The Biplane vs. Helicopter Battle at Lima Site 85 - Vietnam War

A1C Doug Towsley - The picture is of a 1LT that was with me on a remote mountain top in South Viet Nam -- a much different mission, but equally vulnerable. I had two friends that were involved with Lima Site, one only involved prior to the attack. I know he was with MACC-SOG so it had something to do with their missions in Laos and NVN. I believe the other friend was involved in some sort of interdiction operation at the base of the mountain at the time of the attack, plus an attempt to recover survivors after the attack. He also went back many years after the war on a joint recovery mission. I seem to recall they came up empty on the recovery, but I could be wrong about that. My experience dealt with a similarly inaccessible site in South Viet Nam with a different mission. My mission, along with the other Special Forces soldier shown above, was radio relay and I was only up on that mountain, Nui Ba Rah, for a week. Special Forces soldiers rotated in and out for that detail. My job was to support classified missions out of commo range of normal Special Forces units in South Viet Nam. There were two Military Intelligence guys up there too, and I can't recall if the were Air Force or Army. It was probably Air Force because their mission was to monitor sensors for traffic on the Ho Chi Minh Trial coming out of Cambodia, and call in airstrikes on any detected foot and vehicle traffice. Everything was on a need to know basis, and as a radio relay flunky, I certainly didn't need to know much about their job. Then again, they didn't need to know about my activities, beyond my job. They showed me their equipment and how it worked. Seismic sensors were airdropped into the target area and transmitted detected vibrations. The multiple sensors triangulated the position and from there ait strikes were called in. Lima Site was monitoring North Viet Nam and had a whole other mission.

A1C Doug Towsley - It's sad that we have so many enemies of our own country and its military -- in the media and entertainment industry. I never discussed that program with anyone, even fellow service members in Viet Nam or fellow vets after I got out, until it was a well established fact that the government was no longer denying. That might have been 30 to 35 years after I was given some familiarity with the program. I would imagine that with another 50 years of technological the accuracy is amazing.