I served on the same team with Sammy Hernandez in Thailand. He never spoke of the operations at that time. When the HALO/SCUBA detachment split into two separate detachments he went to the HALO team along with Bill "Bata Boot" Bennett.
To add a bit of a fly to the ointment, SOG considered the operations as successful. This was because they inserted and extraxted the teams successfully. However they did not accomplish their mission on either aperation. Their entire time on the ground was occupied with re-assambly and rescue/extraction. In that respect I feel they failed.
Gol Secor pushed real hard for HALO resupply drops when I was in Special Projects, in 1968. Our "timers" were time pencils which would ignite and burn through 550 cord, releasing a pilot chute. I have a picture of a HANO drop if anyone is interested. This was a test using a 5 sec fuse.
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