RAVEN FACs: a personal view
This article is written by Kenneth R. Thompson (Capt. US Air Force, Raven 58) who has kindly donated the rights to publish his work on LaoTravels. This work was first published in Laos Handbook, by Jane Bickersteth & Joshua Eliot (1997).
Raven was the call sign used by Forward Air Controllers (FACs) in Laos. It came to designate, however, a special breed of FAC—someone who was highly motivated, aggressive, decisive, daring and exceptionally skilled and professional in his work. The mystique was heightened by the secrecy of the assignment. Pilots would leave Vietnam and seemingly disappear. This became clear when I read a personal advertisement in the Vietnam Veterans Newspaper requesting information about a Raven FAC I had known. When I called the person who placed the ad, he said that the last time he had seen the Major was at Bien Hoa. He said that he had not seen nor heard of him since. I told him that he had been ‘undercover’ in Laos.
The importance of the mission of the Raven is put in perspective by understanding first the mission of a FAC. Essentially, a FAC had three responsibilities: (1) to conduct air reconnaissance to obtain first-hand information concerning enemy locations, activity and threats; (2) to control and direct Air Force or Navy aircraft bombers or Arm artillery on enemy targets; and (3) to control, direct and coordinate air strikes with ground troops for close air support.
The importance of the first responsibility was clearly demonstrated when I precluded an attack o Tuy Hoa by a North Vietnamese battalion. As a result of my daily flights over the mountains W of Tuy Hoa, I came upon a North Vietnamese battalion digging trench lines and bunkers, preparing for an assault on Tuy Hoa. In addition, I also observed trays of rice drying in the open down the side of the mountain and was thus able to pinpoint the enemy locations in the caves and bunkers nearby. As a result of these sightings, I declared a tactical emergency. That declaration resulted in an unlimited amount of air power being diverted for my use.
The FAC is in a position to have immediate information about troop movements and direct air power or artillery very effectively on the target. He is an on-scene commander with all the responsibilities and authority of that position. The FAC has the responsibility and right to over-rule even the orders of a general officer. I exercised that authority in Vietnam shortly after I was assigned to Tuy Hoa.
Personnel had been spotted in the field by a commanding officer on a mountain top overlooking the valley. He was ready to open fire when I flew over and countermanded the order. In this case after the fact I realized that the artillery fire should have been carried out, as the people were in fact enemy. However, regardless of my lack of experience at the time, my order not to fire stopped the action of a field officer who was more experienced and of much higher rank. But, in time I gained the experience to differentiate clearly between ‘friendlies’ and the enemy. This ability was demonstrated when I directed air strikes on a ‘friendly’ outpost near Pakxong on the Bolovens Plateau. This time, when I spotted the troops, I knew they were enemy. However, after returning to Paksé, the CIA commander called me in and wanted to know why I had bombed one of his outposts. In fact, the outpost had been overrun, and after flying over the post at about 200 ft to confirm the identity of the troops, I did not hesitate to direct air strikes against it.
Whereas my error of judgment in Vietnam cost the life of one civilian who was killed following the infiltration of the town that evening by the troops I had saved from artillery fire, in Laos I saved the lives of many friendly troops. [In 1998, I had an interesting visit to Vietnam. The Viet-Cong General, whose troops I had saved, rode his bicycle 7 miles to come to our home near Luong Phuoc just to visit me. He had heard that I was in town, and wanted to visit. This is the same general who had, on numerous occasions, sent troops to the village of my wife to try to capture her. On many occasions she had to escape from her own village to keep from getting captured. We had a nice visit as he said, “The war’s over,” and we could sit and have our tea and enjoy our company. It was a very pleasant meeting. And, to give an idea of how dangerous my wife’s village was, in 1998 my daughter and I were the first American’s ever to visit our home village. Even during the war, it was too dangerous even for the American Army to enter.
Close air support was the most challenging of a FAC’s responsibilities, since he had to maintain a continuing awareness of where the enemy was and where the friendlies were. In some situations, the FAC had to also consider the ordnance being delivered by the aircraft, and the reliability of the information being provided by the ground troops. In Vietnam I had to send an F-4 out to sea to drop its ordnance since the location of the friendly troops could not be clearly determined. In this case the ordnance was a 10,000 pound bomb. It was not quite appropriate for ‘close air support’—especially when the location of the friendly troops was in doubt.
