First Air RDF Mission in Vietnam, March 22, 1962

March 22, 1962, the Army Security Agency (ASA) flew the first airborne radio direction finding mission in Vietnam. It was a single-engine aircraft that flew low, slow, and had room for only a few people. This mission flew against Viet Cong transmitters east of Saigon.

Airborne DF had never been tried before. The challenges were many, from creating an airborne system that could discriminate between direct waves and sky waves to choosing the right kind of aircraft for the mission. However, by the spring of 1962, a year after their arrival in Vietnam, the 3d Radio Reach Unit was finally able to provide significantly better signals intelligence (SIGINT) support to the South Vietnamese Army with ASA’s fledgling Airborne Radio Direction Finding (ARDF) capability.