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VIKING Control
and Reporting Post (CRP)
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(To see pictures of Viking Control and Mukdahan RTAB, click on the Viking patch.) |
The following narrative, provided by James Marcus 'Jim' Bozeman, MSgt USAF, Retired, provides a snapshot of Viking when it opened in 1966 and contrasts with the next article describing the closing down of the site in 1969
The VIKING radar site at Mukdaharn, Thailand, was DET 6, 621st TCS. I was stationed there from June 1966 - June 1967. I was actually one of the first permanent party people there. It had been built by a "PRIME BEEF" team.
When I arrived, they were still in process of setting up Radar Operations. The communications center was in a half Quonset hut, with a Crypto Trailer sticking out the side. The crypto trailer, was by necessity, on wheels, in case of a need for a quick evacuation. I was an Air Force 29150 (Communications Specialist) at the time.
I had arrived in NKP on a C-130; and was directed to go to the Post Office there. I asked the guy at the post office about my orders, (which said Det 6, 621st TCS), and also read APO SF 96210. He told me to stick around, and there would be a truck by in a few minutes. When the truck arrived, it was a deuce and a half. Two guys in it. They told me to throw my bag in back and hop in. I did. After a few stops around NKP, we proceeded out the main gate. About two and a half hours later, and 80 miles, we arrived at our destination. I climbed out of the back of this covered deuce and a half with my duffel bag, and looked around. All I saw at first was six 12-man tents, with a couple other smaller tents and a couple of Quonset huts, and a mess tent scattered around. I thought to myself, "Lordy, this is going to be a long year". It was.
I was assigned to one of the tents for sleeping purposes, and was, the next morning issued a poncho, because the monsoon season would soon be upon us. I will try to fill in more details, as time allows; but I want to throw in a few names, for right now. The first permanent party commander was Major Dean Parmalee (promoted to Lt. Col. after that tour). Our plumber and primary Civil Engineer man was an Airman First Class Ed England (from Louisiana, I believe). One of the men that later became a hooch mate, and a frequent pinochle partner was a TSgt Rowe. I will try to dig out some of my old orders, and supply more names, but that is all I can think of for the minute.
All of our trucks had a Viking helmet painted on the doors; and the folks at NKP soon got to recognize this emblem. Also we painted the front and rear bumpers with yellow stripes. Easily recognized. Anyway, the folks at NKP soon began to watch us very carefully; because they found out the hard way, that if it wasn't bolted down or had an armed guard on it, we would "requisition" it; being that we were the absolute last on the supply chain. They called it stealing; we called it 'spoils of wartime'. We had fun through all the diversity and hard times of being in a war zone.
To the Photo Recon guys, we were known as "Last out, first in", because our site was the last friendly they talked to on the way to a mission, and the first they talked to on the way back (when they made it back). Frequently, after a successful PR mission, the pilots would come down very, very low over our site, and do a barrel roll in order to say "Thanks". We enjoyed this, and would broadcast it all over the site when we knew they were coming. As many guys as possible would come out into the open field next to the site, and wave to the pilots, as they flew over upside down.
The next narrative, contributed by Paul Olson, describes events at Viking as the site was being closed down in late 1969.
I was stationed at Viking as an E-4 as a "scope dope" from August 1969 until it closed a few days before Christmas 1969. We had approximately 200 people stationed at the site on the edge of Mukdaharn with a Major as site commander. The site consisted of little more than the hootches, mess hall, dispensary, diesel electric power generator, radar compound with a security fence around it and an entry control point, and softball field. Our mail and occasionally a new guy would come in in a STOL Porter plateaus (spelling??) which would land on the ball field. Most personnel arrived and departed by a "duce and a half" up the Friendship highway from Ubon where they would arrive by C-130 from Bangkok.
The three friendly Thai girls that had been hired to work in the serving line in the mess hall were Mukda, Sompi, and Chiang Nit. I think the last was a Chinese. They were in their early twenties, short and petite, and tolerably attractive if one drank enough beers. We always teased them and gave them a lot of crap and they would not hesitate to throw it right back at us.
I forget the exact numbers, but I think there were about 15 to 20 of us living in each open bay hooch. We doubled up our beds to make bunk beds and to create a little more space. We then put our metal, military 3'W x 7'H x 18" D side by side to create 6 foot wide walls between the bunk beds, thus creating mini bedrooms and giving us a little privacy. We also had a floor fan, a folding metal chair, little tables and a lamp. The tables were little ore than 18"x 36" sheets of plywood with legs, painted gray. Each bed also had a very necessary green mosquito net hanging over the top of it.
We also had "house girls" or "house boys", one per hooch, whom we would pay about $30-40 per month ($4-6 apiece) to make our beds, wash and iron all our clothes, shine our boots every day, and keep the hooch clean.
Near the mess hall we had a large cage, about 7 feet high by 10 feet wide by 15 feet long where we kept 3 tan monkeys - one male and 2 females. They were dirty and nasty tempered. Every once in a while they would unscrew the nut and bolt holding their cage door closed and would escape. When they did escape, they would tear up our banana trees and run around on the roofs of our hooches. Whoever caught them and put them back in their cages would end up going to the dispensary with several nasty monkey bites. I liked to tease them by giving the big, dominating, male monkey a clump of old, dry grass and weeds. He would always rush over and take the clump of grass I offered him and not share. After he would leave with his clump of dried grass and weeds, I would reach behind my back and bring forth a clump of soft, green, tender grass and give it to one of the other monkeys. She would eat it until the big male saw that her grass was nicer than his, and he would start chasing her all over the cage until she dropped the grass. That would always cause a lot of screaming, noise, and commotion from the monkey cage.
Being a small site, we could get frequent "bubble checks" from the F-4's and sometimes a KC-135. They would fly in over our site at 400-700 mph at an altitude of about 30 feet. There were two F-4 squadrons that we worked with, one out of Ubon and one out of Vietnam. (I forget the names). Each time one would come over and give us a bubble check, we would get on the radio and tell them they were a bunch of wimps. The F-4 pilots from the other squadron give us a hell of a lot better bubble check. They fly faster and lower. It did not matter which pilots flew over. We always called them wimps and told them the other guys had done a better job.
One day two pilots from Ubon drove up Friendship highway from Ubon to Mukdaharn to visit our site. They very carefully paced off various distances and checked heights of the facilities and radio antennas at our site. We entertained them and drank with them, then they returned to Ubon.
A few days later we got one hell of a bubble check that ended all bubble checks. They came in low and slow in their two F-4's with wheels down, flaps up and everything else set for slow flight, with their afterburners on. They were flying horizontally just a few feet off the ground with their nose pointed about 45-60 upward, and flames and smoke shooting out the ass end like a blow torch. The back door of one of our administrative Quonset huts was open and they blasted into it and blew off and destroyed several blanket panels that covered it. Several rows of wooden ribs and the entire inside were exposed to the weather. The inside looked like it had been hit by a tornado. They had to climb to get over our baseball backstop, then dipped down low again and scorched a line in the grass from our infield out to center field. Unfortunately, they did not get their F-4's into the air andflew over the town of Mukdaharn the same way. They blasted several native houses to bits with their afterburners, then the shit hit the fan politically. The mayor complained to the US embassy, and the US government paid for and rebuilt all of the native houses that had been destroyed, and gave the families some additional money to mend their hurt feeling and to make things well and whole with them again. Needless to say, we also got the word from "very high headquarters" about no more bubble checks.
Along about September or October 1969, we began to hear rumors about our site closing. The site commander called us all together one day and said he wanted to squash any rumors about the site closing. If it were true, he would be the first to know about it and we would be the second as he would immediately announce it to all of us.
We knew that the North Vietnamese seemed to always know what the Americans were going to do before we did, so several of us immediately went down town to visit the local North Vietnamese tailor. He had a beautiful, single daughter, Noi, who was in her mid twenties and spoke excellent English. We asked her if she had heard any rumors about our future. She said, "sure. You guys will all be out of there by New Years." She missed the timing by about a week, but we left behind several MP's to provide site security and guard against vandalism and theft until the disposition of the property could be properly resolved.
And that is the story of the end of Viking, Christmas 1969.
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