Air Commando One: Heinie Aderholt And America's Secret Air Wars

by Warren A. Trest

Air-dropping agents deep behind enemy lines in clandestine night missions during the Korean War, commanding secret flights into Tibet in 1960 to support the anticommunist guerilla uprising, participating in plans for the 1962 Bay of Pigs invasion—even before the escalation of the Vietnam War, Brigadier General Harry C. “Heinie” Aderholt worked at the heart of both the U.S. Air Force and CIA special operations worldwide. In 1964 he became commander of the famed First Air Commando Wing, fighting to build up special operations capabilities among the American and South Vietnamese airmen. In 1966 and 1967 he and his men set the record for interdicting the flow of enemy trucks over the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos and North Vietnam.

Drawing on official records, personal papers, and interviews with Aderholt and many who worked with him, Air Force historian Warren A. Trest details the life and career of this charismatic, unconventional military leader who has become a legend of the Cold War Air Force. He tells how Aderholt’s vigorous support of low-flying, propeller-driven aircraft and nonnuclear munitions pitted him against his superiors, who were steeped in doctrines of massive retaliation and “higher and faster” tactical air power. In the mid-1960s Aderholt’s clash with Seventh Air Force Commander General William W. Momyer reflected a schism that still exists between the traditional Air Force and its unconventional special operations wings. The book also integrates U.S. Air Force and CIA accounts of some of the most pivotal events of the past fifty years.

Genres: Aviation, Military Fiction

336 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 1999

Reviews

[Jerome Otte · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent biography of Aderholt.

Trest details all of Aderholt’s exploits in World War II, Korea, Tibet, and Laos. Many books on these subjects mention Aderholt and his activities, but Trest does a fine job bringing it all together, from Aderholt’s Korean operations in 1950 to his assistance in evacuating the Hmong in 1975. Aderholt’s exploits under a wide variety of challenging conditions and complex command structures are admirable and quite interesting to read about.

While the book provides a great portrait of Aderholt as an officer, we see very little of the man’s private life and often little on the larger context of the operations he was involved in. To the extent that he covers this, Trest usually discusses the conflict between Aderholt’s various special operations outfits and the regular Air Force brass. Also, at one point Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is called "Bulbuddin."

Still, an interesting, informative, and very readable work.

[Liam · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good book about a truly remarkable man who was a talented officer. I just found out that he died last May... General Aderholt deserved much more recognition (from the general public- the special operations community revered him) than he ever received in life.

[Randy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got off a C-123 at Nakon Phenom Airbase (NKP) on Christmas Eve 1966. A jeep roared up and a full bird colonel driving alone asked me who I was. “Get in”, he said, and he drove me to the admin building to get processed. He introduced himself as Colonel Aderholt. He was the wing commander of what would soon be designated the 56th Air Commando Wing. I didn’t realize until I read this book that he was something of a legend. I didn’t run into Heinie Aderholt much during my nine months at NKP but now I learn that our tours pretty much overlapped. He was assigned to command the wing on December 9 of 1966 and had beat me there by a couple of weeks. During my time as an intelligence briefer I worked twelve hour shifts seven days a week. We worked in a windowless building on the flight line so there wasn’t much time for getting to know people or actually understanding everything that was going on. This book has answered a lot of questions that I never got answered before like: Why were the two CIA station chiefs in Laos given free run of the place ducking in and out of classified briefings and sitting in as they wished on debriefings? It turns out that the Colonel had a long association with the CIA during the Korean War and in South East Asia. He even had a peripheral role in the Bay of Pigs. He had personally flown Allen Dulles in a short take off and landing aircraft that he was trying to get the CIA enthused about. He was a long time friend of General Vang Pao the Hmong tribesman who fought the CIA’s war in Northern Laos. His links to the CIA probably protected him somewhat in his battle with General Momyer the four star who was in charge of the air war in Saigon. I never could understand why high flying jets would get priority over our low, slow flying prop aircraft when the jets were diverted from missions in North Vietnam and had to get rid of their ordinance. Our planes, which were WWII A-26s and T-28s, had a much better record in destroying trucks driving down the Ho Chi Minh trail but Saigon and General Momyer were jet oriented and didn’t like the fact that the great majority of trucks destroyed were wrecked by our crews. He wouldn’t give credit according to this book and lumped the 56th results in with the jet totals and made the jets look better. In addition, he refused to invite Colonel Aderholt to the commanders meetings in Saigon. Obviously, our Colonel had some friends in high places to survive the enmity of the four star he had to report to. Fortunately Ambassador to Laos Sullivan liked Aderholt, was vested in the 56th as it was his idea to use prop planes on this mission, and he also had a conflict with Momyer. This no doubt helped Colonel A. Ambassador Sullivan had a lot of clout and we took no liberties with his dictates on Rules of Engagement or otherwise and I now presume this was on the Colonel’s instructions. If Sullivan said we weren’t to do something, that was that. We had lots of high ranking visitors like Secretary of the Air Force Harold Brown who once stood next to me at the entrance to our small briefing room. His entourage trailed him down a long hallway and I explained, in short paragraphs what was going on which he would relay to the next man in line who turned and explained it the next like in the Robert Service poem “Pershing At the Front.” General James Stewart also appeared in the briefing room one day. He was the narrowest human I have ever seen but polite and friendly. Air Commando One pretty much captures Heinie Aderholt’s personality. He was a can do guy who was clearly boss but didn’t have any airs about him. He hated bureaucracy and would break the rules when he could get away with it. He was a non college grad, not a fighter pilot, not a graduate of Air Command and Staff College. Not on the fast track. But he was effective and admired by his subordinates. He made his own rules. Colonel Aderholt didn’t appear often but one day he burst in to the Intelligence shop with Hugh O’Brien, the TV actor who played Wyatt Earp, and told me to tell O’Brian what was going on. I put a classified map on an easel and when I finished the good Colonel gave O’Brien the map as a souvenir! What was going on were night missions over the Ho Chi Minh trail. A C-123 flare ship flew over the road. The belly hatch had been removed (this is described in the book as the idea of Capt. Deken, a pilot I knew well). A volunteer, harnessed up, lay on a mattress with his head on the edge of the opening and with a night vision (Starlight) scope watched for trucks. When he saw one he radioed the pilot who would pop a flare and a T-28 or A-26 would attempt to bomb, napalm or strafe the truck. It was dangerous work flying low level at night with people shooting at them. We lost a lot of crews and although we were the main rescue base we sadly didn’t recover any of our lost crews during the time I was there. We did occasionally do the first debriefing on a jet pilot picked by the Jolly Green Giant helicopters. Reading this book I expect that Colonel Aderholt was gone a lot. I honestly had not much sense of the chain of command but things always seemed to run smoothly, morale was generally good; the pilots, often scared shitless, were still motivated. Heinie Aderholt was an actual leader who supported and took care of his troops. He also took care of General Vang Pao. A-26 missions were flown regularly north to the Plaine of Jarres where the CIA via Vang Pao directed the dropping of bombs on targets of their choice. I don’t recall briefing or debriefing these missions. But it was a long time ago. I do remember once that a few selected A-26 crews were invited to a banquet to celebrate their contributions to the successes in Northern Laos. One of the dishes, they told me, was small birds baked whole and intact.
It’s always interesting to read a book about events with which one has some familiarity. And, I know it’s difficult researching things from a distance to get everything right. Aderholt, according to the book, arrived at NKP on 12/9/66. I arrived two weeks later. There are a couple of anecdotes which I must have certainly heard about but never did: one involving a latrine on the flight line and another where supposedly 4000 men walked the flight line picking up FOD (foreign object debris). In the second anecdote a beer truck supposedly followed the men and at the end of the event all the beer was consumed and a Major Joe Kittinger allegedly dropped all those cans over the Ho Chi Minh trail. I did hear lot’s of stories about Kittinger. He was a wild man who held the high altitude parachuting record and apparently had dropped beer cans filled with nails over the trail along with other interesting ordinance. But Joe Kittinger was already gone when I arrived just two weeks after Colonel Aderholt arrived. One of my colleagues idolized Kittinger and talked about him all the time. I was sorry to have missed him. Critiques aside, the chapter on NKP in this book gives a fairly clear picture. But I do wonder why I don’t have more memories of Colonel Aderholt who was supposed to be everywhere and rarely slept. What I do recall were a lot of Lieutenant Colonels who had been called back to the cockpit, not volunteers, and who really didn’t want to be there. They knew if they got hit hard over the trail their chances of surviving were very low. It was difficult to bail out of an A 26 or a T 28. No ejection seats. One of our A-26 commanders was comedian Jonathan Winter’s brother in law. He arranged for Mr Winters to bring his USO show to the base. That event occurred the week after I left for the states and the following week the brother in law and his copilot were shot down and killed. The author talks about the great morale and how the crews would follow Colonel Aderholt anywhere. But I recall a lot of worried pilots concerned about surviving, though proud of their accomplishments. There were, of course, classic gung ho fighter pilots like Tom Deken who had flown literally hundreds of combat missions during several SEA tours. I honestly don’t recall briefing Colonel Aderholt prior to his piloting a mission though I supposed he might have. Also, as I recall the base was in pretty good shape when I got there. I spent a few nights in a large tent but then got my own room in a hooch that was newly constructed. We even got an instant sod lawn. The pilots had air conditioned trailers. As the book points out the Officer’s club was open 24 hours as we were a night operation. My own schedule was to sleep to eleven, grab breakfast at the club, report for work at noon. At midnight I was replaced and ran to the base theater to see the film that was changed frequently, then at two am to the club for dinner, then bed and sleep again til eleven.
Another story in the book that I found most interesting involved a fire engine that was famously stolen from Clark Air Base in the Philippines. This must have occurred right before I arrived there on temporary duty around 9/1/65. Thievery on base was epidemic and with so many Filipinos working on Clark there were lots of opportunities for the “inside job”. What I didn’t know was that Colonel Aderholt was there at that time and was put in charge of solving the problem “Air Commando style”. He did with a combination of ingenious ideas like horse and motorcycle patrols, flare ships, a large volunteer group and even exploding fence posts. As with most of his missions he was successful. He significantly reduced “shrinkage” at Clark.
“Air Commando One” clearly makes the case that Colonel Aderholt and his wing were sorely under appreciated by the Seventh Air Force. Jets were ineffective at killing trucks. One might make the case that they were also ineffective in the air war in North Vietnam. The smart generals who ran the operation lost the war, after all; were beaten by a bunch of gnarly little guys wearing rubber sandals. My own experience in the Air Force didn’t give me a lot of confidence in our military. There was too much inter service and intra service rivalry. Guys like Aderholt really didn’t stand much of a chance. On his way back to the states after his tour at NKP ended he was snubbed by the PACAF commander at Hickam in Honolulu when he attempted to make his end of tour report.
Aderholt’s biography demonstrates what a shit show the war in Vietnam was. The Colonel’s adventures in Thailand and Laos debacle when he was recalled to active duty and made a general by the State Department demonstrate clearly why our military seems incapable of winning wars.
I was happy to find this book and get better acquainted with the only wing commander I served under who earned my respect. He was one of a kind and Air Commando One does a great job of painting this picture. Plus, it stimulated many memories and answered even more questions about the big picture of our strange little air war over the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

[Curtis Kiland · Rating 5 out of 5]

A different perspective about frustrating historical events from a perspective about how things could have been better and what critical mistakes were made. Also, a view about a guy that placed the mission and people below him above his own career. I wished more people knew about General Aderholt's life.

[Jacques Yerby · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was interesting because I worked for Aderholt at MACTHAI.