Long Tieng: Personal Stories

Looking southeast from the CIA compound. The building on the left contains newly constructed quarters. When it was finished, the CIA gave us the use of one two-bed room, and thereafter I generally spent the night instead of returning to Vientiane at the end of the day as had been our practice for a month or two. Sometimes one of our pilots also stayed over, but often it was just me. I'd walk down to the operations building in the morning, crank up the radios, and give the airborne command post my best amateur estimate of how soon the ground fog would burn off sufficiently to allow use of the runway.

The Air America operations building, with Skyline Ridge in the background. The left-hand end of it is where I nearly got run over by a T-28 one day. Lt. Ly Teng had landed going a little too fast and had burned out his brakes. Having run out of runway, he elected to hit the corner of the building instead of turning onto the main parking ramp -- a good decision, I think. He survived uninjured (apart from his dented dignity), and I was able to scramble out of the way. The only casualty was an elderly civilian who wasn't quick enough. The runway at Long Tieng was short and unforgiving. Massive limestone formations at the northwest end of the runway precluded aborting a landing and going around. You had to get it right on the first try, and not everyone did.