Name _________________
Cuneo – Vietnam
“Earthquake McGoon”
A little New Jersey history in Vietnam
Story courtesy of LHS teaching legend Paul Swenson
A burly man with a hearty laugh, he was known far and wide as “Earthquake
McGoon.” On the afternoon of May 6, 1954, Earthquake shoehorned his six-foot, 250
pound frame into the modified pilot’s seat of a Fairchild C-119 “Flying Boxcar” at
Hanoi’s airfield as he had twice daily for weeks. It was the day before Dienbienphu fell.
Responding to a French request to help airlift supplies to Dienbienphu in March
1954, the USAF loaned the French a squadron of C-119s, whose white eagle wings had
been hastily covered with a single coat of gray paint. Some two dozen American
“civilian” flyers employed by General Claire Chennault’s Civil Air Transport (CAT)
manned the garrison’s aerial life line beginning in late March. For the past six weeks,
they flew the perilous ninety-minute shuttle from Hanoi to the beleaguered outpost 30
times a day, weather permitting, and dropped 8500 tons of ammunition and food. The
anti-aircraft fire over the valley was intense.
For this dangerous job, the pilots earned good pay - $35 for each flying hour, plus
their regular salary – a total of about $300 per month. But Earthquake, to the amusement
of his CAT buddies, would admit that he was not there only for the money and adventure.
“The way I figure it,” he said, “we either got to fight the bastards at home or fight them
over here.”
In the co-pilot’s seat sat Wallace A. Buford, a 28 year old WWII and Korean War
vet from Ogden, Utah, who coaxed a disabled Boxcar back to the base ten days before.
Heavy anti-aircraft fire over the Dienbienphu valley crippled the plane and wounded pilot
Paul Holdens – the first American combat casualty of the French-Indochina War. Both
Buford and Earthquake braved flak many times, circling down to 1500 feet and slowing
the plane almost to a stall so that “kickers” could shove out the seven ton load and
perhaps hit the ever-shrinking drop zone. McGoon’s plane had been hit four times, but,
“when you’re invited to a war zone, you expect to get shot at.”
Earthquake was actually James B. McGovern, 31, of Elizabeth, NJ. A powerful
man with a gentle manner, he piloted P-40s and Mustangs for Chennault’s famed “Flying
Tigers” in China before WWII. Hard-living and hard-drinking, he was nicknamed
"Earthquake McGoon" after a character in the popular comic strip Li'l Abner. In 1948, a
year after he joined CAT, he was attacked by Chinese fighter planes over the Shantung
Peninsula. “They missed,” a terse Earthquake liked to say. Six months after he was
forced to ditch his plane on a river sandbar behind communist lines, a bearded McGoon
emerged from the jungle. “The communists,” he reported, “went out of their way to treat
me good.” But his CAT friends said that his captors probably freed him because they
couldn’t afford to feed him.
Waiting his turn in Hanoi that May afternoon, McGoon guzzled bad coffee and
tossed darts in the sultry air base mess hall with the other flyers. Then he and Buford got
the call and strapped themselves in to “Bird Two.” Once the six plane convoy reached
the valley, McGoon eased the control stick forward and watched his altimeter indicate a
descent to 3000 feet. They were now ready for their 45th run.
Suddenly McGoon radioed, “I’ve got a direct hit.” A shell crashed into one of the
two wing-mounted engines which began to throw oil. Just as he began to regain control,
another shell hit, knocking out a critical tail support. The plane was sent reeling toward a
narrow 4000 foot valley. Earthquake radioed the pilot of the plane following his, asking
which ridge was lower. The pilot responded, “Turn right!” But it was too late. The
controls were crippled, and the big plane could not hold a turn. As his buddies watched
and listened helplessly, Earthquake coolly said, “Looks like this is it.” The left wing
struck first and the plane tumbled down a hill and burst into flames. His body was not
recovered.
James B. McGovern and Walllace A. Buford were the only Americans to die in
combat in the French-Indochina War.
NEWS RELEASES from the United States Department of Defense
No. 633-07 IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 23, 2007
The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of
an American civilian pilot, missing in action from Vietnam while flying for Civil Air Transport, a
proprietary of the CIA, have been identified and returned to his family for burial with full military honors.
He is James B. McGovern Jr. of Elizabeth, N.J. He will be buried tomorrow at Arlington National
Cemetery near Washington, D.C.
Forty-eight years after his cargo plane was shot down during a desperate, last-ditch supply mission over
Dien Bien Phu, a U.S. military team is seeking to recover the bodies of James B. McGovern, alias
"McGoon," and his copilot, Wallace A. Buford.
On the day McGovern and Buford were shot down, the two, along with their French flight engineer and
two cargo handlers - a Frenchman and a Thai - had been attempting to deliver an artillery piece rigged for
airdrop to the beleaguered French garrison at Dien Bien Phu, when they took multiple hits from antiaircraft rounds. With one engine on fire, McGovern turned toward Laos, shadowed by another CAT C-119.
After covering 75 miles and approaching 4,000-foot mountains, he radioed the trailing pilot for help in
finding level ground to land. After a last radio transmission, his C-119 plowed into a Laotian hillside. The
two pilots and the flight engineer were killed instantly, but the two cargo handlers were thrown clear.
McGovern Jr., a 260-pound fighter plane and cargo pilot, was an accomplished World War II aviator who
signed on with Civil Air Transport, the forerunner of the CIA's "Air America" operation in southeast Asia.
An American saloon owner in China dubbed him "Earthquake McGoon," after a hulking hillbilly character
in the comic strip "Li'l Abner."
McGovern was killed at age 31 when his C-119 Flying Boxcar was shot down on a resupply mission for
besieged French troops at Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam, on May 6, 1954. The crippled plane struggled 75 miles
into northern Laos before crashing.
McGovern, who had no children, and co-pilot Wallace Buford, 28, were the first of nearly 60,000
Americans killed in combat in Indochina in the two decades before Saigon's fall to communist troops in
1975.