The Last Flight of BARON 52

In the heart of the National Security Agency’s sprawling headquarters complex located at Fort Meade, Maryland, you will find the National Cryptologic Memorial (assuming you can get inside the well-guarded building). This imposing black granite slab lists the names of 178 NSA personnel who gave their lives on duty. Nearly all the dead listed on the wall were members of the U.S. military (others who died in deep-cover status are commemorated elsewhere, with greater secrecy). Our post-9/11 wars have seen 25 names added to the wall, one as recently as last year.

Above their names is inscribed THEY SERVED IN SILENCE, which is undeniably true. In many cases, their families were told remarkably little about how or why their loved ones “made the supreme sacrifice” per the vaunted cliché. The biggest collection of names on the wall, 34 dead, traces back to June 8, 1967, NSA’s deadliest day, when Israel attacked and nearly sank the USS Liberty, a Navy spy ship, for reasons that have never truly been explained.

Just as strange and unsettling is the case of the four servicemen listed on that wall who died on February 5, 1973, representing NSA’s last dead in the Vietnam War. Those were four members of the U.S. Air Force Security Service, one of the agency’s military components, lost over Laos on a secret spy mission. However, those men’s families don’t believe they died that day.

Their classified airborne mission was termed BARON 52, undertaken on an EC-47Q, a modified version of the venerable Douglas DC-3 Dakota (called C-47 in the military) of World War Two fame. The Air Force took mothballed C-47s out of storage for service in Vietnam. Sixteen of the EC-47Q variant were given more powerful engines and an advanced electronics package under a secret program termed SENTINEL EAGLE. Their job was airborne radio direction finding, flying over North Vietnamese Army or Viet Cong units to locate them based on interception of their radio signals, often so other U.S. aircraft could bomb them.

While the aging EC-47 was a sturdy and reliable airplane with a lot of endurance and ability to absorb damage, making it ideal for the ARDF mission, this was dangerous work. Vietnam has lots of mountains and bad weather, moreover the lumbering and unarmed EC-47 was highly vulnerable to anti-aircraft artillery, the dreaded “triple-A.” EC-47 crews proudly adopted the motto “Alone, unarmed, and unafraid,” but the last wasn’t always true. The VC usually went into hiding when they spotted an EC-47, mistaking it for the USAF’s deadly AC-47 gunship, but the NVA was more disciplined, plus they had lots of AAA. BARON 52 was the sixth and final EC-47 lost during the Vietnam War.

TIDE 86 was lost, with all seven airmen aboard, on March 8, 1967, while flying an ARDF mission over South Vietnam. CAP 72 was shot down on February 5, 1969, over Laos while spying on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, Hanoi’s main supply route to sustain its war in South Vietnam, with the loss of the full crew, 10 airmen. On October 8, 1969, PRONG 33 crashed due to an in-flight fire while attempting to return to base in South Vietnam, killing all six airmen aboard. CAP 53 was hit by AAA while spying on the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos, on April 22, 1970, yet managed to limp back to South Vietnam before crashing. Two airmen were killed but six others survived, although wounded. On November 21, 1972, BARON 56 completed its ARDF mission but experienced engine problems while landing at its Thai air base. The pilot and another crewman were killed in the runway crash, but eight others survived.

BARON 52 would not be so fortunate. Late in the evening of February 4, 1973, as midnight approached, she took off from Ubon Air Base in eastern Thailand to conduct a classified ARDF mission over the Ho Chi Minh Trail in southeastern Laos, an area called 11G by the Air Force. This was a “tank smoker” mission, trying to locate NVA armor headed to South Vietnam via supposedly neutral Laos. Although the Nixon administration had signed the Paris Peace Accords a week before, formally ending direct U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War, intelligence collection was continuing as before. NSA believed, correctly, that Hanoi had no intention of honoring its part of the agreement by curtailing its war against South Vietnam.

The EC-47Q with the callsign BARON 52 belonged to the 361st Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron, which supplied the four “front-enders” who flew the aircraft: Capt George R. Spitz (pilot), 1st Lt Severo Primm III (co-pilot), Capt Arthur Bollinger (navigator), and 1st Lt Robert E. Bernhardt (third pilot). The “back-enders,” the airmen conducting the classified intelligence mission, operating the secret electronic gear, came from the 6994th Security Squadron: SSgt Todd M. Melton (airborne cryptologic linguist), Sgt Joseph A. Matejov (airborne Morse systems operator), Sgt Peter R. Cressman (airborne Morse systems operator), and Sgt Dale Brandenburg (airborne electronic warfare systems operator).

This was a routine mission, in the sense that EC-47Qs had run ARDF flights like this regularly during the Vietnam War, but the Ho Chi Minh Trail was heavily guarded by the NVA. BARON 52 would be flying into thick AAA if the plane were detected by enemy radars. Therefore BARON 52 was required to check in every 30 minutes with an airborne command and control aircraft called MOONBEAM, as well as to report any unusual activity or problems encountered during the mission. There were several USAF planes flying over southern Laos that night, under MOONBEAM’s coordination. Help was close-by if BARON 52 ran into trouble.

Her crew checked in shortly after midnight on February 5, confirming she was headed to southern Laos to collect intelligence. At 0125 local time, BARON 52 informed MOONBEAM that she encountered some AAA fire over eastern Laos but continued her mission. At 0140L, BARON 52 reported that she had been “painted” by NVA radars and was taking flak, apparently from 37 mm cannons. She was flying over the heart of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a hazardous place. BARON 52 failed to check in with MOONBEAM at 0200L and just 10 minutes later the Air Force commenced Search and Rescue efforts which involved several aircraft. However, in the dark of night, SAR operations could not locate BARON 52.

The Air Force surmised that the aircraft was shot down not long before its scheduled 0200 check-in, so SAR operators had some idea where to look for BARON 52. This was bandit country, and the rescuers were regularly under fire as they searched for the missing plane, which was located on February 7. However, it took the Air Force two more days to get SAR personnel to the crash site, deep in the jungle, surrounded by NVA units. On February 9, an Air Force helicopter lowered three Pararescuers and an NCO from the 6994th Security Squadron to the crash site to inspect what was left of BARON 52. Their mission was to find survivors, if possible, recover remains, and secure classified materials. The EC-47’s fuselage, largely shorn of its wings, was lying upside down in the jungle, on its back; it was obvious that there had been a major fire. Not much of BARON 52 remained intact. The SAR team, which spent less than an hour on the ground, contemplated having the remnants of the fuselage lifted out of the jungle by helicopter, but that was deemed too logistically hazardous. They located the bodies of the four front-enders, or what was left of them after the fire, and were able to recover the partial remains of 1st Lt Bernhardt. Of the four back-enders, they could find no sign at all, although the SAR team decided not to enter what was left of the fuselage, fearing it might collapse or be booby-trapped. They could not locate any of BARON 52’s classified electronic intelligence-gathering gear either, a troubling sign. Significantly, the SAR team failed to find the airplane’s jump door, which would have been the back-enders’ way out of the crashing plane.

Had the four Security Service airmen managed to bail out or otherwise escape BARON 52 alive? That thought haunted the 6994th Security Squadron – and some people back at NSA too. The four AFSS crewmen were initially listed as Missing in Action, but their status was changed to Killed in Action on February 23, 1973, despite the fact that no bodies had been recovered. It seems that the Air Force wanted the BARON 52 issue to go away, particularly as the U.S. military was pulling out of the Vietnam War as rapidly as possible. As the 6994th Security Squadron’s previously classified account of BARON 52’s loss observed, delicately, the change to KIA status for Melton, Matejov, Cressman, and Brandenburg occurred “in spite of the fact that certain intelligence reports from NSA had reported the capture of four fliers in the vicinity of the BARON 52 crash site.”

That did indeed happen, and NSA had classified SIGINT which certainly implied that the missing AFSS men might be alive, in enemy hands. BARON 52 was the only U.S. aircraft lost on February 5, 1973, so who else could those intelligence reports be referring to? That debate has raged for decades, with the Pentagon’s POW/MIA Accounting Office, backed by the Defense Intelligence Agency, insisting that the four Security Service airmen died in the crash that night. However, their families never accepted that verdict, in the absence of any recovered remains. In particular, the families of Cressman and Matejov, both aged 21 when they were lost, rejected the Pentagon’s account of the loss of BARON 52, denouncing the reputed cover-up for decades.

This all became part of the “missing men” lore that preoccupied American popular culture in the 1980s. The POW/MIA issue was officially put to rest after the Cold War, particularly by a Senate Select Committee, with significant input from Sen. John McCain, himself a former prisoner in Hanoi, whose 1993 report signaled that the matter was closed as far as Official Washington was concerned. In late 1992, Laos permitted a Pentagon team to inspect and dig up the BARON 52 crash site. That recovery effort turned up various bone fragments (whose remains they are continues to be controversial) and Matejov’s dog tag. That settled the case as far as the Pentagon was concerned.

The recovered remains of the eight airmen lost on BARON 52 were interred together at Arlington Cemetery in 1996. However, the families of the four AFSS back-enders refused to accept that their loved ones were killed in the crash that happened over 48 years ago now. They simply don’t trust the Pentagon to tell the truth about what occurred on February 5, 1973, a skepticism that’s understandable, given how little the Defense Department told the families about the loss of BARON 52 when it crashed in the Laotian jungle.

Regardless, the names of the four Security Service airmen are listed on the official memorial to NSA’s fallen, while the Air Force’s 94th Intelligence Squadron, based at NSA, has commemorated the sacrifice of BARON 52 with an official ceremony at Arlington Cemetery, including a reading of the names of the eight lives taken when enemy fire shot down the last EC-47 to be lost in action.

What really happened to Melton, Matejov, Cressman, and Brandenburg? Perhaps the Pentagon’s account is accurate, but there is evidence that certain U.S. military personnel lost in Laos during the Vietnam War, yet known to have been captured by the enemy, were never returned home. Moreover, the only AFSS airman to visit the crash site when it was still fresh, Ronald Schofield, recounted his experience of observing the wreck on February 9, 1973, in an official Air Force oral history interview 16 years later. In this, Schofield implies his belief that the four back-enders got out of the plane, alive.

What about the intelligence in NSA’s hands? This transpired long before my time with NSA – Vietnam was my father’s war – yet I know agency old-timers who swear that the Security Service airmen lost on BARON 52 survived the crash and were captured by the enemy, and that the agency knew this. I also encountered NSA veterans who believe the exact opposite. We may never know the full story.

THEY SERVED IN SILENCE