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John McCain, Pho Pha Thi, Lima Site 85


Bob Eisenman

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Pho Pha Thi mountain
(Lima Site 85)png

The peak just south of GPS
20.468, 103.7058

Reading about John McCain's brain tumor reminds me of something I read about the Viet Nam war. A top secret radar installation had been placed atop Pho Pha Thi mountain in Laos. The radar unit was used by US aircraft to target Hanoi and reached a peak use in the later part of 1967:
"the TSQ-81 radar system on Phou Pha Thi was considered to have been extremely successful during the final months of 1967"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lima_Site_85

John McCain was shot down in Oct 1967.

"While McCain was on a bombing mission over Hanoi in October 1967, he was shot down, seriously injured, and captured by the North Vietnamese."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCain

'Lima site 85' , was the covert helicopter landing site atop Pho Pha Thi

 (Lima site + # designates a Laotian landing zone on a paper map)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_covert_sites_of_the_Laotian_Civil_War

For perspective, I got my first job as a cook at Kentucky Fried Chicken while in about grade 11 (1970). The man who hired me was a retired Army officer. In one conversation with me he said ,of the Viet Nam war, ...'wait until the public finds out that we are in Cambodia and Laos too!'.

That was two to three years after McCain became imprisoned after being shot down while on a mission directed at Hanoi in 1968.

The end of the radar installation atop Pho Pha Thi occurred on March 10-11, 1968.

"Fall of Lima Site 85     
 
By 9 March 1968, the U.S. facility on top of Phou Pha Thi was surrounded by North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao units. The VPA 766th Regiment and one Pathet Lao battalion totalled more than 3,000 men."

"Blanton, the U.S. commander at Lima Site 85, was killed alongside two other U.S. technicians. Those who were not killed retreated to the west side of the mountain, where they hid on the edge of the cliff. "

"Later in the day, Air America was able to recover or account for eight of the dead U.S. personnel on Lima Site 85, along with a number of wounded Hmong soldiers.[28] By midday, Lima Site 85 was fully controlled by the VPA 41st Special Forces Battalion, and they held the facility until 14 March when they withdrew from the area."

"A total of 12 U.S. personnel were missing or killed in the fighting on Phou Pha Thi; 11 were killed or missing on the ground and one was shot dead during the evacuation."

"In 2002 two of the former VPA soldiers who had taken part in the attack told investigators that they threw the bodies of the Americans off the mountain after the attack as they were unable to bury them on the rocky surface.[38]

In March 2003, JPAC investigators threw dummies over the edge at those points indicated by the VPA soldiers while a photographer in a helicopter videotaped their fall. That pointed the investigators to a ledge, 540 feet (160 m) below. Several mountaineer-qualified JPAC specialists scaled down the cliffs to the ledge where they recovered leather boots in four different sizes, five survival vests, and other fragments of material that indicated the presence of at least four Americans."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lima_Site_85

32904.png

 

V22 Osprey flight sim flyby video of Pho Pha Thi , where the battle of Lima Site 85 happened in 1968.

 

 

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