Racing Back to Vietnam

by John Pendergrass

  Once the bombs were released, the AC pulled very hard, weaving, bobbing, and twisting (jinking) to avoid enemy fire. It was pickle, pull, roll, and jink. Sometimes I could catch a flash of an explosion by looking in the rearview mirrors, but you never heard the sound inside the cockpit.

  Most of the time, our wing used a manual bomb delivery: the pilot would get the target in his sight, press the pickle button at the appropriate time, and the bombs would be released. The Phantom also had a weapons release computer system (WRCS) that, in theory, provided a more precise delivery. The main method we used was called dive toss.

  During dive toss, the AC would roll in the same way as for manual delivery, placing his gunsight directly on the target. Meanwhile, in the backseat, a little blip would float down from the top of the radar screen and the GIB would have to manipulate the radar control handle, placing the cursor directly over the radar return and pressing a button to lock on. The computer would then read the altitude and dive angle and automatically release the bombs at the appropriate time. For the backseater, it was a real-life video game with real consequences; if you missed the lock, you had to make an extra pass, needlessly exposing yourself to ground fire.

  In general, our wing preferred manual delivery over dive toss. I think part of it was the fighter pilot mentality. Most pilots felt they were trained to fly and fight, not to use a computer. This attitude got passed along as new crew members came on board.

  Both aircraft in the flight would alternate making passes. After each pass, the FAC would make corrections and remark the target if necessary. Once we had exhausted our ordnance, the FAC would give us a bomb damage assessment (BDA). It was sort of like getting a report card, and it usually went something like this: “Two trucks destroyed,” or, “One hundred meters of road cut,” or, “80 percent of bombs within one hundred meters of target.” I’d write down the BDA and repeat it; the FAC would thank us for a good job, and we’d compliment his work. Each aircraft would inspect the other plane for any damage from ground fire, and we’d join up in formation for the flight back to Da Nang.

  Heading home, the backseaters often got to fly the plane. Throttles in the left hand, stick in the right hand, with the trim button to smooth things out, time went by fast at 400 miles per hour. Sometimes the wingman would lead and I would get to practice flying on his wing. I would try to do just as I was told, line up the light on the lead’s wing with the star on his fuselage for proper formation alignment and ignore everything else. It was like a lot of things in flying, routine and simple—if you knew what you were doing. It was much more difficult for a novice like me.

  Da Nang control would bring us in one ship at a time with no pitchout. We’d jettison the drag chute, taxi back to the revetment, and park the aircraft. The crew chief would unhook us and ask about the flight. “Any AAA?” they’d ask. “Any problems with the plane?” The crew would take a quick look for any damage from small arms fire. If I told them about something that didn’t work in the backseat, the usual response was, “Damn Doc, you broke my airplane.”

  We’d drop our gear at life support and stop by maintenance debrief to fill out paperwork and tell them about any problems we’d had with the plane. It was just like taking your car to a repair shop. A sergeant would write out a repair order, and the next time you flew the aircraft the problem was (usually) fixed. Finally came a detailed intelligence debrief on the mission followed by a walk back to squadron headquarters, and it was over.

  It was only around a five hour work day, in most instances, but it was always money well-earned.

  SIX

  PARTY SUITS

  1971–1972

  About once a month, our squadron had a party. I’ve forgotten a lot about my year in Vietnam—in fact, I’ve forgotten quite a bit about my life in general—but the memories of those squadron parties are still vivid and clear. They were great celebrations; extended bouts of drinking, roasting, and storytelling, a sacred part of the combat fighter squadron experience.

  The entire squadron would gather one evening in the squadron meeting room, happy to have a few hours off from the war. We were excited to recognize and celebrate the handful of pilots and backseaters who were finishing their twelve-month tour at Da Nang. Since there were between forty and fifty crew members in our squadron, each month we would typically honor the three or four folks headed home to what we called the “real world.” We also welcomed the new additions to our unit and, most importantly, recognized the sacrifices of the men lost in action.

  Thirty minutes or so before the celebration was scheduled to start, I’d borrow the squadron’s truck and pick up three or four nurses from their hootch. The nurses, among the very few American women on the entire base, were always welcomed guests and were treated with great courtesy and respect.

  I had been at Da Nang less than a month before learning that a party suit was an absolute necessity for anyone flying fighters in Southeast Asia. The idea of party suits originated with the 357th Tactical Fighter Squadron in Thailand in 1967, and quickly spread to other fighter units. By 1971, even FAC squadrons and other non-fighter units had adopted the custom. More than a sartorial misdemeanor, it was an insult to an honored squadron tradition to show up at a squadron party in anything other than the squadron party suit. Our squadron lived together, fought together, and celebrated together. The party suit was part of the “esprit de corps” of a fighter squadron; the brotherhood of combat, a way of life that dated back to the first fighter squadrons in World War I.

  The party suits had the same basic one-piece design as a flight suit, but were made of cotton and were often short-sleeved. Instead of the drab olive Nomex suits that we all wore when flying, each squadron had their own unique color (at the 390th TFS, our party suits were a bright royal blue.) Your rank was embroidered on your shoulders in the usual place, while your name and wings adorned your chest. Patches were added to the shoulders, front, and back of the suit as desired. These patches might include your unit insignia, but more often they carried a humorous meaning, be it a poke at the war effort or a plea to go home.

  Our party suits were custom-made by one of those on-the-spot tailors that existed all over Asia. Udorn, Thailand was probably the favorite place to have a suit made. Every couple of weeks, someone from our squadron would ferry a Phantom to Thailand for minor maintenance work. Before leaving, the crew would gather a few basic measurements for anyone who needed a party suit. The tailors were able to take those height, weight, chest, waist, and inseam measurements and create a bespoke masterpiece, all done overnight. The cost was something like $20–25; the patches were a dollar or two extra.

  My party suit and I both made it home in one piece from Vietnam, but a few years after my return, my black Labrador retriever got a hold of my party suit and tore it to pieces. I managed to salvage some of the patches, including “Laotian Highway Patrol” (a reference to the near-constant missions over the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the Laotian panhandle), “Ski Mu Gia Pass” (a pass that led from North Vietnam into the Ho Chi Minh trail), “IHTFP” (I Hate This F—ing Place), and “Wild Boars Make Good Lovers” (a reference to the squadron name, the Wild Boars.)

  Lord knows who came up with these patches; the humor was brash and sophomoric, but then, fighter squadrons are composed by and large of men in their twenties and thirties, better known for their courage than their sophistication.

  A few of the squadron members also wore ostentatious gold chains, bracelets, and other jewelry they’d picked up on trips to Thailand or Hong Kong. Some sported peace symbols worn on a chain around the neck, while others favored jewelry that said “WAR.”

  The ceremonies began with the Pledge of Allegiance and toasts to our fallen comrades. The departing pilots and backseaters were recognized by the squadron commander and presented with a Gunfighter plaque, a wooden shield with the wing logo in the center and their name and number of combat missions engraved below.

  The cocktails, toasts, and wine all seemed to work wonders. Before
long, everyone in the room was in a jovial mood, save perhaps the nurses who were beginning to question their attendance at an after-hours event full of drunken men. As the evening wore on, the toasts became more spontaneous, more profane. There were recollections of close calls and near misses, but also tales of how various flyers had gone astray in off-base bars and other places of ill repute. Inevitably, someone on one side of the room would toss a dinner roll at someone on the opposite side of the room, yelling, “Incoming!” A retaliatory strike became the order of the day.

  While the food fight raged, someone would crank up a tape deck attached to world-class, ear-splitting speakers. Richie Havens, the Animals, Norman Greenbaum, and other anti-war songs poured from the speakers, played at full blast. The all-time favorite for anyone who ever served in Vietnam was “We’ve Got to Get Out of This Place.” Everyone identified with the lyrics and knew them by heart.

  As things got louder and more raucous, the nurses and the squadron commander usually left for safer quarters.

  By now, many in the squadron would be operating on a mixture of liquor and false bravado. The energy would ebb and flow, and just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, the time came for the challenge of “carrier landings”—an idea that might seem foolish and dangerous to a sane man, but which seemed perfectly normal to a drunken fighter pilot. The surviving souls would wander out into the corridor that ran the length of the squadron headquarters building, a narrow hallway no more than four feet wide, covered in linoleum. Someone would grab a hose from outside and flood the floor with water. A couple of guys would squat near the end of the corridor with their backs against opposite walls and a rolled towel stretched between them, maybe a foot and a half above the floor.

  Although any brave drunken aviator could take a shot at a carrier landing, departing crew members were given preference and strongly encouraged to make an attempt. The “volunteer” would then take a running start, dive on his abdomen, arms extended in front and slightly up, and slide five to ten feet on the wet floor, gliding under the extended towel and raising both legs at the knees to hook the towel. If you came up short of the barrier or slid past without hooking it, you had to do it all over again.

  It was mostly harmless fun. Sometimes someone would get a lick on the head, a bruise to the face, or a laceration on the hand. Once, I had to take a pilot to the dispensary to suture his ear.

  I’m sure the celebration was against all regulations, but it was part of life in a fighter squadron. Though one of my jobs as a flight surgeon was to encourage flyers to look after their health, I admit that in these instances, I failed miserably.

  In a world of rocket attacks and anti-aircraft fire, the squadron party was a nice break from the war.

  SEVEN

  ANTI-AIRCRAFT FIRE

  Summer 1971

  It wasn’t until my fifth or sixth mission that I saw anti-aircraft fire. I didn’t have any preconceived notions of avoiding anti-aircraft artillery, or AAA, as it was called; I knew that if I kept flying, I would encounter it sooner or later. The guys in the squadron were always talking about getting “hosed.” It seemed to be one of the main topics of conversation. Every time I flew, the briefing from the intelligence officer mentioned the flights that had faced anti-aircraft fire in the last twenty-four hours. Not everyone got shot at every day, but someone in the wing had always encountered AAA recently. The air war waxed and waned, but it never really stopped; there were no time outs, no days off.

  Since no one in our squadron had been shot down since my arrival in country (our first loss would come a few weeks later), AAA seemed more like an abstract concept than a real threat. It was an ill-defined risk, impossible to anticipate. I knew that it was coming eventually, though, and I was anxious to get the experience behind me. It was much like the feeling you have when you know you have to tend to some dreaded chore like a root canal or a colonoscopy; the task lingers there in the back of your mind and you know you’ll be better off when you’re done with it.

  During my entire year in Vietnam, there was always tension between wanting to fly and staying safe. I knew that I wasn’t flying as many missions as the other guys, and that gave me a naïve confidence that things would work out for me. There is something liberating about inexperience, I suppose; I didn’t know enough to know I was asking for trouble.

  The one thing I figured out early on was that if you flew fighters in combat and never got shot at, you hadn’t really been at war. You were like a fireman who has never put out a fire or a policeman who had never arrested a criminal. AAA was a dangerous but unavoidable part of flying, the price of admission to the world of fighters. I guess I thought that I would just be up in the sky one day and some nearsighted North Vietnamese gunner would fire up a couple of rounds, and that would be it—mission accomplished. I was just a volunteer backseater; once I had seen AAA, I could check that box, ease back, and take a more relaxed view of combat.

  I was flying for the first time with Chuck, a mild-mannered, sandy-haired captain from the Midwest who I rarely saw around the squadron lounge. We were being sent to an area of Steel Tiger (the Laotian panhandle) known as the catcher’s mitt. While the Mekong River forms much of the western boundary of the panhandle of Laos, several other rivers flow through the mountains of the interior of the panhandle. From high in the sky, the different areas of jungle and mountain looked remarkably similar; there are no visible roads or villages and few identifying features on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The flow of the rivers gave a shape and an identity to various locations, so we knew spots in Laos not by their coordinates but by the shapes of the river. The twists and turns created a panoply of images such as the dog’s head, the scrotum, and the catcher’s mitt.

  Chuck was the flight leader for a two-ship interdiction mission; our job was to prevent the flow of supplies as they moved along the Trail and top them from reaching communist forces in South Vietnam, since the rules of engagement still kept North Vietnam off-limits to U.S. air power.

  The mission that day was to work with a Forward Air Controller (FAC) on a target in the area of the catcher’s mitt. At the pre-flight intelligence briefing, we’d learned that there had been AAA activity around the catcher’s mitt for the last several days. This was always unwelcome news; anyone knew that what had already happened several times before was very likely to happen again.

  After the briefing, we went to squadron headquarters for flight planning and then headed over to life support to pick up our gear before walking over to the flight line to pre-flight our aircraft.

  From the end of the intel briefing to takeoff was usually around an hour and a half. Normally, you would be fairly busy with your gear and checklists, but there was still more than enough time for fear and anxiety to creep in. This was the part of flying in combat that I disliked the most. My spirit of adventure gave way to raw, unadulterated fear. Preparing for the mission was an exercise in anxiety or faith, however you chose to view it.

  I think my feelings were the norm, rather than the exception. Many of the guys in my squadron liked to fly Gunfighter alert specifically to minimize the pre-fight anxiety. With Gunfighter alert, two loaded F-4s were kept cocked and ready for tactical emergencies, such as U.S. troops in contact with the enemy or a lucrative target discovered on the Trail. The call would come in to the ready room, and the planes were usually in the air in less than five minutes. Since the crew rushing to get airborne would get the target briefing while taxiing for takeoff, there was less time to spend worrying about the mission.

  As I went about my business preparing for takeoff, I was battling a near-paralyzing mix of fear, self-doubt, and apprehension. My brain kept reminding that I was a volunteer. I wasn’t required to fly this mission. I wasn’t even adding a great deal to the war effort; the North Vietnamese would probably be delighted to face off with an entire air force filled with people of my skill and ability.

  I am a wholly different person when I’m scared. By this time, if I could have backed out wit
hout losing face, I would have done so. If Chuck was nervous, he was keeping it to himself; his voice was as ordinary as can be, a calm, measured Midwestern twang with no wasted words.

  We took off, contacted Hillsboro and got handed off to our FAC. Covey, an OV-10 who worked this area on a regular basis, had found a POL (Petroleum, Oil, Lubricant) storage area that we were supposed to strike. POL is one of those military terms that can mean almost anything, from a large oil storage area or just a few barrels of gasoline. He gave us a standard target briefing—

  description of the target, direction to attack, position of the bad guys, position of the friendlies (none in the area), direction to head if you’re hit, closest base for recovery, etc.

  Our flight of two circled in a counter-clockwise direction up around twelve thousand feet, with the FAC down at around four thousand feet. He rolled in to mark the target with his white phosphorous rocket…and then the fireworks began.

  Red tracers shot into the sky, arriving mainly in groups of three. It looked as if someone was shooting Roman candles. I saw it first and told Chuck, “Triple A at 3 o’clock.”

  Chuck answered, “Got it, Doc.”

  Almost simultaneously, Covey said, “If you’ve got a fix, you’re cleared in on the triple A.”

  I thought of a thousand things in those first brief seconds. My guts churned, my heart pounded, my whole body felt like it was speaking in tongues. I had a sudden need to be elsewhere; I wished I could just run and hide. It occurred to me that someone else should be doing this, and I cursed myself for having left the security of the dispensary, not mustering the willpower to quit while I was ahead.