In the summer of 1971, Col. Lieou Phin Oum was still in charge of the brigade at Kompong Thom. In spite of the failure of Chenla I, he had moved his security perimeter to nearly 5 miles (8 kilometers) around the city and he had used a paved section of Route 6 north of the city to build an airport. With no concrete, asphalt, or equipment, he used whatever he had to construct the runway shoulders and taxiway. Paving was done with bricks from destroyed houses and smoothed with a GMC truck loaded with forty people for extra weight. Although the Rustics never used this runway, Cambodian C-47s used it to bring in supplies.
There was still no highway access to the city and supplies had always been a problem. Initially, Cambodian C-47s and USAF C-130s were used for airdrops. The C-47s dropped from a fairly high altitude and were very inaccurate. Oum estimated that half of those supplies went to the enemy. C-130s, using their low altitude extraction technique, could put a load of supplies right where Oum wanted it. “We didn’t even have to go out and collect the supplies. They dropped them right in front of the warehouse!”
Next, water convoys using small boats were used. The boats were loaded at Kompong Chhnang and sailed across the Tonle Sap and up the Stung Sen River west of Kompong Thom. As part of their daily operations, the Rustics provided air cover for these convoys. With the expanded security perimeter and regular supplies by air and boat, life at Kompong Thom returned to something approaching normalcy.
Colonel Oum’s brigade strength was about thirteen hundred troops. All of them were volunteers and ranged in age from sixteen to forty. Many came from Phnom Penh, but Oum was very successful in recruiting along Route 6 near his mother’s hometown of Rumlong. “Along there, I knew everyone from Tang Kouk to Baray.” (See map of central Cambodia in Chapter 7.)
In Cambodian society, the family followed the soldier. Thus one recruit might bring with him his wife, father, mother, and children, who carried supplies and cooked for the soldier. Thus the total size of Oum’s brigade was around thirty-five hundred people.
His initial military equipment came from the supplies the NVA (and Chinese) had been shipping to Kompong Som for transport to South Vietnam. When Lon Nol took over, he closed down this supply route and confiscated the supplies then in transit. The supplies airdropped by USAF C-130s were arranged by the American Embassy in Phnom Penh and the Rustics would make an occasional contribution of captured arms and munitions obtained through military sources in South Vietnam.
During the summer of 1971, Oum made several trips to Bien Hoa to pick up arms and deliver Cambodians who were to train with the Rustics. Occasionally, his cargo would include a gift for the Rustics, some bottles of “Bayon Brew,” a very potent rice beer from the brewery at Kompong Som. As Lt. Lansford (Lanny) Trapp was the designated hooch honcho, or house mother, the bottles were stored in his room. Once, after a hot bumpy trip from Cambodia, the bottles began exploding and thoroughly soaked Lanny’s room. Once chilled, Bayon Brew was a very good beer.
One trip, Oum brought the Cambodian National Ballet, who put on a performance of Cambodian national dances at a theater in Saigon. Many Rustics attended both the performance and the following reception at the Tan Son Nhut Officer’s Club. The Rustic enlisted backseaters were not invited until someone pointed out that they were the only ones who could talk to the ballet troupe. They wore civilian clothes and were introduced as interpreters. Only the Rustics knew they weren’t civilians and weren’t officers.
Lon Nol recovered from his stroke and returned to Phnom Penh in April of 1971. Based on his misconception of the success of Chenla I, he began planning a second major offensive to be called Chenla II. The objectives would be similar but more ambitious than those of Chenla I. The first objective was to open the highways to Kompong Thom from both Skoun and Kompong Cham. Second was to stop the flow of enemy supplies from the northeast to the Kompong Chhnang region at the southern end of the Tonle Sap. Third was to regain control of the central agricultural region. The Rustics didn’t see much difference between those objectives and those of the Chenla I operation in 1970. They would be fighting for the same real estate that was supposedly captured during Chenla I. The Cambodian army general staff feared that Chenla II would expose the army’s flanks and provide an easy target for the NVA. Lon Nol’s attitude was that U.S. airpower would prevent any such disaster.1 This showed a serious lack of understanding of what airpower could and could not do. Airpower could not occupy and control territory.
Chenla II started with a reported twenty thousand Cambodian troops committed, but that figure was heavily inflated. The problem was the Cambodian method of recruitment. Commanders were expected to recruit their own troops, which led to rampant corruption. According to Oum, if someone told the Army that he could raise a battalion, the Army said “OK” and made him a colonel. He would then report nonexistent soldiers and receive pay and supplies for them. The money went to the corrupt officers and the supplies including weapons, munitions, rations, and medicine, went to the black market and found their way to the NVA. “Sometimes,” according to Oum, “a battalion would actually only have one company instead of three and the company would only have fifteen soldiers instead of three hundred. Army headquarters could not understand how a company that supposedly had three hundred soldiers could be overrun by a platoon-sized enemy force.”
The reason they couldn’t understand it was because the army general staff in Phnom Penh would never go into the field and see what was actually going on. Since the Rustics worked with all the field commanders, they had a good idea of who was honest and who was padding the numbers. They could make a rough estimate of how many soldiers actually existed by just flying over them and looking. If a commander was going to lie about the strength of his force, he also had to lie about what they were doing. This was particularly evident in the bomb damage assessments (BDA) they reported to the Rustics after an air strike. The pilots could usually make a good estimate of the results of an air strike based on the accuracy and the number of secondary explosions. They would always ask the ground commander for his BDA when it was available. If the ground commander came back immediately with a large KBA (killed by air) figure rounded to the even hundreds, the Rustic pilot knew it was padded. He would report it at the Intell debriefing, but add his opinions to go with it.
Colonel Oum would almost never give the pilot a BDA immediately after an air strike. He didn’t know the exact results and wouldn’t pass any on until he found out what they were. That might take him until the next day and he would pass yesterday’s BDA to whichever Rustic was overhead. If he said there were twenty-seven enemy KBA it was because he had personally gone out and counted twenty-seven bodies. If he said his present strength was 1,250 soldiers, that was 1,250 troops trained, equipped, and available. He was scrupulously honest and he exposed dishonesty and corruption when ever he found it. That kept him in chronic trouble with the army headquarters in Phnom Penh and eventually led to his reassignment to the Cambodian embassy in Thailand.2
Lt. Col. Kohn Om continued leading the Cambodian T-28s on close air support missions. He kept in close contact with the Rustics on their radio frequencies and the Rustics treated him as another available fighter resource, one who could attack targets without waiting for anyone’s permission. Doing this with the assistance of the Rustics was a technical violation of the ROE, but nobody complained. The Rustics were there to support the Cambodian Army and they weren’t fussy about where the support came from. As a pilot, Om was as well qualified as any other available fighter pilot and it was, after all, his country.
In November 1971, Kohn Om missed the last part of Chenla II as he was sent to the United States for nearly a year of advanced training. This included training in academic instruction, special operations, counterinsurgency, and squadron operations. While he was there, he managed to visit his good friend and former Rustic Commander, Lt. Col. Jim Lester, at his home in Florida.
Chenla II officially began on August 20, 1971, with the Cambodian army fighting their way up Route 6 from Tang Kouk and arriving at Kompong Thma on September 1. Colonel Oum’s brigade pushed south from Kompong Thom and linked up with the main column on October 5. They met approximately 15 miles (25 kilometers) south of Kompong Thom with the Rustics providing air support to both units.
Based on that link-up, Lon Nol declared the first phase of Chenla II a success and ordered his troops to stand down in preparation for the second phase; the pacification of the local population.3
Meanwhile, another unit of the Cambodian army attempted to fight their way up Route 21 from Kompong Cham while units from Kompong Thma, now established on Route 21 south of Kompong Thom, attempted to move down Route 21 to meet them. Neither group made much progress and Route 21 between Traeung and Kompong Thma stayed in NVA hands.
Lt. Col. Kohn Om, commander of the Cambodian T-28 “Scorpions” during a visit to the Rustics at Bien Hoa, 1971. Walt Friedhofen collection.
On September 26, while supporting the battalion moving north up Route 21 from Traeung, the Rustics lost another aircraft. Lt. Lanny Trapp, Rustic 07 and his Cambodian backseater, Sergeant Khorn, were shot down.
Lanny was supporting Hotel 05 north of Kompong Cham. Hotel 05 had a TIC situation and was taking heavy fire. Lanny was working with Hawk A-37s from Bien Hoa when Sergeant Khorn told him they were being shot at. Lanny could see the tracers coming by the aircraft, which meant it was probably from 12.7mm antiaircraft machine guns.
The guns were out in the open and easy to spot, so Lanny marked them with a smoke rocket and cleared one of the fighters in with a Mk 82 bomb. The bomb hit close to the marker, but it was a dud. Next, the fighter used his rockets and was able to shut down one of the guns. Lanny was orbiting at about 3,500 feet when he suddenly noticed that his left wing was on fire. He called Mayday over the radio and headed for Kompong Cham, which was considered friendly territory. Based on the Mayday call, Jolly Green rescue helicopters launched immediately from South Vietnam.
Lanny saw that most of his left wing outboard of the engine was gone and the plane was getting very hard to fly. It took full right aileron and full right rudder to keep it upright. They were nearly over Kompong Cham when he ordered Sergeant Khorn to eject. Lanny ejected right behind him, but to do so he had to release the aileron and rudder pressure he was holding. The plane rolled violently to the left and Lanny estimated that he ejected horizontally at about 2,000 feet. He remembers the air being filled with one-to-fifty scale maps from his map bag. The OV-10 crashed into the Mekong and Lanny and Sergeant Khorn landed uninjured in the middle of town. They were immediately “rescued” by the townspeople, who treated them as heroes. Within a few minutes, the Jolly Greens arrived and took them to Bien Hoa.
Their “debriefing” took place in the Rustic bar and was probably one of the last serious parties held there.4 The Rustics were packing to leave Bien Hoa and move to Ubon.
Three days after the Lanny Trapp shootdown, Seventh Air Force found a new job for the Rustics. About midnight, Lt. Ron Van Kirk heard a knock on his door and found himself facing the Rustic OV-10 commander, Maj. Bob Clifford.
“We need three volunteers for a mission. They have to be single.”
“Wait a minute. There are only three single Rustics in this whole outfit!”
“That’s true.”
“In that case, I guess I’m a volunteer. What’s the mission?” Maj. Clifford really didn’t know the details, but told Ron to be at the flight line at 0600 hours in the morning with whatever he needed to live somewhere else for a couple of days. The mission would be explained at that time. Ron went back to bed and slept; but not very much.
At 0600, Ron met with the other single “volunteers,” Otto Walinski and Bob Berry. There was a group of marines and some other people they had never seen before. Bob Clifford was also there.
There was a major offensive by the Viet Cong to capture Tay Ninh, a South Vietnamese Provincial Capital, and Krek, a besieged town in Cambodia, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) up the highway from Tay Ninh. The three volunteers were to be “inserted” with Army and Marine units at Tay Ninh East, Tay Ninh West and Katum, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of Tay Ninh. Their job was to call in air strikes as needed to halt the enemy offensive. They drew straws and Otto got Katum, Bob got Tay Ninh East, and Ron went to Tay Ninh west. The Marines were assigned to protect them and would be with them the entire time. They were issued AR-15 assault rifles and loaded onto helicopters for the trip.
Cambodian Sergeant Khorn and Lt. Lanny Trapp “debriefing” at the Rustic bar after being shot down and rescued near Kompong Cham, September 1971. Ron Van Kirk collection.
Nonpilots tend to think that combat flying is highly dangerous. In some cases it is, but pilots are very comfortable in that environment and are doing something they are well trained to do. Danger, to them, is being removed from the friendly confines of an aircraft cockpit, issued an AR-15, and planted on the ground with the real troops.
The Army commander at Tay Ninh West was a little surprised when Ron showed up, but he installed a complete set of radios in the headquarters compound and put Ron in business just a few feet from his door. It was soon obvious why Ron was needed. The army personnel there knew nothing of Air Force ordnance, safe separation distance, FAC and fighter procedures or selection of targets. Ron gave the commander a quick lesson on those subjects and they developed a plan where the commander would identify the threat and Ron would explain his air support options to him. It worked very well. Bien Hoa was close enough to furnish “on demand” air support. After four days, the enemy offensive had been blunted and the commander agreed that he no longer needed Ron. He now both understood and appreciated air support. The Marines got Ron a ride on a Huey (UH-1 helicopter) that was headed for Long Binh army base near Bien Hoa.
It was dark at Bien Hoa and the helicopter pilot didn’t bother contacting the control tower or using the airfield. He just found an open area near the perimeter fence and landed to let Ron off. It turned out that he had dropped Ron in a minefield separating the ARVN and USAF sections of Bien Hoa. Ron tiptoed out of that and hitched a jeep ride back to the Rustic area.
Bob Berry and Otto Walinski also returned that day. Otto was “inserted” into Katum just as it was overrun by the enemy. Otto spent the next three days escaping in one of the army’s tanks.
They were trading stories at the Rustic bar when Maj. Bob Clifford told one that quieted the conversation a bit. The reason that they wanted single volunteers was that at least one and possibly two of them were not expected to return.
Back to Cambodia, in addition to providing air support for the activities on Routes 6 and 21, the Rustics were still flying cover over the large Mekong River convoys supplying Phnom Penh and the small boat convoys supplying Kompong Thom from the Tonle Sap. The Rustics found that using gunships to sterilize the area along the small convoys’ route was very effective.
By October, the Cambodian army controlled a narrow strip of land that paralleled Route 6 from Skoun through Kompong Thma to Kompong Thom. Supply of Kompong Thom via the highway now became possible. In the third week of October, Lon Nol declared Chenla II to be a success, which it was not. Opening the road to Kompong Thom was a minor victory, but the Rustics suspected that it wouldn’t last long. The distance from Skoun to Kompong Thom was about 70 miles (115 kilometers) and the Cambodian army had neither the strength nor the weapons to control that much territory. The U.S. Army faced a similar problem in South Vietnam, that of maintaining control of the Major highways. They did it by removing all vegetation for several hundred yards on either side of the highway and constantly patrolling it with assault helicopters. The Cambodian army could not do either.
Shortly after Lon Nol’s declaration of success, NVA sappers blew up a bridge southwest of Skoun on Route 6, which made use of the highway impossible. It cut the link between the Cambodian Chenla forces and their supplies. During the next week, the NVA cut Route 6 in several places, which essentially isolated the Cambodian battalion garrisoned in the town of Rumlong.
Rumlong was a small town located about two thirds of the way between Skoun and Kompong Thma. The NVA Ninth Division surrounded Rumlong and began setting up mortars for an attack. They would sight the mortars on the town and then bury them so that only the tip of the mortar tube was visible. These were undetectable from the air and this technique gave the NVA plenty of time to organize their attack. At the time, the Stars and Stripes newspaper reported that sixty enemy bunkers were surrounding Rumlong. The source of that news was a mystery, but it was probably correct.
With the attacks along Route 6, the Rustics were suddenly back in the business of dealing with troops-in-contact situations. By now, the Rustics were operating out of Ubon and were starting to get replacement pilots who had been through French language school. In early November, Doug Aitken had one of them, Bob Andrews, in his backseat for an initial checkout.
They flew to Rumlong and put in air strikes supporting relief columns coming from both the north and the south. The army commander at Rumlong spoke neither English nor French and had to relay his situation and requests in Cambodian to the commander moving down from the north. The Rumlong commander requested air strikes right on the edge of his position, which Doug thought was much too close. Because of the lack of direct communication with the commander at Rumlong, Blue Chip disapproved that target, but did approve targets both north and south of the town in support of the relief forces. All of this was relayed from Blue Chip through Ramrod, the ABCCC plane orbiting the area at high altitude.
Doug and Bob planned to use the first set of fighters in support of the southern relief column, but when they showed up (Hawk 05 flight, A-37s from Bien Hoa), the commander of the northern column announced that he had a TIC and was taking mortar, 12.7mm and small arms fire. Ramrod approved the change of the fighters’ targets.
The A-37s each carried four cans of napalm and two pods of HE rockets in addition to two thousand rounds of 7.62 mini-gun ammunition. Because napalm was delivered at a very low altitude (500 feet), the A-37s were vulnerable to ground fire and had developed a new tactic. Hawk Two orbited low out of sight of the target while Hawk Lead rolled in high and ripple-fired one pod of rockets on the target. Ripple-firing shot nineteen rockets sequentially and provided some dispersion of the rockets. Hawk Two timed his pass to be over the target immediately after the rockets hit and released two cans of napalm. After two of these passes they reversed roles. In effect, the rocket pass forced the enemy to keep their heads down while the other fighter made his low altitude napalm pass. This significantly reduced the number of hits taken by the fighters.
Now, Hawk Lead was out of rockets and Hawk Two was out of napalm and they were ready to switch positions. All of a sudden, the Rumlong commander came on the radio yelling something that neither Doug nor Bob could understand, but they could tell he was in a panic. The northern ground commander translated and told Doug that the NVA were coming over the perimeter and infiltrating the Rumlong commander’s position. The northern commander relayed the target coordinates, which were the same ones Blue Chip had disapproved. Doug had no authority to hit that target.
“Thinking there might have been an error in transmitting the coordinates, I put in a mark (WP rocket) about 165 feet (50 meters) north of the coordinates he had given me. The northern commander relayed, ‘Good smoke, but go south 20 meters. He is really getting hit hard!’ ”
Doug declared a tactical emergency, a procedure that allowed a FAC to provide immediate support to a ground commander in a TIC situation without waiting for clearance. He told the Hawk fighters to come down to Rumlong, and he made three or four passes using his own HE rockets. There were hooches built on stilts on either side of the highway north of town and Doug could see the enemy fire coming from under the hooches. He marked the location and cleared the fighters in. They did beautiful work with Hawk Lead dropping one can of napalm at a time and splashing it under the hooches. Suddenly, the northern commander relayed, “Good! Move 20 more meters south!”
The A-37s and Doug’s OV-10 had nothing left but ammunition for their machine guns, so they moved 20 meters south and all three aircraft made strafing passes until their guns were empty. They watched each other closely and all three aircraft were being hosed (taking ground fire) on their passes.
Doug’s replacement, Rustic 18 (Tom Clinch) was on station and monitoring the action. He had already ordered more air support through Ramrod and, after a quick briefing from Doug, was ready to take over the tactical emergency. Doug and the Hawk fighters were both low on fuel and had nothing left to shoot or drop, so they headed home.
OV-10 rolls in to mark a target, November 1971. Doug Aitken collection.
Tom Clinch continued the air support. About twenty minutes later, Ramrod came on the radio and said, “Rustic 16 and Rustic 18, put no more ordnance on those grids. I repeat: put no more ordnance on those grids!”
“Oh s——t,” Doug thought, “There goes my career.” Obviously Seventh Air Force did not appreciate FACs attacking targets they had previously disapproved. Just as Doug and Bob crossed the Thailand border, he heard Tom report that the NVA had abandoned their attack on Rumlong and everything was under control. Any official displeasure of the actions of the Rustics suddenly disappeared.
The Rustics continued to support the forces at Rumlong for two more weeks until it finally fell to the NVA on November 13. The battle had lasted for nineteen days. According to the Stars and Stripes newspaper, the Cambodian army had to leave more than four hundred wounded behind while three hundred survivors escaped the town at 1 A.M. In the end, the friendly perimeter at Rumlong was no larger than a football field and it was simply overrun by NVA troops. Rustic-controlled air strikes destroyed Rumlong and the equipment the Cambodians had left behind. Many years later, Doug Aitken discussed the destruction of Rumlong with Colonel Oum: “Rumlong was Oum’s hometown and he is the one that ordered it destroyed. He knew that wounded soldiers had been abandoned there and if they hadn’t been killed by the NVA, they were killed by our air strikes. As he told me this, his eyes were full of tears.”
The NVA were not done. The next town north of Rumlong was Baray. The NVA cut the highway between Baray and Kompong Thma thus denying it any support from Kompong Thma and capturing it with the same tactics used at Rumlong.
Kompong Thma was next. The NVA tactics were simple and obvious. They would isolate a town by cutting the only highway in and out. This meant the garrison in the town could not be reinforced or resupplied. Then they would encircle the town and set up an attack preceded by mortar and artillery bombardment. They would usually leave a segment of the circle open so that the Cambodian soldiers could escape. When the Cambodians tried to use that route, the NVA would close it and have the Cambodian soldiers surrounded in the open and unprotected by the structures in the town. The Cambodian army units were not strong enough to mount an offensive attack against the NVA and they would merely wait for the attack they knew was coming. In effect, this ceded the decisions on whether, when, and where to attack to the NVA. The Cambodian’s only defensive strategy was to ask the Rustics to provide air support after the attack started.
Air support was furnished, and it was effective, but not effective enough to defeat the attack. Close air support depends primarily on knowing exactly where the enemy is and exactly where to drop the munitions. This was essentially the job of the FAC in coordination with the ground commander. If the ground commander waited until he was attacked to identify the enemy positions, it was too late. The opportunity to destroy the enemy before he attacked or at least limit his ability to attack had already been lost. If the NVA soldiers could get close enough to the Cambodian positions so that bombs could not be used without endangering the friendly troops, the battle was won—or lost, depending on your point of view. Full air support could no longer be used effectively.
On December 1, 1971, Doug Aitken, Rustic 16, flew one of the final missions over Kompong Thma and described it as both the most exciting and disheartening mission of his tour. His backseater was Doug Norman, Rustic Mike.
They flew down from Ubon and entered a battle already in progress. Les Gibson, Rustic 01, with Marcel Morneau, Rustic Victor, had put in seven air strikes in support of Hotel 21 who was now the commander of the garrison at Kompong Thma. The situation was very bad. Hotel 21 had troops along Route 6 to the southwest and Route 21 to the southeast. Sam, his radio operator, reported, “Our troops are cut into three pieces, sir. We cannot join each other, sir.” The main body of troops in the town was under constant mortar and artillery attack. Sam was beginning to lose his normally calm attitude.
“Send a message immediately to your headquarters, sir. Situation is very bad. (The Cambodian word for it is) bacal. Do you know bacal? One more word for you, sir. The end might be today, sir. My superior’s car destroyed by a rocket. He is injured and the driver is killed. Do you know what ‘Hari Kari’ is? Some soldiers are doing the same thing.”5
The fighters check in and Doug Norman was talking to Sam to pinpoint enemy locations. Hawk 03 flight was A-37s with Mk-82 bombs, rockets, and mini-guns. The plan was to use the fighters to unpin the troops along Route 21 so they could escape back to Kompong Thma. As Doug Aitken was about to begin the air strike, Sam called out four more grids and a new plan. These grids were north of the town across the river. Sam wanted them destroyed so that the friendly troops could escape to that area from Kompong Thma.
“Kompong Thma will be completely destroyed within five hours,” according to Sam. The fighters destroyed the nearest grid with their bombs, but Hotel 21 refused to evacuate his troops until all four of the grids were destroyed. Doug Aitken ordered more airpower and took the Hawk fighters south to expend their rockets and guns in support of the friendly troops on Route 6. In the process, the Hawks got hosed by at least three 12.7mm gun sites in a small village west of Route 6.
“Destroy the village, sir. There are no friendly troops there. There are many many (enemy) guns coming up from the village.” The Hawks expended all of their rockets and guns and wished Sam “good luck” as they headed for home. The A-37s were the only fighters with FM radios and thus they carried the only fighter pilots who could monitor the action and gain a real understanding of what was going on down there.
OV-10 on a low altitude rocket attack. U.S. Air Force collection.
This was obviously going to be a major air operation. Les Gibson, who was headed back to Ubon, called ahead to launch Bob Berry, Rustic 17, who was available to fly the backup aircraft. In addition, Phil Frischmuth, Rustic 55, came into the area. He had been escorting a Cambodian helicopter carrying “high officials.”6 He was monitoring the battle and could tell how busy Doug Aitken and Doug Norman were. He passed the current information through Ramrod to Blue Chip and ordered more air support.
When Bob Berry showed up, he and Doug Aitken developed a plan. Blue Chip would send the fighters to Bob on a different UHF frequency and he would brief them and turn them over to Doug on the UHF strike frequency. Doug would put them to work with no delay and no relief for the enemy between sets of fighters. The plan worked very well and the fighters destroyed the 12.7mm gun sites. Sam reported that the friendlies on Route 6 had moved back to Kompong Thma under cover of the air strikes.
Jerry McClellan, Rustic 14, checked in to relieve Doug Aitken, who was low on fuel and out of munitions. The excitement was over for Doug, but not for Sam and his commander, Hotel 21. Kompong Thma only lasted for one more day.
Ron Van Kirk, Rustic 08, with Marcel Morneau, Rustic Victor, in his backseat was there at the end. Kompong Thma had been overrun and an A-37 had been shot down earlier in the day. The pilot was recovered safely after a hard-fought SAR (search and rescue) effort north of town. The Cambodian forces were retreating north along Route 6 to Kompong Thom.
The weather was bad and getting worse. Hawk 05 flight had been scrambled from Bien Hoa. It was getting dark; it was raining and the ceiling was dropping. Ron’s mission was to destroy the store of ammunition the Cambodians had left in Kompong Thma. The NVA was already in Kompong Thma and there was intense ground fire from both small arms and at least five separate 12.7mm antiaircraft gun emplacements.
Ron and the Hawk fighters modified the normal rules slightly. They hid in the clouds except for target run-ins. One of the fighters would call, “Out of the clouds, heading ——.” Ron would pop out of the clouds, pick up the fighter, mark the target, clear him to hit it, and pop back into the clouds. The glow of the fires resulting from their attack gave them a reference point to help maintain their orbit while still in the clouds.
Hawk 06 went first with bombs to protect Hawk 05’s napalm passes. Unfortunately, Hawk 05 went through dry (no release of munitions) on two passes due to target identification problems. Hawk 06 was now out of bombs and Hawk 05’s napalm passes suddenly became very dangerous. Ron rolled in with HE rockets followed by Hawk 06 with strafe to protect Hawk 05’s napalm runs. That did the job and the ammunition cache abandoned in Kompong Thma exploded and burned brightly against the low clouds. Ron and the Hawk fighters headed for home with some satisfaction at having defeated the rotten weather and the intense enemy ground fire. In spite of that, it was still a bad day for the Cambodians at Kompong Thma.
Two Rustics, out of rockets, return to Ubon, November 1971. Doug Aitken collection.
On December 4, 1971, Stars and Stripes carried the following report.7
The decision to abandon the town of Kompong Thma, which was evacuated Thursday (December 2, 1971), was taken against the wishes of the local commander, Col. Um Savuth, who wanted to hold the town. The evacuation was carried out in an orderly fashion despite several days of heavy fighting. Um Savuth was thus able to save most of his heavy equipment and trucks. With the loss of Rumlong, Baray, and Kompong Thma, the NVA now control virtually all of Highway 6 between Skoun and Tang Krasang.
On December 3, 1971, Operation Chenla II was officially terminated. It was, by any measurement, a victory for the NVA. Newsweek magazine of December 13, 1971 reported:
The NVA offensive succeeded in (1) preventing the Lon Nol government from securing control of the record rice crop now being harvested along Route 6, and (2) protecting the communists’ supply Routes into Laos at the start of the dry season.
That was an understatement.
