The US Air Force bravely carried out a vital mission in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. Today, we present a brief overview of the USAF Search and Rescue Task Force, whose dedication and resolve saved countless lives. Pilots and aircrews faced the ominous threat of enemy fire, crippling their aircraft and forcing them to the earth below. As they awaited the Search and Rescue Task Force, their hope flickered.

John Larrison, Dale Stoval, and Dave Preston, esteemed task force members, exemplified courage and dedication for such dangerous missions. They flew through the skies, ignoring danger, to rescue their fellow warriors from enemy territory. The USAF Search and Rescue Task Force braved darkness and battle storms to complete daring missions. They navigated dense jungles and treacherous terrain with an indomitable spirit.

Pilots expertly maneuvered helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft to the limit. Pararescuemen, like angels, descended into the maelstrom to rescue the stranded and wounded, their unwavering determination providing hope in the darkest of times. These brave men embodied the highest Air Force ideals of integrity, service, and excellence. They comforted the distressed and ensured no comrade was left behind through their unwavering commitment to the mission.

A beacon of hope in wartime, the USAF Search and Rescue Task Force was a formidable force. Their military contributions were indelible. Let us remember these heroes today. Let their stories inspire us to never give up in the face of adversity and to remember that the human spirit triumphs in the toughest battles.

Video Transcribe – “Dave. Preston, are you here? Yeah. Come on up and join us on the stage. Dave, if you would. All right, This is John Harrison. And here's your slides right here.

John. Basically, this is going to be a very quick review of the airplanes that we used on SAR and John's. We have tons of time. We've got our whole 5 minutes, so go for John quicker. Now you can you can do it right here. Okay, Can you hear me? Okay, I'll try.

Get us back on schedule. I got a short presentation to start with. I was there very early. Daryl gave you a great overview of the entire operation once we got our shit together, so to speak, in in the seventies. But back in 65, I got there. We were under cover story. We were not following combat. We were training pilots, which gets into the history and I lead up to the first combat.

SR And then I'll get off here.

But when I have this picture, when I got shot there, everything was classified. I didn't even know what airplane was going to fly. So when I left the Pilot Training command, that's what my presentation when I left. And it was not to do far off. Really. Okay, now I can work this thing. You see this one? Yep. Sorry.

Okay. I will spend any time on this because it's been pretty well covered, but my 200 plus missions were mainly in South Vietnam. You heard about the Ho Chi Minh Trail. They were homeless stuff down into South Vietnam to supply their counterinsurgency forces. We didn't get too much in to the trail, but we were fighting the ground forces and most of our sorties were supporting Vietnamese ground forces.

And then later some of our U.S. forces once they came in. So we did a lot of close air support. When we lost a pilot, when we got a pilot down, we generally had an army helicopter nearby somewhere to pick him up. So we didn't have this Operation Desert Daro talk about set up at that time, which all lead up to and he get off.

So I'm not going to spend any time on that. But he did mention the Geneva Accords. When I give my presentation, the most common question I get is why were we in debt now and why were you flying at old Airplane? It was a Korean War vintage airline. It was a first line Navy fighter in the Korean War.

The Geneva Conventions split the country up. I will get to that. Daryl covered that, but buried in that was nobody will introduce modern weapons into Vietnam. And we tried our best. The U.S. tried our best to live up to that going to court. And there were several clandestine missions in the early and mid sixties, fifties and sixties with different aircraft, and I could be 26.

I still and the D 28 and they were getting old and beat up

and they wanted something better. So they looked around. The Navy was phasing out their ailerons, especially their E models, which was a two seater, and somebody put two and two together and said, Hey, we can put the A-1 in there and tell them they're training pilots.

And that's the way I went to Vietnam in December of 1964. The first six months there, I flew a hell of a lot of combat, do very little pilot training. We finally got rid of that. Senator Hurlburt But I had to carry a Vietnamese airman into. Right, See who spoke no English, I spoke no Vietnamese. It was nothing there but a body in case I crash the headline with, say, poor old John Best to but training the Vietnamese pilot.

So the government, I think all you people here know the government is not above line to hear but we did that through mid 65 and this comes up to the to the beginning of the SA stuff when mid 75 when the US said, hey, they're not playing by the game so we're not going to play a game. So we threw all that bullshit out and the other one came into Bennelong.

That's where I was operating out of Bennelong. The foreigners came in and we started hitting up north and it was mid 65. They decided we're going to hit the same sites around Hanoi. We had YouTube wine and Barbie drones, watch them build the damn things, but our government sat there and watch. They got it done. I think they even gave a timer zero in their side to take a few practice shot.

Then they decide they're going to strike and they struck and they lost airplanes, jets and 105 and everything else. And in those days there was a frag order put out for us to send four airplanes to your door. I was scheduled for flight leave and I left the word to you, Dawn. It was a top secret mission. They didn't tell us what we were going for, anything else.

And we got there. We found out they had struck the SAM site. They still had some pilots down. It was later that day. They didn't want to send us in. We were supposed to hover 30 miles west of Hanoi for low altitude support for the helicopter's pick up down pilots. They said until we get radio contact, we're going to say the answer.

We're going to put you on script alert. While I was on board, a Navy A-4 went down about 150 miles north of the DMZ. They scrambled, was off. We went out, joined up. There was a question here about the the Pete Rose, age 43, asked what were they? Had it help? And by the way, one of the words you hear, if you hear naked fanning guys have a habit of renaming everything NPP is commonly called naked fan.

But anyway, we got there with the AK 43, gave a minimal ground support. We were told not to be here. The areas to keep anybody from getting in and shooting at the helicopter. We got him out in back to back home to Utah and we kept hearing all this talk about the Pedro, the helicopter to bring the downed Navy pilot back to bed.

What do you do? Because McNamara was there on a trip. Beautiful photo op. Well, the paid role, those are the you know, Peter was very short legs. He said, I can't make you you don't want to. And that's why a young captain not knowing what was going on, I finally broke in and said, What? Just make it funny you're talking about They told me about day camp and all.

And I said, Well, I've got a parachute and helmet in my right seat that we used for the crew chief when we went over there also had pick him up what kind of runway they got. All they had was PSP 3000 feet. We could land there and we did. So I landed first he it in baby also. So we put the pile up, took him back to your door and landed staff cars all the place they grabbed him, took him off.

I never met he never I don't even know what his name was. I got a picture in my story which I'll put on YouTube on his date, and they jerked us off to intelligence. And I still remember sitting across the table from three or four colonels, and they look very seriously. I also said, Tell us about this airplane you're flying.

They had no idea what anyone was. We told them all it would carry up to a nuke. The Navy actually carried nukes on anyone, believe it, or not, it was rocket assisted move. But anyway, that was the beginning of the what you see or hear over the in a few years. Well, we were back only two weeks and we started to limit aircraft to you don't.

And within two months they moved the whole ships or circled over there the first move to play coup. And then they both moved to Utah and eventually moved to Cape. And what you heard happened, it built up and we learned we made mistakes, but guys learned it. So the same thing you're going to hear from the guys who did those SA's combat mission.

And I was allowed to be that little piece of it. But I wanted to give you the history on how it all got started. And I, I don't want many questions, but I'll try one or two before gold bar gold. It gets me any, any question quicky. You know, my first assignment was in Keep the Lesson to come from Fort Worth in Utah because I ended up this is what I was there that first night in KP and my I don't remember, but I'll bet it was at least 100 miles from them.

From Utah. Yeah, but he had been up and flown to pick up and back and they were the age where you, as you well know, was built for a local area search in that range there, a rival in KP and this young man. And we got to take in shared room with a man. Hey, I was a young captain in.

I didn't know what the hell I was doing. The key word was press on. And the point is, is I was there in a met. Let's get ready. I bring this up because that night he left to go on a mission and never came back. And you got to be around and I at the hospital should all have my laptop there I got the whole roster of already one guys on there I can maybe.

Well this was this was a jolly Hughes was a jolly good jolly. Yeah. He was due flying. You can't help you there. No, he was behind the jolly combined. Oh. Can you feel any other questions. You're not going. You got it.

with me. Ask that question about the Jolly. Were you there last night? Oh, okay. You were here last night. Most of the people I think were here last I think of a few people that work here. But this was they had the two serious threes and KP at that time, one of them was the camera people and the other was the flight.

Okay, there was an f1052 and a sandy down in North Vietnam. They sent this flier up there and they had a fuel tank. In the back was ach3. It got on fire. Everybody bailed out. I told everybody that was here last night. The flight engineer jumped out. He still had his gunners built on and he was spinning underneath it.

The two pilots bailed out the window and PJ went off the back row and he was nobody was in it, including him. He finally dropped down. They were all P.O.W.s except him. He was picked up by a Navy S. S three. But the next day we had another Sandy go down and we had as3 went down and a guy named Barry Commode.

Was it in camp at that time took a broken bird with 15 red Xs on. It means you can't fly the aircraft like Bill Warren, who was his flight engineer wouldn't fly. Is Bill Warren this a maintenance said I go fly with you. It had all a few instruments like the instrument panel and no radios, no navigation. The guys on the ground had no no SAR radios.

We had no ping guns. They had no flares. So they were never able to talk to anybody that flew over the guy that the flight engineer bailed out that evening. Maybe a stray came up there. He uses pen gun, he uses zippo lighter. The signal they got him Anyway, very calm. Went with the canned bird and go Warren signed everything off as pending parts, including an engine change that was required and he went up there for three days.

He got two of the S, another S three got shot down. He got two of those four guys out. And then we had another one. So we had to a once a105 for Jolly Green crew members that were shot down. And after the third day they stopped the SAR. So that was them. And then about a month later they got the H.H. three.

Is that was, you know, a real disaster anyway, but most of the folks were here last night. You heard me talk about it. One of the things I didn't talk about, if you're in this business and you were in SA, I remember my my whole thing was I was going to come over there because I had I was actually that never went to the schoolhouse.

I was trained at Patrick Air Force Base because we are in the H three as part of the support system for the Apollos, then the H 53 came and they brought pilots in and this came out of in KP and oh, Dawn. And so they were training us. Well, what was normal was way different to anybody else. Got trained because all we did, they showed us all the combat stuff and they didn't really want us to upgrade it over four of us.

And so we would go out with the water. If you get and drop tanks. We had about 6 hours fuel on board and there would be two of us on board and normally a sorties one and three for training. We would fly to point six, but they don't want to put 1.3 in the books. So I had twice as many hours of flying years 53 before I got over there.

So I really had it. It's comfortable, but my goal was to get one pickup, okay? And I said, okay, that's it. So I my life after the first SA, I was actually it just became an aircraft, a matter of theater aircraft Commander, We were flying back and all we can go shot down so we got him under fire, had my eyes watered and came back and decided I didn't know where every gun was.

My house and I had a map on the intel folks. Every time we got alerted, they gave me my map was all we call Charmed. Got everything on it. But when I came back, I realized and I think the jolly Green pilot's, Hey, one pilot's realized you're in. Somebody out of there. We had a lifelong impact on men and their families, and that was nearly narcotic because after I did that the first time, I said, I don't want to do this because of the personal and professional feeling was overwhelming.

Now, what you guys are sitting out there. Bill, stand up, please. We're going to brief the Ocean zero two mission this afternoon. And the first day we went up. Ron Where are you? Ron Making that go? So. Ron Smith We're going to talk about that guy and I talked about him last night. When we came back, I had the squadron around with John Green, squadron commander, and I told the deal that I did better.

The seat would have been empty. Neil Gillespie came up because all these copilots on the Golden next, a B-52 guy, he had the whole map, the route, the guns, everything on it. Because I'm thinking, now I've got to get this. I'm all put together tonight here my copilot. Later on, it was a bottom flight of Bob Lofton zero five, the last piece, the last weasel, last one of five shot down at the town Law Bridge.

He wasn't bombing. Perhaps he was escorting B-52s that night, got shot down, and they landed right right on the ridgeline of the town. What bridge? And we had the first really successful A-7 Sharp, of course, sort of all the Sandy's. And it what was the remember the A7 pilot's name but Buddy Clark he got the Air Force Cross from this mission and they had a 20 mile run in He auto rotated through the clouds because Clark went through and said hey, we got a 400 foot ceiling guard who dive straight down.

And Melanie had already tried this once down here, got crash. We went down through the crowds and came up on we came up in different down valleys. We were trying to find each other. You went by a road intersection. They shot holes in him shooting at him. We popped out since that wasn't a good idea. But anyway, he goes down.

If they fall over, they had about a 20 mile run in danger. They were. And of course they were looping 400 feet and almost out of midair going around a piece of cars. You get in a hover and I'm listening and I hear ground fire, 1:00, ground fire, 1:00, Then I hear gunfire, 11:00, round fire, 11:00. There was a 51 cal for 200 yards, huh?

Maybe that car, maybe that for fire, that it must be on both sides. And and Clark killed that from 400 feet with a bomber. Later he got shot, lost his electronics, got to RTP, and he came out and that was the last successful SA for a105 crew through got what those guys so he but he was my copilot the second day the Russian mission we're going to brief this afternoon but the whole thing about the rescue mission guys we had the impact on our fellow comrades from their lives and their families and it was terrifically motivational.

You know, everybody else had great missions, but I think we all saw Faust's and his arms and we got to see 133 times. I had to one throw his gun in. And and the first day of oyster, we were out of gas. And my wingman had a little fuel like this coming over the 10,000 foot mountains of the pass there between Black and Red River.

And I called the king. I says, King, I don't think we have enough fuel to get of North Vietnam. He says, Joy, I've been listening to the radio calls and I'm already in North Vietnam. And we'll we'll talk about that this afternoon. So those guys were critical to us, won the war one time. We had a mission trying to pick up guys at night and went to North Vietnam, all the way up to China's buffer zone.

They took it almost in the Haiphong Harbor. They were feelings. And then I had a second time when they came up, we got jumped by. Next, we're going to talk about that when you one shot of this and I thought I was going to lose those two to AC one, 30th to next. But anyway, we're going to have some nice stories this afternoon.

More stories and daily. We got the participants here. We won't get to the stories if we don't move on over there. Toby saw AC 130. We just need a quick review, gentlemen. This so we can get get on to the stories. Thank you. I don't want to stand too close to this guy, you know, avoiding crutches. Also loading party suits.

I took mine out and tried to get it on, and maybe one leg it was able to get in. And I think as we tried to get her whole flight to try and squeeze myself into it, and I had to take scissors to it to get it off. So no party suits. In lieu of party suits, this vest I'm wearing will have to suffice.

From 20 years ago when I rode to the wall in 2003, which greatest experiences of my life aside from combat SA in Southeast Asia over a thousand miles opposed to of rest, 2 seconds, freezing rain, semis traveling in my place from Kansas City to DC. And every day there were accidents and I run out of time to get that crutch.

But anyway, there were many times on this trip that I thought I survived more or I'm going to die of this motorcycle ride because none of these guys obviously had formation training and that was very obvious. But anyway, back to the subject to a little bit. I first met Dale Stovall and Randy Dean when they came down to Camron Bay on an exchange mission to see what the hell King did to mess things up like that.

That wasn't it. But we we took him on a tour and showed him how we train, because you don't just create sorrows to go out and training. So there's a training process of about three months to take a qualified aircraft commander and get him up to combat systems. And let me talk a little bit about and see it stands for Airborne Mission Commander.

And I always felt a little bit uncomfortable with that word because in my mind, it should have been an airborne mission for him because command or something that's a little overused and we were a bunch of 26, 27 year old captains trying to organize a rescue and talking to what I thought at the time with these sandwiches, I thought they were all mellow lieutenant colonels, senior majors, maybe an occasional captain.

And when I first arrived on a mission called Gunfire Raid, two of a guy named Roger Youngblood was running the SA and evidently he was one of the best ones because I thought God was out there talking to the survivors and the SA was successful not doing any part from what I was doing, but I had a good vantage point of that and a lot of other rescues I came here of to talk about HD One things and I'll try to make this quick and I need a cheap seat.

By the way, this is my third. It's got a quick and dirty navigational chart and somebody had a question, I believe if I heard correctly, what's the distance between Utah and in KP? And according to my third religion, situated anyway it worked out to be about and 30 years for the dollars sorry that very short amount and we didn't feel lonely because all my men were Laotian border.

All right. Anyway, this this map was basically a quick guide for us in our orbit positions or scramble launch points to head for an area where the star was. You want to be taken close by closer. You're like it should be around. Might in your mouth. It sounded like I was coming all the way up the way there, but anyway, I got to go back to my trade seizure.

Okay. The Lockheed C-130 was a multitasking airplane derived from the original C-130 body model and the original AC 138 for the Coast Guard. The Air Force, in turn modified them further when they took delivery and included earlier. We keep refueling capabilities and also the full food recovery system, which we practiced on but never really used it. My loud enough now.

Yeah. Okay. Get to cartel. So the functions of the eight C-130 were long range search and rescue. Life raft and survival kit delivery is a rescue deployment for humanitarian reasons or in combat for We didn't use them in combat. They were only diagrams because we didn't have a many guns.

And they want to limit it because I guess was for all our Dunkirk escorts. Now support for aircraft operations, border crossings, national support, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab Star or Falcon. Surface to air recovery, air air to air satellite package recovery and in my case, worldwide joined me for aviation support where we took three brand new H 50 threes across from Eglin as far as Yokota Airburst.

And they in turn went on down to the line to be delivered to the 37th Air Rescue Squadron in March, April of 1971 before my arrival in Southeast Asia. So the King birds in combat, we didn't do all those things. Basically all we did were provide a command post and air to air refueling for the dog reasons. Simple, but I'll tell you, 51 years later, I don't remember a lot of stuff that we did, and Darryl covered a lot of it.

It became a very complex operation, a lot of radio communications, and that may be one reason why I can't hear it anymore. But it was an interesting mission and we had a lot of super success. But more than anything, I want to talk about my reason for being here and and I don't really consider myself as belonging on the stage or in the present.

These people, many in this room who have been my heroes ever since my first contact with them on star missions and I go back to 52 years ago anyway, I'm finally getting a chance to meet and thank some of those men behind the voices in my memory of heroes and courageous men. Those men. I was in such a unique position to observe and hear of radio transmissions so many years ago.

I'm here to pay tribute to the bravest men I've ever known, or more correctly known only through their voices. Until this weekend, Joy rings. A woman, Sandy Koufax, including the Ravens and the unsung men of Air America. Those on such missions as can zero 1007 four Gunfighter 829031 Alpha and Bravo we'll talk about this afternoon spoke to where I was lucky enough to find 15 survivors dropped in my lap and I had to do some extra work to get there.

Stovall started off in his career properly by a rescue in aid of those survivors on that mission more than any other die, I think one, two, three. And the mother had one or two in an Air America two. So and that was an all night mission from about 1030 at night until 1030 the next morning. We had them all picked up, I think at age me about 15 years.

But it was a mission without much hostility. But there was a lot of drama because we didn't know what was eventually going to happen. When you have 15 guys in bad guy territory. So we lucked out. We got them all allocated. We had pretty well coordinated rescue plans put to the dog or used to come in two teams and each assigned different survivors.

Well, that all went to hell because once the dollars came in Survivor cars were popping up everywhere and in turn the dogs would pick them up. They all ended up with aid and the mission later became referred to as the Great Easter Egg Hunt of 1972. So I'm fortunate to be in a company, at least one of those people out there.

 

I know there were some Saudis to and all I want to say in closing is that I've had a lot of time to reflect on what I witnessed and think about what I might tell any of those heroic individuals if I ever were fortunate enough to meet them. My time to do so has now come, and I'm here to say Bravo and Sierra Hotel to any of them with this audience.

Thanks for being here and a special thank you to those who are there are so many years ago. Thank you.