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

by Ed Cobleigh

  When the Raven returned just before dark to the target area, he found three sets of bomb craters in close proximity to the Vietnamese troops, many of whom had just joined their honored ancestors in the hereafter. However, there was one set of impact craters exactly where the aforementioned Chinese cultural center used to be. It seems that Satan Four misidentified the whitewashed, domed building of the cultural center, confusing it with a round cloud of white Willie Pete smoke, and explosively erased the installation from the map. The same maps clearly show the ex-location of the center and the area is clearly marked as a neutral, no bomb area. The compound which used to contain a run-down building full of Chinese propaganda has acquired enough bomb craters to resemble the surface of the moon.

  As trusted employees of the ClA, Raven FACs are usually comfortable with keeping their mouths shut about things better left unsaid and undisclosed. However, this screw-up is too big and too politically hot to write off against the fortunes of war as an honest mistake. The Raven called the Agency in Bangkok, who spread the word. The U.S. Ambassadors to Thailand and Laos are in the loop and boy, are they pissed. The Seventh/Thirteenth Air Force Headquarters in Saigon who owns and controls all USAF tactical assets in Southeast Asia is energized. The Commander of Seventh./Thirteenth is definitely not amused. The State Department wants answers. Phone lines are buzzing. When the top brass in the Pentagon come to work in the morning they will want answers as well. This mess could go all the way to the White House.

  The worst case scenario for the Vietnam War has always included the nightmare fear of an overt entrance by the People's Republic of China, the Communist Chinese, the PRC, into the conflict. Everyone remembers how a winnable police action in Korea turned into a lethal quagmire when the PRC marched south across the Yalu River. Is the PRC looking for an excuse to enter the war on the side of North Vietnam? Would Americans trashing a Chinese cultural center provide that excuse? The United States has never publicly admitted to bombing anywhere in Laos, much less in the northern regions far from South Vietnam. Our involvement with the Hmong, the whole CIA supply system, the Raven FACs, all have been closely-held secrets undiscovered by our own left-wing press. The entangled countries of Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam, including the PRC, all know what is going on in Laos, but no one is talking. Will the impact of twelve 500 hundred-pound bombs, precisely delivered if I do say so myself, change all that? What are the political ramifications for our entire war effort?

  No one knows the answers to any of this. No one knows what to do. No one knows how to write the after-action report for transmittal to Washington. The only concept the interested parties agree on is that they all want on a platter the head of the junior USAF captain who committed this outrage. That would be me.

  We enter the outer office of Wing HQ and announce our presence to the secretary. I wish I had a haircut and that my flight suit wasn't so ragged. While we wait, I think this day has morphed from a triumph aerial dexterity into of into one of the worst in my life. Getting reamed a new asshole by the Wing Commander is bad enough, but getting chewed out by this particular Colonel is even worse. The Wing Commander's alter ego has been one of my heroes ever since I was a small boy.

  As far back as I can remember the daily and Sunday comic pages of my hometown Tennessee newspaper carried the syndicated adventures of Steve Canyon, drawn and written by Milton Caniff. Caniff began drawing the strip during the Korean War chronicling the idealized life of an imaginary USAF fighter pilot named Steve Canyon. Caniff's comic hero fought in Korea, flew in the cold war, and generally roamed the globe getting into and out of exciting adventures. These fictional episodes usually involved airplanes, spies, evildoers, and beautiful women, not necessarily in that order. Caniff had his creation progress up the military promotion ladder in the comic strip and Steve Canyon is now a full Colonel.

  I didn't miss a single episode while I was growing up, eagerly scanning the comic pages every day to see what Steve Canyon was up to. The life he led, the airplanes he flew, and yes, the women he hung around with, cemented my desire to be an USAF fighter pilot. I always wanted to fly, and in particular, to fly fighters in combat. I really didn't need any comic strip inspiration, but the mythical life of Steve Canyon was another attractive lure for the teen-aged me.

  It is common knowledge around the base that the current Wing Commander is a life-long friend of Milton Caniff and that the famous cartoonist used the likeness, attitude, and demeanor of the "Old Man" as the conceptual model for Steve Canyon. It is easier to draw someone you know than to cut a new person from whole cloth. When the real guy got promoted, the comic strip alter ego did as well. To see our Commander in person is to visualize a real-life embodiment of a well-known fictional character; the physical resemblance is uncanny.

  So, not only am I about to get my head handed to me by a real Wing Commander, I am going to be grounded, fired, and probably have my career ended by the guy who I faithfully followed in the comic strips for all those years. It isn't just anyone who gets to be busted by his boyhood hero.

  The secretary announces that the Wing Commander will see me, alone, now. My squadron boss looks relieved, like a guy who can't stand to see the sight of fresh blood and who doesn't want any of the blood (or the blame) sticking to him.

  My mind has been racing, trying to come up with my story. How could I have destroyed a cultural center by mistake, brought shame on the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing, angered two ambassadors, embarrassed a covey of generals, and brought the People's Republic of China's Red Army flooding into the Vietnam War? Failing to devise a really, really good excuse, I decide to play it straight up, explain what happened, and take my lumps. The sun got into my eyes, it was very hazy and almost dark, I was about out of gas, and the Bad Guys were shooting at me. These reasons might just be believable and have the added advantage of. being the truth.

  I knock once and hear "Come in, Captain" in return.

  I open the door, walk in, and shut it behind me. I salute the Colonel behind the desk and stand at attention in front of it. I try to speak in as firm a voice as a walking dead man can muster:

  "Captain Cobleigh, reporting as ordered, sir."

  The Colonel raises his head, slowly looks up at me and it is Steve Canyon in the flesh. I recognize the wide shoulders, the six- foot, two-inch frame, and the square jaw. I know the shock of blond hair, parted on the right, and the chest full of medals. I wince at the impact of the steely blue eyes, fixed like twin laser beams on my miserable carcass. I have seen this man wreak daily havoc on the enemies of democracy around the world in black and white during the week and in color on Sunday. Now, I am about to get strafed by my own hero.

  Instantly, my carefully prepared story evaporates in my brain. My resolve to present a set of reasons for my error of aerial mis-identification is burned into cranial smoke that is probably coming visibly out of my ears. All I can think of as a reply to the coming barrage will be, "No excuse, sir."

  The Old Man looks at me even harder and says, "I'm very disappointed in you. Promise me that you won't let anything like this happen again and I'll take care of it. Dismissed."

  I manage to get "Yes, sir" out of my dry mouth, do an about-face, and leave the room, carefully shutting the door behind me. The Squadron Commander is nowhere to be seen and the secretary has suddenly found that tomorrow's calendar requires her undivided attention. I am never so glad to leave a building in my life.

  The Old Man's words have cut me like a Randall knife. I was prepared to be chewed out, cussed at, yelled at, and dressed down. That would have been a cleansing catharsis. I could have written the incident off to bad judgment and gone to the Officers' Club for a drink or two. Having the Wing Commander/Steve Canyon speak softly only of his disappointment in me was crushing. I have no answer, and I feel to the core of my being that I have let my mates and superiors down. My only response is to vow never to make such a mistake twice, to not violate the trust, not ever again.

  I find out later that the Wing Commander t
old higher headquarters that disciplining his troops is his job, not theirs. He has told the US Embassy in Bangkok to butt out and has thanked the Raven FAC for his honesty. He has ignored informal inquiries from Washington and has instructed the intelligence officers to remove my name from the after-action report. I suspect he has told the Squadron Commander to forget the whole thing, that the matter is settled, but to see that I get more practice in daylight operations.

  The Wing Commander's actions stick. The State Department and the USAF can't very well formally demand retribution for a mistaken action taken in a war that doesn't officially exist. What about the report by a Raven FAC that the Chinese cultural center on the PDJ has been totally trashed? What Raven? There are no Ravens in northern Laos, nor any bombing missions. The CIA is likewise not talking, but they never do.

  Meanwhile, l decide that the Steve Canyon comic strip doesn't do the Wing Commander justice. His meeting with me was a masterpiece of motivation. His response to various outraged officials was pure leadership. I have decided that I will fly into Hell itself for this man.

  I guess all's well that ends well. Months later, when my combat tour is over, the Wing Commander says a few words at my going-away ceremony. After the party, at the bar, he gives me the name and phone number of a lady friend of his who lives near my new stateside base and suggests I call her and use him as a reference. I wonder, is it the sexy redhead who seems to wear nothing but a trench coat and high heels? Is it the beautiful Oriental spy in the slinky-tight Chinese dress slit to her bare hip, the legendary "Dragon Lady"? Is it the curvy, blond USAF flight nurse with the mini-skirted, nonstandard uniform? I can visualize clearly in graphic detail every one of these famous femme fatales from the comic strip. As it turns out, the Old Man's lead connects me with a girl who was never drawn by Milton Caniff, but that is another story.

  The Wild Blue Yonder

  I

  I have dreamed about this flight all my life. I am on daytime MiG CAP mission, looking for enemy aircraft to shoot down. This classic assignment distills to its essence the act of being a fighter pilot; this is what it is all about. Five years of intensive training and a lifetime of mental preparation have brought me to this point in space/time. I am Satan Three in a flight of four, leading the second element comprised of two Phantoms. The Squadron Commander, the Boss, is leading the four jets of Satan Flight. My wingman, Satan Four, whose personal call sign is "Hostile Man" is a hundred yards off my right wing as the other member of my element. When you are going forth to hassle to the death with the MiGs, you want your wingman's nickname to be "Hostile Man."

  I am flying in reference to Satan Lead 300 yards to my left as our jets float and move in and out, up and down in loose formation. The four-ship formation we are flying is called a "finger four" as the four Phantoms' positions correspond to the four fingertips of a right hand. This formation was developed by the U.S. Army Air Corps "Wolf Pack" wing in the European Theater of WWII. Then the Wolf Pack flew P-47 Thunderbolts, piston-engined, propeller-driven fighters. The formation was further perfected by the USAF's F-86 SabreJet pilots during the Korean War, who called it a "fluid four." Our wing, which has inherited the "Wolf Pack" nickname, uses this formation exclusively; it is in our tactical doctrine. It isn't clear to me why a formation designed to engage propeller-driven Messerschmitts at 250 miles per hour is the right one for jet speeds and distances. But, as the Boss seems to know what he is doing, I keep my doubts to myself.

  We are flying at 450 knots indicated airspeed, about 500 miles per hour, and 27,000 feet high, heading northeast, crossing the invisible border from Laos into North Vietnam. Normally, the objective of a combat mission is to get into the target area, accomplish your task, which usually means bombing the living shit out of. a target, and then get out. Hopefully, this can be accomplished with a minimum of danger and excitement. On a MiG CAP mission the motivation reverses completely. We are looking for trouble and we hope it comes our way. The ultimate goal of every fighter pilot is to shoot down an enemy airplane, or two, or five to become an ace. To do this, you have to first find and then engage the enemy, not avoid him. Our hope for today is that the MiGs will come up to play. Of course, the Bad Guy fighter pilots have exactly the same ambition concerning us; that's what makes life interesting.

  My jet has three large, expendable fuel tanks carried underneath it; these will be jettisoned at the first sign of trouble and/or opportunity, Now the three tapered tanks of jet fuel are feeding the greedy engines, sustaining our 450 knots. I also have on board four AIM-7 Sparrow radar-guided missiles, four AIM-9 heat-seeking Sidewinder missiles and an electronic countermeasures pod to jam enemy radars.

  Satan Flight's job this fine morning is to serve as top cover, or MiG CAP, for a strike force of twelve other Phantoms who will be doing the actual bombing. The Wing Commander, the Old Man, is leading the bombers and is the overall Mission Commander. In addition to our four Phantoms, the strike force is supported by two four-ship formations of F-105 Thunderchief fighter-bombers, whose call sign is "Wild Weasel." The Wild Weasels' mission is to suppress the enemy's defenses by defeating their Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) sites. Four Weasels will sweep the egress route and target area shortly before the strike force arrives and four more will follow the bombers out to prevent SAM attacks from the rear. The eight Weasels and four MiG CAP jets are there to make sure the strike force Phantoms get to the target area and get out without suffering losses to either SAMs or MiGs.

  Unseen, somewhere up ahead of this strike force armada is a RF-4 Phantom carrying no armament, only cameras in its tapered nose. The Photo Phantom will take "before" pictures of the target. An hour or so after the bombs detonate and the smoke clears, another RF-4 will take more "after" black-and-white pictures of the same target area. The pre-strike photos will be compared to the post-strike snaps to see if the strike force did its lethal job.

  What is the job of this airborne armada? We are to attack a suspected enemy truck park and supply depot. It is supposedly hidden under the jungle canopy covering the eastern hills running down the panhandle of North Vietnam. If launching twenty-six USAF jets to destroy a truck park that may or not be there seems excessive, that's because it is.

  Air strikes against North Vietnam are conducted under the code name "Operation Rolling Thunder." Strikes on southern Laos are known by the name "Steel Tiger" and northern Laos gets hit under "Barrel Roll." The noted peacenik, marginal musician, and irritatingly nasal folk singer Bob Dylan calls his backup band the "Rolling Thunder Review." Did he name his musicians after the bombing missions or did the Pentagon mock the Troubadour Kid by naming our missions after his band? It is hard to imagine the insular mandarins of the Pentagon having the wit to mimic Dylan or even to know who he is. This juxtaposition is probably just one of the many ironies of war. Right now, I don't really care.

  A USAF effort of this magnitude would normally be dedicated to a heavily defended and valuable target near Hanoi, the capital of the North. With this much firepower airborne, we should be headed "downtown." However, we aren't bombing the key areas of North Vietnam just now. The farsighted visionaries running the war from their swivel chairs in Washington, D.C. have announced yet another bombing pause. The idea seems to be; if we stop doing nasty things to North Vietnam, they will gladly reciprocate and abandon the war they have been fighting for a quarter century to unify their country. Next, ever so grateful to the United States for not bombing them, Hanoi's Communist fanatics would then allow the people of South Vietnam to enjoy the fruits of an independent, democratic peace. I guess I just don't understand international politics.

  However, we aren't calling a halt to bombing the entire north, just the areas most dangerous and difficult to bomb. These forbidden regions also contain the most valuable and lucrative targets. Instead of really hurting the Bad Guys, we pull our punches. To show that we aren't kidding; we are periodically ordered to raid selected areas such as today's target, the well-hidden truck park somewhere in the rain forest. Evident
ly, blowing the shit out of lesser-known parts of North Vietnam won't compromise the goodwill we are generating by sparing the capital. Also, there are no Russian or Red Chinese TV cameramen this far south. They won't be able to document the fact that we are being beastly to their socialist brethren.

  The absurdity gets even weirder. We are allowed to bomb carefully selected, politically non-sensitive targets in the North Vietnamese hinterlands only if we pretend we are going downtown. We must seize this opportunity to practice the skills needed to fly and fight against the defenses around Hanoi and the port city of Haiphong. Those defenses, already the stiffest seen in the history of aerial warfare, are undoubtedly being strengthened while we are not attacking them. Today's mission is a giant training exercise to keep us sharp enough to someday attack targets and defeat defenses that are growing stronger because we aren't attacking them. If this situation didn't involve life and death, it would be ludicrous. Instead, it's tragic. The whole wacky concept makes my head hurt, but none of it will matter one iota if the MiGs come up and fight.

  The skills needed to pull off a raid of this size are indeed formidable and we certainly do need the practice. The Wing Commander is leading this vast, or half-vast, fleet of fighters and we are all proud of him for doing so.