After Bowers had attended to the injured men, he borrowed a field radio from the South Vietnamese to coordinate artillery and air strikes. Later, two AD-6 Skyraiders arrived over Ap Bac and attacked the thatched houses with conventional bombs and napalm. The South Vietnamese soldiers, who were pinned down on the ground, believed their ordeal was over, so they stood up to see if the VC were retreating from their positions. The VC fired on the exposed soldiers and killed several. Vann then radioed Captain James B. Scanlon—senior adviser to the ARVN 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment—and told him that four US helicopters had either been destroyed or immobilized about southeast of the regiment's position. Scanlon was told to get his South Vietnamese counterpart, Captain Ly Tong Ba—commander of the 4th Mechanized Rifle Squadron, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, to rescue the trapped South Vietnamese company and the helicopters.