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

by Ed Cobleigh

  Night aerobatics are such an obviously bad idea the USAF brass hasn't bothered to forbid the practice. It is all too easy to lose track of which way is up, which are the stars and which are the lights on the ground. Avoiding vertigo at night requires one's ass to be firmly in the seat at all times, not hanging from the seat belts, as we were just doing. Stupid? Yes. Fun? Also yes. A night slow roll is my Christmas present to myself.

  I turn the F-4 toward Ubon Air Base and start to let down. Jack comes on the intercom and says some of the few words he has uttered all night

  "Merry Christmas, Eddie."

  I reply, "Merry Christmas, Jack," and contact approach control.

  Steve Canyon and Me

  The Plain of Jars is a hauntingly eerie landscape from another world. Comprised of a roughly circular patch of gently rolling grassland, it sits at an elevation of 2,000 feet, measuring about thirty miles by forty miles in the middle of the northern region of Laos. From the air, it resembles no other place as much as it does a small section of Kansas plunked down into the Southeast Asia rain forest. Surrounding the plain are rolling mountains covered with a dense green jungle canopy in contrast to the tall grass prairies of the plain.

  The area got its western name from early French colonizers who must have found it to be even weirder than I do, the French not being familiar with the plains with the American Midwest. To me, it looks a lot like Kansas or Iowa in miniature. To them, it must have looked like nothing in "La Belle France." The French found the plain sprinkled with hundreds, maybe thousands, of immense stone pots. These pots are five to ten feet high and four or five feet in diameter. The "jars" are carved from a type of stone found only hundreds of miles from the plain. Who built the jars and transported them to the plain is not known. There is no cultural memory as to their use among the local people. Not being willing to call the area "Kansas" or "Iowa," the French named the place "Le Plain Des Jares" or The Plain of Jars. We still refer to it by the French acronym as the "PDJ."

  Only two roads, an east-west dirt road and another north-south unpaved track traverse the PDJ. The roads meet and cross near the geographic center. There are no substantial villages or towns on the PDJ, just a few scattered hamlets along with the encampments of competing armies and a bumpy dirt airstrip or two.

  The hills surrounding the plain are controlled for the most part by Hmong tribesmen. The Hmong are ethnically, culturally, linguistically, and temperamentally distinct from the lowland Laotians. The Hmong are fiercely independent, fiercely proud, and just plain fierce. They are on our side in the war, which is a good thing for us if not for them. The Hmong have little use for their Laotian countrymen and have even less tolerance for Vietnamese people, from either the North or the South.

  The North Vietnamese know that if they are to subjugate Laos and threaten Thailand from the north, they must control the northern regions, the hill country. This means occupying the PDJ and establishing a presence there in order to operate in the hills immediately nearby and to block traffic from crossing the plain. The Hmong are being encouraged by the United States not to permit this to happen, not that they need much encouragement to make war on the Vietnamese. Neither side is very mechanized; this is a war fought mostly on foot, although the Vietnamese have trucks and a few light tanks. The Vietnamese find themselves in an ironic role reversal. In Laos. They are the foreign occupiers, supplied from abroad, organized into formal military forces trying to occupy and hold land. The Hmong are the guerrillas, fighting from their hills using hit-and-run tactics.

  America is also in an even more ironic mission inversion. We are helping the guerrillas, who are not part of, and would rather not be included in, the internationally recognized government of their homeland. This time the Good Guys are the ones fighting the unconventional war.

  The weird topography of the PDJ evidently has the magical power to warp the thinking of all those who deal with the plain and maybe even those who fly over it. Neither our politicians nor the US Army can get their minds around this secret Laotian war. It is both a mirror image and a subset of the current unpleasantness under way in Vietnam itself. Our aim is to help the Hmong tie up as many Vietnamese troops as possible and thus to form a military buffer between North Vietnam and our staunch ally to the south, Thailand. Our support for the Hmong is supplied and controlled by the Central Intelligence Agency using the services of Americans of unknown military lineage and of undisclosed origins.

  War in northern Laos and on the PDJ follows the seasons, of which there are two; rainy and dry. During the rainy season, men, ammunition, supplies, and food cannot be moved easily from North Vietnam over the rugged terrain into Laos. When the rains fall, the Hmong are able to push the invaders back north into the mountainous border regions. The Hmong need few supplies themselves to beat the Vietnamese in the hills, only guns, bullets, and whetstones for their knives. Ho Chi Minh's self-acclaimed masters of guerrilla warfare are commonly outfought in the rain by tribesmen just back from the stone age. However, during the dry season the Vietnamese can operate more successfully as conventional mechanized forces. They are able to push back south, toward Thailand, often venturing out onto the open PDJ itself.

  The pivot point for this annual ebb-and-flow occupation of northern Laos is the PDJ. It is during their annual march south across the PDJ, bringing along their supplies, that the Vietnamese are vulnerable to air attack. That is when my squadron mates and I spring into the action. The irony is not lost on us. In northern Laos, we are using USAF air power to support guerrillas against conventional forces. In South Vietnam, our Air Force buddies are doing just the opposite, trying (un­successfully) to defeat guerrillas and to support a conventional army, namely ours.

  This is why I am orbiting the PDJ at 17,000 feet late on a dry-season afternoon. I am flying as "Satan Four" the last aircraft in a four-ship formation, with twelve 500 pound bombs hanging on bomb racks beneath the jet. The mission of our flight is to bomb North Vietnamese troops concentrations and supply dumps hidden on the otherworldly PDJ.

  We can't spot the enemy from 17,000 feet; we can barely see the PDJ itself down through the haze generated by burning rice fields. A Forward Air Controller, a FAC, will find our targets and direct us to them. The FAC, whose call sign is "Raven," is an American Air Force pilot and we all are proud that he is. Raven FACs are on my short list of heroes. They usually fly a military version of the propeller-driven Cessna 180, a tiny, slow, vulnerable airplane. At 130 miles per hour and 1,000 or 2,000 feet over the ground, the Raven is a sitting duck for determined ground fire. His job is to find a concentration of North Vietnamese troops, who are typically not pleased to be considered as targets and will resist being so designated. So, while we orbit at 17,000 feet and four hundred fifty miles an hour in our fearsome war machines, the Raven is down amongst them, unarmed, flying a bug smasher.

  The Raven's best hope of survival is the enemy's knowledge that he can summon instant death from the skies. That would be us. Hopefully the North Vietnamese know that if they shoot at the FAC, the Raven can and will bring down tons of bombs on their positions, which they have just revealed by shooting at him. These Raven guys must have big brass balls to go out day after day and offer themselves up as bait.

  They live and fly out of an austere forward operating base in Laos, a third world stink hole called Long Tieng. Long Tieng is in the third world because there is no fourth world classification. The primitive air base is due north of the Mekong among the land of the Hmong they support and far from any formal USAF recognition or control. What a deal. Ravens have the worst of several worlds. They have CIA secrecy and non-accountability, Hmong living conditions, and miserly USAF pay. lf they are going to go to war for the Agency, they should at least live a James Bond-type lifestyle. I have seen some of these guys in Bangkok on R and R (Rest and Recreation). They are easily recognizable with their long, nonmilitary haircuts, colorful civilian clothes, and a wild look in their eyes that comes from living constantly on the edge. In fact, Ravens
define the edge. They are at the edge of civilization, the edge of formal U.S. government supervision, and the edge of declared war. With a casualty rate of over 30 percent they are on the edge of life itself. It is an honor to fly with such men.

  My flight leader has made radio contact with the Raven far below and I have listened to the transmitted target briefing along with the other Phantom flyers; the crews of Satans One through Three. Our targeted objective is a company of North Vietnamese regulars concealed in the tall grass of the PDJ. We will not see them at all; the Raven must visibly designate the target area for Satan Flight. His only armament is a pod of unguided white-phosphorous-tipped rockets. Each rocket is 2.75 inches in diameter and 4 feet long. On impact, the rocket's white phosphorous warhead, called "WP" or "'Willie Pete," will bloom with a dense cloud of brilliant white smoke. The Raven will shoot a rocket into the area occupied by the unfortunate troops and it will be our job to bomb the area surrounding the smoke, which we should be able to see from our exalted altitude.

  My twelve bombs will be delivered to the target area via the time-honored technique of manual dive bombing. I will replicate the maneuvers used by fighter pilots since WWII using no computers, no laser guidance, no smart bombs, just good old-fashioned Tennessee marksmanship. I have turned on my gun sight, it's projected on the front windscreen as a red dot. A circle of red light surrounds the "pipper." My job will be to achieve precisely 45 degrees of dive, 450 knots indicated airspeed (about 500 mph), .707 Gs, and have all this happen with the pipper on the target at 7,200 feet above the ground. If all this gets done as planned, and the surface winds aren't too strong, the bombs will impact in the general vicinity of the target. If the airspeed varies by 10 to 20 knots, the dive angle by a degree, the release altitude by a few hundred feet, or if the gun sight isn't on the target with .707 Gs on the airplane, the bombs will miss wildly. It is a very hard thing to do well and the probabilities of errors occurring are likely enough that manual dive bombing is a rather blunt instrument. However, with unseen troops being dug in who knows where, all that is required of us is that some of Satan Flight's forty-eight bombs get close. The fragmentation pattern of a 500 pound bomb will make up for all but the worst aiming errors.

  Our flight has set up a counterclockwise "daisy chain," a circular orbit around the target area with one aircraft approximately at each cardinal point of the compass at all times. We will make our dive bomb runs in numerical order. Before I can deliver my ordnance, I must have the target in sight, the FAC in view (if he is still in the area), know the position of each of my flight mates, and have positioned my jet so as to accomplish the desired delivery parameters. For a dedicated Sewer Doer, this daytime flying is harder than I remember. It is late in the day and the sun is low on the western horizon, a dull red orb lighting up the ever-present haze. The Hmong practice slash-and-burn agriculture. During the dry season, they are in the burn mode. Smoke is adding to the low-level obscuration. Visibility is rotten and it gets worse the lower the sun gets. At lower altitudes it is really shitty. Already the light brown surface of the PDJ is growing darker with the coming dusk.

  The Raven comes on the air.

  "Satan Flight, Raven's in to mark the target."

  I can barely discern a tiny gray cross far below that is the top outline of the Raven's piddling aircraft. I strain my eyes to pick out a white puff of Willie Pete smoke against the brown­going-to-dark PDJ.

  Raven says, "Satan, that's a good mark, hit my smoke. I'll be holding south."

  The Raven is no fool; he wants to be well clear of the area when four mighty Phantom jets and forty-eight free-falling iron bombs start filling the air above the target. The intended targets can see the Willie Pete smoke on the ground better than we can. They know what is coming and that there is now no downside to shooting at the FAC. For them, there is only the chance of preemptive revenge. I don't have time to contemplate the fear that must be gripping the North Vietnamese troops below. I have to confirm that I have selected all the proper switches in the cockpit to release and arm the bombs. I must visually find each of my teammates in the murky sky; a midair collision will ruin everyone's day. Satan Lead, Satan Two, and Satan Three make their runs and pull off as I watch from above, trying to keep track of each jet's position in the dusty afternoon sky. We Sewer Doers aren't used to all this daytime action in the visible realm.

  Satan One, the flight lead, reports seeing ground fire aimed at him during his bomb run. He must have seen the angry fireflies of tracer bullets passing near his canopy. Satan Three confirms the twinkle of muzzle flashes against the dusky ground during his run. I see the sharp red impacts of the bomb explosions and feel my adrenaline start to flow. I make one last look inside the cockpit and discover that my fuel gauge is almost below "Bingo" state. Bingo fuel is the minimum amount needed to get back to base or to a tanker. It signifies that it is time to leave the target area and head home. I am supposed to announce "Bingo" to the flight lead, but I think I'll wait until after I get rid of the 6,000 pounds of iron and explosives hanging on the jet.

  The other guys have done their thing and it is my turn. I'm on the east side of the daisy chain circle with the target and the sun to my left, westward. This is not the best place to be; if I start my bomb run from here l will be looking into the sun. We night flyers are not used to coping with this sort of problem. Good tactics would suggest a run from west to east. With the sun at my back, I would be using its rays to penetrate the haze instead of having to look into the glare to see the target. Also, coming in from out of the sun would force the Bad Guys to shoot at me looking into the setting sun. However if I wait until I fly around the circle to the west, I will be below Bingo fuel state. So, what the shit, let's do it now and get the hell out of Dodge City.

  I look back outside, over the left canopy rail, and reacquire the target. Unexpectedly, I think I can still see the white puffs of Willie Pete floating in place; I thought the other guys' bombs would have erased it. They must have missed completely. Well, I'm not going to miss. Assigned as Number Four in the formation, I am by definition the least experienced pilot in the flight. I desperately want to make my mark in the squadron, to present my credentials as a fighter pilot, and to gain the respect of my peers. Putting bombs on target is the best, quickest way to make a name for myself.

  I roll the jet left, almost over on its back and pull the nose down to below the target area. Relaxing the stick, I feel myself get light in the seat with near zero G on the airplane. With no Gs on, I can roll back right side up without changing my flight path. We dive deeper and faster into the gathering haze and smoke. As we do, I spot the pipper projected on the ground short of the target, just where it should be. I quickly check the airspeed; it's building nicely toward 450 knots as we accelerate downhill in the dive.

  My navigator's job is to watch the altitude unwind and call out when it is time to press the pickle button. He is also alert to my mental status and if I get fixated on the target, he will call for a pull out.

  He announces, "Ready. Pickle," in a tightly controlled voice.

  The gun sight is superimposed exactly over the white spot marking what I think is the target; I am pleased about this. I hit the pickle button on the control stick and the jet leaps upward as the heavy bomb load is ejected. I keep the stick coming back and the load builds to five Gs until the nose is above the horizon and we are on our way back up, out of the worst of the haze. I'm not supposed to look back under Gs,; it is disorienting, but I can't help but bank left and admire my work. A quick glance over my left shoulder as I start a left turn to rejoin the flight confirms that the white-marked target has disappeared in a cloud of dirty brown bomb smoke. Not bad work for a Sewer Doer caught out in the daytime.

  I push the mike button while composing my voice to appear calm, even bored.

  "Satan Four is off target and I'm Bingo fuel. Got the formation in sight."

  I can see three black dots on the horizon, trailing sooty jet smoke. That is the flight heading south
, toward home.

  The Raven calls from below, "Thanks for the work, Satan Flight, I'll call the BDA (Bomb Damage Assessment) in on the landlines."

  Later on that evening, my first stop after parking the jet and de­briefing the maintenance troops on the status of the aircraft is the Squadron Operations Center. I have to sign in before heading down to the Intelligence Shop to recap today's mission for the records. As I walk in, the junior officer manning the duty desk takes one look at me, hurriedly picks up the phone, and whispers into it. I find this rather odd, but I ignore the feeling and turn to complete the sign-in sheet. In seconds, my Squadron Commander emerges on the double from the inner sanctum of his office. He utters a few words which are guaranteed to strike cold fear in the hearts of fighter pilots everywhere,

  "The Old Man wants to see you, now."

  I have an urgent audience scheduled with the Wing Commander in his lair at Wing Headquarters. As a rule, Wing Commanders almost never require your immediate presence in their offices to tell you what a good job you are doing.

  The Squadron Commander volunteers to walk with me to the HQ and fill me in on what has happened between the time Satan Flight pulled off target in northern Laos, the Raven called in the BDA, and my return to our base in Thailand.

  Bizarrely, he begins with a history lesson. During one of their periodic, and often in vain, attempts to make friends and influence people in Laos, the Chinese Communists funded and built a Chinese cultural center near the crossroads in the middle of the Plain of Jars. Their idea was to impress the Laotians, both the lowland peoples and the Hmong, with the depth, breath, and superiority of. Chinese culture. The Laotians didn't buy the story, having been sufficiently acquainted with Chinese culture during the numerous invasions suffered by Laos at the hands of successive Chinese dynasties. The Chinese cultural center was poorly attended and probably abandoned, but none of that matters now as it doesn't exist anymore.