VIRGINIA BEACH -- Members of a super-secret Navy Vietnam War outfit are finally getting long overdue honors.

The mission was so classified they were not even allowed to talk about it decades after the war’s end. Now that the Ghost Squadron’s work has been declassified, the surviving squadron mates are getting their due in the form of a Presidential Unit Citation for Extraordinary Heroism.

There were around 300 men on the Navy Observation Squadron V0-67. In 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War Tet Offensive, using modified P-2V5 Neptune Aircraft, the nine-member air crews’ mission was to fly in from Thailand at 500 feet and drop seismic and acoustic devices along the Ho Chi Mihn Trail in Laos so U.S. Forces could track Viet Cong troop and vehicle movements to quickly respond and destroy them.

They also dropped the devices around the U.S. Marine base at Khe Sahn, South Vietnam, saving countless American lives.

Retired Navy Senior Chief Roger Ringgenberg was then a 24-year-old Second Class manning the aircraft’s tail gun.

“All I remember is watching out that after station window and watching for black puffs or anything that might give me a clue that somebody was shooting at me,” he said. “Luckily, I never saw one, but some of the crews weren’t so lucky.”
Three planes and 20 sailors in all were lost during the 500-day mission.

Wednesday morning, the surviving members will gather at the Navy Memorial in Washington to receive the Presidential Unit Citation, a public acknowledgement for heroic work that most people never knew about until now.

“It makes me pretty proud to be a member of the group,” Ringgenberg said. “It’s really something that was pretty unanticipated. So, that adds to the, I guess, the gratitude that we have that people are finally starting to recognize some of the things that we did.”

Senior Chief Ringgenberg is now 64-years-old, lives in Virginia Beach, and is a civilian employee at the Army’s Fort Monroe.