The restoration of order was what was at stake in the Mekong Delta long ago, and the answer was a major change in the naval strategy supporting the land war in Indochina. A new and aggressive posture was adopted which called for naval personnel and operational units to be placed in critical lines of interior communication on the river network. In support, intelligence personnel were assigned as liaison officers to critical operational units.

Stopping the night-time infiltration of the Delta and identifying VC forces in concentration was a primary goal of SEALORDS, the forward offensive strategy that brought the war to the enemy in their own back yard.

Lieutenant R.K. Bowers was dispatched by NAVFOR-V to Can Tho, RVN, in the IV Corps area to fly familiarization flights in the O1-E Bird Dog, the military airframe called the “flying jeep.” That was among the printable names for the venerable Cessna airplane.

It was said that the ‘Dawg was one of the safest airplanes there was since it could just barely fly fast enough to kill the pilot.

The 01-E was used for Forward Air Control missions, which made it simultaneously the most vulnerable and most powerful weapon in the air. Able to call in long-range artillery and tactical aviation with the click of a mike, the unarmed aircraft was flown by aircrewmen who knew both their weakness and their supreme power.

“Alone, unarmed, and unafraid,” they said.

After several missions, the LT Bowers was judged ready to participate in the special aerial reconnaissance project. It all seems queerly haphazard in this post-Moonshot age, but it the Vietnam war, like Iraq, was a conflict with strange intimacy and improvisation by both sides far from the Washington acquisition process. The PRIZE CREW demonstration was result of serendipitous collision of requirement and ideas.

The ying-yang of counter-insurgent warfare gave the day to the government, and the night to the insurgents. U.S. Forces reigned supreme in the day, the FACs directing awesome power against anything they could see. At night, though, the land and the enemy became obscure.

The aural and visual signatures of conventional aircraft exceeded far exceeded the detection capabilities of existing sensors. The Bad Guys could almost always hear approaching forces, whether from the air or on the river, and seek cover prior to detection.

As early as 1965 the problem was being worked back in the states. The Director, Defense Research and Engineering was a man named John S. Foster. He challenged the aerospace community to come up with a quiet airframe, and funded it through the Defense Advanced Research and Projects Agency (DARPA). Lockheed Missile and Space Corporation devised a proposal for what became the QT-2 Aircraft.

Engineers have their quirks. The “QT” was a sly play on the 19th century English music hall abbreviation for “quiet;” the engineers called the concept the Quiet Thruster, but it was derived from something much closer to the heart:

A sweet Tuxedo girl you see,

Queen of swell society,

Fond of fun as fun can be

When it’s on the strict Q.T.

At the same time, an operational requirement was rising through the Navy, championed by a young officer who was evaluating Night Vision devices in support of riverine interdiction operations. Paired with a quiet aircraft, the capability would help to eliminate the periodic ambushes from VC concealed at the water’s edge.

He wrote a Technical Statement of Requirements, and launched the paper balloon up through his chain of command to the Navy Research Laboratory.

Normally, the system is ponderous and problematic. In this case, though, the Lockheed concept and the Navy TSOR arrived at DARPA within months of each other:

Lockheed was awarded a contract in early 1967 to produce two quiet aircraft using a single-seat glider airframe powered by a muffled automotive engine and a large slow turning propeller, the two airframes to be ready for test and evaluation within six months.

Lockheed set up a small covert development shop in their Executive Aircraft Hangar at the San Jose Municipal Airport. The project was known as “San Jose Geophysical,” and the phone was answered as “Stan’s Cleaning and Pressing.” They used rules that are highly unusual in defense acquisition today, similar to those used by Kelly Johnson’s “Skunk Works” to produce the U-2 and SR-71 aircraft.

Commercial off-the-shelf parts were used, with minimal inspection, documentation, and reporting. Two Schweizer 2-32 sport gliders were diverted from an existing Navy Purchase Order and expedited, with the help of the Chief of Naval Operations, to the QT-2 Program.

They were fabricated with thicker wing skins and spars to accommodate the weight of a power plant. A long belt-driven shaft connected the engine to the special propeller, which was fashioned so the tips of the blades did not go supersonic at speed.

Two standard Buick mufflers were acquired and provided quieting. It was about the strangest thing you ever saw, with the engine behind the observer seat, the drive shaft over the cockpit, and the strange slow-speed propeller supported by a pylon mounted directly in front of the pilot.

The first one flew on schedule in August of 1967, on time and under budget, and the second one was completed in short order. They were the damnedest things. If you were not looking right at them, or if they did not pass between the moon and the observer they were virtually undetectable.

The besieged Marine garrison at Khe Sahn was getting a lot of attention as North Vietnamese General Giap attempted to divert attention from something else he had in mind. The two quiet aircraft were needed in the theater of operations for evaluation. In January of 1968 they were disassembled, crated, and loaded in a C-130 for the trip to SE Asia with a rag-tag tri-service group of pilots and maintenance personnel.

They were given the name PRIZE CREW and they arrived at Soc Trang Army Airfield on the 22nd of the month. It was a small field, at sea level in the Mekong Delta near where the Bassac River makes its brackish union with the South China Sea. The runway was only 3500’ long, not suitable for tactical jets, but more than sufficient for the flight demonstration.

The truce for the local holiday was just starting, and it seemed like a perfect time to get set up and start the evaluation.

The young Navy intelligence officer, fresh from his indoctrination in the Bird Dog reported in time to see the crates come off the transports and be whisked into the hangar to be put back together out of prying eyes.

Things were just about ready to go by the 30th, the day of General Giap’s big surprise, which he had been preparing on the QT. It was the start of the Tet Offensive, 1968.

Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com

Editor’s Note: The last of the Vietnam Aviation Aircraft stories to be told.

Taking the Night Away From Charlie. Based on an oral paper delivered to the 6th Triennial Vietnam Symposium a Texas Tech University in Lubbock, TX on 3/15/08 Author: Dale Ross Stith, with some recollections by LT RK Bowers, Naval Intelligence Liaison Officer (NILO Nha Trang) and (NILO Go Dau Hau 1968-1969). An excellent military training film on the QT-2 can be viewed on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9klYgXlVhE