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

by Ed Cobleigh

  I can't just schedule a dedicated sortie to do the job; the Thais are leery and understandably so, of us flying combat sorties operating only over Thailand. They feel the air defense of the Kingdom of Thailand is the job of the Royal Thai Air Force and they're right. However, both the Ambassador and the Wing Commander want Bob Hope to be escorted by Americans, not Thais. Also, the RoEs prohibit flying such a sortie or, to be more precise, inhibit planning and scheduling such a sortie.

  As is usual, when a hot potato is tossed, it is a junior officer that gets assigned to catch it. That would be me. If this operation gets screwed up, the powers that be will sacrifice me like a voodoo chicken and continue on with their own careers. I sure hope the US Ambassador doesn't find out that the action officer on the Bob Hope MiG CAP project is the same guy who wiped out the Chinese cultural center in northern Laos. That flap is still blowing over.

  The sergeant sitting beside me is in on the plan. He has found two jets that aren't committed to the morning schedule. I instruct him to have them loaded with dumb bombs for a cover mission as well as the necessary air-to-air missiles and to prepare the two Phantoms for an 0800 takeoff.

  I call Saigon on the secure land line phone and tell them that I have generated two extra combat softies for next morning's combat action. I go on to say that as I am not allowed to schedule an airborne tanker, the flight will have to be un-refueled and work near the base in southern Laos. I am allowed to add to the daily flying schedule, all the better to fly more sorties than the US Navy, but not to subtract from it. Saigon is pleased that I am trying extra hard to win the war and will order a Forward Air Controller (FAC), whose call sign is "Nail," to work with us in southern Laos. They can't reassign a tanker over Thailand either, all that is done from Strategic Air Command HQ back in Kansas. I suspect the Duty Officer in Saigon knows what I am up to, but I don't reveal my plan and thereby save him the embarrassment of telling me not to do it.

  So far, I have two jets with ordnance, a FAC, and a slot on the schedule. Now I need a tanker. I can't count on those Hollywood types in the Bob Hope show to show up at the air base in Bangkok for the C-130's planned takeoff time. Entertainers take great personnel pride in not hewing to a precise military schedule. My "unofficial" MiG CAP needs to have enough flight time and gas to meet the C-130 whenever it leaves Bangkok.

  I call the C-130 base farther up north, the home of the Airborne Command Post aircraft, "Alley Cat" (at night) and "Cricket" (in the daytime). My ol' buddy Bruce is flying tonight, so I speak to his counterpart who is planning the daytime missions. He knows what is going down. The crew of Cricket in their role as the USAF airborne commander in Thailand will need to follow Hope's flight on the radio as it progresses. But the RoE's inhibit candor. I tell the Cricket guy that I will have a nonscheduled MiG CAP flight airborne tomorrow morning available for "special assignment" but the planes will need some gas. There is always extra jet fuel in some tanker somewhere.

  All I need now is two crews. I call the desk officer at my squadron and tell him we are adding two sorties for tomorrow morning. I can sense his doubts over the phone, but I don't explain. I tell him to call the squadron officers' quarters and find three guys sober enough to fly tomorrow morning who aren't already on the flying schedule. He is to tell them to report at 0530 hours. He asks who will lead the flight. That would be me again. If I'm going to spend all night pulling strings to provide air cover for Bob Hope, I'm going to see the action up close and personal.

  Only guys who are in on the plan know what is up with the planned show. Them and the whole base, that is. For three days, the civil engineering squadron and their Thai carpenters have been constructing a stage and setting up sound equipment in an open area on base. Everyone knows that Bob Hope and his entertainers are in the war zone and that a huge open air stage is under construction. This is the worst kept secret in the history of the war. I sure hope none of those Thai carpenters are CTs, it wouldn't take much subterfuge to stash a remote controlled satchel charge under the stage .

  ***

  I get off duty at 0600 hours and I leave the CP with a wave to my relief after clearing away the mess of the night's action. The incoming duty pig also knows what is about to happen. The squadron desk officer has scheduled another pilot, call sign "Animal," to fly on my wing as Satan Two. Two navigators to work the rear cockpits of the Phantoms are also on tap. Their job will be to find the precious C-130 with our jets' radars and vector us in to a safe intercept.

  We are briefing the flight at the squadron when I tell them what our real mission is to be today. I get three smiles in return; this is going to be fun. Suddenly the Duty Sergeant from the CP bursts into the briefing room without knocking. He is breathing hard and blurts out,

  "Captain Cobleigh, you need to come to the CP on the double."

  I reply that I am briefing a combat sortie and ask if this can wait.

  He says, "No sir, the Duty Officer needs you right now, before he calls the Old Man and the Air Police."

  That news gets my attention. I ask Animal to finish the briefing and say I will meet them at the aircraft in time to crank engines, if I'm not in jail. As I hurry to the CP, I ask myself, "'What could have gone wrong? Did someone in Saigon catch on and get cold feet? Has the C-130 flight been canceled or delayed? Did Cricket not find a tanker? Is the Ambassador wise to who is setting this special MiG CAP mission up? Has the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok declared war on USAF HQ in Saigon? None of the possible answers to those questions would have generated the panicked look on the sergeant's face or caused his lack of observance of military protocol. This must be really serious.

  I punch in the combination on the cipher-locked door of the CP and enter. The Duty Officer, another captain, looks at me in panic, his face as white as a sheet. Has thermonuclear war broken out? He barks at me with the desperation of a man who is seeing his career go up in smoke.

  "Where is the RoE book?"

  I look quickly and discover it is not on the end of the desk where it should be. I am supposed to inventory the Top Secret book when I leave and sign a form stating that I did so. The incoming Duty Officer is to perform his own check, certifying that he is receiving the RoE book and is to sign the same form. We have done none of this. I was in such a hurry to get to my flight briefing and the incoming guy had another separate crisis to deal with. Somehow in the chaos the crucial document has disappeared.

  This is a court martial offense. "Top Secret" is the highest category of classification specified by the U.S. government. Misplacing the RoE book will certainly end my career with a dishonorable discharge and a large fine. If the book is lost or compromised, it means big trouble for all concerned. If the CTs and/or the North Vietnamese are thought to have had access to it, we all are looking at jail time in Leavenworth federal prison, making little ones out of big ones with sledgehammers.

  The sergeant says, "We have to call the Air Police and the Old Man."

  If he does, we all won't believe the shit storm that will instantly descend. I council caution.

  "Let's all calm down and think. It has to be here somewhere. When did you last see it?"

  The Duty Officer stammers that it wasn't on the desk when he finally got around to doing his inventory; he hasn't seen it since he arrived at 0600 hours.

  I tell them, "It was here all night, right under the pizza box."

  We all look at each other with the insight of a blinding flash of the obvious.

  I ask, "When did the trash get set out?"

  The sergeant tells me, "I put the trash bag out for the houseboy about 0630."

  The Thai janitor/houseboy is of course not allowed in the CP, he picks up the bag of trash outside the security door.

  Quickly, I probe further, "What does he do with it?"

  The sergeant tells us that the houseboy dumps the trash in a large bin in the rear of the building where the Thai garbage guys pick it up and take it to the off-base dump.

  I ask the Sixty-four Million Baht Question, ''When
do the garbage guys come?"

  The sergeant doesn't know. As one man we sprint out the back door and find the open trash bin. Like people possessed by demons, we tear through the smelly mess with our bare hands. In a few frenzied seconds the sergeant finds the heavy brown paper trash bag from the CP and rips it open. Like a demented pearl diver, I plunge my hands and head into the sack. There, stuck to the bottom of a pizza box by melted mozzarella cheese is the most sensitive document possessed by U.S. Air Force in Thailand.

  We instinctively look around to see if anyone has seen us poring through the trash bin. All's clear, and we take a deep breath. I scrape the glutinous white cheese off the book's the red cover with my fingernails as we sheepishly try to nonchalantly stroll back into the CP as if nothing has happened. Once behind the locked door, we look at each other and silently ask, "Now what do we do?"

  We are obliged to report any possible compromise of the RoEs. We are supposed to notify the security troops immediately if the book goes missing at any time. Official regulations dictate that if any un-cleared person, such as the Thai houseboy, ever has access to the document, a formal investigation must be launched. If any of this is discovered by the command authorities, they will take into account our failure to perform the required inventory in a timely manner. The whole caper will undoubtedly result in severe disciplinary action against the whole, sorry lot of us.

  I look at the sergeant and the Duty Officer, "Sarge, was the garbage bag still tied closed when you found it?"

  He confirms that it was, tightly.

  I go on, "Then the houseboy couldn't have seen the RoE book, could he?"

  The duty officer agrees. I reckon out loud that given the dangers inherent in flying daily combat, we will probably all be dead before any investigation can be conducted and concluded. That gets a laugh and I gently place the RoE book back in its accustomed place on the desk and tell the still-stunned pair that I have a takeoff time to meet. We all look at each other and turn to examine in great detail the floor of the CP as if we have never seen it before.

  I am just able to meet Animal and the two navigators at the jets with my flight gear in time to pre-flight my F-4D Phantom. We take off, join up, and cruise east to Southern Laos; the flight is unremarkable and relaxing. It is calming to perform long-practiced routines in the cockpit and to forget about the near miss with disaster back at the base CP.

  Satan flight arrives overhead the proposed target area on time and I contact the Nail FAC flying far below us in his OV-10 prop-driven bug smasher. On the radio he sounds happy to see us and to have extra, unplanned bombing support. He gives us the target area briefing and tells us he thinks there is a North Vietnamese truck convoy parked in a dense stretch of jungle alongside a dirt road. But, he isn't sure of the exact location of the convoy.

  Nail's plan is to probe the green canopy of jungle trees with bombs, gradually stripping away the foliage with single explosions until the exact location of the trucks can be seen and they can be hit in force. He knows we each have twelve 500-pound bombs. I can sense from his voice on the radio he is going to enjoy watching this as we make pass after pass dropping one bomb each time until we hit pay dirt. The Nail isn't clued in on the real mission of Satan Flight.

  The Nail finishes his radio briefing with, "Satan, how much time on target do you have?"

  .I reply, "We can give you one pass."

  Without even a radio transmission, I can hear him thinking. "What's with these F-4 guys? I know they've just taken off with a full fuel load, we're near their home base, there is no ground fire, and they can only afford one pass?"

  Resignation is apparent in Nail's voice as he accedes to our plan. The FAC launches a white phosphorous smoke rocket as a marker and tells us to hit the tree line on the other side of the trail from the smoke. I feel badly about cheating the FAC out of his expected success and I vow to put all twelve bombs right where he wants them.

  Flying hard, I bear down even more than usual to achieve the planned dive bomb parameters in order to accurately deliver the twelve bombs to the point where Nail thinks the trucks are hidden. At forty-five degrees of dive, 450 knots and 7,500 feet above the ground, my navigator calls, "Pickle," and I salvo the bombs. I feel the jet leap upward, released from 6,000 pounds of cast steel and high explosives as the bombs fall away. I feed in the Gs with the control stick until the nose is well above the horizon, turn left, and look back over my shoulder. I see twelve instant brown mushrooms of dirt and smoke growing in a ragged line along the targeted tree line. For once, I have made good on a dumb bomb dive delivery.

  Half a minute later, Animal's bombs splash through the green trees parallel to where mine hit but fifty to a hundred yards farther along the brown dirt road. I see the angry red flashes as his ordnance detonates and I take pride in Satan Flight's bombing accuracy. Despite being in a god-awful hurry we have put the ordnance right on target.

  As I watch from on high, explosions continue in the Laotian jungle far below. These aren't bomb splashes, but secondary explosions caused by our bombs as the parked trucks ignite and burn. The black smoke of burning petroleum billows from individual trucks and merges into an angry cloud above the road. The truck park was hidden in the jungle just where the Nail suspected. Our bombs have set off a firestorm of burning trucks, torched fuel tanks, blazing supplies, and exploding ammunition. Everything that goes up in smoke here in Laos won't be used later at our troops in South Vietnam.

  The Nail goes crazy on the radio, bursting with achievement and job satisfaction. His day is made. He thanks us for the good bombing as we climb out westward toward the Thai border. Normally we would stick around and admire our work, but we'll leave that to the Nail. I make a mental note to call the Nail pilot on the land line and explain our haste. Now, we have to find that bootleg tanker that Cricket has promised. We contact Cricket as we enter Thai airspace still climbing and throttle back to save fuel. Cricket gives us the tanker call sign and approximate location. It seems that a scheduled strike flight hasn't shown up, which is not uncommon, and this tanker has extra fuel to give away. Before we leave Cricket's radio frequency the controller working our flight, who obviously knows what we are up to, transmits to us a time-honored salutation.

  "Satan Flight, you are cleared to tanker frequency. Good luck and good hunting."

  The sarcasm fills my earphones; Cricket is telling us to watch out for those short-range MiGs between Bangkok and our base, hundreds of miles from North Vietnam.

  My navigator finds the tanker on our radar and vectors us to a rendezvous. Animal and I top off our fuel tanks and I contact Lion radar on the air defense frequency. The Bob Hope C-130 is using the same call sign as the C-130 mail planes, "Klong," to confuse the Bad Guys. I ask for the status of Klong and am told that it hasn't left Bangkok's Don Muang Royal Thai Air Force Base yet. We are all dressed up with nowhere to go.

  All we can do is wait. Animal and I hang on the tanker, flying loose formation as the KC-135 orbits over central Thailand. Our jets occasionally take sips of gas like enormous brown/green hummingbirds at a backyard feeder as we await our chance to break into show business.

  Finally, Lion relays that the Klong is airborne. I thank the tanker crew for the bootleg fuel and turn to the vectored direction given by Lion to us as Animal joins up on my right wing. A few minutes later, both navigators acquire and lock on to the precious C-130 and we complete the intercept on our own radars. I pick up the Herky Bird visually about 10,000 feet below us, headed northeast. As we descend and turn in behind the Klong, Lion confirms there are no unidentified aircraft anywhere in northern Thailand. The skies are clean.

  I transmit to Animal, "Satan Two, confirm missiles safe."

  Animal replies, "Roger that."

  Animal's annoyance at my reminder to deactivate his missiles is obvious on the radio, but we can't screw this up. I double-checked and made sure my own air-to-air missiles are totally safe, not armed, while directing Animal to do the same. Shooting down the Bob Hope show by m
istake would be a worse career move than either losing the RoE book or trashing the Chinese cultural center. We would get a reserved seat in "Ol' Sparky" the electric chair for that foul-up and we would deserve it.

  Satan Flight rolls out two miles behind the lumbering Klong and I contact the pilot on another radio frequency. I tell him that his MiG CAP flight is on the case two miles in trail and he need fear not the North Vietnamese Air Force. The Klong driver asks if we can make a slow pass by his turbo-prop aircraft so the distinguished passengers can see who is sweeping the skies for them.

  I agree, but I have no idea how fast a C-130 flies at medium altitude, or rather how slowly. I pull the throttles back to slow down and my airspeed indicator stabilizes at 250 knots or about 300 miles per hour. The guy in the rear cockpit of my jet says his radar reads that we have 25 knots of overtake; that sounds about right. Flying at 250 knots gives me the creeps. I feel like a big sitting duck in the sky, even if these Thai skies are friendly. I am used to a minimum of 400 knots or faster when I can get it. With Animal on my right wing, we close on the C-130's right wing and I see the four big propellers thrashing their way through the Thai airspace. I rock my wings twice and Animal tucks his jet into closer proximity to mine and flies pretty parade formation as we slowly slide by the Klong's wing tip. The C-130 pilot compliments us on our tight formation as we accelerate ahead with more power to circle to the left around behind the Klong again.