My dad rarely talked about Viet Nam. One of the few stories he’d tell was the deployment. He was in the first call up after Johnson escalated the war. The call up was for E4’s or E5’s? and up. I can’t recall exactly what dad said. It created some problems for my dad and the other sergeants.
My dad was a Tech Sergeant and a supervisor in the Instrument shop at Otis Air Base. It was one of only two facilities with a clean room for disassembling and repairing instruments. He had ten years in the Navy as a radioman and transferred into the Air Force after I was born. They sent him to Instrument Schools and because of his rank, he became a supervisor. Never doing much hands on instrument work.
The other sergeants were in the same boat. If they had hands on experience it was years earlier. All these supervisors found themselves on the flight line in Viet Nam having to do all the work themselves. It was a minor clusterfuck for awhile until they got into a rhythm of doing the work.
My dad got exposed to a lot of Agent Orange. The planes would return from spraying and he said, it was just dripping off the planes when the guys were servicing them. My dad was lucky that he didn’t get sick. He used to follow all the news reports about Agent Orange and got tested at the VA several times.
Everything was a bit disorganized. The bases were still being constructed. They were living on the economy. Their quarters had Concertina wire with tin cans to make noise when people tried to get in. My dad took 35mm slides of our bombers attacking a VC mountain position above the base. The VC had been shelling the airfield for awhile. Those slides looks like the fourth of July times a 100. Some serious fireballs and smoke. I need to get his Viet Nam slides converted to DVD.
I’ve always wondered about the rational for only calling up the senior enlisted guys. Is that pretty common? Does the military usually send the guys over before the bases are ready?
My dad passed a couple years ago. Too late to ask him about those slides. I wish that I could recall which base it was that got shelled from those mountains. He was at several. Mostly Da Nang and briefly at Nha Trang Air Base. Mom got letters from him from at least one other base that we can’t recall.
What do you mean by “call up”? From the reserves? Or just from a duty station somewhere? Senior NCOs are absolutely necessary for leadership and experience. You don’t just send recruits into a combat zone without there being people in charge who know WTF they’re doing. If you are an NCO and you don’t keep up with the specialty field you’re supposed to be an expert in, what good are you to anybody? When I retired as an E-7 after 23 years, I knew as much or more than any junior person in my rating, and went to work carrying a tool box in my first job after getting out.
Um, E4s and up aren’t necessarily “senior” enlisted personnel. They are the NCOs though. E4s & 5s are the infantry squad leaders. NCOs are the people who 1) have the experience and training to do their jobs and B) train the privates, seamen, and airmen how to do their jobs.
Yes, I meant transferred from one base to a overseas assignment. We were really lucky to have over 5 years at Otis. Quite a long time for one military assignment.
When someone says “call up” it would make me think of bringing back onto active duty. That was done quite a bit during the Korean War when there was a large pool of combat vets that were only a few years older than their fighting age. Many were called up for leadership positions. Since then it is done very rarely. Usually only with people that have extremely rare skill sets.
“Senior enlisted men” makes me think of some 20 year PFC who was busted down several times.
Senior NCOs would be E7 and above.
What you are talking about is just basic moving of active duty personnel into units that have a shortage. It happens all the time in wartime and peace. Being moved around is one of the constants of military life.
The usual current method of deploying troops to war zones is by unit. Individual augmentees are normally integrated into the unit to cover shortfalls prior to deployment. But sometimes personnel are shifted within the combat zone. I’m not sure why that would seem unusual.
Sorry about the terminology. I never served and don’t know it. I heard some terminology growing up but get words mixed up.
My dad’s main comment was it was the E4’s or E5’s and up that went in Johnson’s first escalation of the war. It was pretty obvious when he got over to Viet Nam. My dad and the other men he was working with on the flight line were mostly sergeants. They were more accustomed to supervising and handling administrative tasks then doing the hands on work themselves. My dad and the others quickly adjusted. The planes got serviced. Work got done.
I assume it was the suddenness of the call up. The President gave an order. He wanted an immediate escalation and the military obeyed. They had to reassign men with specialized training ASAP.
It was probably the Tonkin Gulf incident. I just know my dad had little warning. He was on a plane and gone.
I’m not sure if there’s enough similarity between the modern AF that I know and the Vietnam era AF, but here’s what I can say. E4s and E5s are not senior enlisted by any means. If you get a bunch of E4s and E5s in room, the average age is probably around 22. Most of them probably have some supervisory responsibility, but it’s going to be far from their full time job. If their career is wrench turning, they’re still going to be spending the bulk of their days turning wrenches. They should absolutely be used to the work. It may have been confusing for them because they were coming from established workcenters with clear direction to chaotic newly created or expanded airfields, but that has little to do with their rank and everything to do with the specific situation they were in.
E7s and up (senior enlisted) would not ordinarily be turning wrenches; at that level, it’s all supervisor and admin stuff. I would be surprised if a bunch of senior NCOs would be deployed by themselves. For one, it leaves a lot of junior enlisted behind to fend for themselves, and 2, there’s not a whole lot of them just by the numbers. It seems like a silly waste of resources.
That said, they should all know how to turn the wrenches. An E7 was probably in his late 20s or early 30s, it’s not like he’s some ancient sage. Your dad was an E6, so he was in a transition period. However, it sounds like he had cross-trained at some point. That’s when the AF allows people to just up and change careers. This is pretty common, which means it’s not unusual for, say, junior enlisted medical technicians to be supervised by a former aircraft mechanic who got sick of working on the flightline. Said mechanic might be an E6 who’s technically gone through all the same schools as the med techs and been signed off on the same tasks, but who lacks the decade of experience that he should probably have at that point. This can be frustrating for the junior folks who have to take orders from someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing, but as far as the Air Force is concerned, all NCOs with equivalent training are interchangeable.
So it could just be that your dad had experience working on Navy instruments that didn’t translate to Air Force instruments and he was just kinda bad at that part of his job. Not to say that in a mean way; in a lot of cases, it’s just the way the cards fall.
I talked with my mom a few minutes ago. She remembered the story but thought it was only for a very short time when he got to Viet Nam. The bases were expanding and under construction. Everything was gearing up for a major war effort. My dad and the other sergeants were getting things setup and filling in until others arrived.
I regret not asking him more. But he rarely ever talked about that experience. My mom was shocked at how much weight he lost in that year. He was 6 ft and almost 200 lbs. He came back weighing about 170 lbs. Really gaunt.
I have his 35mm slides that he took. But with him gone theres no one to identify where they were taken.
As the war was getting underway the military needed to grow, and grow quickly. The same problems arise when a business is growing very rapidly.
When that happens initially you grab whoever you can find within your business and press them into service doing the extra work. You’re more short of additional low-end workers than you are of additional senior VPs. So as a result, the very early days of a sudden expansion find most workers pulled downwards in the pyramid, closer to worker bee than to boss. And the effect is most pronounced in the low-level shop floor supervisors.
Which is exactly what serving E4/E5s are in the military: shop floor supervisors.
A few months later when recruitment and training catches up with the suddenly increased demand, the effect reverses. Suddenly there are lots of newbies at the bottom and the mid-level folks are lifted upwards in the rapidly growing pyramid. Upwards beyond the level they had before the expansion began.
Your Dad may have gone from being in charge of a crew of 10 at Otis to initially being a worker bee to 6 months later being in charge of a crew of 100 at Da Nang. And usually about then the military starts promoting more rapidly so extra rank becomes available more quickly. Your Dad may have gained a stripe or two in just a few months whereas in peacetime it’d have taken years for each stripe.
Yes, he was a Tech Sergeant and came back a Master Sergeant. He had hearing loss from many years on the flight line. He got assigned as one of the squadrons First Sergeants. He was working with the Colonel on the base and representing the enlisted men. Handling all their requests and paperwork.
Did that a few years until he got his 20 years done and retired.
Did the Air Force have an individual rotation policy in Vietnam like the other services? Because if the Air Force wasn’t moving units of maintainers for deployment, but picking and choosing guys from all over to fill billets in Vietnam, I think that would answer the OP’s question.
Why? Senior Enlisted Adviser is the unit’s senior enlisted person. In the Air Force, that would be the First Sergeant for most units. Senior Enlisted is E-7 or above. Prior to 1958 (IIRC), E-7 was the top enlisted pay grade.
The OP was talking about the initial USAF deployments after LBJ started gearing stuff up. This would be before anyone had gotten around to defining a rotation policy, or even deciding if rotation would be on a unit or individual basis.
In military technical specialties, it’s the E4s and E5s who actually do most of the work. E6s do minor supervisory stuff and is the go to guy for the E4s and 5s who are having a bit of trouble doing something. E2s & 3s man the brooms and mops, clean latrines, help move heavy things, pass tools to the E4s & 5s, and perform lower level maintenance tasks under major supervision.
Exactly. While I was a crew leader from the moment I went to my first posting in Vietnam as an E-3 (war makes for unusual circumstance), I was always a working supervisor up through the first couple of years as an E-6, when I ended up behind a desk. That said, my last four years (as a CPO) were spent as both a team leader and also working in the field with civilian counterparts, doing installations. Admittedly, that was an unusual assignment, as most Chiefs spend nearly all their time with administrative duties.
I appreciate the help. I’ve often wondered what it was like for my dad. He went to war so late in his military career. He was in the Navy during the Korean War, but the ships he was on never went to that conflict. They were patrolling in the Atlantic. He almost got through his 20 without going to war. But events caught up with him.
Let me rephrase, then: did the Air Force have an individual DEPLOYMENT policy at that time? Either they gathered up individuals or they sent units. It sure sounds like they sent individual service members as a policy.