Flying in Laos - Dad
Private Pilot License #Laos #CIA
Flying In Laos During the Vietnam War
[ Disclaimer: My father wrote this chapter for his own website, and I am reprinting it here, with minor editing. ]
It was the late 60s. The war in Southeast Asia was in full swing. We were living in the Kingdom of Laos. Where is Laos? It is South of China, West of Vietnam and North of Thailand and Cambodia. It is a landlocked country, without even a bridge spanning the Mekong River on the Thailand side. To get to Laos from Thailand, you either took a ferry or flew.
We lived in Vientiane, the administrative capital. Laos still showed the vestiges of the French Colonial days. Most of the educated Laotians spoke French and English. Many of the houses were basically French Colonial mansions. The first house we lived in was so large that I threw pass patterns in one bedroom with the boys. Of course, there were no windows in most of the houses, just shutters. And the dust would cover the floor and the furniture in a matter of hours. The children attended an American school, but often played with the local kids.
There was basically no industry in Laos, save for a match factory in town. The main crops were Opium poppies and rice. We were told that the American government spent more money in Laos, per capita, than in any other country. In addition to our Agency for International Development presence there, we were supporting the war in Laos against both the Communist Pathet Lao, and the incursions of the North Vietnamese, who transported supplies along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Laos was mostly a country of privation and apathy. Most of the locals smoked dope in pipes or chewed Betel Nuts (a narcotic) and waited for the U.S. to give them something. There were pockets of civilization. The main street was copied from the Champs-Élysées in Paris, complete with an unfinished knockoff of the Arc de Triomphe. Some American kids told our sons that they missed the excitement of the last coup. One group was advancing down the broad boulevard in tanks. The other holed up in the Monument with machine guns. Tracer bullets were flying everywhere. One dive-bombing attack took out the house of a local General, right next door to the house of a senior CIA officer. TV and movies give kids a strange perspective on life. To them a coup was "cool."
On the other hand, kids do have great insight at times. The Bangkok newspaper had reported a rumor that the Chinese were building a road into Laos from the China border. The road was said to be planned to reach all the way to Vientiane. This would give the Chinese the ability to overrun Laos in short order. I had some personal knowledge about the truth or falsity of the assertion, but I had to keep that to myself. However, I asked at dinner as to what the family thought of the rumor and the possible consequences of the Chinese taking over Laos. My son Dusty, who was about 12-years-old, never missed a bite. "I don't believe the story about the road. What would they do with Laos if they had it?" That pretty well summed it up. Next subject.
There were some decent restaurants, some of which served more or less authentic French cuisine. Small shops lined the main downtown streets, where you could buy anything from an electric rice cooker to a six-pack of cans of Beaujolais wine. Yes, wine in cans. It wasn't bad. It was easy to get around in the pedicabs, which were three-wheeled bicycles. The passengers sat in a seat over the rear wheels and the driver was in front. Most locals ate a prodigious amount of garlic. Pulling large bodies around in the 100 + heat made the drivers sweat. The aroma of sweat, tinged with garlic, was enough to make you consider walking the next time. We needed only a few words to communicate with our staff. With the heat, the humidity, the dust, having to boil all your water, and so on, you could not have any semblance of a normal life without a staff. Most of us knew only the following Lao vocabulary:
"Bo mi fi," which meant either we have no fire or no electricity.
"Bo mi nam," which meant we have no water.
"Bo mi Kip," which meant I have no money (Kip).
"Bo ping Yang," which was a catch-all for "Who the hell cares?" or "Nothing we can do about it."
That pretty well summed up life in Laos. We have no electricity, no water, no money, and who the hell cares?
(My spelling is probably wrong, as I never saw the words in print.)
Very poisonous snakes would wrap around the front door knobs. Some got into the house. Geckos would fall from the ceiling into the soup bowl at dinner. The staff kept the bug population down outside. They caught them and cooked them for snacks. My guard almost talked me into sharing a local bug delicacy with him. A pack of wild dogs tried to eat our dog one night. I beat the invader dogs with a baseball bat in a frenzied pile of snarling and snapping dogs. In retrospect, I should have stayed in the house. The gardener cut the entire lawn with a pair of hand shears! Job security. All in all, it was not the vacation spot I would suggest for friends to visit.
Although I speak disparagingly of many of the Laos who lived in Vientiane, in the hill country, the heroic Hmong tribesmen fought with determination and distinction against the Communists. Many of them emigrated to the U.S. after the war.
Eventually, after untold millions (billions?) of money spent, lives lost, and lifelong consequences for those who served there (my family included), we walked away and turned the country over the to Communists. Another American smooth move.
Tucked away in my safety-deposit box is Lao Private Pilot's License No. 11! I was told it was the first license ever issued by the Kingdom of Laos to an American. Numbers 1-10 had been issued to British and French colonialists. I heard from a former Continental Air Services pilot by e-mail in Aug. 2001, who told me that he has license #15. I wonder who has numbers 12 to 14? Since the country is no longer a Kingdom, these licenses seem secure in history. Here's the story of how I "earned" that coveted pilot's license.
(I am precluded from writing about U.S. intelligence matters without first getting clearance of the content. So, everything I relate here is a matter of public record or simply a recounting of a personal experience not related to intelligence work.)
There were two private airlines supporting the U.S. effort in Laos, Air America (a CIA proprietary), and Continental Air Services (CASI) under contract from Continental Airlines. Each contracted with pilots to fly missions in Laos in unarmed aircraft, mostly for transportation and ferrying supplies "upcountry." In Laos, you did not call for a Yellow Cab, you ordered up an airplane. We even flew to Bangkok on our own DC-3 for dental work or an occasional fancy dinner. A DC-3? Nobody said this was a first-class air-taxi service. The tail number ended in 50K, so it was known as the "50 Kip" flight. The pilots were all skilled, most with past military flying experience. They were some of the best small-plane pilots in the World. They often had to be to land in clearings in the jungle only a few hundred feet long. The key word was STOL (short takeoff and landing).
One day, I stopped by the miniature golf course, which had been cobbled together by a Continental Air Services (CASI) pilot, Roger . You have to picture the incongruity of a putt-putt course in a city where the Communist Pathet Lao had their own HQ and stood guard in front of with an AK-47s. Americans will always find a way to stay in touch with their culture. On the bulletin board was a notice: "Flying Club Forming." I had always wanted to learn to fly, and in fact had once wanted to become a commercial airline pilot. So, I asked Roger what the deal was. He said that a Cessna 182 four-seater had crashed in the jungle and had been dragged out and sold to a mechanic at Continental. Over the months, the mechanic had rebuilt the Cessna. "Was it completely airworthy, I asked." "Oh, yeah," Roger answered. "I took it up the other day and rolled it." Well, you are not supposed to roll a brand-new Cessna 182, let alone a bag-of-bones job plucked from the jungle. The FCC airworthiness certificate for the 182 did not include flying loops or rolls, and so on.
The aircraft also had the Wren STOL conversion kit. This meant it was outfitted for truly low-speed flying and short takeoffs and landings. Big Fowler flaps, a Canard surface up front (a kind of front-mounted auxiliary elevator that helped at low speeds) were the main mods that allowed this plane to stay in the air at about 30 miles an hour!
Roger had been a pilot in the Strategic Air Command (SAC) and had taught private flying lessons in California. He had an Instructor's endorsement on his pilot's license. He was one of the many local characters. In addition to flying for Continental, he owned the putt-putt course and sold international mutual funds. He rode around on a motorcycle in sandals, looking pretty native. I had a smaller cycle and wore shoes.
After some ground school and tutoring by Roger, the first flight came. Vientiane had a fairly long hard-surface runway. It was big enough that Ross Perot landed his commercial leased jet there one day on his abortive trip to go to Hanoi for Christmas. Our airplane had the tail number 49-R. "Four-nine Romeo ready for takeoff." Permission granted in English from the Lao in the tower, I pushed the throttle slowly all the way in and took a death-grip on the yoke. At the right speed, I slowly pulled back on the yoke, and we were flying. Roger suggested that I release my white-knuckle grip on the yoke and told me to climb out over the jungle. I took to this flying thing like a duck to water and felt comfortable and confident from the first few minutes. Of course, I did have some fleeting thoughts about a wing falling off or the engine quitting. This was still a bag-of-bones airplane to those of us who were not mechanics.
I flew around for an hour, and we headed back to the field. On the downwind leg (the leg parallel to the runway) I called the tower for permission to land. "Four-nine Romeo. Permission to land. Caution! Water Buffalo on the runway." This was Laos, after all, not Burbank field. With some help from Roger, we got the thing on the ground and stopped. I was hooked! My duties kept me busy seven days a week, but I was going to find time to get some hours in 49-R. Incidentally, at a normal airport you take off and land into the wind, thus the term downwind leg as you prepare to turn Base (90 degrees) and then onto the final approach. Not in Laos. We had to take off and land in one direction, regardless of the wind direction, so we would not disturb the people in town. Noise abatement in Laos? Go figure. So, most days when you took off you were staring a Caribou transport or some hand-me-down airplane we had given to the Lao Air Force coming right at you. You quickly got used to it. Better in many ways to have them out in front of them sneaking up from the rear, as can happen at a normal airport.
Soon, I was introduced to a clearance for "mid-field base." That meant that as you flew alongside the runway, you were cleared to turn toward the runway while only half-way down the downwind leg. This allowed you to land on the second half of the strip and speeded things up. You could land after a mid-field base and scamper out of the way of a larger aircraft which was on final approach at the same time you were going downwind. Again, you got used to it. Air America and Continental had planes like the Pilatus Porter, which was a turboprop which could land on a dime, and the Helio Courier, also a fine STOL aircraft. So, all of us hip STOL guys were doing mid-field bases as a normal landing. Most of my landings were made power off, that is, in a gliding mode. Flying power-off teaches you better how to land an airplane. You must judge your glide, put your flaps down at the right time, be mindful of the steepness of your turns, and so on, to land at a predetermined spot on the runway or in the jungle. Another advantage is that you do not depend upon the engine to "pull" you to your landing spot. Dragging in with flaps down and high power can really set you up for a rude shock if the engines falters or quits. Like dropping into a lake, a cliff, a house, or whatever.
On one of our early flights, Roger was making the landing, sitting in the right (instructor) seat. Suddenly, oil began to spew on the windshield, but mostly on his side. He said as calmly as he could, "I can't see. You got it. Make a nice landing." Peering around the left of the oil on my side, I made a normal landing, to the delight and surprise of both of us. In the press of matters, I had no time to think, just react and fly. The seal on the propeller housing had sprung a leak, and prop oil came close to blinding both of us to a view ahead. Not a confidence builder.
On a final approach one day at about 200 feet, Roger yelled out, "I've got it!" I dropped my hands from the yoke, and he swung the plane violently to the right. A Lao Air Force "bomber" (an old American trainer T-28) flashed by and landed. Roger had seen the shadow of the Lao plane on the ground and kept us from being history. The problem was the guys in the control tower. They spoke English to us, sometimes Lao to the Laotian pilots, and maybe even French now and then. Not a good situation.
Old 49-R kept purring along, and I had long gotten over my concern that it would fall out of the sky for no reason. By now, I was making all the landings and doing all the flying. It was about my 8th or 9th hour of flying. On the Cessna 182, like all tricycle-landing gear aircraft, you have to "flair" (pull the nose up slightly) just before touchdown, so that the plane will land on its two main wheels. So far, I had made so few mistakes, they were not worth talking about. (Or so Roger later told me.)
But on that day, I didn't break my glide and flair the nose up at the proper time. We smacked into the ground nose wheel first. We bounced around, and I finally got the main wheels on the ground. Roger said, "Pull over right here!" I thought he was going to chew my ass out good and who knew what else. Instead, he smiled and said, "Now you know you are capable of making a mistake. Go fly this thing." With that he got out and walked across the grass toward the terminal building. And that was how I came to solo. He had been waiting for me to make my first big mistake. Brilliant strategy. I took off and flew around for a while, still not believing that he had "turned me loose." This time, the landing was textbook and I got the obligatory shirt- tail cut off.
Now that I was allowed to fly solo, I could go to the airport anytime, find the key clipped to the oil dipstick, and take the old 49-R up for a spin. I didn't talk about my flying much around the office. I had a lot of secrets crammed into my head, and worried that the brass might prohibit me from flying around Laos in an unarmed Cessna. After all, we were involved in a war, and there were guys not far from our airport who liked to take potshots at little planes. We lost several pilots at Air America and Continental to ground fire - most of it just simple rifle and AK-47 fire at low-flying planes. Once in a while at lunchtime, I would grab a sandwich and slip out to the airport and put 49-R into the sky for an hour. My wife knew what I was doing and was supportive. The kids did not know for a while. To be honest, compared to the strain that I was under in my job (which I cannot go into), this flying over enemy-infested territory was comic relief. Well - almost.
One sunny day, I flipped the cowling flap and reached for the key to 49-R. Attached was a handwritten note. "Don't make any short field takeoffs or landings! I loaned the flap motor to the Missionary. Roger." A missionary owned the only other Cessna 182 in Laos. The flap motor raises and lowers the flaps along the backside of the wings. It was the large flaps on our Cessna 182 Wren that contributed greatly to its ability to land and take off in a short space. To this day, over 25 years later, I still laugh out loud when I think of this crazy sign on the dipstick. Such was part of the charm of flying in Laos.
Now, I had to make a student cross-country solo as part of my requirements for an American pilot's license. By now, the bosses were in on Rhodes' folly - and surprisingly supported me, with some strict caveats. One, I had to get a Lao Private License before I took my solo cross-country flight. So, Roger prepared a letter in which he praised my skill and yatta, yatta, yatta. We went to see the Prince who was in charge of the Civil Aviation in Laos. He listened to Roger, read the letter, asked me a few questions and pulled out a green pilot license booklet, with gold elephants on the cover (the country symbol). In meticulous printing, he entered all the data. With a few official rubber stamps here and there, and $20.00, as I recall, I was the possessor of Private Pilot License No. 11, issued by the Kingdom of Laos.
I laid out a course down the Mekong River to Savannakhet, got some quizzing and a briefing from the chief of air ops in our little clandestine war. I was never to fly below 7500 feet, as I recall, to stay above ground fire (they had no Stingers). A military base in Thailand was altered to track me on radar. And I had to take a battery-operated pack set with aircraft frequencies in it, as backup. I was surprised and flattered that the brass thought enough of me, and trusted my judgment enough, to even let me make this flight.
The big day for the flight to Savannakhet came. I leveled off and headed East to pick up the southern leg of the Mekong. China was off my left wing. Vietnam far ahead over my nose and Thailand off my right wing. I trimmed up the aircraft and sat back to enjoy this monumental day in my life. A student cross-country in the middle of a war in a Cessna 182. Ridiculous! For much of the year in Laos, there is very poor visibility due to the smoke from all the "slash and burn" of the crops. And then there were quite often a lot of low-lying clouds. This was not a good visibility day. It was below VFR (visual flight rules) minimums, but the FAA was a long way away, so I turned South and started down the Mekong River.
A VOR is a radio station that puts out signals on all 360 degrees of the compass. If you can read two different VOR signals at the same time, you can tell exactly where you are by looking at the chart. Well, we had no VOR stations in Laos. We flew by sight, the compass, seat-of-the-pants, and some ADF beacons. An ADF (automatic direction finding) receiver picks up the signal from a low-frequency signal, and a needle on the panel points to that station. You simply follow the needle. In the States, you can tune in to an AM broadcast station and "home" in on it. And there are commercial beacons at many airports. In Laos, we had some beacons, but many were crude. Often a small transmitter was put in a stick of bamboo. A guy would jam the stick of bamboo into the ground near a landing strip, and when you got close enough, you could home in on it. If the battery didn't die.
Even though the visibility was poor, I was reasonably comfortable with my progress. I could see the Mekong River below me, and my compass pointed generally South. Close enough for government work. Suddenly out of the haze popped two F-4 Phantoms, heading North. They came so close over the top of me that my airplane shook! Fun had turned into terror in 1/3 of a second. I banked sharply and headed back North. I would wait for a day with better visibility. I never knew if the F-4s saw me on their onboard radar and just wanted to scare the hell out of me, or whether they never knew I was there. It mattered not. I was out of there! I have been in some very hairy situations in my life, but after those Phantoms went out of sight, I could hardly hold the yoke due to my trembling. Few times have I ever been scared so badly. Don't want to be, either.
On a more hospitable day, I made the flight to Savannakhet. When I landed, I climbed the bamboo ladder to the crude hut on stilts they called a control tower. The operator did not speak English, and me no Lao, other than my four useless phrases. I finally got across that I needed him to sign my log to attest to me landing there. It was somewhat ironic that in the intelligence business my whole life was one of clandestinely, deceit, and what have you. Yet, here I was worrying about getting a "real" signature from that control tower guy. In time, he got the point and scrawled something in my logbook. When I returned to Vientiane, my wife met me with a bottle of Champagne. Rodger, my instructor, and some others were there. I felt like Charles Lindberg. All I had done was fly a couple of hundred miles up and down the Mekong River. But to all of us, it was a big deal - considering the circumstances.
Kingdom of Laos - Private Pilot's License #11. I had 40 hours and 12 minutes of flight time at its issuance.
Cessna 182 Wren 460 N2449R retitled later as N8968
Missing Photo
My first flight on December 15, 1968, as N2449R (49 Romeo). First flight in the same aircraft as N8968, January 4, 1969. Solo on January 26, 1969.
I logged more than enough hours to qualify for an American license, but there was no pilot there who was certified by the FAA to sign off on flight exams for a U.S. license. On my way back to the States, I stopped for a few days in Honolulu and flew some in a Cessna 172, worked on learning to use a VOR, and so on. Flying over Pearl Harbor and in and out of Honolulu International was a heady experience for me, a very low-time pilot. One day, the tower asked me to turn in front of a 747 which was way out on final. I'd take quiet old Vientiane, with the Water Buffalo on the runway, any day. As it turned out, on the day I was to take my flight test for my U.S. license, the plane was grounded for a 100-hour mechanical inspection. Good planning. Rather than start all over with a different instructor, etc., I left and returned to the mainland. Later I took my flight test at a small field in Virginia, near Washington, D.C. - and passed with no problem. The instructor commented on my short landings. I told him that I had some good STOL instructors - without going into the details.
The chief of air ops in Laos offered me a deal before I left. Go back to the States and get a commercial pilot's license (it would not have taken long, as I had quite a few hours by then) and he would hire me to come back to Laos and fly. If I had been single, I would have done it. But, I turned the deal down. No doubt it was the best thing to do.
In later years, as I was hanging around airports near Dallas, excited students would tell me they were going to fly solo cross-country to some place like Austin or Longview. "That's great. I flew my solo cross-country to ........." And I would usually spare them the story. This was a special day for them. No need to dampen their spirits with some "probably-made-up-story" about my first cross-country solo down the Mekong River.
Later, while living in Rome, Italy, I got a chance to fly with the Rome Glider Club in the mountains of Italy. An interesting experience, since they drank wine copiously at lunch. I never got an Italian pilot's license. The Italian bureaucracy was too tough to crack.
Postscript: I forget now who told me, but I heard that the Cessna 182 460 Wren that I flew in Laos was outfitted with big gas tanks and ferried to Hawaii and to the mainland of the U.S. many years ago. A search of FAA records shows that the original tail number of N2449R is now assigned to a hot-air balloon in Louisville, Kentucky, and N8968 is assigned to a glider in Riverside, California. So, unless I can locate Rodger, or someone else knows the fate of our beloved Cessna Wren 460, I will ever know about the aircraft.
Update Nov. 24, 2005: Through the miracle of the Internet, Roger, my old flying instructor in Laos and mentor, ran across my "Flying in Laos" story and e-mailed me. Even stranger, he lives in Texas, and we will be exchanging e-mails about getting together for lunch in Dallas when he makes one of his trips there.
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
Yep, Roger is my father, contact me, we need to do lunch.