Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
6:07 | It was safe in Thailand. Forward Air Controller Joe Chan didn't have to worry about mortar or rocket attacks where he was based but there was a trade-off. His area of operations was over Laos and the Ho Chi Minh Trail which meant that he faced very intensive ground fire.
Keywords : Joe Chan pilot Forward Air Controller (FAC) Vietnam Thailand jungle boots Laos Ho Chi Minh Trail ground fire anti-aircraft (AA) surface-to-air missile (SAM) search and rescue (SAR) triple canopy
Growing up in Indiana, Joe Chan enlisted in the ROTC at his university and ended up choosing it as a career. Training during school gave him the opportunity to learn a lot more about various aircraft and how to best operate them.
Going to Military Airlift Command school, Joe Chan chose his career path early because he wanted to travel the world. He ended up becoming a Forward Air Controller, tasked with locating and marking enemy forces on the ground.
Jungle survival training was essential for preparing for the hot, humid temperatures of Southeast Asia and to prepare for enemy evasion. After arriving in Vietnam, Joe Chan would face his first challenge in learning how to stay alive.
Running day missions over the jungles was a constant threat for Joe Chan and other pilots. Running an efficient team on these missions was essential to success.
Joe Chan remembers some of the most challenging missions he was a part of while deployed in Vietnam.
Joe Chan was already flying the big transports but he began training for an entirely different kind of flying. He was going to Vietnam as a Forward Air Controller, a job in which he flew a much smaller aircraft and directed the lethal force of fighters and bombers.
When he was supporting Special Forces on the ground, Forward Air Controller Joe Chan would sometimes have one of their members in his rear seat. Since Joe was Chinese-American, one of them concocted a scheme if they were shot down which made use of his Asian ancestry.
As a Forward Air Controller who flew over the Ho Chi Minh Trail, Joe Chan had access to the audio recordings made by sensors which were dropped along the trail. He remembers one on which could be heard a hapless NVA private dispatched to cut a microphone out of it's perch in a tall tree.
Joe Chan caught more ground fire over his AO in Laos than most pilots did over Vietnam. The enemy were trying to protect the movement along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. During the day it could be hard to see but when he had a night mission he could see the true extent of it.
As a Forward Air Controller, Joe Chan sometimes had pre-planned targets which meant he was looking for a specific place which had attracted interest. He describes his most successful mission in which a vast ammo dump was obliterated.
He was career Air Force so, on his return from Vietnam, Joe Chan didn't really have to face the wrath of anti-war protestors like so many returning veterans. He returned to flying transports which is what he did before they made a FAC out of him.
