In 1974, I traveled to Saigon and Australia, by then a lieutenant colonel in the Pentagon. While there, I had studied the 1973 Middle East war in detail. Based on this experience and my experience in Vietnam, I had put together a briefing (containing lots of Israeli gunnery film) on air-to-air combat for presentation to Congress. This briefing led to an invitation to a fighter symposium in Australia. As a courtesy, I visited the Vietnam squadrons flying the F-5 to provide them an update.

Not much was going on in Vietnam in those days. The Vietcong, of course, had been wiped out during the Tet Offensive, and we had pretty much pulled out, though there were USAF units in Thailand that could defeat any major action. So the North Vietnamese just sat tight, concentrated on diplomacy, and waited for the United States to lose interest in the South Vietnamese.

While I was in Saigon, the VNAF officers I was meeting knew we had pulled out for good and they were on their own. Therefore, having taken lessons from us for the past several years, they were putting their faith in hardware: if they had more, they would be OK. So they spent their time with me begging for matériel, radars, aircraft, bombs, transport, etc. By then I was aware that they weren’t going to get most of what they were asking for. I also knew that the Congress had had enough of the war and that the next two squadrons of F-5Es scheduled to go to Vietnam were not going to be delivered. The Pentagon had already started action to use them in building an upgraded Aggressor squadrons force at Nellis.

One day, I was scheduled to drive out in an embassy car with a driver to Bien Hoa Airfield to brief the squadron there (the same briefing I’ d given the other VNAF squadrons), and a VNAF lieutenant colonel, Le Ba Hung, was assigned to escort me. Before I left for the air base, the escort officer called to ask if he could ride up in my car. I said sure, but was mildly surprised. Vietnamese officers normally didn’t grab a ride with an American. They liked to take their own cars. So by asking to ride with me, this Hung guy was giving up a little “ face.” He would have had more face if he had shown up at the squadron in his own car. Well, I went over to the VNAF side of the base. When he got in the car, he was wearing a flight suit, which was another surprise. “I’ve already heard your briefing,” he told me. “So I’m going to get in a mission while you brief the squadron.”