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

by Ed Cobleigh

  On the far side of the so-called sound barrier, the airflow around the Phantom has now changed radically. Shock waves are now attached to the nose and tail. In a few seconds, Thai farmers slip/sliding along behind stoic water buffalos plodding through their flooded rice paddies will be treated to a sharp boom marking our swift passage through the sky far above them. Supersonic, the flight controls are less effective, they seem stiff and unresponsive, particularly in pitch, the downward-slanting stabilators on the tail have less control authority.

  There it is! Mach 2.0, twice the speed of sound. I could go on, Mach 2.4 is probably within reach. Instead, I ease the stiff stick back and the jet climbs again, trading airspeed for altitude, exchanging kinetic energy for potential energy, leaving the relative safety of 50,000 feet for the unexplored, ever-thinner air above us. 55,000 feet, 60,000. We aren't suppose to be up this high, but what the hell, I fly combat missions most days despite the Flight Surgeon's wise advice that bullets are not to enter my body at any time.

  What did they teach us in aviation physiology? At 63,000 feet, coming up now on the altimeter, the boiling point of water is 98 degrees. If we lose cabin pressurization, not an unlikely event at this height, our blood will boil and our gooses will be cooked, literally. Yikes!

  I roll the F-4 up on its left side and let the nose fall through the seemingly rounded horizon, starting back down. I dare not touch the throttles, the engines have little stall margin in the diasporas air up here and if we flame out the engines, we lose cabin pressure. The altimeter unwinds back to 50,000 feet and we can breathe easier again. I start a turn back to the northwest, our fuel is getting low. Still supersonic, I pull the throttles back out of afterburner to a more moderate power setting. With the stick full back, I can only get three Gs as I point the nose toward Ubon..... and oblivion. Everything goes black.

  ***

  Is this what being dead is like? I am conscious but totally alone in an empty black void with no sensory inputs. No sight, no hearing, no feeling, just me and vacant blackness all around. Déscartés said, "I think, therefore I am." What if I can think but I am not? Slowly, slowly, I come to a heightened state of consciousness and I realize where I am and what has transpired. I can hear air rushing over the canopy somewhere out there in the void. Now, my vision is returning, but I am looking through a soda straw at my lap, my chin is resting on my chest. More sight comes and I can see my leather-gloved hands in that distant lap, not on the control stick. I know they are my hands by my big fighter pilot wrist watch, but I can't move them, they're still paralyzed and I can't raise my head to look around.

  I know now what happened. When the jet came back through the Mach to the sub-sonic flight regime, the stabilators regained their purchase on the airflow, dug in, and my three G pull instantly became a seven G turn. The instant onset of seven G's, causing my body to weigh over 1200 pounds, blacked me out without warning as the blood drained from my brain, pulled downward by seven Gs. I've experienced this a few times before and it always seems an eternity until I can see and move again. While I'm waiting, all I can think is, "How long have I been out and what has the airplane been doing while I was gone?"

  Finally, I can move again, I raise my head, grab the stick, and look outside. Above me, out the top of the canopy, is the ground, still far below. We are inverted, but still at altitude, I must not have been out long. Rolling the jet right side up, I take a deep breath of metallic-tasting oxygen from my soft rubber mask, get my bearings, pull the power back and start a long glide to base.

  I ask Jack, "Are you OK?"

  "I'm back," is all he says.

  ***

  After a minimum fuel landing, we are taxing in, back to our jet's assigned revetment.

  I tell Jack, "Maintenance forecasts there is another FCF scheduled for tomorrow, want to fly?"

  "No," Jack replies.

  That's a surprise, Jack always wants to fly. Unprovoked, Jack wields an unexpected verbal blade.

  "I'll fly tomorrow, but not with you. You're getting too wild. You tried to kill us today. Twice. On a maintenance check flight."

  That hurts, particularly coming from Jack, a man who knows no fear . I'll admit my adrenaline addiction has been getting harder and harder to fix, mere combat missions aren't enough anymore, but I thought Jack was there with me.

  Jack goes on, shedding some of his own blood on the blade.

  "I've been talking to a few of the guys, mostly back seaters. They're on board with me, you need to cool it."

  I'm astounded that Jack would admit this feeling of peril and that he has spoken to other GIBs about his unease. Jack usually doesn't talk about anything, but this situation was evidently serious enough to provoke sharing with his, and my, squadron mates. Sometimes, insightful truth creeps into our consciousness bit by bit until we realize that it is time for a change; that our current life path is not sustainable or survivable. Other times, deep situational awareness arrives with all the subtlety of a custard pie slammed into our face. This is one of those second cases.

  My year-long second tour is almost up, I'll be rotating out of Satan's Angels soon. A buddy at the US Embassy in Bangkok has offered me a new plum assignment. I could be stationed in the exotic Thai capital, working out of the Embassy, helping manage the CIA's covert Raven and Air America operations up-country. Part of the good deal is to be able to fly combat missions out of Ubon at least twice a month along with the occasional FCF. Given Jack's heart-felt input, maybe it's time for a rethink of that plan. An addiction to adrenaline probably can't be weaned away with a few missions a month. I've got to quit cold-turkey. Living in Bangkok but not flying would be the pits, particularly knowing that up-country, combat flying would be conducted without me. Also, it wouldn't be too long until someone in the Embassy connects the dots and discovers the war criminal who wasted the Chinese cultural center is working just down the hall. It's time for Plan B or maybe another Plan A.

  Amazing Grace

  I am in the busy, crowded San Francisco airport terminal waiting for my commercial flight to depart. Or at least I think that's where I am. I haven't had any real sleep in several days, since I left Bangkok on a military charter flight. Consequently, my sense of place and time is a little detached and worryingly groggy.

  The civilian Boeing 707 bringing me home from Thailand was hired by Uncle Sam to return servicemen from the war to the United States, the fabled "Land of the Big Base Exchange." We stopped for an hour in Saigon to shoehorn even more GIs on board. To a man (and woman), the second group of passengers seemed uncommonly glad to be leaving South Vietnam. After uncountable, cramped, uncomfortable hours on board the crammed-full 707 and a short refueling stop in Hawaii, we landed at a USAF air base outside Sacramento, California. My fellow passengers were mostly US Army troops returning after their year's tour in Vietnam. Finally, the wheels of the big, clumsy jet squeaked down on the stateside runway and we were home at last. I thought the plane's hull would rupture from the over pressurization generated by a long and heartfelt cheer voiced by the returning troops.

  I felt somehow cheated. After hundreds of combat flights and over a thousand hours of flight time, I didn't get to fly my own self home. Instead of seeing the United States from the panoramic cockpit of my Phantom, I had to squint out a tiny window at the Golden Gate Bridge while some weenie airline pilot getting paid three times my salary drove the airplane.

  Sleepily, I caught a bus to 'Frisco and somehow found the airport. Prolonged sleep deprivation is now causing me to feel disconnected from reality. I am a zombie in a wrinkled USAF uniform. I do know I am in route to my next service assignment in Las Vegas, Nevada. The success of the Paveway laser-guided bomb program has generated an urgent need to train other fighter pilots on how to best deliver these new wonder weapons dispatched from the future. I am to be an instructor at the famed USAF Fighter Weapons School.

  The 'Frisco airport is crowded with civilians getting on and off airplanes, arriving from and departing to places unknown. They ta
ke no notice of a red-eyed guy with a two-day beard in a drab brown summer uniform and green flight jacket. That would be me. I recognize them though; these are a few of the folks I have spent two years fighting for in combat against godless Communism. After two years in exotic, oriental Thailand, immersed in the pressure cooker of war, I feel not of this place and not at one with my fellow US citizens. These folks are different; they haven't seen the bright lights nor heard the loud noises of war. They fully expect to be alive at the end of each day. Why does defending my country make me feel not a part of it anymore? Perhaps that's the price one pays to see the things I've experienced. I've done things that civilians can only dream about. Or is the proper word "nightmare"? Dreams or nightmares, that's a close call and I'm too sleepy to make it.

  A few minutes ago, I was killing time and trying to stay vertically upright when I saw a sign that read "USO Service Personnel Lounge." That sounded homey so I reported here, showed the nice elderly volunteer lady at the desk my military ID card and now I'm in like Flynn. The coffee is standard US government issue mud, the doughnuts aren't Krispy Kreme, but the price is right, i.e. free and I'm a happy camper, back among my fellow GIs and away from the unknowing, uncaring, oblivious civilians outside the lounge in the terminal.

  I'm not too keen about hanging around the public areas of the 'Frisco airport anyway. In the Bangkok Post I have read the great City of San Francisco is the epicenter of antiwar protests. I am a good target for protesters, in my light brown USAF uniform, officer's flight cap, and my flight jacket with its fearsome squadron insignia patches. Normally, I would relish opportunities to confront peaceniks, but not after a couple of days without proper sleep. It's not fun trying to talk sense to people who have decided not to listen. I'm not really sure how much sense I could make now anyway.

  The lounge is busy, but I find a seat on a worn, cracked leather sofa and try not to fall asleep and miss my flight. It is hard to prevent my mind from dwelling on the concept that a major phase of my life is over and I'm moving on. I always wanted to fly in combat in fighter aircraft for the US Air Force and I have done just that. After 375 combat missions spread over two years and 1000 hours of combat time, my direct involvement in this crummy war is at last over. I have seen many wonderful and terrible things. I have watched my friends die and I believed that it wouldn't happen to me. I have dived to the low altitudes of despair and soared to stratospheric heights of elation. I have been tighter with a group of guys than I have ever been in my life and probably will ever be again.

  Life in a combat fighter squadron is like none other. Absurdities follow on the heels of hard realities and contradictions abound. Nonsense is intermixed with life-or-death decisions. I made lifelong friends of guys whose chances on surviving the war aren't good. I strove to win an unwinnable war. I flew missions that were relatively safe and complained that nothing happened. I lived comfortably and I fought for my life. While our troops in South Vietnam were enduring rain, mud, heat, bugs and sharp, shit-covered punji sticks, I complained about getting served chocolate ice cream on apple pie. I lusted after women that I couldn't bring home to Mom and with whom I couldn't bring myself to stay.

  Despite the intensity and the excitement of the last two plus years, I really don't think that my career and my life will run downhill from here; there will always be challenges to meet on the ground as well as in the air. It is sad to think that I will never again feel the degree of emotional passion I experienced during these two years. On the other hand, my prospects of living to a ripe old age have just improved markedly.

  Others haven't been so lucky. On my last mission, once again I used a piece of blackboard chalk to write on the rough cast-steel surface of a 2,000-pound laser-guided bomb. On the bomb I scrawled the names of USAF friends that are now dead, captured, or missing in action. Not merely acquaintances, these were guys who I knew well. They were men whom I drank with and whose wives and girlfriends I called by their first names.

  When I was finished, the olive-drab warhead was overall a dusty white color, like a ghost bomb. Or perhaps a bomb carrying the names of spirits, of lost souls.

  An hour later, that bomb detonated on the soil of North Vietnam. Maybe the force of the explosion vaporizing the names of my unlucky friends will somehow give their souls a measure of peace. I know watching the fiery bomb splash made me feel better. With any luck, the bomb might have taken out some of the folks responsible for my losses. But that was days and worlds ago.

  In front of me is a beat-up stereo. Maybe some musical entertainment will keep me awake. I click the power knob on and without any hesitation whatsoever I am rewarded with instant music. No commercials, no introduction, no gap, just a clear, pure female voice without instrumental accompaniment pours forth from the stereo. It's as if the song was already cued up, waiting for me to turn it on.

  I recognize the voice of Anita Bryant. I don't really care for her style of music, but something keeps me listening, something that says, "You need to hear this." I recently read that Anita is embroiled in some controversy concerning her stands in favor of Florida orange juice and against homosexuality, or is it the other way round? Anyway, she seems to be now singing soprano for me and me alone in the servicemen's lounge. No one around me appears to be listening; can't they hear her?

  Amazing grace, how sweet the sound

  That saved a wretch like me.

  I once was lost, but now I'm found.

  Was blind, but now I see.

  Through many dangers, toils and snares,

  I have already come,

  'Tis grace hath brought me safe this far,

  And Grace will lead me home.

  I know well the song's words from my childhood church-going days. The classic hymn seems to be coming from another long-ago time and a faraway place. It was last heard by a kid, me, who doesn't exist anymore; he grew up. The allegorical words from the past seem aimed at the present, my present. The music's mental image hits home deep inside and I listen intently until the high, lonesome voice finishes the last verse. As the last note fades and dies, I turn off the stereo. I am getting strange looks from the other GIs in the lounge. Haven't they ever seen a fighter pilot cry?

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to acknowledge the contributions which various folks made, making "'War for the Hell of It" a reality.

  The following people helped me by checking facts, scouring their memories for details of flight operations occurring during the time frame of the book as well as suggesting improvements to the tone and to the accounts and descriptions herein: Colonel Larry Casper, U.S. Army Aviation; Colonel Phil Comstock, USAF; Lt/ Commander Broc McCaman, USN; Major Tom McKinney U.S. Marine Corps; Lt/General Jim Record, USAF.; Commander Bill West, USN; Lt/ Colonel Doug Holmes, USAF..

  Also, Donna Beddie's word processing contributions were invaluable. Doris Badger attempted to pound some proper English grammar into the manuscript. I wrote the bulk of this book while employed by the Hughes Aircraft Company, but I swear none of it was written on company time.

  Finally special thanks to my wife and best friend, Heidi Cobleigh for her tolerance of my late-night work at the computer and her strong support for this book.