Project Eldest Son

[macvsog]

Th is probably one of the most secret projects known to SOG. Eldest Son was started by then Colonel John K. Singlaub who happened to be an OSS agent in WWII, wanted the enemy to be harder than a B-52 air strick. So he developed the idea of "doctering rounds" including 7.62x39 ammo, mortar rounds and some larger rounds too.

Before this Siglaub had thought of blowing a case of ammunition in the North Vietnam just by moving a case of ammo in their face. He changed his mine when he thought why just doctor some rounds and mortars and lets see what would happen. Singlaub had a very fertile mind.

A sample of some years ago doctored rounds were used during the 1930's to combat rebellious tribsmen in northwest India's Waziristan. This the same place lawlees region were the Taliban and Al Qaeda terroriosts live now today. The British army even planted ammunition in .303 caliber. There are more wars, especially in the early years of 1886-1897 that were played out with doctored ammo.

SOG would do it likewise. On august 30 1967 it was decided by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to go a head with Project Eldest Son. Some of you SOG guys and SF back then may have heard of it through Operationsole Bean, Italine Green, I believe that this might be all of the rest of the Projects concerning doctored ammo with Project Eldest Son being the most secret.

Anyhow, Col. Singlaub arrranged a test with CIA experts, one docoterd piece of 7.62x39mm. and an AK47 held down on a table with clamps on it to see directly if the Project was first feasable to use such ammunition. It worked perfectely with an explosion so powerful that Col. Singlaub saw the entire weapon blow up into small sectioned pieces. The Bolt flew completely to the rear of the receiver and into a wall and as Col. Singlaub observed, "I imagine that the bolt woud of ended up into the user's head.

After the success of what the staff saw at Camp Chinen, Okinawa the CISO in Okinawa with CISO Chief Ben "Conrad" Baker ( the equivalent to James Bond's "Q" but only very, very fertile mind than "Q's" and it was all used in Vietnam and most worked) who either procured or manufactured all the things that SOG could use in Laos, North Vietnam, China (NOTE: Southern portions only), Cambodia and the border region between north and south Vietnam.

The CIA with the cooperation with CISO began pulling bullets from thousands of rounds and the propellant to be exchanged for PETN. PETN is a white powderly subtance that can be easily be seen that there was a difference in color between the White powder of PETN and the real propellant in black color. PETN will explode with just the primer going off and it would instantly go off like a minature bomb. Now the hardest part of the whole manufacturing process was with Chines ammo. With the chinese ammo which was shipped with its bullet/cartridge with lacquer especially where the bullet seated into the case it caused som small scrapping, but when reloaded these marks would not bee seen because of seating the bullet when reloaded.

When it was all said an done there were 11,5565 Ak rounds manufactured. Along with 556 rounds for the 12.7mm.

Later Ben had found a source that had manufactered a black colored substance that would look like ordinary gun powdered but it was a different explosive compound. Everbody in this Project was concerned that they (NVA/VC) would find out if a round had seperated from the cartridge that it had been doctored ammunition. Thus using the new substace of explosive would almost gaurentee (SP) a black colored explosive was being used.

Next on this thread will be more imformation on Project Eldest Son.

 

[Raven Gold]

Hah! I love those kinds of sneaky bastid's cher;

 

[macvsog]

Now the new explosive had a greater ability to exploded with much more power.

An Ak-47, RPD, AKM's, and Type 56's from China could handle up to 40,000 p.s.i Bakers knew this. The real darker powder that looked like regular communist propellant produced an amazing 250,000 p.s.i. Enough to blow up the weapon and kill the one who is shooting the weapon.

The many doctored rounds proved the easiest challenge in Ben's little shop of horrors. The secret area of Okinawa where Ben developed everything from fatigues to unique weapons such as the Delayed capsules that were more accurate in the timing than the ones used in WWII OSS teams, the Astrolite explosive developed from NASA'S rocket propulsion Laboratory, and there were many more items developed from these handful of fertile minds. The doctored round then could be loaded back into the shipping container and had the case reseald with ease.

The only problem that faced them however, was with the placing of these rounds into the enemy logistical system without the enemy detecting something wrong.

The first eye witness of an Ak-47 blowing up happened near the Cambodian border on June 6, 1968 with the U.S. 1st infantry got into a fairley large engagment. During the battle with the NVA a strange occurence happened. An NVA soilder spotted an American soldier raising his rifle and the NVA soldier taking a a comfortable fireing spot waited for him to get up. When the U.S. Solder got up to fire he pulled the trigger and he was dead in an instance. When the soldier's from the 1st divison went to look for any NVA soldiers that may still be alive, they spotted the NVA soldier with a blown up AK near him and the bolt sticking out of his eye. They thought that either the NVA soldier had a batch of bad ammo or that he had an obstruction in the barrel. They were wrong and didn't know that they had been eyewitness to Project Eldest Son.

In addition to the doctored small ammunition they used, they also used a special fuse for the 82mm mortar which would detonate usually when the mortar reached the firing pin. We had exactly 1,968 mortar rounds that were doctored.

The problem was once these rounds were completed, they didn't know a secure way of putting them down on the Ho Chi Min Trail or the Laotian Hi highway? After a few days they decided to allow SOG Recon Teams to carry some doctored rounds into their AO's (Areas of Operations). Some SOG recon elements would all carry some sort of doctored rounds such as just mortars, Small arm's ammo and mortars, or both.

I apologize for not including some 12.7mm rounds that were doctored too.

Whenever SOG came across some ammo dumps along these trails even on the smaller trails they would put a doctored-full-magazine, one round in the drum of the or on the links for the 12.7mm rounds and placed it into the dump so carefully that the NVA/VC wouldn't be recognized. Therefore the Project worked very well. It worked so well that FAC's in the morning would often take a few pictures of them to see the results from the air of mortar tubes being being pealed open like a banana.

FAC'S would be on their way to a Recon Team to be thier Guardian Angel all morning whith the last FAC starting in the afternoon, then a C-130 called "Hillsboro" would come to remain over the team till morning. All of these airplanes would be SOG"s first connection when they were in trouble. Some times after ambushing a small team of NVA and SOG had a little time they would go out to the dead team and switched a magazine or two, or would just place a round inside in the magazine!

More to come...

 

[macvsog]

The weight of the 82mm Mortar rounds was exceptionaly heavy with three rounds in the shipping box made out of wood it would be close to 30lbs or more.
Carrying that ammo in to the enemy's rear areas took the SOG RT teams were almost would be worth it. Many mortars in Laos, Cambodia and even in Southern Vietnam were were seen by aerial photos from FAC'S to have been blown apart in a star shape pattern. Usually there were a few 3-4 NVA dead around it.

Clearly, the doctored rounds were working. The ammunition was working as planned and the NVA were picking up some of the loose ammo found along The Ho Chi Mihn Trail.

Now it was time to initiate SOG's insidious "Black Psyop's" program...and as As a new Colonel came on board to replace Colonel Singlaub, a Colonel Steve Cavanaugh tookover SOG and stated that: "Are interest was not in killing the soldier that was using the weapon at the time, but to also have the enemy mistrust the Country in which the docotored rounds came from. They were mostly Chinese in origin. Since then and hundreds of years before that, the North Vietnamese have always hated the Chinese and always considered them as distrustful at the very least. So the doctored ammo was also a sign from China that their manufactureing process was very limited and poor at best.

Also, hoping that either the Chinese planned it this way or that they just couldn't produce quality ammo as previously stated. Either way it put allot of doubt on anything manufacturerd from China.

More to come...

 

[rotorwash]

This is great stuff. Somewhere we need to discuss Baker's development of the CIDG ration with which some of us are familiar.

Baker bought 7.62 ammo that SF used in AK-47's from Finland just so there would be no problems with our troops using doctored ammo.

RW