Special Operations.Com
A Note on 158th Support
of CCN
The following was
recounted by an anonymous 158th veteran.
"Phoenix is C/158 Avn Bn (AH) of the 101st.
We were in the 3d brigade out of camp Evans. every
so often we spend a couple weeks in Quang Tri to support
1/5 Mech, ARVN rangers, etc and CCN.
The first time I went on a CCN mission, I had to sign
a paper that said I wouldn't tell what I was doing
there, or go to jail for 10 years, 10 thousand bucks,
or both.
Those missions were among my favorite. They seemed
to be the most organized of anything we'd fly. CCN
had their act together. On one mission, i was flying
with my platoon leader, Cpt (now LTG) Randy House.
One of the teams made contact, so we flew into Laos
with an inflatable doll weighted down and dressed
in fatigues complete with bandages and red dye on
the bandages. We had him on a string inside the aircraft
(Huey), and when we hovered down among some trees,
we tossed him out.. then hovered up like we were in
an emergency extraction, and flew home. the idea of
course was to deceive the enemy into thinking that
was the team's real location. I always wondered if
that kind of stuff ever worked.
Another deception was when two birds went in a Cobra-prepped
LZ with nothing but those old silhouette targets..
you know.. those popup targets for rifle range? well..
we had them upright, and as soon as we landed, we
knocked them down and flew away empty looking. meanwhile,
captain nelson took the real team into an LZ that
hadn't been prepped.
We would take the teams into Laos, then fly across
the border into Nam.. we'd wait ten minutes, and if
we heard nothing, we'd fly east back to Quang Tri.
there was one time when we were in our 10 minute orbit,
that we got a call to get them out.. they were in
contact.. so we went back, and I was the second aircraft
in for the extraction. (only two aircraft). the rest
of the team came running up, jumped in.. one of the
Asians on the team had a pretty bad hand injury..
and just as I was pulling pitch, two NVA came up with
AK's into the LZ ready to blow us away, when my door
gunner wasted them both.. exciting stuff for young
guys, but we all loved that shit.
Take care.. I hope this helped. I would like to see
Phoenix listed on your page.. Lord knows we've earned
the right."
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