KATUM
Story by: Sam McGowan
If
there was a name that struck fear in the heart of airlifters in
Vietnam, it would have to be Katum. Even though Khe Sanh, A Loi, Kham
Duc and An Loc were the scene of major events where C-130 and C-123
crews were forced to call on resources deep inside themselves, Katum
was one of those places that was there all the time. It was a place
whose name on a mission frag order instantly put an airlift crew into a
sober and somber mood, especially if the order read "Bien Hoa - Katum,
ShuttleX" which meant "Shuttle as required" between the two bases.
The airfield at Katum was constructed during Operation JUNCTION CITY in
the late winter of early 1967. The site was the drop zone for the
paratroopers of the 173rd Airborne Infantry who jumped over it in the
only major American airborne operation of the war. Airborne engineers
constructed two airfields in the same general region of their objective
area. Tonlecham, the other airfield, along with Katum was one of the
two most dreaded forward airfields in South Vietnam. In short (and they
were!) they were the kind of airfields that combat airlift is all
about. They are the kind of place where airlift is crucial, and where
it is doubtful a commander in his right mind would ever send an
airplane as expensive as the C-17. The problem at Katum was that it lay
very close to the Cambodian border, so close in fact that North
Vietnamese artillery across the border in South Vietnam's "neutral"
neighbor could shell the airfield at will. It was also close enough
that the Communists could transport crew-served weapons across the
river and position them off the approach end of the runway and shoot up
landing C-130s and C-123s whenever their little hearts desired. It was
because of this that Katum was a name that caused men who were
scheduled to go into there to search their hearts and souls. I very
vividly remember a spiritual conversation I had with my maker on a day
when my crew got one of those 'Bien Hoa - Katum ShuttleX" frags!
Sometime in 1968 a C-130E crew from the 314th wing was on approach to
Katum when they suddenly started taking hits after taking off from the
airstrip. Lt. Fletcher Hatch and his crew had been sent into Katum to
take in a tire for another C-130 that suffered a flat. As they were
climbing out, a burst of .50-caliber fire ripped into the left wing of
their airplane and set it on fire. Number one engine erupted in flames.
The crew shut down the engine and fired the bottle, but the fire still
burned. Hatch turned the airplane toward Tay Ninh City, which featured
a longer runway and was not far away. The fire, as it nearly always
does on C-130s filled with 5606, burned up the hydraulic fluid and
rendered the hydraulics systems useless. The flight mechanic, SSgt Joe
Basillisco, went in back to help the loadmaster, Airman First Class
Jerry Willard, crank down the gear. They were only able to get the left
main gear "down and locked" before the airplane reached Tay Ninh. Hatch
called them back up front to strap in for landing.
The fire in
the left wing was spreading, and the wing itself was beginning to bend.
The aileron had been shot way while the elevators were useless due to
lack of hydraulics. The young pilot - Hatch was only 24 - fought to
keep the plane as close to level as possible as they approached the
runway. The left gear hit, and then the right side and nose. The
wreckage slid off and alongside the runway for 3,000 feet before it
came to a halt and exploded (so much for the theory that jet fuel will
not explode!) Miraculously, the flames receded as the crew escaped from
the cockpit escape hatch and ran away. They not only lived through
disaster, everyone on the crew escaped with only minor injury. The
incident is very impressive because of the age and experience of the
crew. Hatch was 24, the copilot, Lt. Lee Blaser was 25, the navigator,
Lt Jon Alexander was 23 - it was an all-lieutenant crew. Loadmaster
Willard was 20. At 32, the engineer. Basillisco, was the oldest man on
the crew. The crew survived because of the emphasis upon crew
coordination that was a part of Tactical Air Command C-130 training.
Contrary to popular belief among ill-informed civilians, the Air Force
was stressing crew coordination decades before the aviation training
industry coined the phrase 'Cockpit Resource Management."
Another crew was involved in a similar ordeal over Katum later that
year. The aircraft commander, Major Curtis Messex, wrote about the
story in an article that was published in AIR FORCE Magazine and
reprinted in a special book they put out called VALOR, of which I have
a copy. Curt Messex is also on AOL, and is on this list. His story
would be a good one for republication in some of the journals for
present-day airlifters.
Messex and his 21st TAS crew from Naha,
Okinawa were on an airdrop mission to Katum on August 26, 1968. The
camp had been cutoff and an emergency airdrop had been requested. They
were dropping CDS under a 1,200 foot ceiling. On their first pass, the
crew missed the airfield due to the low clouds and visibility after a
vector from PARIS, a GCI site controlling the area. Messex and his
navigator decided to make the second attempt on their own. They went
back out and established their position with a radar fix from Black
Virgin Mountain, a prominent landmark near Song Be, updated their
doppler. (Yes, Virginia, there are ways of finding drop zones without a
combat control team, ground radar, GPS, INS or AWADS.) They planned
their descent to break out of the clouds sooner, now that they knew the
bases were lower than reported.
As the C-130A was a minute out,
they started taking hits. Hydraulic fluid shot out of one of the cargo
compartment lines and instantly ignited, becoming a blow torch which
sat the load on fire. They started loosing hydraulic booster system.
Messex told the flight mechanic to shut if off. The load was on fire,
as the wooden boxes containing artillery fuzes began to burn. They were
only five seconds from the drop zone so Messex elected to drop on
target in hopes that troops on the ground would be able to salvage most
of the ammunition. The nose of the airplane pitched up to allow the
bundles to roll out, but as Messex tried to lower it again after the
drop, it would not go! The flight controls were locked! The hydraulic
system was starting to fail. With the nose raised to a high attitude,
one of the bundles caught at the rear of the cargo compartment and
broke open, scattering 2,000 pounds of artillery shells in the cargo
compartment.
The flight engineer went in back to help the
loadmasters pour hydraulic fluid into the reservoir. The system would
surge and die, then surge and die again as the cans momentarily filled
it, only to be pumped overboard from a damaged system. The pressure
surges did allow the pilots to get the nose back down to avoid a stall.
Messex wrestled the airplane onto a heading for Bien Hoa, mainly by
allowing a low wing to turn it then using physical strength to hold the
heading. The pilots used the electric trim to level the airplane, but
without feedback it was a hit and miss function. Fortunately, the fire
was all in the load and while the airplane was filled with smoke, they
were at least free of that danger. They still had the one pallet on
board but at least it was not on fire.
Eventually the crew got
the airplane under control. As the supply of hydraulic fluid began to
dwindle, Messex told the crew to slow down the rate at which they were
pouring it into the system. They decided to lower the gear while they
still had fluid. The gear started down and eventually extended as the
loadmasters and engineer added more fluid. The crew began considering
options when they ran out of hydraulic fluid. They had drinking water -
and the contents of their bladder! Messex thought about the problem and
decided that the fluid was being pumped out through the return line. He
hit on the idea of pouring fluid in with the system off in hopes it
would stay there. They tried it and it worked. By this time the crew
had put in all of the airplane's supply of extra hydraulic fluid along
with most of the engine oil and a case and a half of propeller oil.
The weather at Bien Hoa was marginal VFR, with a 1,000 foot ceiling and
7 miles visibility. Bien Hoa GCA would bring them in. To compound their
problems, one of the main gear tires appeared to be flat. Without the
hydraulics to boost the control, the pilots had to use trim and brute
strength to keep the airplane pointed in the right direction. As they
came over the approach lights, Messex ordered the hydraulic system
turned on. It was just enough to allow him to position the airplane for
a landing before the system shut down. They landed safely. Messex and
his crew loadmaster, SSgt Bernie Brown, each received the Silver Star
for the mission. The rest of the crew, including a Stan/Eval navigator
and loadmaster who were assigned for the drop, were awarded the DFC.
Katum continued to be a dreaded word through 1969 and into 1970. On
June 23, 1969 a C-130B from the 772nd TAS at Clark was shot down while
landing there. By this time the terror of Katum was caused by a
truck-mounted quad-fifty antiaircraft gun that the NVA moved around in
the vicinity of the airfield. Just before the loss of the 772nd
airplane and crew a crew I went incountry with was shot-up over Katum,
though I was not with them at the time. I had been selected to checkout
in the COMMANDO VAULT C-130 bombing mission which was just beginning.
Though I was in the 29th TAS, I was sent in-country for a checkout with
a 774th TAS crew whose loadmaster was already qualified. MacArthur
Rutherford and I had known each other since basic, and had crosstrained
together at Pope. We had gone separate ways but ended up in the same
wing again at Clark. I was only with the crew to have my lesson plans
signed off to drop the big bombs. After two days of bombing the crew
was put on the airlift schedule. Originally, I was going to go with
them but I had my guitar with me and the night before the mission
somebody kept buying me drinks in the all-ranks club on Herky Hill. I
decided to pass on flying the next day since I had no need for another
cargo flight. Mac said it was okay with him, so I slept late and went
to the beach. I waited around the barracks at about the time he and the
engineer should have been back, but they were late. Finally, I saw them
get out of the shuttle bus by the barracks. I thought to myself, 'My,
Mac sure does like white!" Now, considering that Rutherford was a negro
from Americas, Georgia, looking white was a rather interesting
phenomena! They told me what had happened - they were on approach to
Katum when the gun opened on them. The airplane took 12 hits.
Fortunately, no one was hurt and they made it to Tan Son Nhut.
My day of reckoning with Katum came later. We flew in and out of Katum
all day without incident, though I certainly did a lot of
soul-searching before the first flight! Eventually the Army was able to
locate the quad-fifty and a pair of helicopter gunships took it out.
But just because the gun was gone did not mean that Katum was any
picnic - they didn't call C-130s "mortar magnets" for nothing!
It was largely because of Katum and a few other airfields in that
vicinity that President Nixon authorized the "invasion" of Cambodia in
the spring of 1970. Though the Cambodian incursion brought rioting in
the US, including the Kent State episode, our ill-informed peers in the
United States were out-of-touch with what was really going on in
Vietnam. After more than three years of enduring artillery and
antiaircraft from NVA units operating out of Cambodia, airlifters in
Vietnam praised the move and were not in the least in sympathy with the
protestors in the US. I landed at Katum a few days after the Americans
and South Vietnamese went into Cambodia and we actually shut down our
engines and got out of the airplane and walked around! A week earlier a
C-130 at Katum would have brought in an artillery barrage!
There was one C-130 pilot who protested the move into Cambodia. Charlie
Clements was a pilot with the 50th TAS at CCK. An Academy graduate,
Clements somehow began to develop an anti-military attitude, probably
while attending graduate school at UCLA. After Cambodia, Clements
decided to protest the war and asked to be taken off of flight status.
He underwent a psychiatric examination and was diagnosed as
"situationally reactive." Clements spent six months in a psychiatric
ward and was given a medical discharge from the Air Force. In civilian
life he went to medical school and became a doctor. In the 1980s Dr.
Charlie Clements went to El Salvador to provide medical aid to the
Communist guerrillas in the country. He wrote a book and was featured
in "PEOPLE" magazine and in the media.