Beyond the Bombs: Inside the Secret EC-47 Missions of the Vietnam War

Military Tales Episode 46 takes us into a lesser-known corner of the Vietnam War air campaign, exploring the covert electronic intelligence missions flown aboard the EC-47, nicknamed “Gooney Birds.” Our guide for this journey is Doug Davis, a former pilot who served as a co-pilot, aircraft commander, and instructor pilot flying the EC-47 out of Nakhon Phanom (NKP), Thailand. These flights were, at the time, highly classified.

Davis’s role in the EC-47 involved much more than just piloting. The aircraft carried Air Force Security Service personnel in the back who were tasked with monitoring enemy radios. While the public perception of the war often focuses on overt combat, Davis highlights the significant presence of 50,000 to 60,000 North Vietnamese troops in Laos, operating with radios. The EC-47 crews would listen to their transmissions, copy their code, and perform Direction Finding to locate enemy positions. This intelligence was then passed on, though Davis himself wasn’t aware of where it went until much later. He even learned that many CIA people on the ground fighting alongside the Hmong in Laos were unaware of their airborne support. Remarkably, Jim Clapper, later the retired Director of National Intelligence, was the commander of the security service detachment at NKP and his tour overlapped with Davis’s, though they didn’t know each other at the time due to wearing sanitized uniforms without rank. Pilots were advised to “stay away from the Spooks” and interaction was minimal. Davis saw his primary role as simply the “bus driver” for the intelligence personnel.

Operating out of NKP, the EC-47s would typically fly missions into Northern Laos. Davis recounts always flying at an altitude of 10,000 feet. This specific altitude wasn’t primarily to avoid ground fire, but because the aircraft had no oxygen, and flying higher for the typical five to seven-hour missions could cause the crew to become “goofy”. Ten thousand feet was generally sufficient to avoid most small arms fire.

However, Laos presented significant anti-aircraft threats. Unlike the perception of the war in Vietnam, Laos had hundreds of 37mm, 57mm, and 85mm radar-controlled anti-aircraft guns, as well as Strela handheld missiles. Given the EC-47’s slow speed of around 120 knots, flying over known AAA locations was dangerous. Interestingly, the larger guns rarely fired during the day to avoid revealing their positions, and sometimes crews flying over them wouldn’t be shot at. They also speculated that the enemy might hesitate to shoot, unsure if the EC-47 was a slow-moving gunship. Davis recounted one particularly harrowing experience near the North Vietnamese border during the rainy season when AAA was typically out of ammo; after flying there for hours without incident, two A-1 Skyraiders flying later that day in the same area were heavily shot at.

Davis notes the significant lack of interaction between different sections of the base at NKP – Air Police, mechanics, weapons loaders were all separate. He felt disconnected from the base operations, only using it to eat and sleep, with their job being to leave the base. He felt empathy for the ground crews who made the missions possible without knowing what those missions were. Davis felt their efforts were directly helping the Hmong who were actively fighting and suffering losses. He believed that the relatively small number of Americans in Laos (less than 100 military and CIA at any time) played a crucial role in holding off tens of thousands of North Vietnamese troops who would otherwise have reinforced forces in South Vietnam.

Beyond his standard EC-47 duties, Davis also had experiences flying unmarked C-47s, sometimes in civilian clothes, from the Air America ramp at Udorn. The ownership of these aircraft remains a mystery to him. These missions primarily involved moving people and cargo into Laos, sometimes transporting two and three-star generals who would change into civilian clothes at Udorn before flying into Laos to meet with the Ambassador who “ran the war in Laos”. He found he could essentially use these unmarked planes freely for trips, just couldn’t refuel at military bases. Davis was at Udorn during Linebacker Two, witnessing the period when many MIGs were shot down. He also saw Roger Locher after his famous rescue, and recounts a failed attempt to use one of the unmarked planes to fly Zeke (an A-1 pilot) and Dale Stovall (the Jolly Green pilot who rescued Locher) on a retreat.

Davis also touches upon other topics, including a briefing where a Task Force Alpha commander highlighted the Navy’s A-6 Intruders with their moving target indicator radar as being significantly more effective at hitting trucks on the Ho Chi Minh trail than the Air Force’s methods, a comparison the Air Force wished to keep quiet. He dismisses the idea of helicopters “snatching” drones from the air, though he notes that aerial recovery by fixed-wing aircraft like the C-119 or C-130 was possible. He also knows the project officer for a highly classified program involving retrieving agents via a balloon and aircraft pickup system.

Reflecting on his time, Davis logged a remarkable thousand hours in the EC-47 in one year at NKP. He left the Air Force after an unsatisfying ground job post-Vietnam. He continued flying privately for many years but hasn’t flown for the last eight. He mentions the tragic loss of the EC-47 Baron 52 in Laos a week after the ceasefire, where the bodies of the four aircrew were recovered, but one security service member remains missing, fueling conspiracy theories. Davis’s story provides a fascinating glimpse into the complex, often hidden, air operations over Laos and the vital intelligence gathering that supported the war effort.