Hamfist Over Hanoi: Wolfpack on the Prowl (The Air Combat Adventures of Hamilton Hamfist Hancock Book 4)

by G. E. Nolly

  Until they got their film developed.

  They took their film to the local Thai Photo Shop, on base. When the Photo Shop developed the film, they were outraged that those foreigners had desecrated their religious symbol. They reported the offense to the local police, and the Airmen were immediately arrested.

  It was a slam-dunk case, with incriminating photo evidence. The Airmen were sentenced to three years in a Thai prison. Fortunately for them, they were covered by the Status of Forces Agreement. This meant that base personnel would visit them weekly and bring books, magazines and American food to them. If and when the base ever closed, the Airmen would be transferred to American prisons to serve out the remainder of their sentences.

  The Thai Photo Shop was a thorn in our sides for another reason. One of the pilots from another squadron had taken his camera on a mission over Pack Six, and had gotten a few really good aerial photos of downtown Hanoi. He left the film off at the Thai Photo Shop to be developed. When he went to pick up his pictures, he saw a giant enlargement of his photo for sale in the front window.

  “I took that picture,” he said.

  “Yes. It good picture.”

  “That's my property. You can't sell it.”

  “We sell. Nothing you can do.”

  They were correct. Thailand did not subscribe to the International Copyright Convention. Intellectual property rights meant nothing to them. They could, and did, make copies of photos that were brought in for processing. It didn't take long for all of us to boycott the Thai Photo Shop and learn to process our own film at the base Photo Hobby Shop.

  Then there was our relationship with the taxi drivers. Thai taxi cabs did not have meters. Normally, we would negotiate a fare in advance. Sometimes, guys who didn't know better would get into a taxi and then argue over the fare after they got to their destination.

  That's what happened to an Airman who had only been on base about a week. He took a cab from a restaurant to the main gate of the base. When he arrived, he got into an argument with the driver. Finally, in total frustration, he threw a fist-full of baht at the driver.

  “Here's your fucking money.”

  Some of the money landed on the ground. The King's picture is on the money, and the King is sacred. The driver pulled out a knife and stabbed the Airman. Several times. Stabbed him dead.

  The police were called, and, basically, congratulated the driver on his patriotic act. He had killed the foreigner who had desecrated the King's picture. Good for him.

  I suspect some American GIs have worn out the welcome mat in other places where they have been based for as long as Americans have been stationed overseas. I remember my dad telling me the Yanks were not all that popular with the many Brits during World War II. Talking about the American GIs, the Brits had a saying: “They’re over-paid, over-sexed, and over here”. So this wasn’t the first time there was a strain between American GIs and their local hosts.

  Relations with the local Thais were at an all-time low. I almost never heard the word “Thai” without the prefix “fucking”. “The fucking Thais”.

  On this day, we had another Special. Instead of LGBs, we were going to carry dumb bombs. And the Intel Officer didn't tell us what our target was, he merely told us the coordinates to enter into our LORAN bombing systems. In fact, he said, we would launch even if the target was covered by clouds. We would make straight-and-level bomb deliveries over a target in Pack Two.

  To a man, we all demanded to know what the target was. Finally, he projected a photo of the target, a railroad yard. A railroad yard with no trains, just some railroad ties.

  “Your target is some railroad supplies in a low-threat environment. We want to test the operation and accuracy of the LORAN bombing system over North Vietnam. Basically, you'll be bombing railroad ties.”

  “We'll be bombing ties,” someone shouted from the back of the room. “Finally, we get to bomb the fucking Thais.”

  The room erupted in laughter.

  We all knew that the LORAN bombing system was incredibly accurate, when we used it in Laos and South Vietnam. We would make our bombing runs in wings-level flight. Any maneuvering would cause the system to lock up and give a “settle” light, which would require several seconds to disappear. The system didn't work if the settle light was illuminated.

  The problem, besides the settle light, was that LORAN was only accurate when the signal lines from the various LORAN sites crossed at right angles, as they did in South Vietnam. Further north, in North Vietnam, the signal lines crossed at sharp angles, giving unpredictable results. Apparently, the planners at Seventh Air Force wanted to see how accurate our bombs would be if we used the LORAN bombing system over North Vietnam.

  We all realized how ridiculous that was. Nobody flew wings level over Hanoi.

  We had no idea how wrong we could be.

  58

  October 1, 1972

  It seemed like I never got to go on the missions that really were interesting. I had been the ground spare and didn't launch when the Doumer Bridge was knocked down, the first day of Linebacker. It would have been great to have been on that strike. And I didn't fly on May 13th, the day our wing destroyed the Thanh Hoa Bridge. In 1965, thuds had flown 873 sorties, and lost 11 aircraft, trying to knock it down. And now that “indestructible” bridge had been dropped by one strike flight with smart bombs.

  Then, on this day, there was a once-in-a-lifetime event the guys on the Special witnessed. They were attacking targets right downtown, and the enemy reaction was fierce. Triple-A so thick you could walk on it, and SAMs were being fired like they were going out of style.

  And suddenly, all of the ground fire stopped. The war instantly came to a screeching halt. It was like in a sporting event where the referee has just blown the whistle.

  One of the strike aircraft identified the reason for the interruption of hostilities.

  “This is Maple One,” he transmitted on strike frequency, “Everyone hold high and dry. There's a Russian cargo plane on final to Gia Lam.”

  The fighters stopped their deliveries and orbited the city, while the Antonov AN-12 made its approach and landing at the downtown civilian airport. The gomers didn't want to fire into the air for fear of inadvertently hitting the Russian plane. The strike aircraft didn't want to accidently hit the Russian plane and start a ground war at the United Nations. How the Russians could have sent a plane to Hanoi during an airstrike was anyone's guess. We always hit the targets at the same time, so whoever had scheduled the cargo flight was a complete idiot. Or, the Russians were looking to intentionally create an international incident.

  So, like a basketball game where one side had called “Time Out”, everyone stopped what they were doing, until the AN-12 had completed its landing. Then, just as suddenly, the war started again. MiGs reappeared, SAMs started launching again, and triple-A once again created an artificial overcast. And the strike aircraft once again made their runs.

  Another really interesting thing happened during the Special this day. Some of the protection from MiGs was provided by Marine A-4s, call sign Bar Cap. On this day, Bar Cap One had gotten into an engagement with a MiG-21 and had fired his missile. Right after his weapons release, before his missile had time to hit the MiG, a camouflaged MiG-17 came up from behind him and shot him down.

  He successfully bailed out, and, while he was in the chute, he came up on his survival radio.

  When an Air force pilot gets shot down and gets on the radio, the typical transmission is something like, “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. Maple One Alpha has a good chute, launch the SAR”. This Marine was different.

  “This is Bar Cap One. I have a good chute. Now someone come up on guard and tell me if I got that sonofabitch!”

  When I heard that story, it became clear to me that if another Marine got shot down on the other side of Hanoi, we'd have the gomers surrounded!

  59

  October 2, 1972

  Although this mission, my sixty-second Counter, was de
ep into North Vietnam, it was not a Special. It was a dumb bomb mission to attack an enemy barracks complex at Dien Bien Phu.

  Dien Bien Phu was historically significant, as it was the location of the resounding French defeat in 1954 that ended the French dominance in Indochina. The North Vietnamese military commander who orchestrated the defeat of the French was General Vo Nguyen Giap. Giap was a brilliant military strategist, and now, eighteen years later, he was still in command of the North Vietnamese military.

  We may have been too late to help the French, but we were going to kick ass on this mission. Our call sign was Beech, and, as usual, I was Number Four.

  Our bomb load was six Mk-82s and four Mk-83s on each aircraft. This was my first time carrying Mk-83s, at 1000 pounds each. I'd carried 500-pound Mk-82s scores of times, as well as 2000-pound Mk-84s. From a weapons delivery perspective, there wasn't much difference between dropping one bomb versus another, other than the different mill setting and the slight difference in the way the airplane shuddered when the bombs came off.

  As the fourth member of the flight, I was the last to roll in on the target. The previous aircraft in the flight had all bracketed the target pretty well, but no cigar. I rolled in, made a slight adjustment to the offset aim point based on the speed and direction of the blowing smoke from the previous hits, and pickled off my bombs. Then I pulled off and banked sharply to the left to see my results.

  The target was gone, obliterated by my perfect, absolutely perfect, bombs. I had forgotten how rewarding it was to drop dumb bombs, after back-to-back missions dropping smart bombs. Anybody can drop perfect smart bombs, as long as the laser is working. I proved that at Tits River. But when you release dumb bombs and score a perfect shack, now that's rewarding.

  The French should have called for assistance from Beech Flight back in 1954.

  60

  October 23, 1972

  In her typical fashion, Sam had managed to get a TDY assignment to Ubon for almost a month. She had been with me for the past 27 days.

  A lot of the guys had their wives with them at Ubon. There were so many that, at one of the squadron parties, someone had quipped that it looked like a meeting of the Officer's Wives Club. Some of the guys actually had their wives staying with them in the hootch. Since we always shared a room with another pilot, that usually didn't work out too well.

  The way most guys worked it when their wives came to town was to get rooms at the Ubol Hotel, in downtown Ubon Rachathani. So that's where we stayed while Sam was at Ubon.

  The hotel was okay. Nothing fancy, a bedroom and bathroom. A cold tile floor. Just someplace we could have a little privacy. The water at the hotel was local water, not really safe for drinking, so we would fill empty whiskey bottles with drinking water on base, and bring them back to the hotel with us each night.

  One time, when a hotel employee saw us carrying the water bottles, she said, “No need bring water. I fill for you.” So I gave her one of the empty bottles. I assumed – I forgot, it's not smart to assume – that she would fill the bottle from some source of clean drinking water. When she brought the bottle back to me, I thanked her and gave her a small tip.

  Then I held the bottle up to the light. As I squinted at the bottle, I saw thin, thread-like worms everywhere in the water. If we had taken a drink from that bottle, we would have gotten parasites that could have caused serious illness. We learned our lesson. Only base water.

  Besides wives, some of the guys had local girlfriends, called tilots. Basically, the guy would financially support his tilot, and she would be monogamous with him the whole time he was at Ubon. She would be exclusive, his local wife. When he DEROSed, his tilot would be back on the market.

  There was a story, probably total bullshit, that the wife of one of the guys had visited him at Ubon and had found out that he had a tilot. Naturally, in wifely fashion, she wanted to see what her husband's tilot looked like.

  “I'll tell you what I'll do,” he said to his wife, “We'll go to the club downtown where I usually meet with my tilot, and you will get a chance to see her.”

  So, the guy and his wife went to the club downtown. While the wife waited by the door, the guy went over to one of the girls and chatted for a while. Then he went back to his wife.

  “Was that girl you were talking to your tilot?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “Are all of these girls tilots?” she asked, looking around the club.

  He nodded.

  “You know what,” she continued, “I like ours the best.”

  Probably bullshit.

  Sam was so gorgeous that she attracted a lot of attention from the guys in the squadron. Instead of “Hey, Hamfist, if you get shot down, can I have your stereo gear?” it was, “Hey, Hamfist, if you get shot down, can I have your wife?”

  When she was working at the Ubon JAG Office, Sam had heard my name mentioned. Apparently, I had gotten a reputation as “Mr. Suggestion”.

  It all started early in my tour, when we were filling out some post-mission paperwork. One of the WSOs in our flight was pissed off.

  “Look at this,” he said, holding up a Bomb Damage Assessment report form. “We have to fill out this fucking BDA form and put it in that in-basket over there, that uncontrolled basket, and it's there for anybody to see. Totally uncontrolled. BDA is classified. It's supposed to be controlled.”

  “Well,” I countered, “why don't you fill out a Suggestion Program form and get the procedure changed?”

  “I don't have time for that shit,” he responded. “Why don't you?”

  So I did. I filled out a Suggestion Program form, with a recommendation that the BDA form be overprinted with “Classified When Filled Out”. The suggestion was accepted, the in-basket was changed to a locked box with a slot in the top for the forms. Intel had the key. And I received an award of $25. Easy money.

  That started me on my way to completing over a dozen Suggestion Program forms, with awards ranging from souvenir coffee mugs to $100 checks.

  The suggestion I was most proud of had its genesis when I'd heard Elm Three bail out, on my first Linebacker mission. He had gotten on his URC-64 survival radio while he was still in his chute, but we could hardly understand him because of the background noise from the wind. I wondered how we could arrange it so that we could attach our oxygen mask microphones to our URC-64s.

  Our oxygen masks connected to the airplane oxygen system through the CRU-60/P connector on our parachute harness. On bailout, the aircraft oxygen hose would separate from the CRU-60/P connector, along with the oxygen mask microphone cord. The microphone cord would just be dangling from the CRU-60/P.

  I figured there must be a way to connect that microphone cord to the URC-64 radio. The URC-64 did have a jack for an external microphone in its base, but that jack was a completely different size than the oxygen mask microphone connector.

  I went to the radio shop and looked around at the different types of connectors they had. I found a U-41 male connector that fit the URC-64 radio, and a U-72 female connector that fit the oxygen mask microphone cord. I borrowed a soldering gun and hooked them together.

  “It will never work, Captain,” observed a Master Sergeant, “The impedance is all wrong. One is a dynamic mike, and the other is a carbon mike.”

  I knew something about impedance, since I had a degree in Electrical Engineering from the Academy. But I also knew not to let perfect be the enemy of good. I grabbed my contraption, the connector I had just built. I plugged one end into my URC-64, plugged the other end into my oxygen mask microphone, and headed to the screen room.

  The screen room was a cage, built out of metal screening, that could be used to test radios without the signal being broadcast all over. The screen room was large enough to stand up in, and was used by radio technicians to test their equipment.

  I tested my creation, and, to the amazement of the Sergeant, it worked! I knew that with mismatched impedance it would not be optimal, but I didn't need optimal. I just need
ed good enough.

  “Sarge, what do I need to do to have your guys make one of these for every pilot in the wing?”

  He shuffled around his desk for a minute and produced a work order request form.

  “Fill this out, sir, and I'll take care of the rest.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant.”

  I filled out a Suggestion Program form, and we had connectors attached to the URC-64 radios of every pilot in the wing within a week. And a few days later, one of our guys was shot down. He got on his URC-64 while he was still in the chute, and we could hear him perfectly, CAFB – Clear As A Fucking Bell. The satisfaction of that far surpassed the cash award I got for that suggestion.

  It was great having Sam with me, for a lot of reasons. She was with me when I got up at 0130 to go back to the base for each Special. She saw the nervousness, the turmoil I went through before each mission. She met the guys in the squadron, my brothers. She went to squadron parties with me. And she grieved with me when we lost squadron-mates.

  It was especially good for another reason. She had the war experience. She was mentally ready for whatever would happen to me. If I got shot down again, she wouldn't be caught off guard. The war became real to her. It made our relationship closer, much closer. We cherished every second we had together, and every moment of intimacy was more meaningful.

  And then she had to leave. Her TDY was over, and she had to return to Yokota. I went with her to the Passenger Terminal and saw her off. This was a complete reversal of the roles we had previously served, where she watched me board flights.

  As the plane taxied off, early in the morning, I was left with an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I headed to work. I needed to be around people I knew.

  When I arrived at the squadron, I saw Doc Myers talking to Lieutenant Colonel Smith. He was holding a magazine, and both of them were chuckling. As soon as he saw me, Lieutenant Colonel Smith called to me.