Thomas Barry Mitchell
"Mitch"
d 1968
Service
United States Air Force
Highest Rank
Captain
Years of Service
5
Combat
Yes
Biography as of Oct 29, 2013
Tom lettered in football and was the president of his high school class in Rumson, NJ. At the Academy he worked on Contrails and the Dodo staff and played in the dance band.
Following pilot training at Laredo AFB, TX, Tom was assigned to fly C-130s with the 18th Troop Carrier Squadron (TCS) at Sewart AFB, TN, and Lockbourne AFB, OH. In May 1966 he moved to the 41st TCS at Naha AB, Okinawa. A 1967 bio form lists extensive TDYs in-country in 1966-67, then classified FAC work in the C-130 in 1967. His TDYs in-country would have been much like Dave Wax's had been when coming down from Taiwan. Perhaps TDYs would have been a couple of weeks to fly tactical airlift missions moving people and supplies to smaller airfields.
In 1967 he began flying "FAC" missions in a C-130 at night under call signs such as Blind Bat. After American aircraft bombed a friendly Laotian town in 1966, a directive went out requiring all airstrikes in Laos be controlled by FACs. Regular FACs flying Cessnas out of Thailand and South Vietnam handled that role in the daytime but couldn't carry enough flares to work successfully with F-4s at night. The fix was to qualify C-130 pilots to be FACs and send them over Laos loaded with flares. They carried enough flares to keep a target area lit up for as long as necessary and could more readily handle the fast-movers.
On the evening of 22 May, Tom was the copilot on Blind Bat 01 flying such a mission. Night flying over the Trail was dangerous because the trucks were out of hiding and on the roads - and the AAA guns were fully manned and active. Fireworks shows one never forgets!
Tom was working over the Trail along some of the hotter roads in Laos SW of the DMZ. Classmate Phil Maywald and his partner were finishing up a FAC mission in an O-2A.They noticed ground fire in the vicinity of where Blind Bat 01 was working and called a warning to them. The answer back was the fire hadn't been close.
About 10 minutes later the airborne controller, Alley Cat, couldn't get contact with the C-130. Phil couldn't make contact either, so Blind Bat 01 apparently had gone down without a call. The final radio call about the ground fire probably was from Tom in the copilot's seat.
In a tribute to the lost crew, the Blind Bat 01 call sign was never used again.
"He was a really fun guy. Sometimes things happen and you turn the person into a plaster saint, but he wasn't. He was constantly taking apart engines; he used to drive my mother crazy." Josephine Fitzpatrick, Tom's stepsister
"As a result of my instructional rides and checkout of pilots Bill Mason and Tom Mitchell, I came to the conclusion that Torn was an exceptional C-130 pilot and a go-to guy for the Blind Bat mission." Harold W. Lowe, fellow Blind Bat pilot
"Tom was the class president of the Class of 1959 at Rumson-Fair Haven Regional High School, Rumson, N.J. He was serious, well liked and a good friend to us all." David Foster
"I wore the MIA bracelet of Thomas Mitchell's when I was 12 years old. The day he was concluded dead, my heart sank. I wore that bracelet till it broke in half."
Jennie McLeod Kennedy
(see http://www.talkingproud.us )