I've got a pic or two of them in some books somewhere. Uncle Nick's description is spot-on through. They were about the size of a coffee table, piece of chicken wire framed in wood. Leads of what look like firecrackers branching off all across it. I wanna say the fuses were factory fixed but those crafty ol' explosives junkies in SOG found creative ways to modify them.

There's a very infamous tale from the annals of SOG Recon whereupon Bob Howard was straphanging on a recon team. I'm pretty sure Bob was still the S-4 NCO at FOB-2 (CCC) at this time, so he was frequently able to sneak away from supply duties and get into the field. Anyways, he apparently lashed a Nightingale device to his ruck and somehow carried this thing into a Prairie Fire target with the team. On the second or third night, the team detected a fairly large enemy bivouac just down the hillside from their RON site. In the wee hours of the next morning, Howard and the team's indig pointman eased down the hillside with that Nightingale device and were able to sneak into the NVA's perimeter. Bob found a good spot to hide it and after doing so, he initiated the fuse -- which had to have been modified with a time-pencil because it didn't initiate for at least an hour. I can't remember exactly, but when that damn thing started cooking off, the NVA wen't absolutely nuts and started shooting the shit out of themselves. As the story goes, it took their officers about an hour or more to get everyone settled down. By morning, what was left of that outfit had scurried off, leaving half their number dead in the bivouac.

@RTUtah That is amazing.  Small world if he is your uncle.  If so, tell him his writing style and story telling are exellent.  And that he and the other SOG guys have all the respect in the world from anybody that reads his books.  Guys had balls of brass.

If you can recall the name of the books with the pics, please let me know because Id love to see them.  Also, that story is awesome and sounds like the perfect use of the device.  Reminds me of something I did in my youth (decades ago) with a pack of firecrackers and a cigarette as a time delay to get back at some crappy neighbors.  Allegedly.  Depending on who you ask.

Howard was a badass.


Howard enlisted in the Army in 1956 at Montgomery, Alabama and retired as colonel, Army Special Forces, in 1992.

Howard's service in Vietnam included assignments with 1/327th Airborne Infantry, 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, 5th Special Forces Group and MACV-SOG

As a staff sergeant of the highly classified Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG), Howard was recommended for the Medal of Honor on three occasions for three individual actions during thirteen months spanning 1967–1968. The first two nominations were downgraded to a Silver Star and the Distinguished Service Cross due to the covert and top secret nature of the operations in which Howard participated.

As a sergeant first class of the SOG, he risked his life during a rescue mission in Cambodia on December 30, 1968, while second in command of a platoon-sized Hatchet Force that was searching for missing American soldier Robert Scherdin for which he was awarded the Medal of Honor.[2]:?205–6?[3] He learned of the award over a two-way radio while under enemy fire, immediately after being wounded, resulting in one of his eight Purple Hearts.[4]

Howard was wounded 14 times during a 54-month period in the Vietnam War. For his distinguished service, Howard received a direct appointment from Master Sergeant to First Lieutenant in December 1969.

Howard graduated from Ranger School class 7-73 in May 1973 and served with the 2nd Ranger Battalion at Fort Lewis, Washington as company commander. From 1977 to 1978 he served as Mountain Ranger Training instructor.

Howard later served as officer-in-charge of Special Forces training at Camp Mackall, near Ft. Bragg, N.C., and later, commanding the Mountain Ranger Training Camp at Dahlonega, Georgia

Howard graduated from the National War College, Class 1987–1988.

He received two master's degrees during his Army career which spanned 1956 to 1992. Howard retired as a colonel in 1992.[5]

He was one of the most decorated soldiers in the Vietnam War.[6][7] NBC News said that Howard may have been the most highly decorated American soldier of the modern era, while KWTX-TV states that he was "said to be the most decorated service member in the history of the United States".[9] John Plaster in his 1998 book SOG: The Secret Wars of America's Commandos in Vietnam states that Howard "remains to this day the most highly decorated American soldier."[2]:?204?

His residence was in Texas and he spent much of his free time working with veterans until the time of his death. He also took periodic trips to Iraq to visit active duty troops.

Howard died of pancreatic cancer at a hospital in Waco, Texas, on December 23, 2009. He was survived by four children and five grandchildren.[5][10]

His funeral was in Arlington National Cemetery on February 22, 2010. [11]


In 2014, Howard was announced as the recipient of United States Special Operations Command's Bull Simons award for his "lifetime achievements in Special Operations".[12]

In April 2017 a building at the Rowe Training Facility on Camp Mackall was named Howard Hall in his honor

M3 med bag

@D16man

Ahh, gotcha.

Here is a very interesting page detailing the air crews that supported SOG. Well worth a read.

http://www.macvsog.cc/air_assets.htm

what year?  my pops was also MACV but not SOG.  he was on Westmorelands staff in Saigon for a bit, then went into the field and did 2 tours with 2 different A-Teams(Advisory Teams)not the TV show but he humped around IV corps as a Radio Op as well.  he was at Bac Lieu for a while.  i have a metric shit ton of pics he took.  as to the load outs they carried whilst working with the RVN kids.. they pretty much all carried the same gear as the "Ruff Pups" so that when they made contact they would not have to worry about running out of ammo for their weapons.  although he did make one of the Ruff Pups carry an M-14, he carried an M1/M-2 Carbine.  also to what Snake Driver mentioned. they too could smell the VC or NVA if they were close by.  he said on more than one occasion one of the scouts would come running back saying they had found the enemy!  On one of his first trips out, he ask how they knew the enemy was there and the reply was "we smell them".  They were also very good at spotting enemy booby traps and what nots.  they knew the lay of the land as good as the enemy did and knew how to spot things the Americans wouldn't.  He also set up one of the first M.A.R.S. stations in country and as a result of letting an Air Force General make the first call to his wife in Honolulu( IIRC) the Gen granted my pops and his unit all the air support they would ever need.  IIRC that was out of SOC TRANG but don't hold me to that.  he had so many stories of the RVN soldiers and how they(Advisors)would eat what the RVN ate when out on patrols and what have you.  he said 1. we all smelled the same and 2. it was considered an insult to the RVN not to eat it.  i have a pic of him and several members celebrating after a mission in which they were all eating RAT!  my father said he and his Captain almost threw up and the the little RVN Major told them if they did, they would have to eat it again!  LOL.  lots of great stories from him about the people but he never really commented on the fighting.  i found a rifle one time in our house when i was a kid.  My father didn't say much about it at the time other than he brought it back from the war.  later when i was a teenager i asked him about it again.  He said one day when they were out on patrol, they took fire from a sniper.  after being pinned down for a bit and with the loss of a few people he was able to locate the sniper and took him out with the M-14 his Ruff Pup carried by stripping down a mag and topping it off with Tracer Rounds to direct fire at the sniper.  as a result, the RVN Major awarded the rifle to my father.  it was/is an old ChiCom bolt action thats basically a Mosin Nagant.  i have all the paperwork on the rifle and pics of the dead VC. I sure wish he was still around to hear more but he passed over 20yrs ago.

I want to hear more...  The book about him was pretty lackluster.

Here's the thing - get him to write this stuff down.  Not for us but for you and your siblings and any grandkids.  I wish my grandpa had written down some of his stories from WWII - now none of the family can really remember his stories (he didn't talk much about it).  My mom passed when I was younger and she wrote down stuff for her boys - I cherish that stuff.  Same with my dad - to help him recover from a suspected stroke my brother and I gave him a list of questions and he answered them.  

He managed to snatch something like thirteen NVA prisoners from out across the fence, led countless Bright Light missions across the fence, and led the infamous "Blue Boy" raider element during Operation Ivory Coast, into North Vietnam. The guy was Mr. Recon at a time when SOG was just finding its footing and understanding its role in the war. Any one of those accomplishments would've helped create a legend.

I'd recommend Uncommon Valor by Stephen L. Moore and John Plaster's original SOG title; they both highlight Dick's more epic accomplishments as a young recon man. There's a reason why Sugarfoot is memorialized in a statue at Bragg.

@RTUtah you expand on this a bit more?

Also explain the origin of the nickname "Sugarfoot", please.

Both fantastic books...  I just wish the Dick Meadows specific book was better.  And a COL Howard book would be amazing.  

A few posts above, you'll see what I mean.


I can't recall if this was talked about in his biography. SOG had a codename generator, for lack of a better term, which guys would pick from whenever they showed up and finished the in-processing. Some guys got to select their codenames and some simply picked from whatever was randomly generated.


Yeah it's been a minute since I read his biography. It felt kinda PG-rated, if that makes sense. The author was very careful about the light he shined on the man. I can understand that but it could've been grittier I feel. I dunno.

If you hadn't read any of Plaster, Meyers or Blacks books, you should. The sacrifices that these gents made was just unimaginable in some cases. Whole teams wiped out and never heard from again.

For those of you asking what a Nightingale device looks like.

Attached File

I saw this on google, but its already been posted.

link

I see RTUTah already posted this pick.  I assume that page is from Plaster's book.

It doesn't look like anything so high speed anyone needed the CIA to develop it.  It appears to be a frame of 2x4s with a piece of mesh or chainlink fence as a solid.  The two friction igniters are duct taped top left.  Time fuse snakes down the length of it in an S pattern, and you can tell that  there are multiple noisemakers, as well as five locations where five noisemakers go off at once, to simulate automatic fire or random shifts in the rhythm of a simulated gunfight.

I am pretty sure they threw a few out the doors of a helicopter at the Son Tay Raid.  I thought I read of cut down versions that some troopers would strap to their rucks, but that one seems large and cumbersome.  Tactically, it seems like something you'd commonly toss out of a helicopter in a a false insertion.  If you dropped one you'd clearly want to get away from it as fast as you could, so I'd think you'd want a delay on it, or you'd use it under desperate circumstances, like when you are moving very fast away from it.  Kinda surprised we dont use them nowadays. It would be a cool training aid to sell to teh government for live fires.

Relevant thread.

Quietest missions had the most danger.

I don't think they'd work on modern firefinding microphones.

Ive listened to every jocko podcast.  The one with Tilt talking about Lynn Black's book, "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" simply blew me away.

I have to have that book.  Anyone read it?

1966 IV Corps   Advisory Team carried an M2 carbine and Luger he took from a dead VC.  I’ve seen pics of the Luger.  
1970 MACV
Stayed 32 years. Brigade Commander in Desert Storm

Those podcasts are great.

Half way through John Plaster's episode now.

Twice.

It was out of control

3 books.

Just picked up Special Reconnaissance and Advanced Small Unit Patrolling which is a compilation of "lessons learned" by MACV-SOG missions. The author

is a SOG vet, Lt. Col. Ed Wolcoff.

He frames the lessons by each stage of the mission planning process, execution and support. Highly praised by numerous SOG vets, including Plaster.

Next is another SOG memoir, this time from an officer's viewpoint. A Glorious Nightmare, by Gamble Dick. He starts out as a SF Butterbar who volunteers

for a secret mission unit and is soon leading Hatchet forces over the fence. So far it's well written.

The last one I've read a couple of times. Some Thoughts on Scouts and Spies, by Gerry Barker.

This is a look at Special Reconnaissance in the time of the Longhunters. More of a general treatise, aimed at historical reenactors, the author illustrates through his

Vietnam SF experience the challenges faced by men like Kenton and Boone going up against the Woodland Indians. An interesting twist that

describes a lot of traits that make up good recon operators. Highly recommended.

600 rounds? Holy fuck. HSLD soldiers these days carry what? 5-6 30 round mags?

Depends on the mission and vehicle situation.

Jocko's SOG series is insanely good.  Also the one with Dakota Meyer where he goes over his MoH battle.

I'm not discussing the deployment time, who this guy trained with, or what the Marines did, but I know from the podcasts that MACV-SOG did take from most branches.  They were talking about SEALs that were attached to the group.  I know that they had a lot of Marine air support, too.

The few SEALs who ran recon did so in the earlier days and only for a few months. These guys were also assigned to SOG's Naval Advisory Detachment in Da Nang. Nearly 100% of the round eyes on the ground came from 5th Group or were assigned to Snake Bite TDY teams sent down from 1st Group in Okinawa.