Invert patch c. 1973

Why INVERT?

Inverted '5' logo c. 1973

“ Invert, Invert, Invert, this is Gombey Sixty Nine,
I gotta get some fighters so please stay on the line.
Guess you cannot hear me, it's the same thing every time,
Think I'll call up Cricket, they always read me fine.”

The Cricket's Lament (23rd TASS gedrankenspiel)
© John Taylor - NKP, Thailand (04/16/1966)  

Somewhere along the banks of the Mekong river lies a small town, know to the local inhabitants as Nakhon Phanom.  Since it is English phonetic spelling, sometimes one finds it spelled Nakhonpanom.

Either way you slice it, from the window seat of a riverfront restaurant there, near what was known by GI's as the Ho Chi Minh clock, one can ponder the vista across the river, east to the Anam mountains of Laos.   Hanoi lies some two hundred and twenty seven miles northeast of here.
South, down Highway 212, following the Mekong riverbank towards Cambodia, lies the ancient Buddhist temple of Wat Tat Phanom.

 

  Driving nine miles west from the riverfront at Nakhon Phanom, out towards Korat down Highway 22, on the north side of the road, you find the gated road that leads to a civil aerodrome. What used to be there is largely overgrown - a fenced area with a runway and building, surrounded by forested jungle scrub.  
From 1966 to 1975 it was a busy military air base identified as T-55, and known to us fallangs[1]as NKP.   Some had other names for it, but that is a tale for another day.

Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Air Force Base

  Today, little except runway 33/15 is maintained, with a new terminal where Thai Airways uses the airport to provide service to the growing tourist trade of the Northeastern provinces.  Since there was always a small airport on the North side of the town, the old Royal Thai airbase is known now as Nakhon Phanom West.   You can find it on a world atlas at latitude N 17° 23', longitude E 104° 39'.   
Somebody once said:
                                        "NKP was the worst base in Thailand, but the best base we had in Vietnam".

  Although officially owned by the Royal Thai Air Force, the 56th CSG (Combat Support Group) was tenant-manager for the 56 SOW (Special Operations Wing), 7th Air Force, USAF. They financed, supplied and operated the facility until October 1975, when most American forces departed Thailand.  
  Apart from the C-141 transport - the Silver Samlar[2] that flew the daily Thailand circuit, NKP hosted a diverse array of propeller-powered military aircraft:
A-1E SANDY's, AT-28's, O-2 Cessnas, A-33 Dragonfly's, OV-10 NAIL's, C-47 Goony Birds, AC-130 Spectre's, CH-3 and HH-53 Jolly Green Giants, and some odd DC-130's that air-launched drones for the Buffalo Hunters.  
  In addition to USAF/RTAF operations, there were a number of non-military organizations, like Air America , Continental Air Services, Air Asia and Trans Asia, that flew in and out of there with everything from old C-123's and DC-6's to Cessnas, Beechcraft Bonanzas and Pilatus Porter STOL aircraft.   Other activities there had code names and call signs like Knife (21st SOS), Cricket (23rd TASS), USSAG (United States Support Activities Group), Red Horse (556th CES).  
One program run there was a sensitive joint operation of 7th /13th Air Force known as Igloo White, and managed by an obscure group called Task Force Alpha.   

 

 

Subordinate to HQ, 505TCG (Tactical Control Group) at Don Muang IAP, Bangkok, Detachment 5, 621st TCS operated as one of a small constellation of Tactical Air Control radar units under the callsign INVERT, and contributed to an overlapping radar control network for Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

 

  This picture is a blow-up of the base picture above, outlining the compound. The entrance gate is depicted by a gap in the perimeter line.
  Note the security guard shack and the Squadron Administration building between the gate and the Ops building.   The 'sunrise' photo above, was taken from the road near the hooch area.
  Note the Radio site, located remotely down at the south end of the compound. There was an insignificant footbridge on the path leading down to the radio shop that claimed quite a few 'kills' in the dark.

 

 
  Invert monitored and managed a 500 nautical mile - diameter hemisphere of airspace from the highest point at NKP.   They watched everyone who ever took off, flew, and landed over North Vietnam, Laos, or China as either a standard radar reflection (known in the trade as a skin-paint), or by technical means that I still don't know if I can talk about, even today.   Either way, it definitely had me laughing a lot.

 

Living Quarters
  The Invert permanent party quarters (hootches) were located east of Headquarters, 56 SOW, and west of the Officer's Club, on the north side of the road across from radar operations.   The wooden hootches were a common memory for all U.S. personnel stationed in Vietnam and Thailand, and were well-constructed by Red Horse crews out of locally available rough-cut teak and painted a rust-red color.   They were built on concrete pillars and connected by raised concrete pathways to avoid flooding during the rains, and some of them are still in use today at NKP by elements of the Thai Air Force.   The exteriors were plank-board and fly-screen structures with an exit and steps on either end of the building.   The roofing and hinged drop-sides were made from corrugated tin and usually propped open for ventilation as windows except during inclement weather.   In '71, one character painted a Peace symbol on one of the roofs, but I don't recall seeing it there in '73.  
   Inside, gray steel lockers with taped-over louver vents punctuated rows of bed frames and mosquito nets either side of a central aisle of linoleum tile flooring.   Bedposts sat in rusted water-filled coffee cans that kept the insects from crawling up into the bedding.   Green Army blankets covered constantly damp sheets stamped as originating from the laundry at CCK (Ching Chuan Kang AB, Taiwan).   In some hootches, folks used to rearrange the lockers into cubicles to achieve some sort of privacy and they were all decorated with calendars, Playboy pin-ups, and photos of families at home. During the dry season of '74, some of the open-bay barracks were upgraded to multiple two-man quarters, with access steps to the sidewalks off the sides (see photo).

  The shower and toilet building was separate from the sleeping quarters, and conveniently located in the center of the living quarters, between the RDI (Red Devil Inn) and the rocket bunker.   Sanitation was accomplished by a wet-sump septic tank located next to the building.   The closest thing to privacy one could find was while using the red-painted short-door wooden toilet stalls, and only then after you checked for insects, lizards and snakes first.   At least once a week, some agitated soul would come rocketing out of a stall backwards with pants around their ankles, swearing and hollering about something found in there with them.  The others, half asleep while showering, shaving or brushing their teeth at the sinks, would maybe glance up briefly and try to connect a face with the rear-quarters of the now wide-awake victim on parade.   At times, we would have no hot water for the showers, and shaving got painful.   The open shower area was shared in the afternoons by the GIs and Thai men and women who worked on base.   The Thais were a very modest people, and the men showered while wearing their skivvies, while the women showered wearing their sarongs.   One soon got used to being naked and lathering up in a room full of dressed people while they discussed the physical attributes of the various fallangs on parade.   I learned the Issan dialect but feigned ignorance, just to hear the conversation which alternated between really complimentary to downright cruel.   The fat and the thin; the tall and the short; the black and the white - all were subject to the-long-and-the-short-of-it in quite some detail. The word 'Gop' (frog) came up a lot.

  The only areas that were air-conditioned at Invert were the Operations building, the equipment shacks and the RDI - not the barracks.   At that time my most prized possessions were:
(a) My P-38,
(b) An electric blanket that went under the bottom sheet to keep them dry, and
(c) Two 100-watt light bulbs in my locker to stop the clothes and shoes from rotting too fast.

   In mid-April just before the monsoons came, it got over 110°F with 95% humidity, and that blanket was a luxury that let me slide between hot, dry sheets instead of peeling them apart wet, like they had just come out of the spin-cycle.  After the Song-Krahn water festival the rains started and things would cool off to a reasonable level, but humidity would be at 100%, and you could never get dry again.  From there on out, some kind of fungus similar to athlete's foot inhabited my whole body in a minor way, that no amount of showering and scrubbing could ameliorate until months after I left for Germany.  
   The other problem was mosquitoes.  Base Civil Engineers routinely sprayed DDT by hand and with a fogger vehicle that misted the klong ditches along the roads, and all personnel were provided orange chloroquinine tablets to be taken once a week.    Taking a whole one caused most folks gastric distress, since they were basically designed to be toxic enough to kill the parasites in one's bloodstream. My solution was to break it up to take it with meals over a number of days.
   One of our crew sought to perform 'Goode Workes' with his girlfriend downtown, since so many of the local population suffered from malaria.  He got high marks for his missionary zeal, but his Thai was not very sound. She ended up taking one a day instead of one a week, for which she suffered greatly. Needless to say, she didn't remain his Tealahk[3] much after that.

 

  Getting over to the Commando Inn for chow in the rains was a real chore to cross a valley of mud.   It was a long hike to get up to the roads and traverse the base on the macadam, so a lot of our off-duty time was spent in our Casual bar with its dimly-lit atmosphere of arctic refrigeration, red leather upholstery, beer and cigarette fumes.   A Michelob or a Carling Black Label cost five cents.   Jim Beam or ‘Cutty cost a quarter, and still people would crowd the place for Happy Hour.   On pay-day weekends the amount of cash in the pot at the card games was just disturbing.   The Thai Army guards came in to play poker a lot, and had to keep their weapons with them.
  Some days, with drinks, dancing girls, cards, loaded UZI’s hanging off chair backs - when coupled with the country music playing on the Pioneer stereo, it was kind of like an Asian version of Tombstone there - 'cept we had penicillin.

The Red Devil Inn

  East of the hootches was a red-cinder running track, but most folks ran their aerobics on the latterite perimeter road, out where modern airpower met jungle scrub.  Out there, US and Thai security forces patrolled the trip flares, concertina razor wire and tangle-foot perimeter fences with Cadillac-Gage V200 'pig' armored cars, M151-A1 jeeps, and M113 APC 'track's.  
    After midnight, the DJ's at AFTN radio used to put on a show called The Other Side (the other side of midnight, I guess). They ran current rock 'n roll requests to keep us troops awake and alert on shift, and most requests seemed to come from the SP's[4] out there in perimeter-land. or up in the towers, valiantly trying to do their trick alone. Swings and mids had various names - shift, watch, trick, depending on what branch or part of the service they were in.

  East of the cinder track were the air-conditioned Officers' hootches, next to the 'O'-Club, where 'rolling' and other club antics had been prohibited by the base commander.  The NCO Club was decorated with the unit emblems of every organization working at NKP, and it was a much more entertaining place.   There was the occasional brawl where Para-Rescue PJ's and Combat Controllers sided against Army Special Forces over who was more hard-core, or who really rated wearing berets - but we never rolled beer cans.   Some folks tossed ice cubes and orange peels on stage at the Go-Go girls a lot though.

  Around 1973, somebody wrote to their Congressman complaining about 'lewd and lascivious acts' being performed on-stage by female entertainment at the NCO Club.
I personally never saw a lewd act performed on stage - just a few attempted ones.  
I just knew that as a Cherry Boy[5] I should definitely not sit up in the front row.
  Eventually, we were briefed at base Commanders' Call at the indoor cinema that we were to be visited by a Congressional delegation, with Press, on a 'fact-finding tour'.  

  The area of Nakhon Phanom Province (Jungwat Nakhonpanom) was considered by the Thai government to be a heavily Communist and NVA-infiltrated region on account of the very high population of Vietnamese refugees who had settled the province since the French Indochina war days.   Some had fought against the French for the Viet-Minh. Many had fought with the French and were Catholics who had been persecuted and exiled by the Ho Chi Minh regime after 1954.   Most still had family in Vietnam and were sympathetic to the Ho Chi Minh regime.   We were warned upon arrival that it was no exageration that NVA Intelligence would know our name, rank, serial number, and the names and addresses of our families back in the 'States within a week or two. Too much going on at NKP on a daily basis risked too many peoples' lives to get publicized to North Vietnamese Intelligence, and we knew that anything seen during the visit was guaranteed to end up in the New York Times[6].
  If approached by visitors, we were advised not to lie to anybody under any circumstances, but to refer all 'sticky' questions put to us to the BIO (Base Information Officer).  Since I worked night shift I never got the option of getting tossed in jail for telling them to bugger off and stop trying to get our people killed.

    Nakhon Phanom had an old Catholic church up on the river road on the north end of town that I used to spend hours visiting. Due to the tropic heat, algae grew all over the stucco walls and the place made me feel like I was in South America or Europe.   The graveyard had those familiar carved marble tombs and headstones, and I could actually feel homesick until I opened my eyes, and the cognitive dissonance would drag me back - the names were all Vietnamese.  

    What surprised me most about Northern Thailand was how cold it could get during the dry Winter months. In the early mornings it could be around 34°F, and damp. There would be a fog hanging over the rice paddys and roads, I was shivering in my fatigues, boots and a field jacket with liner, and I would watch lone villagers by the highway, wearing nothing but shorts, sandals and maybe a moth-eaten old sweater.

   On sunny Spring days we hung out at the blue-painted concrete section of klong ditch known as Sunova Beach. On rainy Summer days, well, life got interesting...
  At the Travis library before I left for Thailand, I looked up a precipitation map of the Nakhon region in an old geography book.   It indicated that there were 200+ inches of rainfall a year, but it inconveniently forgot to mention that it only rained from May to September.  We had an outdoor movie theater that we frequented a lot, and I tried watching Jesus Christ Superstar in my helmet and poncho, but got rained out three days in a row.  

   Starting generators in the rain out at the Radio site when the power failed was always an electrifying experience so the trick was to use a stick to punch it on. 
   I never expected rain to hurt.  The impact would cause red mud clouds to rise up from the ground six or eight feet, until it all just disappeared in the sanguine gloom.
  One morning I was inside the revetment behind the shack, just watering the banana trees, and I trod on a piece of paper...

  I looked down just in time to see me getting zapped by a silver cobra that had been out sunning itself.   I must have jumped straight back seven feet without even flexing a muscle, and I don't think I even buttoned my fly.   I figured I had better tell someone so they wouldn't just find me dead out there with my thing in my hand - my mother would have never understood.       
  Walking outside again to show my supervisor, he grabbed my collar to stop me.  Six inches in front of my face was an emerald-green Crait hanging out of a tree by its' tail.   I'd give it a 7 on the PF scale [6].   He probably saved me from just ruining my whole day.  

  There was a friendly rivalry between the NAIL FAC pilots and the INVERT crew, culminating in a ritual New Years' Day flag-football game on the field across the street.   Our cheerleaders consisted of our First Sargeant and others in their Invert color-coordinated red, pleated mini-skirts, white tops with the inverted '5' logo; well-stuffed brassieres, fish-net stockings, high-top sneakers, wigs and make-up.   They worked the game, complete with pom-poms and cheers that would make a sailor blush - all in the finest Katoi[7] tradition.  I don't remember who won, but we drank all the Michelob, Singha and Budweiser, iced in garbage cans on the 50-yard line.   Some brought large jugs of Lau-lau rice wine that was a lot like Sake, but sweeter.  
  The softball games on the field across the street were just as interesting, with the added hazard of getting beer poured on you from above from fans perched up on the backstop fencing. Somebody stole a whole OV-10 Bronco aircraft from the NAIL folks (23rd TASS) one day and hid it. I never heard if they got it back.

Today
     Apart from a small company of Royal Thai Army guarding the commercial airport, NKP was not maintained at the scale seen above after U.S. forces left.
Invert radar systems went off the air 5:00pm Friday, September 12 and Det. 5, 621TCS was officially deactivated October 1, 1975.

     Today, only a few wooden buildings, steel revetments and concrete antenna poles remain where the Invert compound stood. Overgrown by scrub, the home of numerous snakes and wildlife, the rest of the buildings and roads are returning to the forest.

A special "Thank You" is long overdue from all NKP RTAFB residents to the truckers of the 519th Transportation Battalion, US Army.  
In addition to USAF operations, there were a number of US Army, US Navy, and oddly enough, even some US Coast Guard working out of NKP.
  The 519th TC Bn delivered almost all of the supplies, food, ammunition, parts, fuel, clothing, beer, cigarettes and personal commodities that we lived on, for which not nearly enough gratitude has been given. Everything got delivered to us solely through their efforts on a long, dusty and dangerous monthly convoy from the port of Satahip in the Gulf of Siam near Bangkok and when they arrived, the word would go through the base that the shelves would finally get stocked again.  

  The US Army Special Forces' Mobile Launch Team - 3 was stationed next door as part of the tri-services MACVSOG operations, C/C North. Among other things, they were involved in training and assisting various indigenous Thai, Laotian and Cambodian military operations in Thailand, Laos and North Vietnam. Maybe in the near future somebody will develop web pages on Heavy Hook, Green Light and Bright Light operations that I could point to.

In the final analysis, NKP was not just an Air Force facility, and to all of those who served there, I would just like to say:

Whatever our previous perceptions were;
Yesterday, we were 'mostly Green'
Today, we are 'mostly Brotherhood'.
Either way, we are 'mostly Here'
And always, 'mostly Remember'

~Jepp, 8/10/2000

weatherunderground - nakhonpanom

Some other great "Mai Gohôk" [8] Links:

The 56th ACW Page   John Sweets' Air Commando Page.
The 505th TCGp Page   Ken Kimbrough's Tactical Air Control Page.
Laos: The Secret War   Erv Davis' Laos webpage
The Batcat Page   Larry Westin's 553 Recon Squadron Page.
The Callsign Project   Larry Hughes' Callsign Project Page.
The Viet-REMF Home Page   Bob Wheatley's Viet-REMF Page.
The 361 TEWS Home Page   David Steiner's EC-47 'Electric Goons' Page
The Korat AB Page   Bob Freitag's Korat AB Page.
The 23rd TASS Page   Richard Strong's "Lost War That Never Was"
Operation Heavy Green   Ron Haden's Lima Site 85 Page
The QU-22 Page   Jack Hallett's QU-22B aircraft Page.
The 21st SOS Page    Jim Henthorn's Special Operations Page.
USAF SAR/SOS Association   The Land of the Jolly Green Giant.
The A-1 Skyraider Association   The Hobos, Spads and Sandys Page.
Firefly33   A Memorial to Capt. James W. Herrick Jr., USAF
The 519th TC Bn, US Army   Joe Wilson's US Army Transporters Page
MACVSOG - Heavy Hook   Mobile Launch Team-3 references for NKP
The TLC Brotherhood   Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia veterans Page.
Books about The Secret War   Jeff Glasser's Book
The Secret Vietnam War   Jeff Glasser's web page
The POW/MIA Page   The names may change, but the feeling remains.
The Unofficial USAF Locator   Charles Jones' most useful Locator Page.
     
Wat Tat Phanom   One of the main pilgrimage sites of Buddhism.
Sacred Sites   Other sacred sites of the world's religions

 

...and also from 'The Western Front' (Thailand)...

 

 



Thank you for visiting this site, and remember - your assistance and contributions will help us to help little Chris get his web page together right, and to live a fuller, more meaningful life with the few resources that God gave him.
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This page is dedicated to the memory of Ed Jones; Major, USAF; A Thud pilot who left a lot of his blood on Route-Pac Six, and a personal friend of Mme. Chiang ( the Dragon Lady ).
He said he always felt that it would have been nice to have been known for something besides flying ne'er-do-wells into southern China, but what exactly he meant by that, we'll never know.

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Last Updated: April 17, 2003

 

 

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[1]  Fallang (Issan dialect), Farrang – Thai language adaptation meaning 'foreigner'.

[2] Samlar – The Thai name for the bicycle taxi (pedi-cab) seen from Suez, east. The ’Silver Samlar’ was the daily C-141 transport that delivered us to/from our connecting Flying Tiger Airlines flights at Clark AFB, Philippines.

[3] Tealahk – Sweetheart.

[4] SP's      – The 56th Security Police Squadron provided air base combat security and defended NKP during a number of ground attacks. On my tour there were alerts and all-night flare drops by Spectre gunships overhead, but no attacks that I knew of.

[5]  Cherry Boy - A virgin to operations in Southeast Asia - also, an FNG.

[6]  It's a funny world: Today I count Sally, wife of the late Times editor, Sam Rothman as a close friend.

 

[7]  Katoi – a female impersonator. An FNG's first downtown encounter, if they got 'set up' by their buddies - but ain't that just what friends are for?...

[8]  Mai Gohôk – No jive, as in "Would I lie to you? --- Have I ever met you before?".