Fighter Pilot

by Christina Olds

  May 20 started out like many days. The morning mission went out as scheduled. The afternoon frag was a MiG CAP escorting a large force of Takhli F-105s to the Bac Giang railroad yards in northeast North Vietnam. The route in was from the Gulf of Tonkin, straight west along MiG Ridge. Usually two flights of F-4 Phantoms were inserted into the strike force, but this day was strictly CAP. We had two flights of four F-4s each, loaded with four AIM-7s and four AIM-9s. Lead of Ballot flight was Major Phil Combies with Dan Lafferty. Ballot flight flew up front near the lead Wild Weasel flight, offset about a mile to the left. I led the second flight, Tampa, with Lieutenant Steve Croker in my backseat. We were offset to the right two miles and behind the strike force about three miles. Jack Van Loan was my wingman; his GIB was Joe Milligan. Bob Pardo and Steve Wayne were Three, and Ron Catton with Ron Ayers, number Four.

  The current MiG CAP tactics had been very successful. A lot of mutual respect had developed between the 8th and the 355th. Takhli’s formations were 100 percent improved over two months before. They got their gang of brass-balled Thud drivers in and out in one hell of a hurry while still making the MiGs commit themselves to come up after them. This certainly made our job easier. Plus, the new system of MiG calls was working pretty well. Ever since Bolo we’d greatly improved communication among all of the players. Whoever was doing the calling certainly knew what they were talking about. We thanked our unknown benefactor every day. We had no idea how much they were still holding back.

  Fifteen miles short of target, all hell broke loose.

  “Tampa, Break left!”

  That scream from Pardo meant only one thing: MiGs! And they had to be behind us and close. I rolled left and hauled the stick back into my gut. Head over my shoulder, eyes straining, looking, searching … there they came, up from our deep six o’clock, looked like twelve to sixteen of them, God knew how many—some were already through us. The sky was full of whirling, shooting aircraft. One MiG went down. Pardo’s. My wingman was hit hard. I looked back over my shoulder and saw his F-4 nose straight up, a ball of fire, out of control, two bodies ejecting; two good chutes. Van Loan and Milligan had gotten out. No time to worry. One of the bastards was off to my eleven. I continued my turn, switched to Sparrow missiles, got a bead on him, went interlocks out, mashed the button, and squeezed the trigger. The two-second delay was a lifetime. I willed it away, “Go, damn it, go!” With a whoosh, the Sparrow blasted out in front of me, arced toward the MiG, and exploded in a burst of fire. The MiG tumbled down to the left. Damn! Too close to get radar lock-ons for Sparrows. I switched to Sidewinders. There was another one, closing on one of my guys. I pulled up in a rolling turn, breaking down and behind that MiG, close enough, but too close for the AIM-9. He saw me, broke hard left, and disappeared. More MiGs were all around us, and one was down on the deck slowly circling. He was doing a figure eight, the shadow close beneath him giving him away. MiGs everywhere—one took a head-on at me, but no way for me to fire back with a Sidewinder. Christ, I wish I had a gun!

  A damned SAM came right through the middle of the melee. The bastards didn’t care if they hit their own people! Then, “Look out! Thuds at nine!” Right through the battle they came. They’d hit their target and were headed home like a herd of stripe-assed apes, moving at warp 2, it seemed. As fast as they came they left, scarcely interrupting our private fight.

  It was quiet for a few seconds before calls came from my guys, warning one another in excited voices, too much noise. This was no time for me to lecture about radio discipline. The MiGs had formed a huge circle, were following one another, protecting the rear of the guy in front; pretty good tactics. All of us were trying to get a crack at them. Each time one of us tried to line up for a shot we’d have to break off as a pair of MiGs from the opposite side of their circle came at us. Damned good discipline, I thought, giving the devils their due. Without a wingman, I was particularly vulnerable and had to watch my back constantly. It occurred to me they were being directed by that loner down on the deck. He was probably watching our telltale smoke trails and giving warnings and orders to his people, but there was no time for him—my fuel gauge told me the fight was over. This was the longest aerial battle I’d ever experienced, fourteen minutes of pure dogfight. It was high time for us to get the hell out of there.

  “OK, guys, this is Tampa Lead, we’re bingo, RTB, all of you, haul ass!”

  As I completed one last circle of the area checking for any of my stray guys, I saw the main body of MiGs turning for Kep just over a small range of hills. That loner was still down there, still circling, probably doing his own checking for any of his troops. I turned for the coast, certain I was the last out. Then it struck me: I’ve got enough fuel (I hope). Why not go for that MiG leader? At least I could scare him a little.

  Calling ahead I said, “You guys go on. I’m going back to find the loner I spotted.”

  I went out about five miles, pulled a hard 180, went back to the scene of action, and there he was, just turning for the small range of hills between him and his base. I pulled the throttles back to idle to avoid an overshoot. He saw me or was warned by a ground observer because he frantically jinked right and left, hugging the ground for all he was worth. I stayed below him at 30 to 50 feet as we tore across the deck. I knew I was too low to fire a Sidewinder. There was too much reflected heat from the rice fields below us. I could only watch his frantic maneuvering as he approached the hills through a small valley.

  “Look at him, Steve,” I called over my left shoulder. “Watch, he’s in a real bind. He’s going to hit that ridge in front of him, bail out, or pull up and give us some blue sky. No good choices. Oops, there he goes, up over the ridge! There goes our Sidewinder. It’s tracking—come on, baby, do your stuff, come on!”

  Just as the MiG cleared the hill, nose starting down, the Sidewinder struck near his tail in a great blast, blowing off a cloud of debris. He pitched violently left just as I cleared him by about 75 feet. I couldn’t see if he crashed and couldn’t go behind the ridge to check because it was way past time for us to head out.

  Fuel was really a problem now and I began to wonder how I could explain to General Momyer why we’d had to bail out over the gulf. We reached the coast but were still a long way from help. To my relief, a frantic call to our poststrike tanker brought an immediate response, and he headed north to meet us. By the time I got there, Pardo and Catton had taken on fuel and were cycling through again. The tanker pilot asked why there were only three of us, but I was in no mood to talk. I said little, but hooked up quickly with only 300 pounds of fuel remaining.

  I don’t think Steve and I talked all the way back to Thailand. There was too much to think about, too much adrenaline, too many dark thoughts about Jack and Joe interspersed with our own thought that we had lived through another one. There were no victory rolls over the airfield. We landed without fanfare and went to debriefing. Combies and Pardo got a MiG each. As it turned out, I was given credit for that last MiG, too; our intelligence people had their own way of knowing those things. That made numbers three and four for me, but this was the first time I had ever lost a wingman in battle and it felt like shit. I found out later that Van Loan chased two MiGs off my tail just before he was hit and bailed out. No beepers were heard. I hoped like hell they were alive. We learned later that both survived the bailout but Jack was engulfed in fire around his head and neck. They were captured and hauled off to a POW camp. Jack learned to use maggots to treat his burns; they ate the dead flesh, leaving the good. He recovered well, with few scars to show for it. Both of them were Uncle Ho’s guests for five and a half years.

  Two days after that battle, I headed off with Chappie, Dee Simmonds, and several other Ubon pilots to the 388th Wing at Korat for another tactics meeting. This was held on Buddha’s birthday because we were all standing down for the holiday. Scrappy Johnson determined this one would be the First Practice Reunion of the Red River Valley Pilots Association. We wouldn’t have a “real” reunion until the
war ended and all POWs came home. The 388th really did it up. We landed at Korat and were met by six elephants, lovely Thai hostesses in traditional dress, and a band from the 13th AF! I was ordered onto the first elephant and led a parade from the flight line to the O club, where we were greeted by a forty-foot banner proclaiming, WELCOME, RED RIVER VALLEY FIGHTER PILOTS ASSOCIATION. We had one hell of a party. Chappie, in his most natural state as grand orator, was master of ceremonies. I instigated the first River Rat MiG Sweep. The club and all pilots survived. The tactics conference was also worthwhile, with much agreed upon by the various wings. It remained to be seen what decisions would be enacted.

  19

  The Ending Battle

  May and June brought a resurgence of MiGs. We took a heavy toll on MiGs in May battles and they disappeared completely for over three weeks. I believed they retreated into one corner of their hangar, sulked a bit, then tried to revise their tactics. Many of my guys were strutting and celebrating, “We mauled ’em all!” Chappie was all puffed up about it, which tweaked me no end, due to his basic noninvolvement in actual battles. We had several words in private about it, to no avail. His new title of vice wing commander appeared elevation enough to justify the grandstanding. What was I going to do with my good friend?

  While the 8th and the other wings on regular strike missions were appreciating the breather from MiGs, I was fretting about what was really going on behind the scenes. There were few stories in the press or coming out of Saigon about the MiG-17, only disparaging remarks belittling the North Vietnamese combat capability. Pretty strong stuff, coming from armchair strategists and performance data analysts, but I knew the MiG-17 to be a vicious, nasty little beast. As marvelous as our Phantoms were in air-to-air combat, they were no match for the MiGs. We were heavily loaded with bombs, external tanks, missiles, and pods, just pressing in with one objective: the ground target. It was fine to advertise that the F-4 could do Mach 2 plus, or that the F-105 was the fastest thing down low that was ever built, but we weren’t going fast with all those bombs, nowhere near as fast as our capability. Our first hard turn put us at the speed where the MiG-17, as old as it was, was at its best. He could intercept and close with us. Once he did that, his wing loading was so light that his turn capability was fantastic. There was no way to turn an F-4 with a MiG-17 and no way to battle with it in a classic World War II dogfight. I liked to think that if I’d been a North Vietnamese pilot, I would have been an ace ten times over. Give me a little plane with a great big gun; Snoopy flying alone on his doghouse shaking his fisted paw at the sky, shouting, “Curse you, Red Baron!” I was Snoopy in my dreams, but only in my dreams. The real world SEA conflict was a much bigger dog.

  Statistics showed we had a four-to-one advantage over MiGs in air combat kills. We had that advantage only because we had the combination of damn fine aircraft, training, skill, discipline, and leadership across the board. The MiGs found our strike forces a tough nut to crack, but they cracked it increasingly often. Despite our advantages, we often fought them to a draw. Sometimes our flight of four would be hit by twelve MiGs. The eight of us flying the MiG CAP on May 20 were hit by a force of sixteen MiGs—hardly a superiority of numbers. We got lucky that day. I got two, Pardo and Combies each got one. The U.S. got five total.

  By the beginning of June, we all hated the new AIM-4 Falcon missiles. I loathed the damned useless things! I wanted my Sidewinders back. In two missions I had fired seven or eight of the bloody things and not one guided. They were worse than I had anticipated. Sometimes they refused to launch; sometimes they just cruised off into the blue without guiding. And then, in the thick of an engagement with my head twisting and turning, trying to keep track of friend and foe, I’d forget which one of the four I had selected and couldn’t tell which of the remaining was perking and which was already expired on its launch rail. Twice upon returning to base I had the tech rep go over the switchology and firing sequences. We never discovered I was doing anything wrong.

  The June 5 mission became the last straw. It started with a ray of hope when I locked onto a MiG-17 and completed the firing. Away went the Falcon. Oh shit! The bloody missile was guiding! Now what? After all my bitching and complaining about the AIM-4, one was about to work. It was tracking straight and true at the tailpipe of the MiG-17 in front of me. Then, suddenly, it went almost straight up, nosed over violently, and disappeared, going straight down. Damn it.

  The MiG headed for the deck and home. The fight was over. I called out to my troops, “OK, guys, time to RTB. Head out 310 to the Dog Pecker, then the tanker.”

  I turned to that heading and glanced around for any other Phantoms that might be around.

  Sure enough there was my wingman, Dick Pascoe, right in position. Dick was a wonderfully aggressive bastard. He and his backseater, Norm Wells, were among the very best: Dick flying the jet, and that crazy Norm with his Leica slung around his neck, taking pictures during the roughest moments of a mission. Unbelievable!

  Suddenly, there! I saw one lone MiG down low behind us in a turn headed back toward his base. I called to Dick, “Two, slice back left. MiG will be low and just about on your nose. I’ll cover you. Got him?”

  “I got him!”

  “Go, man, you’re covered!”

  Down he dove with me out on his right wing, down, down. And I was thinking, Shoot, for Christ’s sake, shoot!

  Not Mr. Cool. He went down till he was below and in perfect range, then fired one Sidewinder. It tracked true, exploding just below the MiG. Over went the MiG, smoke and parts streaming, and the pilot punched out low, too low. The MiG crashed in a quick explosion.

  “Good work, Dick. Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

  That was Dick and Norm’s second MiG. He wasn’t excited, oh no, not at all, just did victory rolls all the way to the tanker and home. I shared his elation but was also seething at the worthlessness of that blasted AIM-4, foisted upon the air force by a group of idiots who didn’t have a clue.

  As we neared home plate I called ahead and told command post to have Ernie Timm, the maintenance honcho, meet me out on the flight line when we landed. After dearming I taxied to my parking slot and shut down. Ernie had a quizzical expression on this face. I didn’t keep him waiting long.

  “Ernie, I want you to take those goddamn AIM-4s off all the D models and replace ’em with Sidewinders. I don’t give a rat’s ass what you do with those pieces of junk, but I don’t want to see another one on this ramp, ever!”

  “Boss, for God’s sake, we can’t do that! It’s not—”

  “Ernie, I know what you’re thinking, and I’m not going to quarrel with you. Do the D models have proper circuitry to fire Sidewinders?”

  “I don’t know right offhand but I can sure find out in a hurry. But, boss, it’s against regulations!”

  “No buts, Ernie. Let me know ASAP!”

  He was back within the hour. “Boss, there’s proper power and we can mount the LAU-12 launch rails and missiles on the D model inboard pylons. They’ll fire off the stick trigger just like the C models, but you won’t get steering information.”

  “Christ’s sake, Ernie, do you think we’re interceptor pilots? We don’t use steering information in our kind of fighting! Look, while you’re at it, I want you to have the maintenance shop fabricate shims just about the size of my fist to move the launch rails out from the pylon.”

  “Why, boss?”

  “Because I want the lower inboard fin on the Sidewinders to clear the sway braces on the TER if we load it on the same pylon.”

  “My God, boss, we can’t do that!”

  “Why not, Ernie?”

  “Because, because, uh, the tech orders for our birds don’t cover both bombs and missiles on the inboards, and no one has flown or tested the F-4 with that configuration, and—”

  “OK, my friend, I know you’re right and I appreciate that’s your job, but do as I say. And I want that shim on all the older C models, too. Understand? When you’ve got one r
eady with bombs and missiles, let me know and I’ll take it out over Laos for testing. I’ll fire the AIM-9s at the sun first. When I come back you’ll know the change has worked and you can write an addendum to the tech orders if you like. Oh, by the way, I don’t think it’s necessary to bother higher headquarters with our little change. They have far more important things on their minds. Also, Ernie, I really appreciate your concern about these changes. If any flak comes down from above it won’t reach you. I’ll just let it bounce off my head. But think what we’re doing. Instead of either/or, we’ll now go up north with bombs and missiles, giving the Thuds MiG coverage as well as delivering ordnance ourselves. I expect it’ll change the whole damn way the strike force does business: Double our pleasure, double our fun!”

  I figured I’d be in a lot of trouble when headquarters found out what I was doing, but by then it would be too late.

  A couple of weeks later Al Shintz, an old friend, was at Ubon checking up on the performance of the D model in combat. He was in the system at Eglin at the time. Responsibility for upgrading to the D model was his baby. We were standing out on the ramp in front of one of the jets and Al was asking questions.

  “Well, Robin, how do you like the D?”

  “Al, it was great getting some new birds in the maintenance flow. These low-time Ds really helped.”