Racing Back to Vietnam
Page 5
Now, the Seventh Air Force regulations were kept in a three-ring, loose leaf binder, so the rules could easily be updated as new edicts came down. I shuffled around, thumbing through pages, trying my best to look like a scholar of military regulations. Then, when no one was watching, I removed the pages pertaining to flight surgeons, stuck them in my pocket, and went about my business.
The talk about rules and regulations gradually faded away.
Decades later, I found out some of the reasons for the uncertainty over flight surgeons flying combat missions in an F-4 in Vietnam. Part of it had to do with the Phantom itself; it’s a two-seat aircraft with dual controls. The backseater (originally a pilot in the early years of the war, and later a navigator) had essential tasks to perform in regards to navigation, weapons delivery, and communication. This was an airplane where the second man wasn’t “along for the ride”—he was an active, essential crew member. The job couldn’t be faked. It was one thing to take a flight surgeon along on a trip to the bombing range in an A-37, but it was something else entirely to place him in the backseat of an F-4 in combat.
An even bigger reason for limiting a flight surgeon’s role in combat came in 1966, when a flight surgeon in the backseat of an F-4 was lost in combat. The order came down from the Seventh Air Force that no flight surgeon could fly in combat; in some ways, the Air Force seemed to value flight surgeons more highly than fighter pilots. Someone pointed out that flight surgeons were on flying status and had to fly, so the rules were modified: flight surgeons could fly maybe twice a month, and then maybe once a week, then maybe just on certain missions, and only if the wing commander approved.
In other words, nobody really knew, and if anybody did know, they probably didn’t care; it was whatever you could get away with. I knew nothing at all of this at the time. I only knew that I needed a little help getting into the air.
A few days later, I went to see my squadron commander, Lt. Colonel Jacobs. He was our father figure, the well-respected leader of our squadron, and the closest thing we had to God at Da Nang. I was honored that he made time to see me.
I told Colonel Jacobs that it was important to me to fly in an F-4, stressing that it was part of my duties as a flight surgeon, almost implying that the USAF was negligent for not putting me in the air. I pointed out that I was married with a young family and I needed the flight pay (omitting the fact that I could have easily qualified without flying in a Phantom).
Colonel Jacobs was busy, and probably didn’t have time to figure out how to say no. He told me he’d check on it, and we left it at that. The next day, I got a note in my box to see Captain Jack, one of the squadron instructor pilots (IP).
I was on my way.
Early on in the Vietnam War, the Air Force adopted a one-tour policy. If you had spent a year in Southeast Asia, you didn’t have to go back for a second tour until everyone else had gone. The idea was to spread the risks—as well as the career advantages—of combat to everyone in the Air Force. After all, if you hoped to advance in the military, you had to punch your ticket in a combat assignment.
At the beginning of the war, fighter pilots usually went into combat after flying fighters elsewhere. As they rotated home, replacement training units in the U.S. sent over new pilots fresh out of pilot training, as well as others who were cross-trained into fighters from previous assignments with bombers and transports. (The Navy, by contrast, tended to keep their fighter squadrons more intact and deployed them on cruises multiple times.)
Some have criticized this policy, claiming that only a certain type of pilot has the skills and temperament needed to become a successful fighter pilot. Since I wasn’t a pilot, I have no right to weigh in on the subject, but I quickly became aware that some pilots and WSOs were better than others. Everyone in the squadron knew who the good sticks were; no one had to give me a list, I quickly found out. The great thing was that since I was the lowest common denominator in the squadron, I always got paired with the top pilots, the flight leaders.
Let me go into a bit more detail on the F-4 Phantom itself. The Phantom is a two-seat aircraft, with the pilot in the front seat and the backseater directly behind and slightly above him. Originally, the man in the back was also a pilot, but a year or so before I came to Vietnam the Air Force began eliminating backseat pilots and started assigning navigators to that spot. Unlike the F-4s flown by the Navy, the back cockpit of an Air Force F-4 has a stick, rudder pedals, and throttles; this allows the backseater to fly the plane as needed.
The front seat pilot was the Aircraft Commander who did all the serious work (though if the mission went well, the backseater would often get a chance to fly the plane back to base). The official title of the backseater, Weapon Systems Officer (WSO), was rarely used at Da Nang; the man in the rear was simply known as the GIB (Guy in the Back) or backseater. So, if you wanted to ask a pilot who he flew with, you would say, “Who was your backseater?” or “Who was your GIB?”
Captain Jack looked like a fighter pilot sent straight from central casting: six feet tall, blond, and built like a linebacker. He had that quiet cool that inspires trust. Like all IPs, he was one of the best pilots in the squadron. (It’s the one job in the Air Force that seems to be based totally on ability rather than on rank. Our squadron had first lieutenants in their initial assignment who became IPs near the end of their tour. It was a true meritocracy.)
Jack had a charisma and drive that made you listen closely to what he said. He talked as if he had confidence in me. Jack told me what to do and I did it. Without trying, he had me ready to follow orders, to march to the sound of the cannon. He told me that flying fighters was a serious, dangerous business; we took no unnecessary risks because the necessary risks were bad enough. He didn’t smile; this was no punch line, it was the simple truth.
Jack laid out a plan and told me what he expected from me. I started with the basics, things like the byzantine rules of engagement, a list of limitations that seemed designed to victimize fighter pilots. I memorized the emergency procedures, or tried to; everyone carried a yellow set of emergency procedures for the F-4 that you had to be able to recite in your sleep. These were stored in a small canvas bag that you carried with you in the cockpit, known as the ditty bag or doofer bag. The bag also contained your checklists and gloves, as well as the maps you needed to help navigate. There were four or five maps that, combined, covered most of the areas where you would be flying, mainly the Laotian panhandle and the I Corps region of South Vietnam.
I sat in on a couple of mission briefings and debriefings, paying particular attention to what the backseaters did and said. Sometimes the flight leader planned on delivering the bombs manually, other times, dive toss was chosen. Dive toss was a weapons release computer system that required the GIB to get a radar lock as the aircraft rolled in on a target. If the backseater failed to get the lock, the ordnance wasn’t released.
Heading over to the life support shack, I met with Sergeant Joe, a man I knew was an important element in staying alive. The first thing Joe did was take the flight helmet that I’d brought with me from Florida and change the color from a bright white to a camouflage. The Phantoms were all painted in camouflage, and I had no wish for my head to serve as a bull’s eye for some enemy gunner.
I was also fitted with a G-suit, a snug, form-fitting device worn over the flight suit that covered me from the waist down to the ankles. The G-suit, more accurately known as the anti-G suit, could double in a pinch as a hernia truss: it had air bladders over the
abdomen, thighs, and calves. A hose about eighteen inches long hung from the left waist area, looking like someone had sewn a piece of garden hose onto the waist band. Once you were strapped into the cockpit, you plugged the hose into an outlet that sensed the amount of G forces. Normally, we experience one G (or one gravity force) in everyday life. During combat maneuvers in an F-4, it’s common to experience five or even six times as much force, known as “pulling” 5 or 6 G’s. As the G’s increase, the bladd
ers in the G-suit inflate, counteracting the forces acting on the body. Without a G-suit, high G forces can push the blood from the brain and upper body into the lower body, resulting in a temporary blackout or even total loss of consciousness. Tunnel vision, one of the first signs of high G forces, was very common when pulling out of a steep dive. The peripheral vision would gradually narrow as the G forces increased; when the forces diminished, your full visual field would return.
My G-suit also served other functions; there was room for a knife that fit snugly along the inner thigh and was attached to a long piece of cord, and the lower part of each leg had room for a water flask. I also got fitted with a survival vest and parachute harness. The vest carried two radios, a couple of smoke flares, a compass, a first aid kit, and several other useful items, including enough extra rounds of .38 caliber ammunition for a long gun battle. Although the survival vest was made of lightweight nylon material, by the time I added the parachute harness and strapped on a Smith & Wesson .38 caliber revolver, I weighed a good forty pounds more than when I started.
I had already been listening carefully to what Sergeant Joe was telling me as we covered the G-suit and survival vest, but when we got to the next topic, I started paying very close attention, focusing completely on his instructions.
Joe began explaining the ejection seat of an F-4—i.e., the link between surviving and dying. One of the GIB’s responsibilities was to do a pre-flight check of the front and back ejection seats. When I flew in the A-37s in Florida, I never gave a second thought to ejecting from an aircraft. Here at Da Nang, it became a major concern, almost an obsession.
Thankfully, the F-4 Phantom was blessed with Martin-Baker MK-H7 ejection seats. Many of the older ejection seats required the aircraft to attain a certain speed and certain altitude in order for the crew to survive. If you were too close to the ground, you were out of luck; your parachute wouldn’t have time to deploy. The Martin-Baker ejection seat, by contrast, had a zero-zero capability (referring to zero velocity, zero altitude). You could be sitting on the runway, eject, and still survive. Once the frontseater or backseater activates the system, they’re both shot into the air in less than a second and a half. The rear canopy blows first and the backseater is shot out of the rear cockpit in around .54 seconds; the front canopy then blows and the pilot is up and away approximately 1.39 seconds after initiation. (This was the theory, anyway. A few of the guys had stories where things didn’t quite work out in a zero-zero setting.)
It might not have been perfect, but a lot of F-4 pilots and backseaters have Martin-Baker to thank for their lives. A small family-owned British company that still operates today, Martin-Baker counts well over seven thousand successful ejections since 1949. They still dominate the ejection seat business, but the peak of their fifty-plus years of manufacturing ejection seats came from F-4s during the Vietnam War.
I didn’t need to be sold on the product. Sergeant Joe gave me a list of things to check on the ejection seats before flying—switches, safety pins, cables, etc.—and I learned them as if my life depended on it.
I was feeling pretty good. I was learning a lot about Phantoms, and felt I knew a fair amount from having flown A-37s in Florida. (In reality, I just didn’t know enough to know how little I knew.) My roommate was a WSO, and he helped me a lot by explaining procedures, telling me problems to avoid, and answering all my questions. Most importantly, the fact that I was going to fly F-4s now seemed to be a given. It was now a question of when, not if.
Jack called me at the dispensary one morning and told me, “Doc, I’ve got a plane. Meet me at 2:00 pm at the squadron briefing room.” I was getting the non-credit introductory course in flying the F-4. I was excited; I felt like a minor league baseball player who had gotten a call to the majors.
I had been out to the flight line several times, introducing myself and working with the crew chiefs, so I knew where to go. The Phantoms were parked under concrete revetments, protected from rocket attacks.
It was love, awe, and fear at first sight. The shark-like nose gave the F-4s an angry, menacing look. The planes were some sixty feet long and dressed in war paint, the top a brown and green camouflage while the belly was white. The shark’s mouth on the nose was bright red in color and studded with white teeth. There was a huge air intake on each side of the two main cockpits. The wings tilted up at the ends, while the horizontal stabilators in the rear pointed down. This was a plane with a lot of angles.
A good sixteen feet high, I had to climb a six-rung ladder temporarily mounted on the left of the front cockpit before I could slide into the back seat. The rear cockpit was sometimes called the “pit,” and it gave you the feeling of being partway down a hole with limited visibility. The canopy rails on each side were high. The control stick was in the center, the rudder pedals were on the floor, and a pair of throttles was on the left. The backseat dashboard was filled with gauges, knobs, switches, dials, levers, and handles. The ejection seat was in the rear. This was no basic model aircraft. It was like whoever designed this plane had decided to spring for all the available options.
Our flight was a single-ship training mission; the F-4 would carry no ordnance. We didn’t go to wing headquarters for an intelligence or weather briefing, we just picked up our gear at life support and headed to the aircraft.
Jack ran me through his pre-flight check and went through the routines. My pre-flights included the ejection seats and ordnance. I plugged in every tube and wire I could find—oxygen, radio, G suit. The crew chief made sure I was squared away, and we were soon ready. The command post cleared us to Da Nang ground and we taxied out, skipped the arming area before finally getting clearance for takeoff.
That was it; we were up and away, out over the South China Sea.
Jack covered a few basic emergencies, like unusual altitude recoveries, target fixation, and other problems. Next, we climbed up to around thirty-five thousand feet, pushed it into afterburners, and went supersonic. Since there aren’t any available landmarks high in the sky—no land, no clouds, nothing to relate to—flying faster than the speed of sound wasn’t much of a sensation. That was, until Jack came out of afterburners, and the deceleration felt as if a telephone pole was pushing me in the back toward the instrument panel.
Jack gave me the controls for a little bit. The throttles are for fast and slow, the stick is for right and left, up and down, and the trim button smoothes everything out, all of which makes it sound much simpler than it really is. I had a death grip on the stick, pushing the throttles like I owned the plane.
We headed home to Da Nang. It was a smooth landing, the drag chute deployed, and we taxied back to the revetment. It was a simple training flight for Captain Jack; an exhibition game that didn’t count, checking out a slow learner in a fast mover, and almost assuredly a low point of his combat tour.
For me, it was so much more than another day at the office. I tried not to appear too excited, but I couldn’t help but hope there were bigger things to come.
FIVE
LIFE IN THE BACKSEAT
1971–1972
As fall approached, my life at Da Nang took on a regular pattern. Our medical dispensary was open seven days a week, around the clock, but we were fortunate to have enough physicians that everyone enjoyed a decent amount of time off. Our group of flight surgeons worked well together, filling in when someone was off flying, helping each other with difficult cases, and sharing the challenges and rewards of practicing medicine in the military during wartime.
My DEROS calendar, initially a blank white page, began to take shape as I colored it in with each passing day. Simple things took on a special meaning; my greatest pleasure was the daily mail delivery. Letters and pictures from my family were my greatest treasure, a reminder of what was waiting when I returned from Vietnam.
New arrivals, many of whom had the same forlorn, bewildered look that I once had, showed up regularly. We celebrated—even as we envied—the old-timers as they rotated back home.
Except when it came to flying.
I found out very early on that there was no such thing as a “routine” combat mission. Flying fighters was often full of surprises and loaded with challenges. Equipment on the plane sometimes didn’t work like it was supposed to, the weather often failed to cooperate, and people on the ground shot at you. There were dozens of ways for things to go bad in wartime.
During the Vietnam War, an F-4 Phantom cost several million dollars. It was a sophisticated fighter with advanced radar, computers, engines, the works. The planes flew around the clock and were pushed to their limits by the pilots who flew them. The Phantom required multiple work hours of maintenance for every hour in the air, and it was almost impossible to keep everything working all of the time. Sometimes it was a navigational system, other times a problem with the radar.
The whole air war in Vietnam revolved around the weather. The I Corps region and the Laotian panhandle had opposite monsoon weather patterns. In the fall and early winter, it seemed to rain constantly at Da Nang, while in Laos on the other side of the Annamite Mountains it was the dry season, and traffic was heavy on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. If you caught a good weather pattern at Da Nang, you were usually out of luck over the Trail; only rarely did you have favorable weather at home and over the target.
The F-4 wasn’t an all-weather fighter—things tended to work best when the pilot could actually see the target. There were ways of delivering ordnance in bad weather, but they weren’t very accurate. Good weather was needed not only to see the target but, more importantly, to see the people on the ground shooting at you. It could be small arms fire, anti-aircraft artillery (AAA), or even surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) along the passes on the North Vietnamese border.