Apollo 11: As Seen From Vietnam

At corner of Tu Do and Nguyen Van Thinh. AP. Flicker-manhhai photo, 1969

  This is a variation of my story published in Vietnam magazine's August 2019 edition.

During a marathon torture session something extraordinary happened to Air Force 1st Lieutenant John Borling, a prisoner of war held at the “Zoo,” a prison outside Hanoi. He was “trussed up” with shackles, ropes and handcuffs which inflicted pain and could break bones.

When he was left alone in the room, Borling managed to loosen the bindings and scooted over to a nearby desk, where he discovered letters in a drawer, hoping to find one addressed to him. But his captors burst in and were furious. “I had a handful of envelopes, and they ripped them out of my hand, and there was the ‘Man on the Moon’ stamp that absolutely riveted me.” Borling was pummeled to the point of semi consciousness.

A commemorative stamp issued in Sept. 1969

After he was locked back in his cell, Borling communicated his news bulletin via the POW tap code. “I tapped on the wall, ‘We own the moon,’ and I can remember how excited people were,” recalls the F-4 Phantom pilot. “This was a tremendous morale boost. It contributed to staying power, and I can tell you for me it was uplifting. It’s still uplifting.”

POWs were among the last to learn about Neil Armstrong’s pioneering moon walk. Borling reckons he saw that postage stamp about June 1970, nearly a year after Apollo 11’s epic voyage.

Prisoners say guards never passed on good news, only disheartening events: antiwar protests, riots, assassinations, Jane Fonda and general propaganda. A number of prisoners remember hearing clues from the Voice of Vietnam—radio speakers were common in prisons.

Memories are foggy, but POWs recall tantalizing hints on Radio Hanoi: “No one has to go to the moon to see craters. All they have to do is look at the countryside of Vietnam;” “It doesn’t take Neil Armstrong looking from the face of the moon to tell that the U.S. is loosing the war in Vietnam;” “You can send a man to the moon and back, but not bring your troops back from 10,000 miles way.”

Navy Lt. Mike McGrath, historian for Nam-Pows.org, was being held at the Zoo when rumors about Apollo 11 began to circulate late in 1969, he thinks. “Someone got a package, and there was a sugar packet with a picture of Neil Armstrong standing on the moon with the flag.” According to McGrath, a Skyhawk pilot on the U.S.S. Constellation, “We had a unilateral bombing halt and no POWs came in with news for four years. I’d say it was one of the brightest days.”

The week after astronauts landed in the Sea of Tranquility, President Nixon was in South Vietnam to visit the 1^st Infantry Division at Di An. The trip was code-named “Moonglow” to commemorate the achievement. Sadly, none of the Big Red One soldiers had seen the historic live telecast from more than 200,000 miles away. With no satellite over Vietnam, a live broadcast was technically impossible.

AFVN's Apollo 11 set in Saigon. Courtesy AFVNVETS.NET

For in-country personnel who had access to television, delayed coverage was available from AFVN, the American Forces Vietnam Network. But the fact remains, all servicemen and women in Vietnam, more than a half-million, were among the few Americans on Earth who did not witness the most fantastic live broadcast in television history. NASA estimates the must-watch spectacle was seen by 530 million people worldwide.     

Harry Hahn was a 21-year old Navy radioman assigned to a howitzer Monitor boat at Go Dau Ha, near the Cambodian border. “I wandered into a little hut, and there was a black and white portable TV sitting on a chair,” recalls Hahn. “We adjusted the rabbit ears, and another sailor and I watched the moon landing together. It was a moment I will never forget as a proud American serving in a war!”

The brass at AFVN headquarters arranged to have recordings flown in from Hawaii, and Army Sergeant 1st Class Bob MacArthur was waiting to anchor the show in the Saigon studios. “The Air Force was suppose to shuttle new film in every two hours,” according to radio announcer Army Spc. 5 Larry Green, “but there were delays, so Bob had to ad lib for hours.”

The first recordings arrived three hours late, according to MacArthur’s biography at the website macoi.net. “He discussed the history of aviation and the space program for the entire time without notes and with no teleprompter. He was noticeably hoarse when the tapes finally arrived.” Subsequent recordings were flown in from the Philippines and broadcast in Saigon about five hours later.  

The AFVN set in Tuy Hoa. Courtesy Bob Young

AFVN’s distant affiliates had to wait longer for copies to be made and shipped upcountry. Our Quang Tri station, which could be received all the way to the demilitarized zone, aired the kinescope films one day after the Saigon broadcast.

The station at Tuy Hoa devised a novel alternative. Since AFVN radio were able to provide live reporting from civilian networks, thanks to an undersea audio cable from the States, the Tuy Hoa station broadcast the radio feed over its TV channel, with Airman 1^st Class Bob Young anchoring the coverage on-camera.

When the visual recordings finally arrived, Young remembers, “The images were not that great, and it was difficult to make out what we were seeing.” Despite the poor quality, he drove a copy to a military unit where TV reception was blocked by a mountain and gave troops a private showing on a projector in their chow hall.

The triumphant space shot spanned 10 exhilarating days with multiple perilous maneuvers. Armstrong’s historic words, “That’s one small step for (a) man . . . one giant leap for mankind,” came on the morning of July 21, at 09:56, Vietnam time. Another veteran had a secondary reason to be overjoyed. Toney Brooks was in an airliner, his tour of duty behind him. "I was somewhere over the Pacific en route home . . . the pilot announced the (moon) landing," said the former AFVN war news editor. "There was immediate applause and cheering."

Congratulatory news release

On the very day that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin playfully hopped across the lunar surface, Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Theiu issued a congratulatory statement to President Nixon. It had the presidential seal of South Vietnam and contained only three sentences, including this excerpt: “We wholeheartedly concur in the message of peace, which the brave astronauts carry for mankind to this new frontier of human beings.”

Many of the Americans suffering in North Vietnam prisons had a common bond with NASA’s spacemen: They were aviators. Navy pilot Lt. j.g. Charlie Plumb had even taken his physical hoping to become an astronaut himself, but his F-4 was shot down by a missile south of Hanoi in May 1967 and he joined other POWs at the Zoo. “We figured we were probably the last people on Earth to find out we put a man on the moon.”

Plumb said guards would pass propaganda newspaper stories under his cell door. An article from the Soviet news agency Tass seemingly bragged about another victory in space. The former POW paraphrased the key sentence: “We (Soviets) have sent a vehicle to the moon to gather samples, taken pictures, blasted off and returned safely to Earth and, unlike the Americans we didn’t have to put a man aboard to control the vehicle.”

“I read that a couple times,” Plumb said, “Then I tapped the thing word-for-word to the guys in the cell next door. They interpreted it the same as I had, that, in fact, we had put a man on the moon.” Since the war was dragging on, with peace talks stalled, the POWs were jubilant and Plumb recaptured the joy once again: “Holey smokes, we put a man up there. We knew it had to be one of our fellow pilots. It helped us hang on.”

Dennis Morrison at Di An. Courtesy: Morrison

A soldier with the 1^st Signal Brigade had to work on the day of the moon landing. “Everyone was listening that day,” emphasized Army Sgt. Dennis Morrison, “I had to work a 12-hour shift and knew I couldn’t listen.” So he started a reel-to-reel recording of AFVN’s radio coverage and let it run while he went to work. He still has the news wrap-up anchored by Specialist Mike Maxwell. “I play the CD all the time in my truck,” explains Morrison. “My wife got tired of hearing it.”

Morrison’s obsession is justified. He and Neil Armstrong were born 30 miles apart: Morrison in Bluffton, Ohio, and Armstrong in Wapakoneta, a small town where the Armstrong Air & Space Museum is located. Morrison is donating a copy of his nostalgic recording to the museum, so visitors can experience Apollo 11 news coverage exactly like veterans did in Vietnam.