by Ed Cobleigh
There are some who would say that a Phantom looks broken, even when it isn't. The designers bent the wing tips upward, apparently as an afterthought. The fuselage is both humpbacked and cola-bottle shaped, leading to a bulbous black nose. The dual canopies are small, too small to see out of well. The horizontal tail stabilators droop down to an alarming degree and the top of the vertical stabilizer is cut off. If there was ever an airplane designed by feuding committee members, it is the Phantom. The brown, green, and mud-colored camouflage paint scheme doesn't help either.
Sometimes, I envy the guys who fly other more comely jets. I'd love to drive the stiletto-thin F-104 Starfighter or the aptly named F-106 Delta Dagger, Even the spear-shaped F-105 "Thunderchief" wouldn't be too bad. Those are pretty airplanes, fashioned with sleek lines, pointy noses, and harmonious curves.
The Phantom has one thing going for it. The airframe is immensely strong and solid, with size and weight aplenty. It is wrapped around two huge engines that ram all that metal through the air with dispatch. It totes a larger bomb load than the B-17 Flying Fortress of WWII and mounts more missiles on one wing than the effete F-106 carries internally in its whole airframe. With its butt-ugly lines, shit-colored paint, yawning air intakes, and dangling armament racks, the Phantom is the consummate war machine. It can bomb, strafe, launch missiles, and return me home at the speed of heat.
However, it is not reassuring to remember that my awesome fighting device is now laid low, grounded, by the absence of a small greasy part, whose replacement is rumored to appear any day now. Oh well, I guess those pretty jets break sometimes too. Until the missing but crucial bit arrives, there is nothing to do but kick back and live like a colonial Englishman while my friend is living like a hunted rabbit over in Laos.
I ask myself, "Do I feel guilty, living like this, while my ex-squadron mate is trying to simply carry on living?" The answer comes back from inside my head that I don't feel that way at all. The one-armed bandit of war has spun me triple sevens while my buddy got dealt junk under the pay line. I have to believe this or else it would be very hard to strap on that airplane and go back to combat. I could go crazy trying to make sense of why things happen the way they do.
If combat survival depends only on skill, who has enough skill? Some of the most skilled guys in the USAF are now eating pumpkin soup in the Hanoi Hilton, while lesser pilots are already back home safe in the United States. There is no doubt that skill is important, but there is something else at work in determining who lives and who dies. If a God is calling the shots, why does He bag some guys and not others? Who knows what you would have to do to curry favor with such a capricious God? And which God do you choose to suck up to? My mental well-being requires me to attribute the random outcomes of war mostly to fate and the odds. You can't predict or question either fate or slot machines, both wheel and deal and all you can do is cope or enjoy.
I guess there are many ways to enjoy Asia and it is my turn of luck to experience one of the better ones. All I have to do is sit back and breathe deeply. The essence of Asia is floating in through the screens of the veranda.
Asia is, above all, a smell, an aroma, an odor. The smell of Asia is unmistakable. Once that bouquet hit into my olfactory nerve the first time, I knew it was captured there forever, like a sensual virus. The smell assaults your nose with your first breath of Asian air wafting through the open door of a commercial airliner after landing in Singapore. That sensory effect is replicated when you raise a Phantom's canopy on the ramp of a USAF base in Thailand. I'm sure the Navy guys smell it on board ship long before landfall at Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam.
The smell of Asia is omnipresent, from the fragrant harbor of Hong Kong, to the jungles of the Philippines, to the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok. It is the smell of rotting vegetation, of constant heat, and dense humidity. It is fetid jungles and brown-water rivers. It is too many people in too small an area. It is rice paddies and banana groves and mangrove swamps and rain forests. It is jacaranda trees and bamboo thickets. But, the smell of Asia is also pungent sesame oil in a hot wok, of fresh fruits too numerous to identify. It rises from fermented fish sauce and lemongrass. It is exotic flowers and strange food laced with unfamiliar spices. It is the aura of mind bending perfume and of radiant Thai silk sliding on bare brown skin. It is dust and mud and incense burned in a temple. It is sweet-and-sour sauce with the fiery hot chilies the Thais call "rat turds." It is the floral output of decay, of parasitic growth, and of incredible beauty. If orchids had an aroma, that would be the smell of Asia.
I have read that your brain remembers a particular smell longer and more distinctly that any other single sensory input. It seems that the return of a long-forgotten but once-familiar odor will trigger old memories and will bring to your mind's surface thoughts long buried. I also remember reading that Napoleon said he could smell the fragrant shrubs of Corsica sixty miles across the Tyrrhenian Sea from his exile on Elba. The aromas of his birth island made the little emperor homesick. I wonder if I will be able to remember the smell of Asia once, and if, I return home? Or will I have to return to Asia to breathe it in again? Will I want to?
The screened-in porch of the Officers' Club filters the smell of Asia and mixes it with scents of fresh-mowed grass, of chorine from the swimming pool, and the antiseptic spoor common to government buildings, but the screens don't change the fundamental aroma of Asia. The presence of Clark Air Base in the Philippines has temporarily altered the makeup of the islands. We have brought our food, our lawn mowers, our crystalline pools, and the smell of our spilt blood. Once we Americans leave, the smell of Asia will return unfiltered and unchanged. The impact of our western culture on the overpowering smell of Asia will fade like footprints in the muddy jungles of Laos.
The presence of Asia, which totally surrounds Clark Air Base, seems to only minimally affect the American subculture within the perimeter fence. However, the reverse is not true. Outside the base lies the local town of Angeles City and if there was ever a city more inappropriately named, it is not on this planet. There are no angels in Angeles City. There are bars, restaurants, nightclubs, casinos, liquor stores, whorehouses, cheap motels, and drug dens. Usually all these businesses seamlessly occupy the same building. An American can enjoy any pleasure of the flesh, any drink, any drug, or any sexual preference in Angeles City and save money doing it. Sin is cheap in the Philippines.
On the air base, the crime rate is zero and the sin rate only slightly higher, depending on whose definition of sin is being applied. Things are buttoned down on Clark AB. Outside the base, anything goes and the local mobsters make it happen. Yesterday, the Mayor of Angeles City was cut down by machine-gun fire on the steps of City Hall. Despite the large crowd present, no witnesses have come forward. Rumors on the motive for the mob hit are rampant, but none include overdue parking tickets. As a matter of fact, the mayoral murder probably didn't stem from any previous breach of the law, as almost nothing is illegal in Angeles City.
As wild as Angeles City is, conventional military wisdom holds that the Philippine town of Olongopo outside the U.S. Navy base at Subic Bay makes Angeles City look like Davenport, Iowa. I guess those anchor clankers are ready to party hearty after six months at sea and for sure the local entrepreneurs are only too willing to accommodate them. In Olongopo, it is rumored the booze and sex flow like rainwater down the middle of the streets, as opposed to the relatively sedate social life outside Clark Air Base.
As I relax on the veranda, I wonder once again why it seems we manage to export only the indulgent portions of our American culture to Asia. Why don't we spread the ideas of democracy, the rule of law, of individual rights, and freedom? Instead, we seem to pass along only the concept of the honky-tonk. Instead of teaching the locals, be they Filipino, Thai, or Vietnamese, how to vote, we teach them how to sing like Elvis. Maybe the problem isn't so much with the transmittal of our culture, but rather with the ground on which it falls. Is this a cultural case of Gresham's law, where the counterfeit c
urrency drives the real gold out of circulation? There are no crummy honkytonks outside our bases in Europe. The mob doesn't run towns bordering USAF facilities in Iceland. Why do Asians embrace our baser values and not our best aspects? Are we not trying hard enough, or are they not receptive? Who teaches them these things? What they seem to be receptive to is our money given in exchange for a good time.
The readily available local debauchery doesn't appeal to me, at least not yet. However, my navigator has tasted of the fruit of the vine in the garden of sin and has found it favorable. He tossed his duffel bag on the bed on the VOQ when we arrived a week ago and split for the fleshpots of Angeles City.
A few months ago we took another airplane for a major overhaul to Taipei on the island of Taiwan. Jack pulled the same disappearing stunt. He returned later that night with someone who he called an "ornamental girl" (instead of "Oriental girl") in tow. Whenever he has found enthusiastic feminine company, he has always suggested that I would be much more comfortable vacating the room and sleeping outside on the patio hammock. It's touching when he wants his pilot, that would be me, to enjoy the cool night smells of Asia unscreened and outdoors.
For a change on this trip away from our home base, I have had the room all to myself. Jack checks in from time to time to see if the jet is still broken, to top off his aftershave supply, and to tell me how much he has won at the crap tables. He seems to have taken the recent shoot down in stride, not knowing either of the crewmembers. I wish I could be as blasé. Maybe a night with a willing Filipino girl snuggled up naked next to me in the VOQ would take my mind off what is happening on the ground in Laos, but probably not. I think I'll just cry in my drink tonight in time to a Hank Williams ballad of lost love.
Even if I wanted to enjoy having a lithe brown body next to me tonight on base, I couldn't. The USAF is looking after my morals for me; no local talent allowed in the VOQ. The thought of a government bureaucracy being in charge of the strength of my moral fiber causes me to drain the last dregs of my second pina colada in one gulp.
My navigator's sexual and gambling adventures (not unrelated activities) occur exclusively off base here in the Philippines. In what seems to me to strongly suggest yet more racial prejudice, Filipino girlfriends are not allowed on Clark by the U.S. Air Force. Female maids, house girls, and cooks are permitted, but not social companions, not even in the "Pit" at the O Club. The USAF Air Police stop any local female without a permanent work badge, escorted or not, at the gate. The senior powers that be, and/or their wives, don't want cute brown ladies of questionable morals readily available. Perhaps the American women can't stand the talented competition.
There are few single "round-eyed" women on Clark, which is one of the reasons that, as George Thorogood sings in his rock classic, I drink alone. A handful of schoolteachers, a few teenaged daughters, and the visiting airline stewardesses (married or not), that's about it. Far too few single girls are available to provide social opportunities for the many male bachelors. This could be easily rectified, but not according to the USAF. Above all, conservative western moral behavioral norms must be upheld.
It is tolerable, even applauded, to bed the wife or daughter of someone stationed on base as long as they are white or black and American. That sort of thing happens all the time. However, it is forbidden in the interest of morality for two consenting adults to conduct a commercial transaction involving sex if the female half of the pair is Filipino. It is not even allowed to couple for free with the locals. Free and extramarital is OK. Paid and single is not OK. Even free and single Filipino sex is not OK. Go figure.
Not that all, or even most, of the town girls are pros. There are plenty of nubile young Filipina ladies who would like nothing better than to hook up with a GI to taste the wedded bliss of matrimony. A marriage certificate is a surefire ticket to the land of plenty back in the United States and away from the tropical poverty of the Philippine Islands. I guess this is why all the waiters in the Officers' Club are male. Uncle Sam is once again looking out for my best interests. Having dozens of mini-skirted waitresses readily at hand might lead to something untoward.
I guess the moral police would rather my navigator take his chances in some mob-controlled fleabag motel in Angeles City than in the safe VOQ. While I'm not in the commercial dating game, yet, it frosts my ass to think that my government trusts me with a multimillion-dollar jet, but doesn't rust my choice of female companions. I can easily get shot down like my buddy and spend the rest of my nights with the rats in the Hanoi Hilton for my country. But, I can't bed a willing Filipino for even one night in the VOQ whether she is doing it for love or money. Supposedly, we are fighting the Vietnam war for our way of life, but our way of life seems to lose something, to get debased, when transplanted into Asia. How does the message get mixed up? I can't teach these people to vote if I can't even organize a sleepover.
The thought of forced celibacy drives me to drink, not that far a journey, and I order another one from the nearby waiter. I ponder what all this means while contemplating my newly empty glass shaped like the hourglass figure I won't be seeing tonight.
Jack and I are theoretically fighting for the land of the free and the home of the brave, as another famous song goes. The version of this one that I prefer is not by George Thorogood, but was performed by ex-paratrooper Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock. I think we have got the brave part covered, or at least my buddy Jack does. After all, he flies with me. It seems the freedom part needs a little work. When we joined the military, in exchange for the opportunity to fly jet fighters we agreed to give up certain freedoms. We have forgone living where we want and we gave up the idea of getting rich. We gave up the freedom to run when we're scared and we agreed to risk giving up the freedom of life itself. It seems that we have also given up the freedom to sleep with who we want, where we want. I'm sure this enforced morality makes sense and if that waiter would get his ass in gear with my next drink, I could figure it out.
I hear footsteps behind me and turn to take pina colada number three, but find my trusty navigator instead, flashing a big, shit-eating grin. He tells me that he has just come from the base Command Post and that the Jolly Green Giant helicopters have fished both crewmen out of the Laotian jungle and that they are en route to Thailand, safe and sound. I didn't know Jack was querying the CP several times a day.
I break into my own version of his grin and reply, "Shit hot!" That is a load off my mind and all my intentions of analyzing the USAF version of sexual purity evaporate instantly.
Jack invites me into Angeles City tonight to celebrate, but I decline. My almost-lost buddy is heading for a wild party of his own at the Officers' Club at his home base, as is the custom after a successful rescue. I'm still scheduled solo for some high lonesome sounds on the hilltop patio. Now, I can really get seriously into sad country songs without some well-rhymed and nasally expressed emotions spilling over into what passes for my reality.
And to All a Good Night
There is only an hour to go until midnight and the blessed arrival of Christianity's holiest night of the year and the beast is waking up. The beast in question is an F-4D Phantom II strapped firmly to my butt. The ground crew and I are about to roust it from the slumbering security of its flight line revetment. Until we do, the beast is nothing more than 50,000 pounds of inert metal. The keepers of the beast are ready; it's time to go to work.
With my left hand, I push the two battery toggle switches behind the throttles to "on" and the instrument panel leaps to life, each black dial containing a white-glowing needle. By the red cockpit lights now illuminated I can see that many needles are flaccid and limp against their lower stops, but some are erect and ready to perform. In the rearview mirror suspended inside the canopy top arch, I can see my navigator with his helmeted head down in the rear cockpit. He is busy aligning the jet's inertial reference platform and preparing to perform his own pre-flight checks.
The yellow auxiliary power cart is screaming away just off the lef
t wing tip. Its own tiny, noisy jet turbine is spinning a generator, pushing electric power through a fat black cable into our Phantom energizing the aircraft electric system. Also attached is a six-inch air hose, a yellow fabric corrugated umbilical. It runs underneath the aircraft to the center of the fuselage, connecting the hard-working start cart to the navel of the Phantom. The cart is howling, ready to pump compressed air to the onboard starter turbines.
I raise my leather-gloved right hand over the windscreen, high enough to be seen by the ground crew chief, with my index finger pointing at the hot night sky of Thailand. I spin my finger and hand in a tight spiral, telling the chief,
"Start number one."
The sergeant pushes a large red button on the side of the start cart. I feel the drowsy jet quiver, as the starter turbine is force-fed hot air, spinning to life one huge J-79 jet engine buried in the aluminum belly of the beast. As the left rpm gauge reaches 10 percent (the tachometers are calibrated in percentage of maximum rpm's, not with the actual number of revs) my left hand pushes the massive right throttle forward past the lockout detent. At the same time, I push the ignition button on the base of the throttle's handgrip and hold it down with my thumb.
At about 45 percent rpm, the beast starts to grumble, roused from its slumber. A fire is lit in its gut, as a drink of JP-4 jet fuel torches off in the combustion chamber. The rpms climb to about 75 percent and I feel the engine thrust report for duty, straining to move the Phantom forward against the chocked wheels. Engine oil pressure, fuel flow, and exhaust gas temperature are normal, according to my gauges.
