Like Les W., I was an Air Force Lingy, AFSC 20351. I
spent a 10 month stint at DLI West Coast Branch at
Monterey learning Chinese Mandarin. After additional
training in basic radio theory at Goodfellow AFB, I
was assigned to Okinawa with the 6927th Security Group
at Onna Point. There, I spent a year listening in on
Chi-com air to ground / ground to air communications,
mostly civilian and military transport aircraft.

The civilian air net was designated by the Security
Service as "WTVS" and the military air net was
designated as "WAVS". The "W" signified Chinese
Communist, the "V" or "A" stood for civilian or
military respectively, and the "V" stood for voice
communications. CRS what the "S" stood for.

Our counterparts on Taiwan listened to mostly VHF
fighter traffic and ground radar station
communications. But most of the traffic we
intercepted on Okinawa was on HF, between ground
controllers and the transports - everything ranging
from AN-2 biplanes to IL-18 Beagles. The primary
piece of equipment we used was the Collins R-390
receiver. CRS the designation for the tape drives we
used to record incoming traffic, while we took hand
transcripts on the fly. The tapes were later
transcribed, word for word and then passed on to the
analysts to glean for any intelligence. Six carbon
copies required really hammering that ROYAL 88
typewriter! The immediate hand transcripts were of
importance, in case any really HOT intelligence was
intercepted and needed to be passed along to the
analyst right away.

After a year on Oki, my 13 month tour was curtailed,
so that I could squeeze in a year in Thailand at
Detachment 4 of the 6922 Security Wing at Ramasun
Station. I did pretty much the same thing there as I
had on Okinawa, except I was now a shift supervisor as
well as an intercept operator. I spent most of my
time on duty listening in on the IL-18's that made
daily flights out of Beijing to Hanoi, carrying men
and material to help North Vietnam fight "The American
War". As a side note, every time an aircraft came up
on frequency to report, they preceeded every
communication with a quote from Chairman Mao's litte
red book....

"Our great leader, Chairman Mao, teaches us saying,...
The American Imperialists and the reactionaries of all
nations are all old paper tigers. The Chinese
people's struggle has demonstrated this, and the
Vietnamese people's struggle is in the midst of
demonstrating this." (I can still remember it all in
Chinese.)

I don't think most of the Chinese who were forced to
mouth the propaganda actually believed all of it, but
they were expected to always quote something from
Chairman Mao, before getting to the meat of their
reports.

Off duty, I did what most others in Thailand did -
party hearty! The bath houses and bars of Udorn in
1968 were a very big part of the experience for me. I
also spent a good deal of time, sightseeing, learning
the culture and getting to know the people. Like most
of us, I grew to love the "Land of Smiles" and its
people during my time there.

Finally, I spent a good deal of off duty time watching
the F4's and A1's and Jolly Greens coming and going
from the Udorn Air base, wondering where they were
going, or where they had been, and what their missions
were. It took me thirty years to find the answers to
those questions. Thankfully, in 1998, I found the
TLCB and have since had many of those blanks filled in
for me.

In brotherhood,

Bob Wheatley
Sgt. E-4, USAF Security Service
Det 4, 6922 Security Wing, Ramasun Station / Udorn
Shift Supervisor & Mandarin Voice Intercept Operator
Dec, 1967 - Oct, 1968