snowmman 3
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snowmman 3
this is some excerpts of the history file that I said had good tech detail on the Vietnam HALO jumps.
did you guys note they jumped holding each other? (pairs?)
And from their DZ, they didn't jump in jungle. I think they just found each other by eye and lights.. They jumped with fluorescent stuff too?
Again the whole report is interesting (copied at the paintball guy's site, but I'm repeating here just to show it's interesting).
I highlighted in blue a story about landing on a mine (they each carried six mines) and a guy blowing his ass off. Ouch!
I also highlighted some radio stuff for 377. they used cw.
"More improvisations followed. The parachutes were standard T-10, modified to a 7-gore TU to improve maneuverability. For timing devices - which automatically deployed the main chute at a designated altitude should the parachutist fail to do so - SOG procured Czech-made KAP III timers, which were far more reliable than the standard U.S. alternative. Also procured was Tierra Spray (it has since been deemed a biohazard), a green florescent mixture that, when coated on a freefall team, would allow them to see each other while falling through the darkness. It actually didn’t work that well.
Finally, the CIA loaned a homing beacon to be carried by Newman. Each team member would carry a transistor radio which, when tuned to the right frequency, allowed them to converge on Newman on the ground.
By the third of November, RT FLORIDA was ready. As the team gathered at the CCN isolation area in Danang, however, US intelligence sources began to suspect that the mission was already compromised and the mission was postponed a couple of days. Again, signs pointed towards compromise and the mission was postponed for several more days. This time, a radio intercept showed that the North Vietnamese not only knew of the mission and the drop zone coordinates, but also the names of everyone in RT FLORIDA, to include Billy Waugh, who wasn’t jumping.
Faced with a serious leak in its operational security, OP 35 was forced to change drop zones. The new target was 40 kilometers south of Khe Sanh and 15 kilometers inside the Laotain border. Although the region was rugged and sparsely populated, it was well known for its dense anti-aircraft protection. And if there were any doubts about North Vietnamese vigilance, they were dispelled when Hill made a visual reconnaissance of the area in a Nail OV-10, only to have the windshield shot out of the plane.
During the final week of November, RT FLORIDA again suited up to jump. This time, on the suspicion that the leak had occurred in Danang, the team assembled in Long Thanh. At 0200 hours on 28 November 1970, the six RT FLORIDA members filed aboard a C-130E Combat Talon Black Bird. Frank Norbury, recovering from malaria, got out of bed to act as jumpmaster.
Heading north, the aircraft rose to 17,000 feet and crossed into Laos. Five minutes from drop-time, the team did its equipment check and found that the light on Hill’s (the One-Zero) altimeter had burned out. This meant that he would not know when to deploy his chute. Improvising, Hill tried dousing the front of his body with Tierra Spray, but still could not get enough illumination to see the altimeter.
Unwilling to abort the mission, Hill and the rest of the team moved to the edge of the tail ramp. Employing Combat Skyspot, a navigational system using ground-based radar positions, the C-130E crew came up on the drop zone. With a hand signal from Norbury, RT Florida stepped off the ramp and into the night.
As he had practiced many times before, Newman would exit first, followed by the rest of the team. Within 2,000 feet, however, the team hit rain clouds and lost sight of each other. Hill, who could not see his altimeter, remembered from the team’s weather briefing that the first of two cloud layers ended at 4,000 feet, at which time he began counting before pulling his ripcord. But he opened his chute too soon and drifted from the rest of the team.
Once on the ground, problems continued to mount. The drop zone turned out to be buried under six inches of water, and when Newman set up his homing device, it shorted out. Worse, the Combat Skyspot navigational system, supposedly highly accurate, had put the team a dozen kilometers off its intended target.
Separated on the ground, in enemy territory, with poor weather closing in, and without maps of the area, RT FLORIDA’s members focused on staying alive. Climbing an adjacent hill burned away by a lighting strike, Newman ran into Tiak Bya-Ya (now living in Hope Mills, NC), one of the two Rhade on the team, and the two tried to raise a Covey Forward Air Control (FAC) plane on the radio. The other Rhade, No Nie-Ya, managed to link up with the Vietnamese warrant officer. Hill and Hernandez were both alone. This was not the first or last time that Hernandez would find himself alone in the enemy’s backyard.
A search was immediately launched for the missing team. Looking in the wrong vicinity, however, it took three days before a Covey (Al Mosiello, flown by Jim Lathham, later a POW and Commander of the Thunderbirds) finally broke through the clouds and made visual contact with Newman. The team members were glad to see friendly aircraft, but it also alerted the North Vietnamese to the presence of a SOG team. Enemy patrols approached, forcing RT FLORIDA to call in repeated A-1 Skyraider strikes from Nakhon Phanom, Thailand. Two days of poor weather kept rescue aircraft on the ground.
It was not until 2 December that a pair of CH-53 helicopters attempted an exfiltration. Hill recalls that the team had chosen to use the URC-10 survival radios, as their prime means of communications. This later proved to be a saving grace decision. Hill’s radio was soaked enough that he lost voice communications. Al Mosiello, an old radio operator, was able to remain in contact with Hill by Hill sending CW (Morse Code) to the Covey.
Mosiello responded, and relaying to Newman by voice to maintain intra-team communications. Newman then provided team directions and intentions to the Covey. Rendezvousing with the orbiting Covey, the choppers headed for four separate pick-up locations to collect the men. While retrieving Hill on a jungle penetrator, small arms fire rang out from the triple canopy, hitting Hill in the right shin with a spent round. The other lifts were completed without incident and returned to NKP Thailand.
RT FLORIDA proved that HALO could be used to get a team in and out alive. SOG concluded that, “as a means of entry this technique was considered proven, since an active enemy search was not made to locate the team.” Better yet, nobody was killed, so Shungel and Waugh continued to expand their pet project.
By the beginning of 1971, Frank Norbury, assisted by Harry Denny, Cliff Newman, Melvin Hill, George Zacker, and a handful of other HALO specialists, had established a freefall course at Long Thanh and began training a mixed class of Americans and South Vietnamese.Cliff Newman remembers another humorous antidote that took place when the school was set up.
Colonel Shungle wanted to make a jump. Cliff spotted the C-130 from 12,500 feet. As Cliff did a standing landing in front of the PIO people from Saigon, Colonel Shungle went into the woods.
When they made contact with him by radio, Cliff clearly remembers the transmission: “Tell Newman to assume the position of attention and do not leave the drop zone!” Cliff recalls, “I figured I had my second butt-chewing coming from him.” (The first had been when Cliff took his team members to Saigon prior to the first insert for a night of partying.) “After Shungle went into the woods, Melvin gave me a rotten carrot to improve my eyesight.”
After a dozen more students were trained, a decision was made in the late spring to form a second HALO team.
Billy Waugh, the recon company Sergeant Major at CCN, decided to have just four Americans on the team. Because on the previous jump, considerable time had been wasted trying to assemble on the ground. This time each member was to be equipped with two radios to continue his mission independently if necessary. Chosen as team leader was Captain Larry Manes, who headed CCN’s recon company and had been a freefall instructor at Long Thanh earlier that year. Three others, Specialist Six Noel Gast, Staff Sergeant Robert Castillo, and Sergeant John “Spider” Trantanella were from the HALO-qualified RT IDAHO. Sergeant First Class Charles Wesley, from Recon Company was the standby jumper, but was called on emergency leave the night before the jump. Sergeant Jesse Campbell would now be the stand by jumper. During the pre-dawn hours of 7 May 1971, Captain Manes’ team moved to Danang airfield and boarded a C-130E.
By this time, restrictions leveled against SOG prevented Americans from entering Laos, so their target was a new North Vietnamese supply trail just inside the South Vietnamese border midway between the Ashau Valley and Khe Sanh. At 18,500 feet, the team jumped in pairs. Manes, with a Ranger Eye Panel (illumines tape) attached to the back of the parachute container, and Gast, covered with Tierra Spray, exited first.
Murphy’s Law quickly intervened. Gast, who had armed his toe poppers, landed hard on his rucksack causing one of the mines to detonate and wounding Gast in the buttocks (earning himself the nickname Half-Assed Gast).
John (Spider) Trantanella remembered the jump this way. “We used supplemental oxygen by breathing off the oxygen hoses from the console until told to standby. We did not have oxygen masks that were used for normal HALO jumps. Robert and I exited the ramp holding onto each other. I remember I was inverted and my KAP-3 activated around 4,000 feet. There was valley fog and I could not see the ground, but trees protruded through the fog. After checking my canopy, I looked around and saw a canopy about 50 to 100 feet below and to my front. I kept my eyes on the canopy following his moves. He was losing altitude faster than I, as he penetrated the ground fog, I took a last bearing on his position. All of a sudden, there was a flash, as if a hand grenade went off. Thinking that the North Vietnamese had spotted us, I immediately turned away from the flash. As I entered the fog, I pulled down on the rear risers preparing to land. When I regained my composure (breath) I cut myself free from the harness and parachute. Since it was BMNT, I could not see anything but high weeds and shrubs. I started crawling towards the area I presumed was the flash. I came across several makeshift huts. Still moving, I heard nothing but calm.”
"“As it started to get light, I saw what appeared to be movement behind a fallen tree. A semi-bald head was moving a little then stopped. I aimed my CAR-15 at the head, then made a noise. Noellooked up. I was happy to see him. I jumped over to his position, then to my surprise I saw his rucksack blown to pieces, and his pants were burnt off from the buttocks to his boots. He was in semishock, and his color was dead gray. He asked me how he looked, and I responded not bad considering we were both on the ground alive and separated from the others. Noel was bleeding. I took my shirt off and wrapped it around his butt, sort of like a diaper to stop the bleeding. When the sun came up, I heard the sound of our COVEY. It was Sergeant First Class Dave Chaney flying out of Quang Tri, CCN’s Mobile Launch Team 2. I grabbed my survival radio and came up on the radio. I gave him our situation, explaining that Noel was hurt bad, and needed an extraction.”
“We moved to an area away from the explosion, but Noel couldn’t move far. A few hours passed and the sound of helicopters coming up the valley could be heard. During that time I observed some movement about fifty feet away. I did not recognize it, but I believe it was Manes or Castillo, but we stayed hid. I directed the UH1-H to our location. The chase medic was Robert Woodham. He threw out a single string for Gast.
With his injuries I knew that he could not be stabo rigged out without damage to his butt and legs. I waved my arms to throw another stabo. I hooked Noel in, and then myself. I let Noel ride over my shoulder to take up some of the pressure. We rode beneath the helicopter for about twenty minutes. They set us down at a deserted fire base. Then we boarded the helicopter. Noel was in enormous pain. I was limping on my left side, hurt from the jump, or from Noel ridding on my shoulder during the flight to the fire base.”
Nearby, Manes had settled in a streambed. After hearing choppers come overhead at first light, he waited two more hours before breaking radio silence to contact Covey. Told that Gast and Trantanella had been extracted, Manes was asked if he wanted directions to link up with Castillo. Not wanting to attract more attention with orbiting aircraft, he opted to continue the mission independently, as trained. With the enemy apparently unaware of their presence, Manes and Castillo paralleled each other while observing enemy positions along the road for four more days before being extracted without incident."
other report:
"Once over the DZ and a combination of a thumbs up from Frank Norbury and the green light, we exited and I got to watch Sergeant John Trantanella's smiling face for the next 70 seconds. His eyes were rather large and his moustache was blowing all over. During the freefall, we made a few slow turns, but by any standard, it was a controlled and stable fall.
I was not able to keep CPT Manes and SP6 Gast in sight 100% of the time during the descent, but I had a fix on them, and after opening, began steering toward them. I believe we missed our intended opening and landing point by a good distance and thus opened up over terrain that was higher than we had expected. Therefore, we ran out of altitude before we could assemble under canopy.
As I was steering toward the group, I noticed the ground coming up and realized I was over trees and turned to run down the tree line looking for some place to land. As I was heading down hill, I heard a very rapid set of explosions and figured that someone had landed in and among the bad guys. Shortly thereafter I ran out of altitude and suitable landing spots and went down through the trees and landed on the ground sloping downward. I got out of my parachute gear and took a quick check around, heard nothing, saw nothing. I then gathered up my chute and other gear that I would leave behind, stuffed it into the kit bag, shoved the bag under some thick brush, and set out to attempt to find the others. I was not able to reach anybody on the radio and continued my slow and careful movement across slope in the general direction of where I last saw my teammates and had heard the explosion.”"
did you guys note they jumped holding each other? (pairs?)
And from their DZ, they didn't jump in jungle. I think they just found each other by eye and lights.. They jumped with fluorescent stuff too?
Again the whole report is interesting (copied at the paintball guy's site, but I'm repeating here just to show it's interesting).
I highlighted in blue a story about landing on a mine (they each carried six mines) and a guy blowing his ass off. Ouch!
I also highlighted some radio stuff for 377. they used cw.
"More improvisations followed. The parachutes were standard T-10, modified to a 7-gore TU to improve maneuverability. For timing devices - which automatically deployed the main chute at a designated altitude should the parachutist fail to do so - SOG procured Czech-made KAP III timers, which were far more reliable than the standard U.S. alternative. Also procured was Tierra Spray (it has since been deemed a biohazard), a green florescent mixture that, when coated on a freefall team, would allow them to see each other while falling through the darkness. It actually didn’t work that well.
Finally, the CIA loaned a homing beacon to be carried by Newman. Each team member would carry a transistor radio which, when tuned to the right frequency, allowed them to converge on Newman on the ground.
By the third of November, RT FLORIDA was ready. As the team gathered at the CCN isolation area in Danang, however, US intelligence sources began to suspect that the mission was already compromised and the mission was postponed a couple of days. Again, signs pointed towards compromise and the mission was postponed for several more days. This time, a radio intercept showed that the North Vietnamese not only knew of the mission and the drop zone coordinates, but also the names of everyone in RT FLORIDA, to include Billy Waugh, who wasn’t jumping.
Faced with a serious leak in its operational security, OP 35 was forced to change drop zones. The new target was 40 kilometers south of Khe Sanh and 15 kilometers inside the Laotain border. Although the region was rugged and sparsely populated, it was well known for its dense anti-aircraft protection. And if there were any doubts about North Vietnamese vigilance, they were dispelled when Hill made a visual reconnaissance of the area in a Nail OV-10, only to have the windshield shot out of the plane.
During the final week of November, RT FLORIDA again suited up to jump. This time, on the suspicion that the leak had occurred in Danang, the team assembled in Long Thanh. At 0200 hours on 28 November 1970, the six RT FLORIDA members filed aboard a C-130E Combat Talon Black Bird. Frank Norbury, recovering from malaria, got out of bed to act as jumpmaster.
Heading north, the aircraft rose to 17,000 feet and crossed into Laos. Five minutes from drop-time, the team did its equipment check and found that the light on Hill’s (the One-Zero) altimeter had burned out. This meant that he would not know when to deploy his chute. Improvising, Hill tried dousing the front of his body with Tierra Spray, but still could not get enough illumination to see the altimeter.
Unwilling to abort the mission, Hill and the rest of the team moved to the edge of the tail ramp. Employing Combat Skyspot, a navigational system using ground-based radar positions, the C-130E crew came up on the drop zone. With a hand signal from Norbury, RT Florida stepped off the ramp and into the night.
As he had practiced many times before, Newman would exit first, followed by the rest of the team. Within 2,000 feet, however, the team hit rain clouds and lost sight of each other. Hill, who could not see his altimeter, remembered from the team’s weather briefing that the first of two cloud layers ended at 4,000 feet, at which time he began counting before pulling his ripcord. But he opened his chute too soon and drifted from the rest of the team.
Once on the ground, problems continued to mount. The drop zone turned out to be buried under six inches of water, and when Newman set up his homing device, it shorted out. Worse, the Combat Skyspot navigational system, supposedly highly accurate, had put the team a dozen kilometers off its intended target.
Separated on the ground, in enemy territory, with poor weather closing in, and without maps of the area, RT FLORIDA’s members focused on staying alive. Climbing an adjacent hill burned away by a lighting strike, Newman ran into Tiak Bya-Ya (now living in Hope Mills, NC), one of the two Rhade on the team, and the two tried to raise a Covey Forward Air Control (FAC) plane on the radio. The other Rhade, No Nie-Ya, managed to link up with the Vietnamese warrant officer. Hill and Hernandez were both alone. This was not the first or last time that Hernandez would find himself alone in the enemy’s backyard.
A search was immediately launched for the missing team. Looking in the wrong vicinity, however, it took three days before a Covey (Al Mosiello, flown by Jim Lathham, later a POW and Commander of the Thunderbirds) finally broke through the clouds and made visual contact with Newman. The team members were glad to see friendly aircraft, but it also alerted the North Vietnamese to the presence of a SOG team. Enemy patrols approached, forcing RT FLORIDA to call in repeated A-1 Skyraider strikes from Nakhon Phanom, Thailand. Two days of poor weather kept rescue aircraft on the ground.
It was not until 2 December that a pair of CH-53 helicopters attempted an exfiltration. Hill recalls that the team had chosen to use the URC-10 survival radios, as their prime means of communications. This later proved to be a saving grace decision. Hill’s radio was soaked enough that he lost voice communications. Al Mosiello, an old radio operator, was able to remain in contact with Hill by Hill sending CW (Morse Code) to the Covey.
Mosiello responded, and relaying to Newman by voice to maintain intra-team communications. Newman then provided team directions and intentions to the Covey. Rendezvousing with the orbiting Covey, the choppers headed for four separate pick-up locations to collect the men. While retrieving Hill on a jungle penetrator, small arms fire rang out from the triple canopy, hitting Hill in the right shin with a spent round. The other lifts were completed without incident and returned to NKP Thailand.
RT FLORIDA proved that HALO could be used to get a team in and out alive. SOG concluded that, “as a means of entry this technique was considered proven, since an active enemy search was not made to locate the team.” Better yet, nobody was killed, so Shungel and Waugh continued to expand their pet project.
By the beginning of 1971, Frank Norbury, assisted by Harry Denny, Cliff Newman, Melvin Hill, George Zacker, and a handful of other HALO specialists, had established a freefall course at Long Thanh and began training a mixed class of Americans and South Vietnamese.Cliff Newman remembers another humorous antidote that took place when the school was set up.
Colonel Shungle wanted to make a jump. Cliff spotted the C-130 from 12,500 feet. As Cliff did a standing landing in front of the PIO people from Saigon, Colonel Shungle went into the woods.
When they made contact with him by radio, Cliff clearly remembers the transmission: “Tell Newman to assume the position of attention and do not leave the drop zone!” Cliff recalls, “I figured I had my second butt-chewing coming from him.” (The first had been when Cliff took his team members to Saigon prior to the first insert for a night of partying.) “After Shungle went into the woods, Melvin gave me a rotten carrot to improve my eyesight.”
After a dozen more students were trained, a decision was made in the late spring to form a second HALO team.
Billy Waugh, the recon company Sergeant Major at CCN, decided to have just four Americans on the team. Because on the previous jump, considerable time had been wasted trying to assemble on the ground. This time each member was to be equipped with two radios to continue his mission independently if necessary. Chosen as team leader was Captain Larry Manes, who headed CCN’s recon company and had been a freefall instructor at Long Thanh earlier that year. Three others, Specialist Six Noel Gast, Staff Sergeant Robert Castillo, and Sergeant John “Spider” Trantanella were from the HALO-qualified RT IDAHO. Sergeant First Class Charles Wesley, from Recon Company was the standby jumper, but was called on emergency leave the night before the jump. Sergeant Jesse Campbell would now be the stand by jumper. During the pre-dawn hours of 7 May 1971, Captain Manes’ team moved to Danang airfield and boarded a C-130E.
By this time, restrictions leveled against SOG prevented Americans from entering Laos, so their target was a new North Vietnamese supply trail just inside the South Vietnamese border midway between the Ashau Valley and Khe Sanh. At 18,500 feet, the team jumped in pairs. Manes, with a Ranger Eye Panel (illumines tape) attached to the back of the parachute container, and Gast, covered with Tierra Spray, exited first.
Murphy’s Law quickly intervened. Gast, who had armed his toe poppers, landed hard on his rucksack causing one of the mines to detonate and wounding Gast in the buttocks (earning himself the nickname Half-Assed Gast).
John (Spider) Trantanella remembered the jump this way. “We used supplemental oxygen by breathing off the oxygen hoses from the console until told to standby. We did not have oxygen masks that were used for normal HALO jumps. Robert and I exited the ramp holding onto each other. I remember I was inverted and my KAP-3 activated around 4,000 feet. There was valley fog and I could not see the ground, but trees protruded through the fog. After checking my canopy, I looked around and saw a canopy about 50 to 100 feet below and to my front. I kept my eyes on the canopy following his moves. He was losing altitude faster than I, as he penetrated the ground fog, I took a last bearing on his position. All of a sudden, there was a flash, as if a hand grenade went off. Thinking that the North Vietnamese had spotted us, I immediately turned away from the flash. As I entered the fog, I pulled down on the rear risers preparing to land. When I regained my composure (breath) I cut myself free from the harness and parachute. Since it was BMNT, I could not see anything but high weeds and shrubs. I started crawling towards the area I presumed was the flash. I came across several makeshift huts. Still moving, I heard nothing but calm.”
"“As it started to get light, I saw what appeared to be movement behind a fallen tree. A semi-bald head was moving a little then stopped. I aimed my CAR-15 at the head, then made a noise. Noellooked up. I was happy to see him. I jumped over to his position, then to my surprise I saw his rucksack blown to pieces, and his pants were burnt off from the buttocks to his boots. He was in semishock, and his color was dead gray. He asked me how he looked, and I responded not bad considering we were both on the ground alive and separated from the others. Noel was bleeding. I took my shirt off and wrapped it around his butt, sort of like a diaper to stop the bleeding. When the sun came up, I heard the sound of our COVEY. It was Sergeant First Class Dave Chaney flying out of Quang Tri, CCN’s Mobile Launch Team 2. I grabbed my survival radio and came up on the radio. I gave him our situation, explaining that Noel was hurt bad, and needed an extraction.”
“We moved to an area away from the explosion, but Noel couldn’t move far. A few hours passed and the sound of helicopters coming up the valley could be heard. During that time I observed some movement about fifty feet away. I did not recognize it, but I believe it was Manes or Castillo, but we stayed hid. I directed the UH1-H to our location. The chase medic was Robert Woodham. He threw out a single string for Gast.
With his injuries I knew that he could not be stabo rigged out without damage to his butt and legs. I waved my arms to throw another stabo. I hooked Noel in, and then myself. I let Noel ride over my shoulder to take up some of the pressure. We rode beneath the helicopter for about twenty minutes. They set us down at a deserted fire base. Then we boarded the helicopter. Noel was in enormous pain. I was limping on my left side, hurt from the jump, or from Noel ridding on my shoulder during the flight to the fire base.”
Nearby, Manes had settled in a streambed. After hearing choppers come overhead at first light, he waited two more hours before breaking radio silence to contact Covey. Told that Gast and Trantanella had been extracted, Manes was asked if he wanted directions to link up with Castillo. Not wanting to attract more attention with orbiting aircraft, he opted to continue the mission independently, as trained. With the enemy apparently unaware of their presence, Manes and Castillo paralleled each other while observing enemy positions along the road for four more days before being extracted without incident."
other report:
"Once over the DZ and a combination of a thumbs up from Frank Norbury and the green light, we exited and I got to watch Sergeant John Trantanella's smiling face for the next 70 seconds. His eyes were rather large and his moustache was blowing all over. During the freefall, we made a few slow turns, but by any standard, it was a controlled and stable fall.
I was not able to keep CPT Manes and SP6 Gast in sight 100% of the time during the descent, but I had a fix on them, and after opening, began steering toward them. I believe we missed our intended opening and landing point by a good distance and thus opened up over terrain that was higher than we had expected. Therefore, we ran out of altitude before we could assemble under canopy.
As I was steering toward the group, I noticed the ground coming up and realized I was over trees and turned to run down the tree line looking for some place to land. As I was heading down hill, I heard a very rapid set of explosions and figured that someone had landed in and among the bad guys. Shortly thereafter I ran out of altitude and suitable landing spots and went down through the trees and landed on the ground sloping downward. I got out of my parachute gear and took a quick check around, heard nothing, saw nothing. I then gathered up my chute and other gear that I would leave behind, stuffed it into the kit bag, shoved the bag under some thick brush, and set out to attempt to find the others. I was not able to reach anybody on the radio and continued my slow and careful movement across slope in the general direction of where I last saw my teammates and had heard the explosion.”"
They used whatever info/photos they could find, as background. I saw them post on what I thought was a vets forum, so I think they're not way off base (look at the rest of their site for their background/motivations. They're paintball guys, but they say
"Modern Forces Living History Group and it aims to faithfully portray the units of MACV-SOG in the period of 1966-1972 during the Vietnam conflict."
Note they say
"We appreciate comments from SOG veterans and have recently been talking to SOG One-Zeros John S. Meyer, Lee Burkins and John Good (RT Texas & RT Arizona) about how we can make what we do as correct as possible. Here is what John S. Meyer had to say.
"Paul, I enjoyed your Web site. Thank you for keeping the history of SOG alive and for striving to make your depictions historically accurate. "John S. Meyer One-Zero, RT Idaho 68-70"
(we all remember what a 1-0 was, right!)
the photos of the recreation are here;
http://www.modernforces.com/SOG_halo_1.htm
(they admit they got the back chute wrong)
There a couple of interesting things. In old photos, there was tape around the carabiners at the shoulder, apparently to keep them from flopping around. Would be real cool if any '70s military jumpers here ever taped carabiners when jumping with military.
2) There were two rucksacks apparently used. The last was called "Tropical Rucksack" and is shown attached below the T-10 reserve in the photos at that link. (look at all the photos)
I think they were unclear on how the Tropical Rucksack was attached. It looks like they decided to use carabiners.
A real CISO Indigenous Rucksack is here
http://www.modernforces.com/uniform_cisoruck.htm
"Conrad 'Ben' Baker of the Counterinsurgency Support Office (CISO) designed the indigenous rucksack based on a VC/NVA design on request of the Special Forces in Vietnam. The bag was intended to be used by CIDG troops hence the name, over 350,000 were produced.
The rucksack was made from rubberized cotton canvas that was water resistant, the CISO pack had a thin waist strap (often cut off as in the case of this rucksack) and featured three outside front pockets and a back map pocket inside the flap. Though designed for indigenous personnel and their advisors, the rucksack was also popular with SOG Recon teams before the Tropical Rucksack become a more common item."
The Tropical Rucksack had a metal x frame and is shown here.
http://www.modernforces.com/uniform_rucksack.htm
Be interesting if anyone here actually jumped in Vietnam with a rucksack, to give any detail.
"The Tropical Rucksack was introduced in 1968 as part of the M-67 equipment. The 68 dated example that I have has the early plastic snaps on the pockets like all first issue 67 gear. It was first issued to "priority" units including Special Forces, Rangers, and Divisional Recon. It would be more common to see the Lightweight Ruck in a line unit in 1968 than the Tropical Rucksack. This Ruck is easily identified as it has an integrated frame in the shape of an "X" that can be seen looking at the side of the Ruck that goes against your back. This pack was bigger than the lightweight rucksack, but incorporated the same basic ideas of a large compartment with three external pockets."
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