by G. E. Nolly
Instead, Lieutenant Colonel Wiley was still in the cockpit. His leg restraint release hadn't worked, and he had to carefully disconnect each restraint separately. Left lower leg restraint. Left upper leg restraint. Right lower leg restraint. Right upper leg restraint. Harness release. All this time, his raised canopy was melting around him, dripping burning plexiglass onto his nomex flight suit.
When Zoomie saw Lieutenant Colonel Wiley hung up in the cockpit, he sprinted back to the burning aircraft, and climbed up the right side to help Wiley get out. He pulled the harness release just as Lieutenant Colonel Wiley finally got free of the leg restraints, and he pulled Wiley out of the cockpit.
They both tumbled to the tarmac, and Lieutenant Colonel Wiley broke his heel. Zoomie picked him up and carried him on his shoulder to the drainage ditch. They hunkered down just as the munitions started cooking off.
Walnut Lead's plane had carried one of the few remaining Pave Knife pods. It was destroyed, of course. Now there were only four AN/AVQ-10 Pave Knife pods left at Ubon.
Zoomie later received the Airman's Medal, one of the highest non-combat awards you can get.
Well deserved.
53
July 17, 1972
The Special this day was to a target northeast of Kep Airfield, some munitions storage. My WSO was Bob “Deacon” Diller, the same Bob Diller who had been my back-seater in RTU. Deacon had originally been assigned to DaNang, and then transferred to Ubon when operations at DaNang had drawn down.
Our call sign was Utah Flight, and I was, as usual, Number Four. Target ingress was fairly uneventful, with a few SAM indications on our RHAW gear, but no actual SAM sightings. We set up a wheel orbit over the target and rolled in individually while Lead illuminated the target. As I was rolling in, with a bank angle of 135 degrees, my G-suit ran away to full inflation.
The G-suit, also called “fast pants”, is an elastic garment that is worn over the bottom half of the flight suit. There are inflatable rubber bladders around the upper legs and lower torso. These bladders inflate proportional to the G-loading on the aircraft, to prevent blood flow from pooling in the lower extremities. That way, under heavy G-loading, the G-suit helps keep blood flowing to the brain. Air from the aircraft pneumatic system inflates the G-suit to a lesser or greater degree, metered by the subsystem in the airplane that senses G-loading. The G-suit is pretty effective at helping the pilot tolerate heavy G-loads.
Unfortunately, in this particular case, the valve in the aircraft that controlled air to inflate the G-suit had malfunctioned. Under normal circumstances, all I would need to do to stop the erroneous inflation would be to disconnect the G-suit hose from the quick-release located on the left subpanel of the cockpit.
But this was not normal circumstances. I was close to upside down, trying to keep the target in sight while attempting to achieve perfect delivery parameters. Probably, a lot of jocks would have been able to simply reach down to the left side of the cockpit and release the G-suit connection. I was not one of those jocks. I needed to concentrate on the bomb delivery, G-suit runaway be damned. I would disconnect it after my pull off.
With the G-suit fully inflated, I felt like a giant python had wrapped around my body. I could hardly breathe. I tensed my abs and performed a Valsalva maneuver, trying to ignore the intense pressure, and completed the bomb delivery. Just as I pulled off the target, Deacon started screaming on the intercom.
“SAM,SAM, break right! Break right!”
I couldn't see the SAM, but when my WSO is screaming to break right, I break right. Normally, with a properly operating G-suit, I could sense the loading on the airplane. I knew what a 4-G pullout felt like. But with a fully inflated G-suit, everything felt different. I pulled on the pole with what I thought was the correct amount of pressure for a SAM break, and then, when the dust had settled, I reached down and disconnected the G-suit connector. The suit deflated and I could finally breathe.
“That was some pull-out,” Deacon commented.
“Yeah, the SAM didn't get us.”
I had assumed Deacon was remarking about the SAM threat. But he had been talking about the way I had just overstressed the aircraft.
“Look at the G-meter, Hamfist.”
“Holy shit! Nine point five G's! Are you okay, Deacon?”
“I'll live. But give me a heads-up next time you try to set a new record on G-loading.”
I had overstressed the aircraft. I flew it as gently as I could, and after we landed, we couldn't open our canopies. The canopy operation was controlled through the aircraft pneumatic system, and the excessive loading on the aircraft had ruptured the pneumatic accumulator.
Clearly, I had earned my nickname Hamfist. The aircraft had to undergo a major inspection to make sure I hadn't broken anything else.
Hamfist, indeed.
54
July 17, 1972
When I got back to the squadron, I expected to get a ration of shit from the rest of the guys in my flight for overstressing the aircraft. Instead, everybody was listening to the radio.
Jane Fonda had been visiting Hanoi, and was making radio broadcasts against our troops. We all listened in silent disgust as we bore witness to Treason being committed in real time.
"I don't know what your officers tell you, you are loading, those of you who load the bombs on the planes. But, one thing that you should know is that these weapons are illegal and that’s not, that’s not just rhetoric. They were outlawed, these kind of weapons, by several conventions of which the United States was a signatory -- two Hague conventions. And the use of these bombs or the condoning the use of these bombs makes one a war criminal."
"The men who are ordering you to use these weapons are war criminals according to international law, and in, in the past, in Germany and in Japan, men who were guilty of these kind of crimes were tried and executed."
Finally Major Moose Moore, one of the senior WSOs, went over to the radio and turned it off.
“I've heard enough,” he said.
Nobody objected. Now I knew how the GIs felt when they heard Tokyo Rose during World War Two. We had seen photos of Fonda in the Stars & Stripes, posing on a triple-A gun. For all we knew, she could have been doing some of the shooting at us.
Fighter pilots are a resourceful group. I don't know who did it, or how he did it, but the very next day there were decals with Jane Fonda's picture on them in every urinal on the entire base. Piss on Jane Fonda.
And we were all comforted by the knowledge, with certainty, that she would be charged and convicted of Treason when she returned to the States.
55
July 30, 1972
This mission was going to be a total goat-fuck. We had been fragged on the same target, northwest of Hanoi, for ten days. Every day, the mission was weather cancelled. Finally, the weather was good, and we were going to go.
What made the mission so incredibly bad was the route we were using. One of the geniuses at Seventh Air Force had gotten the bright idea that we needed to change our target ingress routes. We always attacked targets northwest of Hanoi by flying north over Laos and doing right turns, entering North Vietnam over Thud Ridge. We always attacked targets south and east of Hanoi by going north over the ocean and making left turns.
This time, the thinking went, we would ingress over the ocean and make left turns and attack targets northwest of Hanoi. The SAMs would all be pointing the wrong way! That brilliant idea had one major flaw: SAMs are not mounted in concrete, they are mobile. It takes, perhaps, three minutes to change a SAM from west-facing to east-facing.
Then there was the fact that the whole plan hadn't changed during the past ten days, and the spies at Ubon had undoubtedly heard about the mission. And, unfortunately, there were a lot of guys who didn't really pay a lot of attention to Operations Security. More than once I would be in the bar and hear, “We weather cancelled again on that stupid fucking mission that has us running in feet wet to attack a target north of Kep.”
Finally,
on the day of the strike, as we were on Purple refueling track on our way to the target, one of the tankers said, on strike frequency, “What time are you guys planning on tanker drop off for Kep?”
The only intelligent thing I heard was the response, from the lead of one of the strike flights.
“Subtract 12877 from your tail number for the drop-off time in zulu.”
So, our plan had been compromised. That was evident as soon as we got over the land. We ingressed North Vietnam south of Hanoi, headed northwest. Before we even got west of Hanoi, we had dodged four SAMs. Another two SAMs over the target.
We made a left roll-in on target in close fingertip formation. I was, as usual, number four, on the right side of the formation. My WSO, Jinx Jenkins, was an FNG on his first Pack Six mission. As we rolled out for our delivery, I was pushing forward, pressed against my lap belt by negative-Gs. Dust and debris from the cockpit floor floated up and got into my eyes.
I blinked hard several times and cleared my vision. I saw that I was getting close, too close, to Number Three, probably only about one foot of spacing. I banked away from Three, and ended up even closer. It hadn't occurred to me until just then that, with negative Gs, I would need to bank toward Three to increase my distance. It wasn't something that was intuitively obvious to me.
We all pickled in unison and lead illuminated the target for a direct hit. As we pulled off target, Lead switched us over to post-strike frequency and called for a fuel check.
As soon as I checked my fuel gauges, I knew I was in deep shit. I had less than half the fuel of the other planes in our flight. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.
We got feet wet and performed another fuel check. Now I was down to less than 15 minutes of fuel. Our flight lead was new – on his first four-ship lead. And he was running out of ideas.
My element lead, Walnut Three, was Springs Springer. Springs came up on the radio.
“Walnut Lead, Three. Request permission to take the lead.”
“Roger, Three,” Lead answered, “You have the lead.” To his credit, Walnut Lead didn't let his ego get in the way of saving my ass.
Three came up on the radio.
“Walnut flight go Guard.”
“One.”
“Two.”
“Four.”
We were now on Guard, the emergency frequency.
“Walnut flight check.”
“One.”
“Two.”
“Four.”
“Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is Walnut Three on Guard. We need an emergency tanker to Haiphong Harbor now!”
Almost immediately, we got a response.
“Purple two-eight's on the way.”
“Roger, Purple 28, say your pigeons off Red Crown.”
Red Crown was a Navy ship with a TACAN transmitter, that we used for navigation.
“Purple 28 is Red Crown 235 for 44.”
Springs did some mental gymnastics and computed a point-to-point rendezvous heading for our flight and Purple 28. We made a slight heading correction to the left.
“Purple 28,” Springs transmitted, “fly heading 340, and say your angels.”
“Roger. Purple 28 at angels 30.”
We were also at 30,000 feet. I could see Walnut Three's WSO hunched over his radar, looking for Purple 28.
“Purple 28, we have you on our radar. Start a left turn to a heading of south.”
“Roger.”
While all of this was going on, Jinx was reading our Preparation For Bailout checklist over the interphone.
“Lock shoulder harness.”
“Locked.”
“Tighten lap belt.”
“Tightened.”
“Insert oxygen mask bayonets to last locking position of helmet receiver.”
“Inserted.”
“Lower helmet visors and tighten chin strap.”
“Done.”
“Adjust sitting height as necessary.”
“Adjusted.”
“Stow all loose objects.”
“Stowed.”
I was operating on mental autopilot, and not doing too well. I was in what psychologists call “negative panic”, sounding calm, cool and collected, but totally out to lunch. I had answered that I had stowed loose objects, but I still had my small camera hanging from my CRU-60/P oxygen connector. If I had bailed out, it would probably have inflicted serious injury to my head. But at least I sounded cool.
Walnut Three pointed at me and then pointed forward, giving me the lead.
“Purple 28, Walnut Three. Start a toboggan maneuver.”
“Roger.”
I looked ahead of the aircraft, and I was staring at the back end of a KC-135 tanker aircraft. I had been so head-up-and-locked that I had been oblivious to the entire rendezvous.
“Walnut four,” Three transmitted, “start a half nozzle descent.”
“Roger.”
I pulled the throttles back until the nozzle gauge indicated half open on each engine. That was the best endurance power setting for a glide.
I was now in the pre-contact position, flying downhill in a toboggan refueling, an emergency procedure designed exactly for my situation. A lot of pilots had demonstrated incredible airmanship to get me to this point. All I could think is, I sure don't want to live up to the name Hamfist and screw this up. I glanced at my fuel gauge. I had zero on the tape, and 0030 on the counter. That meant I had about two minutes fuel remaining. With the known tolerance in the fuel gauge, my fuel could have been a bit more, could have been even less.
I opened my refueling door and immediately felt the comforting “clunk” of the boom seating into the receptacle. My fuel gauges started increasing immediately.
I wasn't going to bail out today.
56
July 31, 1972
For the past day I'd been trying to locate the Aircraft Commander of Purple 28. I knew that most of the Strategic Air Command tanker aircraft were based somewhere in Thailand. Since U-Tapao Air Base was a major SAC base, I looked there first.
I placed an autovon call to the U-Tapao O'Club. The Club Receptionist answered.
“Could you please page the Aircraft Commander from Purple 28?”
I waited. No one came to the phone. Then the Receptionist came back on the line.
“I'm sorry, sir, no one has answered.”
“Okay. Please page any crew member from Purple 28.”
Again, no answer.
“Please page any tanker crewmember.”
Finally, someone came on the line.
“Who is this, and what is it you want?”
“This is Captain Hamilton Hancock, and Purple 28 saved my ass yesterday. I'm trying to find out who he is, so I can properly thank him.”
“Oh. Look, this is SAC, so nobody ever answers the phone if they don't know who it is. It will most likely just be another shit detail.”
Finally, I was able to have a Captain-to-Captain talk with someone who could help me. It turned out Purple 28 was not based at U-Tapao, but I got the information I needed.
I made an appointment to see the Wing D.O., after getting clearance from the new Squadron Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Smith. The D.O. agreed to see me right away. I entered his office and saluted.
“Captain Hancock reporting, sir.”
“What can I do for you, Hamfist?”
“Sir, the crew of Purple 28 flew all the way up into Haiphong Harbor to save my ass two days ago, and I'd like to submit them for a medal.”
“I'm ahead of you, Hamfist. As soon as I heard about your mission, I had my Admin guys get on it. We heard back from SAC Headquarters that they wanted to court-martial the crew for putting a valuable SAC resource into harm's way just to rescue one F-4.”
“Just to rescue one F-4,” he repeated. “Can you believe that? I have a call in to PACAF Headquarters. We'll let them fight it out, four-star to four-star. We'll get Purple 28 some kind of award. And not a court-martial.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Thank you, sir.”
I saluted, did a sharp about-face, and left the office.
The Air Data Computer was the brains of the airplane. Among other things, the ADC scheduled movement of the Variable Inlet Ramps at the inlets of the engines to optimize fuel efficiency and power. The ramps being extended, in the wrong position, had caused me to use more fuel than the other aircraft in my flight, more fuel than it should have used.
An errant electron had almost caused me to bail out.
57
August 1, 1972
Being based in Thailand was totally different from being based in Vietnam. In Vietnam, we couldn't go off base. In Vietnam, when we landed, the war just changed character; instead of being shot at in the air, we received rocket attacks and got shot at on the ground.
In Thailand, we could go off base, and we did all the time. We found people who smiled. When we landed, we were in a peaceful environment. No rocket attacks. Nobody shot at us once we landed. I often thought that the combat credit shouldn't have been the same for Thailand and Vietnam. But it was.
Lots of guys had their wives there to spend time with them. On their days off, they would take the train down to Bangkok and be in a modern city with great hotels, restaurants and clubs. If Sam had been a civilian, I could have brought her over.
But all was not roses. Relations were starting to get strained between the Thais and the guys on base. For one thing, a lot of the guys weren't very sensitive to the customs and culture of Thailand.
Two young Airmen were on their day off and rented bicycles, to see the countryside. At some point, out in the middle of nowhere, they came upon a giant statue of Buddha. They thought it would be nice to get photos of themselves with Buddha. Sitting in Buddha's upturned palm. They thought it was pretty cool.
