Supersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age

by Boyne, Walter J.

  Feeling pretty good about himself, Tom signaled that he was returning to base. Short on fuel, he throttled back, extending the glide, worrying about the possibility of a flameout but glowing with pleasure from having waxed Clark’s ass. He’d have to avoid talking about it tonight at the club—unless Clark mentioned it. When Tom touched down, the fuel warning lights were blinking.

  Air Force Officers Clubs were pretty much the same the world over, slightly better than average food, much lower than average liquor prices, and a constant high-decibel level of conversation. The club at Nellis Air Force Base differed only in the higher testosterone level of pilots who put their lives on the line every day, either training or teaching in the hottest aircraft in the world. There were not too many fights but a lot of near fights, tempers growing with the beer intake. Most of the steam was let off with impromptu games that involved a lot of pushing and shoving.

  Clark had driven down from the MiG base and was waiting for Tom when he arrived at the club. Tom slid in the leatherette seat beside him, signaled the waitress, and they began the usual endless process of matching names and dates and, always, deaths.

  “So what do you think of Feather Duster?”

  “So far so good. But I’m scheduled to check out in an F-4 and repeat the entire program in about six weeks.”

  “I know; I’m scheduled to check you out. They figured that you’d be too much for some fuzzy-faced young instructor to handle. We’ll be doing the checkout concurrently with Feather Duster I—it means a hell of a lot of driving for me, but I come down here every night I can anyway. I like to see if there’s any action in town; if there’s not, I drive back. Kills the evening, and sometimes it’s not too expensive.”

  “That reminds me; I had a friend here, a young guy named Steve O’Malley. Did you ever run into him?”

  “Absolutely. He was a phenomenon, just like he was at the Air Force Academy. First in his class as a student, then probably one of the best instructor pilots we ever had. In fact, if he were still here, I’d recommend him to instruct you, but he was fighting to get into combat, so he’s on his way overseas, heading to the Sixth Tactical Fighter Wing at Ubon, in Thailand. He’s a hot young pilot and knows it, but he has a lot of class, very considerate, a really good instructor; none of this banging-the-stick-around stuff, he would analyze the students’ problems and then tell them how to overcome them.”

  Clark drank his beer and said, “And he was really good to his backseaters. That’s unusual nowadays.”

  Tom grunted. He wasn’t thrilled about flying a two-seat fighter, depending upon the guy in back to get them into trouble and then out of it.

  “It must be hell for a young pilot to be stuffed in the backseat with a radar set!”

  “Tom, it is a hell of a problem. The idea, of course, is that the GIB—short for ‘Guy In Back’—learns the ropes from a good pilot, then advances to become a front-seater himself. But it doesn’t work out.”

  “Why the hell are they doing it? The Air Force is short on pilots and has a surplus of navigators—they could fly the backseat as well as anyone.”

  Clark shook his head, saying only, “Let’s eat.”

  They moved on into the dining room, ordered the inevitable steaks and baked potatoes, messed around with the salad bar, and when they were seated again, Clark continued, “The worst thing about it is when they crew them up overseas, they will put the strong front-seaters with the weak backseaters, and vice versa. Some of the old-time pilots have flown single-seaters all their lives, and they tell the GIB just to sit still, be quiet, and not touch anything unless he’s told to.”

  “Pretty grim!”

  “And of course it’s no better when they stick a competent backseater behind some guy who has been flying a desk for years, then gets stuffed into an F-4. There’s a lot of retreads out there and most of them are lousy, present company excepted. Then when they get in combat, the experienced young guy in the back raises hell with the senior guy in front. It’s no good at all.”

  “Any solution?”

  “The Navy did it right with their F-4s, designed them right from the start to have weapon system operators in the back, same as a navigator or a radar bombardier. No flight controls, no question about who’s a better pilot, et cetera.”

  Tom was thoughtful for a moment.

  “And how do they award a kill? Suppose you get lucky and shoot down a MiG, who gets credit for it, the pilot or the backseater?”

  “Believe it or not, they both do.”

  “Holy Mother of Christ! That is bound to be trouble. I can just see it now, some Navy weapon system officer or some Air Force backseater could become the first ace in this war.”

  “Maybe, Tom; it could happen. Unfortunately, we are not shooting enough of them down to have many aces. Besides, what do you care? You’ve been an ace in two wars; that ought to be enough for anybody.”

  Tom was quiet, a reserved look drawing over his face. “That’s what my dad was trying to tell me. But, you know, being the only ace in three wars, that would be something. I can’t beat Rickenbacker’s twenty-six kills, or Bong’s forty kills, but I could be the only guy to be an ace in three wars.”

  Clark’s expression changed from deep enjoyment to concern. “Don’t even think about it, Tom. You’ll wind up getting an Atoll missile stuffed up your ass, and your kid won’t have a father. Just go over there and teach the young bucks what you know; let them do the killing and take the risks. You’ve paid your dues.”

  Tom nodded, his thoughts twelve thousand miles and five more kills away.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  September 21, 1966

  En route to Ubon Royal Thai Air Force Base, Thailand

  The pilot on the muddy Lockheed C-130 had apologized to Tom in the operations room on the military side of Bangkok’s Don Muang Airport.

  “Sorry, Colonel, we’ve been in country all week, hauling supplies, and the birds needs a bath. I’m honored to be taking you to Ubon, but I wish we’d had a chance to get things cleaned up for you. It’s not good to bring in a new wing commander in a beat-up old plane like this.”

  “Don’t you worry about it, Captain; I’m pleased to have a ride, glad to get out of the Bangkok taxis in one piece, and looking forward to the trip.”

  “You can ride up in the cockpit with us, Colonel. It’s not much cleaner, but the view is better.”

  And the view was magnificent. Tom watched the beautiful Thai countryside roll by. First there were huge patches of forest, some brilliant green, some overlaid with dust from the tapioca factories. The overgrown forest soon gave way to marvelous farms, the rice fields gleaming like mirrors in the sun. Little jumbles of houses, as if someone had spilled a Monopoly board, sprang up along the klongs, the canals that served as combination roads, food and water supply, and sewer. There were small Buddhist temples everywhere, flashing gold in the water and among the palm trees. At frequent intervals large compounds sat astride the few paved roads that connected one village to the next. They had the regularity of a Roman encampment and were almost always surrounded by a miles-long fence of pine trees. Tom spent most of the flight standing between the two pilots, watching the familiar efficiency with which they flew the plane, a cheerful nonchalance that spelled expertise. As the countryside flashed by, he tried to recall everything he had learned in his abrupt, almost savage briefing from General William “Spike” Momyer, Seventh Air Force Commander.

  “Shannon, I’ll tell you first that I don’t like the way you’ve waltzed in and out of the Air Force at your convenience, making money when times were tough, but coming back in when there was some action. If everybody did that we wouldn’t have an Air Force; we’d have a massive Reserve outfit, nothing more, a fucking militia Air Force.”

  Tom had no rejoinder for this. He had done exactly that—come in and out of the Air Force when it suited him.

  Momyer went on, “But I’ve got no choice. I’ve watched you over the years and I’ve read some of the papers yo
u written about going back to basics.”

  Tom was granite faced. Over the years he had formally protested the emphasis the Tactical Air Command was placing on the delivery of nuclear weapons. He had insisted that this was the job of the Strategic Air Command and that TAC should become supreme in gunnery, in dive-bombing, and in dogfighting. Essentially he said that the key to air superiority was the fighter, not the fighter-bomber. It hadn’t made him popular.

  “The Sixth is in trouble. It has been coddled too long, and it’s not getting any results. The pilots are all pissed off because we are being assigned worthless targets from Washington. Well, we have had a lot of worthless targets, but when we’ve had a worthwhile target, the Sixth hasn’t taken it out.”

  Momyer’s face darkened. “We’ve lost eleven airplanes and twenty-two people in the last three months, all but a few against junk targets, mostly trucks carrying rice. Now when you take command, you can restore discipline and improve morale if you can. I frankly don’t give a damn about that, what I want is results. I don’t want any more losses, and I want the targets taken out on the first mission, not after three or four.”

  Tom did what any sane subordinate would do. He said, “Yes, sir,” saluted, and got the hell out of Momyer’s office. But ever since then his remarks had weighed on Tom. He was being handed a group of pilots whose training had been all wrong and who were not getting the right support in the field. All he had to do was reverse the process, see that they were trained, and instead of lobbing bombs on rice bags set about winning the war, the air war, anyway. Tom’s tour was for a year, but he was determined to shape the Sixth up in six months—and spend the next six months shooting down MiGs.

  The C-130 touched down right on schedule at Ubon and was cleared to park directly in front of Base Operations, where a reception committee waiting, backed by a huge sign saying: “Welcome to the Cougars.” A group of grinning officers was standing in rank order to greet him, and behind them was a bevy of beautiful Thai girls, each one with garlands of flowers.

  It put Tom off. There was a war going on and flowers from Thai girls were incongruous. But he was an old guy, from other wars; he knew these men would be looking at him with suspicion, wondering what an aging crock could contribute to them. He didn’t know himself.

  The acting wing commander, Lieutenant Colonel Fred Calfey, was genuinely glad to see him. Calfey took him down the line, introducing him to people whose names he forget immediately, as he knew they would always be wearing name tags.

  They knew from their own experience that Tom had had a long day, and Calfey took him to his quarters, a double-sized hooch fixed up with air-conditioning and a private bath.

  “Will we see you at the club, tonight, Colonel? There’s a lot of people who want to meet you.”

  “Sure, Fred, I’m going to have dinner, but then I’m going to cut out and come back here—I’ve got some paperwork today, and I want to get an early start tomorrow. I’d like to talk to everybody that’s not flying tomorrow at oh eight hundred.”

  “Nobody’s flying tomorrow, Colonel. We knew you’d want to talk to us, so we asked to stand down for one day.”

  Tom controlled his temper. Standing down for a goddamn briefing! No wonder Momyer was pissed off.

  “That’s fine. See you later, then.”

  As Calfey turned to go, Tom asked, “Is Captain Steve O’Malley still with the Sixth?”

  “Sure is; he’s due back from his mission in about twenty minutes.”

  “Well, when he’s debriefed, and if he feels up to it, would you ask him to drop by my quarters?”

  “Sure thing, Colonel.”

  O’MALLEY SHOWED UP an hour later, showered, shaved, and wearing a luxury, a clean flying suit.

  “Steve, I’m going to count on you for some straight answers. General Momyer is dissatisfied with the results the Sixth has been getting. I understand from the grapevine that morale is bad. How does it look to you?”

  O’Malley looked miserable. “I don’t want to be a fink, Colonel. This is a great group of people; they just haven’t had the leadership they need. Our last commander, Colonel Nealon, didn’t exactly lead from the front.”

  “Come on; tell me what’s going on. You’re not a fink; I know you better than that. But I’m behind the eight ball here; the guys will be watching me to see what I do, and I don’t want to make the same mistakes.”

  O’Malley unloaded. Nealon had flown only twenty-four missions in the previous year, and of these only two were “counters”—missions to North Vietnam.

  “And we’ve got this stupid stuff that comes down from the White House—I mean it, not Washington, but from the White House itself. It comes through channels, of course, and that means it takes so long that the enemy knows about it before we do. They say General Momyer hates it, but has to salute and do what he’s told. And the top people, the President, I guess, and the Sec Def, McNamara, are fixated on statistics. They want everything quantified. So when we were short on munitions, we were launching four F-4s, each one carrying half a load, because it increased the sortie rate.”

  As O’Malley went on, Tom got a clear picture of the problem. Good aircraft, great mechanics, good pilots, but poor morale because of the leadership and the stupid missions.

  “You’ve been briefed, I know, on the rules of engagement—we cannot hit enemy airfields, flak, or SAM sites unless they are preparing to fire on us. Crazy!”

  “What about the enemy? What are the North Vietnamese like?”

  “Damn clever. They have little itty-bitty airplanes that maneuver like crazy. Even the old MiG-17 is still competitive in its own regime. The MiG-21 is a hell of an interceptor. And they have good tactics—they are not interested in dogfighting; they just want to make the bombers drop their bombs. So they lie low, come in with plenty of speed, pull up, fire a heat-seeking missile, and they are gone. Sometimes they’ll stay and mix it up, but not often.”

  “Why do you think Momyer is so pissed about poor results? He must know the story here.”

  “I don’t think so. He knows that the orders come through from the White House—they go through his command—but he discounts that, saying those orders are a small percentage of what we do. But he is hit by the ground commanders in South Vietnam who see their forces and the South Vietnamese forces getting chewed up by regular North Vietnamese troops as well as by the Vietcong. He wants the supply routes stopped.”

  They talked some more and O’Malley left, obviously pleased at becoming a confidant of the new CO, a man he’d long admired. Tom sat back, disheartened. There was an obvious solution—you didn’t try to stop the flow of supplies by bombing men carrying bags of rice on their backs. You stopped it by bombing the source of the materials in Hanoi and Haiphong. But that was forbidden by the rules of engagement.

  Just before he dropped off to sleep, it came to Tom. There was no way to influence what the President wanted; there wouldn’t be any bombing of Hanoi or Haiphong in this administration. But Tom could get results if he got the North Vietnamese to engage and he could shoot down enough MiGs. It wouldn’t take a lot—there were probably no more than sixty or seventy MiGs in their inventory. But if he could take out a sizable chunk of them, it would make Momyer happy, it would raise the morale of the Sixth TFW, and it just might make Tom an ace in three wars.

  At eight o’clock the next morning, all the pilots and most of the staff officers in the wing were assembled in the only building big enough to accommodate them, the Officers Club. Tom called Calfey over and said, “Colonel, have the officers fall in outside the building in open ranks. You and I will inspect them.”

  Calfey looked at him dumbfounded, almost asking if he was kidding, then realizing that would be a mistake. It took ten minutes, but the men were finally assembled, and Tom and Calfey trooped their ranks. As Tom expected, it was unsatisfactory. He was not a fanatic on spit and polish, but these uniforms, shoes, and shaves were unacceptable.

  “Colonel Calfey, we’ll repeat this in
spection at eleven o’clock. Tell the men to be in Class A uniforms, have their shoes shined, and their faces shaved.”

  At eleven, Tom and Calfey repeated the performance. The sense of resentment was palpable, but the group was presentable.

  Tom said to Calfey, “Now we’ll have our meeting.”

  At eleven fifteen, Tom walked in at the back of the room, Calfey called the group to attention, and they sprang to their feet. Tom strode the length of the room to the podium. He stood there, seeming to gaze directly at every individual before saying, “At Ease.”

  He spent a full moment gazing around the room, watching the increased annoyance, some faces coloring, others making whispered asides. Then he said, “Pretty chickenshit, eh? Fat-assed old colonel, a crock from World War II, comes rolling into Ubon, doesn’t know his dick from a doorknob, and gets everybody into a sweat on their first day off in weeks. ‘The poor old bastard probably hasn’t flown this year, and he’s going to be leading us. God have mercy.’”

  Looking around, he asked, “Did that about sum it up? Well, you are right. I am a fat-assed old colonel, and I don’t know my dick from a doorknob, but I’m going to learn, and you are going to teach me. I’ll start flying tomorrow, number four in the last flight, and I’m going to have you teach me everything you know. I’ll move from position to position, from one day to the next, and in two weeks, I’ll know as much as you do, and from then on I’ll be leading the show, every show, and especially every show that goes north.”

  There was a quiet murmur, incredulous but approving.

  “Now we’re going to intensify our flying. We’ll fly all the missions they assign us, and we’ll fly an additional training mission every day. We’ll practice dive-bombing, air-to-air gunnery, and, most of all, how to avoid surface-to-air missiles. Don’t tell me we don’t have the airplanes to do this, or the fuel, or anything else. If we don’t have it, I’ll get it.”

  He stepped down from the podium, hesitated, then climbed back up on the little stage and said, “One more thing. We are going to shoot down one hell of a lot of MiGs in the process.”