Terry McDonnell - Vietnam

National Service and early RAAF experience

Hometown was Benalla in Northeast Victoria. Went to the local schools there. After school, left work got a job as a motor trimmer and then, in 1952, was called up under the National Service Training Scheme. The 1951 scheme applied to all 18-year-old males, they were required to register for national service training, which was 176 days of training over five years in the reserve. The Navy and Army and Air Force had different approaches to it.

So the army did about three months' worth of rookie training and put them in the CMF where they did monthly or annual training until they completed their176 days over five years. Navy did about four and a half months of training and spread them out over the next few years. The air force did the whole lot in six months, and then you're on the reserve for the balance of that five years with no further training obligations.

So I went down to Laverton and then found there was an opportunity to get some flying training, they were offering, I think it was about eight out of each intake of several 100 the opportunity to do flight training with the Royal Victorian Aero Club on Tiger Moths up to the standard of getting a private pilot license, which had no bearing on the air force it was just for flying Tiger Moths, so did that. Completed the six months, went home, picked up my job, thought about it for a while.

Thought about the Korean War and I thought I'd like to get a job in the Air Force anyway. Well paid, flying, all good fun. So I applied and got selected, then joined number 15 pilots' course, starting off at Archerfield in Queensland where we flew Tiger Moths, then moved down to Uranquinty near Wagga and then Bega where we flew Tiger Moths and Wirraways. Normally the course would then go on to Point Cook to complete the training on Wirraways but in 1954 the Air Force decided to experiment with jet training and so several people from number 13 pilots course went down to CFS, Central Flying School, East Sale and trained on Vampires.

Apparently didn't get enough data out of that to make it a worthwhile thing so they decided to take more from number 15 pools but since there were only, I think, nine of us left at that stage, no point in breaking them up, so they took a whole lot of us down there. So, the course was unique in that we never went to Point Cook, graduated from CFS, learned to fly Vampires and the seven of us who graduated, went up to Number 2 Operational Training Unit at Williamtown, north of Newcastle, to be trained as fighter pilots.

I was no good as a fighter pilot, so I got sent to fly transports instead and shortly after that got posted to Iwakuni, Japan to work with the remnants of the Korean boys, so we're flying from Iwakuni to Kimpo in South Korea, taking people, mail, foodstuffs and whatever across, occasionally bringing back medivacs, medical evacuation and kept her going until the war closed off in ‘56 … Benalla had been a flying training school during World War Two.

So, we were sort of conscious, of it. Some of the guys I worked with were ex RAAF and the option of getting it all over in the one hit rather than having to drag that over five years and the further option of maybe getting some travel out of it came up. To get into the Navy or the Air Force, you had to apply separately and state that you would accept to being sent overseas if need be, with the army that didn't have the option.

So, never got to be sent overseas, but got the flying training … The Air Training Corps existed at that time, this was just towards the end of World War Two and I don't know of any Army Cadets or whatever, but because of the flying training school at the Benalla aerodrome, there was a connection with that. The Air Training Scheme took 16- to 18-year-olds and pre trained them for going into the air force when they turned eighteen. I was far too young for any of that. I left school at fourteen.

Learning Vietnamese

I was aware of French Indochina as a place in Asia from school geography and so forth. I didn't know anything about Vietnam but in 1960, when I was a flying instructor, I suffered stomach ulcers, couldn't fly anymore, or couldn't fly for the time being and I got an administration job and I thought, " Well, maybe I'd better get another feather for my bow sort of thing" and applied for training as a linguist …

I was selected for Vietnamese training. Then I found out about Vietnam and became conscious that, yes, there was a potential for things happening up there and while I was doing that course in sixty-two, the Australian Army Training Team was created. There was talk about sending some decoders to be based in Saigon to help support things there.

Nothing really developed from that because it was in about 1964 … and the ones we dealt with generally spoke English anyway … my friend and I had also done Vietnamese, he was the navigator with 2 Squadron. We used to try and practice our Vietnamese on trips to Vietnam or to Laos where there were lots of Vietnamese, more for our satisfaction than anything else. There wasn't much occasion to use it in anger.

The Caribou's capabilities

Pressure from the Americans to have us contribute a bit more led to the offer of the Caribous which we were just getting from Canada at that stage and three Caribous initially were offered and others were sent later on but at the first stage, we're just getting into the Caribous and didn't have enough support equipment and facilities to maintain the aircraft in Vietnam as well as the ones in Australia.

So a deal was struck with the Americans who were operating Caribous in the American army, that they would provide the deeper support that was needed. Our guys were doing the maintenance up to all the C servicing and anything beyond that which required pulling the aeroplane apart and so forth, we had done by the American army … it was a very satisfying aircraft for the job there for flying into awkward airfields, that's to say, again, very short runways, very rough runways.

Sometimes the sort of things that were, one of the tests whether the runway could accommodate a Caribou was to drive a jeep over. Rough, rough, rough. If the jeep could manage it, a Caribou could manage it. Then you got distance and length of runway as a separate function but whether the ground would support the Caribou was tested by running a jeep over it.

We could get into, I think the minimum length strip we had there was 780 feet, which is pretty short considering that most aerodromes in Australia are at least 3000 feet. The Caribou could do that because it had reversing props. So that after landing, you could switch the props and reverse, put on full power or it's stopping you from going forward.

They could get into where airfields that no other aircraft could, or no other meaningful aircraft apart from Cessnas and the US Special Forces, the Green Berets, relied tremendously on support by Caribous by ourselves and the US Army. I think we had a better record than the US Army for getting into aerodromes in Special Forces places.

In tight conditions, in bad weather or whatever we got in when they couldn't, so we got a good reputation … with good power 2000 cubic inch displacement engines, two of them and slotted flaps allowed you to get the maximum lifted at minimum speeds, you could get off in the Caribou without any problem …

It was an aeroplane that was designed for a purpose and performed excellently both in South Vietnam and in Papua New Guinea where we used to operate them, again, getting into very awkward airfields that major aircraft, other major aircraft couldn't get into, we could. It was meaningful … it was found, as a matter of necessity, that it was good to have a ground crew guy along as well, became known as the crew chief, later on as the loadmaster because his job, as well as looking after the aeroplane, was to supervise the loading of the aircraft to make sure that loads were in the right place, so the centre of gravity was right.

Centre of gravity is very important in aeroplanes, get the airplane at the loading out of a centre of gravity, you've got control. In Vietnam, because of the activities, the rate of activity, we generally had an assistant to the loadmaster, who was not particularly trained, just someone to be there more or less as a helpful labourer.

Delivering under the Colombo Plan

Flying from Butterworth into Vietnam was not so much a warzone at that stage although it changed very quickly. We did get one bullet hit on a Dakota at one stage at a place called Kanto, coming back from Saigon. Just some local who decided they didn't like us, didn't do any damage …

Our activities there were in support of the embassies, particularly in Laos, Thailand, and South Vietnam where the ambassador always had to keep in touch with what was going on in the provinces and there was also the Colombo Plan aid to be distributed. You might know the Colombo Plan was set up to help countries in need, so that we were taking things like schoolbooks and other things like that, exercise books rather than topic books, anything that helped them in the basic schooling.

What else I don't remember, but it was just Colombo Plan aid. So we delivered that, say hello to the province chief, and then go back to base.

Vung Tau as a base

Vung Tau, that was picked on as the most appropriate base for both Caribous and the Iroquois helicopters, which came later. As it happened, I took the team from Butterworth across to Vietnam to have a look at appropriate places and they found that the support offered by the Americans at Vung Tau and the facilities there made it an appropriate place and it was fairly close to where Nui Dat became the base of the army Task Force.

Tan Son Nhut

When I was first flying there from Butterworth it was a single runway, fairly busy traffic. Normally, in aircraft coming into land, you'll have two or three being spaced by air traffic control. I found occasions going into Saigon where there would be contra rotating circuits, that's to say, the normal thing is a left-hand circuit where you ideally fly along the runway then turn left and do a parallel thing, get your judgment all right, get your heights right and then swoop in and land.

They had right hand circuits going at the same time and they were then straight end approaches going at the same time and I got positioned at number 12 downwind at one stage which means there were eleven aeroplanes ahead of me on that circuit, probably another ten on the other side and another half dozen coming in from direct entry, so it was busy.

By the time I got back to Vietnam in '66, the parallel runway had been built, which halved the load because as well as all the landings, you've got the takings off that were happening, so it got pretty tight.

The role of 35 Squadron

The original idea was to go in direct support of the US Army bases, that's the Special Forces guys, not main bases, but these were isolated spots, generally in unfriendly territory and generally with minimum aerodrome facilities. So something like the Caribou was ideal to support them.

You couldn't get a C 130 Hercules in there. In some cases, they'd get the Fairchild Providers but the Caribou could always get in. It was ideal for that job and when RAAF transport flight got going, that was their major activity and that became more demanding once more aircraft were sent. More people were sent and it grew to the size where it was appropriate to become a squadron, it became number 35 Squadron.

Origin of the Wallaby Airlines name

I've read that it was coined by an American liaison officer. How factual that is, I don't know. As a call sign, I don't know where that started, whether it was just the fact that the Air Force roundel has a kangaroo in the middle of it. Kangaroo airlines were the Qantas job. So maybe someone figured little kangaroo will do.

Khe Sanh

Khe Sanh would be the hairiest I suppose and it wasn't one of those little places, was a major base, major US Marine base, and it was positioned as close as possible to the Ho Chi Minh trail to interdict their supplies there, which upset the Vietcong so that they were determined to eliminate it.

They had it pretty well surrounded with mortars zeroed in, anti-aircraft weaponry along the approach paths. So getting into that place was quite a matter of concern and you couldn't afford to hang around otherwise somebody would drop a mortar on top of you, get in and get out as fast as you could and it was about the most hectic place, I think, at the time.

Unfriendly fire

After that one occasion being hit at Kanto in a Dakota, I didn't count the hits we picked up in the Caribou, we got lots of them. In my time there were no caribou was actually shot down. We had aircraft damaged that had to undergo repairs but we just accepted the fact that they were doing their job and we're doing ours …

If you're flying in Australia you follow all the rules about visual flight rules being able to see where you're going, others being able to see you and so forth. In the Vietnam situation, we didn't always stick to those rules, if you got over the site you wanted to go to and it was nicely underneath you but there was cloud all around, the only safe way to get to it was to spiral down inside the cloud, sorry, clear of the cloud, inside that hole in the cloud and it also kept you away from any unfriendly gunfire out in the periphery because most of the places we went to the Vietcong were conscious of the approach paths, and there'd be a strong chance of someone sitting out there trying to get a shot at you, on the way through. So the defensive spiral was staying over the top and out of range of any unfriendlies.

Flying the standard circuits

We had two standard circuits each six days a week, I think it was. You'd head off from Vung Tau to Saigon. Two aircraft, one would pick up a load to do the 405 mission, if I've got the numbers right, it's the one that did a circuit down over the Delta servicing places along the way there, you'd get six or eight stops and starts on the way in the circuit back to Saigon then back to Vung Tau.

The other one, the 406 went up through Phan Diep, Nha Trang, Da Nang and various other places on the way towards the north, doing the standard circuit and then back to Vung Tau at the end of the day. This was worked out in conjunction with the Americans.

I can't think of the name of the authority now but they had control of us in terms of tasking us for jobs to do with some exception that we could task, the Australian forces could task us with stuff to do with the army, not much of whichever came up with the Australian Army. So they had control but not command, didn't have authority. I was to say you do this, you do that but we'd agreed that they could tell us what jobs they wanted us to do.

A parking problem

We're friends and allies and all that sort of thing and certainly when we went to the Special Forces camps, the Green Berets guys, they were keen to see us to have another face come in instead of the twelve or so that were there looking at one another all day and every day, they'd like to have somebody else come in. That was always good.

Did have a problem with the commander of the Nha Trang Airbase at one stage, because our guys were normally the ones who were based at Nha Trang, we had an aircraft base there all week, and another one at Da Nang just going into the Special Forces camps. Because we're normally first off and last back packing the aircraft became quite a problem so it was arranged with them that there would be a spot for our aeroplane.

Came back late one day and found that spot was taken. Asked about another spot and couldn't get anything and I saw one of the spookies as they call them, they had Dakotas, and I forgot what other aircraft that were fitted with sideways firing weapons to attack the Vietcong. The idea of that was that they could fly a circuit around with the side of the airplane pointing down, and the gun pointing down and they could blast away on the enemy down there.

They were known as the spookies, they were generally painted black and you weren't supposed to see them and they had a roped off parking area. On this occasion I saw one of these guys coming in and figured, " I'll go there, there's a parking spot." So I got there and parked and had an argument with the Americans about that and had to go and see the base commander about that, got his promise that they would make sure there's a spot for us in future and that if I ever did it again he would make life very uncomfortable for me but otherwise we got on well with them.

Personal weapons

We carried either a forty-five or a nine-millimetre pistol and whatever weapons we could get individually. The story was, when I got there, that after the Transport Flight got settled into Vietnam, they asked Canberra to provide them with defensive weapons, rifles or pistols and the answer came back saying, " Sorry, we need them all for training. See what you can get from the Americans."

So, we had American weapons that were just handed over, no questions asked. I inherited the weapons from my predecessor, I handed them on to Nick Watling when I was leaving, no control over them at all, which breaks the normal rules but it was the only way we could get by. I had no occasion to use mine in self-defence, just carried it … that was what it was for, essentially to make you feel better until someone came to rescue you or didn't.

Long days of hard work

We did long days, 12-hour days for five hours flying sort of thing. So you get back at the end of the day, hand the aeroplanes over to the maintenance guys and they'd work on them all night if need be to have them ready for next morning early take off … and they worked bloody long hours and there was a lot of stress on them and I know a couple of them got adversely affected by the stress and had to be sent home and it was not just that they were scared of the war, it was just that they were working so damned hard.

The media and the anti-war movement

The American media coverage was largely influenced by all the protest movements going on in America at a time and they were tending towards criticism of the war and the people involved in the war because of the attitudes, I think, the public attitudes that was growing in America. Earlier on, there was not such a problem in Australia.

When the government first agreed to send forces to Vietnam, the Labor opposition and the liberal country party government all agreed with the exception of Eddie Ward, long known as a very strong leftist. The following year there was an election in which this was an issue and, again, the government was elected with a comfortable majority. So, the public had no problem. Then the government decided to bring in national service and that was a red rag, of course, to the Labor Party.

They'd broken up the Labour Party in 1916, when Billy Hughes tried to introduce it. They were strongly against it. They opposed it. There were other groups who opposed the forced recruitment of the young men, 20-year-olds. The Save Our Son's campaign got going and that, in conjunction with the anti-conscription view of the Labor Party and, I suppose, a degree of left-wing support for the North Vietnamese became a very strong movement.

Everything about the war was wrong, as far as they were concerned, that included the people who went to the war. We were blamed for what the government was doing, that they didn't like and it got quite nasty for a while. I think the Australian media out of necessity to reflect that, I don't recall ever seeing any media articles that said, " Hey wait fellas, let's get this straight." It just reported what was happening and there was a lot of antiwar, anti-defence force sentiment going on.

When the HMAS Sydney, nicknamed the Vung Tau ferry, was bringing battalions back to Australia each year, they'd always have a match through Sydney as a sort of a welcome home. People were throwing red paint over them to simulate blood and calling them baby killers and things like that, blaming the defence force for what they didn't like about the whole thing.

When I got home, when I was back in Melbourne, we were advised never to wear uniform in public unless there was some formal occasion to do it, but otherwise don't attract adverse attention. So there was certainly some nasty stuff with it. That was not the fault of the media, the media were just telling us what had been happening … I never encountered any personal antipathy, my friends and family just understood what the thing was. They might not have been happy about there being a war, but they didn't blame me for it.

Family pressure

I could cope with it but the hell of the strain was on my wife … she did say that was the most stressful time of her life. She had the kids, she had her family, her parents within range. It was just damned hard on her … I just used letters and if I got to a place where I, if I got down to Butterworth as we did a couple of times a year, we'd take aircraft across for things to be done. Get a phone call home, talk to her, and talk to the kids. My youngest daughter, who was born in '63, so she was four years old when I got back, hadn't seen me for over a year, didn't know me.

A reflection on the politics of South Vietnam

I feel pleased with the effort I put in for it, that I'd done what I was sent to do. On the other hand, I wonder whether it was the right thing for Australia to become involved, indeed, for anybody to become involved in that situation. It was perceived at the time as part of the domino theory that we've got to stop these communists from moving on step by step.

The fact that South Vietnam was far from a democracy to be defended against communism. President Ngo Ding Diem was a strong Catholic, as was his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, and he had another brother, whose name I forget, who was the Bishop of Hue. So they were strong Catholics in a Buddhist country and they were favouring the Catholic attitudes towards anything at all and downplaying the, not giving the Buddhists a reasonable chance on things which led to the bonze fires, you might be aware of where the Buddhist bonze self-emolliated, burned himself to death and it led to general dissatisfaction becoming more manifest and so finally Ngo Ding Diem was assassinated and then he was followed by various military guys, sort of military dictatorships running the place with not much recognition of, in my opinion, the real needs of their public.

I believe there was a lot of dissatisfaction growing out in the wider community, out in the countryside in particular, certainly fomented by Vietcong sympathizers there that made it not really a matter of saving the North, the South from the North but just a matter of what a bloody mess, let's get out of it.

Anzac Day

I grew up with the idea that Anzac Day was almost a sacred day and so forth, this was in World War Two, with still plenty of people around from World War One, including my own grandfather, who didn't participate and just accepted that as a routine thing and then when I returned from Vietnam, or when I returned from Malaysia, to go back even further, when I returned from Korea asked about joining the RSL, I was told, " Nah, that doesn't count" even though we'd been entitled to war service benefits including a war service home loan, didn't count. Came home from Malaysia and, yes, that counts because you're doing medivacs from South Vietnam.

I wasn't real thrilled about the RSL, their attitudes on things and since they owned Anzac Day, so to speak, I did feel for a while, that performing on ANZAC Day was saying, " Yes, I support completely the RSL." I had some uncertainties about it at that stage and my kids and my wife used to ask, " Why don't you march?" and I said, " Nah, don't feel like it."

But in later years, as the Vietnam Veterans got going, and I'm in the Air Force branch of the Vietnam vets, it became more a matter of getting together with people who had a similar experience which is probably what the whole idea started out to be originally just that I didn't recognize it. So, I go along to catch up with people and reminisce a little bit and then go home again.

Due recognition

RAAF Transport Flight Vietnam and 35 Squadron, who I think performed magnificently through all their time there and aren't as well known to the Australian public because our work was not so much with the Australian Army, it was mainly with the American forces and that left us a bit out of sight and then there's the guys who went up there as forward air controllers, Air Force fighter pilots who went up and embedded with American units, performing very dangerous functions of finding enemy targets being shot out while they're calling in the airstrikes. The Navy sent up a bunch of helicopter pilots to work with the US Army. Again, they tend to be not in the public eye but need to be acknowledged.