War For the Hell of It: A Fighter Pilot's View of Vietnam

by Ed Cobleigh

  We Sewer Doers also fly at night for another reason; no brass to cope with. Older, more senior officers hate flying at night; it deprives them of opportunities for promotional face time with the local commanders and it is physically more dangerous. Sewer doing may be hazardous to your career as well as to your health. So, with squadron headquarters deserted at night, things are more informal with less saluting. The physical as well as the military climate is also more temperate. These are the tropics; the cooler temperatures after dark make for more comfortable flight planning, pre-flighting the aircraft, and just living. Sewer doing is a kinder, gentler, more informal way to fight a war, at least until the real fighting starts.

  But now, it is time to go to work and quit gawking at the celestial light show, we are nearing the target area. I press the radio microphone button with my thumb on the inboard throttle and, summoning my best southern accent, transmit.

  "Alley Cat, Satan Flight of two, across the fence, going mission frequency."

  No one knows why all fighter pilots are expected to have southern accents; that's just the way it is. Mine is Tennessee bred- in and natural, and there are still universal verbal conventions to be followed. The referenced fence is both a geographical as well as a conceptual one; it is the largest river in Southeast Asia, the mighty Mekong. It is also the border between Thailand, which is mostly peaceful, and Laos, which is anything but.

  A hundred miles to the rear over north-central Thailand, a lumbering C-130 Hercules, or "'Herky Bird", a four-engined transport plane, orbits in constant oval patterns. In the cargo compartment sits a large metal box full of radios and sleepy men sitting at glowing consoles. This is the Airborne Command and Control Center, known by the radio call sign "Alley Cat." My transmission arouses a particular major from a mental review of his memories of home. His job is to keep track of all the flights working the southern Ho Chi Minh Trail tonight and to pass along hot target information, weather data, tanker locations, and general encouragement. Satan Flight, that's my wingman and me, has drawn a very good controller tonight, an officer tagged with the nickname "Bruce" by the fighter jocks. Bruce earns his call sign from his lisping, swishy accent. Aurally, he fits all the stereotypes of an out-of-the-closet homosexual. No Sewer Doer has ever met Bruce in person, but we all know him by the sound of his voice in our earphones. As much fun as we make of Bruce in absentia (for example, "I'm excited when Bruce handles me"), he is the best controller going, unflappable, knowledgeable, and highly professional. Bruce is a pleasure to work with and I feel better when he is on the job.

  Bruce replies with, "Satan Flight, you're cleared to mission frequency, good luck, and good hunting."

  Then he adds the predicted local altimeter setting and signs off. The altimeter setting is important; without it we won't know our exact altitude above the ground and Bruce knows that we will be operating at low level tonight, below the highest mountain peaks. We appreciate Bruce wishing us luck, but we would rather eat a bug than admit it.

  I key the mike again and command, "Satan, mission freq."

  I hear two clicks in my headphones in reply.

  Fifty feet away is another Phantom, floating unseen off my right wing as Satan Two. My wingman has been flying formation in the night, keeping his relative position constant by watching the formation lights on the nose and tail of my aircraft. These are green glowing strips similar to a household night light. Instead of dispelling a sleeping child's fears, these pale, dim panels allow night formation flying without much fear of disorientation. I have turned their intensity down gradually since takeoff to preserve my wingman's night vision and I have extinguished all other external lights on my aircraft for the same reason. My wingie has turned everything off on his jet, including the strip lights. We will soon need all the night vision we can muster, and not just to admire the stars. If I look closely, I can see the outline of his plane only as it obscures the fires far below. Satan Two is slightly lower than my jet and slightly to the rear. Against the inky background of Laos, he is nearly invisible, but there all the same.

  Flying as Satan Two tonight are another two Sewer Doers, my wingman and his navigator. I can talk to them on the radio and hear their replies as clearly as if they were plugged into my own intercom. However, I can't see them and even if I could, the blacked-out separation between the two jets hurtling in the dark over Laos at 500 mph makes the other two men as remote from physical contact and sight as if they were with Neil Armstrong on the absent moon.

  I know my wingman in many ways better than I know my own brothers. Flying together for many nights has merged our two aircraft and four heads into a seamless, coordinated team. I know what he is doing at most times without asking, and generally where he is in the featureless night sky without ever seeing his airplane. He knows what I am thinking, often before I do. Night flying in the sewer darkly distills aerial combat down to its naked essentials. The large, multiple ship formations assembled and flown in the daytime are unworkable at night; two is the maximum and it is also the minimum number of jets. Operating more than two aircraft in close proximity is dangerous and unwieldy at night. Fewer than two is no better; flying alone at night is a good way to not come back with no one knowing why you didn't.

  Our thinking is so aligned that few radio calls are required and such is our familiarity with the attack plan that we will need very little feedback to stay in touch as violent events unfold. The two answering clicks on the radio instead of the USAF standard reply, "Satan Two," are sufficient for me to know that Satan Two has heard me and will meet me on the new frequency.

  I wait until my navigator has changed the radio frequency and transmit, "Satan Two. Check. Take spacing."

  I hear the same two clicks in reply once again.

  Satan Two is on frequency and is starting to pull both throttles back, reducing power, allowing his jet to drop behind my Phantom. Invisibly and silently, he slips off my wing and slides farther and farther rearward. I can never really visually confirm that he is there; I can only trust that he is. Unseen, he drops in trail and I sense, rather than see, his departure rearward. I haven't heard his voice since leaving our base in Thailand, only clicks on the radio.

  I have read somewhere that women bond with their female friends by means of frequent verbal conversation, but that men bond by doing guy things together. If this is so, then night combat flying is the ultimate male bonding experience, all doing and no talking.

  Without conscious notice, I start keeping track of vitally important spatial relationships in the Laotian night sky. I try to keep a running mental picture of the location of my jet, my wingman, the target, the ground, the borders, and the direction to our home base, even the position of faraway Bruce in Alley Cat. Flying combat at night is like playing blindfolded chess, only with fewer pieces and in three dimensions. Taking a deep breath, I turn off the dimly glowing strip lights and remind myself to ignore the starlight above. It is time to put on our own light show down there on the hostile ground.

  Suddenly, a small scope similar to a radar display three inches in diameter on the top of the instrument panel comes to life. A bright green strobe appears on the tiny scope, pointing at the six o'clock position, toward the tail of my aircraft. My wingman has locked his air intercept radar onto my Phantom. Using his radar, he can keep track of my position ahead of him and precisely maintain the planned distance between us. This exact spacing is important for tonight's plan of attack; our respective arrival times over the target must be sequenced exactly right. A less experienced pilot would have transmitted on the radio, "Two's tied," indicating a radar lock-on. However, Satan Two knows I'll see the strobe on my scope and that no radio call is needed.

  I pull my own throttles back slightly, reducing power and lowering the nose slightly to begin a gradual descent. The Phantom is a machine with high aerodynamic drag defeated by large engines. It doesn't take much thrust reduction to descend as the drag side of the equation starts to prevail. If I take off too much power, the deceleration
would be like running into a wall of black Jell-O. Nothing changes in the cockpit; the noise level remains quietly disturbed only by the sound our own breathing. Slowly the altimeter unwinds, indicating that we are going down. The indistinct horizon climbs in my peripheral field of view, the inky black of Laos grows larger, and the starlit cosmos grows smaller and more distant. The sensation generated by the view outside the aircraft canopy is one of being slowly immersed in a darker shade of black, of submerging into deep water. Sewer water.

  I keep busy setting up the armament switches, selecting the weapons, designating the delivery mode, and lastly, activating the master arm switch. The ordnance is now "hot." My leather gloves, palms sweaty with nervous tension, dance around the cockpit, guided by memory, by feel, and by the dim red glow of the map light. I work by touch and long habit, calling out each switch position on the intercom to my navigator for a mental double check. In a few seconds, the Phantom is hot-armed and ready for mortal combat.

  The familiar routine of switch selection is somehow comforting despite its lethal intent. Doing something quickly and well which I've done several hundred times before gives me the impression that I can control the developing situation, that the routine will play out this time as it always has in the past. Maybe doing small tasks with precision will endow the larger and more dangerous tasks to be undertaken later with a better chance of success.

  Tonight's attack plan is simple in concept but difficult to execute. If the Bad Guys are there and awake, it promises to be an exciting night. I wouldn't attempt this tactic if I didn't trust my wingman explicitly to do his part and to do it well. Our target area is a ford crossing the largest river in southern Laos except for the river border with Thailand, the Mekong. The North Vietnamese are running convoys of trucks up and down the muddy spider web of jungle roads the stateside media likes to call the "Ho Chi Minh Trail." The so-called trail is not one track but a network of single-track dirt roads clinging to the sides of mountains, spanning the local rivers and creeks. Air strikes years ago dropped all the bridges in Laos. There have been no bridges intact since the last war, or perhaps the one before that. The enemy's trucks have to ford rivers where they can. Our job is to ensure they don't survive the crossing. The "trail" is used only at night and our intelligence system has little capability to predict when and where. We have to concentrate our fire on known choke points such as tonight's target.

  We will drop down to low altitude, below the tops of the nearby mountain peaks, slopes unseen in the darkness, and will fly down the valley of the equally invisible river. Over the ford I will release a series of. parachute flares. The flares are metal tubes about a yard long and six inches in diameter filled with magnesium powder and suspended from a small parachute. After a short time delay, the flares will ignite in a line straddling the ford, dispelling the Laotian night. Burning magnesium will generate blue-white light projected in circles beneath each flare. There will be a stark line of division between light and dark. Hopefully the flares will flame into life directly over the ford. They should hang underneath their chutes a few minutes, long enough to illuminate the targeted areas of the river crossing and the banks on each side. We will have a few precious minutes to work before the flares burn out and the jungle darkness returns to mask the scene.

  With my jet passing overhead the shallow ford at 575 mph, the flares will ignite without warning. The trucks will not have time to complete splashing across the river or to get out from under the flickering light before coming under attack from Satan Two. That is if the ford is in use tonight, which we have no way of knowing. Four guys in two airplanes will attempt a difficult and dangerous task with no assurance of any success. If everything works out, it will be like walking into the dingy kitchen of a cheap dive late at night and throwing on the light switch. We hope to see dozens of trucks scurrying for the safety of the dense jungle cover like cockroaches running for the sewer drain. The lumbering, Russian-built trucks with their dirty canvas bedcovers look like filthy bugs from the air and their drivers' frantic attempts to drive quickly across the rocky ford will only reinforce the tropical insect image.

  Flying a precisely timed distance behind me, my wingman should arrive on the scene just as the flares ignite and before the scuttling trucks can reach shelter outside the flare light. He will have to press his attack before they can escape into the dense foliage or hide in the inky darkness. He will be at a higher altitude suitable for dive bombing and if bugs are beetling, he will light up the night with bomb explosions and the fiery destruction of burning trucks.

  However, my immediate challenge is to fly down the river in the middle of the night without hitting the valley walls. Jack, my navigator has programmed his gear, correctly I hope, to give me steering commands on my attitude indicator in the front cockpit instrument panel. Once he activates the proper mode, I will see a needle super­imposed on the little black-and-white globe in the display. All I have to do is to fly the actual aircraft so as to keep that needle centered over the little miniature aircraft symbol on the display. If all the navigation calculations are correct and nothing goes terribly wrong, the flares will ignite over the target about the time we are climbing away to relative safety.

  As we descend, the Laotian air becomes hotter, wetter, and turbulent. At altitude, the atmosphere is serene, calm, even clean. Closer to the steaming jungle, heat left over from the day rises in thermals that deflect the jet's flight, causing bumps in the night. It gets more difficult for me to keep the needle on the display centered and to fly at the right altitude. Too high and the circles of flare light will be too small to illuminate the truck bugs. Too low and the dripping rain forest will welcome the jet and us. It gets hotter in the cockpit, both from the jungle below and from the exertion required to keep the tossing, bucking Phantom on course. If I could take off my oxygen mask, I'm sure I could detect the smell of slowly rotting tropical vegetation floating in the warm, sluggish river below. The planned airspeed for the delivery is 500 knots, about 575 miles per hour. I have put both throttles full forward and I am much too busy to jockey them. The speed will be what it will be; exactly as fast as a Phantom can go at this altitude.

  I know that on each side of our course, vegetation-clad mountains rise in steep vertical escarpments named "karsts." In the daytime, these gray limestone rock formations resemble giant decaying teeth, patchily covered with green plaque and riddled with cavities. At night, they are invisible, but still sensed. I fight the temptation to look for the karsts outside the cockpit; all I could see would be more blackness. But I know they're there. Survival and success depend on making the instrument panel my whole universe, the total focus of my attention. The humid jungle and its beckoning cliffs have to be ignored. I don't have time to let fear be a part of the action. Concern for doing the job right is paramount. I know that if I do my job well and the navigator has done his, this maneuver will succeed.

  I hold down the "pickle button" to permit the release of the string of flares; the weapons release computer will order the actual drop. During WWII, the bomb release button on B-17s was indeed the shape, size, and color of a dill pickle and the name stuck. In a modern fighter it is a small red button on top of the control stick.

  The flares are not heavy enough to make an impression on the jet when they are forcibly ejected aft; I feel nothing in the bucking cockpit when they leave. After what seems like an eternity of high work­load flying, the navigator calls, "Flares away."

  Relieved, l make sure the wings are level on the attitude indicator and suck the stick back into my lap. Climbing rapidly away from the foul jungle, we feel the G forces build and both of us sigh, partly from the force of temporarily weighing four times normal, but also from release of tension and from the dank world not so far below the jet. The onset of the G forces seems to have a cleansing effect, it's as if the increased G is pulling out all the strain and danger of flying fast close to unseen ground at night. Fighting mental strain with cleansing physical stress seems to produce a sort
of uneasy balance. Most aircrew believe the reason we are so well adjusted and non-flyers are so confused is that a steady regime of increased Gs pulls the bad vibes out, probably through our assholes. This mental therapy is unavailable to the ground-bound.

  Happily I spot the star-studded boundary that denotes the ragged black horizon and resume flying the Phantom by visual references instead of by artificial gauges. All fighter pilots like to turn left. It is easier to turn and look toward the left side where your arm rests on the throttles. I complete a climbing left turn and roll out on a heading opposite to the direction on which we laid the flares. I level off at an altitude well above the grasping karsts and take my first relaxed breath in minutes. At least we didn't get shot at; we noted no antiaircraft fire, no surface-to-air missiles, and no enemy action of any kind.

  As I get my bearings, I re-establish my mental picture of the night air battle space. Satan Two should just now be approaching the targeted ford. One by one, the flares ignite and I can see the meandering path of the lazy river as the steely gray water reflects the flare light. I can make out the dirty foam waves caused by the shallow ford and the sticky mud road that leads to and from the river crossing. The images below dance in the night as the flares dangle and sway under their parachutes. Anxiously I scan the circles of light cast by the flares and diffused by the jungle humidity, looking for scurrying trucks and waiting for my wingman's ordnance to start detonating among them.