Batcats: The United States Air Force 553Rd Reconnaissance Wing in Southeast Asia

© 2003 by Jack Sikora and Larry Westin

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Contents

Preface

1  Somewhere in the Beginning

2  Thailand

3  Politicians, Professors, & Plans

4  Korat Royal Thai Air Force Base

5  Back on Old Cape Cod

6  Potlids, Dune Moon And VO-67

7  Korat Town

8  Missions

9  Batcats Down

10  The End…The Beginning

Index of Abbreviations & Nicknames

Appendix A  Serial Numbers and Final Disposition of Batcat EC121R Aircraft

Appendix B  Batcat Orbits

Bibliography

About the Authors

This book is for our comrades both living and dead and especially for those killed in action. None are forgotten and all are honored.

Preface 

This book is not a definitive history of the 553rd. It is flawed, limited, and in myriad ways unworthy of the story it seeks to share. What may be said of the book may well too be said of its authors. How dare we seek to relate here a noble effort by the best and bravest people we shall ever know? We acknowledge our presumption, and we apologize to our brother Batcats and their loved ones for our failings. It is our hope that they and every reader will appreciate our mission in preparing and presenting these pages. Specifically we have sought to bring to the public’s attention the unique story of the 553rd and to honor those who played a part in it. To the latter end, we wish for readers to know that when we refer to the Batcats we mean to include in this descriptor the men who flew the sorties as well as the excellent and professional airmen who supported them in essential and critical roles ranging from maintenance to transportation. It is these officers, men, and women who made the Batcats fly.

Because of its imperfections and because its subject is worthy, we hope very much that others will perhaps employ our effort as a rude foundation and write more about the Batcats, correct our errors and omissions, and bring the story to future generations. The story presented here is from our limited perspective. We respectfully recognize that there are many other points of view, and we hope that these will come to be published and appreciated.

We gratefully acknowledge the assistance and fellowship of numerous Batcats who have contributed to this effort: Jim Bartholomew, Ralph Blankenship, Ron Bogota, Peter Bono, Al Bosse, Dean Boys, Mike Burroughs, Doug Cedras, Ron DeGroff, Paul Desrosiers, Dave Dotson, Tom Forbes, Lynn Gates, Ron Grayson, Bill Herridge, Ron Hurley, Jack January, Cliff Jensen, Bill Kearney, Lee Magers, Dan McKenzie, Joe Mosel, Bill Person, Ed Richey, Les Robbins, Steve Rust, Charle School, Chuck Silverstein, Joe Slattery, Dave Smith, J.J. Smith, Gordon Tatro, Mike Walker, Richard Weiner, Rick Whelan, Randy White, and Bob Young. University College of Bangor, and Andrea Thorne, Joseph Carver and Archie DiFante of the Air Force Historical Research Agency. We thank too our wives, Lynn Sikora and Sue Westin, who have honored the Batcats by standing by our side and lending aid, comfort, and encouragement as we strove to bring the Batcat story out of the shadows into the light. Finally, we are grateful to the many people who responded to our call for recollections and other information and whose names do not appear in these pages.

We would ask discriminating readers to recognize that in rendering words and phrases from the Sanskrit, Pali, Thai, Khmer, Lao, Vietnamese, etc, we have elected to employ transliterations. Because there are, in many cases, various options from which to select, we have tried to employ throughout this book those transliterations that are most generally used and/or have the potential for the easiest comprehension for readers. Thus, for example, while Korat can be rendered as Khorat and Khmer as Khymer we have chosen to use the former transliterations in the interest of simplicity and in keeping with current general practice.

Jack Sikora Larry Westin

Fall 2003

1

Somewhere in the Beginning 

Before getting to Korat I remember the fear I felt about flying over there…After all is said and done it was my greatest adventure and one I will never forget.

—Ed Richey, Batcat

The EC-121R aka Super Constellation (Connie) appears to some to go reluctantly into the air. It starts in fits complete with smoking billows and the roar of a hacking, hoarse dragon. Once all four engines are finally cajoled and harnessed, the great machine shudders, trembles with anticipation, and declares itself awake and ready with a throaty rumble that runs a gambit from a discordant panoply to a harmonious choir of powerful motors. When it rolls along for takeoff the choir reaches a crescendo to coax and cheer the lumbering machine into a graceful bird of flight and prey. Watching a single Connie take to the sky is an arresting sight, but observing a cluster of them can quicken one’s pulse and help one to perhaps understand why God in His goodness allowed men to fly.

In the autumn of 1967 late season vacationers and some lucky locals looked skyward to follow with their eyes the drone of strong engines. What they were privileged to see was one or more EC-121 model Connies, their white bellied sleek bodies and graceful tip tanked wings plumed in green and brown camouflage, the formal dress of jungle combat, ascending and winging Westward in an ordained migration from their Cape Cod roost at Otis Air Force Base toward a rendezvous with the undeclared yet bloody war in Southeast Asia. By October the Speckled Bugs had arrived at Korat Royal Thai Air Force Base, Thailand, and the Batcats began to fly their long, round the clock hide and seek missions in the new age of high tech warfare and political micro-management.

Aboard one of the lead aircraft was a young airman named Ron DeGroff. DeGroff s deployment to Korat took him first to California and McClellan Air Force Base where Colonel Gus Weiser regrouped the seven Connies under his command and led them into the Sacramento sky and West over the wide Pacific. The journey traced some of the great landmarks of World War II linked in a rosary of battle sites burnished with past peril, unspeakable suffering, and gallantry. The significance and sacramentality of these places was not lost on DeGroff, his comrades, nor on many of the Batcats who were to follow in his footsteps tracing the same route to Korat. Perhaps what DeGroff and the others saw provided a sense of continuity linking them to a previous generation of warriors and helped to inspire a sense of purpose in an otherwise turbulent and uncertain time in which many questioned America’s direction and some, like DeGroff, elected to serve anyway. Ron Degroff was, like each of the Batcats, a volunteer.

Weiser landed the Flight at Hickham Air Force Base, Hawaii, and DeGroff paused to appreciate his surroundings and the emotions that places like Pearl Harbor evoke in an American’s psyche, but what really burrowed into his soul was the layover on Wake Island.

DeGroff was struck by the small size of the airstrip at Wake. The tiny island was a refueling point for numerous military and civilian aircraft carrying personnel and materials to Southeast Asia and beyond. Because the Batcat crews needed rest and their aircraft required attention, DeGroff was obliged to bunk overnight in a tent pitched near the ocean’s edge where he reclined on his cot and watched the waves breaking on the moonlit shore; however, it was more than the natural beauty of the island that captured his fascination. He was much taken by the DC-8 commercial airliners making fuel stops whose mighty engines thundered in the night and provided a spectacular light show in the otherwise placid sky. But there was more to Wake, and DeGroff touched upon it as he explored the island’s artifacts of war. He stood on the shore and gazed in wonder at the rusting hulk of a Japanese supply ship, crawled around a collection of pill boxes, and gathered up for his collection some ammunition cases. He discovered that he could see wrecked American aircraft under the clear water of the lagoon, and perhaps he found himself lost in time in a place somewhere between the fury of a past war and the present one. By the time he returned to the flight line his aircraft commander, Major Lefferts, gave him hot hell for holding up their departure for Guam.

The Guam stopover was brief, and the flight continued on to Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, where later many Batcats received special training at the

USAF Jungle Survival Training School. DeGroff saw part of the route of the infamous Bataan Death March. He also experienced for the first time fresh pineapple.

A few hours after departing Clark, Lefferts entered Vietnamese airspace, and DeGroff looked down to scrutinize bomb craters, the first of a myriad of fresh artifacts of war the young airman was to see.

After more than 49 hours in the air, Lefferts put his wheels down at Korat. DeGroff and his fellow crewmembers climbed down. The ancient red dirt of the Korat plateau that surrounded the runway signaled that they were a long way from home.

2

Thailand 

This country of Thailand is really funny. Heard on the last flight where some Thais wanted us out of their country because we were ruining their culture because we (US) didn’t have any. We are only 200 years old while Thailand is 2000. As I look out the window there are no farm-yard lights, only fires here and there. Very few highways, but a lot of mud paths.

—Lynn Gates, Batcat

Most Batcats had neither experience with nor knowledge of the peoples, cultures, and history of Southeast Asia much less Thailand and the Korat plateau. A few never endeavored to learn much, some never ventured off the Base, but many more were eager to learn, explore, appreciate the people, and make the most of an otherwise lonely combat tour of duty. Among them good airmen, like Lynn Gates who loved flying Batcat missions, enjoyed what he got to see of the country, and for the many like him the Thai experience was sometimes romantic, often rewarding, and nearly always enigmatic. Many of the American airmen traveled far and wide in search of friendship, romance, adventure, and just plain fun. Most went at least to Bangkok in search of the sensual pleasures of sight, sound, taste, and touch, or to see for themselves the astonishing splendor of ancient monuments and cultural treasures. Those that ventured into the museums, temples, and libraries garnered an abiding sense of place and perhaps their own microscopic role in the drama of Thai history. The Batcats who tread this path came to see in the red earth of the Korat Plateau the lifeblood of a proud people.

Unlike Vietnam, which underwent a thousand years of Chinese domination, Thailand does not have a Sinicized cultural tradition. Instead its culture developed both from indigenous traditions and a process of Indianization or San-skritization. What follows is a historical and ethnographical sketch of Thailand and the people of the Korat region.

No one knows very much for certain about the earliest humans to inhabit the Korat plateau, but the region was probably sparsely populated by homo sapiens for many millennia. Among the early populations were pygmy Negritos and other hunters and gatherers whose subsistence methods were best adaptable to the grassy terrain produced by the savanna soil. Eventually Austroasiatic people, perhaps migrants from the Malay Peninsula and further south, established themselves in the region and developed horticultural societies based on rice cultivation. It was during the period of their habitation that the water buffalo was probably first domesticated, and the archaeological record reveals such things as more than primitive musical instruments as well as decorated pottery, indications of a relatively sophisticated culture. Eventually the early peoples were assimilated by migrating Austroasiatic Mons whose origins no one seems to know for certain, but they may have been, in part, from the north (probably Central China). These Mons had been established since prehistoric times in what is now southern Burma and thus were genetically and culturally no longer Chinese nor a southern people but an amalgamated population.

Between 500 and 1000 C.E. a great empire known as Dvaravati had established its capital city in present day west central Thailand. Called by some Thai sources the Empire of the Civilized Mons because it became Buddhist, the kingdom was an Indianized/Sanskritized society as a result of cultural contact with Indian Hindu traders, priests, and Buddhist missionaries. The very name Dvaravati, can mean in Sanskrit consisting of doors.

The Indianization of the region continued under the Khmers who came to dominate the area during the Angkor Period (802-1432 C.E.). The Khmer temple ruins at Phimai (now preserved and maintained as a Thai National Park) near Korat provide a dramatic testament to the Hindu/Brahmanical and Buddhistic legacy left by Angkor.