Fighter Pilot

by Christina Olds

  Take the perch? What the hell was that? That was a Stateside procedure. We didn’t do that over here. This must be a new guy fresh from SAC and he was trying to pull the procedures he’d used over Nebraska. Well, to hell with that “perch” crap.

  “Orange 56. You just hold nice and still and we’ll work the prestrike refueling. That’s a good boy.”

  Orange 56 got the word because he held still as he was told. We bored straight in, each of the four of us taking our prestrike load and moving out to let the next man come in. The boomer was good and my guys were pros. The operation went smoothly as we flew north on Orange tanker track to our final top-off point over central Laos.

  I bid Orange 56 a fond “See ya” and headed my two flights of F-4s over for a rendezvous with our Thuds. The strike mission went smoothly, if you call dodging flak and SAMs smooth. Then we were hit by MiGs. As usual, all hell broke loose. During the ensuing tussle, Plymouth Flight became separated and wisely headed for home, as they were supposed to.

  Meanwhile, I kept Buick at it much too long and fuel became critical. I took a horrified look at my fuel gauge and shouted, “OK, guys, break it off. Break it off! Disengage heading 240 degrees! Bingo minus two. Egress!” and we streamed back over Thud Ridge at high speed. We were close to our “no-shit bingo” and I began to worry about reaching the tanker, let alone the nearest recovery base.

  In order to save fuel, I started climbing before we reached the Red. Considering the missile threat, that was not the safest thing to do, but it was certainly the lesser of two evils. I knew the tanker was waiting for us at the south end of his track and I wanted to get him headed north as soon as possible. Then I began to fret about the responsiveness of a new tanker crew, probably on their first refueling mission over here.

  I switched to the refueling frequency and called, “Orange 56, this is Buick. Head north, now!”

  He answered, “Roger, Buick Lead, as soon as I check in with Brigham.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Orange, Brigham is busy! Head north as fast as you can. I’ll work the intercept.”

  “But I—”

  “No damned buts, head north! NOW!”

  He must have sensed my urgency, as he let me know he was heading our way. I soon picked him up and told him I had him on radar. He knew he was already north of his normal track limit but, like a good fellow, kept right on coming.

  When he was 27 miles off my nose I told him to make the tightest 180 he had ever done. He was in an almost vertical bank when I got a visual of him. What a beautiful sight it was! He rolled out and headed south just as we came up under him. I moved into position first, and as the boom plugged in I saw I had about 400 pounds remaining. That’s less than four minutes’ flying time in the F-4, assuming the gauge is accurate and you’re at cruise power at altitude. As Lead I’d been tapping my burners during our engagement with the MiGs, and I knew the other guys had a lot more fuel than I did. I told the boomer to give me only 2,000 pounds and then I backed off so my wingmen could take on their full poststrike load of 4,500 pounds each. By the time number Four was finished refueling, I was back down to 300 pounds. I went under the tanker for my full share and gave a huge sigh of relief when the boom thudded home.

  Then it was suddenly disengaged and stowed under the KC-135 in the trail position.

  I hollered, “Hey, wait a minute, give me my fuel!”

  The tanker pilot responded, “We’re bingo. Returning to base.”

  “Bingo, hell! You don’t know what bingo is! Give me some fuel!”

  “No, we’re bingo, headed home.”

  I knew his bingo meant he could go from our position over Laos clear down to U-Tapao in southern Thailand, turn left, and proceed all the way to the Philippines. Even then, he’d have some fuel left over.

  “Look, buddy, I’m about to flame out. Give me some damned fuel.”

  “Sorry, I’m at my bingo and headed home.”

  “For God’s sake, those people down there in the jungle don’t like us at all. Give me fuel!” I even tried to pull rank on him, but in spite of my pleading and cussing, the tanker guy was adamant.

  Finally I said, “OK, I have a couple of Sidewinders left. I’m going to drop back behind you, and before I punch out, I’m going to pull the trigger. Put your parachutes on!”

  There was a moment’s hesitation before the boom came down with a twang. The boomer thudded it home and began pumping just as my left engine flamed out. I hung on desperately, hoping the incoming fuel would keep the right one going before it, too, quit. In what seemed like minutes but could have been only seconds, I got the left restarted and things settled down to normal.

  In a shaken voice, the tanker asked how much fuel I wanted, and I told him, “Fill ’er up!” I didn’t need or want that much, but I wanted the tanker guy to get the message. I said, “Look, 56, old buddy, we’re all in this together. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. Over here we help each other out. If you’re really low on gas you can stop short at Ubon and we’ll fill your damned tanker with bourbon.”

  That evening I called his boss and explained what had happened. He wasn’t all that happy, but he assured me he’d have a talk with Orange 56.

  The fighter guys knew we couldn’t operate without the tankers. We never forgot the many times they broke their own rules to save our butts. They were our safe ticket home, and our admiration for them ran deep. For all the old heads in SEA, the feeling was mutual. I’d goofed that day in more ways than one and I knew it, but I couldn’t help smiling at the thought of all that bourbon sloshing inside a tanker. Hell, there probably wasn’t that much booze west of Hawaii.

  Around the end of April, my notoriety was such that General Momyer, convinced by his staff officers (and probably Pentagon brass), told me I shouldn’t fly into North Vietnam anymore. The thought of me shot down, captured, and exploited by the People’s Republic PR machine was more than anyone could bear, so an order came down from 7th HQ directing that “Colonel Olds can no longer lead missions over North Vietnam.” Christ, they couldn’t even get that right! I called Phil Combies into my office, showed him the TWX, and said, “OK, Phil, YOU lead the missions. I’ll follow you and if the silly bastards figure that out, then I’ll change my name!”

  Also at this time I was keenly aware that the magical one hundredth mission would send me home sooner than end of tour, so I started covertly erasing my missions off the board. Nobody could figure out what number I had or hadn’t flown from that time forward. I kept the number hovering in the high eighties and low nineties. Damned if I was going to record one hundred before I was ORDERED home. We were busier than hell. No way was I going to leave.

  May started off with a bang. On the fourth we provided two flights of four F-4Cs each as MiG CAP for the strike forces of the 355th TFW. Chicago Lead was flight commander. I led Flamingo Flight. Dick Pascoe, Kirk, and Allen were my three wingmen.

  We were one mile in-trail of the last two Thuds in the strike force when four MiG-21s were sighted coming in from seven o’clock. Two of them sliced right up between my flight and the Thuds. I told the next-to-last F-105 flight to break and turned to take on the two 21s. The first one broke right and headed down and out. The other tried but was blocked, so he crossed and tried the other way. I pulled up high, staying inside the MiG’s turn, and hovered for a second to let him move forward on me. I dropped the nose and flipped the missile toggle down from Sparrow to Sidewinders, then waited for a growl. I finally got a Sidewinder off under marginal parameters. It tracked and exploded right beneath the MiG. Damage was not immediately apparent so I stuck with him. The MiG began turning madly, alternately losing control then recovering, some turns so violent that the aircraft snap-rolled in the opposite direction. He finally straightened out in a steep, steady dive heading directly for Phuc Yen. I closed to about 2,500 feet and saw he had brilliant magnesium flames erupting from the left side of his fuselage. He continued straight for the runway. Flak became dangerously thick. Then Bill Kirk saw
MiGs on my tail and called, “Flamingo, break right! Break!” Just as I did, Bill saw the MiG crash about 100 yards south of the runway, right in the middle of an active flak site. I was pissed I’d missed watching him go down. I inserted myself back between Bill and the MiGs. He moved off a bit to gain separation but kept asking, “Hey, Colonel, can I come in now?” which meant “Get out of my way!” On his third repeat, I growled at him, “Do you need an invitation?”

  When that donnybrook ended I took Flamingo Flight over Hanoi to cover the last of the Thuds coming off target, then turned right and headed for Hoa Lac. We dodged a pair of SAMs, then spotted four or five MiG-17s in the landing pattern. We tore into them like foxes in a henhouse at 1,500 to 6,000 feet, right over the center of the airdrome. The mix of F-4s and MiG-17s was thick enough to prevent the flak gunners from shooting. It was a dogfight reminiscent of World War II. Those MiG pilots were damned good. Round and round we went, me with no missiles left at all but enjoying myself immensely, making dry passes on the various MiGs. If only I’d had a gun! Would have had some lovely shots. We separated at bingo fuel. Number Four tapped the tanker with only 800 pounds remaining. Kirk confirmed my MiG. That made two for me.

  Back at home, it was business as usual for two weeks, nonstop in the air and on the ground; new F-4Ds started coming in with replacement crews, the F-104 pilots of the 435th at Udorn were transitioning out, and the 435th name and number were reassigned to Ubon as an F-4D squadron. When I wasn’t on missions, my days were filled by arguments with HQ, piles of reports to review, nonstop paperwork, and endless visitors. Days started early and nights ended late, either at the O club or back at my trailer doing homework. My office was rarely a sanctuary, but my administrative duties were held together by a ray of sunshine named Ruby Gilmore. Ruby had arrived in late March from Randolph as a replacement secretary. She thought she was headed for a civilian job in Bangkok when they suddenly shipped her to the 8th. The poor girl got to Ubon knowing nothing about the wing, but within a week she had whipped the whole office into shape. Her efficiency and pleasant personality had a calming effect on me. After grueling missions, I’d flop down on the sofa near my desk, falling asleep to the rhythmic sounds of typing and her voice on the phone.

  We all loved the C model of the F-4, but with the advent of this new bunch of upgraded jets, we old heads would be flying the new birds. We had to attend ground school to learn the main differences with the new Phantoms. The courses were taught mostly by tech reps, civilian experts from the various systems manufacturers and aircraft plants. The differences were minor, except for the new missile, the AIM-4 Falcon carried on the F-4D. Like our Sidewinder, it was a heat seeker. The tech rep extolled the virtues of the weapon, but to my way of thinking it didn’t have any, certainly not in the environment we faced each day.

  “Go over that again,” I asked the instructor.

  He did.

  “Once more,” I said.

  He did, this time with a bit of exasperation.

  I must have growled when I said, “Your damned missile might be OK for an Air Defense mission, but it won’t work here.”

  “How do you know, Colonel? You don’t know anything about it. It has been thoroughly tested by Systems Command and the Air Defense Command. It’s been fired at airborne targets at Eglin and out over the ranges at Point Mugu. It’s been adopted by ADC and installed on a good portion of the alert birds. It—”

  I interrupted. “I don’t give a rat’s ass where or by whom it’s been tested and accepted. I’m telling you the switchology you describe doesn’t fit our situation. Whoever thought up that gadget didn’t know a damned thing about air-to-air fighting, and didn’t ask anyone who ever had.” I left the briefing room in anger, not at the tech rep, who was only doing his job, but at whatever bunch of designers, developers, and procurers had put that creation on an air force fighter. I wondered what command wanted the damned thing in the first place. The Falcon required a complex set of steps to cool the seeker before the missile could be fired, sometimes taking up to a minute. Once cooled it was good for a limited period of time and couldn’t be cooled again. This was intolerable in dogfights. Who in hell thought we had the luxury of checking our watches? Unlike the Sidewinder, which had a proximity fuse and a sophisticated warhead, the AIM-4 had a contact fuse, which required a direct hit to explode. Assuming it locked on, launched, and guided, it had to hit the target with its little 3-pound warhead in order to do its job. What a classic fuck-up.

  It occurred to me that we were the warrior victims of an ongoing battle between the air force and navy. Our Sidewinder was a navy missile that had been thoroughly tested and proven in actual combat. That meant the air force procurement people had to go hat in hand to obtain a share of the production, and it also meant the operators had little or no control over any future changes and improvements. Bureaucracy! What the hell did I know about such things? All I had to do was determine if my reservations were valid and then find a way to do something about it. All of it could wait until the new squadron arrived. That would be soon.

  The F-4Ds would replace the F-104s in the 435th Tac Fighter Squadron. The pilots and crews of the 104s would return to the States, and the squadron designation would go to the F-4 crews and maintainers. The construction of the new 435th Squadron operations building proceeded on schedule and was just about complete before the first F-4Ds arrived. Telephones were installed; lockers were moved in; the squadron briefing room and the pilots’ lounge were the best on the base, with only a few bits of furniture still needed. The ground cadre arrived ahead of the pilots and settled into their hooches. The Combat Support Group’s construction people did a first-rate job all around. We hoped the new guys would appreciate what had been done for them.

  I admit all of us were impressed by the formation fly-past put on by the new squadron on arrival. After a near perfect transpacific crossing, they came over in squadron formation from their last stop in the Philippines. I met the squadron commander as he climbed down from his cockpit and offered my heartiest congratulations on the impressive show he and his troops had put on. As we stood in front of his aircraft we had to give way to one of my armament men driving a small tug. He pulled to a stop just past the bird. The squadron CO turned to see what was going on. The young airman was bare to the waist, tanned bronze, and wore one of those popular copies of an Aussie hat with the right brim pulled up tight against the crown. On top of that, he sported a truly impressive blond mustache sweeping jauntily out past his ears. Behind him were three small bomb dollies loaded with a total of nine 750-pound bombs. Farther back, another armament troop waited with four of the new AIM-4 Falcon missiles we were supposed to start using. Behind him were two men with a QRC 160 ECM pod.

  The lieutenant colonel’s reaction was amusing. I wondered what shocked him the most, the getup and mustache of the young bomb loader or the immediate appearance of all those bombs. Perhaps it was both because he turned to me with an air of bravado and asked, “Oh, going out tomorrow, are we?”

  “No, Colonel, you’re not, but the aircraft is.”

  “But that’s my aircraft!”

  I tried to control a growing exasperation. “Not anymore, Colonel. The minute that plane touched ground here at Ubon, it became part of the 8th TFW. I’ll use it as I see fit, for whatever purpose and whenever it fits the schedule. I assure you it will always be a part of your squadron. Your men will maintain it and you and your pilots will fly it when it’s available to you in the daily cycle. That’s the way we operate around here, and it would be wise if you understood and accepted what I’m telling you.”

  “But it’s a brand-new D,” he almost whispered.

  “I don’t give a damn if it’s a P!” I shot back. “It goes into the daily overall schedule, and that’s that.” I didn’t tell him we had all already gone to school on his precious D. He’d find out for himself in due course.

  Now it was his turn, and he replied with more anger than was prudent, “And what do you intend doing wi
th me and my pilots?”

  “You are all going to ground school,” I replied.

  “Ground school? The hell we are! Every pilot in my squadron is combat ready!”

  “Combat ready by whose standards?” I snorted. “You don’t know your ass from a hole in the ground about combat ready. If it makes you feel any better, neither did I, or anyone else around here, when we arrived. I’ll let you know when I think you’re ready to be called combat ready and then you’ll fly with someone who’ll keep your sorry asses alive. Furthermore, I’m splitting your pilots into three groups. One you’ll keep and the other two will fly with the 433rd and the Triple Nickel. I’m going to fill your outfit with an equal number of my old heads, each of whom has less than ten missions to go. You will listen to them, they will lead in the air, and they’ll teach you as they complete their hundred. In due time, you’ll get some of your guys back, but not until I’m satisfied all of you have learned how to survive this damned war.”

  To mollify my tirade, I added, “OK, I know you have a fine bunch of troops and I look forward to flying with you and getting to know you personally. Meanwhile, you’ll do exactly as I say.” I walked off. I hadn’t meant to get so pissed. I knew I hadn’t made a friend, but getting this job done properly had become an obsession, and I didn’t intend to take a bunch of losses by not doing what I knew had to be done.

  One day ground into the next, punctuated by a few highlights. Bill Kirk got his MiG on May 13. We rocked the O club that night. Colonel J. J. Burns assumed position as deputy for operations, and Chappie moved into the vice wing commander slot when Pappy Garrison headed for home. He was a great fighter pilot and ace in two wars. My God, how that Kentucky gentleman schoolteacher could handle an airplane! By Ubon he was so nearsighted he carried about four different pairs of glasses with him. He sneaked his way over to the 8th and never did get checked out properly in the F-4. He didn’t know the emergency procedures from sour owl manure. I always put an IP with him instead of just a GIB, but by God, if you wanted a target bombed, he would hit it. He would hit it when everybody else missed. That old-timer flew his fifty-second mission on his fifty-second birthday. He got furious with me because I wouldn’t let him get up there among the MiGs. I told him, “Pappy, every fighter pilot in the air force knows and loves you, and I am not going to be the guy that sends you up there to get your butt scragged.” He just could not see anymore. He would swear that he could, but I knew damn well that without his bifocals he could not see a thing. Those weren’t going to help him at six g’s. God, I would miss him.