and villages in the coastal and Mekong Delta provinces.
The Lieutenant was reporting for “duty as assigned.” He had the benefit of Navy aviation ground school training at Pensacola, and the basic course at the Armed Forces Air Intelligence Training Center a Lowry AFB in Denver, Colorado, and a little Vietnamese language orientation. Naturally, he was curious about where he was going to spend the next year of his life..
After an endless wait in the outer office, the Lieutenant was shown in to meet the Captain. He was a lean man with movie-star looks like his boss, the dynamic VADM “Bud” Zumwalt. He looked distracted, and said there were reports of impending VC activity, possibly something big.
The Captain told him about a project that he thought the Lieuentant might like to volunteer for. It involved flying, and would be starting soon.
Naturally, the Lieutenant volunteered, and shortly thereafter, he was on his way to Can Tho, RVN, in the IV Corps area to fly familiarization flights in O1-E Bird Dogs. In late Jan 1968, he arrived in Soc Trang to join the unique tri-service unit working for Naval Research and Development Unit -Vietnam (NARDU-V).
It was a mouthful to try to get out. They made it a lot simpler. The detachment was called Prize Crew, and it was the demonstration of something that had popped out of the Lockheed Skunk Works.
It was quite revolutionary, and in time, it would take back the night sky.
Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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