Racing Back to Vietnam

by John Pendergrass

  The flight schedules were anything but regular. Bad weather,

  aircraft breakdowns, and problems at the receiving hospitals on the other end all created a lot of uncertainty. Often I’d have a room full of problem patients to worry about—the man with the persistent fever, the one with a drop in his hemoglobin level, the wounded soldier who had just learned that his wife had left him—and these concerns would gnaw at the back of my mind, worrying me at night and making it difficult to sleep. Then one afternoon I’d walk over from my office to make rounds, and the patients would be gone. I rarely got word, if there was word, of when the plane was coming to take them away. The aircraft would land, the flight nurses and other personnel would load them aboard the plane, and they were gone.

  I tried to stay positive myself, as well. You knew that many of the sick and injured would fully recover; but they were the lucky ones. The less fortunate had lost limbs, suffered serious burns, or had other permanent problems. Sometimes it was difficult to keep from crying at their bedside, seeing the very young, injured in the prime of their life in a war without meaning.

  At the height of the conflict, in 1968–1969, over a thousand casualties a month were being evacuated. Casualty Staging Flight facilities at places like Da Nang and Cam Ranh Bay had one hundred beds or more. Fortunately, by the time I arrived, it had slowed to a trickle; a dozen or less was the usual census in 1971.

  By late fall of 1971, most of the American ground troops were gone. By that time, President Nixon’s “Vietnamization” program had been underway for some time. The plan was to gradually turn the war over to the South Vietnamese, leaving some U.S. air power and advisors to keep things in check.

  I was thankful that there would be no more battlefield casualties to look after and happy for the soldiers and Marines who no longer had to fight the brutal war. The air campaign continued unabated, but the war in the sky had a different dynamic, a different feel from the ground war. If you were shot down, you faced the quick death of combat, the hell of captivity, or the joy of being rescued. You were unlikely to end up in my hospital. Once the ground troops left, I was free to concentrate on the more traditional duties of a flight surgeon—taking care of the men who flew the airplanes.

  For almost as long as there have been airplanes, there have been flight surgeons. The concept started back in World War I, continued in both war and in peace, and is an important component of today’s Air Force. It’s one of the best jobs in the USAF, a splendid opportunity to learn a lot about aerospace medicine and put your skills to direct use. I was fortunate to live and work with people who knew a great deal about flying and were happy to share their knowledge with me.

  The Vietnam War was a boom time for the flight surgeon business. During the year I spent at Da Nang, there were more than seven hundred flight surgeons serving in the USAF. The majority were people like me: physicians who had finished medical school, completed a one-year internship, and were fulfilling a two-year military commitment. The Air Force appealed to doctors in a number of ways, but the biggest accommodation made to physicians was the requirement of only a two-year tour of active duty, instead of the usual four years.

  More than a hundred doctors were in my class at flight surgeon school (more formally known as the Primary Course in Aerospace Medicine). Most of us had just finished a busy year of internships before coming to Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas in early July. For an overworked intern, it was like arriving in heaven.

  In flight surgeon’s school, we only went to classes during the day, and there was no night call or weekend duty. For the first time in a long time I had the time and money to go to a movie or eat out at a restaurant.

  During the two months at San Antonio, we studied aerospace physiology and pathology, public health, preventive medicine, and other interesting fields that rarely come up during an internship. Many of the instructors were career flight surgeons who had completed a three-year residency in aerospace medicine as well as a tour in Southeast Asia.

  We all had a lot of exposure to aviation in our course at Brooks AFB; things like altitude chambers and ejection seats, but we never flew. Flight surgeons aren’t pilots. The whole experience of flying was new to me. When I first signed on with the USAF a couple of years before graduating from medical school, I had never even flown in an airplane before. In the 1960s, flying was a quick, efficient way of traveling for the relatively affluent public; it had little of the “cattle car” ambiance of today’s commercial aviation.

  But in wartime, things can (sometimes) happen quickly, if you let them. In just a few brief years, I went from wondering what it was like to fly in an airplane to being an active crewmember in the backseat of a Mach-2 fighter in combat. I knew I was lucky, but I sometimes wondered if I had stepped too quickly or aimed too high.

  Much of the enjoyment I took from flying came from being around the people who flew the planes. Pilots and WSOs are intelligent, practical, well-motivated individuals who are action oriented and able to handle stress efficiently. Fighter pilots love to fly, and they are very good at it. Normally, flying is built on routines, but in combat, it’s an adventure as well as a job. The men in my squadron were aggressive and competitive, but good team players at the same time, emotionally stable and able to make snap judgment calls. Some of the older pilots had attended the Naval Academy, while many of the younger ones were Air Force Academy graduates. By and large, they had degrees in fields like business and engineering; philosophy or sociology majors were rare. Plus, service academy graduates have that strong sense of duty and a love of country that is often missing from many college graduates.

  Often, the physicians who chose to become flight surgeons tended to emulate, or at least admire, many of these personality traits. Speaking personally, I liked and respected fighter pilots; we had a mutual admiration. They had a high regard for my medical education and for the fact that I had volunteered to live and fly with them. I knew that they flew the top fighters in the world in combat and I was excited that they were going to take me along for the ride.

  FOUR

  INTO THE SKY

  June 26, 1971

  It took me a good six weeks from arrival in country to make it into the air. There was no book or schedule that set out the rules and procedures for a flight surgeon flying combat missions in an F-4 Phantom. I had to beg, plead, and scheme to get off the ground; it never would have happened on its own.

  The basic reason it took so long was simple. My unit, the 390th Tactical Fighter Squadron, didn’t really need me. The backseat of an F-4 was normally occupied by a Weapons System Officer (WSO) who had spent years acquiring the needed skills. I was an unnecessary appendage; someone who could contribute a warm body and little else to a combat mission.

  In my view, fighter pilots were young, heroic, almost romanticized figures. They were a breed apart from the rest of the Air Force—flying dangerous missions, taking anti-aircraft fire, missiles, and MiGs, and never once complaining. I admired them greatly and was anxious to be a part of the squadron. Fortunately, they respected me as a physician; but more importantly, the 390th was proud that I had volunteered to be their flight surgeon. (During my year at Da Nang, neither of the other two F-4 squadrons had a flight surgeon.)

  On paper, my orders to Vietnam had assigned me to the 366th Dispensary. My main duty was to provide medical care to the Air Force personnel at Da Nang Air Base, with a special emphasis on the pilots, navigators, and other crew members who flew the aircraft.

  What did that entail? When most of the pilots and navigators first arrived on base, they would drop their medical records by the dispensary. These medical records were supposed to be hand-carried from one assignment to the next by the individual, but this was a fragile system; documents would get lost or disappear in the bureaucratic maze of the military. It was my job to make sure they had the correct paperwork, including an Air Force Form 137. This form was a set of footprints taken with ink, much the same as you would record someone’s fing
erprints. These footprints were a solemn reminder of the dangers inherent in flying; after a fire or crash, a foot encased in a boot was often the only way of positively identifying a victim.

  In addition, all of the aircrew members had detailed physicals at least once a year, with no exceptions made for wartime. When the pilots were sick, I took them off flying status. They were grounded, assigned to DNIF (Duty Not Involving Flying.) When they were healthy, I cleared them once again to fly.

  In most cases the decision was clear cut, but there were a few gray areas. In general, pilots in a fighter squadron want to fly; this is the principal reason they’re in the Air Force. Even in wartime, they are anxious to return to the sky. I felt that if I got to know the men as individuals, I could make better calls.

  A month or so before I arrived at Da Nang, I’d received a letter from one of the flight surgeons who would be rotating home around the same time that I would be arriving. He laid out the choices: I could stay in the medical hootch with the general medical officers, a few other flight surgeons, some dentists and a couple of medical administrators, or I could choose to live with any of the squadrons on base.

  Flight surgeons are rated officers, meaning that they participate in “regular and frequent flights.” Like pilots, navigators, and a few others, they are entitled to wear wings and also receive additional pay and benefits. So flight surgeons are on flying status, but they only need twelve hours or so of flying time each quarter to qualify for flight pay. An occasional trip on a transport plane flying from one base to another base would easily fulfill that requirement. If you wished, you could tag along on a flight from Da Nang to Saigon; the pilot would list you on the manifest, and you could sit in the back of the aircraft and read a book while earning flying time. In other words, a flight surgeon was primarily a physician, he could make as much or as little of flying as he desired.

  For me, it was an easy choice—the chance to fly an F-4 Phantom in combat was too good an opportunity to pass up. It fueled a sense of adventure, answered the need for a challenge. This was the real thing; it wasn’t an incidental, meaningless activity that I could do in my spare time. I would have to work hard to learn my job. So, unlike most everyone else in the squadron, I ended up being assigned to an F-4 squadron by choice. Every one of my fifty-plus combat missions was flown as a volunteer.

  People mature at different ages. I was young and well educated, but not very wise for a man with a wife and son. I didn’t choose to go to Vietnam, but since I was there, I wanted some tangible sense of accomplishment; something I could look back on with pride.

  I had grown up in the 1950s in rural Mississippi, a state that still celebrates Robert E. Lee’s birthday. My first eight years of education were spent at a small Catholic elementary school taught by an order of nuns from Kentucky. This was at the height of the Cold War, and there was no greater enemy of freedom and faith than communism. We were certain that our cause was just, and we knew that “those godless communists” were ineligible for the afterlife. The courage and moral rectitude of the Christian martyrs were held up as noble goals worth pursuing. There was no higher virtue for a young man to strive for than valor.

  Many of us learn these things growing up; or, at least, we used to. And while you never completely bought in, those ideals provided a framework for your actions, a sort of default setting.

  I knew that there was no greater litmus test for courage than flying fighters in combat, but at the same time, I’ve always been a realist. I knew I wasn’t ready to become John Wayne, but I figured that if I could slip in through the back door and get close enough to combat, maybe a little of the bravery of fighter pilots might rub off on me.

  I was very aware that few people would ever have this opportunity—flying in a Mach 2 fighter, watching anti-aircraft fire streak through the sky and explode into white puffs as you rolled in on a target. The excitement and challenge of flying in combat were there for the taking—I just had to reach out and take it.

  I also looked forward to the friendship and camaraderie. A fighter squadron lives through good times and bad times as a unit; it’s both a communal and a personal experience. Nobody lives small; it’s a rich, full life, and I knew I would be foolish to pass up the chance.

  Not to mention, I loved everything about the Phantom. I loved the speed, the sound, the smell. At Da Nang, even after flying dozens of missions, I still enjoyed lying in bed at night and listening to the roar of a flight of F-4s taking off, heading to work in the darkness of night over the Ho Chi Minh Trail. My barracks were only a quarter mile or so from the flight line, and I could feel the walls vibrate as the planes thundered into the air.

  Much of my interest in fighters came from my first assignment at Hurlburt Field in Florida with an A-37 Dragonfly squadron. Originally a trainer, the Dragonfly was a twin engine aircraft with side-by-side seating. The controls were identical on both sides and it was a perfect see one, do one situation for a beginner like me. I could watch everything the pilot did and attempt to replicate his actions.

  Compared to a Phantom, the A-37 was small and slow, a bit like comparing a budget car to a Formula One racer. The Dragonfly sat waist high off the ground; at times, it had the look of a plane you’d see at an amusement park. To get into the cockpit of an F-4, you had to scale a ladder some 15 feet in the air; for an A-37, you simply threw a leg over the side and swung in like you were climbing into a convertible.

  That said, the Dragonfly was no toy; it was a tough aircraft that could carry its own weight in both fuel and armament. The plane was good value, too; you could buy a half dozen A-37s for the cost of one Phantom. The Dragonfly was slower over the target but more accurate than the fast movers. Most of its missions were in the southern part of South Vietnam in close air support of ground troops. It never went north like the F-105 and F-4s, but many South Vietnamese and American soldiers owe their life to the A-37.

  Personally, I owe my air legs to the A-37. The worst thing that can happen to a flight surgeon, or anyone in pilot training, is to get airsick. I was lucky; I never had that problem, and by the time I got to Da Nang I was totally comfortable in an airplane.

  At Hurlburt, we flew regular missions at the bombing range at Eglin AFB. The range was laid out like a bull’s eye, with an observer stationed in a nearby tower to record your accuracy. The dummy bombs would create a small puff of white smoke as they struck the ground, hopefully in the center of the bull’s-eye. The missions to the bombing range were a lot slower, were flown at a lower altitude, and were more controlled than real combat in Vietnam, but the basics were similar. My body soon got accustomed to the rigors of dive bombing.

  The best days in an A-37 were those spent at the acrobatics range. We’d practice loops, barrel rolls, Immelmanns, and other acrobatic tricks. The pilot would do a maneuver, then I would try it. It was like teaching your thirteen-year-old son to drive a car.

  By the time I had been at Da Nang for a couple of weeks, I had met most of the people in my squadron. They knew my name, or at least knew I was the squadron flight surgeon. Since wars are usually fought by the young, most of the guys were in their twenties and thirties.

  I didn’t know a whole lot about the flight schedule, but I gradually learned how things worked, mainly from watching and listening. The squadron had a scheduling officer who would usually receive the orders for the next day’s missions in the late afternoon. These orders were called the “frag” (an abbreviation for “fragmentary order”). Each unit received only a portion, or fragment, of the daily strike plan. He would post the following day’s schedule around six o’clock in the evening. It was all on a large Plexiglas board behind the scheduling desk, the flight call sign, crew members, and take off time written in grease pencil.

  I would drop by the desk from time to time, acting like I was looking for my name on the schedule, and casually mention that I was ready to fly. The scheduling officer had a hundred and one things to keep up with, but he said he would check it out and see what he coul
d do. This was wartime, after all; there were a lot bigger problems to deal with than getting me into the air.

  The real problem was that the 390th had been at Da Nang for years but hadn’t always had a flight surgeon. My predecessor did an outstanding job, but I was the new kid on the block. If you were a pilot or WSO, you followed a well-laid out plan for getting checked out for combat, but no one knew how things worked for a flight surgeon. Flight surgeons had flown in the backseat of Phantoms since the beginning of the Vietnam War, but it was a hit-and-miss situation.

  It wasn’t a simple task finding out what was allowed by regulation (the Air Force, like the rest of the military, lives and dies by regulations). On the wall opposite the scheduling desk was a bookshelf filled with large volumes—USAF regulations, PACAF (Pacific Air Force) regulations, Seventh Air Force regulations. These books, by and large, sat gathering dust. The scheduling officer leafed through some of the books, looking for guidance on my flying status. What kinds of missions could I fly? Where was I permitted to go? How often could I fly? He might as well have been searching the IRS tax code for directions; he wanted to help me, but he couldn’t really tell me where I stood.

  I felt a little embarrassed. I’m sure in the squadron’s eyes, my question was a minor one. The ground war was winding down, but the air war was still running wide open. The squadron had more serious problems to attend to than accommodating a novice flight surgeon. I felt like I was waiting on a light that might never turn green.

  So I decided to lend a hand and search through the regulations myself, hoping to speed the process along. A day or so later, in the Seventh Air Force regulations, I found the applicable rule for flight surgeons flying in combat. I don’t remember the exact wording, but the rules were restrictive and confusing, with a very long list of what you couldn’t do. A flight surgeon seemed to be allowed to fly in just a few circumstances, mostly non-combat.