THE SON TAY RAID 50 YEARS November 21, 1970 BY DAVID ISBY
1970: Air reconnaissance photographs of the North Vietnamese town qMay of Son Tay, about 35 kilometers west of Hanoi, had revealed the location of a secret camp for U.S. prisoners of war (POWs). Under the eyes of North Vietnamese guards, the POWs signaled their presence by drying laundry and treading out escape-and-evasion symbols in the dirt. The intelligence evidence was that there were about 60 prisoners at Son Tay.
PREPARATION The Son Tay photographs – and the proposals for a raid to free the prisoners – were brought by the Air Force to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) through U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Donald D. Blackburn, special assistant for counterinsurgency and special activities (SACSA). Blackburn, one of the Army’s original special operators, commanded Filipino guerrillas from 1942 to 1945. When asked how many battalions the raid would require, he told the JCS, “I had no intention of going in there with a battalion. I was going to go in there with a small group of men and helicopters and lift the POWs out.” Blackburn was given the go-ahead to carry out a feasibility study for a raid. Planning for a raid was approved by the JCS on July 19. In the absence of a joint special operations headquarters, it would become the first-ever operation under direct JCS control. Blackburn appointed Brig. Gen. Leroy Manor, a combat veteran fighter pilot commanding the U.S. Air Force Special Operations Group at Eglin Air Force Base (AFB), Florida, as mission commander. His deputy was Col. Arthur D. “Bull” Simons, already a legend in the U.S. Army’s special operations forces, with World War II service as well as more recent combat in Southeast Asia. Blackburn knew his reputation: “When Bull Simons undertook an operation … the research and planning behind it were meticulous.”
88
Special Operations Outlook
