Thud Ridge

by Jacksel Markham Broughton

  Crab lead called for afterburner and was forced to descend down toward a cloud deck that was about 4,000 feet above the ground. He dropped down to be in a better maneuvering envelope should he encounter more Migs, to be better able to combat the SAM launches he fully expected and also to align himself better for the bomb run he would have to make despite the marginal cloud conditions. The target itself was a particularly tough one to find, a dinky little thing that blended with the surrounding terrain and construction. The radio chatter was really picking up about this time—in fact, it was so dense with all the Mig and SAM warnings and everyone shouting directions and commands that it was almost impossible to interpret what was going on. This is a real problem and once it starts, it just keeps getting worse and worse and is almost impossible to stop. About the time all four Crab flight members had secured a good burner light, Crab three spotted a SAM heading for the flight from the three o’clock position and hollered on the radio, “Take it down, take it down.” This is a most difficult situation, in that you see something that you know you have to tell other people about in a desperate hurry to protect them and to protect yourself, and the temptation is to blurt it out as quickly as possible without using the proper call sign. The result is that everyone in the air immediately gets a shot of confusion and wonders who is talking about whom.

  The desperate question, “Who is that call for?” almost always triggers a return call and further increases the critical chatter level.

  Crab three felt that he had alerted the flight and for self-preservation he broke sharply down and below number four. At this stage four was concerned with keeping three, his element lead, in sight, and he was also nervous about the SAM heading his way. He pushed over violently on the stick. After a control movement such as this, especially at speeds of about 600 knots, the aircraft reacts violently. All his maps, charts and checklists, in fact even the fuel selector knob which is part of the control panel, flew up into the air and filled the canopy and windscreen. Everything that was not tied down came up. Four’s immediate reaction was to pull back on the stick and he entered a porpoise. A porpoise is a vertical oscillation where you are just a step behind the aircraft and can’t physically keep up with the machine; each control movement only serves to exaggerate the problem. In other words, when you are heading down, your reaction is to pull back on the stick and you usually pull too much. You may already have pulled back enough but by the time it takes effect you have probably gone too far and need to come back the other way, so the cycle repeats and you go up and down in increasingly violent gyrations and find that you can’t see where you’re going or what you are doing. It is better known as a J.C. maneuver. The best way to get out of it is to let go of everything and say, “OK, J.C., you’ve got it. I’ll take over when you get it straightened out.” The control situation, plus the visibility limitations caused by things flying around the cockpit, the close proximity to the ground, a Mig trying to set up on the flight and a SAM coming their way was further complicated as all the guns at Phuc Yen opened up, and there are many, many guns at Phuc Yen. This flight was in severe trouble early in the run.

  Number four finally let go of the stick which was about the only thing he could have done to get out of this porpoise condition; he could never have caught it, especially with his bomb-load, and after riding through a few more violent ups and downs, the aircraft dampened itself out to the point that he could regain control. As things began to come back into focus for number four, he observed the lead element, that is, number one and number two, high and out to the right and screamed out to them that they had SAMs coming at them from their nine o’clock toward their one o’clock. The SAMs streaked across the lead element but far enough away so that they did not detonate. Crab lead, while trying to dodge the SAMs, which he did successfully, called out three Migs at the flight’s three o’clock position. Perhaps you can feel the tempo of this thing increasing, and you must remember that it is all crammed into the space of a few minutes. The three Migs in the three o’clock position were initiating an attack at the same time another call went out, again without a call sign or an identifier. The call was to Crab lead and told him that he had Migs at his six o’clock positioning also initiating an attack, and telling him to take it down. To add one more twist to this rapidly compounding situation, Crab lead had lost the stability augmentation system on his aircraft. This is the device that dampens out control pressures and oscillations and allows you to fly rather smoothly even at high speeds. Without it, it is almost impossible to maintain even straight and level flight, and turning or climbing or diving the aircraft is impossible to do smoothly. When he heard this call of Migs at his six o’clock position, Crab lead had no choice but to believe the call and was forced to push his nose down. In no time, without control augmentation, he too was in a violent high-speed porpoise that threw him all over the sky. At that speed and with that bombload on, Crab lead found himself only seconds from the target and, for all practical purposes, out of control. This put Bob, in Crab two, in the difficult position of trying to stay on the wing of his leader, not daring to separate yet faced with an impossible aircraft-positioning job. He had to avoid being run into as well as face all the other problems at hand. In the attempt to maintain position, he too entered a porpoise condition. As he was bouncing out of rhythm with the lead he popped up about 500 feet above the lead and suddenly his aircraft pitched violently down and to the left. In other words, this translated him from the right wing position with the element sitting over on the left-hand side, through a pitching motion, and down and to the left into a new position underneath three and four. By this time, the entire situation was completely out of control. There were tremendous speeds and weights involved and these massive weights were flung through extreme maneuvers that exceed the control capabilities of the machinery and of the men. With the defense’s guns shooting heavily from the Phuc Yen area, SAMs firing from all quadrants, especially from the city itself, and Migs in the area but backed off momentarily in order that the close-in defenses might have their chance, the situation had become nothing but grim.

  Number two bottomed abruptly and stopped the downward pitch or porpoise almost as if he had gained control of the machine. Actually, he was probably hit at some time during the porpoise, perhaps when he was forced up high above the leader. He apparently took a vital hit at that time that knocked his aircraft down and to the left and the abrupt bottoming probably occurred when he caught the aircraft and at least momentarily regained control over the machine. As he bottomed, his bombs and tanks separated from the aircraft, which would indicate that he knew he had been severely hit and that he did not have adequate control of the aircraft and needed to get as much of the weight off the aircraft as he could by hitting the panic button, a switch that electrically jettisoned all external loads. His hope was that a lighter load and a change in airspeed might give him a chance to control his wild machine. The big problem was that he did not have any place to move at a time like that, especially with an aircraft as sick as his obviously was. If he went up all by himself, he would in all probability have been gobbled up by the Migs who were just waiting for a stray to fall out of the formation, or, for the instant, he would more probably have been hit by the SAMs which were thick in this area close to downtown Hanoi. If he went down, he would have been faced with the intense small-arms and automatic-weapons fire that even extended down to handguns; and don’t ever think that a handgun can’t knock down a big bird if it hits the right spot. When the bugle blows and thousands of people lie on their backs and fire small-caliber personal weapons straight up in the air, woe be unto him who is unfortunate enough to stray through that fire.

  Without freedom of movement, he was pretty desperately trapped. In this case, it didn’t make too much difference because Bob came on the radio and said, “Crab two is hit.” This, of course, alerted everybody to the fact that one of our guys was in bad trouble and there was an out-of-control aircraft traveling close to 600 knots in the immediat
e vicinity. A vital hit in a sensitive area of the Thud will very rapidly deplete the hydraulic systems that operate the flight control systems. The degree of depletion depends on the location and nature of the hit, but once that pressure is gone, the controls go with it and there is no way to control the aircraft even momentarily. This was the plight of Crab two; he was riding in a hurtling, out-of-control, heavyweight monster in the middle of a hostile environment determined to kill him if at all possible. Thus, only seconds after he had been hit, Bob apparently lost all control and knew that he was about to hit the ground. He evaluated his position in who knows how many microseconds, and had no choice but to take the high-speed ejection right in the middle of a hail of lead from all sides, rather than simply crash and be destroyed along with his dead aircraft. He called and said, “I’m bailing out,” and out he went, right into the inferno of Hanoi under attack. His aircraft hit the ground at a speed in excess of 500 knots.

  The two-ship element, led by Crab three, had become understandably confused during the wild gyrations that had occurred and initially thought that Crab one had struck the ground out of his wild porpoise. In an area like that there is absolutely nothing you can do for a pilot who has jumped out, you can’t really even stop and look. If you observe the impact of the aircraft, it is strictly by chance. Anyone who stood still or retreated long enough to even try to find out what was going on would also be shot down. So that’s part of the code, the name of the game. Anyone who is hit and has to jump in that area does it strictly solo.

  It took this particular flight a while to sort things out and get organized coming back out of the target area, and there is little doubt that this particular strike will go down in the annals as one of the wildest and toughest rides that any flight has ever had to go through. They did manage to get reorganized and return to base safely.

  It was a real heartbreaker. Bob was such a nice guy, and in this business you naturally gravitate toward eager young people who seem to have all the spunk and drive and desire that you are looking for. Bob was one of those guys we all felt very strongly for, and his loss got to the squadron and the wing, but especially to the guys in his flight. Bob’s brother was over there at the same time and had been at our base visiting Bob shortly before this particular flight. He is also a fine young gentleman and is in the tanker business, refueling us as we go in and come out of the North. As soon as the flight got back on the ground and went through their formalities, they got in touch with Bob’s brother and he came right back to see what he could learn. Unfortunately, you have a tough time explaining these things in exact detail and it often takes an amazing amount of mental research to reconstruct things that happen so fast and so violently. However, when Bob’s brother came to the base we did everything we could to explain the situation and spell out our ideas of what had occurred.

  I saw his brother that evening and that was a tough one. What do you tell a guy? You don’t want to discourage him completely because you don’t know what happened to the individual. You don’t want to pump him up too much because you know that the chances of survival from bailout at that speed are mighty slim. You know that the flak-filling air that he went down through during his short descent was extremely dangerous. You know that his chances of injury on landing were extremely high. But here’s a guy whose brother is at best missing, going back home to tell his brother’s wife—what? I don’t know. I appreciated his attitude and he was a wonderful man to talk to, but it was an awfully lousy conversation.

  That same night, Hanoi Hanna came on the radio and announced that the same day an American aircraft had been shot down while raiding the Hanoi area. They have the usual line of chatter that all propaganda broadcasts use and a lot of it you can’t believe at all. But this particular night, Hanoi Hanna said that one of the American pilots, a fine, young healthy boy had been shot down and severely injured, and that despite the best efforts of the North Vietnamese doctors, had died in the hospital shortly afterward. You can’t always believe what they say and only time will tell if the announcement in itself was the truth, but I think it most interesting to note the terminology used in the broadcast. Most of the references to the Americans coming out of Radio Hanoi are highly uncomplimentary, and we are referred to as bandits, air pirates, Yankee dogs, rotten imperialists, and so on. Yet in this particular case, the individual is referred to as a fine, healthy, good-looking American boy. I wonder if this is an extremely clever bit of writing and narration designed to pluck at your heartstrings, or if perhaps young Bob impressed even the North Vietnamese as much as he impressed aU of us.

  6. Behind the Flightline

  Throughout my tour at Takhli, the basic rule held firm that it takes a lot of people to run a wing and to run a base. We had quite a community, and when I left, it was up to about five thousand men without a round-eyed white female in sight. The command section of a unit such as this is in many ways like the office of mayor in a small city. We had all the problems that you would expect in any municipality, and -these problems were compounded by the fact that it was a constant battle to scratch what you needed out of the jungle. Funding is controlled at higher command echelons and you seldom find those holding the purse strings sharing your operational enthusiasm for the things you feel you need. In short, making a first-class operation out of a bare strip in the jungle is plain hard work plus an awful lot of frustration.

  The bases in Southeast Asia vary enormously from one to another, and some of them were pretty jumbled up and sorry. The differences were due in part to mission requirements, physical location or the varying degrees of higher command interest, but the big difference was the drive and the desire of the individuals running a particular unit. Southeast Asia is usually a one-year tour for those in command and staff positions, and there is always the temptation to let the tough things slide for the next replacement to worry about. This is especially true of the flying commanders, as things move very rapidly from the operational end and’there is a lot of ground to cover. Thus, you often do not get the opportunity to put the emphasis you want on the physical facilities.

  The word jungle conveys different images to different people—quite naturally, because the jungle itself is so various. The image of vine-entangled trees, with Tarzan about to swing across the steaming pool of quicksand, seems quite apt in some corners of Asia. I took a small group out in the wilds north of Takhli in search of the engine from one of our Thuds that had crashed shortly after takeoff, and after three days out there I felt like the great white hunter when I returned. A couple of our pilots arranged a few days off duty and hooked up with a native Thai hunting party over toward the border of Burma, and their impressions were similar to mine, when they returned without a tiger. Other areas of the “jungle” are simply rolling green fields with trees that vary from sparse to nonexistent. I always enjoyed dropping down to a few hundred feet above the green carpet when it was practical to do so on the last hundred miles of the return leg of a combat mission. The color, the stillness and the variety are fascinating, and, to me, relaxing to view. It is not uncommon to see 200-foot-high trees with 75-foot trees nestled under them and still another 25-foot bramble of green undergrowth covering the jungle floor. Within a few hundred feet you may well see a native, who knows and cares little about your presence, scar farming a patch of burned-out open land that he will abandon when the urge to move on seizes him.

  I personally thought the climate in the Takhli area was great. It got a bit soggy at times, and it was the home of the king cobra, but we had driven the cobra back with the noise of our jets and the bustle of approaching civilization. Temperatures topped 110 degrees during the extremes, but at that time of year the humidity was at its low ebb. Generally, the temperatures were moderate, the breezes were cool, the sunshine was bright and there was lots of good fresh air. When it rained, it rained like nothing I have ever seen and it was common to see 6-ihch puddles of water accumulate within a few minutes.

  We were fortunate at Takhli in having exceptional
ly good people, hard drivers who wanted to get the job done properly and rapidly; and the base showed it. We had the finest physical facility in Southeast Asia this side of Clark Air Base in the Philippines. Of course, Clark had about a fifty-year head start on us and I doubt that anyone will catch’up in the next few days, but we were head and shoulders above anyone else in Vietnam and Thailand.

  It was not always so. The first time I saw Takhli a few years ago, things were pretty grim. As far as air bases were concerned, Takhli was at the bottom of most anyone’s ladder, anyplace in the world. We had a runway, a taxiway and a bunch of wooden hootches. (A hootch is a long, single-story, stilted wooden building of typical Thai rural design. The stilts discourage the cobra and his companions from sharing the building with you, and the sides are open and screened.) Through the cooperation of the local Thai military, we hired Thai labor, used Thai materials, and supervised the construction and placement of our first attempts at housing and working projects. Our originial hootches were definitely of the low-rent-district type and we had to cram thirty men into each one to give people a place to sleep.

  We had nothing resembling roads except the mud trails serving the runway area. The jungle was all around and very much in evidence; in fact, the first time I got there you couldn’t even see the runway lights because of the vegetation around the runway. Snakes were prevalent at this time and nobody with any sense wandered far from the tramped-down area. Other bases in the country had received more emphasis and were in far more promising condition than was Takhli. Korat, the home of the other F-105 wing, was a far better looking base, and Udorn, in my opinion, was the most promising of the whole group. General John Murphy was the big gear at Udorn at that time and he had some fine plans for developing the base. It did not turn out that way. Takhli, on the other hand, was in the soggy jungle and did not look like it would ever amount to anything but a hellhole.