by Tom Wilson
"Push it up," was all Lucky said, but his voice was cool and sure, and they all followed him as he slowly descended and accelerated, faster and faster yet, until they were flying just above Mach one, and descended lower and lower, until they were less than 200 feet above the water.
"You are now bulletproof," came Major Lucky's laconic call.
They streaked past the coast, still traveling at the speed of heat and so low they barely skimmed over the swells in the Ca River, ignoring the squealing sounds from their RHAWs and watching only the man they were flying formation with.
"They cannot hit you if they cannot see you," called the even voice of Lucky Anderson, and they knew they were a fuzzy, noisy blur to anyone watching from the ground.
They followed the gentle S-curves of the river, still flying so low and so fast they were invisible. Too low for radar detection. Too low and fast for human detection. By the time human ears heard them, they would be past and going out of sight.
Then Lucky was climbing, and they were following. Up quickly, then leveling out at 4,500 feet, throttling back to five-fifty knots, now out of range of the Vinh defenses.
"That, gentlemen, is rule one. The laws of physics and logic do not change in combat. If they can't locate you, they can't harm you. The bad thing about flying down there is you have trouble finding targets and delivering bombs with any real accuracy. So we fly up higher like this most of the time to be able to see. Any questions, Tinker flight?"
"Tinker lead, Tinker three," called Manny DeVera. "Are those barges I see down at our two o'clock?"
There were five river barges being hauled by a tugboat, stacked high with barrels of fuel and headed up the Ca River toward the trucks traveling the Ho Chi Minh Trail. When Tinker flight finally pulled off ten minutes later, after their final bomb release and strafe pass, the tug was sunk and all five barges were burning furiously, floating aimlessly back toward Vinh and the sea.
1855 Local—355th TFW Command Post, Takhli RTAFB, Thailand
Lieutenant Colonel Pearly Gates
The thing that bothered Pearly most about the briefing was the presence of Colonel Tom Lyons, because Lyons regarded him with a sour frown throughout.
The thing he liked best about it was seeing a lot of faces among the key combat-operations staff that he remembered from earlier forays to Tahkli. Fiery Colonel B. J. Parker and his quiet Deputy for Operations. The heroic majors: like the weapons officer, Max Foley, who had shot down two MiGs, and badly scarred Lucky Anderson, who had pressed in close and taken down an entire blast furnace of the Thai Nguyen steel mill, then limped home with severe battle damage from his own bombs. He couldn't forget Lieutenant Colonel Mack MacLendon, regarded by some as the canniest combat squadron commander in the free world. But several other faces were unknown to him, and that was sad because they'd replaced others who'd been shot down.
The 354th TFS, for instance, presently had no squadron CO, for the last two commanders had been shot down in rapid succession. A new commander was in the pipeline, which meant he was being shipped over from the States, but in the interim one of the flight commanders was acting in his place. B. J. Parker had told Pearly he'd offered the interim job to Lucky Anderson, but that Anderson had asked not to be considered. He was happy leading his C-Flight. Lucky Anderson was a strange duck, he thought. Most men would have jumped at the chance to command a squadron.
Mack MacLendon handed him a cup of coffee, although he hadn't asked for it, and said, "You look like you need this." Pearly was indeed tired, having already visited Danang, Udorn, Ubon, and Korat.
"We've missed you, Pearly," said the quiet Deputy for Operations. "What's it been now? A month?"
"Six weeks since I was here last, sir," said Pearly. He took a sip of coffee and almost choked. Then he took a more appreciative gulp, for it was laced with good brandy.
"Great coffee," he said to Mack.
"What kind of bullshit target you got for us this time, Pearly?" growled B. J. Parker. "Another Thai Nguyen?"
He grimaced. "I sure as hell hope not, Colonel." He'd shuttled like this, between the headquarters and the bases, during the strikes at the Thai Nguyen steel mill. The enemy had dragged up every defense imaginable there, and the two sides had gone at it tooth and nail. In the end air power had won out, for the steel mill had been leveled and the SAM defenses punished and battered, but the losses had been heavy.
Pearly sipped his coffee. "Which targets would you like to take out most, sir?"
Parker narrowed his eyes and stared, afraid to say it unless it was true.
"How about a couple of MiG bases?" prompted Pearly.
Silence pervaded the room as B. J. Parker's mouth began to crinkle into the same smile General Moss had worn a few hours earlier. Some said it was because the politicians were afraid of harming Russian advisors, while others said it was because they feared the appearance of escalating the war. But for some reason, until now they'd been restricted from striking the enemy's air bases.
"How about Kep and Hoa Lac?" Pearly asked.
"Hot damn!" whooped Major Max Foley, seated beside Parker.
"Are Phuc Yen and Kien An on your list?" asked Lucky Anderson. Those were the two primary MiG bases, the first just north of Hanoi, the other immediately south of Haiphong.
"They're not on this list. So far they've just authorized Kep, Hoa Lac, and a few smaller fields like Vinh, Yen Bai, Dien Bien Phu, and Dong Hoi, which are pretty well unusable anyway. Kep and Hoa Lac are the biggest ones on the list."
"Lucky, don't question," grinned Mack MacLendon. "We'll take 'em, Pearly."
"Damned right." Parker had found his voice. "But as soon as we've wiped these out, get us permission to bomb their main bases."
"You don't have to encourage us, sir. General Moss would love to turn you loose on Phuc Yen. He asks for authorization almost weekly."
"Okay, tell us about Kep and Hoa Lac," Parker said, sitting back with his arms folded across his chest and peering up at the large map of North Vietnam behind the podium.
Pearly paused to double-check his data. He'd just briefed at the other bases, but he liked to be meticulously correct when men's lives might depend upon him.
"Both bases are near Hanoi. Hoa Lac's fifteen nautical miles west, and last Thursday there were eight MiG-17's there. Kep is thirty-three miles northeast of Hanoi. We don't have a current estimate, but a week ago Motel radar reported six MiG-17's had landed there."
"Everything you're saying is a week old," grumbled Colonel Tom Lyons, speaking up for the first time. "Don't you have any current information?"
"Not really," said Pearly.
"Haven't you learned what tactical recce's about? Get us some current photos, dammit. How else are we going to know what we'll find there?" asked Lyons. His tone was increasing in both volume and nastiness.
Pearly looked directly at Lyons. "Colonel, we're trying to keep this one from the enemy. If we sent in recce birds, it would be like sending them a telegraph we're coming. Right now their defenses are bunched around other areas, and that's where we want them."
"What areas?" asked Lyons, spitting out the words as if he didn't believe him.
Pearly hedged. "That's really not a part of this briefing, Colonel."
"You mean," said Lyons with disbelief, "that you've got information about defenses that you're going to withhold from the combat units? Unbelievable."
Pearly opened his mouth to answer, then realized Lyons had him trapped, that anything he said would appear trite.
"I'll provide a follow-on briefing for Colonel Parker's ears only," he finally said.
Lyons shook his head in disgust.
"That's okay, Tom," said B. J. Parker, his brow furrowing at the undercurrents. "We'll take these targets, no questions asked. You don't realize how long we've been waiting to knock out the MiG bases." Parker paused, then sighed. "But I agree it'd be nice if we knew whether we were going to find MiGs there."
"Amen," Lyons snorted, glaring at Pearly.
"How about their bombers?' asked Colonel Parker hopefully.
"Four operations IL-28's are based at Phuc Yen. When they fly, which is seldom, it's usually on short training missions up toward China. They're big enough we can track them using Motel, and we've never seen 'em go into either Kep or Hoa Lac." "Motel" was the call sign for the sensitive over-the-horizon radar set up at Udorn Air Base, Thailand.
"Well, hell," said Parker. "When do we get turned loose?"
"Tomorrow morning, sir. We'll be hitting both bases off and on all day long. Your wing is assigned to strike Kep in the morning and Hoa Lac in the afternoon."
Parker stared. "Will we be first to strike Kep?"
"Yes, sir, you will."
That made B. J. Parker look happier.
"You won't receive official tasking until after midnight tonight, sir, but General Moss said to assure you that there'll be no surprises."
"What are the weapons loads, so I can alert the munitions people and the load crews?" asked the Deputy for Maintenance.
Pearly reached into his briefcase for the information sheets he'd made up before leaving Saigon.
Later, when there was only B. J. Parker and himself left in the room, and as he sipped from the third cup of coffee provided by Colonel Mack, Pearly allowed himself the luxury of relaxing. He explained that, though bombing the MiG bases was something they'd waited a long time for, they were intended mainly as a diversion, to draw the guns away from the bridges before that campaign was begun. Then he went over the upcoming strike at the Paul Doumer bridge and mentioned that PACAF wanted them to use Bullpup missiles.
Parker stared up at the map. "So you're saying the word got out somehow, and the gomers are piling their defenses around the bridges? Where's the leak, Pearly?"
"God only knows, Colonel. The General's got half the spooks in Saigon tripping over one another trying to find out."
"If their intell's so good, what makes you think the gomers'll sucker for this one and pull their guns away from the bridges?"
"I don't know they'll fall for it at all, sir."
Parker was frowning. "A bridge might look big from the ground, Pearly, but from the air it's damned small. You want to hit it with a Bullpup, you've got to fly straight and level enough to keep your eye on the missile until it hits. If we use bombs, some of the guys'll end up pressing too low . . . all of which means they'll be vulnerable. That'll be doubly so on smaller bridges that are heavily defended. Is the general aware of all that?"
"Yes, sir." Pearly cocked his head inquisitively. "Are you against this campaign?"
B. J. Parker mused for a moment, then shook his head. "I'm just telling you there'll be losses. If I could read the future, I might be against it. Like if I knew this was just another stop-and-start campaign. If we're going to go out and bomb a bridge, then give 'em time to repair it, then maybe bomb another one, or stop bombing them altogether, then I'd say it's another bunch of bullshit. You've got to admit that so far no one's been very persevering at waging this war."
"I concur, sir."
Parker shook his head. "If they don't turn us loose and let us fight, the people back home are going to get sick and tired of it all and say that's enough. Then someday someone'll look back and believe we failed and not know it was political lack of purpose."
Before he left to return to the flight line and the T-39 waiting there to take him back to Saigon, B. J. Parker asked what was going on between him and Colonel Lyons. Pearly told him what had transpired at the meeting at Seventh Air Force headquarters, without casting blame. Parker took it in without comment.
CHAPTER FIVE
Monday, April 24th, 0350 Local—Command Post Briefing Theater, Takhli RTAFB, Thailand
Major Lucky Anderson
The men were restless. They knew the target was a special one because the eight flight leaders had spent part of the night planning the thing. Lucky hadn't gone to bed until one and had left a message for the squadron orderly to wake him at three-fifteen.
B. J. Parker came into the briefing theater and peered about. "Looks like a happy group," he said.
A weary-looking tech sergeant entered behind him and went to the backlit Plexiglas board. He started writing target coordinates, and the muttering got louder.
Parker had told the flight leaders he personally wanted to break the news about the target. He'd wanted to bomb the MiG bases since he'd gotten to Takhli, had requested that permission from the generals from the various headquarters every time he got his chance. Now B.J. felt a personal triumph that they were getting to go after them, even if they were limited to the small ones. But the wing commander hadn't mentioned telling the men about another directive received from PACAF, which Lucky had just heard about. He wondered if Parker would cover the bullshit news as well as the good.
B.J. waited for a couple of last-minute stragglers to take their seats, nodded to the lieutenant from intell to shut the door, then pointed his finger out at the fighter pilots in the room. The muttering subsided.
"Wars are won by the troops on the ground, but since 1917 we've realized that we can make a hell of a difference by supporting them from the air. Air support is vital to modern conflict, but to properly provide that support, we must first gain air superiority. The first step of gaining air superiority is to take out the enemy's airfields and not give his aircraft a place to land or hide. Every war plan we've ever devised has targeted enemy airfields. Yet whenever I've asked for that authority in this conflict, I've been told no."
B.J. nodded at the backlit Plexiglas board.
"We've wanted this every time we watched the MiGs taxi out while we flew by, every time they jumped us when we were on our way to a target loaded with bombs, and every time one of the bastards popped out of a cloud, fired an Atoll missile at one of our buddies, then ran like hell for his base, where we couldn't shoot back. Now you're going to remove one of the enemy's sanctuaries. Gentlemen, today, all day, we'll be going after two of their MiG bases."
The pilots' whispering grew loud.
Parker said he'd wanted to lead this one himself, but had been restricted because of the sensitivity of certain information he'd recently received. Parker gave the men a few more rah-rah words, then turned the briefing over to Mack MacLendon, commander of the 357th.
As Lucky had anticipated, the wing commander had presented the good news and left the bad stuff for Mack.
Colonel Mack was an experienced fighter jock, liked and admired by Lucky and most of the other combat pilots. He'd flown P-47's in North Africa and Europe in World War II, and was regarded as both a fine leader and a competent pilot. No one complained when Mack was placed in charge of a tough mission.
But then Colonel Mack gave them a surprise. The commander at Headquarters PACAF, the general with the bomber background who thought fighter jocks were dumb-shit cowboys and called them that, had changed the way they were going to fly. At their sister base at Korat, the Thud drivers had been trying a formation designed to baffle the sophisticated SAM radars, where everyone flew in a single giant gaggle with their ECM pods turned on. The message from PACAF had directed that Takhli fly the same formation.
"Horseshit," said Captain Turk Tatro, who sat beside Lucky. Like Turk, Lucky preferred the flexibility of the fluid-four formation, but he remained quiet.
"Dammit to hell," exploded Major Max Foley from nearby. Max had been at the club eating breakfast when the other flight leaders had been told about the PACAF message, so this was the first he'd heard of it. They'd had their chance to cool off while he had not. "What kind of lunacy is this?" he raged.
"Fucking bomber generals at PACAF headquarters, I'll bet," growled Turk Tatro. "Betcha Bomber Joe Roman got nostalgic thinking about the great B-17 for
mations of World War II, so he decided we oughta fly the same way."
B. J. Parker charged to the forefront of the group, glaring at Turk and Max and then at the other pilots. "The fucking generals you're talking about are your superior officers, and by God I won't hear any more words like that."
Very slowly Major Max Foley, the lanky wing-weapons officer who had always been a good and loyal officer to Parker, rose to his feet. He sighed and looked the wing commander squarely in the eye. "Colonel, there's just no sense in flying up high, straight and level, and putting our faith in a jamming pod that may or may not be working. Even if it works against SAMs, it's a dogshit formation for fighting MiGs."
"Our job isn't to fight MiGs, it's to drop bombs," snapped Parker. "Anyway, you don't have to like the formation, Max. I got your recommendation that we continue to fly the fluid four, and I agreed and forwarded it to PACAF. Now they're telling us no, that we've got to do it their way. It's time to bite the bullet and play soldier, not to be insubordinate."
"It's not their asses getting shot off." Max Foley's voice was even. He was still staring Parker in the eye, and the level of tension mounted until it almost crackled, like static electricity.
Colonel Parker had recently recommended that Max be awarded a Silver Star Medal for gallantry in action for shooting down his second MiG-17. Unofficially, the two men were friends. Officially, Max was the wing commander's advisor when it came to selections of weapons and delivery tactics. In both capacities Max had advised B. J. Parker that he thought it would be a mistake to change to the big formation. This directive ran counter to everything his training and experience told him was right, everything he'd briefed Parker, everything he personally believed, and was a slap at Max's pride.
"You want off the flight, Max?" B. J. Parker asked in the quietest of voices.
Max stared for a moment longer.
Don't do it, Lucky's inner voice yelled at Max.
Someone coughed.
Lucky cautioned softly, "Max!"
Max Foley blew a disgusted breath of defeat, broke the visual lock, and slowly sat down.
