What was a colonel doing on such dangerous mission in the first place? - Bat*21 (1988) Discussion

Based on what?

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[–] Alfabeta 12 years ago

Pure speculation. Of course, there are two other possibilities. Maybe they needed the best man they had for the job since the mission was really important or he just got really nostalgic for the good old days and decided to fly one more time just for the hell of it.

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[–] ta2me92704 12 years ago

It was his 63rd mission, and he was rather high rank (0-5) for combat flight, but indeed, it could have been for a reason. On the other hand, I seem to remember reading something a long time ago that confirmed your speculation. I can find nothing now however.

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[–] Alfabeta 12 years ago

As far as the movie itself goes, I'd say its "stance" is that it was the third of my suggestions - the nostalgia factor.

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[–] ta2me92704 12 years ago

And that stuff happens. I just saw the film on TV yesterday and there ws a pilot who had been shot down and a POW mention how he got it. It was his last mission before going on R&R leave and was considered a milk run. Except that he got shot down and spent years as a POW. Things like that happen...

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[–] agamemnon_b5 12 years ago

I can't speak for the Air Force, but being in Army Aviation, if you are an aircrewmember (any rank) or on flight status (flight surgeon, intelligence analyst in an aerial recon unit) you must fly a certain number of hours each month to mantain flight profeciency and pay. Also, it is not unheard of that for a special event, that a high ranking officer will finangle his way onto a flight, even in the middle of a warzone.

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[–] caledoniadesigns 11 years ago

He planned the mission (air strikes) so was the most qualified. Happens frequently!

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[–] MandumeYaNdemufayo 11 years ago

He was a strategic missile expert, as well as an expert on the Surface to air missiles used by the NVA. The plane he was flying (EB-66) in was being used as a bait (escorting B52s), making the SA-2 SAM's lock onto them so that they could use electrical instruments to figure out how they operated (So that they could develop countermeasures to jam the SAM guidance frequency etc) . But that area was heavily defended and they were subsequently shot down (Only Hambleton managed to eject) .

This was the biggest rescue operation that the US mounted during the vietnam war.
He was rescued by an american & south vietnamese navy seal after 11 1/2 days.

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[–] tplast 10 years ago

by Alfabeta» Sun May 6 2012 11:16:35

I think he was going after a medal.

That could very likely be true. The late David Hackworth wrote in his first book that medal/decoration awards were grossly inflated even during the Korean War and worse than that during the Vietnam conflict. He said so many officers, in both conflicts, would go to the front for a quick tour of the front and then leave hours later before any serious shooting occured. Later these officers were awarded decorations for valor. Whether it happened to Hambleton, who knows for sure.

I remember reading somewhere that Hambleton spent many years, both in the 1950s and 1960s, serving in the SAC (Strategic Air Command). In the early 1970s Hambleton was assigned to a combat role in the Vietnam conflict (to be shot down in 1972, all major ground forces were gone by '72 but air fleets were still there to help S. Vietnam). I don't know if he asked for the assignment or the Pentagon forced it upon him. He was near retirement, twenty year retirement at least. Maybe he wanted a war zone assignment to increase his chances of promotion to Colonel from Lt. Col.

His service and training in SAC would make him a "prize catch" for the Communists, both N. Vietnamese and the Chicoms/Soviets. Many who served in NSA during the war years, and were involved in the collection of enemy radio traffic, greatly suspected that the Soviets had a quid pro quo deal with the N. Vietnamese whereby the Soviets would have their pick of captured American airmen as payback for the air defense weapons and munitions provided by the Soviets to the N. Vietnamese. Back seat operators (weapons or otherwise), men trained on nuclear delivery or trained in the countermeasures to Soviet nuclear weapons, any/all ECM trained personnel and even space trained personnel. YOu get the picture.

Also, NSA greatly suspected there was a secret, parallel prison system for such captured "prizes". It was believed that once a POW went into the secret/parallel system, he would never come back. Some POWs kept their strategic training secret from the N. Vietnamese and came back. Others, not so lucky. If such a thing existed, the Soviets would demand a counter-intelligence program to "hide its tracks", so its existence would have to be guessed at.

These men were taken to Russia for the rest of their lives to be used for their expertise. Hambleton would have been a stupendous prize for them. Of particular interest to the Soviets were F-111 Aardvarks and their crews. All but one of the F-111 crews shot down were lost and never heard from again. One of these had a NASA space trained man. Just a few shorts years after his loss/disappearance, the Soviets debuted a new, swing-wing aircraft (just like the F-111) and their space capabilities improved by a great leap. No surprise there.

It was nothing short of criminal for the Dept. of Defense to put such personnel, in an admittedly Cold War side show, in a position to be shot down and, potentially, hustled off to the Soviet Union for the rest of their lives. Whereby the Soviets would use any technical knowledge to compromise our (the USA) strategic posture. I bet the Soviets beat them like a drum to get the information wanted. It was criminal also that Congress did not perform oversight on the Pentagon about these types of US personnel.

There was another man in the same aircraft shot down that day with Hambleton, by the name of Serex. In the early 1990s, satellite imagery of northern Vietnam found some crop fields that clearly had S .. E .. R .. E .. X somehow roughed out, or stamped out, in the ground/vegetation. In an adjacent field, there were two letters and four numbers stamped out. Probably his, or another MIA's, authenticator code. Fed Gov't never divulged this to the next of kin when it was first obtained, like they were supposed to by law. Simply because John McCain sponsored a bill to remove the punishments for not performing this task. It is a violation of law for fed. gov't personnel to NOT notify next of kin when information about their missing family is received, but there are no punishments for violating said law. Later, when the sat. photo went public, the gov't claimed it was naturally occuring vegetation/shadows.

I would say Hambleton came as close as possible without sharing their fate.

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[–] sugardaddy3001 10 years ago

The whole crew of Bat21 were very experienced, and mainly senior officers. There were 2 other Lt Colonels, 2 Majors and a 1st Lt (who all didn't survive).

The question is not why Hambleton was in the air, it's why were so many experienced senior officers all in the same plane?

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[–] tplast 10 years ago

why were so many experienced senior officers all in the same plane?

That's a good question.

I didn't mean to say only Hambleton; there were of course other officers like you said.

Why were so many senior/experienced officers in the air over N. Vietnam and especially so many in the same aircraft?

That's probably the best way to put it.

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[–] joedogboy68 10 years ago

Sending a crew of your best, most experienced people can give you the highest probability of a successful mission.

It's a "high risk for high reward" option.

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[–] tplast 10 years ago

If the only consideration was the conflict against N. Vietnam, that would make sense.

But, as I indicated previously, not risking our strategic position against the S. Union in the Cold War (by not using these type men) was more important.

Also, I am not sure if "highest probability of a successful mission" was the main consideration for that particular mission (that Hambleton was on). Maybe it could have been. One would have to be in the unit to know that.

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[–] joedogboy68 10 years ago

Sending out a team of poorly trained expendables would not get the mission done. This would mean that a lot of the bombers on the strike they were planning would get shot down.

This would costs many lives and hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars of equipment.

It would also have a significant negative impact on morale of American aircrews. There would also be political ramifications if the Soviet export quality SAMs were seen to be able to easily destroy large numbers of American aircraft.

Sometimes you risk the best trained, because that gives you the best chance of success. Some failures have larger ramifications.

While we often avoided using the latest generation of weapons systems in Vietnam (and other "small wars") for fear of losing our technological edge by revealing our capabilities to the Soviets, or having systems captured, the active battlefield also provided a great testing ground for new systems, as well as a place for us to find out about the capabilities of Com-Bloc systems.

This means that, while you don;t want to risk having highly trained technical personnel fall into enemy hands, you also need to have highly trained technical personnel going where they can use their existing skills, and gain experience and new knowledge about the enemy's systems.

This means that a decision was made at a fairly high level that this was a risk worth taking, because of the rewards they hoped to gain. The fact that the Air Force had developed an extensive Search and Rescue system shows that they were also prepared to mitigate the down side of such risks.

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[–] tplast 10 years ago

Sending out a team of poorly trained expendables ....

I've never said, or implied, that the only two choices were sending poorly trained personnel or sending well trained personnel.

I believe the training that air crews received for the tactical missions (conventional munitions against roads, bridges, airfields, troop concentrations etc) during the Vietnam conflict was some the best in the world.

What I believe the U.S. had two choices about when considering who to send on conventional missions against N. Vietnam was:

a) send officers with some years of service (Majors and Colonels) and who had the strategic training that I mentioned earlier,

or b) send fairly recently commissioned officers (Lt's and Capt's) but who would not, if captured, be a liability to the US's world wide strategic position (meaning no strategic training, simply because they had not been in service long enough).

I believe both groups would receive the same tactical training and then would have the same lack of experience during the first several missions of their combat tours. And build up pretty much the same expertise during the course of their combat tour. So, clearly, it would have made sense to send only those officers without any strategic knowledge, that could be used against us if it came into the hands of potential adversaries, as a result of being captured.

... the active battlefield also provided a great testing ground for new systems, as well as a place for us to find out about the capabilities of Com-Bloc systems.

I wholeheartedly agree with that part. I just think it could be done without risking the loss of personnel trained for strategic missions.

... you also need to have highly trained technical personnel going where they can use their existing skills, and gain experience and new knowledge about the enemy's systems.

Again, that could be done just as well using (relatively) recently commissioned flight personnel. Using officers with strategic mission training could very well allow our communist adversaries to gain experience and new knowledge about the(ir) enemy's systems.

... a decision was made at a fairly high level that this was a risk worth taking

Do you mean high in the Pentagon? I agree it was made at the Pentagon (DoD) level, but I don't agree for the same reasons. I suspect it was due to bureaucratic misfeasance.

Honestly, I've read somewhere of other similar type decision making on part of the Pentagon during the Vietnam conflict. For example, around 80% of the targets struck in N. Vietnam during the Vietnam conflict were within range of the main guns of a battleship. We know the N. Vietnamese could never mount a serious threat to our surface forces. We also know that we lost a little over a thousand pilots over N. Vietnam (not including those over Laos and S. Vietnam) during all the war years. One can only conclude that many pilots would never have been lost if the battleships had been used on targets they could have reached. And it was all because there was no serious voice in the Pentagon advocating battleship firepower. There was certainly a huge voice advocating Naval airpower, as well as Air Force power. Again, it was because of a wrong headed attitude on part of the Pentagon and those above them ((Congress and the President).

... the Air Force had developed an extensive Search and Rescue system

I definitely agree with that, all the services actually. Not long ago, I read George Veith's Code-Name Bright Light: The Untold Story of U.S. POW Rescue Efforts During the Vietnam War . Very illuminating as to the lengths the U.S. went to recover downed or otherwise captured personnel. Mainly the intelligence that was gathered and the rescue raids that were planned to the smallest detail. Unfortunately there were very few rescues because so few rescues were attempted, usually due to some upper-level-decision-maker's boondoggling or interference.

In summary, I still say we did not have to put men, such as Hambleton, at risk of capture. Not for the sake of some third world side show of the Cold War.

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