2 Elephants, one at a time, were flown on a C-130 from Nah Trong, Vietnam to Chu Lai to help villagers move trees. They were sedated during the trip so they wouldn't move. They were then moved from Chu Lai to the village with a CH-53 helicopter.
DIRECTORATE OF INFORMATION, Headquarters Seventh Air Force TAN SON
NHUT AIR BASE REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM APO San Francisco 96307
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 4-68-40
AIR FORCE FLIES ELEPHANT AIRLIFT
NHA TRANG (AF)
Air Force C-130 Hercules transport crews are used to flying
almost anything you can name. Even elephants. Flying elephants isn't
easy. It takes the help of the U.S. Arny Special Forces, the Marine
Corps, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID),
the Cleveland Zoo and the U. S. Bureau of Narcotics. It all began when
an Army Special Forces team at the diminutive Vietnamese village of
Tra Bong offered to help the 400 Montagnard and Vietnamese families in
the area start their own industry. With the heavy growths of timber in
the area, a sawmill looked like the answer to the villagers' economic
problems, and with the help of USAID, the villagers soon had a
burgeoning business going. Before long, however, the villagers had cut
down all the trees near enough to the sawmill to haul by hand, and a
problem arose. The local terrain was so rugged that machinery for
hauling logs was useless. Tra Bong was in danger of losing its only
industry, Elephants, the villagers said, were the only answer. Two
suitable elephants were found and with the help of USAID funds,
purchased at a price of 70,000 piastors (about $590) each.
Unfortunately, however, the elephants were located in Ban Don, more
than 170 miles from Tre Bang. The pachyderms couldn't be transported
by land because the trip was too long and the Viet Cong controlled too
much of the intervening territory. A move by sea was ruled out because
it would also take too long and there was the danger of the elephants
becoming seasick. The only way to move the 3-ton, 6-foot-high animals,
it appeared, was by air.
Special Forces Captain Scott Gantt, the man given the job of moving
the elephants, decided to call on the Air Force. When Gantt approached
7th Air Force with his project, he was told that the elephants could
easily be moved in the cavernous C-130 Hercules cargo transports,
provided the animals could be immobilized enough to prevent their
thrashing around in the aircraft.
After hours of transoceanic phone calls, Gantt finally learned from
the Cleveland Zoo that a drug called M-99, manufactured by an English
firm, would keep his 6,000-pound charges docile for the necessary
time. When Cantt arranged for a shipment of M-99, however, he ran
afoul of the U. S. Bureau of Narcotics, which demanded that he spell
out how the drug was to be used before it could be shipped.
Gantt complied, the drug arrived, and on April 1 a C-130 crew from
Task Force Bravo, a special airlift mission based at Nha Trang Air
Base, landed their aircraft on a dirt strip near the Special Forces
camp of Trang Phuc and prepared to take on board their most unusual
passengers ever. While the first of the animals stood on a cargo net,
Gantt Stood behind him and fired a hypodermic dart from an air gun
into the elephant's rump, injecting him with the K-99. Five minutes
later, "Clyde," as the Green Berets had nicknamed him, lay dosing
peacefully in the net. A forklift hoisted him onto a wooden platform
and lifted him into the gaping rear doors of the waiting C-130.
With Clyde strapped firmly in place, the Hercules crew took off for
the Marine Air Base at Chu Lai, 20 miles from Tra Bong. At Chu Lai,
Clyde was removed from the C-130 and still wrapped in the cargo net on
his platform, was slung beneath a Marine CH-53 "Super Jolly Green
Giant" for the final miles of his trip. The chopper whirled away in a
blast of sand and dust, and 15 minutes later Clyde was settling to the
ground at Tra Bong in front of the watchful eyes of more than 2,000
villagers. Then, after a repeat of the first trip with Clyde's
partner, the village and the sawmill were back in the lumber business.
