Thud Ridge

by Jacksel Markham Broughton

  I moved to the north of the target and cleared the second flight into the valley which was now well marked with fire, smoke and dust. I moved on an east-west axis that allowed me to observe the work of the succeeding flights as they methodically chewed up the building complexes. I also managed to spot a few new clusters that I had not seen the day before, and all indications were that our find was as good as or even better than we had figured. I swung back to the east from one of these new sightings just about the time my third flight followed my directions to perfection and left another cluster of buildings aflame. The fourth flight was a good minute out, and a small but well-constructed set of buildings followed a straight road now perpendicular to my wing. Why not? I rolled in and strafed the length of the complex with my flight and as we pulled off to the south, the fourth flight rolled in over the top of us and bombed to the north. As they pulled up they rolled into a wingover to the west and strafed what the intelligence people told us might be an early warning radar site in the hills on the northern edge of the valley. It was going like clockwork and I was elated.

  As my fifth and last flight pulled off target, the area was pretty well saturated. The count at this stage of the game showed numerous fires burning throughout the area with two large secondary explosions—Earl’s ammuniton hit, and a fuel hit that lofted black smoke and debris as high as 4,000 feet into the air. The gun positions were silent, and eight large buildings were completely destroyed while twenty-three others were damaged or burning. Eight trucks had been destroyed and left as hulks, and the suspected radar site had been well massaged. As I looked at the valley, I was pleased with the way my guys had worked, but there was one more job that needed to be done. One of the pilots had hit right on the corner of a good-sized complex and cleaned out several buildings, but there were still about a half dozen buildings in that cluster that needed to be hit. As I moved away from the cloud cover to the north I decided to attack these buildings in a high angle strafing pass with my cannon, and I lit the burner and pulled up and over onto a steep strafing run with my flight behind me.

  As my nose dropped down toward the complex I was after, I was in trouble. The course I had selected placed at my two o’clock position the hills at the northern end of the valley that led up to the suspected radar site. In all of our attacks of the day before and of that day, there had been no fire from that area, but now the air between the green hills and my aircraft was alive with the piercing red balls of tracer ammunition from the ground. There were a lot of them, and they were curling my way. It only takes a few experiences to know when they are on you, and I was afraid that these gunners were on me. I wondered instantaneously where in hell they had come from and then I was in real trouble. My bird lurched to the left with the sickening click of another big hit and before I could even react she lurched and clicked again. Instantaneously the fire light on the instrument panel went to red and the reflexes built up from combat in the Thud threw my eyes to the hydraulic pressure gauges that indicated the number of pounds of pressure per square inch available to move the flight controls. If they went I was done, and there would be no controlling my diving steed. It was the too-familiar pattern that had cost us most of our Thud losses, and my eyes arrived there in fractions of a second only to find the primary system at zero and the indicator needle of the secondary system settling on zero.

  I had already lost many of the systems necessary for normal flight and the only thing keeping me under control was the third and weaker utility hydraulic system. The little white needle on that system was already wavering. I was entering my strafing run and I was on fire, and it looked like I was about to become an unguided missile. I thought, What the hell, those lousy bastards may have me but I’m going to get them before I go, and I pressed on, mad and scared. Earl called, “Lead you’re hit and on fire with smoke and pieces coming out the back end.” I knew it, but I squeezed that trigger for all I was worth and sprayed a stream of lead into the guns and the buildings. If this was going to be it I wanted to get the job done first, and I did. I got about five hundred rounds right in the middle of them, and then it was time to start worrying about the old behind. Very gradually, I started back on the stick with an eye on the utility system. This was it, and if she didn’t take now, the only alternative was a highspeed ejection attempt and that was not too promising a prospect. The pressure needle bucked and shuddered even with slight control pressures but she did not fall to zero and the nose started slowly up. I could use all the speed I could get to displace myself from any guns that might still be active, so an easy pullout that just cleared the ground was all I wanted, and that’s just what I got.

  My gradual pullout had carried me a fair distance to the north of the target area, but in my delicate condition north was not the place I wanted to go. I didn’t want to use any greater control pressures than I needed to, as every activation of my one remaining emergency hydraulic system was tempting fate. I had at least one eye on that gauge all the time, and it set up a strange pattern that fascinated yet terrified me. It would hold relatively steady around three thousand pounds for about ninety seconds, then stagger a couple of times and drop down to zero, bounce off the bottom peg and shudder back toward three thousand pounds. If it stayed on the bottom I was out of flight controls, and each time it went through its cycle, my hands dropped involuntarily to the ejection handles at the base of my seat. I never knew if it was going to come back up again and it was most important that I get south while I was still able. I had to ease her around to the south and fly right back over the valley that I had been beating up for two days. Earl had stroked the burner as soon as he saw my tail light up and he pulled up close to me as I approached the valley from the north and said, “Chief, you better get ready to get out of that thing. I think the rear end is coming unglued and you have lots of fire back there.” Just as he said that the hydraulic needle took one of its nose dives and for some reason I looked at my clock at that instant. It was quarter of twelve and I had a very clear thought, If I have to jump out of this thing right on top of these bastards I’ll never make it even as far as the Hanoi Hilton. They’ll eat me for lunch. The pressure came back up but I couldn’t get the fire out and I was most concerned about: what the fire was eating up in the rear end of my bird.

  Earl was a pretty cool type and although I never did figure out whether he did it on purpose or not, he managed to relax me a bit. He carried a miniature camera with him and as we crossed the valley he called, “Hey, Chief, how about holding still for a minute. I want to get a color shot of that mother bear before it lets go.” Fighter pilot humor. He later promised to send me a print of his picture but I got a letter from him recently indicating he may not have been as calm as he thought. It seems that all he got were lots of pictures of sky and ground as I struggled for altitude and displacement to the south. His description of the egress is interesting. “For about sixty seconds that day I wouldn’t have given two cents for your chances of making it at all, to say nothing of making it back to a forward emergency strip. Here’s the, incident as I remember it. You called, ‘I’m rolling in on a strafe pass,’ and I followed on the right side. I saw about twenty goof balls come up in your vicinity—they seemed to come from several places but were all focused around your aircraft. They all let loose at the same instant, which was surprising—zap, zap, zap—and it was over. I pulled up hard, rolled over and spotted you about a thousand feet below me and a little to my right and forward. Your aircraft was trailing dark black smoke for about two thousand feet behind you and there was a bright orange glow along the right rear side. The smoke lasted about sixty seconds and the glow remained until you had turned southwest and leveled off. The transmissions are hazy, but I remember discussing whether to go direct to the emergency strip or to head for one of the safer bailout areas. I was extremely impressed with the holes in your aircraft and • remember thinking it odd that the orange fire from the large hole didn’t trail from the forward motion of the aircraft. It sort of licked all around the
area like a good fireplace fire. When it would die down momentarily I could see into the tail pipe. Every so often it would flash inside the tail pipe and leave the area a bright red, like a good hot farm stove.”

  I knew there was nothing I could do to improve the hydraulic situation but that I had better do what I could to get that fire out. Violent control action was out of the question and since the burner had been knocked out with the hit, all I could do was ease up to whatever altitude I could get with normal power and hope that the rarefied air might discourage the fire. I am not sure I would have wanted to pour all that raw burner fuel into the aft section even if it had been working. I felt like I was sitting on a time bomb but I was not about to terminate by jumping out as long as I was still flying. Twenty-three thousand was the maximum altitude I could get out of her, and as I leveled there, Ken pulled up alongside and took over his role as deputy flight lead. I told him I was going to try for the emergency strip and he moved in on my wing as he sent two and four on to a tanker and home. I had enough fuel to get to the emergency strip, if she would keep flying, which was very fortunate as our friendly airborne gas station operators would have been nuts to let a burning aircraft hook up to them. Earl, in two, called the rescue people as he herded four toward their tanker. They scrambled a Spad in no time and headed north to cut me off should I have to step out. The Spad came up on our frequency and talked to me all the way and it was something of a reassurance to know that at least he was ready for what I “hoped wouldn’t happen.

  Once I had leveled off in the rarefied air I started a series of very gentle slips and skids, trying to alter the airflow over the aft section so as to discourage the fire. After about ten minutes of looking at that ugly red fire-warning light glowing steadily in my face, it flickered on and off a few times. The temptation was great to exaggerate the slips and skids at this first sign of possible success in fighting the fire, but I forced myself to go easy on the remaining hydraulic system that continued to drop my heart into my boots every ninety seconds. (I even took my hand off the stick and regrasped the very top of it with my thumb and forefinger so that I could not possibly manhandle the controls even if I tried.) I continued the gradual slipping and sliding motion and the red light flickered with increasing frequency until when we were about halfway there it went out. Ken confirmed that the rear end looked better and my rescue buddy in the Spad sounded as happy as I was to hear the news that at least the fire was out.

  The morning winds had shifted the thunderstorm patterns some, and I was now following a slightly different course outbound from the target as I headed for the emergency strip, but I was still concerned about the weather. Ken and I were able to stay in the clear by altering course and altitude from time to time for the next hundred miles. It was almost imperative that we stay in the clear because my convulsing control pressure could hardly stand the demands I would have to put on it to counteract the bumps and jostling I would encounter if I had to fly through another thunderstorm. Then, with still a hundred miles to go, one of those black monsters stretched across my path and reached from the ground to right out of sight. To enter it was out of the question, but to skirt it meant many more miles of flight while watching that ninety-second gauge that kept telling me this could not go on much longer. There was no choice, and I gently slid my bird to the east and through the rain that hung from the upper deck of the storm. It cost me a hundred miles and it cost me time, but I had to do it. I regretfully advised my rescue companion and he altered his course to remain within striking distance if needed.

  As I crept through the peripheral rain and reduced visibility, I contacted the radar ground control people and received two additional surprises. First, I had some difficulty generating the sense of urgency in the ground controllers that I felt in the cockpit. They seemed content to handle me as a routine recovery along with the rest of their traffic and it took a few sharp words to convince them that they had better handle what was left of this bird with kid gloves,, or else I would blow up right in the middle of their radar shack if it was the last thing I did. This was probably good for me in a way, as it irritated me so badly it got my mind out of my own cockpit and forcefully into the recovery and landing problem. Second, the man on the radio blithely informed me that I had a 700-foot ceiling to penetrate at the emergency strip. That was all I needed, a little more weather time and an instrument approach, but there was no choice and I did not have the fuel to go anyplace else even if I had wanted to, which I did not. I needed to get on the ground.

  Despite his vocal lethargy, my friendly recovery director set me up on a good instrument approach and I guess I have probably never flown a better one. The closer I got to the ground, the more devastating each pressure surge appeared and when I descended through safe bailout altitude I tried to stop looking at the gauge but I couldn’t keep my eyes off it. I held my landing gear until I figured I had the end of the runway hacked and then blew them down with the emergency system that worked the first time and showed me the three beautiful green lights indicating landing gear down and locked. When I saw the end of the runway I started to let my bird drop below the glide slope so I could put her down right on the end of the runway. I had no idea how my drag chute and brakes would perform after touchdown and, in fact, did not know what was liable to fall off the bird when I hit the concrete. The two most worthless things to a fighter pilot are altitude above him and runway behind him, and I was going to spot this baby doll right on the end of the runway. This almost got me into trouble, as from Ken’s position on my wing it looked like we were awfully low and flat, which we were.

  He was concerned that I might get too low as I whizzed over the trees on the approach end of the runway and gave me a courtesy call to the effect that I might want to pull it up a bit. I didn’t want to, but his transmission was garbled and partially cut out by another transmission and all I got was “up.” In a position like that, when you hear the word “up,” all you can think about is your landing gear. I knew I had checked my indicators carefully and they said down and locked, but my only thought was that perhaps something in my sick machine had goofed up and that my gear were not properly positioned. I involuntarily jerked back on the stick as my eyes stabbed for the reassurance of my three green gear lights. I got my unnecessary gear-down assurance, but I had overtaxed the extremely sensitive control balance that I was working with and as the pressure needle started down, the controls tightened up and I figured, this is it—got her all the way back to the end of the runway and she’s locking up on me. I would have been a big orange ball on the end of the runway if they had locked then, but she struggled back up one more time and I stabbed her onto the concrete.

  The drag chute worked and the emergency brakes worked and I even managed to turn her off the runway at midfield. As I cleared the runway I punched the mike button and said, “Thanks a lot, Christ. I’ll take it from here.”

  All the crash rescue troops were there and we got her chocked quickly and I shut down that particular engine for the last time—it grated to a stop. I crawled down the firemen’s ladder and took a look at her and she looked bad. She was bleeding hydraulic fluid and fuel and the rear end was burned to a sickly color that failed to hide the more than fifty holes that covered the aft section. One of the functions of this particular strip was the recovery of wounded birds and the boss man of the facility was there to meet me as he had met many others. He gazed at my Thud in disbelief and allowed that it was the worst one that he had ever seen come back. He didn’t have to convince me, but I had gotten her back and I had gotten myself back and we would both fly again. I was most thankful. I filled out the usual debriefing forms and bummed a seat on an administrative courier that left for Takhli ten minutes after I landed.

  The debriefing and the ride back to Takhli were anticlimac-tic. I guessed the episode of the past two days might have been good for an award but I was not overly concerned with that at the moment. The three-star commander of our operational headquarters must have thought so a
s he affixed his signature to an endorsement on a recommendation for my second Air Force Cross that concluded “Colonel Broughton’s actions during almost eight hours of combat fighter flying in North Vietnam during this ‘twenty-four hour period represent the ultimate in skill, professionalism and dedication to the detriment of his personal well-being and safety. Through his exemplary leadership and ability, he and his forces destroyed a vital rail link,’ outmaneuvered a SAM attack, drove off a Mig attack, spotted, identified and diagnosed a significant target complex; planned, coordinated and executed a significant strike; survived perhaps the wildest aerial refueling episode hi the history of fighter aviation; regrouped his forces under almost impossible conditions; thoroughly pummeled a major hidden link in the North Vietnamese supply and transportation, scheme and recovered two severely damaged irreplaceable F-105 aircraft to fly again. He capped his efforts by attacking the last remnant of his target when his aircraft was on fire and practically out of control. The only thing that he did not do to accomplish his mission was kill himself in the effort; and but for his superior airmanship and guts he would have done that. I recommend that Colonel Broughton be awarded the Air Force Cross.”

  It didn’t work out that way. Two of my majors were accused of strafing a Russian ship near Haiphong as they fought for their lives. I fought for them with all my might and instead of my getting my second Air Force Cross all three of us received a general court-martial. That is quite a story in itself and one of these days I may tell that story too. I haven’t decided if I will call it “The Turkestan Incident” or “Hanoi and Back—Six Dollars a Round Trip.”

  Appendix: A Bit About Words

  Much of what I have written in this book is flavored by the exclusive world of the fighter pilot, a man who assumes that everyone understands what he is doing and how he talks. (I have heard it said that if you tied a fighter pilot’s hands behind his back, he could not talk coherently for more than sixty seconds.) So I have written this book in the language of the Thud drivers over Vietnam, and that language necessarily includes a good many words whose meaning you’re not likely to know unless you’ve been there. Rather than break up the narrative with repeated explanations or end the book with something in the nature of a glossary, I have chosen instead to give you here a capsule account of any government-issue throttle jockey’s Thud combat tour. In the course of this summary, you will, I hope, form a clear picture of how our various air combat units were put together and how we worked together in them. And ailong the way you should get a better idea of the meanings of some of those odd-sounding special words.