Dale Hanson

collect the information.

A lot of our guys would go out, they see the enemy, they get in a firefight, usually they initiated it, and then they would ask for an exfiltration.

So the missions were being cut off simply because they didn't break contact and continue the mission.

And so they were saying that our old guys are kind of disappearing.

You need to sit back and watch for a while.

So I did.

And what was happening was Ford Drum.

It was a secret program that only about six of us Special Forces and six or eight pilots ever knew.

They flew bird dogs and all that.

Our job was going behind the lines, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, not Thailand, North Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and look for intelligence.

And if it was fruitful, you wouldn't have to send a recon team in there and expose them to being killed.

Or if you did send one in there, it was to confirm or deny or find a vulnerability.

So we were...

One of us would fly about 4,000 or 5,000 feet, and the other one about 10, 20 feet.

And so the top one up there would say there's a villa and a highway out there that looks like trucks.

And so we would come down on the low level, sometimes below the trees, and actually tilt wings to get between trees.

And I would be out the window taking the pictures, snapping pictures.

and finding enemy intelligence.

It would be new segments of road, truck parks, things like that, really important things.

And that's what we did.