BUT it is 91 today in Bangkok and 84 in Chiang Rai.
Will be on my way in one week.
Portland – Seattle – 55 min –
Seattle – Tokyo – 10 hrs 40 min –
Tokyo – Bangkok – 7 hrs 0 min –
22 hrs, 19 min gate to gate.
Walkabout: A spontaneous journey through the wilderness of one’s choosing in an effort to satisfy one’s itchy feet, a need to be elsewhere, the craving for the open road, that space over the horizon…yes… something like that… you can’t quite touch it so you have to go find it because it’s you just know it’s there…Or maybe it just feels good to go walking around …
Why should I go to The Plain of Jars in Laos?
Here is the answer:
First, a little background…..
My father was a saver. He saved every piece of paperwork he received in his 24 years of service in the USAF. I have spent many, many hours reading, organizing, filing and putting everything into chronological order. He never talked about what he was doing in Thailand. But I found a map and started researching. And reading. And asking questions. Searching Google and Wiki. I finally figured out what in the hell he was doing over there.
7 June 1966 – Appointed Deputy Staff Office Top Secret Control officer in Osan, Korea.15 June 1966 – Notified via Special Order of reassignment to flying duties in C-47 aircraft.8 August 1966 – Transferred from Osan, Korea to Udorn, Thailand. Top Secret.
I have spent hundreds of hours on the web searching and have bought and read numerous books on the secret war in Laos.
If you spend time searching Google or Wiki for these key words: “Dogpatch”, “Moonbeam”, “Alley Cat”, “Airborne Command and Control”, “RC-47D”, “Operation Steel Tiger”, “Operation Barrel Roll”, “Operation Half Moon”, “Cricket”, “Vang Pao”, “Long Tieng”, “CIA Laos 1966”, “Butterflys”, “Ravens” – you will get an idea of what was going on over Laos in 1966.
For example, this is an excerpt from Wiki about Operation Barrel Roll :
“Barrel Roll was one of the most closely held secrets and one of the most unknown components of the American military commitment in Southeast Asia. Due to the ostensible neutrality of Laos, guaranteed by the Geneva Conference of 1954 and 1962, both the U.S. and North Vietnam strove to maintain the secrecy of their operations and only slowly escalated military actions there. As much as both parties would have liked to have publicized their enemy’s own alleged violation of the accords, both had more to gain by keeping their own roles quiet.”
I have searched many blogs and user groups and asked many questions. I received the following response from a Yahoo user group about some of my questions:
>>Fishbike53, read the following information word for word all the way to the end. You will find some interesting info about C-47’s in 1966.
So on July 19,1966, a C-47 flown by Capt. Hoskinson was performing Command and Control activity out of Udorn, Thailand, and was shot down over Sam Neua, Laos. On June 15, a month before Capt. Hoskinson’s plane was shot down, my father was notified that he was being sent to Udorn to do the same mission. On August 10 , 21 days after Hoskinson was shot down, my father was in Udorn and getting into a C47 and headed over the Plain of Jars in Laos to perform a similar mission.
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This is why I am headed to the Plain of Jars. To travel overland some what he flew over.
Picked up the malaria pills (one a day for the next 2 months), diarrhea antibiotics (yikes……enough for 3 bouts) and then received 3 shots. Shots were free, but pills were $244.00. Tetanus, hepatitis A&B, typhoid and doubtlessly a few more bacteria, microbes, or whatever the hell you call them now will be immunity supporting travel partners.
Received a half hour lecture on street food, (yes), wild places (yes, on the agenda), the importance of drinking bottled water and considerable cautions about mosquitoes….the daytime ones and the nighttime ones, the big ones and the little ones, the urban ones and the hinterland ones.
Really?
Picked up crisp, clean travel cash after reading that even the smallest cut, tear or stain would render US currency useless or reduce its value. After the Oaxaca trip in October where $1.00 = approx 12 pesos, I still think about conversion premiums. There is always a premium for currency conversion. In Laos $1.00 = 8,000 kip. $100.00 = over 80,000 kip. Will need to have a wad of money – tens of thousands of kips…….for even a tuktuk ride…..
Per the phone carrier: Free texting and $0.20 a minute for cell calls from Thailand, Cambodia and Viet Nam. $4.19 a min from Laos. T
I told my best friend Jerry that I would gladly call him from any where…..and often do…….and will……..from anywhere but Laos.
The same message is affectionately presented to all followers of this blog.
Do not call me.
Send an email to: fishbike53@yahoo.com.
But do please keep in touch.
The internet is ubiquitous.
Fishbike53walkabout
B
I am attempting to see how comments are received and how to manage.. Thx.Posted by Unknown at 11:22 AM Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest
dokiokiDecember 8, 2013 at 8:14 AMWow!!!…your well underway..one step at a time creates a trail of adventure……Prepared in Late Dec 2103. Posted 1/13/14
Below are several photos of a map I found squirreled away in some of my father’s things.
The closeup of the map at the bottom of the page shows an area about 60 to 80 miles NNE of Vientiane, Laos. L98 is Long Tieng – often described as “The Most Secret Place on Earth”.
I had the map framed and look at it daily. Considerable research resulted in an understanding of places and numbers on the map. My father never told me much about it or about what he was doing………but with much of the war in SE Asia now declassified and the power of the internet, I think I figured some of it out…….
My father drew the lines, the numbers for the radio beacons, the distances from the beacons, the landing strips (Lima Sites). All the edges were cut off the map. It had been folded, refolded, creased, crinkled, crunched and folded again. It was obvious that it had been used very heavily.
On the top right corner over the crease in the map you can see “Plaine Des Jarres” or The Plain of Jars. Much of his flying was over this region in 1966 as a USAF pilot. The war in Laos was a “Secret War”. U.S. Activity in Laos was classified until the Clinton Administration.
The CIA was running the entire show in Laos, so it was covert – everything about activity in Laos was covert. Secret. Dangerous. Officially, the U.S. was not involved in Laos. But we were, big time.
The map is full of lines, radians from radio beacons, distances, landing strips, etc. The Plain of Jars was a major link to the Ho Chi Minh trail and a primary route of transit for equipment, food and soldiers into South Viet Nam. Depending on the time of the year, (monsoon season) control of much of the region often shifted between the “good guys” and the “bad guys.”
This area that he flew over is a primary destination of my travels. To walk on the Plain of Jars. My father was not dropping bombs from his plane…but he did in WWII. That is another story and just might be the next walkabout.
In Laos, he was flying a WWII era C47 outfitted with a payload of first generation radio receiving and relay equipment, communications specialists and a Lao national or two. They communicated with Hmong ground forces, spotter aircraft (The Ravens), the inbound fighter/bombers, and the CIA in Vientiane, the Lao capital. The plane was basically an early version of AWACS.
In less than year after his missions were over, all the work stations were upgraded to a module that fit inside a C130.
Targets were ID’d by a “Raven” or a “Butterfly” flying a single engine spotter aircraft. The location was transmitted to the C47 and bombing of the coordinates was approved by Lao nationals in the C47. Fighter/bombers were called and radioed to the target coordinates. The target was marked with smoke by the Raven/Butterfly and then bombs were dropped by the fighter/bombers. Then Ravens flew back over the area and reported damage assessments.
Laos had more tons of bombs dropped on it during the war in SE Asia than all of the bombs dropped by all the planes – German, English, Japanese, American…….during WWII. The countryside is riddled with unexploded ordinance, or UXO’s. The quantity of UXO’s is unimaginable. There are still millions of UXO in Laos and hundreds of people are maimed or killed each year.
More about the jars on the Plain of Jars in a future blog.
Here is a little info on UXO’s:
Quick Facts and Figures:
Check out the following link for information about Ravens doing the real dirty work and some great information about Long Tieng:
http://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/ravens.html
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| Per Wiki – regarding L98 (Lima 98) on the map above: L98 (AKA Lima 98. Later L98 was renamed L20 Alternate) or Long Tieng – was often described as “The Most Secret Place on Earth”. It was located in a valley at 3,100 feet elevation, high enough to have chilly nights and cold fogs. It was surrounded by mountains and on the northwest side of the runway were karst outcrops several hundred feet high. In the shadow of the Karst outcrops was “Sky” the CIA headquarters in Long Tieng. Jerry Daniels, a CIA officer codenamed “Hog,” is said to have named Sky after his home state of Montana, known as “Big Sky Country.”[7] Long Tieng was protected on three sides by limestone mountains.[8] “What a place is Long Tieng,” said USAID officer Jim Schill. “Tribal soldiers dressed in military garb standing next to traditionally dressed Hmong, with Thai mercenaries milling about. And the Americans here are mostly CIA operatives with goofy code names like Hog, Mr. Clean, and Junkyard. The town itself is not much. There’s one paved road running through it and tin shacks on either side with eating shops, food stalls, and living quarters.”[9] During the Secret War, Long Tieng became the largest Hmong settlement in the world.[8] In the words of one author, Long Tieng “became a desultory metropolis, an unpaved, sewerless city of 30,000 where Hmong ran noodle stands, cobbled shoes, tailored clothes, repaired radios, ran military-jeep taxi services, and interpreted for American pilots and relief workers.”[10] |
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