The Misty Pilots
There wasn't any. But paperwork over the incident was indeed piling up—in both the American and the North Vietnamese militaries. The Air Force had begun filing reports on the shootdown five minutes after it happened, documenting everything known about the crash. One message sent to the Air Force Chief of Staff's office, at the Pentagon, detailed what was known about Howie's parachute beeper, which had flickered on and off. "It is possible," the message concluded, "that natives or hostile forces activated and/or deactivated the radio."
The North Vietnamese were filing reports too. Shooting down a U.S. jet and the "Yankee Air Pirates" aboard was a huge feat, worthy of medals and other honors. It was even more significant if the shootdown produced live prisoners. Every downed jet, if it was accessible, was a magnet for the North Vietnamese, ransacked by locals looking for valuables and souvenirs and scoured by intelligence experts eager to learn everything they could about American tactics. So the North Vietnamese, always attentive to detail, kept careful records of their achievements.
The Ban Karai Pass, where Misty 21 had gone down, was in North Vietnam's Bo Trach Military District. The AAA guns there were operated by North Vietnam's 18th and 21st air-defense battalions, disciplined units well known to Air Force intelligence because they had already scored many hits against U.S. jets. The United States knew little, however, about the fate of most of the pilots who had gone down in that area.
Officers of the Bo Trach military district kept a list of American aircraft that their troops shot down. Under the heading 1968, there was one entry: On February 15, at 7:00 a.m., gunners had downed an F-4 with two pilots aboard. Now, a recordkeeper added a second entry. "1020 hours; 18 March 1968," he scrawled in Vietnamese. "Bo Trach District shot it [the plane] down at kilometer 26 and 20; 1 F100; 1 man killed; 1 alive; they took him and he was lost." To the Americans, Brian Williams had been saved. To the North Vietnamese, he had been "lost." And while the Mistys hoped against their better judgment that Howard Williams was alive somewhere, and might return someday, the North Vietnamese knew otherwise.
There were others who knew Howie was dead. Among the many secret operatives in the war—special forces, CIA irregulars operating behind enemy lines, the "Air America" characters who flew for the CIA—the most effective may have been the intelligence experts who intercepted enemy radio communications. Some flew overhead in aircraft loaded with the world's most sophisticated electronics. Others manned camouflaged listening posts nestled atop strategic—and often dangerous—high ground.
The information they gathered was some of the most valuable intelligence of the war. Since they were often able to tap into the North Vietnamese Army's own communications, they learned details of battle plans, the location of troops, the status of prisoners, and other vital information. Success was spotty and often there were just fragments of data, but electronic eavesdropping also produced some spectacular battlefield results. Many of the B-52 "Arc Light" strikes that wiped out legions of troops, for instance, were triggered by intercepts that helped pinpoint the location of enemy units. The very value of such electronic intelligence—ELINT–made it highly sensitive "compartmentalized" information, classified even higher than top secret. If word of the eavesdropping had ever filtered out to the North Vietnamese or any of the thousands in the South who sympathized with them, it could have shut down one of the Americans' most lucrative sources of information.
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