White Shirts and Ties

The History Net ^ | Dan Feltham

[PeterPrinciple]

Data processing went to war with IBM's bachelor computer experts. by Dan Feltham

From 1965 to 1973, approximately 250 American technicians employed by International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation left the comfort of their Stateside jobs to accept two-year assignments in Vietnam and Thailand. They volunteered their services for various reasons--adventure, money, career advancement, or belief in America's presence in Southeast Asia--to help our U.S. military install, operate and maintain an amazing amount of data-processing equipment used to supply, monitor and manage the American war effort.

These employees represented IBM's Data Processing Division, Field Engineering Division, Office Products Division and the Federal Systems Division. The IBMers were invited to Vietnam by CINCPAC (Commander in Chief, Pacific Command) and were sponsored in-country by MACV HQ (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, Headquarters). I was among them; I served as a manager for IBM in Vietnam from 1969 to 1971.

As the war escalated in the 1965­1968 years, more and more data-processing equipment found its way to the growing Army, Marine and Air Force bases around Saigon and at Long Binh, Bien Hoa, Cam Rahn Bay, Nha Trang, Qui Nhon and Da Nang. IBM posted permanent personnel at all those locations (as well as at several base locations in Thailand and the Philippines), and also supported equipment at the more remote camps and bases by driving or flying to required maintenance situations.

As the war became more complex and sophisticated, the number of unit record machines and computers grew and grew until the war was being managed to a large degree by information processing applications. Examples of a few of the better-known installations or applications were Air Force projects, including Seek Data II, PIACCS and Igloo White; Command and Control at MACV's Data Management Agency; the Army's Supply System; the Navy's Stock Points supply system; the Da Nang Marine's Command and Control applications; the Information Data Handling Systems for the Intelligence community; and the AUTODIN communications requirements and government work at USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development). By the early 1970s, the U.S. Armed Services could claim to have some of the most sophisticated computer applications in the world, but without the comparably few dedicated IBMers who maintained it, much of the equipment could not have been operated.

The IBM volunteers were all bachelors (a requirement of the assignment), and the average age was probably under 30. There were probably never more than 50 IBMers in Vietnam at any one time, but a few men stayed for four years. Each man was selected on the basis of a particular set of skills and had to have an adventurous and independent spirit. Many of the men were what IBM chief executive officer Tom Watson called "wild ducks," IBMers who perhaps did not fit the classical corporate image. Most of the men adapted fairly well to the unique environment of war-torn Vietnam. Each man held a Secret, Top Secret or Special clearance, each carried a "noncombatant" card and each held a GS-equivalency level depending on his particular combination of education, skills and responsibilities.

The way that the GS levels were determined is an interesting story. Sometime in early 1967, when the planned IBM presence in Vietnam was being negotiated, the liaison between the Federal Marketing Unit in Honolulu and CINCPAC HQ was through an Air Force Command and Control office at Hickam Air Force Base. A protocol officer there initially tried to establish the equivalency levels at GS-7, which meant that no IBMer would have accepted an assignment in Southeast Asia (for logistical support reasons). The protocol officer had obtained an IBM corporate organization chart and equated CEO Tom Watson to the CINCPAC, then worked downward from there to the GS-7 for branch office personnel. IBM's federal senior marketing manager then gave the protocol officer a chart showing CINCPAC at the 19 level, equal to himself (since he was in charge of IBM's Vietnam operation), which meant the managers in Vietnam would be GS-18s and so on. That, too, was unacceptable. A compromise was established at GS-11 through GS-15 for Vietnam technicians and managers. These levels provided the IBMers with certain privileges of rank, mostly having to do with dining in any military mess hall and aircraft travel orders; they were levels that were never unnecessarily abused.

Headquarters for IBM's government office were at 115 Ming Mang, located one block north of Cach Mang Street off Tran Tan Buu and about half way between the Tan Son Nhut area bases and downtown Saigon. Most of the Saigon-based IBMers lived in rented villas nearby. Saigon management reported to an IBM federal office in Honolulu, which, in turn, reported to National Federal Marketing in Bethesda, Md. MACV provided a half-acre property for IBM's use that had previously served as a Red Cross office. It consisted of an old French farmhouse surrounded by high walls and protected by an iron gate and concertina wire. The house was converted to maintenance, systems engineering, sales and administrative office space and was occupied by the IBMers for more than five years. A huge diesel generator ensured back-up power for the building. Outbuildings stocked a full inventory of unit record machine and computer spare parts designed to meet needs for and repair almost any machine in-country.

Southeast Asia was a long way from any major IBM parts depot, so a back-up spare parts warehouse was established on Okinawa. If "Oki" couldn't provide a necessary part, it was either repaired on-site, using creativity and pieces scavenged from less critical equipment, or ordered from the United States with a 24- to 48-hour delivery time.

The heart of the IBM office compound, other than the people, was a Collins SSB (single side band) radio transceiver and 75-foot antenna capable of communicating with remote stations throughout Vietnam and Thailand. The office had a very old Japanese-made switchboard system (complete with operating instructions written in Japanese), but Saigon telephones were notoriously bad, and PTT had a terrible mess on their hands; consequently, the SSB radio system was made operational 24 hours a day. It was used for machine outage reporting, reporting up-country spare parts and supply requirements, planning preventive maintenance schedules, and monitoring the movements and status of the IBMers in residence up-country.

The IBM customer engineers were also on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and the radio network often provided connectivity. The SSB network was used more than once by Army or Air Force personnel when their own telephones or communications systems failed. Each IBMer carried a portable Collins "handy-talky" used to report his whereabouts and parts requirements or, if necessary, to bash wayward cowboys intent on stealing his wristwatch.

It was a standing company safety requirement for each IBMer to keep the home base informed as to exactly where he was and where he planned to go next--customer site, home, or bar. Each handy-talky was faithfully kept in a bedside battery charger at night in the "on" position. The Collins equipment worked flawlessly.

IBM's military business in Southeast Asia was conducted under the guidelines of a yearly General Services Administration (GSA) contract. It provided for expedited DO/DX rated equipment purchase orders to ensure timely delivery of machines to Vietnam and Thailand. Most machines were shipped by air out of McClellan or Travis Air Force bases. The contract specified what machines had been approved for use in Southeast Asia and provided sales, rental and maintenance prices for all equipment and spare parts. The contract promised that IBM would provide at least two-hour or better maintenance response time in the event of a nonexpendable machine outage, although common sense had to prevail if a location were under attack and the situation was considered unsafe. The contract also provided for the logistical welfare of the IBMers in the war zone with respect to post exchange, medical, commissary, housing, recreation facilities and travel privileges.

Each year the GSA contract became more comprehensive, more definitive and more cumbersome, but as a general rule the contract was the operative bible. Each year GSA renewed the contract months after the previous fiscal year's contract had expired, with the net result that the IBM bills could not be paid on time. It was said that our government knew how to order, ship and operate the equipment, but did not know how to pay for it. The IBM Corporation probably made money during the war, and at one three-year stretch between 1969 and 1971, the Saigon-based branch office could account for an estimated $70,000,000 to $80,000,000 in machine-based revenue. However, IBM's expenses were unique, unusually high, and the operation was clearly risky and subject to criticism by the United States government.

IBM paid for employee housing, transportation, up-country 4-wheel-drive vehicles and portakamps, meals, inflated hazardous duty salaries, vacations, yearly R & Rs as well as the SSB communications equipment, and probably too many long-distance upper-management trips from the United States. Those millions in revenue also had to cover the federal sales, technical and administrative support organizations throughout the United States, the extra spare-parts system put in place across the Pacific, and of course the initial manufacturing of all the machines (and not all of them made it back to the States again) in use. IBM did not want to be viewed as profiteering from the war, but it is doubtful that they lost any money.

IBM World Trade Corporation also had a sizable Vietnam-licensed business headquartered in downtown Saigon on Gia Long Street. The personnel at that site were almost entirely Vietnamese, Chinese or French citizens, with several American managers. This company sold and serviced computers for Vietnamese businesses, banks, the Vietnamese government and the VNAF (Vietnam Air Force [South]) and ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) military installations. IBM Vietnam was separate and distinct from this military support organization, with a completely different reporting structure through Hong Kong. It is only mentioned here to clarify the difference and to introduce what will be told in a follow-on story written about the 130 IBM Vietnam employees and their families who were trapped during the fall of Saigon in April 1975.

As far as I know, Vietnam was the first and only war in which data processing was extensively used within a war zone by all major branches of the U.S. military. Unfortunately, we were there long enough to write huge, complex software applications, upgrade equipment in the field from 1401/1410/7010 generation computers to the then relatively new System/360 Models (first announced in 1964), train military and Vietnamese computer professionals and even build large, completely new computer centers such as those at Da Nang, Nakhom Phanom, Long Binh and around Saigon. Data processing operations varied in size and sophistication from simple 026/029 keypunch, 083 sorter and 407 tabulating machine card installations throughout Southeast Asia to the various complex command and control System/360 Model 50s at Seventh Air Force, MACV and Da Nang Marines to the ultrasophisticated dual S/360 Model 65 systems at Task Force Alpha in Thailand. There were literally hundreds of small and large data processing centers, and over the years they were staffed by thousands of Army, Air Force, Marine and Navy enlisted men and officers. Data processing had become a new career path within the military, and the men who brought their training and expertise from the U.S. Army were skilled professionals who were in most cases already familiar with IBM products prior to arriving at their Vietnam duty stations. In addition to the necessary hardware maintenance responsibilities, IBM's job was to hone the skills of these men, keep them updated about new products, teach the computer languages of the day (COBOL, FORTRAN, Assembly Language, PL/1) and Operating System/360, assist with new software releases and hardware upgrades, take part in the installation planning process and answer technical questions about software and hardware. These men became good friends as well as valued customers. An example of a set of successful computer applications follows.

Data processing at the Seventh Air Force's Directorate of Automated Systems grew in complexity and capability between 1967 and 1973. (The following brief description is a rough approximate--please pardon any omissions.) The hardware began as a 1410/1401 installation with banks of 729 tape drives and 1301 random access storage and was gradually upgraded to two System/360 Model 50 processors (each with 512,000 positions of main memory--a mere pittance by today's standards) with the newer 2305 storage, DASD and 2400 tape-drive models. These systems were linked to identical S/360 systems at PACAF in Hawaii, interconnected via a trans-Pacific subseabed line (later via satellite) with two complicated pieces of equipment called the 7740 programmable communications controller. IBM 1050 terminals were installed at every air base in Southeast Asia. Timely information could be transmitted to the Seventh Air Force system at Tan Son Nhut on 1,200- and 2,400-bps lines (state of the art in the late 1960s). This leading-edge combination of hardware, together with software written by IBM, CDC and Air Force personnel, became known as PIACCS (Pacific Interim Air Force Command and Control system) and Seek Data II. It was extremely instrumental in managing the air war.

The mission of Seek Data II was threefold. There was "Frag Prep"--the preparation of mission orders to be sent via PIACCS to an appropriate air base. The orders included date and time of attacks, what kind and how many planes to fly, targeting information, ordnance requirements, etc. The "frags" (short for fragmentary orders) were stored on a 360/50 system and were modified and transmitted based on Intelligence reports. There was also "CREST," the combat reporting system. After each mission, the pilots would submit the results of their sorties to their base Intelligence center. These results would then be transmitted by PIACCS to the computer center and on to PACAF HQ at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii. The reports were then compiled into a master report used for top-level briefings and to create subsequent frags. And last there was "Airlift Management." This was the planning and coordination of the massive movement of men and materiel by air throughout Southeast Asia. Each flight manifest was created and stored on a 360/50 and then dispatched to the appropriate supply or personnel center. The tracking of all these movements was also coordinated by this part of Seek Data II. These applications represented the Air Force's version of Command and Control--and it worked!

IBM was also proud of the work it did with the USAID mission in Saigon. The early computer system was either a 1401 or 1460 processor, later upgraded to a S/360 Model 40 with updated I/O capability. The machines themselves were crammed into makeshift office space within the USAID compound, and the installation was sometimes noted for the telltale sickening aroma of nouc-mam emanating from behind a row of tape drives during the operator's lunch hour. IBM systems engineers taught Assembly Language, COBOL and computer operations to young Vietnamese and Chinese civilians--students who had been handpicked by the mission for future professional positions at IBM Vietnam, ARVN computer sites and follow-on computer jobs within what was hoped would someday be a peaceful South Vietnam. The planning for this special training program took place in mid-1968, and may have been one of the first examples of "Vietnamization," put in place well before Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird coined the term for President Nixon in 1969.

A major and unique accomplishment by the IBM systems engineers assigned to USAID was the design and development of the "1403 Vietnamese print train," which, for the first time, enabled the printing of legal documents in the Vietnamese language. Our English ABCs and alphabetical sort sequence were translated by these engineers into the graphical shapes and sort sequence of the Vietnamese language, including the necessary diacritical overmarks and undermarks. (The Vietnamese language, known as Quoc Ngu, has 12 vowels and 27 consonants and uses diacritical markings to help distinguish the pronunciation and meaning of the tonal Vietnamese vocabulary.)

The first important use of the new print train was with a land redistribution program called "Land-to-the-Tiller," which was directed by President Nguyen Van Thieu. Huge tracts of government land holdings were subdivided into small, farmlike parcels, and the deed or title was printed on USAID's IBM system in Vietnamese, complete with the new owner's name in his native language. By 1972, the Land-to-the Tiller program had distributed land titles to 400,000 formerly landless farmers, totaling more than 1,500,000 acres. This was a great morale booster to the farmers in the countryside (who were being courted by the Viet Cong) and was one of the principle Vietnamization government projects..

Danger and humor were full-time companions to the Vietnam IBMers. Soon after the 1968 Tet Offensive, two hardware customer engineers--we'll call them Bob and Jerry--were at STRATCOM's Phulam switch working on an IBM 360/20 AUTODIN tributary. They completed their work after dark and decided to stay the night and sleep in the military barracks. Sometime after midnight, they were awakened by a siren and the whump, whump, whump of incoming Viet Cong mortar shells. Bob said he looked to his left and saw Jerry scrambling out of bed, saying, "Let's get the hell out of here." Bob then looked around and realized that he and Jerry were the only ones left in the barracks. "Those 18-year-olds can sure move fast when they want to," thought Bob. They dressed hurriedly and beat it out to a nearby bunker to join the other troops. Bob later told me, "For some reason I needed my flashlight, so I reached inside my pocket to turn it on. It didn't work and I stepped to the bunker's entrance to check it out in the light of a drifting flare. Well, it wouldn't work because it was a bar of soap, and I also noticed that I had on two different colored socks, one of them military. Who--me, nervous?--but at least there was a military guy out there out of uniform with one of my socks." Bob went on to say, "We survived the night, and at the crack of dawn, Jerry and I were seated in the back of a deuce-and-a-half truck that had convoy duty that morning. The convoy pulled out, and our truck became the escort for a fully loaded propane truck on its way to the Esso yard. The GIs were all taking bets as to whether the propane truck would survive the trip through Cholon. The trip was terrifying--a jeep with an M-60, us in the deuce with a mounted 50-caliber machine gun, followed all too closely by the propane. We moved at full speed through the narrow Cholon streets, so narrow that the second-story balconies seemed to overhang our convoy. With horn blasting, we made it OK. Jerry and I put away the M-14 we were sharing and returned to the quiet of our civilian villas."

A different Bob tells the following story: "I received a call late one afternoon from a lieutenant at Cu Chi. He wanted me to come right away to repair a 407 listing machine that was giving trouble. I said it was too late; by the time I got there it would be 4:30 or so, and I already had things I had to do that evening in Saigon. Could the 407 wait until the next morning? The lieutenant said, 'No, Bob, you have to come this afternoon; there's a helicopter at Hotel One you can still make, and I'll take care of you tonight. You can eat well in our mess, drink my booze and sleep in my hooch.' I said there was no way I was coming that night--that the place scared me, and I would rather stay in the safety of my villa and not spend a night under potential VC attacks. Then I went on to say that I just didn't feel safe in Cu Chi at night--there had been too many recent attacks, etc.

"After much discussion, the lieutenant finally relented, and I promised him I would be at Hotel One at eight the next morning and see him soon after that. The 20-minute helicopter ride the next morning was uneventful, and I began to wonder whether I had been wrong to wait. It was a short walk from the landing area to the data processing building and the lieutenant's hooch. The lieutenant had built himself a private, one-man specialized sleeping quarters complete with sitting area, comfortable bed and refreshment bar. It was hexagonal in shape and made from scrap wood and metal, set apart from the regular BOQ sleeping dorm.

"I walked past some palm trees that shielded the view of my destination, turned a corner and looked for the hooch. It just wasn't there! The hooch had been leveled during the night. It was just a pile of rubble. The whole side of the data processing building had been blown out, too. Oh, boy! I hustled over to some GIs who were cleaning up the mess and they said that the lieutenant's hooch had taken a direct hit from a 122mm rocket just after midnight. The machines looked like they were OK, but I was afraid to ask about my friend. Just then the lieutenant walked in another door and said, 'Welcome, Bob, I guess you saved my life! I haven't slept in the BOQ since I built the hooch, but after talking with you yesterday and listening to all your arguments about not wanting to be here last night, I decided I would sack with the other guys.' He shook my hand and said, 'I owe ya one--now let's get to work.' Was it plain dumb luck or had I had a premonition?"

Another unusual maintenance call caused IBM management considerable worry. The story goes as follows: A customer engineer, whom we will call Jack, was called in Saigon to go down to the docks along the Saigon River to board a U.S. Navy ship. He took only his tool kit, expecting to be gone a couple of hours. There was a 407 listing machine in need of repair somewhere in the bowels of the ship. But when the ship pulled out, Jack was still hard at work and unaware of the departure planned for him. Jack finished his repair job and went back on deck to return to the IBM office, then found that he had been "shanghaied"--the Navy had forgotten he was on board. The ship was on its way to the United States. Well, that wouldn't do, so dispatches were sent. Another ship came alongside, and Jack was transferred in a swaying basket, with tool kit, to another ship bound for the Philippines. Jack ended up at Subic Bay without money, passport or a change of clothes.

The story becomes a bit hazy here. One version has Jack being adopted for a few days by a sympathetic nurse, and another version has Jack urgently trying to return to Saigon via any means possible. Eventually he did catch a military flight to Da Nang and another to Saigon. He was away for almost a week, and no one knew where he was during that time. He was soundly kidded after that about taking a week to repair a 407, but it was a big relief to have him back.. IBMers carried noncombatant cards in their wallets, which said that in the case of capture (by the VC, perhaps) they were peace-loving and innocent civilians. However, the men were not naive--many of the employees also carried a hidden collection of personal weapons. MACV had issued 50 M-2s to IBM management, to be handed out as necessary for defensive purposes. They were also given two clips of ammo per M-2 and invited to use the local gunnery range. But this was not enough, and since it seemed as though they were living in the modern-day equivalent of the American Wild West--Dodge City in its heyday--they had other weapons too, things like .38 and .45 revolvers, AK-47s, carbines, grease guns and even hand grenades.

The gang in Da Nang was particularly well-armed and perhaps better-equipped than some of the local troops. Buying a gun was fairly easy. Most civilians carried a weapon of some sort. MACV finally collected the 50 M-2s sometime in 1971, and they were passed along to the ARVN as part of the Vietnamization program.

In addition to the war zone dangers such as VC terrorism, night maintenance calls and random rocket fire into the cities, the next serious obstacle to getting along well in-country was the chaotic traffic. Lane integrity simply did not exist, and the level of vehicle congestion in Saigon itself defied description. The highway between Saigon and Long Binh was also a major challenge, and became the scene of many a wreck. The IBMers in Saigon were all asked to buy their own cars. To complete an entire two-, three- or four-year assignment without having one's car seriously damaged or stolen was a true challenge. Two traffic stories should illustrate the point: One of the busiest streets in Saigon was Cach Mang Street, which carried the bulk of the traffic between Tan Son Nhut and downtown. About halfway into town there were railroad tracks crossing Cach Mang, and a train passed by a couple of times a day. One IBMer remembers stopping in his car with the traffic behind the lowered safety barriers. A train that was longer than usual went by. Cars, trucks, taxis, cycles, pedicabs, Hondas, carts, jeeps, bicycles and people continued to pile up in all lanes and expand to the opposite side of the street, which had been empty, until there was a mass of waiting traffic from sidewalk to sidewalk, all heading the same way toward town. Finally, the train passed and there was quite a sight. The other side of the tracks was also filled sidewalk to sidewalk, so that two massive crowds faced each other and neither could move ahead. It took the Vietnamese police an hour to sort out the mess.

Another day in that same area, just as an IBMer pulled up to a traffic light, a Vietnamese on a Honda pulled up to his right and another Honda driver pulled up to his left. When the light turned green, the Vietnamese on the right turned left and the Vietnamese on the left turned right and collided in front of the IBMer's car. Fortunately, the IBMer had anticipated what would happen and had purposely waited so he would not run over both of them.

As the political policy of Vietnamization became reality in the early '70s and U.S. troop reductions continued, it became obvious that the IBM military mission would also be short-lived. Certain services were curtailed (typewriter repairs, for example), personnel were not replaced at the end of their assignments, upgrades ceased, computer equipment was transferred to ARVN and VNAF locations, and IBM customer service was gradually transferred to the World Trade Organization's IBM Vietnam. American customer engineers were kept busy packaging and crating machines for their return to Stateside installations or IBM plants.

The S/360 Model 50 at MACV DMA was purchased and given to the ARVN headquarters computer center (the Defense Attache's Office [DAO] absorbed a number of small military customers and reverted to the use of punched card equipment), and a second S/360 Model 50 system, which had been rented by the Seventh Air Force was also purchased and given to the Vietnamese government, to be installed in a new computer center downtown. These two 360/50s remained in Vietnam after the Communist takeover in 1975. The S/360 Model 65s at Nakhon Phanom were returned Stateside when the Igloo White project was phased out, and when the Seventh Air Force moved their continuing air war function to Nakhon Phanom, their other S/360 Model 50 system and an 1130/2250 terminal went with them.

On January 27, 1973, the Paris Peace Accords were signed. Exactly 60 days later, the door to the IBM office at 116 Ming Mang was closed for the last time. Except for one man who volunteered to remain another few months to help in the transition, IBM's American mission in Vietnam had ended.

The history of IBM's participation in the Vietnam War is one I have taken great pride in. During the Vietnam years, IBMers made every effort to maintain the IBM standards--respect for the individual; excellence in customer service; and the best data processing products and support services possible. I believe we succeeded, and through it all--in the middle of monsoons, under attack by enemy troops, during machine upgrades, while in transit to the accounts up-country via helicopter or C-130 transport, in front of every military customer and friend, and even within our own office environment--we always wore our white shirts and ties!