Commando Lava

[bobdaley]

I heard a long time ago about a mission called Commando Lava, but only the name.

Sam McGowan sent me some pictures of the aircraft involved in the mission.

I googled it and in an Wikipedia article about the Ho Chi Minh Trail there was a good explanation of it.

The article said one airpalne was written off after landing at Chu Lai but I can\'t find any evidence of that.

Basically the idea was the used a soapy concotion (Hence Lava) to destabalize the soil on the Ho Chi Minh trail. They tried it 3 times and only the first time worked.

I\'ll try to post the pictures.

Bob [img size=800]http://www.herkybirds.com/images/fbfiles/images/003a_Don_Powell__s__AC__A_Shau_Valley_DZ.jpg

[bobdaley]

2 [img size=800]http://www.herkybirds.com/images/fbfiles/images/006_004_After_Drop_In_The__A_Shau_Valley_DZ.jpg

[bobdaley]

3 [img size=800]http://www.herkybirds.com/images/fbfiles/images/007_004_After_Drop_In_The__A_Shau_Valley_DZ.jpg

[SamMcGowan]

Bob,

The airplane that went into Chu Lai was flown by Captain (later Colonel) John Butterfield\'s crew. They were shot up pretty bad and the airplane was onfire when they landed. All of the circuit breakers for the side that was on fire had popped and the copilot - the 41st Ops Officer - was trapped in the cockpit. Buttefield got the first Silver Star awarded to a C-130 crewmember and the rest of his crew all got DFCs. He was number three in the formation and while the other two airplanes got through without any damage his airplane caught hell. I don\'t know whether the airplane was written off or not but if it wasn\'t, it took a long time to repair. I think they were hit on the first mission. As for three missions, I think there were more than that. John told me about his experiences in a letter which he sent me along with a copy of his Silver Star citation and a photograph of his crew. Another of my correspondents was involved in the training at Eglin. TAC wanted the crew that did the training at Eglin to go to PACAF to fly the missions but they told them to go to blazes so it went to Naha and the 41st got the mission because they were the only squadron at Naha that didn\'t have it\'s own special mission already. I was at Cam Ranh when they flew some of the missions and one of the loadmasters came into the barracks afterwards covered from head to toe in gray dust. He said he couldn\'t talk about it and there was a lot of speculation about what they were dropping. It wasn\'t until I got in contact with Butterfield that I found out what they were doing. There was a reference to the mission in some news articles about General Dick Secord as he was the project officer. I never trust anything on Wikipedia because it is a community edited \"encyclopedia\" and anyone can put anything they wish. Gary Peters told me that one of his friends in LA was a CIA man and he told him that after they gave up on the C-130 missions they tried it again with C-123s. Nobody seems to really know what the dust was supposed to do. Butterfield told me it was supposed to cause erosion and cause landslides that would block the passes but some of the articles claim it was supposed to cause mud (in an area that is primarily solid rock.) Having spent a few years crawling around in limestone caves - incidentally not far from where the dust was manufactured at the Calgon plant in Ashland, Kentucky - I suspect that they thought it would hasten the process by which natural acidity causes limestone to erode.

[SamMcGowan]

I went and looked at the manuscript for my book and see that Butterfield told me that the mission was not halted after his airplane was shot up as the Wikipedia article states, but that General Momyer ordered a change in tactics. The crews went to single-ship rather than three-plane formations using the rationale that the NVA gunners had been alerted by the first airplane and it took them until the third airplane got in range to start firing. Butterfield was hit on the second mission, not the third as the article states.

[DC10FE]

Sam,

That must have been Butterfield\'s second crash in SEA since he also went off the runway at Tuy Hoa in 1966 while trying to avoid a truck on the runway. The Army destroyed that airplane when they tried to move it with a tank & a chain through the crew entrance door & out the AC\'s swing window!!

I was at Dyess when he was the Wing King there.

Don R.

[SamMcGowan]

Butterfield was the AC on the airplane that went off the end of the runway at Tuy Hoa but the landing at Chu Lai wasn\'t a crash. They flew all the way across the northern part of South Vietnam after being hit in Laos and landed at Tuy Hoa with a burning wing. It must have been pretty hairy. The wiring in the wing burned and caused all of the circuit breakers to pop. His engineer was a black TSgt named James Meredith. His loadmaster was John Kilcher but there would have also been a 7th APS loadmaster on board as second. I was thinking about this last night and I don\'t think word even got to the barracks at Cam Ranh about them being shot up. It was a classified mission and the crews were not supposed to discuss it. It wasn\'t until about a year later that they received their decorations. Bob Daley\'s post is the first I\'ve ever heard that the airplane was written off. My guess is it was probably repaired, but it would have taken quite awhile since the wiring would have had to be replaced. Kilcher and I went to Naha on the same airplane and Butterfield\'s crew was in the same hooch with ours on Blind Bat and I knew him and Meredith both fairly well. The only inkling anyone other than those on the missions had that they were flying something out of the ordinary was when the loadmaster came in with dust all over him. I can\'t think of his name offhand but he was one of the 41st people who had come over to Naha with the squadron, although he was a first-termer. He came down the hall between the partitions in his fatigues wearing his survival vest and was covered with gray dust. He told us \"don\'t ask, I can\'t talk about it.\" There was a lot of speculation about what they were doing. Rumors went around that it was some kind of chemical designed to kill crops.

[J. P. Morgan]

Crews from the 41st flew three missions of Commando Lava. I piloted the lead ship in all three missions. The first was out of Udorn, Thailand. The target was a hillside road in Laos, part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The spooks (CIA) flew me and our Nav (Dick Paprowitz) and CP (Jack Schofield) in a twin engine Beech to scout the trail in Laos the day before the mission. The spook misjudged the gas required and we had to land in Laos to refuel on the way back. That caused a huge international hue and cry, since we were in our flight suits and no Americans were ever to admit being in Laos. The next day we flew the mission, coming in at low level parallel to the ridge line and below the crest. The NVA gunner on the ridge woke up and opened fire with 12.7mm (as I recall) but was firing over the top of our three ship because he couldn't depress the barrel of his gun. Our A1E escorts made quick work of the two gun emplacements on the ridge. We dropped our loads, which was an agent that, when mixed with water, would break down the chemical bond that held the soil together and create mudslides. In other words, it was SOAP. The success of the mission depended upon a good rainfall after the drop, and we lucked out--it rained heavily that day and the whole road washed out down the hill. The spooks (and Secord) were elated. We had a big party with all the spooks at a local hangout that night. Our stop in Laos the day before seemed to be forgotten.

The next mission was out of Cam Rahn Bay and the target was the road at the northern mouth of the Ah Shau valley. We were un escorted on that mission and received only light arms ground fire. The mission was unsuccessful because it didn't rain and the NVA sent crews out to scrape the soap compound off the roads.

The third, and final (as far as I know) mission was a bit north of the second drop, up more on a hillside. We were escorted by F4s from Cam Rahn who made sweeping passes on either side as we made our run in. The only damage my aircraft experience was a stray CBU ricochet that punched halfway through the windscreen exactly lined up with the flight engineers (Msgt Shea) forehead. The first two Herks made it through and dropped no problem, but as Col Butterfield's aircraft came off the drop zone, he was hosed down pretty good, and had to shut down one engine (the inboard right, as I recall). We all rejoined and headed to the coast in the direction of Da Nang. I put John in the lead so we could do a battle damage check, and while doing that (and filming it also (Mike Babler was giving me a check ride), we noticed the thin blue flame coming from the wing. We were just abeam Chu Lai about then, and John swooped in for an emergency landing. By the time I landed, they had put the fire out. I think they flew back to Cam Rahn with us, but I'm a little hazy on that. As far as I recall, we were told that the main wing spar had been so deformed by the fire that the wing was a total loss. I think they just class 26ed the airplane. As far as the 41st was concerned, that was our last mission.

J.P. Morgan

LTC, USAF, Ret

[Railrunner130]

That's a very interesting story. Thanks for sharing it. I'm also thankful that as a participant in the current wars I have no story that comes close to it.

[SamMcGowan]

I've got Butterfield's Silver Star citation and his account. Gary Peters was with J.P. Morgan and I've got some pictures he took of another C-130A that had just recieved tail codes.