A Tigerhound Memoir by Jim Gordon INTRODUCTION          DANANG, EARLY 1968           FAC AIRCRAFT           PLEIKU, 1968           COVEY OPS FROM PLEIKU VISUAL RECONNAISSANCE & INTERDICTION           EXTRA PHOTOS           LINKS           FAC PATCHES

At the end of 1967, after six months in a back-room desk job, I "escaped" from 7th Air Force Headquarters in Saigon by extending my 1-year tour in Viet Nam for an additional six months.  7th Air Force granted my request for reassignment to a forward air control (FAC) unit, but surprised me with an assignment to spend the next year with the 20th Tactical Air Support Squadron, headquartered at Danang Airbase in the northern part of the Republic of Viet Nam.  At Danang, I worked in the Tigerhound/Tally Ho Task Force, a MACV joint-service office that served as the 20 TASS' intelligence office, supporting the squadron's FAC, reconnaissance and interdiction mission over the southern Ho Chi Minh Trail and the very northernmost edge of South VietNam.  The Ho Chi Minh Trail was actually a network of dirt roads and trails that served as the logistics channel from North Viet Nam through southeastern Laos and into South Viet Nam and Cambodia.  Although the office had been set up as the Tigerhound/Tally Ho Project, also working on the Tally Ho area of Route Pack 1 just north of the demilitarized zone between North and South Viet Nam, the increasingly-intense air defense environment over the Tally Ho area forced our propellor-driven FAC aircraft to stay in the DMZ, and as 1968 progressed, 7th Air Force began to use jet FACs from other units to cover the Tally Ho area.  The squadron had centralized its operating locations at Hue/Phu Bai, Danang and Pleiku before I arrived.  Squadron aircraft from those bases used the "Covey" callsign along with a three-digit number that identified the individual pilot or navigator and his home base.