I worked the general’s schedule, and he’d become irate if anything went wrong with it. He made it very clear that I must learn his requirements and standards very quickly. And Lord help the man or woman who, in one way or another, cost him time he didn’t want to spend. He usually saved a few minutes after lunch for his personal “quiet time” and considered it inviolate. No one dared to disrupt that silent interlude.
Henry Ramsey, the political adviser from the State Department, a “Foreign Service Officer One,” which is one grade below ambassador, was a bit of a thorn in Adams’s side. He was a bachelor and a gentlemanly and verbose man, inclined to writing lengthy messages. He did not use the terse military style Adams preferred. I knew Adams didn’t want to waste any minutes with Ramsey, so we put Ramsey off by referring him to subordinates in the command. But Ramsey was persistent, and one day he came into my office and said, “This is an absolute, dire emergency. I must see General Adams!”
So, with reluctance, I entered the general’s office. “Sir, Mr. Ramsey insists on seeing you.”
Whereupon the general took the container full of number two pencils, which were religiously sharpened for him every morning, raised it to shoulder height, and slammed it down with a loud clack on his Plexiglas-topped desk. “Goddamit!” he said. “Can’t you keep that son of a bitch out of here?”
Then he heaved the pencil he was writing with onto his desktop. It ricocheted from the desk and whizzed by my head. I defensively fell to the floor, successfully avoiding the missile, and scampered from the office. I told Ramsey the General couldn’t see him today. I advised Ramsey that the general preferred that he make his remarks at the morning staff conferences.
Ramsey angrily said, “Commander Lawrence, you are not letting me do my job!”
So I was a bit of a scapegoat in this fracas.
Incidentally, the general never apologized for pitching that number two pencil at me. He was not an apologizer.
As to the Navy’s role in Strike Command, General Adams finally acceded to the fact that naval forces and the carriers would stay under the operational control of a naval commander. Operational Control is a term that describes how those elements in the chain of command respond to a reporting authority. In this instance, Admiral Moorer had conceived of a way to have naval forces “in support” of army operations rather than under their control. This new concept was agreed to by Gen. Earle Wheeler and approved by Secretary McNamara.
There was an exception. In the Middle East, a seaplane tender and two destroyers were permanently based at Bahrain, under the commander Middle East Force. Through a quirk in the overall arrangement, these ships came directly under the control of General Adams. We called it his “Little three-ship Navy.”
Although I wouldn’t want to emulate General Adams’s style of leadership, I admired and respected him for his achievements. Though he always called me “Lawrence,” never by my first name, I sensed he had warm feelings toward me. I noticed he never used first names. I asked a fellow officer about this, and he told me, “Welcome to the club. As far as we know, the only people he calls by their first name are his wife and children.”
The war in Vietnam was heating up as my tour at Strike Command ended in January 1966. Adams, who was a student of warfare, had carefully studied the French experience in the Indochina War, which lasted from 1946 to 1954 and ended in defeat for the French. Consequently, he was very wary about America’s entry into a conflict in Vietnam. He felt we could win there but that it would take a long time and be very costly. He wrote many letters to the Army chief of staff, General Wheeler warning that American involvement in Vietnam would be lengthy, frustrating, and costly in both lives and money.
When I was ordered to a fighter squadron, which, in all likelihood, would be sent into combat because of Vietnam, he was happy for me. He knew how much I wanted to fly again. There was a touch of sadness in his eyes when we made our good-byes. He was a time-tested warrior, who knew close up the horrors and tragedies of armed conflict. He feared America was in for a dreadful experience, and I read in his expression a genuine concern for my future well-being.
Memorably, some time after I was released from captivity in North Vietnam, I visited Adams in Tampa. He called me “Bill.”
Chapter Eleven
COMBAT
Abeam the beach, with a sizeable crowd watching, he started a roll. Something went wrong, and the F-4 slammed into the sea, killing both men and destroying the aircraft.
“HEY, I THINK I HEARD A HEART MURMUR,” said the young Air Force flight surgeon. I was undergoing my annual physical before my departure from Strike Command at MacDill Air Force Base, and the last thing I wanted to hear were those words, heart murmur. I’d paid my staff duty dues and craved climbing into a Phantom and bursting back into the sky. Moreover, I had been promoted to commander and had screened for command, which meant I would join a fleet squadron as executive officer and, after a year in that billet, would “fleet up” to command of the unit and more than likely be involved in the fighting in Vietnam.
The words followed me to Naval Air Station Miramar, where the doctor there declared, “You need a complete cardiology workup at Balboa,” the major naval hospital in San Diego.
At Balboa, a physician, who was not a flight surgeon, said, “Your heart murmur is a disqualifying condition. Were you to try and enter the service today with this problem, you couldn’t get in.” Dark clouds loomed on my horizon, but I wasn’t going down without a fight.
I called Cdr. Frank Austin, a friend from Patuxent River days now serving in the Navy’s Bureau of Medicine. Frank was a flight surgeon who had also gone through flight training to become a fully qualified naval aviator. I explained my dilemma to him. He listened carefully and then decided my case should be resolved by a board composed of flight surgeons at the Naval Aviation Medical Institute (NAMI) in Pensacola. Consequently, in February 1966 I was ordered temporarily to Pensacola for the evaluation. I was not optimistic, a feeling made all the worse because I felt perfectly fit and was really anxious to get into combat in Vietnam. Like every naval aviator—and just about anyone who enters military service, I was committed to the warrior mode. As much as it might sound like something out of a John Wayne movie, we were trained to kill and destroy. Volumes of pilots and backseaters go through their careers without tasting combat, although it seems as if there’s war for every generation. It’s all a matter of timing, and my time had come.
After another thorough examination that focused on the state of my ticker, the board met and carefully reviewed my situation. “Commander Lawrence,” the head of the board began rather somberly when we went one on one in his office at NAMI, “you’ve been in naval aviation for fifteen years.” He paused, and my heart sank, murmur and all. My one year of black shoe duty apparently was included in the fifteen. “But you’re healthy,” he went on, “and your heart murmur is what we call ‘human dynamically insignificant.’”
My heart sank no further, but it wasn’t rising yet.
The doctor then smiled and said, “We’re going to give you a waiver to stay in naval aviation, service group one!”
The old ticker leapt, and I sat straighter in my chair, elation building.
“Furthermore,” the doctor went on, “you’re the first guy on record to have a heart murmur who has been allowed to stay in a military field, aviation in particular!”
Thank you, Frank Austin. I also thanked the Lord for providing me an otherwise excellent cardiovascular system. The board had compared my NASA physical records in 1959 with the current readings and there had been no change in heart size. I was allowed to continue as a Navy pilot.
I was rushed through the training syllabus at the Fleet Replacement Squadron (FRS) at Miramar, a kind of graduate school tailored for the Phantom. But the family was with me, and we made the most of our time together, knowing I would deploy immediately after completing the curriculum. In July 1966, being slated to be the XO to Cdr. Tomas Townsend, I stuffed a couple of
duffel bags with flight gear and uniforms, said goodbye to Anne and the kids at our rented Solana Beach home overlooking the beautiful Pacific, and traveled via military transport from Travis Air Force Base to Danang, South Vietnam, then via a carrier on board delivery aircraft to the USS Ranger in the Gulf of Tonkin. Because the ship and squadron had already been deployed for over two months, I was anxious to get into the fray. “Dixie Station” operations (which encompassed bombing targets in South Vietnam) for the Navy had been terminated, and all carrier assets were now dedicated to bombing North Vietnam, operating from “Yankee Station,” a geographical point off the central North Vietnamese coast.
The Phantom’s punch was being felt. In my first F-4 tour, the aircraft was purely a fighter. We didn’t carry ordnance, even though we knew the capability existed. No fighter pilot would consider himself a bomber pilot in those days. But the Phantom had been transformed in reality to a fighter bomber, arguably one of the best combat machines ever built.
For tactical planning purposes, North Vietnam was divided into six zones beginning at the demilitarized zone (DMZ —the 17th parallel) with “Package One” to “Package Six,” the utmost northern portion of the country, which encompassed the port city of Haiphong and the capital, Hanoi, sometimes referred to as Indian Country because it was so heavily defended and patently dangerous to enter.
I didn’t know it at the time, but target selection was actually determined in the White House and, as was later confirmed, Pres. Lyndon Johnson himself made a lot of the target assignments. Hard to imagine, but true. Most of our objectives were in packages two or three during the 1966 deployment. They ranged from suspected truck parks to bridges and barges suspected of transporting the supplies of war by the enemy. The surface-to-air missile (SAM) threat was not significant at the time. SAM sites existed but were sparsely positioned throughout the country. At the same time, you could expect to be shot at anytime you went over the beach, usually by 85-millimeter antiaircraft artillery or smaller guns.
If there were two carriers on station, one would operate from 1200 to midnight, the other during the next twelve hours. If there were three flattops, one would fly midnight to noon, the second would operate noon to midnight, and the third would fly from 0800 to 1800. The worst schedule from most everyone’s standpoint was the midnight to noon. It was notably more difficult to adjust to it than the other periods. You just couldn’t seem to adjust your sleep pattern.
We didn’t realize it at the time, but the pace and intensity of this deployment could be described as benign compared to our next turn on Yankee Station in 1967. For one thing, there was a lack of electronic countermeasures—the technology to break the enemy’s radar lock on our aircraft—although the A-4 Skyhawks and A-6 Intruders did have ECM equipment that told pilots when they were “receiving radiation” and the direction of site from which it was coming. They could also break the lock.
For us, in 1966, this wasn’t a critical deficiency, but that all changed a year later with the proliferation of surface-to-air missiles in the North. Fortunately, our CO was Cdr. Doc Townsend; a technically oriented officer who made sure our aircraft were upgraded with the APR-25 Electronic Countermeasures (ECM) system, which was designed to detect a basic search radar signal. Once that signal locked on an aircraft, the defensive system would try to break that lock. A pulsating tone would alert aviators of an active radar signal. When that happened, a pilot might transmit, “I’ve got a chirper.” When the signal intensified and lock-on was imminent, the chirper became a warbler, meaning a high pulse rate frequency (PRF). A very scary sound. Our ECM system would provide the direction of the threat as well as the audio signal.
When we returned to Miramar following the 1966 deployment, we had to transfer our Phantoms sequentially to the Naval Aviation Depot at North Island, California, for electronic upgrades that would better serve us in the increasingly hostile SAM environment in North Vietnam. Our F-4 “availability” rate plunged, and that translated to less flying time and a reduced state of readiness. This was the down side of the “fix,” but we had no alternative. We did try to give the nuggets—newly arrived aviators—some priority to tune them up for their baptism in combat.
It was hectic. Even though there was a war on, we had to undergo an administrative inspection, a real pain in the posterior, because it entailed a review of all our instructions, personnel data, operating procedures, log books, the whole nine yards. On our deployment, paperwork took a back seat to combat operations. Ashore now, we were paying for that with frantic updating of the records, a lot of scurrying about, and elevated tensions, because these “admats” were serious business. A team of inspectors from Commander Fleet Air Miramar would swoop down on the squadron and go through all our data inch by inch. We spent long hours at the squadron getting our paperwork into shape. On top of all these, we had to conduct weapons training at the Marine Corps Air Station Yuma complex in Arizona in preparation for the forthcoming deployment.
By 1972 Navy aircraft were equipped with an affective array of ECM equipment, but in 1966 we were on the backside of the learning curve. Because we were dealing in technology that could spell the difference between survival and the dreaded alternative, there was a deepening intensity toward getting our jets ready for the next tour on Yankee Station.
In peacetime, a Friday night—and a few midweek days—wouldn’t go by without an exuberant gathering at the officers club for happy hour. During our turnaround, there were no happy hours. Men were predisposed to spend what precious free time they had with their families. We weren’t in a somber state of mind, but knowing we would soon be going back into harm’s way took some of the humor, normally free-flowing in a cadre of aviators, out of the workplace.
One of our new pilots, an Ensign Brown, was a quiet sort but a pretty good stick. He had flown well around the ship, day and night, and we were quite impressed with him. One week before we were to set sail for the Pacific, he was sent to the overhaul and repair facility at North Island to collect one of our Phantoms freshly upgraded with the new gear to fend off the SAMs. His RIO was a “mustang” lieutenant, an officer who had begun his career as an enlisted man and had a wife and several children. They manned up, launched, and headed north toward the coastline at La Jolla. Brown accelerated and kept the Phantom down low. Abeam the beach, with a sizeable crowd watching, he started a roll. Something went wrong, and the F-4 slammed into the sea, killing both men and destroying the aircraft.
It’s hard to imagine an event more devastating just prior to deployment—losing a crew and a refurbished warplane. Flathatting is a cardinal sin, and when it terminates in disaster, it is costly beyond measure. The families suffer, all that training and experience is lost, and you must add in the lofty cost of the multimillion dollar jet itself. But it happens, and the effect of this tragedy set us all back at a time when we were already pent up in anticipation of going back into harm’s way.
In addition to my other responsibilities, I had to spend the succeeding weeks preparing the Judge Advocate General (JAG) investigation on the incident, which is conducted in parallel with the official accident investigation, the latter being a more technically detailed and lengthy process.
Chapter Twelve
MIDNIGHT TO NOON – NOON TO MIDNIGHT
“Better proceed to the alternate target, Bill,” he radioed. This is when I sighed guiltily, knowing we would not have to duel with the dreaded SAMs that had proliferated in the Hanoi-Haiphong area—“Indian country”—since our last deployment.
I BREATHED A GUILTY SIGH OF RELIEF. It was early morning and Haiphong was socked in—cloaked by heavy cloud cover. The CAG Cdr. (later Rear Adm.) Gene Tissot, a superlative officer, was in an F-4 Phantom farther back in the flight, but I was the designated flight leader and was at the apex of the thirty-plus aircraft formation. My job was to navigate us to the target, which was a complex of transshipment points in the Haiphong area on the Red River. My F-4 and seven other Phantoms were to pounce on enemy gun sites as fla
k suppressors, clearing the way for the Skyhawk and Intruder bombers to make their attack. My RIO was twenty-four-year-old Lt. (jg) James Bailey from Kocuusko, Mississippi.
The flak suppressors carried six to eight five hundred-pound cluster bomb units (CBU) with proximity fuses. These were pressure-sensing devices that caused the bombs to detonate slightly above the ground, sending hundreds of lethal steel fragments over a wide area at tremendous velocity. The CBUs were ferociously effective as antipersonnel weapons. On this day they were intended to debilitate crews manning enemy antiaircraft artillery (triple A—AAA) and SAM sites. We also carried four Sparrow and two Sidewinder missiles each. After the flak suppression runs, we would become the MiG Cap element, swiftly climbing to altitude to do battle with any MiGs that might be in the sky.
In addition to the A-4 Skyhawks and the A-6 Intruders, RA-5C Vigilante photo-reconnaissance jets would transit the target area right after the strike to obtain bomb damage assessment (BDA) imagery. The transshipment points were temporary holding facilities for supplies that came in via ships we were not allowed to target. Ridiculous, but true. The supplies were subsequently loaded onto trucks from the transshipment points and delivered to Communist units positioned throughout North Vietnam, more often than not in the darkness of night.
We prided ourselves on the ability to launch and rendezvous a large group of warplanes in a relatively swift and orderly manner under “zip lip,” or radio silence. I’m not the only Alpha Strike leader to be awestruck by the sheer drama of this undertaking. As I circled high overhead, the jets, weighted heavily with bombs, drew toward me like obedient geese joining on the leader of the flock.
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