Air Force Vet from Parker Advanced Country’s Drone Program in Vietnam
Harold Smith expected a lull as he worked on drones at Bien Hoa Air Base in South Vietnam during the 1968 Vietnamese New Year.
I read on the bulletin board that everything was going to be quiet, peaceful. The local Viet Cong, which was the insurgency, would hold for peace and everything would be fine and itd be a nice holiday, said Smith, now 83. Well, at midnight all hell broke loose with an attack on the base.
It was one of many surprise assaults across the region during the Tet Offensive, one of the most significant military campaigns in the Vietnam War. The initial siege on Bien Hoa lasted a week, but overall, the confrontation there lasted for a month.
After the first three days we went back to work, but there was intermittent rifle fire in our compound, he said.
Smith, who goes by the nickname Red, helped oversee the U.S. drone program at the time, pieces of which were declassified in recent years. He spent four months in Vietnam to correct navigational issues with the drones.
After retiring from the Air Force as a lieutenant colonel, and after a stint with a major drone contractor, Smith founded R&D Engineering in 1977. His son, Doug Smith, 55, works with him at the warehouse he erected on land at the Caddo Mills Municipal Airport. Doug Smith said his dad has always been driven and focused.
I think he was born to get the job done and the military just cemented his belief on how to do it, Doug Smith said. He worked his way out of the ghetto.
That determination drove Smith to pursue two bachelors degrees at the University of Colorado and a masters degree in engineering management at Southern Methodist University.
From the time I was 10, I wanted an aeronautical engineering degree, but I grew up poor, said Harold Smith, who was born in Sioux City, Iowa, in the 1930s. There was little prospect for advancement. When I graduated from high school, I had taken all the scientific engineering curriculum because I had this ultimate goal.
The Parker resident said President John F. Kennedy was dismayed after the Russians shot down CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers in 1960 and the Cubans shot down Air Force pilot Rudolf Anderson in 1962.
Kennedy inquired about the drones available for reconnaissance, but Smith said only two were equipped to take surveillance photos.
The program received greater support, and between 1962 and 1964 the program ramped up with tests, preparing to deploy.
It was very quick, but it was ordered by the president that makes a difference, Smith said.
He joined the effort soon after.
The unmanned aerial vehicles were primarily utilized during the Vietnam War to get photographs of areas blanketed with surface-to-air missiles.
North Vietnam had become the most heavily defended airspace in the whole world, Smith said.
The drones were able to fly at very low altitude, under the operational effectiveness of the weapons. Smith said at a minimum, two drones were launched each day.
Mark Witham, founder of the Military Heritage Collection in Nevada, Texas, said Smiths work kept pilots out of harms way.
It just saved countless lives and I doubt anyone ever turned to him and said Thanks, Witham said. I meet a lot of people and hes one of my heroes.
Witham added that Smiths team made the strides with only rudimentary technology available.
They were still using slide rules, Witham said. Those guys were designing things that were so far ahead that it was ridiculous.
A document declassified in 2006 that analyzed the program from 1970 to 1972 states, Many major combat decisions hinged on drone photography. It also quoted a general who said the programs role was of the utmost importance to our tactical and strategic reconnaissance objectives.
Smith said his team not only equipped drones to take photographs, but eventually to capture radio control signals that made enemy missiles ineffective.
There was an undersecretary of the Air Force that said, This one mission was the most successful electronic warfare enterprise in the whole history of the war, and it was done by a little $175,000 drone with special radios, Smith said. I was pleased to hear him say that.
Drones have filled the headlines for the past few years since theyve been used to make targeted kills, but Smith thought of the capability and pursued it well before the U.S. used the technology abroad.
Smith said the Israeli Air Force lost several F-4 bombers in 1970 over a span of about two weeks during insurgency missions over Egypt. Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir asked President Richard Nixon for help, so Smith traveled from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio to the Pentagon to brief the Department of Defense.
I told them that we could put a weapon on target from a TV-guided drone, Smith said. In nine months, a Maverick missile was shot off a drone in the desert.
But it wasnt until three decades later that the Air Force used weapon-mounted drones with the introduction of the Predator, which was deployed to the Middle East.
No one picked up on what had been done, Smith said of the programs successful test in 1971. It was infancy work. It was pioneer work.
Tags: Veterans News
