This is the text of a speech that BG Ed Brya gave to an Airlift convention about the C-130 tatics they used at An Loc.

In April 1972 as the war in southeast Asia was winding down the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) launched their spring offensive. This caused a major build up and reinforcement of air force, navy, and marine air from both the cones and pacific theater. In late 1971 and '72 we had been withdrawing forces from southeast Asia. The C-130 wings at Clark, Mactan, and Naha had been deactivated and the airplanes returned to the states. The 374 taw at CCK in Taiwan, with its four squadrons, was the only pacaf asset for C-130 airlift in sea. At the start of the spring offensive the wing had 27 aircraft, 43 crews and 260 maintenance personnel deployed to Vietnam, or in-country as we called it. During April we surged to 44 aircraft, 60 crews and 370 maintenance personnel. In response to the NVA spring offensive our short-filed operations increased from the occasional landing at an out of the way field to major operations on a 24 hour basis. Early in April we brought arvn troops from the 3000-foot strips in the delta to bien hoa for defense of the Saigon area. Other aircraft went to long-forgotten places to pull out men, land and equipment. We operated in the DMZ and quang tri until the enemy forced us out. The major areas of operation were at Kontum, in the highlands, and in the south surrounding bien hoa and Saigon. During the month of April we made 358 short field landings including 51 at night. In the south the centerpiece battle of the spring offensive was fought in bien long province. The communists boasted that An Loc would become the seat of government for the liberated provinces. Col. Ray Bowers in his excellent air force history of tactical airlift, describes the battle for An Loc as "the most trying time of the war for the C-130 crews." An Loc was a small provincial capital 60 miles NW of Saigon which lies on a plateau surrounded by plantations with tall rubber trees. In early April the area was cut off and surrounded by the nva. The northern half of the town was captured... The raven and their American advisors were forced into a small area in the southeast corner of town. The command element was inside a bunker, which was located by a soccer field 200 meters square. The vnaf had tried without much success to resupply the beleaguered troops; during this time, a c-119 was lost to ground fire. On Saturday, 15 April, two C-130's were sent in. They used the then approved method of a descending slow down into the DZ. They were briefed by 7th air force to approach up the road from the south, as all the vnaf drops had been flown, and drop on the soccer field. The first aircraft made a successful run taking only a couple of hits from ground fire. The second aircraft came in approximately 15 minutes later and was under constant fire. One 51 cal. round came through the right hand circuit breaker panel, killed the engineer and went on to shatter the windows on the left side of the cockpit. Other shells ripped the cargo compartment and ignited part of the ammo load. The loadmasters jettisoned the load, which landed on the DZ. Number one and two engines were shut down. The navigator and Co-pilot were both wounded and incapacitated. With the Loadmasters fighting the fire and manually cranking down the Landing gear, the pilot, bill Caldwell. Managed to get the aircraft Back to tan son nhut. Around the 10th of April I had gone in-county with our wing Commander Col. Andy Iosue. That day we had been out flying a Leaflet drop. We returned to Saigon shortly after Capt. Caldwell landed. Col Iosue directed me to get with our chief nav, Maj. Bob Highly, and plan a better way - and that the three of us would fly it the next Day. That night we got together with the airborne FACS and devised some ways, which would hopefully get us through with minimum damage. The FAC would serve as our combat controller. To avoid the appearance of the C-130 from the same heading, we drew a circle around An Loc and laid