Operation Tailwind: A Marine's Experience in the Vietnam War

Celebrating Veterans Day

The Studies and Observations Group (SOG) was a covert American military unit in Vietnam that specialized in clandestine cross-border operations in Laos and Cambodia. In September 1970, sixteen Green Berets and one-hundred-twenty Montagnard mercenaries departed on Operation Tailwind, the largest and deepest raid in SOG history. Their mission was to disrupt and distract the enemy in support of a larger CIA operation that originated in the White House. Over the next four days, as their ammunition dwindled and casualties mounted, these soldiers, and the aircrews overhead that went to extraordinary lengths to keep them alive, achieved the improbable if not the impossible. Twenty-eight years after Tailwind concluded, CNN produced a documentary about Tailwind, called “Valley of Death,” accusing the participants of war crimes, specifically using nerve gas to kill women, children, and American defectors. This broadcast created a media firestorm that reached around the world.

Author Barry Pencek, a helicopter pilot in Operation Tailwind, presents an incredibly detailed account of the four-day running battle and does a thought-provoking deep dive into the negligence of journalistic ethics at CNN that created a media debacle.

About the Author

Barry Pencek was born in July 1946 in Scranton, Pennsylvania. After college he joined the United States Marine Corps and graduated from flight training at Pensacola, Florida in August 1969. He was assigned to HML-367 at Marble Mountain Air Facility, RVN. In September 1970, Pencek flew the AH-1G Cobra during Operation Tailwind in Laos for which he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. After active duty he continued serving with the Marine Corps Reserve, retiring as a Colonel in 1996. His civilian career included working for Bell Helicopter in Iran and flying as a commercial pilot. He retired as a Captain with United Airlines in 2006. Colonel Pencek resides in Atlanta, Georgia with his wife Mary and is now working on his first novel, a spy thriller set in Iran during the 1979 revolution.

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