Some folks say I don’t talk much about my adventures in Southeast Asia. Other say I’m waaaay too verbose on the subject. Seems it hinges on how many adult beverages I’ve had. A fifty-year NDA in 1972 would hush your mouth if you didn’t cotton to an extended staycation at the Fort Leavenworth Graybar hotel for 10 to 20.

N199X

If any of you have looked at what remained of that PC-6 Porter (above)  in my “About the Author” widget, you’d get a bang out of the pre-and post- history of the crash. Perchance, the pre-history…

Captain Jack C. Smith, if for one minute you believed that was his real name, was stationed up at T-11 in northwest Thailand right on the westerly most boundary of Laos. So was I. It appears on maps as Changwat Chiang Mai but fifty years ago it was a tiny burg hopping with all manner of clandestine, Thai and Lao activity. Doi Suthep mountain, to the west of the walled downtown proper, reared up above the town and the King’s summer palace was near the top with the big Wat Doi Suthep temple. It was like a natural antenna mast sticking up. We had all kinds of spook shows afoot scattered on the easterly side of the mountain facing towards Hanoi. Detachment 415, USAF HQ. Command was running Channel 9 TACAN pointed right at downtown Hanoi so errant bombers could “ride it in” on overcast days.

Downtown conveniently had a US Consulate with our own Aerial Port Post Office (APO Seattle 96272). In addition, the US Information Agency had an office around the corner. So did the US Agency for International Development. We called it Usaid as a two-syllable word. They had a ripsnorting busy schedule supplying pigs and M 1 carbines to the Meo Tribesmen right over the border. The Army, in order to keep us in touch with the outside world, had a MRC 98 dual dish Tropospheric shot down to Bangkok via Phitsanolok.

Add to that Detachment B, 7th Radio Relay Field station which had more antennas that a mobile home trailer park,  was about 40 klics out in the wilderness and looked like they’d sprayed more Agent orange there than on the Trail. The place was absolutely nuked-not so much as anything green anywhere. There were also about 20 interlocking machinegun bunkers around the perimeter.

Air America also had a presence there or I wouldn’t be talking about this. Jack Smith had quite the reputation as a dude that could really pack Bourbon away. Flying the next day, even though the standard stricture about not flying within 12 hours of drinking, wasn’t universally obeyed- especially in a backwater operating location nobody could find on a map. Well, unless you had the old French pre-WWII maps.

Jack’s nickname was Jesus F****ing Christ Smith or simply JFC. He was a real air cowboy and often over-estimated the aerial capabilities of his Porter PC- 6. They’re not very forgiving if you screw up. The FAA had forbidden their operation in the lower 48 continental US. So, on the morning of April 20, 1971, I had the misfortune of flying with him and another individual name Captain Clutter to lay about a mile and a quarter of RG 58 antenna cable right over the jungle canopy from the vicinity of Detachment 415 out to their antenna farm. Seems one of the old cables had gone tits up and they needed Channel 9 back on line pronto.

I was sort of preflighting the aircraft at 0745 when Jack poured himself out of his Land Rover. We had already refueled and were pretty much waiting for His Highness. The mission was about 15 minutes away straight off and to the left of the runway. JFC still reeked of Jack Daniels but no one would dare to question if the Pilot In Charge (PIC) was mission capable. Oh Hell no. I just walked over and grabbed the fire extinguisher and waited to pull chocks after he got the engine warmed up. I’d already had a Buddhist monk bless the aircraft for 5 baht just to be safe. That was standard operating procedure any time JFC was the PIC..

We were going to pay the cable out the bottom bay of the Porter and do a shallow 360° circle away from the side of the mountain every time I ran close to the end of each 1/4-mile cable reel. The crew chief and I had them strung up sideways on a steel bar. At least that was the game plan.

At the end of the third reel, Captain Jack turned to port into the side of the mountain instead of starboard to the right away from the mountain. The Porter predictably lost speed and began to fall off on the left wing steeply.  That was JFC’s first “Oh shit!” the second one was right after the A/C stalled and he dumped the nose lower and firewalled the throttle to get out of the stall. We never pulled out of the stall because we ran out of the one commodity we desperately needed and didn’t have-altitude.

In addition, he’d had about 12 degrees of flap hanging out, too because we were cruising about 65-70 knots so I would have plenty of time to change reels. The Porter held true to its reputation of being ornery. We went from 100 kts to 0 in about ten feet in what could only be referred to as an “arborous setting” of small deciduous trees.

And the post-history…

I started seeing a single image again about a minute  later (according to my trusty Seiko™) ten feet to the right of what remained of N199X.  Jack’s centrifugal force seatbelt hadn’t caught and he’d kissed the windshield and was out cold. Captain Clutter crawled out on his hands and knees covered in his own puke. It was obvious his bladder had cut loose, too because his khakis were soaking wet.  I reckon I might of pissed my drawers if I’d been up in front looking out that canopy, too. It all happened so fast, I didn’t get a chance to piss in mine. I personally think it would have been nicer if JFC had shouted “hold on” or “This is going to be a rough landing.” I shook off the fog, lit a Marb Red and went in and cut Jack out of his seatbelt and dragged him and my Car 15 away from the area formerly known as the cockpit. By now the aircraft was on fire. A cigarette wasn’t going to change things at that point.

Clutter and I got Jack up and moving and made our way west to the road that ascended to the mountain palace and finally flagged down a baht bus going down. We passed the Thai Provincial Police racing up the mountain and told them where it was. None of us spoke Thai fluently much beyond “Which way to the best whorehouse?” so you can just imagine how long that took. They wanted us to go back up and lead them to the crash site but Jack had a bodacious head gash above his eye and we all know how they bleed uncontrollably. Besides, all you had to do was follow the smoke. Clutter’s eyeballs were bugged out like a hyperthyroid dude and he was stuttering pretty badly. My back was killing me and I felt like I was about 2 inches shorter. Turns out I was only off by 1 ½ inches.

So, as we all know, when you screw up, blame it on the aircraft. The Jackster got a month’s leave in Bangkok with his pregnant wife.  They probably gave him a raise, too. I got morphine for my back and a PT chit for a week. Captain Clutter got a dry pair of trousers and three blue Valium 10s to bring his diastolic down below 150. Actually, that’s pure conjecture. I never set eyes on “Captain” Clutter again after we got to McCormick Hospital. By then I had the Mother of all headaches brewing that lasted for about 6 months.

Considering I had the pleasure of flying during my years there with Captain Ben Franklin, Captain Steve Canyon and other equally famous folks, I wasn’t surprised to see JFC show back up a month later with his head wound scabbed over and ready for more bourbon/aerial adventures. They even tied a bright red ribbon around his slightly used replacement Porter. Meet the Jackster. That ol’ boy sure loved polyester. You can still see the scab on his forehead above his left eye here.

I found his picture on the Air America Facebook Page about a year or two ago. I remember the new bird showing up in the revetment area that summer but never realized they’d held a ceremony to present it to him. I sometimes wonder how many aircraft he went through during his time there.

Anyway, April 20, 1971, was the day my number of takeoffs became unequal to my number of landings. I always associate it with Easter which was a scant nine days earlier. As we boldly plowed into the jungle, I wondered if I was going to get to rise from the dead, too. This is one of the prime reasons I don’t worry about dying in an aircraft accident. I have better odds of winning the Powerball Lotto than being in two aerial misadventures. But then, being in an aircraft crash has to be the ultimate “Come to Jesus” meeting any of you will probably ever experience.

Happy Easter. And that’s all I’m gonna say about that.

P.S. Not sure where our commenter Will M. gets his spelling of Chieng Mai. We used the old French maps from WW II and they all show it as Chiang Mai.