Blind Bat by Fred Nyc III ’51

The following is the full chapter that was previewed in the Class of '51 May 2018 Newsletter. If you are not receiving Newsletters, make sure your information is up to date at AggieNetwork.com/Profile. If you are interested in purchasing the book, visit tx.ag/BlindBatBook.

Fred Nyc III ’51

Fred Nyc III was in “F” Air Force at A & M and was active in the Fish & Game Club and the Rio Grande Valley Club. He graduated with a degree in Wildlife Management, was commissioned and ordered to active duty in June 1951 along with most of our Class. He was accepted into flight training and began a twenty-year plus career in the Air Force. During the Vietnam War he spent 2 ½ years based in Ubon, Thailand flying in C-130A night missions along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, first as forward air controller (FAC) and later as operations and tactics officer. The operation was known as Blind Bat and involved spotting North Vietnamese traffic and calling in air strikes and also dropping flares for troops and dropping leaflets.

The following, with permission from his son, Fred Nyc IV ’77, is a chapter from the book Fred wrote about these experiences titled “Blind Bat”. In this chapter, he was able to return for several final missions after completing his tour and being assigned to Okinawa.

BLIND BAT
One More Tour

“In May of 1970, a requirement came up to have two Blind Bat aircraft set up at Cam Ranh Bay for some night FACing in South Vietnam. I was able to help Lieutenant Colonel Haley set up the project at CRB (Cam Ranh Bay). While helping with this project, an incident happened that allowed me to once again go back to Ubon to fly with Blind Bat.

An aircraft had been lost off the end of the runway at Naha (Okinawa) due to bleed air duct problems. The problem was potentially so serious that all aircraft had to be inspected over a relatively short period of time. As a consequence, we had no local training aircraft available at Naha until all of the inspections had been done. Due to my past experience at Ubon, I was able to get a five to six-day TDY (temporary duty) to fly more FAC missions at Ubon.

I arrived at Ubon and the Ops officer took time to brief me on the current situation in Laos. Most of the missions lately had been in northern Laos around the Plaines des Jarres.
I had read in the papers that a push was going on by the Pathet Lao and the North Vietnamese, but so little news of the war in Laos ever made the paper that I really hadn’t been able to keep up with what was happening.

The CIA’s man in Laos, Gen. Vang Pao, was a fearless leader of the Meo, the largest tribe of “hill” people in northern Laos. He was not afraid to go anywhere he asked his troops to go. VP, as he was called by the Americans, helped pay for his part in the war by being in the drug trade, an operation fully known by the CIA and the Laotian government.

“At this particular time,” the Ops officer said, “the Meo are under great pressure from the NVA, and a large number of strike aircraft are being diverted to the area,”
After my brief, I checked into the BOQ and went by the club for dinner and a drink. Just like old times!

I flew with Frank Somely’s crew and was able to get some instrument time. We went to the old area around Tchepone. We scouted the roads in search of trucks, but found none. Frank’s crew worked a couple of fast movers on a suspected truck park, but got no BDA (bomb damage assessment). We logged six and a half hours, and I got the landing at the end of the mission.

I flew early the next night as well. An aircraft commander wanted a night off, so I got his crew. We were tagged to go to Barrel Roll (an area of operation), and inbound we contacted Alleycat, the Command and Control for the Hmoung for the next five hours. They had TIC (troops in contact) and we were able to watch the firefight from the air. The people on the ground had an American controller, so from our perspective everything went smoothly.

The following night, we flew late. We were fragged to Barrel Roll again to flare for TIC. I flew as aircraft commander for Barnett’s crew.

We contacted Peacock and were given two call signs to work, along with sets of coordinates to go with each call sign. The first contact was Showboat, and he needed us to flare for TIC. We never got around to calling Red Tiger, the second priority flare target for the night.
When we arrived at the coordinates given to us by Peacock, we were over the mountains again, the nav said. We certainly weren’t able to tell by looking out the window. It was as dark as the inside of a boot.

We tuned in to the assigned frequency to talk with our contact on the ground, and the conversation that took place sounded like something that came out of a ”B” World War II movie. The man we were talking with certainly spoke better English than I spoke Lao, but it could best be described as pidgin English.

He said that “many bad men attack,” and that they needed flares to “shoot many bad mens.”

As we flew over the site on top of a mountain, we could see tracers going up and down, on what must have been the battlefield on the north side of the mountain.

We readjusted our flares for the terrain and dropped our first string of four flares. In the light, we could see the line of fire that told us where the line of troops was entrenched. According to our friend on the ground, there were about two companies of NVA in the attack. When he spoke to us, we could hear the sound of automatic weapons feeding into the radio. Ever now and again, the firing would slack off, only to start again in fifteen to thirty minutes. In the middle of one of our conversations, the attack was bad enough that the radioman said, “Bad men close, I go shoot.” He was off the air for about twenty minutes.

As the night wore on, it was evident that our flares were helping the men to defend their mountaintop.

I used the time to check weather back at the home field. I called Ubon Metro and asked for a forecast. They came back and predicted ground fog for themselves and Nakhon Phantom. Ubon would hold up, they reported. As things could rapidly change, and since it was about 300 miles back home, I watched the temperature and dew point with interest. When these two indicators are forecast to be within a couple of degrees of each other, ground fog can set in. even if only the slightest breeze starts to mix the air. I have seen situations in which all that was needed was for one aircraft to take off and the mix would occur to sock in the field to zero, zero zero ceiling and zero visibility, in other words, ground fog.

When it came time for us to break off the flaring and head home, I called our friend on the ground and told him that we were getting short of fuel and would have to leave shortly. He replied immediately and pleaded with me to stay until sunrise. It was evident from his tone of voice that he didn’t think that they could make it if they didn’t have light to defend themselves.

I got the nav and engineer to go over the charts to see how long we could stay if we shut an engine and hung on up there on three engines. After careful calculations, they announced that we could stay until dawn and still have a reserve when we arrived back at Ubon.

I called our man on the ground and told him that we would stay. He sounded very grateful.

We shut down an inboard engine and flew our flare orbits at 140 knots. I stayed in close contact with Ubon Metro on channel 13, and they continued to report no change back at Ubon.

When the Big Flare in the East finally came up, we bade the Hmoung a farewell and headed home. We cranked up the fourth engine, went back to normal operation, and climbed to en route altitude.

As we approached the Mekong headed south, Ubon went zero, zero. In order to make a GCA (radar ground controlled) approach into a field, we had to have at least a100-foot ceiling and one-fourth mile of visibility. Even this low a ceiling and visibility equates to only about seven seconds from the time you break out from under the ceiling, see the runway, and touch down. Not exactly an eternity.

Within minutes, Metro announced that Nakhon Phanom had gone down also. That was not surprising, as NKP was on the Mekong River with all of its added moisture.

When we were within range of Ubon Metro, I called and asked for their forecast. “No sweat, GI.” they said. I then asked to speak directly to the forecaster, and he said the same thing.

Just before I left altitude, I called and they reaffirmed once again that everything was fine. I told them that I didn’t want to have to make another climbout and use more of my precious fuel to get back to altitude.

When the TACAN read thirty-five miles out from Ubon, I called for the Before Landing Pattern Checklist and pulled back the power. We started our descent out of 22,000 feet and were still VFR. We contacted Ubon approach control for landing. They gave us a heading and all of the necessary info to get us an instrument approach to the field. We were passing 4,000 feet when approach control calmly announced that they had just gone to zero, zero.

I declared an emergency immediately and asked them for the nearest alternate airfield. I told the engineer to get out his charts for the best altitude and airspeed when we found out where we were going and how far it was.

Approach control came back up on frequency and said that Khorat was the nearest field above minimums, and it was reporting CAVU (ceiling and visibility unlimited). Nav heard, and gave us a heading and approximate distance. The engineer checked his charts with the distance information and told me that the best altitude was 8.500 feet at 155 knots indicated.

We were on heading by this time, and I climbed to the most fuel conservative altitude and the most efficient airspeed. I asked the navigator to calculate our fuel remaining. He very carefully did his analysis and said that we could barely make it if, and it was a big if, the fuel gauges were correct. Fuel gauges are notoriously inaccurate at the bottom of their range. It was 150 nautical miles (170 statute) to Khorat. His prognosis was not a confidence builder.

While we still had time, I told each crew member to put on his parachute and be prepared to jump if the gauges were incorrect. We all went over what we would do—just in case. The rest of the crew, in most circumstances, could go out the rear doors. In case of a real crunch, the pilot and co-pilot must go out the main entrance door. This means that someone else must jettison the door. The pilot and copilot would probably have to jump or dive from the flight deck, through the door, and under the inboard prop.

I decided on a high, power-off approach. I was good at this as I had practiced it many times on the short strips in Vietnam. One thing to our advantage was that the runway was perfectly lined up with our inbound heading.

I called Khorat tower, declared an emergency, gave them our distance and ETA (estimated time of arrival), and told them that we would make a steep, straight-in-approach.

The whole crew was in the cockpit and everyone was straining to be the first one to see the runway through the morning haze. The copilot called runway in sight, and we maintained our altitude.

When we were several miles out, we went through the checklist and I pulled the power back and lowered the nose for a power-off approach. One of the nice things about the C-130 was that you could easily modify airspeed, approach angle, and altitude by changing the flap setting. I had, in non-emergency situations, started an approach fifteen miles out and never touched the power until we were on the ground and I went into reverse.

The fuel level low lights were set to come on when a tank had 500 pounds of fuel remaining in it. They had all been on for too long already.

I reminded the copilot to be ready to feather any engine that flamed out due to fuel starvation. At 500 feet with gear down and approach flaps, I called for final flaps.

“Number 4 engine flameout,” said the engineer.

“Feather Number 4, Copilot,” I announced. He calmly did so.

We had made it, I thought.

In the roundout, the engineer said, “Number 2 engine flameout.”

“Feather Number 2. Copilot,” He did.

In seconds we were finally on the ground. I didn’t reverse because I wanted to be able to get as far down the runway as possible before I slowed down. No use to block the runway if it wasn’t necessary. Finally, I slowed down enough with brakes to make the turn off, and I headed toward the ramp. We had all of the firetrucks following us, and fortunately there were none blocking our way to the ramp.

The copilot went to ground control frequency and had just contacted them when the engineer announced, “Number 1 engine flameout.”

The copilot feathered it. We found an empty space on the ramp, ignored the Follow-Me, and stopped. We shut down the last engine by using the regular checklist sequence.
Suddenly, it was breakfast time. We told transient alert that we would be back to fill it up after we had eaten. They pointed us to a place that we could eat as a crew.

It had been quite a night.

I flew two more missions before returning to Naha. On both missions, we flared for TIC near Attopeu and Saravane both in the panhandle of Laos.
This was my last association with Blind Bat. It had been exciting and rewarding. The only other time that I flew out of Ubon was on another Frantic Goat leaflet mission.”
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Fred retired from the Air Force in 1972 as a major with the Distinguished Flying Cross and six Air Medals plus a MA in Public Administration from George Washington University. He then began his second career in hospital administration in Smithville and Eglin. He and his wife, Betty (deceased), raised four children, Billie, Edgar, Fred IV ’77 and Lee Ann, and 12 grandchildren and 10 great grandchildren.
Fred passed away on December 29, 2016.