By mid-1971, the American withdrawal was well underway. USAF advisors were hurriedly training their Vietnamese counterparts under the VNAF 'Improvement and Modernization' (I &M) program. Among the projected VNAF units was a TEWS squadron, to be formed with ALR-34 [non-computerized] equipped EC-47s. Personnel form the 6994th Security Squadron at Tan Son Nhut had begun training ARVN [not VNAF] Morse intercept operators in April, and by late in the year, the first VNAF navigators had begun OJT with the 360th.

Among the USAF organizations to stand down in 1971 was the 460th TRW. On August 31st, the wing was inactivated. The TEWS were initially reassigned to the 483rd Tactical Airlift Wing with HQ at Camh Ranh Bay, but this organization was itself inactivated on May 31, 1972. The TEWS bounced from wing to wing for another two years before the final USAF EC-47 mission was flown from Ubon in May of 1974.

The author does not yet have access to much of the TEWS histories written after the stand down of the 460th. It can be safely assumed that the EC-47 continued to provide a significant chunk of intelligence on enemy operations and no doubt made major and specific contributions in turning back the 'Easter Offensive' of 1972 and to the 'Linebacker' campaigns that, most would say, convinced the North Vietnamese to sign the 'Paris Peace Accords' on January 27,1973.

As of that date, American combat actions in Vietnam were to cease. The TEWS continued to operate, however, and a few veterans of those days recall flying from Da Nang in USAF EC-47s painted in VNAF markings. Be that as it may, the remaining U.S. ARDF aircraft were officially pulled back to Thailand, where they carried on for more than a year.

Barely a month after the cease fire, an Electric Goon was involved in one of the most notorious shot-downs of the war. On March 5, 1973, EC-47P serial number 43-48636, operating under the callsign 'Baron 52' was shot down over Laos. The wreckage was spotted in a remote mountainous area of Xekong province. The aircraft had caught fire and rescue crews remained on the scene only long enough to remove a few remains in or near the cockpit.

Beginning in 1973, the USAF began turning EC-47s over to the VNAF. By August or so, the VNAF 718th Reconnaissance Squadron had been formed at Tan Son Nhut as part of the 33rd Wing. The "Sky Dragons" eventually operated approximately 33 ex-USAF EC-47s, staging a daily complement of missions from Tan Son Nhut and also deploying through Da Nang to cover the northern areas.

On May 13, 1974, a VNAF EC-47 operating near the 'Parrot's Beak' northwest of Saigon was shot down. The sole survivor was the navigator, Lt. Troung Tu An. The following narrative of Lt. An's experience was supplied by another former EC-47 navigator, Pham Tan Chon. [JM: The original has been edited slightly for clarity.]

We took off from Tan Son Nhut AFB at 1300 hours and headed for the Tay Ninh area. There were no [enemy] radio signals for the first two hours on target. We thought that it would be a peaceful mission. We traveled on a north-south axis over the border of the two countries [Cambodia and Viet Nam] and every thing was quiet. We did not expect any enemy action until we changed heading 270 to the Parrot's Beak at 1530 hours and we saw couple trails of smoke were chasing our air plane. We ignited four or five decoy flares. One of them drove the surface-to-air missile away during as the pilots were making a sharp turn at 10,500 feet.

Suddenly we felt [as if] our air plane was stopped with a big boom, and I used the drift meter to check under the airplane and I found a big hole at the left wing—about 3 to 4 feet in diameter. At that moment the Pilots already shut down the left engine and turned around to Tay Ninh airport.

I do not know what was happened after that movement, and I felt that I was being thrown out the plane because the centrifugal force when the plane started to spin. I was captured by North Vietnamese Army soldiers and later they turned me in to the Viet Cong. In March, 1975, I was sent to Hanoi and they released me on May 13, 1982.

Pilot, Copilot and Flight Engineer were killed inside the plane. Two Radio Operators were killed because their parachutes did not open and [they] impacted into the ground. The North Vietnamese soldiers told me that they shot down another C-130 from Korean Air Force [?] at the same time and in the same area. The crew members of that plane were rescued by VNAF choppers. [Lt. An notes that this may have been a USAF C-130 because the Koreans were not involved in Vietnam after 1972.]

Pham Tan Chon reports that "After 'Thien Long 13' was shot down, we changed the thirteenth mission to 'Thien Long 12 bis'. (i.e., to 'Sky Dragon 12 plus'.) On April 30, 1975, the VNAF flew the last EC-47 missions of the Vietnam war. Maintaining coordination and good discipline until the bitter end, the Sky Dragons boarded the airworthy Electric Goons and flew them to Thailand. Within hours, NVA troops were on the Tan Son Nhut flight line.

Meanwhile, Baron 52 became the subject of a debate that, despite the passage of time, has not entirely ceased. Based on statements by a former USAFSS analyst, the story circulated that the 'back end' crew of Baron 52 had survived the shoot-down, been taken captive and, because of their knowledge of U.S. SIGINT secrets, were turned over to the Russians. Subsequent testimony indicated that the original statements were based on an improperly translated or improperly interpreted radio intercepts, but accusations of a government conspiracy/cover-up persist.

In November 1992, a preliminary survey was made of the Baron 52 crash site and in January-February1993, the site was excavated by a joint U.S./Laotian team. Only a few fragments of human bones were found, but considering that wild animals inhabit in the area, the unpleasant possibilities are obvious. Among the artifacts found were the 'dogtags' of three of the USAFSS radio operators.

As for the Electric Goon itself, the last of them in USAF service—Q models stripped of the ARDF gear—seem to have ended up in the Philippines in 1974. The ultimate fate of those VNAF birds that escaped to Thailand is unknown, but it is unlikely that they remained in flyable condition for long. Somewhere in some Southeast Asian junkyard may lie the hulks of a few Electric Goons, indistinguishable to all but the sharpest eyes from the basic transport version.

More personnel were lost on EC-47 aircraft than on any other type of mission in USAFSS history. Outside the headquarters of the USAF Air Intelligence Agency, the organization that absorbed what was once USAFSS, a replica of an EC-47 has been set up as a memorial to those fallen crews. On its tail fin has been painted the serial number of Tide 86, the first Electric Goon to be lost in action. It's a fitting tribute.