by G. E. Nolly
“Hey, Hamfist, get in here.”
“Good morning, sir, Doc. What's up?”
“You're famous,” Doc Myers said, holding out a copy of Aerospace Medicine Magazine.
The lead article was about the 28-year-old pilot who had caught his testicles between his parachute harness and his body. As I read the article, I was shocked.
“Doc, you didn't tell me how close I was to requiring castration!”
“I didn't want to worry you, Hamfist. There was the real potential for necrosis with testicular torsion, but there was nothing you could do about it other than bed rest. That's why I insisted you stay off your feet. You looked fine during the follow-up, and I don't anticipate any reproductive problems in the future .”
“Thanks, Doc. Glad I could help you get published.”
There was no Special this day. Instead, we had a squadron meeting at 0800, mandatory attendance.
Lieutenant Colonel Smith stood up in front of the squadron and made the announcement.
“Gentlemen, Operation Linebacker has ended.”
Total silence. You could have heard a mouse fart. I had mixed emotions. I was really glad there would be no more Specials. I wouldn't have to look at the guys in the briefing room and wonder which of them – or me – wouldn't be returning. At the same time, I already had 69 missions over the North, and I really wanted to get that coveted 100 mission patch. And I wanted another chance at a MiG. Stupid, really.
Slowly, people started talking, softly. Then, someone in the back of the room started clapping, and then the whole room erupted in wild applause.
“We'll still be flying combat missions over Laos, Cambodia and South Vietnam, so don't go and get careless, but there will be no more bombing missions north of the twentieth parallel,” he continued. “And, we've got a few good-deal missions scheduled. You'll see them on the scheduling board after 0900.”
We all hung around the Scheduler's office like hawks, waiting for the day's schedule to be finalized. I lucked out. I would be taking an airplane to Clark Air Base, in the Philippines, for a much-needed IRAN – Inspect And Repair As Necessary. The Maintenance folks at Ubon didn't have the facilities to do IRAN, but the team at Clark did. IRAN would take about three days, so we would be totally off-duty, and collecting TDY pay, for three days. A paid vacation.
I was paired up with Deacon again. Deacon and I were scheduled to leave at 1500 for an easy 3-hour flight. The aircraft had a baggage pod loaded centerline, and we could easily get our B-4 bags into it, with plenty of room to bring back any souvenirs we may find at Clark.
It was dark when we arrived at Clark. This was the first mission I had flown in a long time with no munitions, and it was a funny feeling not needing to go to the de-arm area after landing. We turned our airplane over to Maintenance, and headed to Chambers Hall, the new Billeting Office.
Unlike all the other BOQs I had stayed at in the past, we were given individual rooms. And these were new rooms, not the old World War Two-era barracks I had seen during my previous trip to Clark, when I had attended Snake School. There was a color television in my room, and I even had a coffee maker. I told Deacon I'd meet him in the lobby in about a half-hour to go to the O'Club, and I flipped on the television.
There were only a few channels available, and they were all controlled by the Philippine government. President Marcos – no relation to Tom – had declared Martial Law about a month earlier, and the government controlled everything. Up until last month, pretty much every Filipino male had a knife or gun in his back pocket.
Now, guns were outlawed. Government soldiers were making house-to-house searches for guns, drugs and other contraband. Anyone caught with a gun would be immediately taken out and, in the words of the government spokesman, “executed by musketry”. As I was watching the local program that was on the television, the scene switched to a live camera shot.
“We interrupt this program,” the announcer said, “to show you the execution of Juan Verera. Mr. Verara was found to have a gun hidden in his house.”
Mr. Verara, an ordinary-looking Filipino about 25 years old, was brought outside and made to stand against a wall. His hands were tied behind his back. Then there was the sound of a bunch of rifle shots, and he fell down dead. No “ready, aim, fire”. One minute he was alive, now he was dead.
The program went back to the soap opera, or whatever had been showing. Life in the Philippines went back to normal. Except, of course, for the family of Mr. Verara.
61
October 26, 1972
Three days at Clark Air Base made for a nice break from Ubon. They had a great BX, and the O'Club was much nicer than the one we had at Ubon.
Deacon and I went out to some nice small restaurants in Angeles City, right outside the base. We discovered a great local dish, called lumpia. Basically, lumpia was an egg roll with jalapeno peppers inside. Certainly not bland, but not too spicy, especially when washed down with a cold San Miguel beer.
We were told to be ready to fly back to Ubon in the afternoon. I had breakfast in the O'Club, then returned to my room and turned on the television, just in time to see a news flash. Henry Kissinger appeared on the screen. He was in Paris at the Peace Talks with North Vietnam.
“Peace is at hand,” Kissinger intoned in his heavy accent.
This was fantastic news. The POWs would be coming home soon. Maybe we would find out what happened to Vince. I was ecstatic.
Fuck the hundred missions over the North. Fuck the MiG-kill. I wanted this fucking war to end.
62
December 18, 1972
The war, of course, wasn't over. Now it was a different war, with no missions north of the twentieth parallel. But we still had plenty of combat. And guys still got shot down.
One of the squadrons had been flying only missions over Pack Six, and they had a dry period for several weeks until they could get additional taskings for missions in Laos. In fact, some of their guys were losing their combat pay and their tax exemptions.
Since we were based in Thailand, we didn't get combat pay, a few hundred dollars a month extra, if we didn't fly combat. Just as important, we only received an exemption from paying income tax during any month we got combat pay. It all added up to a significant amount.
During this dry spell, there was still a way to get combat pay, by flying in combat with one of the other squadrons. Some of their guys were temporarily assigned to our squadron for a mission or two, while some of them volunteered to fly on Specter AC-130 gunship missions.
The gunship missions were strictly boondoggles for the fighter guys, where the F-4 jocks rode along as observers, with no actual mission duties. But they were on the flight orders, they were in combat, and they got combat pay and tax exemption. After the first of November, when they still hadn't flown any combat missions, several of the F-4 guys volunteered for Specter missions. The Specters could only take one extra observer at a time, so as November wore on, there was a rush to get a Specter ride.
Then a Specter got shot down over the Plain des Jarres, in Laos. There was an F-4 jock on board. A Jolly Green was dispatched to the PDJ and made contact with some survivors. One of the AC-130 crewmembers verified that he had bailed out and had come down near the F-4 jock. The jock had landed in the trees, and then the branch holding his parachute had broken. The jock fell to the ground and then the branch – a really heavy branch – had fallen on him, crushing his chest. By the time the AC-130 crewmember got to him, he was dead.
This was a wake-up call for us for several reasons. We were all made acutely aware that combat pay was there because we were doing something dangerous. We were in combat. And in combat, people get killed.
Perhaps more significantly, we became aware that the AC-130 mission was actually pretty damned dangerous. Up until now, we F-4 jocks had kind of ignored the Specter crews, because we flew over Hanoi and they didn't. We flew supersonic jets, while they flew big, lumbering propeller-driven airplanes. We were, in a word, arrogant. Specter getti
ng shot down opened our eyes to their mission and the fact that they had a mission that was as dangerous and, yes, as important, as ours.
I didn't need to decide if I wanted to fly with Specter. I flew 29 missions between October 26th and December 18th. Nineteen of them were over North Vietnam, the area around Bat Lake and Fingers Lake. They were sensor implant missions, not bombing missions. And they were in southern North Vietnam. No SAMs. No MiGs. Only triple-A. This war was getting kind of easy.
We had a squadron party this night. It was a going-away party for a couple of our guys, and it was sort of an early Christmas party. We started at about 1700, and we all took turns telling funny stories about the guys who were getting ready to DEROS. We had just started drinking, and everyone was in a great mood.
It was my turn to tell a story about one of our back-seaters, a guy we called Papa Foxtrot. Papa Foxtrot was the phonetic alphabet for the letters P and F. When we weren't in the public eye, we called the guy Pig Fucker, because he was always going out with ugly girls. With so many beautiful girls in Thailand, he only found the ugly ones.
“We're really going to miss Papa Foxtrot because now we won't have anyone...” I was interrupted by the Wing Commander, who had just walked into the Club.
“Gentlemen, the party is over.”
Most of us smiled, waiting for the punch line. The Colonel wasn't smiling. There was no punch line.
“There will be a mission briefing at 0400 tomorrow morning. Everyone will attend,” he continued. “As I said, the party is now over.”
We were all in shock as we filed out of the Club and back to our rooms. I set my alarm for 0230. I eventually got to sleep, but not before doing a lot of thinking. Wondering.
Two months ago, Kissinger had said peace was at hand. It was now almost Christmas. What the fuck had happened?
63
December 19, 1972
When I got to Intel, the mood was totally different than before, during Linebacker. The shoot-down board was filled with the names of crewmembers who had been shot down during the night. There weren't enough lines on the board, and some of the lines contained two names. And three of the airplane losses were B-52s, six crewmembers each.
This was about as incomprehensible as it could get. You just didn't send a B-52 over an area protected by SA-2s. A B-52 couldn't dodge a SAM the way an F-4 could. A B-52 was big. It was lumbering. It was not maneuverable.
We all gathered in the mass briefing auditorium. There was a large curtain covering the projection screen. The Wing Commander walked up to the front, and a hush enveloped the room.
“Gentlemen, last night Operation Linebacker Two was launched. One hundred twenty-nine B-52s attacked Hanoi last night, and our own night squadron pilots flew essential support missions, including MiG Cap.”
“Your targets,” he continued, “are in the Hanoi area.”
As he spoke, the curtain opened and a map of downtown Hanoi was projected on the screen, with red triangles denoting our targets.
“Due to the monsoon weather, you probably will not be able to see your targets, so you will make level deliveries using the LORAN bombing system. You will each carry twelve Mark-82 dumb bombs.”
“Gentlemen, this is an all-out war effort, and there will be no SAR until the war is over. If you get shot down, you are on your own until the war ends. I will be leading the initial wave. Are there any questions?”
A senior Captain raised his hand.
“Colonel, when we jink from MiGs and SAMs, the LORAN will give us a settle light. We won't be able to complete our deliveries.”
“Let me make this perfectly clear to all of you. You will not jink or maneuver your aircraft until your bombs are released. You will not do anything that will give you a settle light.”
Well, that took care of that. Now I understood the railroad tie mission. It was preparation for today. We went to our individual mission briefings with a sense of resignation. When three B-52s, with six crewmembers in each, get shot down, an individual F-4 didn't seem so important any more. If I needed to fly wings level over Hanoi to get my bombs on target, so be it.
As I walked back to the squadron for the mission brief, I thought about the motivational movies they had shown us at the Academy, during the summer of my first year, doolie summer. Every morning after drill practice, we would assemble in the base theater and watch training films to learn about the proud heritage of the Air Force.
One of the movies I remembered the most vividly was the inflight footage of the B-24 bombing mission against the German refineries at Ploesti, Romania. Fifty-three aircraft, with six hundred sixty crewmembers, were lost on that mission. The Ploesti raid suffered the worst Army Air Force single-mission loss of the entire war. Out of 178 B-24s, not one aircraft turned back due to enemy fire.
“I want to remind you all,” the Wing Commander told us during the briefing, “there's never been an Air Force aircraft that has aborted its mission due to enemy reaction.”
I was scheduled to be the airborne spare, Walnut Five. I had the lineup information for all of the flights, and I took off after they had all launched, joining up with Elm Flight, the last flight to take off. I tagged along with Elm Flight, and took on fuel with them on the tanker.
At tanker drop-off, when none of the strike aircraft had air aborted, I checked in with Hillsboro, the Direct Air Support Center, and they assigned me to work with a FAC in Laos. I had great bombs, with several secondaries, and then RTB'd to Ubon.
And I waited for the return of my comrades.
64
December 20, 1972
I was Number Four in Bronco flight. This was an unusual call sign, since most of our strike flights on the Specials were named after trees: Maple, Elm, Walnut, Beech. Our target was a radar and communications center, north of Hanoi.
More B-52s had been shot down during the night, and Guard frequency was cluttered with survivors calling for help and some replies by SAR aircraft. Apparently, there was still SAR activity, but only in Laos. None in North Vietnam.
As we got over Hanoi, I put the light on the star and ignored the sounds coming from my RHAW gear and the shadows that flitted in and out of my peripheral vision. I could discern a couple of airbursts, likely SAMs, that had missed us. A few hundred yards on the other side of Lead I saw an air-to-air missile go by in the opposite direction. But I didn't look around, like I usually did. I was capable of flying fingertip formation and still looking around, but I chose not to. I had briefed Deacon to not call out any MiGs or SAMs until after we delivered our bombs. If I couldn't maneuver to avoid a threat, I didn't even want to know about it.
As we ingressed the target area, I could see that it was completely undercast. The bomb deliveries really needed to be LORAN deliveries, or nothing at all.
Lead came over the radio.
“Bronco Flight, three, two, one, pickle, pickle, pickle.”
As soon as he said “pickle” I pressed my pickle button, and my bombs fell in close formation with Lead's. Then we all immediately spread out to tactical formation, looking for threats. I was hoping we'd see a Mig. We all had AIM-7 Sidewinder radar-guided missiles, and I think we all wanted a little mano-a-mano action.
No such luck.
65
December 23, 1972
I was fragged on a single-ship flight to implant sensors for the Igloo White program just north of the Demilitarized Zone. This was my ninety-first mission over the North. I was carrying Adsids and Accusids, seismic and acoustic sensors that looked like artificial Christmas trees. They were carried in a SUU-40 dispenser, and my run-in was going to be at tree-top level, with a pop-up to 1000 feet for the actual delivery. Although my target was north of the twentieth parallel, it was not a bombing mission, so it was permitted.
As I crossed the DMZ into North Vietnam and started my descent for the run-in, I saw a silver airplane maneuvering over Fingers Lake. I had been briefed that there were no friendly aircraft in the area, and this looked like it might be a MiG. I cou
ld feel my pulse pounding in my temples against my helmet padding as my excitement mounted.
I switched over to Hillsboro frequency.
“Hillsboro, this is Nile.”
“Go ahead, Nile.”
“Roger, I have a visual with a silver aircraft over Fingers Lake, just north of the DMZ. Are there any friendly aircraft in the area?”
“Negative, Nile. Go get 'em!”
“Roger. Wilco.”
My fangs were really out now. I unloaded to about a half-G and lit minimum burner. I was closing fast and had a good aspect ratio on the target aircraft. I put my pipper on the target and hit the AUTO-ACQ button on the throttle quadrant, to get a good radar lock-on. I armed up my AIM-7 missiles and performed a low-speed yo-yo.
I was closing fast, and would be within firing range in another second. Two at the most. I had a good visual on the enemy, and got a good ID on him. It was a MiG, red star on the tail and all. I was going to fire both AIM-7s in rapid succession. Even if one didn't guide, the other one probably would. My finger tightened on the trigger.
Suddenly, the radar screen turned black, with a giant red “X” across its face.
“Don't fire! Don't fire!” My WSO was screaming on the intercom.
And then, a funny thing happened. I blinked, and the MiG, with the red star on the tail, instantly turned into a U.S. Navy A-7. Instantly.
I had wanted it to be a MiG so badly, it had become a MiG, reality be damned.
And, all of a sudden, I understood how, every year, hunters go out and shoot cows, horses, even cars, and swear they were firing at deer.
66
December 27, 1972
After almost shooting down the Navy plane, four days earlier, I almost “bought the farm” – a euphemism for getting killed – on that very mission. The Igloo White mission required the single-ship pilot to make his delivery from 1000 feet above the target, rock-steady for the full 30 seconds it took for the artificial trees to come out of the back of the SUU-40 dispenser.