NEW Lima Site 85 Painting Completed

Prints Available

This year, 2007, marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Central Intelligence Agency. To commemorate the occasion a series of paintings have been commissioned to illustrate important milestone moments in that history. The paintings will be donated to the CIA Fine Arts Collection for display at Headquarters and from time to time will be rotated for viewing at the various U.S. Presidential Libraries. For many of those 60 years, CAT and Air America played an historic role. "Earthquake's Final Flight," which most of you are familiar with, was the first in the series. The fifth painting will honor Air America and the subject will be our Air America Huey defending a Top Secret United States Air Force Radar Installation, in Laos, against North Vietnamese Air Force pilots attack in armed Russian-made aircraft.

Keith Woodcock of the United Kingdom is the artist chosen to execute this painting at an estimated cost of $7500. Marius Burke and Boyd Mesecher have ensured the project gets underway, by funding the deposit, in time for print delivery at Nashville. Keith is planning to attend our Reunion and hopes to be available to sign Prints. This will be a limited edition; the number of prints will depend on the number of advance orders and prepayment.

Cost & payment for the prints:

Prints of the painting will be sold via advance order to Dan Gamelin and will be delivered at the Air America Store at the reunion in Nashville. If not attending the Reunion the prints will be mailed to your home at an additional cost of $10. Please send your order to: Dan Gamelin, 3117 Via Premio, Carlsbad, CA 92010.  dangamelin@roadrunner.com

The prints will sell for $100 each (or $110 if mailing required) , a portion of which will pay for the original oil painting gifted to the Fine Arts Collection at CIA. Payment for the prints should be made to the AAM Association Treasurer, Patty Sherman, P.O. Box 307, Spring Lake, NC 28390. Patty's e-mail address is: ptrcsherman@yahoo.com Checks should be sent as soon as you place your order.

Background:

Air America’s Singular Aerial Victory

 On January 12, 1968, four dark green People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) Air Force AN-2 “Colt” biplanes lifted off from an airfield in northeastern North Vietnam and headed west toward neighboring Laos. According to an official Vietnamese account, the specially modified aircraft and highly motivated crews were on a critical mission to destroy a U.S. radar base that was successfully guiding American bombers in damaging attacks against communist supply depots, airfields, and railroad yards.

Known to the Americans as “Site 85,” the radar facility was perched on the southwestern cliffs of Phou Pha Thi and had been in operation only a few months. The 5,800-foot mountain, used for many years as a staging base for U.S. Central Intelligence Agency-directed Hmong guerilla fighters and American special operations and rescue helicopters, was only 125 nautical miles from the North Vietnamese capital of Hanoi.

Manned by U.S. Air Force volunteers “sheep-dipped” as employees of the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation - under the code-name “Heavy Green” - the facility provided the United States an otherwise unavailable all-weather bombing capability against North Vietnam. A tactical air navigational aid (TACAN) was located on the mountaintop.

The isolated base was protected by local Hmong guerillas and Thai contract soldiers under the direction of U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) paramilitary officers. Air America, a CIA-proprietary, provided critical aerial support for the facility, the technicians, and the security forces.

At about 1:30 PM the Colts approached their target and split into two formations. While two of the aircraft orbited in the area, the other two planes turned toward the mountain and conducted separate single bombing and strafing passes. John Daniel, a Heavy Green radar operator, was at the helipad just below the radar buildings when the airplanes attacked. “I could see the aircraft very clearly, only a couple of hundred feet above the site. I saw one dropping bombs and a Thai soldier emptied a full ammo clip at the plane.”

The extensive bombing and strafing was confined mostly to the CIA area near the helipad, indicating the pilots may have been attracted to the shiny tin-roofed buildings. Roland Hodge, an electrical power specialist assigned to Heavy Green, was working on a CIA generator near the helipad and was slightly wounded by flying debris. Elsewhere, the attack killed four Hmong (including two women) and wounded two soldiers.

Air America captain Ted Moore, flying artillery ammunition to the site, saw the biplanes attack and recalls, “It looked like World War I.” Moore and his flight mechanic Glenn Woods began to chase the first Colt as it attempted to head north to the Vietnamese border. Captain Moore positioned the unarmed UH-1D “Huey” above the biplane as Woods pulled out an AK-47 rifle and began firing at the lumbering airplane. The pursuit continued for more than twenty minutes until the second AN-2 flew underneath the helicopter and both airplanes attempted to gain altitude. Moore and Woods watched as the first AN-2, apparently hit by gunfire, dropped and then crashed into a mountain ridge less than two miles west of the North Vietnamese border. Minutes later, the second Colt hit the side of a mountain located some three miles further north of the first crash and only a few miles west of the border. The two AN-2 Colts orbiting to the southeast of Site 85 did not take part in the attack and retreated back to North Vietnam.

Within hours a CIA-controlled ground team reached the crashed aircraft and found bullet holes in both. The first airplane had burned on impact and was nearly completely destroyed. The second aircraft, which bore tail number 665, was in far better shape. Three bodies which “appeared to be Vietnamese” were found in the wreckage. Aeronautical charts, which marked the inbound route to Site 85 and a return home, were found along with note books and a Soviet manufactured HF radio.

An examination of the aircraft by a U.S. Air Force intelligence team revealed “that 120mm mortar rounds had been converted to ‘bombs.’ Dropped through tubes in the floor of the AN-2, the ‘bombs’ became armed in the slip stream and detonated on impact. The rockets were 57mm, and were carried in rocket pods under the wing of the AN-2.” Captain Moore later estimated that nearly fifty of the mortar “bombs” were dropped on Phou Pha Thi. Clearly, had the pilots been even slightly more proficient in their bombing and strafing, the attack at Site 85 would likely have been costly in both lives and equipment.

Shrouded in the mists of the Annamite mountains, and part of a “secret war,” Air America employees Ted Moore and Glenn Woods gained the distinction of having shot down a fixed-wing aircraft from a helicopter - a singular aerial victory in the entire history of the Vietnam war.

Two months later, in yet another unprecedented communist attack, Vietnamese commandos would launch a daring nighttime raid on Site 85. The radar facility was destroyed and Hanoi inflicted the deadliest single ground loss of U.S. Air Force personnel of the Vietnam war.

by Timothy N. Castle

Timothy N. Castle, author of One Day Too Long, the story of Top Secret Site 85 and the Bombing of North Vietnam was our Guest Speaker at Nashville. Dr. Castle also wrote At War in the Shadow of Vietnam.

Artists Bio and Web Site

http://www.satiche.org.uk/keithw/gallery.htm

http://www.satiche.org.uk/keithw/woodcock.htm

First Drawing

Second Drawing

Third Drawing

Fourth Drawing