Welcome to the War!
We arrived at NKP on the 22nd of October and were greeted by several members of the 1st SOS, our new squadron. I recognized some of the guys in the squadron who had also been in A-1 training at Hurlburt but had completed the training course in an earlier class. I did not see Ramsay Vincent there, so I asked one of the guys, “Where’s Ramsay Vincent”? The sudden downcast look told me there was something was wrong. He said, “Oh, I guess you hadn’t heard, Ramsey was KIA a couple of weeks ago.” Capt Halton R. Vincent and 1Lt George Kamenicky were lost on a combat mission in Laos. It was Capt Vincent’s first combat mission and he was riding in the right seat of an A-1E on the last day of the month so he would get his combat pay for the month of September. 1Lt Kamenicky and Capt Vincent remain side-by side on the Vietnam Memorial wall at Panel 2W/Line 31 and Panel 2W/Line 32 respectively.
Briefings, Briefings and More Briefings
Before we could even think of flying, there was lots of ground to cover. There were rules of engagement (ROE) briefings that defines the rules of war to include what we could or could not strike. These briefings continued throughout my one-year combat tour as the rules changed frequently. There were intelligence briefings that gave us the “lay of the land” and where the enemy was located and where they were projected to be. They were a lot like the weather briefings we got before every mission, you took them with a grain of salt. We filled out our personal authenticator cards that would have information only we would know should we be asked to authenticate. We wrote questions and then our answers to those questions. Just like now when we have to give our mother’s maiden name to get logged on to a website. Who know back in 1971 that these would be used for this purpose.
One of the more important things we had to do before starting to fly was to get our personal flying equipment issued and fitted. In addition to our Nomex flight suits, we wore Vietnam jungle boots, a survival vest filled with a small amount of food, a URC-64 survival radio and spare batteries, Gyrojet pen-gun flare launcher + flares, two rescue flares with a day (smoke) and night (flare) end, a holster for a side arm (I used the standard issue Smith and Wesson K38 Model 15 Combat Masterpiece. We carried some red tracer rounds but mostly normal rounds. If we extracted and were lucky enough to retrieve the survival kit that came with you when you extracted in the A-1, there were additional items of food and other surgical gear to include a raft for over water extractions.
My Skyraider Dollar Ride In Combat
As the end of October neared, we new arrivals were ready for our first dollar-ride in the right seat of the A-1E. My first combat ride was on 3 October and was 29 days since my last flight in the A-1 at Hurlburt. I certainly was keenly aware of what happened on 30 September a short month earlier when Capt Vincent was lost on his first mission, but once we briefed the mission and walked out to the aircraft, I was all business and tried to move on. Our mission was a two-ship of A-1s north to the Barrel Roll (northern Laos) on the Plaines des Jarres (Plain of Jars or PDJ). Large stone jars dot the landscape of a large flat plain with an elevation of 3,500 feet surrounded by mountain peaks rising to nearly 10,000 feet.
Although I was fitted with an AFH1 ballistic flight helmet, it was not long after takeoff that I began to feel “hot spots’ in several places on my head. I told the pilot in the left seat who flew most all of the mission, that I was going to remove my helmet and he should let me know when we arrived in the target area. I removed my helmet and held it in my lap until we arrived in the target area after about 30 minutes later.
The airstrike was against a nondescript target under the control of a Raven FAC and our bomb damage assessment (BDA) report was RNO smoke and foliage, meaning results not observed due to smoke (from our bombs) and foliage. This kind of BDA report was quite typical and was repeated over and over again on many of the missions I flew.
You Can Read More
So, this was the short version of my first combat mission. You can read more on my A-1 Skyraider Combat journal website in addition to all 138 of my combat missions from 30 October 1971 to 1 October 1972.
