1st MIBARS Handheld Photo Intelligence Support

by Gene Zwarycz

All pictures were taken by Gene Zwarycz

I arrived in DaNang in March 1968 and shortly after I arrived we all had moved into the Modern Hotel .

I was a 96B20 and was assigned as an II to Det B , along with Norm Karis and a couple other FNG’s , can’t remember the CO’s name, but I do remember Sgt Ferris and Sgt AC West as being there when we arrived.

Meeting all the guys in the II and repro section as time went on, I met John Ripper who at that time was very active, if not the only one, in the hand held program and I asked a lot of questions about how to go about getting into it, he helped me along the way and as they say, the rest is history.

The areas we covered in our missions were primarily were in I Corp, from the DMZ south to the Central Highlands, around Kontum, and west as far as Laos and Cambodia.

The 21st RAC normally flew two missions per day, one into the mountains to the west with 2 aircraft, one high and one low, and another solo mission along the coast from about the DMZ south to Chu Lai while I was flying with them

The units we supported requested these missions through G-2, I-Corp, who in turn would contact us for support based on Intel received from the ground troops, aerial imagery we interpreted, or ARVN Intel.

We also flew missions on request for the Marines, Air Force, Special Forces and the ARVN’s.

I had always had a love for flying and was even in flight school, almost done with a private ticket while a civilian before the "Greetings" letter. I would often hitch a ride on our Goodguy, wherever I could and later on while heavily involved in the handheld program, I had the opportunity to fly in many different kinds of aircraft during the remainder of my tours in country. I flew with the AirForce, in O-2’s,the ARVN’s in support of the Special Forces, in those old 34’s (That funny looking chopper with the huge engine hanging off the front and the pilot sitting about 2 stories up)and with the Marines in OV-10 Bronco’s and the Army in all kinds of Huey models, from gun ships to Medivacs

Somewhere along the way Mel Glenn came along into Det B and also wanted to get into this handheld program although I don’t remember exactly when, as it was only 40 years ago. Besides the hand held photos that we took while flying we also were involved in support of the ground troops directing air strikes, navel gun fire, artillery, marking targets and adjusting fire.

USS New Jersey

The New Jersey off the coast after we were able to have her give us a fire mission, we went out to see her, but were told by radio to "Stay Away" and don’t get too close. They actually had security Drones circling the ship all the time.

During the remainder of my tours through until my Deros in Feb 1970 I had flown with many different Army, Air Force and Marine flight units along with our very own Beaver, of which our Det B pilot and I were involved in an accident where we broke the airplane pretty good when we hit a tree on Hwy 1 on our way south to Chu Lai.. That’s another story later on for our "Second" Reunion Book, hopefully not 38 years from now, I’ll be 99 ,God willing !

That little tree episode, along with the pilot and I being MIA for three days on a Chu Lai drunk cost me a stripe and the pilot got transferred somewhere down South.

A large majority of missions were with the 21st RAC located out at Marble Mountain, we flew in O1-A,E and D models as shown in the below photo.

This particular photo was taken at Marble Mountain just before we took off on April 27, 1969,the day the ammo dump at Da Nang main was attacked by some sappers, and blew up, and remained burning and blowing off shells for the next three days.

Our mission was to fly ‘cover" in and around the Ammo Dump, it was truly amazing to see this thing blowing up from the air, where we would see the explosions and than the implosions where all the exploded dust in the air would get sucked back into the center of the explosion resulting in the clearest view of the ground I had ever seen, than the percussion, which would actually shake the aircraft around quite a bit. We didn’t stay around too long as there was an awful lot of air traffic in the area and the stuff was blowing up all around and no one had any idea of the direction of the next bunkers blowing up or what it would send into the air.

We managed to get as much distance between our asses and ground just to be on the safe side, flew around for an hour or so, dodging all kinds of traffic, and than returned to base.

We did, although, get lost one day while I was in the back seat and with the Lt flying, we managed to wander into North Vietnam by mistake. The mistake of being lost wasn’t a big deal to us as the local NVA or VC in the area didn’t even know we were there.

Going over some maps for an up-coming mission. The Lt was a real good pilot and a great person, friendly and loved the company of someone on those longer missions, especially due to us getting lost that one time. He would taxi out to the active and take off, and after getting ground clearances, he would key his mike and say "Z, take us for a ride today".

He would sit back, make sure I didn’t screw up while I flew for awhile and when we were ready to come in he would land us, again as I couldn’t see the runway. Didn’t happen very often but was fun when it did.

There was a second stick stored on the left side of the aircraft right behind his seat that would snap right into another control stick socket right in front of me, along with throttle and mixture quadrant. We had some real easy flights along with some real hair rising flights with all kinds of excitement.

On one particular mission just west of Go Noi island around the "Tennis Courts" we started to pick up some ground fire while supporting the Marines and finally were able to mark the target and get some "Fast Movers"(Attack Jets) on target for some strafing runs or some Napalm.

The Jet jockeys saw us by the markings on top of the wings and said to run a race track pattern east to west just below the ridge line while they would do the same 90 degrees to us, coming in high and dropping at the ridgeline and into the target area.

We did as ordered and the first one came north to south in as we were doing our east to west with no problems, dropped his load and went around for a second pass. His wingman was next, we heard and felt him as he went over us with what seemed like only a10 foot spread from the bottom of his aircraft to our wings.

Scared the crap out of us and shook the s**t out of the airplane as he went on his way. Lt radioed back about how *%$#++#@ close he was and the jet jockey replied back that he didn’t even see us as he went by. We dropped a lot lower below that ridge line for the next couple of passes and returned home safe, but shaken.

While flying support for the 5th Special Forces in I Corp, I was dropped off at Ha Tan SF Camp for insertion into a Long Range Recon patrol to photograph a “Sand Table” ( A scale model of the SF Camp done by the local VC or NVA) that was discovered by a local patrol. We never went out due to Intell indicating an attack on the camp any day.

I ended up stuck there waiting for the attack that never came. I lived in a hut for the next three days with the A Team guys, winning a lot of money playing poker while waiting to get back to DaNang.

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