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aircraft as swift, silent and well-equipped as the Mohawk, flown by pilots with intimate knowledge of the terrain and the current enemy situation, is an invaluable asset to a commander.
Similar terms of praise came from the 9th Infantry Division advisors and the senior railway security advisor. In the case of railway security, enemy attacks decreased by 50 percent after regular surveillance was begun by the 23d Special Warfare Aviation Detachment. Nevertheless, the career of a railway engineer in Vietnam was considered to be non-habit forming.
There is no doubt that the Mohawks filled a real intelligence need for the U.S. Army advisors in the field. For the first time the advisors found themselves with a responsive tool in the form of the Mohawk under their direct operational control to fill in the many gaps in their intelligence. Their requests for aerial surveillance and fighter strikes through the cumbersome channels to the Vietnamese Air Force no doubt increased their desire for more Mohawk support. As can be seen from the above, there was the inevitable trend to use the Mohawk in the fighter role, mainly because it was there and it had the hard points necessary to carry armament.
The Caribou in Vietnam
Having described earlier some of the controversial aspects that surrounded the procurement of the Caribou by the U.S. Army. I must now touch on its role in the early years in Vietnam. Unquestionably, the Caribou filled a serious gap in the United States inventory. Its short field characteristics, pay load, and flight "footprint" made it an ideal aircraft in the counter-insurgency environment.
A not-well-known fact is that the Caribou airplane predated our major helicopter commitment to Vietnam by five months. On 21 August 1961, an experimental "Y model" Caribou landed at Saigon under the auspices of the Advanced Research Project Agency. The Advanced Research Project Agency had its own charter to test almost any device, technique, or prototype that it felt might have application in our counter-insurgency efforts. Consequently, the Agency was able to cut through the red tape of Service disagreements and expedite those tests it deemed appropriate.
The Advanced Research Project Agency Caribou flew up and down the length of Vietnam going into airstrips normally limited to much smaller aircraft such as the O-1 or U-6 Beaver. Initially it specialized in resupply of Special Forces outposts that were in-