The timing of the test in 1964 is interesting.
Braden entered Vietnam in 1964 with Special Forces Project Delta. That's when he was teaching? some HALO
the official us navy seals site has some mention of those days
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Login[RT] Colorado was also unique because of its team leader, Ted Braden. Among the many larger-than-life characters in the program, Braden was a complete enigma. Formerly an active-duty commissioned officer from the Army Reserve, he had arrived in South Vietnam in late 1965 as part of the second increment of special forces noncommissioned officers slated for the cross-border teams. At times, he was a quiet, almost professorial model, walking around camp in a sweater and puffing on a pipe. At other times, however, Braden displayed uncontrollable rage. “He punched a Vietnamese lieutenant in Kontum,” said Hetrick, “and was banished to Dak To.”
There, troubles followed. After a tense exchange with Lieutenant Colonel Arthur “Bull” Simons, one of the senior SOG planners, Braden was punished by having Colorado’s intended long-term unconventional mission scrubbed. Instead, Colorado would be tasked with reconnaissance missions like any other Shining Brass team.
Despite such outbursts, there was no denying Braden was something of a pioneer. “He had the idea of mixing different ethnic groups in a single team in order to foster competition,” noted Hetrick. Braden also had his team train in native civilian garb. After this led to protests from SOG superiors—who apparently disliked the complete departure from military norms—
he then became the first SOG team leader to have his men wear combat fatigues dyed black, reflecting existing Vietcong apparel.
Perhaps the most mysterious aspect about Braden was his close ties to the CIA. “He spent a lot of time with the agency representatives in Saigon,” noted Shattuck, who joined the team in the fall of 1966. “We were told not to ask questions when he was gone for a week at a time.”
Not only did Braden go missing for extended periods, but he would return from his CIA trysts with cutting- edge hardware. “We were the first SOG team to get a Starlight scope (an early-model night-vision device) and a wiretapping kit,” said team member James “J. D.” Bath. Braden also procured a seismometer to test its applicability for use in conjunction with the automatic detonation of Claymore mines.After a single in-country reconnaissance mission at the behest of the U.S. Marine Corps during the second half of September—which turned up no evidence of an NVA presence—Colorado was ready for its first major outing in early October.
A few days before its scheduled infiltration, the team gathered at the SOG compound in Phu Bai, the town north of Danang. To ease tension, Braden arranged for a tour of the nearby ancient imperial capital of Hue. Halfway to their destination, however, their truck ran into a Vietcong ambush. Careening off the road into a ditch, the team jumped from the vehicle and hugged the rise formed by a railroad track running parallel to the road.
Noticeably cool under pressure, Braden leapt to his feet, carbine in hand. Urging his teammates to fire, he sprinted ahead across a rice paddy toward the source of the ambush in a neighboring village. When it soon became apparent that the enemy weapons had fallen silent and the Vietcong had fled, the other Americans followed. Before reaching the village, however, they came across a body wearing the uniform of the South Vietnamese Regional Forces militia. The corpse was face down in the paddy, a bullet hole at the base of the skull.
When they finally arrived in the village, their team leader was interrogating the locals and made no mention of the dead militiaman. Already, U.S. Marine reinforcements had arrived and brought the situation under hand. Braden, however, apparently was still on an adrenaline high. When the team suggested they return to Phu Bai before nightfall, he waved his weapon and labeled them cowards, then commandeered a bus for Hue.
By the time the team regrouped at Phu Bai, a cloud already was starting to form over the execution of the South Vietnamese militiaman. While it was apparent that Braden would face some kind of disciplinary hearing, it was decided to go ahead with the scheduled mission. For this, they would be equipped with both the Starlight scope and a West German-made wiretap—both firsts for the Shining Brass program. Their target was the extreme western edge of the Demilitarized Zone, just inside the Laos-Vietnam border.
In keeping with plans, Colorado would not be the only team to be deployed in that vicinity. Seven kilometers south of the intended landing zone, a second SOG spike team, Arizona, was gearing for a simultaneous infiltration. Richard Ray—who previously had accompanied Ohio on a single mission—was originally scheduled to accompany Arizona on this outing. Two days earlier, however, he contracted malaria and was convalescing at the SEAL compound on the Son Tra peninsula. Five Vietnamese members of the team also remained behind, giving Team Arizona a light complement of just three Americans and four indigenous commandos.
Late on 2 October, both spike teams headed for the forward SOG launch site at Khe Sanh. The next morning, Colorado departed first aboard South Vietnamese-piloted H-34 choppers. Already thick with tension, the team focused on Braden with added concern. “He was carrying very little ammunition,” recalls Shattuck, “and we feared he had no intention of coming back.”
According to the original plan, they were supposed to install the wiretap, then pull back three kilometers and wait for a B-52 bomber strike before recovering the tapes. After further consideration, however, the planners felt it was not worth the risk of detection to have the team move three kilometers. Revising their plan, then, the B-52 strike went in first, immediately followed by the team’s insertion.
Once they landed, the situation intensified. In short order, Colorado located a suitable telephone cable running along the slope overlooking the Houei Nam Se River from the north. The entire valley, they found, was crawling with North Vietnamese troops, who had carved steps into both slopes and even had a simple ferry shuttling supplies across the river.
The heavy NVA presence extended all the way to Arizona’s area of operations, this entire pocket of Laos essentially having been annexed and treated as territorial North Vietnam since December 1958. Almost as soon as this second team landed to the south, it was in deep trouble. “We made contact with the NVA next to the landing zone,” said ethnic Chinese team member Tran Hung Quang. Pleas from the U.S. radioman came over the airwaves, followed by an eerie silence. One member managed to escape and return to friendly lines. Tran and one other ethnic Chinese were captured the following morning; the remainder of the team, including the three Green Berets, were listed as missing and presumed dead.
Colorado was more fortunate. Remaining sheltered in a bomb crater near the summit of the slope, the team waited patiently until sundown. Intending to use their Starlight scope, they unpacked the device and aimed it along the river. To their disappointment, however, the scope refused to work. Not wanting to be burdened with broken gear, Braden buried the night vision device on the spot. “We later caught hell for not bringing it home,” said Bath.
The team had better luck with the wiretap, which it managed to install without complications. Waiting nearby for the tapes to record several hours of telephone traffic, Colorado then recovered the device and was successfully exfiltrated by chopper.
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