Monday, April 24, 1972
2 Pilots Nab Mystery Plane
QUANG TRI (UPI) --Two U. S. aircraft forced down a reportedly unmarked spotter plane over South Vietnam Saturday on suspicion it was directing North Vietnamese artillery strikes.Military sources said that two American reconnaissance planes -an OV10 Bronco and an 02 Super Skymaster -intercepted the L19 spotter craft over Quang Tri Province and forced it to land at the Phu Bai Air Field to the south.The sources said Allied officials began interrogating the spotter pilot immediately at the airport, but details on the secret questioning was not available.The sources said they did not know yet whether the seized plane and pilot were North or South Vietnamese. They said, however, at least one South Vietnamese L19 has been missing from the Da Nang Air Base for more than two months.Allied officers in Quang Tri, South Vietnam's northernmost province, claimed to have seen a tiny prop-driven L19 serving as an air observer during the past two weeks for North Vietnamese 122mm and 130mm artillery.Officers said the single-engine spotter plane appeared overhead during shellings on at least four occasions and almost immediately the North Vietnamese began zeroing in on their targets.Military sources said the two prop-driven U. S. planes intercepted the L19 Saturday afternoon near where North Vietnamese artillery shells were pounding La Vang, a mile south of Quang Tri City and 17 miles below the DMZ.They said both American aircraft as well as Allied ground crews tried to contact the plane by radio, but the spotter failed to answer. The two American planes then closed in and forced the L19 to land at Phu Bai, 50 miles south of the DMZ.The military sources speculated the craft might have been the missing South Vietnamese spotter plane, possibly stolen by a disgruntled government pilot and using Communist-held highways in Quang Tri Province as landing strips.The sources said the U. S. pilots might have missed seeing markings on the plane and the L19 could have been an innocent South Vietnamese spotter mistakenly seized.The South Vietnamese use L19's as reconnaissance planes to search for Communist troop movements and to direct artillery."2 Pilots Nab Mystery Plane", by (UPI), published in the Pacific Stars and Stripes on Monday, April 24, 1972 and reprinted from European and Pacific Stars and Stripes, a Department of Defense publication copyright, 2002 European and Pacific Stars and Stripes.