Racing Back to Vietnam

by John Pendergrass

  This inner soundtrack of self-recrimination continued to play loud and clear for the entire flight.

  I remembered the guys in the squadron telling me that it was difficult for AAA to hit a fast mover like a Phantom, but those reassurances seemed to ring hollow in the moment. Sometimes the North Vietnamese would fire their guns into a sector, hoping an aircraft would fly into the saturated area. While I knew that the worst wasn’t inevitable, it seemed a lot more plausible than it had a few minutes ago.

  The tracers continued to shoot into the sky as multiple puffs of white smoke scattered about like kernels of exploding popcorn. AAA is designed to detonate at a certain altitude if it hasn’t struck pay dirt, and those puffs of smoke I was watching fill up the sky were the explosions.

  We had briefed making three passes on the target, dropping four MK-82 five hundred pound bombs on each pass. I told myself, Surely Chuck is going to dump the whole load at once and get us out of here in one piece. I thought of mentioning this to him, but my mouth was so dry that I probably would have had a hard time speaking.

  Chuck rolled left, almost inverted, and headed toward the ground at a 45 degree angle before rolling back upright and pickling off the ordnance. I was a little disappointed to discover that Chuck wasn’t thinking what I was thinking. When the bombs came off, it was a normal-feeling release, much like if you’d topped a speed bump in a car. If all twelve bombs had come off at once, it would have felt heavier, more of a heavy jolt than a light tap.

  Chuck jinked left and right as we pulled hard, shooting back in to the sky. He must have been getting paid extra to make that Phantom go that fast; we were out of the target area in no time at all.

  Back up around twelve thousand feet, number two in our flight rolled in and punched off four bombs. The AAA continued, and we headed down the chute once more. The FAC, holding off and away from the target, said we were doing well. As we made our third pass, I didn’t see any more active fire, just the smoke balls from the AAA dissipating into faint wisps, like smoke disappearing from a chimney.

  The FAC gave us our BDA (Bomb Damage Assessment); something like, “Two AAA sites possibly destroyed.” Who knows; maybe they just got tired of shooting. The FAC didn’t drop down real low to confirm the damage, and I didn’t blame him one bit.

  As we head back to Da Nang, Chuck handed me the controls for a little stick time. I was amazed; his demeanor hadn’t changed the whole flight. I, on the other hand, was delighted to have survived the experience. I felt like blurting out, “That AAA was something. I was scared shitless; I thought I was going to die.” Instead, I grabbed the controls and did my best to act like the Phantom was my natural second home; that there was no place I’d rather be than flying over the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

  We landed and taxied back to the revetment to park the F-4. The crew chief unstrapped me and asked how things went. I told him that we got hosed (I’d recently learned the full meaning of that word and now enjoyed using it).

  “Doc,” he said, “they can’t get you; it’s against the rules to shoot a doctor.” And he roared with laughter.

  Even on quiet days, the walk from the flightline to drop off your gear and debrief never feels routine. But that stroll was one of the best of my life. I felt like I had met an unspoken standard for flying fighters; in my mind, I had taken one for the team. I had that radiant, ineffable joy that comes from having survived combat. It seemed as if God Himself had smiled and patted me on the back. I had taken the challenge, and my soul felt richer for it. There was a feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment, a sense of completeness, a sense of relief. I had never experienced anything in my life that was simultaneously as gratifying and as terrifying.

  I couldn’t wait to do it again.

  EIGHT

  LOST IN ACTION

  September 30, 1971

  Ron Bond’s aircraft went down over the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos on September 30, 1971. He was the first man from the 390th Tactical Fighter Squadron to be lost in combat since my arrival in Vietnam.

  Ron was in the backseat of Stormy 3 on a fast FAC (Forward Air Controller) mission, piloted by Mike Donovan from the 421st TFS. The F-4, operating alone, was on a visual reconnaissance mission over the Trail, looking for targets in a high-risk area. Stormy 3 took off shortly after daylight and spent the morning scouring the jungle at a low altitude, looking for signs of enemy activity. The Phantom had completed two aerial refuelings from a KC-135 tanker over Thailand when it was last heard from, shortly before noon.

  When Stormy 3 failed to report later in the day, search and rescue (SAR) efforts began immediately. Rescue aircraft were sent over the last known areas of operation, looking for a downed plane, a parachute, radio calls, any sign of the men or their aircraft. Every hour was critical; since the aircraft almost certainly went down in enemy territory, the chances of rescue decreased with time. Each day, the SAR mission continued without success.

  Finally, on October 6, nearly a week later, a suspected wreckage was found in a jungle valley in one of the worst areas of Steel Tiger. The spot was too dangerous to insert ground troops for positive identification. Ron Bond and Mike Donovan were listed as Missing in Action (MIA).

  The flight of Stormy 3 was no ordinary mission. Normally, an FAC is a slower aircraft that loiters over an area of responsibility looking for targets such as trucks, fuel depots, or weapons caches. The FAC directs the fast moving fighters, marking the target with a smoke rocket and coordinating the details of the strike. Afterward, the FAC takes a good look at the target and give a bomb damage assessment (BDA). Were some trucks, weapons, or fuel dumps destroyed, were some roads or bridges knocked out, or were there just a few more holes in the jungle? This is how the score was kept in Vietnam.

  Some areas, however, were too dangerous for a regular FAC to work in—areas where there were too many anti-aircraft guns or surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). Since a slow FAC would not be able to survive in a dangerous zone, you needed a fast mover to find targets for other fast movers. The crews that flew these fast FAC sorties had one of the most dangerous jobs in the Air Force. Mike and Ron were part of an elite volunteer program that accepted only the best pilots and backseaters. They flew in high threat areas, places too dangerous for anything but the fast movers.

  Stormy was the call sign of the fast FACs of the 366th TFW at Da Nang. The program started in 1968, and eventually most F-4 wings in Southeast Asia had a fast FAC component, each with their own call sign. “Wolf” FACs worked out of the 8th TFW; “Laredo” FACs were part of the 432nd TRW; “Tiger” FACs belonged to the 388th TFW. But regardless of moniker, the men who flew these missions were the bravest of the brave.

  Ron Bond lived three doors down the hall from me. He had been in country for nearly eight months and had already logged a hundred and forty-nine combat missions. The fact that he was in the Stormy program meant that he was one of the top GIBs in the wing. Short and stockily built, Ron was a high school wrestler and an Air Force Academy graduate. I remember him as a man who took his job seriously, a man who loved flying, a man who knew what he was doing.

  I first learned about Ron’s loss the afternoon he went missing, when I returned from a mission. The intelligence officer told us that Stormy 3 was hours overdue. At the time, the information was fragmented and incomplete, but we could fill in the blanks. The fact that the crew hadn’t been seen or heard from was a bad sign.

  Making matters worse, Stormy 3 was alone. Fighters rarely worked alone; normally, if an F-4 was shot down, there was a wingman or a regular FAC who could look for a parachute, get a fix on the location, and initiate the search and rescue. Everyone knew that if you survived a crash, the Air Force would risk everything to get you out, but they had to first find a starting point, be it a parachute or a crash site.

  No resource was spared in the SAR effort to locate and recover Stormy 3. The guys in the squadron continued to fly a full schedule; everyone hung on and hoped for the best. I’m not sure if the searches stopped once the susp
ected wreckage was found, but our hopes grew dimmer with each passing day.

  Several weeks later, I lent a hand as Ron’s roommate packed Ron’s personal belongings for shipment to his family back home. In a way, cleaning out his room seemed to add a certain finality to his loss.

  Ron Bond remained MIA until 1979, when his status was administratively changed to killed in action (KIA). His remains have never been recovered. Ron was single, but his family suffered through decades of trials and tribulations fighting the military bureaucracy trying to definitively determine his fate. Their hope never died.

  The great fear of every military family is to see a group of officers come to their front door. During the year I served at Hurlburt Field in Florida, I once had to accompany the squadron commander and the chaplain as we notified a wife that her husband had been killed in a stateside airplane crash. It’s a sad but necessary job; a personal visit is much better than a telegram or phone call. Because of his concern for his mother’s health, Ron had listed his older brother as the person to contact. The family later gathered as a group to break the news to his mother.

  Wartime doesn’t lend itself to grief counseling. There was no time allotted for mourning, no discussion of the various stages of grief, no worry about survival guilt. Loss is visceral and unspoken. By 1971, everyone who signed up to fly fighters in combat was well aware of the danger of being killed or captured. Our missions were flown as before; there was no easing up, no change in tactics. But things were quieter and more reserved for a while; there was less of the back-and-forth banter, the relentless kidding that usually took place during the evening poker games. I spent the next few days hanging around the squadron lounge, quietly raising the subject of Ron’s loss in case anyone wanted to talk about it.

  Every time we briefed a flight, everyone was urged to “fly smart.” These words were a hollow effort at reassuring ourselves. There was no guarantee that being careful would keep you alive; there was nothing to suggest Stormy 3 hadn’t “flown smart.”

  There are times in war when courage isn’t rewarded. The reality was that the Vietnam War was a potentially lethal place for people who flew fighters. North Vietnam, Laos, South Vietnam, Cambodia—you could get killed anywhere in Southeast Asia. More than five hundred F-4s were lost during the war, about one out of every eight Phantoms made for the U.S. If you flew F-105 Thunderchiefs, the odds were even worse. Some forty percent of the “Thuds” manufactured were lost in combat, mostly over North Vietnam. It was an unspoken fact that every time you took off, there was a distinct possibility that you wouldn’t be coming back. The courage to face these risks, not once or twice but on a daily basis, is what I most admired about the members of my squadron.

  At the end of my tour, another Stormy fast FAC Phantom from my squadron was shot down, both crew members KIA. In the strikes over North Vietnam between Christmas and New Year’s in 1971, a 390th F-4 was hit, but both crew members ejected and were rescued. Another squadron Phantom was lost at the battle of An Loc in April 1972; fortunately, both of the crew were picked up.

  Ron Bond was one of many American men who paid the ultimate price in the service of our country. I greatly admired his skill, courage, and sacrifice.

  NINE

  LIFE IN A FIGHTER SQUADRON

  1971–1972

  Living with a fighter squadron in wartime was nothing like I’d imagined it would be. Living together and sharing the risk of combat created a common bond among the squadron members. In some ways, it was like residing in a college dorm, save that most of the students were in their twenties or thirties instead of their teens. People came and went at all hours of the day, you could always find a bull session somewhere, and there was no shortage of alcohol.

  If you ignored the sandbags lining the outer walls, the accommodations at our squadron barracks even looked a lot like a college residence hall from the 1960s. We paid a couple of middle-aged Vietnamese women out of our own pockets to do the cleaning and laundry. We called our accommodations our “hootch,” a word that came to be applied to most any living quarters in Southeast Asia.

  That said, there were a few key differences between life in a fighter squadron and life in a college dorm. Instead of concentrating on studying and graduating, the focus was on flying fighters, completing missions, and staying alive. These men were no innocents brought to war; everyone at Da Nang had already been out and about in the world. Their goal wasn’t to receive a diploma or get a job; their challenge was to finish their twelve month tour and return home to their families alive.

  By the time I arrived, the living conditions for a fighter squadron were a long way from the Spartan lifestyle seen in the early days of the war. As a result, though the food was horrible and my family was absent, I still had many of the comforts of home. If it hadn’t have been for the rocket attacks and the anti-aircraft fire, it would have seemed like a summer camp for grown men.

  But perhaps it would be more accurate to compare it to a school for civil servants. As an outsider, what struck me immediately was the vast amount of paperwork generated during wartime. There were several layers of bureaucracy, and each one needed a written report using the stilted language common to the military. The Air Force went to war and the paper pushers came along for the ride; the system was a self-replicating bureaucracy. Even at Da Nang, there were a lot of people who placed more emphasis on following rules and regulations than on accomplishing the mission. I knew this was true in the United States, but I thought it might be different in a war zone.

  In addition to flying, everyone in the squadron had other assigned jobs—tasks like safety officer, scheduling officer, weapons officer, housing officer, etc. Since I had my regular job as a physician at the dispensary, I fought through paperwork on the medical end and had few assigned squadron chores. (Though, if we had a meeting of the full squadron, I usually tried to attend, as this often meant something major was about to happen.)

  The fighter crews of the Vietnam era were all male. These men loved and valued flying and felt they were part of a unique brotherhood, an elite group. There was a certain amount of machismo and panache, and a more than a bit of swaggering adventurism, but that has always been part of a fighter squadron’s culture. I know a lot has changed in the military during the last half-century, but during the Vietnam War, a fighter squadron was no place for a woman.

  Around half of the men in our squadron were married, but there were enough single men to ensure that the local bars never lacked for customers. Occasionally, a crew would ferry a Phantom to Thailand or Taipei for maintenance and expose themselves to all the sins of the Orient. If you were lucky enough to go, you were required to return with a story of good food and good times. I was no stranger to the late night knock on my door, and was sometimes called upon to offer a clandestine consultation about some malady of the groin. Treating venereal disease has always been a staple of military medicine, especially in wartime.

  Many of the guys spent a fair amount of their free time drinking beer and playing cards at the Boar’s Head Inn, our unit’s lounge located in the squadron headquarters building. Despite its grand-sounding name, in reality the Inn was a real bare-bones operation; just a few tables and chairs, a couple of sofas, a small bar, and a refrigerator full of beer. A mounted boar’s head hung over the bar, and the squadron and wing insignias graced the walls. A seldom-used, toaster-sized television set was stuck high in the corner of the room.

  And that wasn’t the least of the Boar’s Head’s limitations; there were no waitresses and no food. If you needed a drink, you helped yourself and left a quarter in the kitty. Every few weeks, someone would borrow several ration cards, grab the squadron truck, and head to the Base Exchange to restock. The person who did this job was considered one of the most important men in the squadron and was subject to immediate criticism for any failure to perform his duty.

  The squadron had a movie projector, and each night we could watch a different film. The movies, mainly third-rate films by people you
had never heard of, rotated among the three fighter squadrons. I had always considered fighter pilots as the modern day version of the strong and silent cowboy and, sure enough, the squadron’s taste in movies confirmed my opinion—westerns were always popular.

  The nightly poker games were serious, albeit low-stakes, contests. The rules were bizarre, with a variety of high-low, split pots and multiple wild cards. The hardest job I had was keeping up with the changing rules. If I had a lucky night, I might win enough to eat out at the local Chinese restaurant. If I lost, I figured I was saving my good fortune for more important things.

  This was a men’s group, so the topics of conversation were predictable—flying, women, sports, and politics, in that order. With the exception of flying, these subjects have probably occupied men’s minds since the beginning of time.

  Fighter pilots love talking about airplanes almost as much as they love flying them. For these men, the war was a great opportunity. They had generally finished near the top of their pilot training class and were flying the best fighter aircraft in the world in the biggest war of the day. The F-4 was the high end of the Air Force hierarchy, the top rung of the ladder. For fighter pilots, flying was life and life was flying; it seemed like they couldn’t get enough of it. They had a true love affair with fighters, while I had more of a platonic relationship.

  The conversations tended to revolve around the pros and cons of different aircraft, the close calls they’d had, the tricks of the trade, the deadly screw-ups. There were plenty of tall tales, breathless misadventures, and charming misfortunes. The stories were usually overflowing with bravado; the squadron bar was a clearinghouse of fighter pilot lore. I mostly listened and tried to learn. I was careful to avoid asking questions that would expose the large gaps in my knowledge of flying, but I found that if I said something like, “Tell me how that happened,” and listened carefully, I could learn a lot.