Thud Ridge

by Jacksel Markham Broughton

  The second phenomenon that makes Asian skies uncomfortable is the continuing poor visibility. Upon the arrival of a major or fast-moving weather system, the visibility will clear and the weather will be beautiful. Flying over there on a day like that gives you a sense of luxury. All the rest of the time the visibility varies from poor to dreadful. I have done my share of flying in smog and city-polluted air as well as dust over the deserts and smoke over an area like Tokyo, but they do not hold a candle to the murk that hangs in the air from Hanoi to Bangkok. In most reduced visibility conditions you can see straight down or at least penetrate the restricted visibility on some axis. Not thai: stuff. It is like somebody painted your sunglasses white. I guess some of it comes from the fact that everyone from India to Tokyo seems to be burning something, and part of it comes again from the heavy, wet air, but regardless, it is plain awful as far as seeing where you are going when you are flying a fighter.

  Another thing that costs us on the easy ones is the appearance of the countryside and the lack of a skyful of flak to meet you upon your arrival in the target complex. The easy Packs look like the other side of the moon in lots of spots. The North Vietnamese have little need to clean up or rebuild the many crossings, fords, bridges and the like that we have destroyed in the past, as it is much easier to build a new route or find a new crossing. The hulks of the old targets scar the countryside. Moreover, nobody moves when you are flying over the area and only when you surprise something like a stray convoy of vehicles or construction equipment do you get any sensation of actuality or life below you. The guns are there, nobody doubts that, but they are not there in the concentration that you find up North. Many of the guns are on the move, while others have specific facets of the constant southward flow of men and equipment to protect. When you come upon this scene with a small maneuverable unit like a flight of two or a flight of four and gaze on the silent bomb holes and the silent roads and villages, and when you are excused from the rattle and burst of the heavier guns of Hanoi, it is easy to make the big slip. It is easy to forget that they will shoot. They are smart in the easy Packs, and most of the time they will hold their fire until you stumble into a position where they have a good chance of zapping you on the first try.

  Another reason for Thud losses in the easy areas goes back to the combination of man and machine tempered by experience. Lots of us have flown many of the machines of the recent past as well as the present, and we have flown them on a variety of missions. Each one is different and each handles differently as you force or coax it through its performance spectrum. Like boats and cars, each model has its strong and its weak points, so that each one is best suited to a particular kind of mission. I would argue violently with the thought that any single machine could be desig’ned and built to accomplish all missions satisfactorily.

  You can fly them all through the same sky, but that is a great deal different from doing the best possible job on each mission. The basic differences in speed, altitude, maneuverability and weapons delivery just do not make it good sense to assume away the differences and try to build one vehicle for all tasks. Pilots have a tendency to wish all good things from air machines they have flown into the one they are presently flying, and this can mean trouble. Those who have horsed an F-102 around a corner like a midget racer on dirt don’t forget it, and someplace way back in the computer is the feeling that all century series fighters should turn like that. Those who have violently changed direction in the F-106 while still maintaining perfect control don’t forget that. Those who have strapped the neat little F-104 onto their backsides and experienced the sensation that “I can make this baby doll go anyplace, anytime” do not forget that. Yet, when any of us fly the Thud with its almost complete lack of these sporty characteristics, we love the way we can whistle along on the deck with the big, high-drag bomb, tank and missile load, as we race down the Ridge to Hanoi with little fear for the Mig. However, when we take this same Thud and try to play maximum performance close support over terrain that often rivals Denver for elevation and rarefied air, we sometimes forget that we have a skinny little wing originally designed for high-speed, straight-and-level, on-the-deck nuclear delivery. When we forget that we can’t turn like a deuce, honk like a six or skitter like a four, we ask for trouble and we most often find it.

  We had a good example of the weather problem the day we lost Pete—the visibility was so bad you couldn’t believe it. We had been reporting this to the head shed for several days, but were unable to convince anyone that it was too poor to work in safety. The show must go on. Although Pete was relatively new to us, he had made a great impression, and he had a wealth of experience to back it up. He was supposed to have been our next new squadron commander and with this in mind, we had him out setting his fingernails dirty in all the areas we flew in. That day he was flying number two and finding out what the wingrnen felt like in the nasty visibility of the near North. The big headquarters executed his flight to work with a forward air controller flying a slower prop aircraft, who would direct the fighters against targets he had identified on the ground. We figured the visibility would make the forward air control portion of the mission a loser from the start, but they had to go, and sure enough, by the time they arrived in the area, the airborne controller had aborted the mission because even in his slow prop job, he could not see his hand in front of his face, to say nothing of having adequate visibility to control high-speed fighters against pinpoint, sensitive targets. The controller had a change in plans for them and sent them out on their own to work an area that was no better as regards visibility but far less sensitive.

  Once in the newly assigned area, the lead knew they had their hands full, and as he searched for his target and attempted to roll in on it, he instructed Pete not to go lower than 10,000 feet, but to attempt to keep him in sight as he attempted to split the murk. The lead hurtled down the chute, but lost all visual contact and bombing references, aborted the pass and recovered his altitude on instruments. Back on top, ready to give it a second try, the lead attempted to call his number two man on the radio, but to no avail. He stayed up on top and milled around over the target area trying in vain to locate his flightmate by visual or electronic means, until low fuel forced him to drop his bombs on a target of opportunity that he was able to see and head for home as he alerted the rescue forces that his wingman was among the missing. The rescue people searched in vain, and the only thing other fighters called in to support the rescue managed to locate was an active heavy radar-controlled gun battery. When the lead recovered at home base, we found several hits in the underside of his aircraft, but he had no knowledge of when or where or how he had taken the hits. It was supposed to be an easy one, but we had one bird shot up, and we never again heard from, or about, our prospective new squadron commander.

  The weather system that made the visibility so bad moved further north, but then we lost John on a well-traveled route in the easy area that everybody knows waxes hot and cold. I was in command of the force that day and we launched on the primary target way up there in the face of a weather report that looked impossible. Someone up the line got the same impression, but not until we were on the tankers, and we were diverted to a series of alternates that we had sagely planned for in advance. After .sorting out mission planning cards and target photos, and jamming now worthless maps into odd corners of the cockpit, we all got squared away, and the flights split away from what had been the strike force to go after their individual and lesser defended targets. I was the first flight across the line and as John’s flight entered behind and to the north of me, his flight leader further split his flight into elements, and he took one half of his assigned route, while John with his element took the other.

  John flew over the spot he eventually bombed but elected to continue to the northern end of his route while lowering his fuel load to make his Thud lighter and more maneuvera-ble, and taking a good look at the entire route. When he swung back over the desired area, he set up his element and
rolled in on his run without opposition, but he didn’t like the way the run looked and figured he could do better with another try, so he aborted the pass and pulled back up over the target for his third exposure over the same point. His number four man had rolled in behind him as instructed and had completed his bomb run, leaving no doubt in the minds of those on the ground as to what the Thuds were after. John readjusted his position, rolled in again, and, sure enough, got hit hard as he was dropping his bombs. The ground gunners had received all the tracking practice they needed and knew they had one in their sights, and when they opened up, they did their job well. He got the nose up and managed to get a little way past the target before she locked up on him and he had to step out.

  We found out later that afternoon that there was plenty of firepower in that desolate section of the world, and later intelligence info indicated that the target he had picked was a sizable “group of well-organized and well-equipped troops who were moving south with their weapons. If we had been able to control the winds, we probably could have recovered him, but the wind was blowing directly in his face as he leaped out, and no amount of pulling or tugging on the risers could keep him from drifting backward, and he landed right smack where the enemy troops were. By the time I had responded to the Mayday call, he had hit the ground directly on the road he had been bombing, and he and his chute had disappeared the instant he touched down. It was quite apparent what had happened, but we still wa.nted to be sure. I had the exact spot pinpointed by both coordinates and description, and when I arrived, the flight lead and number two had been forced to head for the tanker for fuel, and the number four man, on his first combat mission, was somewhere between disoriented and lost. Once again I was running a Rescap, and the first thing I did was locate the neophyte number four man and get him squared away and on his way back to the tanker. He later turned out to be one of our shiny lads, but unfortunately he was killed in a midair collision toward the tail end of his tour, as he himself was shepherding a then-new sport around.

  When the first Spad arrived on the scene, I found myself and my number two man as bottom cover and we were able to get the Spad almost over the spot, yet displaced a couple of miles to the north to take advantage of the protective cover of the hills. The Spad and I decided that the only way to determine whether further rescue was feasible or necessary was for him to take a close look at the spot where we knew John had hit the ground. We figured that if we both headed west for a few miles, he could stay on the deck with his slower aircraft and turn in toward the spot while I could light the burner and pull my element up several thousand feet as I did a wingover to the left to line up with the road. The combination of the burner noise and the up and over maneuver was calculated to get their attention, and then we could roll in and race down the road with our cannon blazing while the Spad came in on the treetops. Halfway down the road, about over the spot where we had seen John, I would light the burner again and do another wingover and come back down the road shooting up the south side as he passed the spot and broke north for the cover of the hills. We executed the maneuver, and as I approached firing range, I noticed that the hills sloped rather abruptly upward on both sides of the road, making in effect a valley. Small arms, .50 caliber and who knows what all else spit from every rock and ditch along the roads and up into the foothills, and I realized that we had stumbled onto at least a battalion of North Vietnamese regulars. Those guys were dug in, and they were loaded, but it still looked like good shooting for me for the first few rounds. I fired, and then the stupid gun jammed and not another round passed through it that day. I cursed the gun, and I cursed the troops on the ground, and I flew to the spot and started around, knowing full well that my gun was done, but that the Spad was behind me doing his part. Around we went for part two and this time I felt like I had a toy airplane flying through real bullets as I pulled the trigger on the dead cannon and screamed for nobody’s edification but my own, “Drop dead, you bastards.”

  The Spad hugged the trees to the north, and I hugged them to the south and thirty seconds later all the nasty tracers and noise had gone away and he said, “There’s nobody there, no sense in losing any more birds. We better call it off. Sorry, old man—thanks for the cover.” I concurred, and that was the end of that.

  It’s easy to say, why press? The target wasn’t worth it, but John had a job to do and he wanted to do it to perfection, and God knows he tried. He hung it out over the target for them to shoot at, and I know many who will tell you how bad that is, but I have a lot more experience and a lot more combat than John had, and I hung it out twice without even a gun to shoot, and what’s more, I dragged my wingman with me, and we both knew exactly what we were getting into. I guess that is what combat is made of.

  The weather refused to change and my old buddy Ralph bit the dust on an easy one fighting the same old rotten visibility, but also fighting the aircraft. He was element lead on a point target on an early morning go, and when they got there, the haze was even covered up with a low cloud layer. There was no choice but to fall back to the planned alternate of road reconnaissance, so they split into elements and started to work. Ralph had been in my squadron for a long time when I had an F-106 outfit as a light colonel. He had flown F-102’s before that and was one of my best. He and I worked up a little acrobatic routine that I thought was quite good—but don’t tell anybody about that as it’s not authorized. I helped arrange an F-104 assignment for him when he left the squadron, and he performed with distinction in his new assignment until Southeast Asia called and he joined us.

  Part way down the route of the road recce, Ralph called out a truck and wheeled to attack it from low level in the haze of early morning. He still had all the bombs on his aircraft, and he was low and slow, heavy and sluggish, but he had a target in sight and he was after it. I never did figure out if he was going to bomb it from a very low angle or strafe it with his bombs still on the aircraft. All I know is that neither approach is healthy in the machine he was in, and I know that the ground gunners had a more lucrative target in their sights than Ralph had in his. I wonder if for an instant he was flying a batwinged F-106 instead of a clipped-wing F-105. He was only about 3500 feet above the ground, and his speed was weir below 350 knots when he took a direct hit from the previously silent guns. They ripped his belly section out and started a fire that in turn caused other large pieces of structure to separate from the aircraft.

  His flight leader called him three times to bail out but the canopy never separated from the aircraft, and there was no bailout observed. The bombs were still on the aircraft as it impacted the ground. Number four reported that the last thing Ralph said was “Oh, no.” I’m sure by then he knew what was happening. All for a lousy beat-up truck, but if you are going to take a bunch of guys and feed them gunpowder and raw meat while you tie one hand behind them, this is what you have to expect—losses. It just hurts worse to lose them on the easy ones.

  11. Unhappy Hunting Grounds

  Everyone who flies a combat tour in fighters finds a favorite area to work in. You find places you detest and have no desire to fly into, and you find other places where you feel more relaxed, more competent, more aggressive. The index is not necessarily the severity of the defenses, and in fact a flier’s favorite section may be very heavily defended. It is just a case of feeling that you can master all the challenges in one spot and adopting that section as your personal hunting grounds. When you make that identification, it is amazing how well you can manipulate both the schedule and the conduct of the mission to allow you to comb your hunting grounds regularly. I despised the northeast railroad. I didn’t like the long haul that we had to make to get there and I didn’t like the approaches to the targets, even though it was easy enough to get there and the landmarks made navigation no problem. While there were plenty of people shooting at you on the way in and the way out, the gunfire was not an overriding factor until you got to the target itself. The targets were blah targets, and they were all heavily defende
d. We smashed most of the worthwhile ones fairly early on, and after we had knocked out the better targets in other complexes to the west of the railroad and toward Hanoi, the North Vietnamese loaded the railroad with guns from these other areas and then moved them up and down the rail line as needed. Our plan of hitting the same places again and again helped them in their arrangement of guns, and there were not too many places where they couldn’t hammer you pretty hard from all sides. Nobody wants to bust his rear end, but I abhorred the thought of busting it for some crummy beat-up piece of railroad track or a couple of used railroad cars.

  I didn’t like the egress route either, because once you got past the guns that chased you to the coast, you would have to look at all those ships lined up waiting to get into the port at Haiphong with, flapping in the North Vietnamese breeze, the flags of many nations we had knocked ourselves out to help. It was rough to watch some kid blow up in your face and moments later watch your supposed allies unloading more equipment to be transported to the gunners so they could work you over the next day, or down the trail, so as to clobber some poor grunt crawling around in the mud down South. I didn’t like the refueling on the way out because everyone was always hurting for fuel, and the rat race to find your tanker and hook up with him was always more confused out there. And I didn’t like the long haul home. As far as I am concerned, all single-engine fighters still have an automatic rough running engine once you pass the shoreline and look out at all that water.