by T. E. Cruise
My first combat mission, Robbie thought as he switched on the lamp on the little folding camp table beside his cot. At once the winged things that ruled the Southest Asian night began thumping insistently at the window screens.
“You know, Stew, when I arrived I was really feeling gung ho,” Robbie began nervously. “But now I’m feeling kind of rusted up …”
“Yeah, well, it was a tough break you got,” Stew said. He was at the mirror, carefully twirling wax into the handlebar curves of his luxurious mustache. “I guess it would be best to get here and just jump right in, but rules are rules.”
Robbie nodded. Since he’d arrived at Phanrat he’d been parked on the shelf, with nothing to do but swat bugs and bite his nails worrying about how he would react when he finally did see action. He’d been grounded because of a string of bad weather and the relative difficulty of the targets that Saigon Command had seen fit to send the 609th’s way. His squadron’s commander, Lieutenant Colonel Owen Farris, believed in an easy break-in for buck pilots. Farris wanted Robbie to bust his cherry on a target in a less fortified area, during daylight, and in good weather, so that Robbie could maintain visual flight rules. Robbie had begun to think that his opportunity would never come, but now here it was …
All the years of daydreaming, and the hard work to get through school, and then fighter pilot training … Robbie climbed out of his cot and padded barefoot in his boxer shorts and T-shirt to his footlocker in order to grab his kit. It’s taken so long to get to this day; the first mission. He stepped into his unlaced boots and headed for the door. Just let me do okay …
He noticed Stew watching him. “I’ll just hit the showers, and then I’ll meet you—”
“No,” Stew said.
Robbie, his kit in hand, paused in the doorway. “No, what?”
“No shaving, no brushing your teeth, no shower, and no deodorant.”
“Why the hell not?” Robbie demanded. Outside the hooch he could hear the voices of the other pilots drawn for the morning’s mission as they walked by on their way to the mess. He glanced out the window. Here at the hooches it was too dark to see much beyond a few glowing cigarettes bobbing like fireflies, but off near the hangar complex harsh lights were staining the night sky. Robbie could hear the clanging of ordnance being fitted and the whine of the electric carts as the maintenance crews hustled to prepare the fighters for takeoff.
“Why can’t I shower, for chrissake?” Robbie repeated. “I’m sweaty as hell. I’ve got plenty of time to make briefing …”
“Gomer doesn’t brush his teeth,” Stew replied. “And he doesn’t take showers, or use deodorant, except for maybe splashing a little fish sauce in his armpits to attract the little gomer girls. Should you have to punch out over unfriendly territory all that minty clean Ipana smell coming off you will let gomer sniff you out in that jungle of his like a bird dog on a quail …”
“Come on …” Robbie shivered, and then laughed weakly. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Just get dressed and come grab yourself some breakfast,” Stew said evenly. “Be plenty of time to shower later.”
Jesus Christ, it’s really happening, Robbie thought numbly. Oh, please let me just get through this day …
The civil engineers who were busy messing around with Phanrat would be working on the base long after Robbie’s tour of duty was over. They’d already done a good job on the fighter maintenance/ordnance areas adjoining the spaghetti tangle of concrete taxi ramps and runways, but the rest of “The Rat” was still nothing but a wide expanse of tramped-down dirt hacked out of the emerald jungle. The base had elevated wooden sidewalks that floated in the mud, some rusting trailers where the senior officers berthed, and prefab, hangar-type buildings that housed the mess and the officers’ club, both of which functioned twenty-four hours a day. Near the ready line were the pilots’ personal equipment shack, and the Operations center, which was where Robbie was now, along with the other pilots selected from “The Rat’s” several squadrons to take part in this morning’s strike.
The main briefing room was a large, fluorescent-lit auditorium with sky blue walls, and an acoustic tile ceiling. The room had a raised platform equipped with lecterns, blackboards, and maps, and a lot of those uncomfortable combination folding chair/writing desks … Just like a high school or college lecture hall, Robbie thought, remembering his dream.
“… The primary target will be the Song Sen Bridge …” the operations commander was announcing.
Robbie was chain-smoking. The eggs, toast, and coffee he’d forced down were churning in his gut. He was sure that everybody could tell how nervous and afraid he was, but when he looked around nobody seemed to be paying attention to him.
“… Song Sen is the name of the village where this bridge spans the Song Ca River southwest of …”
Get your shit together, Robbie told himself. Listen to the briefing. Up on the raised platform the operations commander and his support staff—weather, intelligence, and weapons officers—were talking specifics concerning their areas of expertise about the primary and alternate targets if for any reason the Song Sen Bridge could not be struck.
Robbie tried to concentrate, dutifully shuffling through his maps and navigational cards and the mimeographed reports and their update inserts, but he couldn’t focus. All he could think about was winning medals, or disgracing himself by acting cowardly.
The Wing briefing broke up. The pilots left the auditorium for their individual squadron briefings held in smaller rooms around the corner from the main hall. As Robbie entered his squadron briefing he saw Lieutenant Colonel Farris talking with his senior officers.
Farris was in his early forties. He had red hair, freckles, a pug nose, and blue eyes. Behind his back the guys called him Howdy Doody, but Robbie thought the commander looked like Robbie’s grandfather Herman Gold must have looked in his younger days. Robbie took that as a good omen.
Farris must have felt Robbie’s eyes upon him. He glanced up, then winked at Robbie before returning his attention to his staff. Another good omen, Robbie thought, settling into a chair/desk.
“All right, this should be an easy one, gentlemen,” Farris began once the rest of the pilots had arrived and were seated. “The weatherman tells us that visibility should be excellent. Intelligence suggests that the enemy has most of its defenses concentrated over a hundred klicks to the north, at the Dragon’s Jaw…”
Robbie began flipping through his maps. He couldn’t find anything called Dragon’s Jaw, but then map reading had never been his strong point …
“But before I go any further, I want to make a personnel change,” Farris said. “Lieutenant Greene—”
Robbie, his heart pounding, wondered if he was going to be scratched from the mission. He looked up from the crumpled maps littering his desktop and his lap. “Sir?”
“Since this is your first mission, I want you where I can keep an eye on you,” Farris said. “For today you’ll be part of my flight. Our radio call sign is Warrior …”
“Yes, sir.”
Farris moved on. “Major Gleason’s flight call sign is Rambler. Major Goldblum is Dasher … Major Lawrence is…”
It was almost 4 A.M. when Robbie and the other pilots got to the personal equipment shack. The others were talking and joking as they drew their gear. Robbie stayed out of it. He really didn’t feel like he had any right to be among these men who had all passed the ultimate test: The least among them had twelve combat missions under his belt …
Robbie emptied the pockets of his cotton flight suit and stowed his personal belongings in a locker. He began donning his equipment. First he laced on the chapslike, waist-high, G suit. Next came his vest, its many pockets bulging with survival gear, including canteens and his beeper radio. He strapped on his chute, and a .38 revolver, then drew the weapon from its holster to make sure it was loaded.
He stared at the gun, thinking about the survival training he’d received, and his target practice at the ra
nge. He’d gotten to be a pretty good pistol shot, just as he’d gotten to be highly accurate at delivering dummy ordnance and cannon fire during flight gunnery practice … But shooting at paper targets or bombing circles painted on the ground wasn’t anything at all like attacking a flesh and blood enemy who was going to be shooting back at you—
Eahhhhhhhhhh—
A high-pitched wailing, the electronic equivalent of fingernails on a blackboard, startled Robbie. It was one of the pilots fiddling with his rescue radio. If you punched out over gomer land it was that mournful cry that Search and Rescue would lock onto in order to find you and pull you out—if they could …
The pilot switched off the radio. He saw Robbie staring at him, and winked as he said, “It’s a good idea to check out the battery…”
Robbie was anxious to please, but the thought of hearing that despairing keening coming from his own radio was unbearable. “I’m not going to need it,” he said loudly.
He grabbed his helmet and satchel full of paperwork, and strode out of the room. On his way to the van that stood waiting to take the pilots to the aircraft he patted his vest to make sure that his radio was there—
It was just dawn as the pilots were ferried to their parked aircraft. The line of F-105 Thunderchiefs, their fuselage racks bristling with ordnance, their wing pylons heavy with extra fuel tanks, were parked with their canopies raised up, as if in salute to the arriving pilots.
Robbie’s bird was near the front of the line. Like the others, she had a tricolor camo paint job: green and tan up top, with a ghost gray belly. The Thud had a conical needle nose. She was huge for a single-seat fighter, sixty-four feet long, which was almost the length of a DC-3, with a thirty-four-foot wingspan. A man could comfortably stand beneath one of those wings without having to duck his head, and just climbing the ladder and settling into the cockpit put you about twelve feet off the ground.
“Good morning, Lieutenant,” the crew chief said, saluting Robbie as he approached.
“Sergeant.” Robbie nodded. The chief was wearing green fatigue pants and an oil-smeared, white T-shirt, and was looking tired and pale beneath the outdoor lights. Robbie sure hoped the guy had been awake—not hung over or anything—when he’d been doing his job checking out the bird. “How’s everything?”
“She’s ready to go, sir…”
Robbie nodded in what he hoped was a knowing manner, set down his satchel of paperwork, and began to walk around the aircraft, pretending to be sagely giving it the once-over. It was a joke, of course. He knew there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of his spotting anything the maintenance people might have missed. He didn’t know why the other pilots persisted in peering and poking at their bird, kicking the goddamned tires like they were on a used car lot or something, but they did it, so Robbie was damned sure he was going to do it as well.
One thing Robbie did notice: There were only six 750-pound bombs nestled beneath the Thud’s belly. The bombs were painted drab green, with banana yellow noses. Safety clips dangling long red ribbons were attached to the fuses.
The crew chief came up behind him as he was staring at the paltry war load. “Sarge,” Robbie began. “This airplane can carry up to six tons of ordnance—”
“There’s a bomb shortage, Lieutenant,” the chief said in a whisper. “Between us, I’m surprised the old man even let you have those six.”
“Huh?”
“If I could speak frankly … ?” the sergeant looked uncomfortable.
“Go ahead.”
“The old man doesn’t like to send out his buck pilots loaded up until he’s sure that pilot’s got the balls to go the distance.”
“I understand now,” Robbie replied quietly. The facts were the facts. It was his first mission, so nobody, including himself, could know for certain how he would react in combat. Perhaps he would lose his nerve, and toggle off short of the target, shredding jungle … Like the crew chief had said, there was a bomb shortage …
“Time to strap in, Lieutenant …”
“Right …” Let’s get the fucking thing over with, Robbie thought as he climbed the ladder.
He settled into the cockpit, strapped himself in, and then put on his helmet and sunglasses. He was reviewing the preignition checklist on the pad clipped to his knee when the chief came scrambling up the ladder with his satchel.
The chief didn’t say anything; he didn’t have to. Robbie, feeling like a fool, snatched the bag. He stuffed the more important things, like his navigational cards to help him find the alternate targets, into the nooks and crannies around the instrument panel. The knee pads of his flight suit were already filled to capacity with more paperwork.
He heard a clicking sound in his helmet as the chief plugged his mike into the Thud’s belly in order to go through the lengthy starting procedure. Fifteen minutes later the Thud’s engine was droning.
The chief radioed. “You’re all set, Lieutenant. Now you go get them, and then you bring my bird home safe and sound to me …” He disconnected his radio, took several steps back, and threw Robbie a salute.
Robbie felt a shiver travel his spine as he saluted back, thinking, Chief knows he may not be seeing me again …
Robbie eased his throttle forward. As the Thud got rolling the chief used hand signals to guide Robbie through the gray dawn light, out of the parking area and safely past the orange painted weapons and maintenance carts, onto the taxi ramp. There, Robbie paused to allow other ground crewmen to make one last check that nothing had gone wrong or come loose, and for the armorer to pluck the red-ribboned fuse safeties off his bombs and his cannon.
Holy shit, Robbie thought happily as the armorer held up the red-ribboned bundle for his inspection. This is for real. When I drop these bombs they’re gonna explode. For the first time I’m being sent out to put some wholesale hurt on the enemy.
“Warrior Four, hold position,” the tower radioed.
No! Now! Let’s go now!
“Warrior Four, cleared for takeoff,” sounded in Robbie’s ears.
Robbie joyfully began trucking down the runway. He built to full power, and then jerked his throttle sideways, activating his afterburner. The kick in the pants flattened him against his seat as his Thud leapt forward, trailing a cone of orange fire. The big bird hurtled along, eating up the concrete, and at 190 knots he lifted off, retracting his gear. Then he was traveling at 250 knots, 290, 300; charging into the sky, eager to join the rest of the strike force on its way to war.
A half hour later the strike force was at 25,000 feet, approximately seventy minutes from the primary target. Warrior flight was in the vanguard of the five chevrons of Thuds that curved across the mottled Asian sky. Flying ahead of Warrior flight were F-100 SuperSabres from Danang, assigned weather recon and advance flak-suppression. More SuperSabres from South Vietnam flew MIG-CAP escort, weaving protective swallow-tail patterns above the strike as they searched for enemy fighters. A recon flight brought up the strike’s rear to photograph the damage done to the target once the bombs had been dropped.
“Warrior lead, to Warrior flight,” Lieutenant Colonel Farris radioed, cutting through the random exchanges from the various flights that cluttered the frequency. “Weather recon says we’ve got clouds coming together up ahead. It looks too big to fly around or over. Looks like we’re going to have to tough it out going right through.” He paused. “In honor of our new young buck, let’s practice a channel switch to another frequency. Go manual—Now.”
Robbie hurriedly double-checked the list of call signs and frequencies, and then tuned his radio to the channel that had been exclusively assigned to Warrior flight.
“—ior flight check,” Farris was saying. “Warrior flight check.”
Robbie listened as the other members of the flight sounded off, and when it was his turn clicked his mike and said, “Four!”
“Attaboy, Warrior Four,” lead said. “Are you close to element leader?”
“Rog, boss,” Robbie said succinctly, anx
ious to impress Farris with his radio discipline. He was flying as wingman to Captain Strauss. Over the target area Robbie would become his own man for the seconds it took to execute his attack dive and toggle his bombs, but going and coming it was his job to stick to Warrior Three like glue.
So far I’ve been able to manage that, Robbie thought worriedly as he watched the rugged green and brown landscape that was the border between Thailand and Laos passing beneath his wings. He had easy tallyho with Strauss; for that matter, he had visual contact with the entire flight. But even with visual contact he was using every ounce of concentration and skill to stay in formation. Back at Fighter Weapons School the instructors had concentrated on teaching straight-on, low-level, nuclear weapons strike delivery techniques. This morning Robbie had not flown a straight course for more than a few minutes.
Robbie understood that the flight commanders had to have their people zigzagging all over the sky if the strike was to avoid known enemy concentrations of defenses, but that didn’t help him to stay in formation. He invariably strayed during the abruptly announced course changes, and then had to stoke his burner in order to catch up. It was no big deal because he could see where his element lead was, but if visibility should decrease to the extent that the strike had to resort to instrument flight rules he was going to be one harried buck pilot …
“Warrior flight,” Farris called. “We’re coming on enemy territory. Start your music.”
Robbie scanned his flight checklist just to refresh his memory, and then set to work flicking the numerous switches necessary to activate his weapons systems. He watched his weapons indicators go green, signifying that his ordnance was “hot.”
“Warrior Four, how’s your fuel situation?” Farris asked.
“Boss, you read my mind,” Robbie said, startled. All that maneuvering and extra afterburn had cost him fuel. For a while now he’d been anxiously eyeing his steadily dropping fuel gauges.