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

by Ed Cobleigh

  At the bus stop, I hop off and hail a waiting samlor. This personal service may cost me all of five baht or twenty-five cents. The samlor is a large tricycle pedaled by a sturdy Thai guy with legs like knotted cords. There is a seat for two Thais or one American between the rear wheels. The driver pedals and steers from the front. The samlor driver speaks no English and my Thai language skills need work and lots of it. With hand signals, I direct him along the streets to Judi's house. A samlor is a relaxed and civilized way to travel if you aren't in a hurry and if you don't mind watching a Thai guy's butt go up and down as he stands on the pedals at close range in front of you.

  It is nearly midnight and the side streets of Ubon City are still alive with people. The only paved road in town leads to the air base; the rest of Ubon's thoroughfares are composed of hard-packed red dirt. The dirt tracks are lined with wooden houses, each with its fenced yard. It is still warm tonight, but the night air isn't as humid and oppressive as when the sun beats down.

  Nighttime in rural Thailand is a dark dreamland, smoky from cooking fires, with the slightly-built ghosts of Thais drifting in and out of the scattered lights and my view. The silent samlor drifts along the dirt streets like a tiny ship sailing the canals of Venice. We overtake people who barely take note of our passage as they clop-clop along in rubber shower shoes. We meet folks carrying buckets hanging from the ends of tote sticks slung across one shoulder, their pace dictated by the resonate frequency of the bouncing sticks. I hear laughing and soft conversation in Thai, with no voices raised. The scent of Asia is very strong tonight with no wind to dispel it. I have no alternative but to drink in the aroma and wonder why no one seems to notice it but me.

  Despite the late hour, there is an electric light, only one, on in each house we pass. People move in and out of the harsh glows, visible from the street. Thai houses feature open spaces, no need for heating, ever. The traditional style houses are mostly windows; even the shacks have very few walls under their tin roofs. The streets are lighted by single fifty-watt naked light bulbs, one suspended on the intersection of every block. Smoke from charcoal fires under woks drifts in and out of the dim circles of light cast by the streetlights. The smoke is mixed with oily steam from the bubbling woks, the burning of incense in tiny spirit houses, and the foul vapors from the open ditches.

  The food pushcarts are still out and are still doing business. Each has its own propane lantern lit and its own specialty for sale. One might serve satay; chicken or pork roasted on a bamboo skewer and dipped in a coconut, chili, and peanut butter sauce. The next might have cut fruit, the one after that omelets or steamed jasmine rice. The pungent ones sell dried squid. The hand-sized squids are transparent and flat when dried. They are hung up on strings above the pushcart, ready to be stir-fried and doused in a fiery chili sauce. The smells of charcoal, squid, aromatic rice, and fetid ditches wafts over the samlor as we cruise silently along the dirt road. I wonder what Judi is planning on for our romantic midnight dinner?

  Thais eat constantly, they seem to snack every waking hour, hence the popularity of the pushcarts. Yet, they are invariably slender. The people of Ubon have access at all times to some of the best food in the world, yet it is rare to see a fat Thai. People on the streets are making one last raid on the pushcarts before bed. The neighborhood is getting more rural and quieter as I am transported by pedal power in the samlor.

  Now we are at Judi's house and it is impressive in a Thai sort of way. I pay the driver and take a good look. The house speaks volumes about the earnings to be made working on the American air base. Few twenty-something girls in Thailand have their own digs. The house has several airy rooms with open windows and wooden walls. It is built on stilts with enough room to walk under it. A ramp leads up to the living quarters on the second and only floor. The underside of the house is smaller than the second story giving it the look of a wooden mushroom with a tin roof. It is also completely dark.

  Judi said that she gets off at midnight. She has to check out and catch the baht bus home. I expect her to arrive about 12:30. I find myself speculating on how it is possible for her to sit down in her tiny, tight skirt on the baht bus and still stay modest. Maybe, despite her high heels, she can cross her bare legs while perching on the straight-backed wooden seats. My mental image of Judi sitting on the bouncing baht bus, trying to hold her micro-skirt down with both hands, makes my upper lip break out in beads of sweat.

  Across the dirt street from Judi's dark house is a large mangrove tree with expansive roots. The spreading mangrove roots are one to two feet high and will make a good seat. It has been a long day and an intense party and I can stand to take a load off. With only one fifty-watt streetlight every block, it is dark here among the roots of the mangrove tree.

  While I wait, I start thinking, which is always dangerous. Is what I am about to do a good idea? Sure, I'm single, but how badly do I need a Thai girlfriend? Judi didn't invite me to her house after midnight just for fried rice. She will be an exciting, exotic lover, but what happens afterward? Can I afford, the emotional involvement while I'm focused on laying my life on the line every night in combat? Can I sleep with someone and not get involved? I doubt it.

  Can I afford not to enjoy my life to the fullest now? Who knows how long that life will last? What if I spend some of my future years in the Hanoi Hilton? Will I regret that I laid Judi down tonight or look back on her intimate memory to sustain me? Did the two guys we lost this week die with regrets for chances not taken? The chance of buying the farm could justify a ton of bad behavior, but what if I live through it all?

  I could see myself falling for her big-time; she is so pretty and perky. I can already imagine candlelight playing on her shiny ebony hair as her undone ponytail cascades down her nude back spilling over her smooth shoulders like a midnight waterfall. That image makes rational thinking very hard for me tonight. My upper lip was beaded earlier, now I'm sweating bullets and it hasn't gotten any warmer tonight in Ubon City.

  Is this a smart thing to do? What if I survive this crummy war? I won't be in Thailand forever. Is my family in Tennessee ready for a Thai daughter-in-law, if it comes to that? But I'm really getting ahead of myself with that line of thought, sitting on a mangrove root in my green party suit. Would I be here if I were sober?

  Maybe I should let sobriety and future events take care of themselves and only live for the enjoyment of the moment. Wait a minute! Isn't that the deal I have with the devils in the Pentagon? I'll fly and fight and experience the most exciting time of my life. I just won't think about what it all means too much.

  Why not enjoy Judi's exotic favors and let the emotional chips fall where they may for both of us? But I have to admit to myself that taking a hand dealt from the U.S. government devil is very different from me dealing the cards to a nubile twenty-one year old Thai girl. But just how innocent is a mini-skirted barmaid? Particularly one who loves showing off her nude, shapely legs? As the King of Thailand never said, "It is a puzzlement."

  ***

  There is a bright light shining through my welded-shut eyes and I can hear several children giggling. What the hell is going on here?

  I manage to pry one eye open, only to be blinded. I shade my aching head with my right hand and crack the other eye open. The hot Thai sun is trained directly on me. I am lying between two mangrove roots, neither of which is offering any shade. Three Thai kids, ages six to eight, are looking down on me, they're silhouetted with the sun at their backs and giggling. By the angle of the sun, I judge the time to be about 0800. What's with these kids, haven't they ever seen an American pilot in a green party suit sleeping on the ground between mangrove roots before? I feel terrible. I hope I can find a samlor to take me all the way to the base so I won't have to bounce on the baht bus. As I stumble up the dirt street I leave both Judi and her house un-entered behind me. I have to get back to the war, where I know the rules.

  Sailing, Sailing

  The flight deck of an aircraft carrier conducting
flight operations at night is the most dangerous place on the planet where people are regularly called upon to work. I can say that because I have never been in a deep coal mine. I am, however, on the deck of the USS Hancock and it looks plenty dangerous enough to me here.

  Jet aircraft are frequently taking off, aided by massive shots of acceleration delivered by two steam-driven catapults. Most launches involve A-4E Skyhawk attack planes but occasionally an F-8E Crusader fighter taxis on to the catapult and blasts the deck behind with its afterburner plume. The jet blast from the J-57 engine in the F-8 glows white hot, with shock diamonds of flame imbedded in the trail of plasma-colored gasses. Even the A-4s with their much smaller J-52 engines suck and blow furiously, scouring the steel deck with its rubberized coating.

  The noise is terrific, even with Mickey Mouse style ear protectors on my head. The A-4s are loud enough to wake the dead, but are nothing compared to the Crusaders. The F-8's engine is so loud, I feel the noise in my gut, rather than through my covered ears.

  Crewmen trundle racks of live bombs and missiles close by slow-moving aircraft. Fuel hoses turgid with highly flammable jet fuel snake across the deck. A thirty-knot, ninety-degree Fahrenheit wind blows from the bow down the flight deck at all times as the massive Hancock powers its way across the Gulf of Tonkin. The ship always sails into the prevailing breeze just fast enough to provide thirty knots of hot, humid headwind for flight operations. The huge steel deck is rimmed with horizontal nets to catch unlucky sailors who sometimes get blown off by the wind or swept off by jet blast. Steaming off to one side of the carrier and to the rear, a destroyer cruises in formation with the Hancock across the gulf to rescue anyone who leaves the deck and misses the nets. The USN destroyer's mission also includes the rescue of a pilot from any jet that lands in the drink instead of on the ship or anyone who ejects nearby.

  The sea is rough tonight, with dark waves of black water that seem to be fifteen feet from their deep troughs to their foamy tops. The carrier blasts its way through the incoming marching walls of water, pitching up and down with the waves. The shepherding destroyer, a much smaller ship, occasionally takes solid water over its bow. Riding on that boat must be an e-coupon tonight.

  Night operations on the flight deck consist of an intense scene of complex, carefully orchestrated action which constantly threatens to degenerate into chaos. The heat, the wind, and the danger sculpt all human movement into a kind of industrial strength ballet. Enlisted crewmen scurry everywhere wearing helmets and earmuffs, scant protection against the incessantly howling noise. Each of their job specialties has its own colored jersey; the fuel guys have purple shirts, the bomb guys red, the catapult team are in yellow, and so forth. They all also have big brass balls for just being here. Despite the obvious danger and omnipresent violence, the deck crewmen have an air of studied indifference and a way of moving indicating there is nothing abnormal about walking past a jet engine screaming in full afterburner. Men are working hard, but are moving deliberately, only walking fast enough to get the job done, apparently without care. Or, has long exposure to the danger numbed their sense of self-preservation?

  I am not numb. A U.S. Navy sergeant, I think they call them Chief Petty Officers, has been assigned to show me around. He told me to stick to him like glue while we are out on the flight deck. You couldn't separate me from the Chief with a spatula. Without his guidance, I wouldn't survive a minute in this horrific environment. There is just too much heavy metal, sucking intakes, and fiery gasses moving around without regard to any human life in the immediate vicinity.

  An A-4 loaded with six 500-pound bombs quickly taxis into position on the left-hand catapult track at the bow of the ship. Teams of sailors swarm all over it like multicolored army ants checking everything in sight. One guy hooks the Skyhawk's nose to the catapult shuttle using a braided steel cable fashioned into a bridle for airplanes instead of horses. Another sailor pulls the arming pins with their attached red safety flags from the bomb racks and the fuel drop tanks. This crewman shows the handful of pins to the pilot in the cockpit, who seems remarkably calm in the middle of such a maelstrom of dangerous activity.

  The flight deck is dimly lit by red floodlights to preserve the pilots' night vision, lending the aura of a hot, windy hell to the proceedings. Even in this dim light, I can see the pilot look at one of the deck officers, who has some key role in all of this dedicated effort. The catapult officer twirls his right hand high over his head as a signal for the pilot to jam the throttle forward. The noise, even through my acoustic earmuffs, is skull splitting. The pilot checks his cockpit gauges and turns on the jet's navigation lights as a signal that he is ready for flight. The cat officer stops twirling his hand and leans forward dramatically to touch the deck in front of him, toward the bow of the ship.

  One instant the Skyhawk is there, the next it isn't. The little jet disappears like the roadrunner in a cartoon in a wisp of smoke (more likely steam from the catapult), leaving a fading visual image in its place as the real jet disappears off the front of the ship. As soon as the first A-4 has been launched into the hot, black night, the sailors begin to minister to the next one. A second A-4 leaves a few seconds later from the right hand catapult and two more Skyhawks taxi into position, ready to be shot off the ship into the void.

  This time, I watch the A-4 as it is hurled down the deck and off the bow. As soon as the aircraft's wheels start rolling on thin air, the pilot starts a right bank away from the ship's course, flying at what has to be close to his stalling airspeed. I am told this maneuver allows the ejection seat to save your life if the jet's engine quits on take­off. If the fire behind you in the aircraft goes out and you have to eject, you don't want the 50,000-ton USS Hancock running over you in the water.

  I have never seen such a demonstration of barely controlled mechanical fury. A fully loaded A-4 has to weigh 14,000 or 15,000 pounds, small for a jet aircraft, but still impressive. A seven-ton jet is hurled off the ship like a manned rock from a schoolboy's sling shot and another one is readied before anyone misses the first.

  As I watch, an outboard section of the steel deck the size of a tennis court disappears downward. In a minute or so the flight deck elevator reappears, climbing upward, to merge flush again with the flight deck. It carries an A-4 from the hanger deck below, ready to be loaded with bombs, fuel, and an intrepid pilot.

  After forty-five minutes of furious action, all the ready aircraft have been launched and the ship slowly turns 180 degrees to run downwind. It sails in a racetrack pattern in order to maintain its position off the coast of North Vietnam. The ship is so huge it feels as if the horizon is swinging around the ship instead of the ship turning. It is marvelous that something as immense as the Hancock can even move across the surface of the sea, much less at thirty knots. I have enjoyed about as much of this as I can stand, so I ask the Chief to escort me to someplace safer and quieter. As a matter of fact, any place would be safer and quieter than here on the flight deck.

  I am on the USS Hancock for a few days to instruct the US Navy on how to drop these newfangled laser-guided bombs they have heard so much about. The Hancock is on "Yankee Station" off the coast of North Vietnam to take the war, such that it is, to the enemy. Another aircraft carrier is off South Vietnam on "Dixie Station" to fly in support of U.S. troops in the south. Yankee and Dixie Stations are really two ill-defined orbit points in the South China Sea.

  The USAF is having terrific success with our Paveway laser-guided bombs. Some days, my squadron in Thailand alone racks up more targets confirmed destroyed than the rest of the US air effort, including the US Navy. In the world of inter-service rivalry, and there is no other world, this is wholly unacceptable to the admirals. The idea that one upstart USAF F-4D Phantom squadron in Thailand can destroy more targets in a day than the whole US Navy's air arm goes down poorly in Washington. If this very unbalanced success rate continues much longer, some flinty-eyed congresspersons might have the nerve to ask why the American taxpayers are spend
ing so much money on aircraft carriers for such relatively poor results. Even worse, the green eyeshade types in the Congressional Budget Office might divert funds from the supposedly inept US Navy to the wildly successful US Air Force. Oh, the horror!

  The US Navy brass, of which there is an overabundance, reminds me of the mafioso Don who was told by a classy dame that he had no couth. The Don immediately dispatched all his hit men to buy up every drop of couth in town. In belated response to the USAF's Paveway success, the Navy has obtained a limited supply of laser guidance kits from the civilian contractor in Texas for immediate installation on USN dumb bombs. The kits were air freighted to Hawaii to meet the good ship Hancock during a port call in the islands on its way westward from the United States to the war. En route from Pearl Harbor to the Subic Bay naval base in the Philippines, the navy guys opened the boxes to check out these new, wonderful "smart bombs." Much to their surprise, they discovered the bombs need a laser to illuminate the target. Paveways are smart bombs, not genius bombs; without help they don't know the target's location. Thus, lasers were hastily procured and flown to Subic Bay for use by the Hancock's bemused flight crews.

  During the short sea journey from Subic Bay to Yankee Station the munitions troops learned how to assemble the bomb kits from instruction by the civilian contractor's technical support person on board. He told them how to insert tab A into slot B. But, the pilots are clueless on Paveway flight operations and tactics. Navy pilots tactically clueless, why am I not surprised?

  The Commander of the Hancock's air wing swallowed his considerable naval pride in the interests of achieving success with the laser-guided bombs and made an urgent radio call for help to USAF headquarters in Saigon. The request rolled down the chain of command hill to Ubon, Thailand, located at the bottom of that slippery grade. My Squadron Commander, who obviously wishes to see me dead or humiliated or both, tagged me to go sailing with the Navy. So here I am, trying not to get sucked down a jet intake on the hellish flight deck of the USS Hancock. The entire A-4 squadron, VA-212, the "Flying Eagles," tasked to introduce the concept of smart bombs to the fleet was just shot off the front of the boat tonight one by one. They are all flying. So, I have no one to brief and/or educate.