by Tom Wilson
"Amen," echoed Max.
"But Mike knows his limitations. He's not afraid to ask questions and he's not too proud to listen when you tell him something. The ones to watch out for are the guys who think they're better than they are, not the Mike Ralstons."
"Like Colonel Lee?" Tiny asked.
"He was just in over his head," Max said.
Benny drank a gulp of black coffee, paused, then listened. Tiny looked ill at ease as they talked about Jim Lee. No one had chewed his ass about not sticking with Lee through his wild maneuver over the target, but everyone knew he'd shown poor form, including himself.
"I've got to say one thing for Colonel Lee," said Tiny. "That reattack he was trying to make through all that flak was the hairiest thing I've ever seen."
Foley agreed. "Yeah, but not smart. Nobody should fly a thirty degree dive-bomb in a high-threat area. Too shallow and predictable, and you're too low to the ground."
"Maybe. But it took balls. No radio, on fire and burning, and still he was trying to get his bombs on the target." Tiny swallowed and looked away.
"If you'd stayed with him, probably neither one of you'd have come home," Max said.
"Did you guys know Lee had just finished a Ph.D. program?" asked Benny, pulling their attention away from Tiny's transgression.
"I heard," Foley said.
"Bet you didn't know that a message came into personnel about him the day he was shot down? That he'd been accepted for the Apollo program? He was supposed to report to the hospital at Brooks Air Force Base tout suite for his qualification physical."
"You're shitting me." Even Tiny was impressed.
They thought about that for a while. Then Benny and Max started talking about tactics and basics of combat flying. Things like: "A good fighter pilot instinctively knows his position in the airspace relative to the rest of the world. He knows his flight's position, the enemies' position, and he can anticipate the next move that both are going to make." And: "One day you'll have it, another day you won't. You've got to recognize your limitations on a day-to-day basis, know when to press and when to hold back."
Foley was the wing weapons officer and part of his job was to talk about tactics with the other pilots. Benny just liked to talk about flying.
Benny and Max were experienced. Between them, they had 5,000 hours of fighter time, almost 4,000 of which was spent in F-105's. Both had come to Takhli from Nellis Air Force Base, where they'd taught in the fighter weapons instructor's course, the Air Force's graduate school for their top fighter pilots. The other Thud pilots said they were two of the best. Foley was outstanding at air-to-air combat tactics, and was able to think three or four maneuvers ahead of most adversaries. Benny Lewis had velvet hands, and some said he could get more performance out of the F-105 Thud than any man alive.
Tiny judiciously kept quiet and listened to learn a secret or two.
Maj Glenn Phillips approached, his flight suit impeccable, his jungle boots glistening, his newspaper folded neatly under his arm. He smiled to show perfect teeth and a cleft chin.
"Mind if I join your table?"
Max squinted. "Shit, Glenn, don't you sweat?"
Benny motioned at the empty seat. "It's S-O-S this morning."
Max shook his head in disbelief. "You can't not sweat. It's not fucking human to not sweat." He glanced at Benny and Tiny. "I was sweating like a pig when we came in. You guys too. But Glenn isn't sweating."
No Hab approached, scribbled on her pad as Phillips dictated his S-O-S order, then giggled when he propositioned her. Most females giggled a lot when they were around Phillips. Women young and old, from Denmark to North Africa, from Las Vegas to Tokyo, had fallen prey to his good looks and charm.
"No Hab," Phillips said quietly in his rich, pleasant voice, "you have captured my heart. Come to my hootch and I'll show you how to do a snap roll."
Max focused bloody eyes on Phillips. "A snap roll?"
No Hab walked away with a special twist to her hips, glancing back over her shoulder. She had no idea what Phillips was talking about, but it was obvious she wouldn't mind trying whatever it was.
Phillips was a West Point graduate. As a first lieutenant only two years out of pilot training, he'd won second place in the Air Force's Top Gun competition. Shortly after pinning on his captain's railroad tracks, he'd been selected as a Thunderbird demonstration-team pilot. His Thunderbird tour had been cut short when flaws were discovered in the F-105B, but he'd gained the name and the fame. Next, Glenn had finagled his way into the fighter weapons school at Nellis, another sweet deal, and had been assigned to the headquarters in Europe at Weisbaden, Germany. Well liked by the colonels and generals there, he'd made major two years below the zone. Glenn Phillips was slated to wear stars.
Benny got along well with Phillips, who in peacetime had often been regarded by his peers as an egotistical ass. Most of the complaints were sour grapes, for Phillips was a fine officer and a superb pilot. He didn't just crawl into a fighter, he wore it. He put it on, became a part of it, and flew with it. As in the biblical sense, he knew the F-105, and could coax it to do things others could not. Benny felt that same way when he flew, and he shared a kinship with those who knew the feeling.
At Takhli, Phillips was assigned to fly an especially dangerous mission and that made up for some of his pomposity. Tiny Bechler made little secret of the fact that he disliked Phillips, regardless of what mission he flew, perhaps because Glenn's ego matched his own.
"Any of you guys seen my bear?" Phillips asked.
Benny bunked in the same hootch as Mal Stewart, who was also called Phillips's Bear, but mainly just "the Bear." "He's sleeping. Got in from town this morning and woke up the whole place when he stumbled into a fan and a locker. Once he had everyone awake, he passed out beside his bed. He was still there when I left, curled up on the floor next to his bunk, snoring. I shook him to tell him he ought to get in bed, but I couldn't wake him up." Benny then said, smiling, "You oughta get him under better control."
Max laughed, clutching at his forehead.
"Put him on a leash," Tiny Bechler growled.
Phillips frowned, sadness tugging at his face. "He's got me confused. He goes to sleep in the airplane, snores all the way to the tanker, then wakes up and just wants to kill commies. Mean bastard, with balls that drag the ground."
Phillips's dangerous mission was called Wild Weasel, a new concept in the Air Force. It involved two-seat fighters and backseaters they called "bears."
Max Foley regarded Phillips. "How the hell did the Air Force come up with the Wild Weasel idea, Glenn?"
"You tell him, Benny." Glen nodded toward Maj Les Ries, the Wild Weasel pilot from the 354th squadron sitting at another table. "I want to ask Les if he knows when our replacement airplanes are supposed to arrive. Be right back." Glenn took his coffee and went across the room.
Foley looked at Benny. "That's right. You went through Wild Weasel training too, didn't you?"
"Yeah. It's an interesting story. A completely new concept."
In early 1965, the president had ordered American fighter bombers to attack targets in North Vietnam, hoping to relieve the growing pressure the North Vietnamese were bringing to bear in the south. The gomers had a lot of guns, of all sizes, but the fighter jocks found that they could fly above the guns' effective altitudes, and the few MiG's they had didn't worry them much.
But shortly after the bombing campaign started, Russian surface-to-air missiles and tracking radars were photographed being off-loaded at Haiphong. SAMs had never been used in combat, so they created a great deal of concern. The president's advisers decided the Russians were bluffing and wouldn't really turn the SAMs over to the North Vietnamese. But, they cautioned, if SAM sites were attacked and Russian advisers were harmed, that might provoke them to change their minds. The fighter pilots were told not to interfere while the batteries were being set up.
In June of 1965 the SAMs were launched by the dozens and shot down increasing numbers
of Air Force and Navy aircraft. Low altitudes were already untenable due to intense ground fire and antiaircraft artillery. Now the medium and higher altitudes, where the deadly SAMs were most effective, were equally inhospitable. The airspace within fifty miles of Hanoi and Haiphong became a killing ground.
Strike flights had been sent to attack the SAM sites, but with disastrous results. The fighter pilots had difficulty locating the camouflaged sites, and when they thought they'd found them, they encountered flurries of SAMs from blind sides, heavy barrages of flak, and intense small-arms fire. They suffered terrible losses, and the sites they attacked were empty! The real ones were camouflaged and nearly impossible to find.
President Johnson ordered that a solution be found, and the Air Force gave the matter its highest priority. A committee was formed at the Pentagon. A new, highly specialized mission was settled upon, to seek out and destroy the SAM sites. The aircrew would consist of an experienced fighter pilot and an electronic warfare officer, a flying officer trained to fight radar-controlled threats. The aircraft would be a two-seat fighter equipped with electronic homing systems. Wild Weasel was the classified code name, and the aircraft, aircrews, as well as the concept, were called by that name.
They'd picked F-100F Super Sabres because they were readily available. After a frantic development effort, the rear cockpits of the aircraft were fitted with miniaturized radar-analysis and homing receivers. The electronic warfare officer would analyze the SAM radar's signal and give the pilot directions so he could locate the SAM site. The first crews were picked and hastily trained, then given a pep talk by Harold Brown, the technically astute secretary of the Air Force, and sent off to fly over North Vietnam to see if the concept worked.
After three months of dangerous trials, heavy losses, and considerable doubts, one of the crews homed in on a North Vietnamese SAM radar and attacked the site with two cannisters of 2.75-inch, high-explosive antitank rockets.
When the surviving Weasel pioneers returned to the states to train replacement crews, they suggested that a faster, tougher aircraft with better range, the F-105F, be outfitted to replace the aging F-100's.
In mid-1966, the Wild Weasels were deployed to both F-105 bases, first to Korat, then to Takhli. Glenn Phillips and his bear had been in the group. They flew the specially equipped F-105F's and used electronic equipment to find SAM batteries, or launched Shrike radar-seeking missiles at them to keep them preoccupied while the other F-105's attacked their targets. Few of the strike pilots envied them. They, too, flew daily into the face of the defenses, but they tried to minimize their exposure. Wild Weasels went out of their way to duel with surface-to-air missiles. That was their job.
Benny Lewis had been trained as a Wild Weasel pilot, in the group following Phillips, but upon arrival at Takhli his backseater had developed chronic airsickness. The backseater had been transferred to EB-66's and seemed happier there. EB-66's were much slower aircraft, well protected from MiG's, and flew at safer distances from the antiaircraft guns and SAMs.
Benny Lewis had become a strike pilot, which he figured was just as well. He preferred single-seat fighters, with no one to hear him belch, mutter to himself, or critique him when he sang corny flying songs.
Phillips returned to their table just as Benny was finishing his monologue and the breakfast group was pondering the improbability of the Bear's sanity. Unlike the backseater Benny had parted ways with, Mal Stewart thrived in the fighter environment and enjoyed the dangerous mission.
Tiny ventured a guess. "Maybe he doesn't understand what the hell's going on."
"Could be," Phillips said, "but he sure knows where every missile is, and he can see MiG's when they're still ten miles out." He regarded the others seriously. "You know what he says when he crawls into the back cockpit and gets strapped in?"
They leaned forward.
"He says, 'Driver, take me to work and wake me when we get there.' "
Everyone smiled, even Tiny Bechler. Phillips was likely stretching the truth, but that was part of being a fighter pilot. They enjoyed talking about "bears," the only group the strike pilots—excepting Tiny Bechler and a few recalcitrant diehards—accepted as their own. After the Takhli Weasels had flown their first few missions out in front of the strike force, the single-seat pilots started calling the backseaters "bears," like the ones found in arcade shooting galleries. When the enemy shot at Wild Weasels they'd just roar, turn around, and attack. The nickname had stuck, and Wild Weasel pilots were often advised to keep their "bears" on their thirty-six-inch chains, that being the distance between the front and back cockpits.
No Hab arrived with their orders.
Tiny Bechler downed his orange juice in a single gulp before regarding Phillips. "You hear what Colonel Mack did this morning?"
"Yeah," Phillips replied, with no further comment. Colonel Mack's new order wouldn't affect Glenn. In the 357th, the Wild Weasels had been attrited from five down to one aircrew and a single aircraft, and Phillips was the flight commander of himself and his backseater.
Phillips and his bear were considered the best and certainly the most aggressive Wild Weasel crew in the wing. Mission commanders sought them to fly on the toughest targets. B. J. Parker, the wing commander, asked their advice on matters concerning enemy defenses, and used them to distribute information to the other Weasels. Even if there had been a full complement of crews, no one would argue with Phillips's position as the 357th squadron's WW-flight commander, and no one would argue that he shouldn't lead the Weasel flights in the air.
"What do you think of Colonel Mack, Glenn?" asked Foley.
Phillips joked. "Pretty impressive for an old guy who never finished college."
Tiny, who had been wolfing his food down, mistook Phillips's pun as a slap against his latest hero. He stopped eating and bristled. "That's a stupid thing to say. What does college have to do with flying fighters and leading people?"
The below-the-zone major with 2,500 flying hours glanced at the first lieutenant bars on Tiny's flight suit and gave a shake of his head. "Just concentrate on your flying and cut out the wise-ass insubordination, Lieutenant. You've still got a lot to learn."
Considering the matter handled, Glenn turned to his reconstituted scrambled eggs, which were splattered with S-O-S and tasted like cardboard.
Tiny Bechler stood, self-conscious and red-faced at the rebuke. He gathered the front sections of his newspaper and stalked, stiff-legged, toward the cashier's cage.
Phillips watched him leave without comment.
"I think Tiny's going to be a good pilot," Benny said.
"Maybe, if he can remember he's just a lieutenant."
"I enjoy flying with the kids we're getting from the academy," Max said, partly to needle Phillips. "Most of the time they hang right on the wing and don't ask questions."
Tiny Bechler was one of several recently arrived first lieutenants who'd gained their commissions from the fledgling Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs. Vietnam would be the first taste of combat for academy graduates. Previously, a percentage of West Point and Annapolis graduates had taken commissions in the Air Force to provide a backbone of regular officers. Officers like Benny and Foley, who'd gained their commissions through ROTC and flight cadets were proud of the Air Force's own academy, while former Annapolis midshipmen and West Point cadets maintained a wait-and-see attitude, with more than a touch of prejudice for their senior academies.
Phillips dabbed his mouth with his napkin, then stared thoughtfully at the doorway through which Tiny had disappeared. "I need a good wingman. I'll try him, see if he learned anything from what happened with Lee."
"He'll be good," Max said, "if he lives through the next few missions."
Phillips mused.
Max leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Were you on the Yen Bai mission, Glenn?"
"Yeah. I was leading the Weasel flight. We were on the defensive the entire time."
"Out of twenty-four Thuds, only two got their bombs on t
arget. That's shitty."
"Only two," Phillips concurred. "Our friend here and his wingman. Wasn't for Benny there wouldn't have been any damage done to the target at all."
Benny grimaced. "I believe it when they say Ho Chi Minh's girlfriend runs a cathouse there. The flak was so thick you could land on it and get out and take a stroll on the stuff."
Phillips said, "We're going to have to make damned sure we stay alert any time we go to pack six, even on the ones we think are going to be easy. The only good thing about it is that it can't get much worse."
27/0900L—Hanoi, Democratic Republic of Vietnam
Lt Col Xuan Nha
Xuan Nha entered at the heels of Colonel Trung, his superior officer, peering about the reception room of the cultural hall, the largest annex of the sprawling Russian Embassy. More than fifty newly arrived Russian advisers were in the room. The colors of their cloth collar tabs and epaulets told their specialties. Red for ground force, blue for air force, black for rockets and artillery. Senior officers from the Vietnamese People's Army, Air Force, and Army of National Defense mingled with their counterparts among the new arrivals.
As happened whenever he was in the presence of Russians, a blanket of suspicion descended over Xuan. He privately called them Tay, a derogatory term for Westerners.
Xuan Nha was short, even for an Annamese, but he was broad of shoulder and built powerfully through his back and arms. He had strong facial features with an embarrassing hint of a Caucasian look. His jaw was large and often taut, and his nose was sharply pointed, like that of a sparrow. He had once been plagued with that nickname. His eyes appeared deceptively lazy, giving him a soft and gentle air. He was neither.
Col. Feodor Dimetriev, senior adviser from the Soviet air defense command called PVO Strany, hailed Colonel Trung with a friendly wave. A large, beefy Russian stood at Dimetriev's side, holding a steaming cup of tea and generally looking ill at ease. The collar tabs and epaulets of his tropical uniform showed a single gold star embroidered onto black cloth, announcing him as a major in the missiles and artillery branch. He was the one Xuan studied as they crossed the room.