War For the Hell of It: A Fighter Pilot's View of Vietnam

by Ed Cobleigh

  The moonlight in the cockpit is almost bright enough to read the instruments. I keep the internal lights on anyway, but dimly. I won't need super-sharp night vision tonight, as we won't be trying to find targets on the ground. I have the radarscope in the front cock­pit on and I can see the return of the radar beam scanning from side to side on the display. That information is more valuable than trying to capture with my retinas the last few photons from outside. I don't have to set up the armament by feel tonight; I can actually see the switches. For a hardened Sewer Doer, this is real luxury.

  My Phantom tonight carries a full air-to-air combat load. Three disposable fuel tanks for maximum endurance, four AIM-7E Sparrow radar-guided missiles and four heat-seeking AIM-9D Sidewinder short-range missiles. My F-4D has no gun; a later version of the Phantom, the F-4E, has a twenty-millimeter Gatling gun in the nose for close-in work. Ordinarily, I would sorely miss not having a gun on a CAP mission, sort of like walking into the Oriental saloon in Tombstone, Arizona, circa 1880, sporting an empty holster. But tonight I would rather have the extra fuel and less weight. Any air combat that occurs tonight will be fought at long range on the radar scope. I won't see my opponent until I spot the distant fireball of his aircraft exploding from the impact of my missiles, maybe.

  Before there can be any fireballs, I have to arm and ready the missiles. I select "radar" and "CW power on" with toggle switches on the missile control panel. This "tunes" the Sparrow missiles to the exact frequency of the aircraft radar, The Sparrows are semi-submerged into recesses in the bottom of the jet's fuselage and are blind at launch. If and when I pull the trigger, they will be ejected in sequence and start looking for the target onto which the Phantom's radar is locked. After a few seconds, I get four green lights indicating the Sparrows are awake and tuned.

  The next switch on the missile panel is labeled "heat." This gets me four green lights from four Sidewinders, two on each wing, hanging on pylons. The "heat" toggle switch has a six-inch extension on it jury-rigged from rigid plastic tubing. This lets me cycle through all four missiles without looking down into the cockpit in the heat of battle. All I have to do is slap the tubing with my left hand to select another missile. Sidewinder operation is indicated by a growl, like a rattler's hum, in my earphones. This will tell me before launch that the missile's seeker sees the heat generated by the target. With nothing visible outside the aircraft but the far, frozen moon, there are no growls tonight, yet. To ensure that each Sidewinder is coiled, aggressive, and alert for action, I could have selected them as I joined up on the tanker, using the tanker's engines as ersatz heat sources. Understandably, the tanker crews are not very enthusiastic about having live missiles locked onto them, but what they don't know probably won't hurt them. Still, accidents happen and ever since some hapless fighter pilot shot down the B-52 bomber he was practicing against, using the tankers as surrogate targets is strictly forbidden. So, all I can do is hope the 'Winders are well. The last switch remains off. It is the "missile arm" toggle and allows the missiles to launch. It will remain off unless things heat up both literally and figuratively.

  Our CAP station is near Laos' northeastern border with North Vietnam. The flight orders say we are to orbit at least ten nautical miles from the border and await the presence of the MiGs. Translation: "Be prepared to spend a couple of hours boring holes in the sky. Enjoy your night airplane ride, then go home." We are escorting an invisible airplane on an unknown mission. We are to protect this unseen aircraft from threats that don't exist. Our job is to prevent an invulnerable plane from being shot down. Success is expected.

  Tonight, a SR-71 "Blackbird" reconnaissance aircraft will be crossing North Vietnam to gather intelligence data. The location of the targeted data is has not been revealed to us lowly fighter pilots, nor has the method of collection, we only know what type of aircraft is coming. The SR-71 was designed by the famous Lockheed Skunk Works in the late 1950s to be the highest-flying, fastest manned aircraft in the world. It still is. I am not trusted with any of the details of tonight's Blackbird flight profile, other than it will occur well above 60,000 feet and involve speeds in excess of Mach 3. Indeed, we are instructed not to lock our jet's air intercept radar onto the Blackbird if we can find it. To do so might reveal its conditions of flight on our scopes and we mortals are not authorized to know that data. Also, the navigator in the rear cockpit of the SR-71 might interpret our radar signal as that of an enemy and soil the space suit he is wearing. Above 50,000 feet, and the Blackbird flies way above, all aircrew are required to wear full pressure suits, capable of preserving life on the moon. I guess it is uncomfortable to be scared in a space suit.

  We will have no contact with the SR-71; the two-man crew will take off from an undisclosed base far away from the theater of war (We all know it is Andersen Air Force Base on the island of Guam, but nobody's telling). It will refuel from a special tanker containing unique fuel and zorch across North Vietnam like a manned comet. We don't know the exact time of passage, the course to be flown, any of the flight details, the call sign, the radio frequencies used, or anything else. Why should we? We're only the escorting MiG CAP weenies with the live missiles. I wonder if Bruce in Alley Cat knows any of. this? Probably not; such secrets are not shared with anyone who lives anywhere near the Bad Guys, and Bruce's base is in northern Thailand.

  The SR-71 is a long, thin, black airplane with two giant afterburning engines. It moves at the speed of heat. I have never seen one, but I built a plastic model replica once. That's as close I have ever come to the jet that I'm supposed to protect from being shot down.

  The premier interceptor of North Vietnam's air force is the MiG­21. It was designed in the early 1950s to be a light, cheap interceptor to attack lumbering bombers at medium altitude. It has a rudimentary radar, a single crewman, limited range, and no radar guided missiles. The North Vietnam Air Force rarely flies at night. Takeoffs and landings in the dark challenge its low-time pilots, not to mention the lurking danger of much more capable night fighters such as my Phantom.

  I know that if I employ all my skill, use every ounce of performance I can wring out of my jet, and if my missiles work perfectly, I could still never shoot down a Blackbird. The chances of a primitive MiG-21 with an ill-trained pilot doing what I cannot are precisely zero.

  So, why are we here at 33,000 feet over northern Laos in the middle of the night? The SR-71 belongs to SAC, which has the mission of Strategic Reconnaissance, or SR, from the plane of the same name. Since SAC took over this mission early in the Cold War, there .has been a standardized operating procedure which dictates all reconnaissance flights are to have fighter cover. This requirement stems from the time when such flights were by conducted by unarmed, modified versions of common aircraft. The introduction of the SR­71 did not generate any rethink of this policy, despite the vast difference in performance between the escorts and the escorted.

  The commanding generals of SAC are fighting the Vietnam War from their impregnable redoubt, a deeply buried bunker at Offutt Air Force Base on the outskirts of Omaha, Nebraska. By orders of God and SAC, every SR-71 flight will have fighter cover and that is the end of that story. So, my navigator and I will have a prolonged scenic night view of northern Laos, log some more flying time, and get to practice our night aerial refueling. It will be fun, but if I were a taxpayer, which I am, I would be pissed off at me for burning up several hundreds of thousands of tax dollars on a fool's mission.

  Our only hope is that the generals running North Vietnam are as obtuse as ours seem to be. Maybe they will send a MiG-21 up tonight for the pilot to prove that he can't shoot down a SR-71 either. Maybe my navigator will spot the impotent MiG on its futile mission with our radar Maybe we will get cleared to fire from whatever command authority there is in the region tonight. Maybe the target on the radar won't be a lost U.S. Navy pilot from the Gulf of Tonkin (lost Navy pilot, isn't that redundant?). Maybe the moon will fall out of the sky. Bruce was right; we will need lots of luck tonight. We
will need it to keep from drifting off to sleep and crashing.

  Since the time of Julius Caesar, soldiers have complained and groused about duties that seemed to them to be senseless. I'm sure some Roman Centurion bitched and moaned that he should be whooping it up in Paris instead of freezing his butt off manning an outpost on the edge of Gaul in the middle of a winter night. All you can do is hope the guys running the war know what they are doing. However, I do know more about what I am doing than any swivel-chair general in Nebraska. Far too many of the missions I fly are similar to the one tonight. I fly CAP for aircraft that can't be shot down. I drop bombs on targets that don't exist. I employ ordnance that doesn't work. I take off in stinko weather that is unworkable. Despite all this, when my squadron mates and I have the enemy on the ropes, the politicians call a bombing halt and let him climb back into the ring. The soldiers of North Vietnam try their best to kill me, while airhead movie stars and biased journalists visit Hanoi from the States. Why does this madness continue? Lowly fighter jocks such as my navigator and me, lay our asses on the line night after night to accomplish what? We rather get the impression that the whole war and the individual decisions which make up the that war are being scripted by people who don't know what they are doing, or who have hidden personal agendas unconnected with victory, however it is defined. That is the charitable view. The truth is probably crazier.

  I have no doubt that we are here over far northern Laos at two o'clock in the morning because our top Air Force commander in Saigon doesn't have the guts to tell the other generals in Omaha that tonight's mission is stupid. Being bold enough to point out unpleasant facts to the higher-ups can be harmful to your career.

  But hey, what am I complaining about? It is a spectacular night to be flying. Am I a small part of the problem? Should I have told my squadron commander that tonight's mission is a waste of everyone's time and refused to fly? Should my boss have told the Wing Commander to take a hike on launching the night MiG CAP? Should the Wing Commander have called Saigon with his regrets? Where does the buck start? Never mind where it stops. Rather than confront this ethical dilemma, I chose to enjoy the scenery, the night sky, and fly my airplane.

  I should have brought my binoculars tonight to look at the moon; it is really clear and bright at 33,000 feet with less than half of the earth's atmosphere above us to obscure the view. As we turn endless racetrack-shaped patterns in the night sky we have no contact with anyone. Bruce is out of radio range. The Blackbird crew won't speak to us mere mortals. Lion and the Orange Anchor tanker are way too far away. There are no other flights in the north tonight. Likewise it seems there are no air strikes in northern Laos either. We would have seen the red blossoms of exploding bombs and perhaps the ground fire trying to stave off the explosive rain. It is hard not to feel very alone. I wonder if this is what astronaut Mike Collins felt when the Apollo 11 command module passed behind the moon while the other two crewmen were down on the surface? Mike couldn't talk to Houston or the lunar lander. Mike knew (hoped?) he was going to emerge from behind the moon and reestablish radio contact. Eventually we will have to fly south, find the tanker, and get some gas to get home. But wait a minute, all Mike had to do was let the Newton's laws of planetary motion work. I have to fly this jet back to Thailand.

  I know I'm daydreaming and that can be fatal, but what else is there to do?

  Suddenly a bright purple fireball streaks across the sky above the Phantom's canopy. It is moving from the southeast to the northwest and it is really hauling ass. The brilliant incandescent light illuminates the cockpit as bright as day, destroying what little night vision I have built up. I crane my neck and swivel my head and helmet trying to get a better view of the flame-trailing object. I yell into my inter-cockpit microphone to the Navigator.

  "'What the hell is that?"

  Instantly my brain goes into data processing overdrive, examining all the possibilities. Instinctively I shove both throttles forward to their stops, commanding full military power from my jet's engines. My leather-gloved left hand slaps down from the throttle to the missile arm switch; the missiles are hot. In the time this takes, my brain has considered several possible explanations.

  Has the Blackbird blown up overhead our jet on its Mach 3 run? No, I have seen jets blow up in the air and this looks different. A destroyed plane slows down rapidly as it disintegrates and loses its aerodynamic form. This fireball is definitely not slowing down.

  Is it a Surface-to-Air Missile, a SAM, fired at us? I don't think so. SAMs are the size of telephone poles and much slower traversing the sky. The only way a SAM could light up the night sky like this thing is if the booster rocket was still attached and burning. But, this apparition is above us, above 33,000 feet, and SAM boosters drop off much lower. Thankfully, it isn't a SAM.

  'What about an air-to-air missile fired by someone trying to bag our Phantom and us? That's not it; the Soviet-supplied missiles the Vietnamese use are much smaller and burn white, not purple. We aren't to be someone else's kill tonight, at least not yet.

  My adrenaline-fueled brain considers and rejects all these possibilities in the one or two seconds available, then comes up with the answer. It is a meteor, larger and brighter than any I have ever seen. A rock, probably the size of a grapefruit, is entering the earth's atmosphere from outer space. Its kinetic energy is being converted to super hot gases by air friction as the rock burns itself out, maybe fifty miles up. Everyone who flies at night, all the Sewer Doers, see meteors. Nearly always, they appear as they do on the surface of earth, only brighter. This one is a luminescent monster with a visible size and odd color, but it is totally harmless.

  My navigator thinks otherwise. Jack yells into the intercom.

  "Leave it alone!"

  Leave it alone! I think. This rock is going God only knows how fast and is fifty miles straight up. If I can't shoot down a SR-71, how in hell am I going to even begin to bring missiles to bear on a meteor?

  All I can do is to say, "Don't worry about it, I'll leave it be."

  I am laughing so hard that I can barely fly but I turn off my microphone so as not to embarrass my navigator. Leave it alone I shall.

  I settle down, get my heartbeat rate back into double digits, and see that our time on station is over, it is time to head back south to Orange Anchor and get enough fuel to make it home. Our night MiG CAP is over. I wonder if the SR-71 crew saw the meteor. If they did, SAC will probably put them in for a hero's medal as a reward for avoiding it.

  Somehow, tonight's mission all makes perfect sense now. We spent a gorgeous evening flying over an exotic land. We accomplished a night aerial refueling to burn jet fuel for no apparent reason. We kept an invulnerable aircraft from harm's way. We didn't shoot down the MiGs that weren't there. Finally, we left a meteor alone. It makes a fellow proud to be a soldier.

  In the Absence of Fear, Bravery Is Not Required

  Fear comes in various assorted flavors. The trick for long-term survival is to not let yourself become too comfortable with any of them. Fear can become habitual, a familiar presence, once it is established in your gut or perched on your shoulder like a raven. However, once you have tasted fear on your tongue, found it to be too bitter, and spit it out, it will become harder and harder to swallow in the future. But beware, like all strong flavors, fear can be addictive. Once addicted, there will be hell to pay to kick the habit.

  Pilot training and combat fighter aircrew training are each year-long exercises to develop your taste buds until you are a connoisseur of gourmet fear. Through constant sampling, I have learned to feed off certain varieties of fear and to shun other flavors. The first day a junior officer in the USAF straps on an airplane the desensitizing process begins and it continues without respite as long as landing gear continue to retract and jets become airborne. I have been taught and I have gleefully learned how to master the most basic and primeval of fears.

  The fear that once stuck in my craw is the fear of death, of injury, of crashing. For any sentient
human, this is the meat and potatoes of fear. It is the choking, vomiting fear of non-survival. I first learned to fly in a Cessna propeller-powered bug smasher with a top speed of maybe 125 knots with the throttle fire-walled. Even if improperly flown, the T-41 could barely kill me. Emboldened by the perceived invulnerability of extreme youth, I learned to not fear anything that primitive Cessna could do. This mastery was hard-earned, imprinted bit-by-bit, flight-by-flight.

  The next aircraft on the training menu was the T-37 "Tweety Bird" a tiny two-person jet also built by Cessna. The "Tweet" got its name from its diminutive size and the piercing shriek of its engines. It could have killed me with ease, as it did one of my classmates. Again, each sortie, each flight, each new challenge instilled in me more and more confidence. Fear of non-survival faded into some remote, recess of my brain, perhaps in the reptilian stem. I became comfortable with jet speeds and used to higher performance flight. I found myself blithely doing aerial maneuvers that only a few months before would have scared me shitless.

  My basic pilot training culminated with many flights in the T-38 "Talon" a true high performance jet machine. The "Talon" nickname was inspired by the smooth curve of its fuselage, which resembles the outstretched talon of a raptor in the stoop, diving to pluck prey from the air. The T:38 could and did achieve supersonic flight, faster than the speed of sound, with me at the controls. I was on my way to being a fighter pilot. Fear was well under control.