An R-4B Hoverfly like the one Air Commandos used in the first helicopter rescue. Robert F. Dorr collection

Carter Harman took the job to be near his mother.

The R-4B Hoverfly was built in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Harman was a newly minted second lieutenant, a pilot and a Connecticut boy to the core, eager to snap up a proffered assignment to the Sikorsky factory. He was just another Army pilot, Harman thought, but as soon as he wrote “R-4B” in his logbook, they told him he was going to be an Air Commando.

A common characteristic of many special operations aircraft is the ability to sneak in and out of tight places in a hurry – often called short takeoff and landing (STOL) capability. No aircraft does STOL better than a helicopter.

“I didn’t know what that meant,” said Harman. “And can you guess what they told me next?”

They told Harman they were sending him to Burma.

“I can’t say I ‘got’ the significance of rotary-wing immediately,” said Harman. He was interviewed a decade ago after not talking with anyone about his experience since immediately after the war.

A common characteristic of many special operations aircraft is the ability to sneak in and out of tight places in a hurry – often called short takeoff and landing (STOL) capability. No aircraft does STOL better than a helicopter.

The voices of airmen in Air Force Special Operations Command’s (AFSOC) history make up the bedrock of this narrative about iconic flying machines operated by the command and its predecessors. This will be a quick look only, and will by necessity leave out many other iconic aircraft others will argue should have been included. The World War II Air Commandos in Burma alone, however, had almost enough unusual aircraft types to fill a volume of Jane’s All The World’s Aircraft. Think of the bloated C-46 Commando cargo ship touching down on a semi-paved strip and being swallowed up by surrounding elephant grass. Or a UC-64 Norseman utility plane touching down near enemy troops where there’s no pavement at all.

The 1st Air Commando Group, led by Philip G. Cochran and John Alison, both lieutenant colonels, flew C-47 Skytrains, P-51A Mustangs, B-25 Mitchells, and other heavy iron. They introduced the L-1 Vigilant liaison plane. All of the wartime aircraft were tailored for unorthodox missions, carried out by special operators with extraordinary courage. From that point of view, Harman’s ungainly R-4B helicopter was just one more odd bird in an unconventional flock.

The Hoverfly and the First Helicopter Rescue

The Sikorsky R-4B was a box-shaped machine with a 180-horsepower engine and a 38-foot main rotor. Former Staff Sgt. Jim Phelan, who was Harman’s crew chief, described it this way: “Imagine a jungle gym on a children’s playground. Now, cover it up with canvas. Now, take your kitchen eggbeater and attach it to the top. You have some metal, some fabric, and a lot of motion as the thing tries to tear itself apart.” The metal frame of the R-4B was actually covered with a layer of thin linen, but crews routinely called it canvas.

In 1944, arrangements were made to send four R-4Bs to Burma to assist in rescue efforts.

The helicopters were to augment L-1 Vigilant and L-5 Sentinel light planes that frequently landed behind the lines to rescue troops separated from their units.

On April 24, Harman reached the downed quartet and began hauling the men to safety. Since the R-4B could carry only its pilot and one other, it took Harman most of a day to evacuate the three Britons.

On April 21, 1944, an L-1 rescued three British soldiers behind Japanese lines but crashed, still behind the lines. Pilot Sgt. Ed Hladovcak, known as “Murphy,” and the three soldiers sought cover in a rice paddy. An L-5 found them but could not land in vegetated terrain crisscrossed by paddy fields and surrounded by slopes. The L-5 made a low-level pass and dropped a handwritten message to Hladovcak: “MOVE UP MOUNTAIN. JAPANESE NEARBY.” A radio call went out for Harman.

The toughest part of the rescue for Harman was the 600-mile solo trip from Lalaghat to “Aberdeen,” a temporary airstrip in Burma deep inside Japanese territory. Part of the journey involved crossing over high mountain peaks, a challenge for the underpowered helicopter. The YR-4B had a range of only about 150 miles, so Harman had to carry a supply of gas in jerry cans and stop several times to refuel.

Once at Aberdeen, Harman was guided to “Murphy” by an L-5.

On April 24, Harman reached the downed quartet and began hauling the men to safety. Since the R-4B could carry only its pilot and one other, it took Harman most of a day to evacuate the three Britons.

“The final part of the rescue was aimed at Hladovcak,” said Harman. “‘Murphy’ was now alone near his crash site. He was signaling, trying to tell me something. I didn’t understand the signal, but learned later that he was shouting about Japanese troops bearing down on him. As I approached him, soldiers broke out of the treeline about 1,000 feet from him, some with their rifles held in the air.”

Harman landed, picked up Hladovcak, and took off quickly.

Years later, Harman learned that the approaching troops were British long-range raiders known as Chindits rather than Japanese.

The combat search and rescue (CSAR) mission has been on and off the roster of duties assigned to AFSOC and its predecessors – mostly off – throughout the history of unorthodox air operations. The helicopter came and stayed – until 2008. Special operators used some small, underpowered Sikorsky H-5s – the Navy version is remembered as the craft Mickey Rooney flew in the film The Bridges at Toko-ri – before acquiring larger flying machines.

Also during Korea, special operators used a Sikorsky H-19 to retrieve the wreckage of a crashed Soviet MiG-15 fighter to be studied by stateside scientific experts. During the Vietnam War, special operations squadrons flew Bell UH-1F single-engine and UH-1N twin-engine Huey helicopters during sensitive, behind-the-lines work. Versions of the H-3 Jolly Green and HH-53 Super Jolly Green appeared during Vietnam but evolved into the MH-53M Pave Low that ultimately became AFSOC’s last helicopter. The MH-60G Pave Hawk provided yeoman special ops duties in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Douglas A-1 Skyraider

Fixed-wing aircraft designed during World War II remained a vital part of the special ops inventory long after the arrival of the jet age. Air Commandos went to South Vietnam in 1962 with B-26 Invaders, C-47 Skytrains, and T-28 Trojans. Soon, they began to operate an aircraft that had a distinguished record with the Navy and Marine Corps but had never previously been used by the Air Force, let alone the Air Force’s elite, unorthodox-warfare squadrons. By 1964, the Douglas A-1 Skyraider began arriving in Air Commando squadrons in South Vietnam. It had made its first flight two decades earlier and in terms of its design features was very much a creation of World War II, although it didn’t get into combat during that conflict.

Though it was only one of the special ops missions assigned to the Air Force Skyraider, many remember the aircraft as “Sandy,” the generic term for both pilot and aircraft leading and protecting combat rescue forces behind the lines. The Skyraider kept up its role in the “Sandy” mission until replaced in October 1972 by the Vought A-7D, the Air Force version of the plane the Navy called the Corsair II.

The men who flew the “Spad” – the new nickname the Skyraider acquired during the Vietnam era – were an irreverent band of mavericks. At first restricted to functioning only as advisers, they took along on each sortie a South Vietnamese observer for political and legal reasons. “We had one guy who was the observer everyone wanted,” said retired Col. Charles Vasiliadis of the 602nd Air Commando Squadron. “He could sleep no matter how abruptly you were maneuvering. That meant he wasn’t in the way when you carried out your ‘adviser’ duties by strafing and bombing the Viet Cong.”

The Skyraider’s Wright R-3350 radial engine belched, trembled, and leaked oil. It also powered the ’50s majestic DC-7 and Super Constellation, delivered a hefty 3,250 horsepower, and had the “oomph” to get a pilot out of a tight spot.

But the engine was a maintainer’s headache. “They were terrors to work on,” said former Airman 1st Class Monty Lawrence, a flight-line mech. “Everything was king-sized and in large numbers – seven nose-mounted magnetos that were practically inaccessible, a carburetor as big as a 15-inch TV set. It took three sturdy young airmen to pull the four-bladed propeller through every morning for preflight. But it was powerful! On a jam acceleration, while in the chocks and an eight-point tiedown on, you’d swear you were going to snap-roll from the torque.”

On March 10, 1966, under heavy fire, Maj. Bernard F. Fisher made a high-risk landing in an A-1E to rescue a downed pilot at the besieged A Shau Special Forces camp. Learning of Fisher’s courageous act, Lt. Col. Gene Deatrick, newly arrived commander of the 1st Air Commando Squadron, remembered that no airman had yet won the highest American award for valor. On the phone to Col. William McGinty in Saigon, Deatrick proclaimed, “I’ve got this family man with five kids who doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, and the strongest cuss word he uses is ‘Shucks!’ He has just pulled off the bravest act of the war. I want to nominate him for the Medal of Honor.” President Lyndon B. Johnson presented the medal at the White House. Fisher’s A-1E 132649 became the first Medal of Honor aircraft from any war to be preserved and is at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.

Deatrick was soon swept into another of the dramatic events of the war. On July 20, 1966, Deatrick was flying over a streambed in Laos when he happened upon a person waving for help. Deatrick directed helicopters to the rescue and learned only months later that the lone figure was Lt. Dieter Dengler, a U.S. Navy Skyraider pilot who had been shot down six months earlier and taken prisoner by the communist Pathet Lao. His rescue by another Spad pilot was extraordinarily good luck.

On Sept. 1, 1968, the commander of the other principal Spad unit, the 602nd Special Operations Squadron (as Air Commando squadrons were re-named that year), Lt. Col. William A. Jones, was covering a rescue when his A-1H was hit. Flames and smoke churned up inside his cockpit. Afire and under fire, Jones remained in the area and pressed the fight. He survived and became the second A-1 pilot to be awarded the Medal of Honor.

Though it was only one of the special ops missions assigned to the Air Force Skyraider, many remember the aircraft as “Sandy,” the generic term for both pilot and aircraft leading and protecting combat rescue forces behind the lines. The Skyraider kept up its role in the “Sandy” mission until replaced in October 1972 by the Vought A-7D, the Air Force version of the plane the Navy called the Corsair II.

Gunships

Vietnam was also the beginning of the fixed-wing gunship, beginning with the AC-47 Spooky, a version of the venerable DC-3.

The bulky, ungainly, twin-boom Fairchild C-119 Flying Boxcar became the next-generation gunship. Twenty-six C-119Gs were converted to become AC-119G Shadows. Over a target, the work of an AC-119 was a challenge to crew resource management, with the night-observation operator, table navigator, gunners, flight engineer, and pilots all having choreographed duties to perform in unison. The job was especially difficult for the flight engineer, who sat on an inverted can in lieu of a seat, and the gunners, who constantly hefted 132-pound ammunition boxes.

Fairchild converted a second 26-plane batch of C-119Gs into AC-119K Stingers, primarily to hunt trucks on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The AC-119G carried four GAU-2/As with 50,000 rounds of ammunition for day operations or 35,000 rounds plus 60 flares for night. The AC-119K retained the mini-guns and added two 20 mm M61 Vulcan cannons.

“The AC-119G was a ‘vanilla’ airplane with a flare launcher on the left parachute door and a spotlight on the right,” said retired Col. John Hope, an AC-119K pilot in Vietnam. “The AC-119K had all those sensors added and even with the boost from the jet engines it often seemed heavy and under-powered. We computed our takeoff data based on an assumption of a climb rate of 100 feet per minute – that’s after ‘clean up,’ tucking in the gear and so on – which is really slow.” The final Vietnam-era gunship, the AC-130A/E Spectre, was another derivative of a well-known cargo hauler. Its successors serve in world hot spots today.

Helio U-10 Courier

If the Skyraiders and gunships of the Vietnam era were gruff, leaky, and noisy brutes, the Helio U-10 Courier was elegant and classy. The U-10 was, very simply, a remarkable fixed-wing STOL aircraft that became a legend largely due to efforts by the Air Commandos’ Lt. Col. Harry C. “Heinie” Aderholt.

Aderholt worked at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the 1950s and got the CIA interested in a high-wing, tailwheel-equipped plane with big flaps and an enormous vertical tail. It evolved into the Helio U-10 Courier, sometimes called the Super Courier. Aderholt’s biographer, Warren A. Trest, wrote that the Courier could operate from crude airstrips where the De Havilland Beaver and Westland Lysander could not.

Listed as a six-place utility/special operations aircraft, the U-10 was powered by a 395-horsepower Lycoming GO-480 six-cylinder horizontally opposed piston engine. It had a maximum speed of about 180 miles per hour, and – extraordinarily – a minimum speed very close to zero.

Retired Army Maj. Darryl Neidlinger is today the pilot of the first U-10 delivered to the Air Force. It’s pulling new duty today with a missionary organization.

“You have to give it your best and most conscientious attention all the way from tie down to tie down,” said Neidlinger. “Once you’re in motion, the tail doesn’t want to stay behind the airplane. You have to use a tremendous amount of brake and rudder to keep the airplane straight.

“Takeoffs and landings can be a challenge,” Neidlinger continued. “It’s a bear to handle in a crosswind because of that big old giant vertical stabilizer and humongous rudder. It has two to three times the rudder surface area of a typical light aircraft. That’s because you want to operate this airplane at slow speeds, which is what it was designed for. It will fly very handily at 30 miles per hour if you have flaps down.”

The Air Force acquired 100 U-10 Couriers and operated several dozen in Vietnam.

The Courier’s flaps are aerodynamic. “They go down when the aircraft needs lift,” Neidlinger said. “The pilot has no control over them. On approach, they come out at 62 miles per hour. They come out with a bang and it’s loud.”

Retired Air Force Col. Harvey Taffet said the 5th Air Commando Squadron “flew its first Vietnam mission on my birthday, Nov. 23, 1965, over the Ia Drang Valley” – site of the classic battle, that month, between American Air Cavalry men and North Vietnamese regular troops. “We had 30 pilots flying 20 airplanes, but it wasn’t a pretty sight. Most groundlooped the airplane at least once.” U-10 veterans agree that the aircraft performed well once aloft but was difficult to operate on, and near, an airfield.

The Air Force acquired 100 U-10 Couriers and operated several dozen in Vietnam. After the Air Commandos were redesignated special operations forces in 1967, they flew with the 5th Special Operations Squadron at various locations in South Vietnam. They were used for routine transportation, for special missions behind the lines, and for psychological operations duties with broadcast loudspeakers and propaganda leaflets. During one of the loudspeaker missions, a U-10 pilot persuaded 60 suspected Viet Cong to walk out of a cave and give themselves up.

Also in Vietnam were special operations helicopters, including the UH-1F Huey, HH-3E Jolly Green Giant, and the HH-53B/C Super Jolly Green. All of these were used for a special ops, trans-border effort known as Pony Express that hauled special operations fighters to and from North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The Super Jolly evolved into what became AFSOC’s most beloved helicopter and its last – the Pave Low series.

Sikorsky MH-53 Pave Low

The H-53 series of helicopters began with the HH-53B/C Jolly Green Giants of the Vietnam era and morphed into a series of extensively modified, all-weather, special ops aircraft culminating in the MH-53M Enhanced Pave Low IV. Today, when airmen wax nostalgic about these steel chariots, they use the term with which retired Col. Darrel Whitcomb began the Air Force’s own official history of the aircraft.

“Pave Low,” Whitcomb wrote. “The term itself generates an image: a dark, wispy night; a low, pulsating rumble approaching from the distance. The rumble becomes a presence, a large helicopter that settled onto the ground amidst the deep darkness. Earnest men of determination spew forth from it. Heavily armed, they quickly set up to collect intelligence, kill enemy troops, rescue downed or isolated friendly personnel, or otherwise conduct a direct action mission. …”

The H-53’s original job in the Air Force was combat rescue. The Air Force became interested after the Marine Corps introduced its CH-53A Sea Stallion transport helicopter, which completed its maiden flight on Oct. 14, 1964.

“The HH-53B/C represented the best in rescue technology, yet there were some limitations in the system,” said Air Force historian Earl H. Tilford, Jr. “Too large to be an ideal rescue helicopter, its size kept it from maneuvering in tight areas like karst valleys. Its large size and relatively slow speed made it an easy target for enemy gunners.”

In November 1966, the Air Force borrowed two CH-53As from the Marines and soon purchased eight combat-rescue HH-53Bs.

The HH-53B made its first flight March 16, 1967, and entered service in October 1967.

In the official history Search and Rescue in Southeast Asia, Air Force historian Earl H. Tilford, Jr., wrote that the effectiveness of the HH-53B and subsequent HH-53C was undermined at first by inadequate training of crews in air-to-air refueling and other procedures. Tilford wrote:

“The HH-53B/C represented the best in rescue technology, yet there were some limitations in the system. Too large to be an ideal rescue helicopter, its size kept it from maneuvering in tight areas like karst valleys. Its large size and relatively slow speed made it an easy target for enemy gunners.”

Tilford’s book credits first-generation H-53 helicopters with 371 of the 2,039 combat rescues made in Vietnam. HH-53B/C helicopters participated in the attempt to rescue American prisoners of war in the Son Tay raid of November 1970. In 1969, an HH-53B was tested with a night/all-weather rescue system known as Pave Low I, which did not prove successful. The “Pave” designator signifies a program managed by what’s known today as Air Force Materiel Command.

The Pave Low’s last mission was on Sept. 27, 2008, when six helicopters supported special operations forces in Iraq.

After the Vietnam war came the HH-53H Pave Low II and subsequent versions. Subsequent MH-53J Enhanced Pave Low III models used their terrain-following and global positioning navigation systems to bring the attack helicopter into position in Task Force Normandy, the joint strike team that opened Operation Desert Storm on Jan. 17, 1991, with a secret, nocturnal attack on Iraqi radar stations.

A flight engineer who asked not to be named because he’s still in AFSOC said that “no other aircraft ever inspired the amount of love the Pave Low did – but it was really a love-hate relationship.” The Air Force was planning to retire the helicopter after the failed 1980 attempt to rescue U.S. hostages in Iran, known as Operation Eagle Claw. When Navy RH-53D models, lacking modern avionics and navigation gear, couldn’t handle the Eagle Claw mission, a series of modifications resulted in a succession of Pave Low models, ultimately the MH-53M Enhanced Pave Low IV.

“It was a great aircraft but it suffered from the familiar problems of added weight and reduced elbow room caused by constant upgrades. We had a hodgepodge of stuff on board, including a cartridge-based mapping system taken from the A-7 Corsair II. A huge avionics rack in the left center of the fuselage, right under the main rotor head, took away a lot of our cabin room and housed the majority of AFSOC-specific mission avionics. We called it the ‘pizza rack’ because it was a huge monstrosity that resembled a pizza oven. It routinely collected leaked oil and hydraulic fluid.”

The Pave Low’s last mission was on Sept. 27, 2008, when six helicopters supported special operations forces in Iraq.

Many Pave Low veterans are among the AFSOC crews who now fly the Bell-Boeing CV-22B Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft. The Osprey is widely considered, today, to have overcome teething troubles. Ospreys have had key roles in recent operations in Iraq and Libya.

Credible Sport C-130

One of the most bizarre, and seemingly dangerous, aerial creatures designed for STOL capability was a C-130 Hercules modified with lift rockets slanting downward, slowdown rockets facing forward, missile motors facing backward, and still more rockets to stabilize the aircraft as it touched down. First- and second-generation versions of the C-130 have served heroically with AFSOC, but none was as unusual as the Credible Sport YMC-130H.

“They called it Super STOL,” said a flight engineer close to the Credible Sport project. “And with the nosewheel off the ground after 10 meters and the entire 140,000-pound aircraft airborne at 150 feet on takeoff, they weren’t messing around.

“Of course,” added the flight engineer, “strapping on more than 30 Mk78/Mk56 rocket motors was what transformed this beast into something special.”

The C-130 airframe was familiar to special ops airmen long before Credible Sport and remains so long after.

Credible Sport would have been used in a second attempt to rescue U.S. hostages in Iran in 1980 – after the failure of the first provided the impetus for the creation of AFSOC and Special Operations Command.

On April 24, 1980, the United States failed in an attempt to rescue 52 diplomats being held captive at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran. Eight American servicemen lost their lives in Operation Eagle Claw, two burnt-out aircraft had to be left behind, and a sense of gloom fell over the U.S. Congress, press, and public. One long-term consequence was the founding of AFSOC. A shorter-term reaction yielded a bold plan for a second rescue attempt, built around Credible Sport.

The objective was to land in a Tehran stadium to pick up hostages and to make a short landing a second time on an aircraft carrier deck to deliver them to safety. STOL capability was achieved with extensive modification to the Hercules, including installation of an array of rocket motors.

Credible Sport, first called the XFC-130H and later the YMC-130H, appeared practicable despite a tragic accident, but the second rescue attempt was never made.

The C-130 airframe was familiar to special ops airmen long before Credible Sport and remains so long after. Today, AFSOC is converting to versions based on the second-generation C-130J design. They refuel helicopters. They insert troops behind the lines. They conduct electronic warfare missions and gather electronic intelligence. They have become legendary gunships with extensive modifications and upgrades, some of them catch the eye as being a bit unusual.

But in the long history of special ops aircraft, unusual is not so unusual, after all. AFSOC and its predecessors have been flying remarkable aircraft from their earliest days.

This article first appeared in The Year in Special Operations, 2015-2016 Edition.