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

by Ed Cobleigh

  ***

  It is finally time to meet with my host squadron and discuss Paveway laser-guided bombs. Back in the ready room, a group of eight or ten pilots are gathered in one quarter. They are all from the same squadron, save one. This loner has a different set of patches on his faded navy flight suit, a different color T shirt on under it, and a different, pissed-off look on his face. The other guys seem friendly enough but this lieutenant looks as if he was forced marched to our meeting at gunpoint. He won't look at me or speak to the others.

  My steel trap mind instantly gloms onto the fact that there is something going on here I don't understand. I mentally switch my mental communications mode from "transmit" to "receive" and ask the guys how they intend to use the laser-guided bombs. They guys are only too willing to fill me in.

  During the long, boring transit across the Pacific, it dawned upon the A-4 squadron they needed lasers to guide laser-guided bombs. The lasers were waiting for them at Subic Bay. The USN procurement community purchased several handheld, battery-powered lasers, probably from the lowest bidder. These units are about the size of a shoe box, with a leather strap handle on each end and a thumb trigger. On top of the box is an optical sight with aiming crosshairs. The laser emanates from a lens in the center of the box.

  The current plan is to use the ship's one and only two-seat jet, a TA-4J Skyhawk trainer, as the illumination aircraft. The two-man T-bird will guide the Paveways dropped by the single-seat birds. It is a plan of breathtaking naiveté.

  My first thought is, "How can I get out of this scene and escape being tarred with the fallout from the inevitable debacle. These guys are going to sprinkle wild Paveways all across Southeast Asia like falling leaves."

  The illuminators in the backseats of our big USAF Phantoms are firmly bolted to the aircraft and are motion damped, operated by a tiny joy­stick. The accuracy of a laser-guided bomb is dependent of the pointing accuracy of the laser. The bomb doesn't know where the target is, only where the laser spot on the ground is. If the laser illumination is off the target, that's where the bomb will hit. It is hard enough to hold the laser spot precisely on a small target from the backseat of a large, stable aircraft such as the Phantom, even with the laser hard-mounted to the canopy rail.

  There is no way a little bouncy jet like the Skyhawk can fly a flight path smoothly enough for illumination. Secondly, the laser is going to be handheld by a human being, with no support or damping. The laser spot is going to be all over the place and so are the bombs. Paveway has the ability to average out pointing errors of a few feet, but not hundreds of yards.

  While I am considering hurling myself into the sea in despair, the situation gets even worse. I am told that the laser will be held and aimed by a F-8 Crusader pilot! This is the guy with the shitty attitude sitting grumpily out on the fringes of the meeting.

  In the US Navy, there is a rigid hierarchy, a pecking order for pilots. At the top of the pyramid are fighter pilots who fly the single-seat, single-engine Crusader. They are strictly dedicated to air-to-air combat. They drop no bombs; indeed, the F-8 is presently incapable of carrying any external stores other than Sidewinder missiles. They always fly alone; there is no two-seat version of the Crusader. The fighter pilots flying the two-seat, twin-engine Phantom occupy the next rung down on the ladder. Phantoms are switch-hitters; they perform air combat as well as drop bombs. The single-seat attack pilots flying single-seat Skyhawks as well as the A-7 Corsair come third on the prestige ladder, followed by two-seat attack pilots in the A6A Intruder and so forth on down to lowly helicopter pilots and transport drivers.

  The status ladder on the Hancock has but two rungs. The ship carries only the Crusaders and the Skyhawks; there are no two-seat jets on board, except for the TA-4J trainer.

  Someone in authority has decided that a single-seat fighter pilot from the Hancock's Crusader squadron will fly in the backseat of the A-4 trainer and help deliver bombs, even if they are laser-guided. This is akin to sending a heart surgeon to work in a leper colony.

  Evidently, the 1950s era Crusader aircraft are old and are broken a lot, giving their pilots lots of free time. You can't fly prestige; you have to have a working jet. In the interests of efficient utilization of onboard personnel, some command genius has decided to make bombardiers out of pure fighter pilots.

  Thinking hard, I see I have been dealt a losing hand. Technically, tactically, and personality-wise, this USN introduction of Paveway laser-guided bombs is doomed to failure. My viable options are few. I can pretend to be seasick and hang over the rail vomiting until they take me off of this wretched boat. I can tell the USN its cockamamie scheme will never work and be dismissed as a lunatic crank from the USAF, probably an undercover agent from the Pentagon after Navy funding. I can help them all I can and hope for the best while expecting the worst. Or, I can dream up another plan that might just work.

  I am having a big problem with my personal ethics. I can't just walk away from this situation, that would be UNSAT and cowardly. I strongly believe the destiny of tactical ground attack lies with guided bombs; these devices are the wave of the future. The results I see produced by Paveways from our base in Thailand are magical. We are destroying targets with surgical accuracy and in relative safety. Despite the naysayers, the traditionalists, the macho techno­phobes, and particularly guided munitions' long history of failure, we are proving terminal guidance works and works exceedingly well. Besides providing reliable target destruction, guided bombs save pilots' lives. Using Paveways, we fly many fewer dangerous combat sorties and we can stand off from the enemy's lethal defenses when we do go in harm's way. What can I do to fix things here and still be able to walk into the Ubon Officers' Club bar with my head held high?

  My personal best bet is to quickly brief these guys and then get the hell off the ship before they try this unworkable plan. However, a highly visible failure of the USN Paveway program, however ill conceived, will set the cause of precision guided munitions back by years. I am a true believer in this technology and I just can't let it fail. The scoffers are still out there in their legions and will pounce on an abortive USN Paveway program to turn back the clock to employment of only dumb bombs. The USN brass likes nothing more than returning to the storied days of yore. So, I can't disengage, walk away, and still face myself in the mirror. I have to come up with a plan. It has to be good and it has to be now. I decide to enlist the help of the guy with the most to lose besides me. Starting slowly, speaking clearly waving my hands, and using simple words, I explain the physics of laser guidance and the absolute need for illumination accuracy. I forecast that a number of wild, unguided bombs will go ballistic if dropped under the current plan. I take a guess at the accuracy of the ones that do guide. I drop the hint that when things predictably go astray, the navy brass will start asking questions as to why the USAF is able to succeed splendidly with Paveways and the USN can't get its act together. I get shocked, worried looks returned from all hands present. They have been led to believe that these laser-guided wonders somehow find their targets with little human intervention. The disgruntled Crusader pilot takes the bait, hook, line, and sinker. He flatly refuses to be an operator of such a jury-rigged system. He now clearly sees a way out of an unpleasant situation he wanted no part of to begin with. The fighter jock leaves the meeting heading for his own crew room on the double. Undoubtedly, he will tell his skipper that those A-4 idiots are setting him up to be the fall guy. He has no intention in taking the blame for a failure of the technical community, a mistake fueled by the childish Washington area, inside the beltway rivalry with the USAF.

  The guys remaining in the meeting give a visible sigh of relief, not having to deal any more with the departed prima donna. I go on with the second part of my hastily concocted plan. Why not let the USAF do the target illumination? The Skyhawk guys can rendezvous with one of my squadron's Paveway illuminators over the target area. We will do the lasing; they will do the bombing. We know how to aim lasers. They already know
how to bomb and no one in the USN will have to learn anything new. This plan meets with relieved approval. If the bombs miss, they can always blame the failures on us USAF weenies.

  All I have to do now is to get back to Thailand and sell the idea to our brass. Getting back to Thailand is a good idea in itself; I am tired of sailing. I am ready to have a drink in public, to have my chow served by a pretty Thai waitress instead of some Pilipino guy named Steward, and to fly instead of watching other guys fly. But, I have learned a lot while boating.

  An aircraft carrier isn't a normal ship. It is large enough to be considered a place that moves to other locales. Living on board one is like inhabiting a giant, noisy, smelly machine full of other people, all of them ugly males. My helmet is off to these USN types who put up with their shipboard lifestyle like monks with no feminine company. I do respect the men who land back on the carrier; that looks way difficult. However, I am more than ready for a good ol' civilized U.S. Air Force base.

  ***

  Back in Thailand, my plan is dashed on the shoals of bureaucracy. Once the idea of USAF Phantoms illuminating for USN Skyhawks is proposed and considered, the staffers and paper pushers in Saigon think of a myriad of reasons why it won't work and none why it will. How will they schedule the sorties? The USAF command elements have no direct lines of communication with the USN schedulers. The two bureaucracies live on separate planets despite being committed to fighting the same war. The navy isn't about to adjust its flight schedule for any reason; it is dictated by the rhythm of shipboard operations. The USAF isn't going to fly at the whim of the USN either. Who will get credit for the targets destroyed, the USAF or the USN? When a grateful Congress hands out the annual funding checks, whom will they go to? What happens if a bomb misses? Whose fault will it be? Does the USN really want everyone in the Pentagon to think they need the USAF for success? This sort of joint operation has never been tried before, therefore it must be impossible. If it were a good idea, we would have been doing it all along, say the staffers who didn't get their jobs because they were the sharpest knives in the drawer. If some junior officer up-country in Thailand can come up with a new and effective way of operating, then HQ doesn't need as many staff drones.

  Given the insurmountable obstacles, all of which are bureaucratic, none are operational, the USN's Paveway project has been quietly shelved until it can be reconstituted as an all-Navy show, with purpose-built illumination hardware that actually works. The Bad Guys breathe a sigh of relief.

  ***

  I am sitting at the bar in the Ubon Officers' Club, sipping a legal Bourbon and water, in plain view. I am watching how the Thai barmaid's trim, shapely bottom seems to have been poured into her skintight dress, realizing I can see more like her and more of her at any time I so desire. You won't find a vision like that on a US Navy ship. I'm also trying to remember what my last landing was like, no one taped or graded it. It must have been a good one as I walked away from it, but I can't for the life of me remember how it went.

  There's No Business Like Show Business

  I'm running the Vietnam War. Actually, I'm temporarily running the base Command Post, the CP, and thus the local outpost in that war. For the next six hours, I will be the Wing Duty Officer, or "duty pig" as exalted the position is affectionately called by one and sundry.

  The CP is a windowless room in Wing Headquarters equipped with three desks facing a large wall of backlit Plexiglas. On that transparent wall is posted the current twenty-four hour day flying schedule for the entire wing, all five squadrons of it. Each flight's details are listed; squadron, call sign, takeoff times, missions, ordnance, and tail numbers of the aircraft in the flight. The board also lists pertinent facts about the status of actions under way on the base itself as well as the posted security posture, the DEFCON state. I have two sergeants with me who keep the big board current and assist in liaison with the non-flying units on base. Direct phone lines run to each squadron; the Wing Commander, the emergency fire and rescue crews, the weather station, the control tower, and Seventh/Thirteenth Air Force HQ in Saigon. My job is to make sure the daily flying schedule is accomplished without any hitches and to see any emergencies that arise are dealt with.

  If all goes as planned, which it never does, I will have little to do on my six-hour shift but to sit and watch it all happen. I'm really not commanding anything, as the folks charged with actually doing the work know what they are doing far better than I do. All I can do is coordinate, communicate, and make sure there are no obstacles to them doing it.

  I am pulling this shift to prepare me for higher command. The USAF believes in relentless promotion. You are either promoted on a fixed, predictable schedule, you are retired, or you are kicked out of the service. The USAF prepares each officer as he or she progresses up the rank ladder to be the Commander, the Chief of Staff USAF although only one of us will be the Chief at a time. Another canon of USAF dogma is you cannot achieve higher rank solely by flying. Many a failed officer's professional epitaph reads, "All he ever did was fly airplanes." Theoretically, the mission of the US Air Force is to fly, fight, and win. If you specialize in doing just that, your career is doomed. To progress up the chain of command, you must learn how to prosper in a bureaucracy, which means accepting assignments which put you behind a desk at times. Judging from the quality of command decisions made by our senior leadership, quite a few of them have spent far too much time flying those desks.

  To prepare each and every one of us to be the Chief, we are assigned what are called "additional duties." Some of these duties are really necessary like my present part-time job in the CP, but the utility of other assignments is questionable at best. My roommate's additional duty is to serve as the acting commander of the sentry dog unit on base. He has a couple of dozen airmen and their dogs reporting to him. When he isn't flying, he is at the dog kennel supervising patrols, training men and dogs, doing veterinary checks, feeding, and watching dog shit disposal. I envy him; his additional duty is more enjoyable than mine and he is dealing with highly trained dogs and their expert handlers. My roomie gets to work in a more realistic environment than I do in the CP. He deals with more honest people than I do in working with the folks at Air Force HQ in Saigon. His sons of bitches really are dogs. My counterparts are human SOBs in training.

  My shift runs from midnight to six o'clock in the morning. Usually, the tedium is pronounced, but not tonight. There is to be a major, secret, undercover mission conducted early tomorrow and I intend to make myself an integral part of what is to transpire. I am working at full speed to set things up, to schedule the aircraft, the tankers, the ordnance, to coordinate, not with those twits in Saigon, but with the pros at the US Embassy in Bangkok.

  I wolfed down the pizza I had delivered earlier from the Officers' Club and set the greasy box on top of the Top Secret Rules of Engagement loose leaf notebook at the end of my desk. The RoEs govern everything we do at the war, who and what we can bomb and shoot down, and how we are to do it and not do it. The red-covered book is the CP bible. I personally sign for it when I come on duty and sign it off to my relief officer when I leave. Compromising the RoEs or giving the Bad Guys access to the Rules could seriously harm the war effort and could get more guys killed than currently predicted. I have to keep in mind the directives the RoE book contains as I plan and staff the extraordinary sortie I am putting on the big board for mid-morning next.

  This secret two-ship sortie will be assigned to provide MiG CAP for a special mission aircraft flying up to Ubon from Bangkok. The passengers on that C-130 Herky Bird are to be safeguarded at all costs; no harm is to come to them. The flight schedule of the C-130 is classified Secret; the mission doesn't appear on my scheduling board, nor is it on the official daily flight orders from Saigon. There are perhaps a dozen folks on base, including me, who know when and where this aircraft is to appear and why. The Bob Hope show is coming to our base.

  Everyone concerned, presumably including the Bad Guys, knows that losing this p
articular C-130 would be a devastating blow to American morale. Bob Hope is an American icon. He has entertained our troops since WWII. He was in Korea during the war there. Bob has traveled the globe to the far reaches of US Armed Forces deployments to put on his shows, usually around Christmastime.

  If the North Vietnamese were able to enlist the support of the Communist Thais, known as the CTs, to mount a sapper attack on the base during the show, carnage could result among the assembled troops. If the North Vietnamese Air Force were to fly south on a one-way mission to Thailand and shoot down the C-130, the propaganda and morale victory would be worth whatever it cost them. The North Vietnamese Air Force has never ventured over Thailand, but you never know what they might do. The dangers of an enemy appearance in Thailand pale in comparison to the risk at other venues where Hope's troupe performs, but the

  US Ambassador to Thailand is taking no chances whatsoever. He wants air cover, a MiG CAP, over the C-130 at all times.

  My present CP challenge is to generate two additional sorties that are either off the books completely or not what they appear to be as listed on the schedule. I can't change the daily combat orders; Saigon won't stand for that. Ever mindful of the rabid stateside press, they are somehow afraid of a possible headline in the Washington Post, "USAF Cancels Vital War Mission to Escort Hollywood Stars," The fact that 90 percent of the American public would applaud such a precautionary move escapes our leadership. Our generals' lack of understanding of the popularity of Bob Hope is indicative of their disconnect from US public sentiment about the war and of much else. I also sense a bureaucratic turf battle between the mandarins of Seventh/Thirteenth HQ and the U.S. Embassy in Thailand. The USAF, part of the Department of Defense, feels that it is its job to allocate fighter assets and not that of the U.S. Embassy, which of course is part of the State Department. But never mind, it is my intention to make both organizations happy and shine my own young ass as well.