Fighter Wing: A Guided Tour of an Air Force Combat Wing tcml-3

by Tom Clancy

  Operation Golden Gate Southeast Asia

  Operation Golden Gate.

  Jack Ryan Enterprises, Ltd., by Laura Alpher

  The inevitability of the event seemed so clear in retrospect, yet this did not mitigate the surprise. South Vietnam, once deluged by American and other Western influences, simply never bought into the Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy of the North. And while Hanoi was able to make it stick for a generation, the demise of their governing philosophy everywhere else in the world only encouraged the South to go its own way. The leader was a former chieftain with the Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN — the former Viet Cong headquarters) with his own reasons for rebellion. Only 5 feet/1.5 meters tall and thin, even by Vietnamese standards, Duc Oanh had been an earnest and effective foe of the RVN and its American protectors. Wounded twice in combat actions and nearly buried alive by a B-52 Arc Light mission in 1970, he'd carried the banner for his beliefs, only to be shunted to a minor post office job when the North finally overran Saigon in 1975. What began as personal resentment in Duc's mind grew into a dream as he watched the North stagnate while the South fought the ideological reins well enough to begin something akin to genuine national development. He saw the perversion of his people's revolution by the ruling council of the North as final proof of the folly of the old men who ruled this corner of the world. One day, the dream formed into action.

  Many former revolutionary soldiers shared Duc's feelings.

  The coup that followed was anything but bloodless. In eight violent hours of darkness, combat veterans of the Vietnamese Army systematically assassinated their own senior officers during parties following the twenty-fifth anniversary Liberation Day ceremonies on April 30th. By dawn most of the military formations in the southern half of Vietnam had either been decapitated or had new leadership. And from Radio Saigon (nobody but foreigners had ever called it Ho Chih Minh City) went out a cry of renewed Southern independence that caught every news and intelligence agency in the world by total surprise.

  Hanoi's first reaction was predictably intemperate.

  The People's Republic of China was the only nation with any inkling of what was happening — Duc had established covert links to that government, whose hatred of Hanoi was every bit as deep as his own — and by noon the first international recognition of the revolutionary government had been announced. As for the Americans, the timing was too close to an American election. The President — himself a veteran of the aerial campaign against Hanoi in the 1970s and one of a generation of former warriors with a personal promise to make that lost war right — had to act.

  Communist Party Headquarters, Saigon, May 1, 2000, 0930 Hours

  The Party headquarters in Saigon had originally been built by the French as Saigon's city hall. The wide corridors, arched windows, and high ceilings with slowly rotating fans gave the building an air of faded colonial elegance. But the wiring was almost as bad as the plumbing. The emergency diesel generator in the basement had been delivered from East Germany in the 1970s, and was inoperable for lack of parts. Brownouts and complete power outages in the city had grown more frequent lately, as the arthritic Vietnamese economy and crumbling infrastructure were increasingly unable to meet payments on oil shipments, even at the subsidized "friendship price" the Chinese comrades offered to help prop up one of the world's three remaining Communist states.

  Vu Xuan Linh, Chairman of the city's Party Committee and effective ruler of a metropolitan region of over five million people, was not surprised when the lights went out. That happened often enough. He was surprised, though, when he heard bursts of automatic fire in the corridor outside, and a ragged crowd of men armed with sticks, hand tools, and a few AKMs taken from the still-warm bodies of the dead guards outside burst into the office, grabbed his speechless body, and hurled it from the third-floor window. As the pavement rushed up to smash him, he only had time to wonder why the crowd in the plaza outside was waving those tattered, forbidden yellow flags with three horizontal red stripes.

  Tho Xuan Airfield, Vietnam, May 1, 2000, 1445 Hours

  The phone lines to the South were down, and the few military posts that had not thrown down their weapons or joined the rebels were getting out only fragmentary reports. The rebels seemed to have some sort of electronic jammers (ham radio gear actually) and knew how to use them. But the CNN news feed on TV in the ready room of the 923rd Fighter Regiment was clear and chilling. Saigon, Danang, Hue, even small provincial towns like Dalat and Ban Me Thuot, all seemed to have broken out in a mad carnival of mutiny, vandalism, looting, and murder of government and party officials. Colonel Nguyen Tri Loc, chief political officer of the Vietnam People's Air Force (VNPAF) Fighter Command, could see that he was facing the greatest challenge of his career. He would have to send his pilots into action against their own people.

  "Airmen," he said quietly to the two dozen pilots in the ready room, "this is the most serious crisis Vietnam has faced in a generation. Your grandfathers shed their blood to drive out the French imperialists. Your fathers shed their blood to drive out the Americans. If this criminal counterrevolutionary uprising is not crushed swiftly, all their sacrifices will have been for nothing, and your children will become slaves of international monopoly capitalism. Remember your training, and your aim will be true. The Party and the Nation are depending on you."

  The pilots looked straight ahead, stood to attention, and filed out to the flight line. There were no sidelong glances or murmurs of conversation. The colonel had no idea what they were thinking, and that made him uneasy. The 923rd was trained for the ground attack role, operating some 24 Su- 22M-3 Fitters. Twenty were flyable today, an excellent maintenance performance considering the difficulty of keeping the temperamental Tumansky engines running without regular factory overhauls. The range of over 600 miles/983 km. for this mission would limit the ordnance each could deliver on downtown Saigon to either two pods of 57mm rockets, or two napalm canisters. The most urgent target was the secret police headquarters. If the rebels could secure the building and its voluminous records, it would be a disaster. (The Party leaders had learned well the lessons of the overthrow of the German Democratic Republic.) After striking the city hall, the broadcasting stations, the Caravelle Hotel, and other likely centers of the revolt, the planes would recover at Danang, if that airfield was still secure, or alternatively at Cam Ranh Bay, then refuel and return to Tho Xuan to re-arm. There were no target folders, but every pilot was given a large-scale city map. The latest weather satellite pictures indicated that after some morning showers, it would be clear over most of the South. There was no up-to-date reconnaissance beyond what every pilot could see on CNN. The air defense missile sites around Bien Hoa and Tan Son Nhut airport had been thoroughly sabotaged by their loyal crews before they were evacuated, but there was no way of knowing how many handheld SAMs and anti-aircraft guns had fallen into the hands of the rebels. The regiment took off in five four-ship waves, spaced a few minutes apart.

  HQ PACAF (U.S. Pacific Command Air Forces), Hickam AFB, Hawaii

  "Looks as if the VNPAF is making a full court press," General Russ Dewey, commander of the U.S. Pacific Air Forces, observed as the situation display flickered with the latest updates. "We haven't seen this much activity out of them since, oh, hell, back in '72."

  "There's still no word from the Pentagon," Admiral Roy Shapiro, the Commander in Chief, Pacific (CINCPAC), replied. "Not that we could do much right now, even if we got a green light." You didn't have to see the gold wings above the admiral's chestful of ribbons to tell that he was an aviator. He had flown off carrier decks in the Gulf of Tonkin, out of Subic Bay and Clark Field in the Philippines, out of Andersen AFB on Guam, the Marine base at Kadena on Okinawa, and a dozen other places that were now mostly memories. It was the kind of situation that was every CinC's worst nightmare. Another Major Regional Contingency (MRC) was shaping up, and the nearest airpower that U.S. Pacific Command controlled was exactly two squadrons of 8th TFW F-16s in Korea, two thousand
long, long air miles away.

  Downtown Saigon, May 3, 2000, 2035 Hours

  There was still some daylight fading in the western sky as the planes came in from the north low and fast. Because the mission had been laid on in a hurry and the ground crews had humped whatever ordnance was immediately available in the closest bunkers at Gia Lam and Hue, they had been loaded with 250 kg. incendiary and fragmentation bombs.

  The slaughter in the streets, thronged with celebrating crowds, was appalling. Months later the International Committee of the Red Cross estimated that over five thousand people had been killed outright and about fifteen thousand seriously burned or injured. No one would ever know for sure — the provisional city government committee reluctantly had to order the dead buried in mass graves for reasons of public health. Some of the fires burned for days, but not as hotly as the wave of rage and revulsion that swept through the normally docile and apolitical Saigonese population. Even worse from the point of view of the world press was what happened to the visitors that made up Vietnam's major cash industry — tourism. Better than two hundred foreigners, mostly businessmen from Europe or Japan, were checked in at the Caravelle Hotel in Saigon. Most of them were eating an early dinner or drinking in the world-famous bar. There were also about a hundred elderly American Vietnam War veterans in the country, invited by the Hanoi government to visit old battlefields and exorcise ancient demons. The original idea behind their visit, in fact, had been to speed along the normalization of U.S.-Vietnamese relations. Unfortunately for them, and for Hanoi, the pilots of four MiG-27 attack fighters had been told that the Caravelle was under rebel control.

  It is one of the realities of our time that satellite news networks are the finest intelligence-gathering agencies in the world. Though Hanoi denied conducting the strike, a Sky News TV crew from Britain had it on tape, with the yellow stars clearly visible on the MiGs. The tape was uplinked immediately to the global satellite network.

  The United Nations Security Council, New York City, May 4, 2000

  The first Security Council resolution came up for a vote within hours of the airing of the tape; the pictures from Saigon had shocked even the hardened diplomats of this cynical group.

  RESOLUTION 1397

  The Security Council,

  Recognizing the belligerent status of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Vietnam,

  Alarmed by the bombing of Saigon by aircraft of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and continuing attacks on civilian targets in southern Vietnam by land, naval, and air forces of the DRV,

  Determining that there exists a breach of international peace and security by the DRV,

  Acting under Articles 39 and 40 of the Charter of the United Nations:

  1. Condemns the DRV attack on the Republic of Vietnam;

  2. Demands the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of DRV forces to positions North of the 17th parallel;

  3. Calls upon the Provisional Government of the Republic of Vietnam and the Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam to begin immediately intensive negotiations for the resolution of their differences and supports all efforts in this regard, and especially those of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations;

  4. Orders that the DRV shall be the object of a UN-sanctioned air, ground, and naval quarantine of all products considered supportive to military efforts against RVN;

  5. Authorizes that member nations providing forces for the quarantine may use military force consistent with their own security, and the enforcement of the previously mentioned action;6. Decides to meet again as necessary to consider further steps to ensure compliance with the present resolution.

  The motion had been proposed by the ambassador from France, the one-time colonial ruler of the region. It called for a UN-enforced isolation of the South until such time as UN-supervised elections could be conducted. Some speculated that the French proposal was offered in order to soothe old feelings of guilt going back three generations. The other Security Council members barely had time to call in to their various departments and ministries of State to obtain instructions. The surprise came when the vote by the permanent members was taken.

  "The United States of America?"

  "Yes."

  "The United Kingdom?"

  "Affirmative."

  "The Republic of France?"

  "Oui."

  "The Russian Federation?"

  "Da."

  "Japan?"

  "Hai!"

  "The People's Republic of China?"

  There was a long, tense pause while everyone waited for the simultaneous translation. "Madame Chairman, China abstains." In capitals around the world, the great and powerful sucked in their breath.

  The White House, Washington D.C., May 5, 2000, 0015 Hours

  "How the hell does the UN Security Council expect us to back them up when they won't even tell us what they want ahead of time?" the National Security Advisor raged to the President, the Cabinet, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

  "Mitch," the President said in his best soothing fighter jock voice, "we have a unique opportunity here with regards to Southeast Asia, and I intend to take full advantage of it."

  "I agree, Mr. President, but what do we use for bases and deployment support? We've gutted our forces in the region and have almost zero influence within the governments that run those places," the National Security Advisor pointed out correctly. "And on top of that, we're down to zero carrier battle groups in the Western Pacific, after that little problem with the Eisenhower battle group last week."

  A Cypriot supertanker outbound from the Persian Gulf had plowed into the side of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-68), killing over fifty U.S. sailors and causing a massive hole in the supercarrier amidships. The tanker sank. With the big ship under tow to Newport News, Virginia, for repairs at the builder's yard, it would be at least three weeks until another battle group could be assembled and dispatched to the Western Pacific.

  "This is going nowhere," thought the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and he noisily cleared his throat to gain the attention of the assembled group. When he spoke, it was with the controlled authority that had made him the first Marine to ever hold the post. "I should point out that nations do not have allies, but common interests. Things are getting a bit crazy over there. Which means a lot of people over there are eager for the craziness to go away. Which means I think we can count on the leadership of that region offering us some options, if we're just ready to make use of them. Let me make several suggestions." As he spoke, and wrote ideas on a white board at the end of the conference room, a few thin smiles began to crack on the faces of the attendees. The National Security Advisor was among those smiling.

  Communist Party Headquarters, Hanoi, May 6, 0345 Hours

  It had been a long night for the Leadership Council of the Communist Party of Vietnam, and the meeting was still not over. A bunch of elderly, has-been revolutionaries, thought General Truong Le, the Vietnamese Defense Minister, trying to hold on to the memory of a war long since gone, with ideals long since dead. The Premier himself may have been a veteran of Dien Bien Phu and Hue, but even those in this room did not have the personal courage to point out that his service had been as a staff headquarters political officer. Now these old men were going to decide the fate of two nations, and they were not viewing the situation with any sense of reality.

  "We will not stand for this interference in our internal politics by the capitalist powers," stated the Premier flatly.

  "What would you have us do against the power of nations like America and Russia?" asked the Defense Minister. "We are a third-rate power facing the most technologically advanced societies in the world."

  "Precisely the kind of negativism that our Great Leader Ho had to overcome during the Liberation decades ago. Where would we be now if they had listened then to defeatist drones like you?" barked the Premier. "I'll tell you what we are going to do to the weak-willed dogs that call themselves the leaders of countries," he continue
d. "We're going to declare a blockade around the whole of the so-called RVN, just like the one the UN thinks they can slap around us. Then we'll see who chokes first!" He finished the statement by slapping the meaty palm of his hand on the polished conference table, stunning the assembled members of the council.

  "But that means that we are granting de facto recognition of the RVN in the process," protested the Foreign Minister.

  "I should also point out that this action carries with it certain international responsibilities, and is almost certain to place our forces directly into conflict with the UN forces that will be deployed to this area," said General Truong Le calmly, "and that their so-called rules of engagement will never be as insane as the ones they imposed on themselves during the Wars of Liberation."

  "I speak for the Council," said the Premier coldly. "The action will go forward as I have ordered it!" Nobody on the Council tried to protest.

  Mountain Home AFB, Idaho, May 6, 2000, 2300 Hours

  No Vietnam veterans flew tactical aircraft for the U.S. Air Force… they hadn't in years. A few senior officers remembered going "downtown," but these were generals; and if they were allowed in fighters at all, they had to satisfy themselves with two-seaters. But the colonels and the majors were veterans of another air war. They knew what it was like to fight where their targets were not picked by a politician in the Oval Office.

  Now the 366th logistics officer took her place in front of the map. "Okay, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to run another no-fly-zone operation with a possible air offensive somewhere in the rub," she said. "Now, where the hell are we going?"

  "The F-16s and tankers will bed down initially at Takhli, about one hundred miles north of Bangkok. Seems that the Thais got real cooperative when the bombing in Saigon started a few days ago. In fact, everyone has been that way." The officer grinned. "Good facilities. The Royal Thai AF has operated F-16s there for years. Excellent runway — it was built long enough to handle 'hot day' takeoffs of F-105s. The rest of the wing, for now, will go to U-Tapao, right on the coast about seventy miles southeast of Bangkok. The facilities are great. We can bring seagoing tankers of jet fuel and munition ships right into the port. We're going to forward-base the Combat SAR guys up-country at a Thai Army airfield called Sakon Nakhon and a little opium-smuggling airstrip called Chiang Rai in the middle of the Golden Triangle. It's hairy up there; we'll need some heavy security on the ground. The guys down at Fort Benning at the JFK School are sending some instructors and volunteers to take care of that problem. Meanwhile we'll be working to reactivate old air bases at Udon and Korat about two hundred miles northeast of Bangkok for any other coalition nations that send in forces later. Great locations, but the Royal Thai Air Force abandoned them a few years ago, and it'll take a lot of engineer work to make the jungle and cobras give 'em back."