The rest of Jerry Hogan's story of George and the Son Tay Raid. George is the guy on the right in the pic with the red-white-blue ribbon around his neck.
Richard's $.02
Here’s what George has to say. “We got on the helicopters still hoping they would not cancel the mission at the last minute. The only really scary thing that happened for the next three and a half hours was when we had to refuel our helicopter. To do this, the pilot had to move out of the “drafting “position we were in on the C-130 wing. We refueled and then the task was to get back into position in the middle of darkness with no lights. If we could not do this, the mission was over. Our pilots were the best and we got right back in position and kept going for Son Tay.
As we approached the prison we were coming down a valley at low level. The C-130’s were dropping flares and napalm bombs but we could see no organized resistance. We did see, however, a truck convoy moving with its lights on headed right down the same road the camp was on. Later we found out it was a truck driving school teaching Vietnamese soldiers how to drive. Funny after it was over, but we thought we were in big trouble.
We headed for the camp and our Security Platoon helicopter carrying Colonel Simmons headed for their area. Unfortunately there was some confusion and the pilot landed at another adjacent group of buildings that looked like the prison camp. As in most battles, everything does not go according to plan. Now the Security Platoon was in the wrong place. But also like many battles, a seeming mistake turned into a big advantage because the compound where the platoon landed was a complex housing a ‘western military group.’ These were big tough looking soldiers that were an organized military force. Over 100 of them were quickly killed or wounded by the Raiders preventing any reinforcements to the prison camp cadre force.
Our helicopter headed for the middle of the prison compound. The plan was to sorta drop the helicopter in making a hard landing because of space limitations. I was in the door with one of my attack team members below me on the floor. The plan was for him to go out the door first and take up his shooting position to cover me as I raced to the front guard tower to throw a grenade in and kill the guards. But when the helicopter was landing it hit a standing pole that we did not know was there. When it did that, the bird torqued to one side and actually threw me out the door. I hit the ground running and inadvertently became the first man on the ground in the Son Tay prison camp raid.
My team and I moved to the front of the camp and destroyed the guard tower and killed about 8 enemy soldiers. We went into the solitary confinement cells but no POW’s were there. By this time the other teams had gone into the other cells and they too found them empty. We had missed the prisoners by 4 months as they had all been moved to another camp in July.
At about the ten minute mark after hitting the ground, we started to leave the camp. Since our helicopter was destroyed in the camp compound, my team left on one of the other CH-53 helicopters. The ride back was the scariest thing I have ever experienced. We had 26 SAM missiles fired at us in North Vietnam. Every anti-aircraft gun in that part of the country seemed to be firing at us. I looked ahead of the helicopter and all I could see was a solid sheet of missiles and tracer rounds in front of us. I don’t know how we got through it without being shot down.
We got back to Thailand along with the rest of the Raider force. We experienced no losses. As you would expect, we were really disappointed and depressed that we could not free any POW’s. We thought we had blown it and had accomplished nothing.”
But as history shows, they were really wrong. As a result of the raid, the North Vietnamese changed their entire approach to our POW’s. Prior to the raid, many scattered small POW camps were in operation. Prisoners were kept isolated from each other and many had not talked with an American for several years. Immediately after the raid, however, because of the fear of another raid, the Vietnamese closed down all of the smaller camps and moved the prisoners in to the Hanoi Hilton prison complex in Hanoi for better security. But for the POW’s, it got them back into a more supportive environment where they were now placed in multi-man cells where they could communicate and help care for each other. It also demonstrated to both our POW’s and the Vietnamese that we were determined to get our POW’s back and would not be content with leaving them in prison cells abandoned and lacking hope.
But as George went on to say, “I was depressed for about three years. We always wondered what could have been done differently to actually pull POW’s out of their camps. Then Ross Perot stepped in and helped heal all of our wounds. He invited, at his expense, all of the Raiders and their families and all of the POW’s who were supposed to be in Son Tay when we conducted the raid, along with their families, to meet in San Francisco and for three days we were treated to the best of that city. We got to meet and talk with all of the POW’s we were trying to free and they got to meet and talk with all of us who went in after them. Thanks to Mr. Perot, we were finally able to put closure on the Son Tay raid.”
Lt Petrie went on to finish 22 years in the service retiring in 1980 in the Dallas area where he went to work for Ross Perot. He later formed his own securities and investigation company in that area. He is now retired and living in Greenville, Texas.