ZORRO STRIKES

The T-28's secret war in Southeast Asia

- BY THOMAS MCKELVEY CLEAVER

Editor's note: The North American T-28 “Trojan” trainer is one of the least-known combat aircraft of all time. This is because it was designed as a trainer and history has failed to properly recognize its other roles. It was an unglamorous airplane and fought in even more unglamorous, sometimes officially denied wars. However, it earned its stripes and deserves to be better recognized.

IT WAS A DARK NIGHT OVER THE HO CHI MINH TRAIL. “Zorro-16, Nail-43. I have you approximately seven thousand above terrain. You are on fire. What are your intentions?” “Roger, Nail-43. Understood-on fire.” Air Force Captain Charles Brown didn’t need the FAC to know he was on fire; he could see the glow of the fire out the exhausts of his AT-28D! Whatever his intentions, the decision had to be fast. “I was in a burning aircraft, at night, over the Ho Chi Min Trail in Laos-these were not the ingredients for a good night.”

It was January 27, 1968. Flying out of Nakhon Phanom (NKP) with the 606th Special Operations Squadron, the job of the AT-28D pilots was to find and stop the supply convoys moving down the Ho Chi Minh Trail at night. “We were needed because the fast-movers had trouble seeing trucks at night. The objective was to jam them up by hitting the first and last trucks, then let the fast-movers or the A-26s work on them.” Brown's patrol area was the section where the trail exited North Vietnam and turned southeast through Laos toward South Vietnam. Arriving on station around 2015, Brown had watched two jets miss with their bombs before “Nail-43” cleared him in hot. “I saw strings of 37mm fire in the area where I thought the FAC was holding. I was about to call him when my aircraft shook, jumped, and burst into flame.”