Lucky’s Bridge (Vietnam Air War Book 2)

by Tom Wilson

  It was Pearly who interpreted the regulations and operations plans, who revealed the implications of new bombing restrictions passed from the President through the Air Staff, and who estimated the impact of various target assignments upon the North Vietnamese. He did his homework and seldom opened his mouth unless he was positive his answer was correct according to all available information. He kept himself and his staff of two officers, five noncoms, and nine airmen working long hours to make sure of that.

  Pearly held a Top Secret clearance, had access to SI/ TK/SK sensitive, compartmented information, and joked that he was cleared for the ridiculous. A sergeant in the comm center covertly tagged every classified scrap concerning North Vietnam that came in addressed to anyone in the headquarters. Pearly Gates scanned through each of those at his 800-words-per-minute reading rate, then pored more deliberately over the important ones.

  He also spoke often to the flying wing commanders to gain their impressions and input, and argued on their behalf at the headquarters staff meetings. Those favors generated trust, and he was told things other headquarters pukes were not. He read the after-action summaries transmitted from every wing, every day, and compared those to reports and estimates generated by the half-dozen Saigon intelligence sources he considered credible. He did all of those things in order to remain aware, to be able to put two and two together, and to provide informed answers to General Moss's tough questions.

  The field grades, from major through full colonel, were watershed ranks for officers in the military services, the shining time in a career when it was decided whether one was to progress to more important positions. Most Air Force light colonels believed success would come only by commanding a flying squadron or managing a highly visible department in a major headquarters. Neither of those were offered to Pearly, so he dedicated himself to a boring job no one else wanted and became indispensable.

  Lieutenant General Moss used Pearly Gates's knowledge as he might an encyclopedia, for he'd assigned him to the handful of trusted advisors that he called his mafia. If he had a question, Moss would call out his name, and a few minutes later Pearly would appear in his office to answer his question. To show he truly knew his subject, Pearly would sometimes add the volume, chapter, page, and paragraph number of the reference. General Moss knew he had his man, and Gates knew he was going to enjoy a more prosperous career.

  Pearly was an unlikely candidate for his role, for except for their dedication to duty, he and Richard J. Moss were opposites.

  Moss was tall and lean, exuding a sensitive, patrician air, and possessed the aura of a man born to command others. The extent of his intellectual bent was to quote, inaccurately if it met his purpose, historical military figures. He was vain and had a terrible, quick temper. He looked particularly at ease on a tennis court, but his staff members hated playing him, for he refused either to win or to lose graciously.

  Conversely, Pearly Gates was of average height and battled constantly to remain within official weight limits. He had a bulbous nose, a receding hairline, impossibly curly hair, and wore plastic-framed issue glasses to correct 20/100 nearsightedness. Pearly prided himself on being a steady, reliable, and reasonable man.

  It was a pilot's Air Force, a fact nurtured by the generals who had run the service since the first U.S. Army Signal Corps officers filched flights aboard the Wright Flyer. The great bulk of the aircraft assigned to Seventh Air Force units were fighters, and General Moss left no doubt that he was a fighter pilot. He believed strategic bombers and missiles should be transferred to the Army as part of their long-range artillery, and berated the dumber shits and clumsier oafs on his staff by saying they acted like "goddamn navigators."

  Pearly Gates was an unrepentant navigator. He knew that airplanes flew because of a nebulous thing called lift, but did not care to further explore the physics of flight. As a navigator he'd worked in the bellies of B-29's and nose compartments of B-47's, and then had been upgraded to become an electronic-warfare officer stuffed into darkened compartments in B-52's. All this had been done while he was assigned to Strategic Air Command. He'd never flown in a fighter aircraft and possessed no slightest wish to do so. Yet for some unfathomable reason, Pearly liked the obnoxious, superegotistical fighter pilots he met around the bases.

  Pearly carefully studied the traits of the fighters assigned to Seventh Air Force units. He learned their weapons configurations, their best and worst maneuvering regimes, and their peculiarities, strengths, and vulnerabilities. He knew to question when someone tried to assign F-4's to low altitudes or F-105's to the higher ones. He knew that fighter pilots preferred to fly at seven or eight nautical miles per minute in low-threat environs, and at nine or ten miles per minute in the presence of heavy defenses, to simplify navigation and fuel-flow computations. From the pilots in the various units he learned which weapons were appropriate for the various aircraft and targets, and he argued with the headquarters weapons people, often fruitlessly, to obtain them.

  Once he'd discovered an oddball weapons configuration directed in an air tasking order being prepared at the Tactical Air Control Center and had corrected the error before the ATO had been sent out to the fighter wings. General Moss had learned of it and had bestowed his highest compliment. "I don't care if you can't see jack-shit, Pearly," he'd said with a sincere smile, "they should've made you a fighter pilot."

  As soon as it had become clear that Pearly was Moss's chief mafioso of the North Vietnam bombing campaign, the general had grown protective. A new full colonel named Tom Lyons had learned this the previous week at the weekly ROLLING THUNDER recap meeting.

  For the dozenth time in as many weeks, Pearly had voiced his opinion that using F-105's and F-4's to bomb camouflaged jungle truck parks was too often a waste of munitions.

  Colonel Tom Lyons had interrupted Pearly to ask where he'd gained his information.

  Pearly had replied that he'd canvassed wing and squadron commanders and a number of unit pilots, had gone through a number of intell reports and that he'd concluded the results just weren't worth the resources they cost.

  Lyons, although new to the headquarters, had responded by admonishing him, speaking slowly as he might to a child. "We've got to stop the trucks some way, Gates, and fighters can bomb more accurately than the other birds over here."

  General Moss often argued the same point, but he'd regarded the colonel with the look he'd once given to dog mustard he found on his shoe after he'd walked across a Persian rug.

  If Lyons had not been so new and had known him better, he would have immediately stopped. Instead he'd shaken his head slowly, staring at Pearly's chest and his star-and-wreath-adorned Master Navigator wings. "You've got to be a pilot to understand that sometimes squadron jocks don't want to do the tough things it takes to win a war."

  Moss had grown pale about the ears as he continued to stare at Tom Lyons, who did not realize that his status had just dropped even lower than that of dogshit. Lyons had glanced about, smiled brightly at General Moss, then at his own two-star boss, the Deputy for Operations. He'd finished with a grandiose and self-important flick of his wrist to show that he would handle this minor irritant.

  "I'll speak to the commanders and reemphasize just how essential it is to continue the antitrucking campaign, and put a stop to these complaints," he'd said.

  The two-star DO started to give a terse warning to his man just as Moss's jaw began to quiver. Too outraged at first to speak, Moss had stabbed an angry forefinger at the colonel before gaining his voice. "Get the hell out of my meeting!" he'd roared.

  Lyons's jaw had drooped. He'd started to respond, but the DO quickly interrupted. "You heard him, Tom. I'll talk to you when we're done here."

  Moss had glared, and the colonel had slunk out of the room without understanding that by criticizing the general's handpicked mafioso, he had criticized Moss.

  "Who the hell was that fool?" Moss had snorted at the Deputy for Operations, still angry and not to be fooled with.

>   "Colonel Lyons, sir. Fresh from the Pentagon. He's taking over the Out-Country plans desk at the Tactical Air Control Center."

  Moss had snorted again. "Bullshit. Get him out of my headquarters and off my base!" Then the general's eyes had glittered. "Send him to Takhli. They don't get many colonel volunteers. Maybe B. J. Parker can use him."

  Colonel B. J. Parker was wing commander at Takhli Air Base, considered the shittiest assignment in Thailand for staff officers. Located in the boondocks in the middle of the blistering Thai savanna, Takhli had few amenities and no frills. There was no city there, only a small farming community. and the area's claim to fame was that it nurtured the world's largest king cobras. It was unbearably hot in the dry season and miserably wet during the monsoons.

  "Good choice, sir," said the Deputy for Operations. "Colonel Lyons checked out in the F-105 before coming over. He'd planned to get out periodically to fly with the units."

  Moss had nodded and returned his attention to the briefing. "Go on, Pearly." Then he'd growled at the audience, "And no more interruptions until he's done."

  While it had been confirmed that Lieutenant Colonel Pearly Gates was firmly entrenched on the general's list of good guys, Moss didn't agree to stop the fighters from bombing suspected truck parks. He made the same argument Colonel Tom Lyons had. Stopping the shipments of supplies to South Vietnam was too critical to allied efforts, he said.

  Lieutenant Colonel Pearly Gates

  A little after noon on Friday, Pearly sat waiting in the general's outer office, knowing he should move cautiously for what he was about to request. The importance of his business made him pause, for if properly pursued, the campaign he was about to suggest might make a great difference to the war effort.

  After ten long minutes the general's secretary spoke quietly on her intercom, then nodded at Pearly. "The general will see you."

  He stood, smiling appreciatively. He'd learned that an important key to getting things done in any headquarters was a good rapport with the secretaries. The fiftyish secretary had been with Moss since he'd been a colonel and zealously controlled access to his office.

  "He's not in a good mood," she whispered. Pearly was one of her favorites.

  Pearly pushed his glasses firmly into place, hitched and smoothed his uniform trousers, drew a breath, and then walked resolutely through the open doorway of the lion's den.

  Moss refocused his attention from the several-page message spread before him on the massive teak desk and nodded at Gates.

  "We're working for fools, Pearly."

  Gates stared without comment.

  "The President refuses to listen to anyone, and the Edsel mechanic's so convinced we're going to lose that he won't turn us loose to win."

  Gates swallowed, feeling uneasy. The general despised politicians and berated them mercilessly when he was with his mafia members. He especially disliked the Edsel mechanic, which was what he called the SecDef.

  "They want us to stop the supplies coming south, but they won't let us do it where it's easiest. Dammit, the supplies are on the docks at Haiphong and in the streets of Hanoi."

  Gates nodded glumly.

  Moss calmed himself a bit. "You here about this dumb-shit LOC message?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "They think it's a big deal, authorizing us to mount a campaign against the lines of communications. Hell, we've been bombing LOCs, especially roads and rail sidings, since before I got here last year."

  Pearly spoke cautiously. "They also want our ideas on how the campaign should be run. And it reads 'throughout North Vietnam,' so it's not as restrictive as we've seen."

  Moss snorted. "We've given 'em campaign plans before, but they've been ignored."

  "I think they may be prepared to listen, General."

  "Soon as they take the restrictions off and untie our hands, we'll give them all the results they want, but you and I know damned well they're not going to do that as long as Russia and Red China make sounds like they might step in. That's all bullshit, but they don't have the balls to ignore them." Moss tapped the message. "So what does that leave us?"

  "Perhaps there's something, sir. Back-channel I'm hearing that the President needs results because the voters are restless and it's getting close to election time."

  Back-channel messages were nonattributable, sent between individuals at the different headquarters without record and with no copies made. Back-channel info was what a headquarters puke like Pearly could learn from his contacts, unofficially and off the record. While sometimes speculative, back-channel information was often accurate.

  Moss brooded. "We're already hitting LOCs. How about the railroad sidings? Hell, we're hitting them every week."

  "Yes, sir, and those generally give us good results. We destroy considerable tonnages of war matériel that way."

  "When they let us hit the right ones, we do."

  Pearly sucked a breath and plunged in. "I want to concentrate on their bridges, sir."

  Moss narrowed his eyes. Gates had mentioned such a campaign before. Moss had discouraged it because he hadn't believed that, one, the brass would allow a concerted effort, and, two, that they could do it without taking undue losses because of all the restrictions.

  "Bridges are critical chokepoints on the lines of communications," said Pearly.

  "And what makes you think your plan won't be just another exercise in futility?"

  Pearly was ready. "I spent the night talking on the scrambler net. PACAF and CINCPAC thought a bridges campaign was a good idea, but they didn't believe the Pentagon would buy it. XOOF at the Pentagon thought it was an okay idea, but they thought it might piss off the JCS."

  Moss gave his I told you so look.

  "So I said screw it and used a shekel." Pearly Gates measured the give-and-take between staff officers at the various headquarters in imaginary shekels. "I called a friend at the joint-plans office at the Pentagon. He said they'd purposefully left the options open, that the President wants results so badly he'll even consider targets inside the restricted areas."

  "So it's up to CINCPAC?"

  "I called back to CINCPAC and told them what I'd learned. They said they'd consider the idea if you request it. Then they asked if it was you or me I was talking for."

  Moss waited.

  "I had to tell him that so far it was just me talking."

  Moss stared at him. "And that's the end of it?"

  Pearly nodded. "Anything more has to come from you, sir."

  "Give me the gist of your plan."

  "We keep bombing until we knock out the critical bridges between Hanoi, Haiphong, and China to slow down the surface shipments."

  Moss sighed, not excited with the idea. He stared at the window and the glare of the sun against the mesh curtains. "We'd need Navy support," he said begrudgingly.

  "Yes, sir. Especially for the bridges near Haiphong."

  Pack six, the Red River Valley of North Vietnam, was divided into two parts, six alpha and six bravo, separated by the railroad running northeast from Hanoi to China. The Air Force was generally responsible for the targets in six alpha, the western half of the valley. The Navy bombed mostly in the east, in six bravo. Since they both had their own jealously guarded bombing plans, the boundaries were sometimes crossed.

  Moss finally sighed. "Come on, Pearly. I know you've already brought it up to them. What's the Navy's reaction?"

  "Their targeting officers think it'd be a good idea, if . . . ah . . . we'd take care of our part."

  Moss glared. "We fly seventy-five percent of the combat missions, but the Navy gets seventy-five percent of the credit. We should keep them out of a few big ones, just to show the press who's doing the real work up north."

  "They're critical on this one."

  "We took the Thai Nguyen steel mill down . . . flew ninety percent of those missions, did most of the damage, and took most of the losses. But who got the credit in the press?" He snorted. "Our damned PR officers have to get off their asses."r />
  Pearly was prepared to use even inane arguments. "This time there'd be plenty of PR for everyone, sir. There'd be a lot of bridges to destroy."

  Moss stared at the window. "I don't know," he muttered, still unconvinced.

  "The wing commanders believe we can knock them all down, sir. They think some of them would be difficult, but they feel we can do it."

  Moss grunted. "It'd be harder than they think, especially if the North Vietnamese brought in large numbers of defenses. It takes big bombs to knock the things down, and it's no fun lugging them around when they're shooting like hell."

  Pearly released another tidbit. "My contact at PACAF thinks we'd be directed to use AGM-12 Bullpup missiles."

  Moss snorted again. "That's dumber than dirt! You've gotta get in close and guide them all the way to the target, for Christ's sake. Our pilots would be sitting ducks."

  "Maybe there's another option. A captain from Nellis Air Force Base came through the other day to brief us on a new family of weapons he's working on. He calls them smart bombs,' and from what he told me, they'd be perfect for targets like these."

  Moss narrowed his eyes. He'd come to Saigon from Nellis. "What was his name?"

  "Diller, sir. Captain Diller. He wanted to brief you, but you were unavailable."

  Moss chuckled. "Moods Diller. Used to work on projects with my fighter mafia guys there at Nellis. He's smart, but he's got his head up in the clouds, always coming up with ideas no one can understand or afford. I wouldn't get too excited about what he's got."

  "The people in our weapons shop here and at PACAF liked the sounds of them."

  "Has he got hardware, or is he just pipe-dreaming?"

  "From the sound of his talk, they're close to having hardware, sir. He'd like to get our support so he can get a higher priority to finish development."