Escape from Saigon

by Michael Morris

  From a hilltop in the nearby jungle, Trung had been observing the comings and goings of the officers who flew the A-37 fighter jets and the mechanics who kept them running. Because of its bulbous cockpit and long, thin fuselage, the A-37 was aptly named “the Dragonfly.”

  Every USAF pilot had affection for the A-37. The trainer version was the first jet each pilot flew after transitioning from a civilian Cessna 172. It was fast but not supersonic, fully aerobatic, and pilots sat side by side as they would in a civilian plane. This made training a lot easier than with tandem seating—especially when there is a language barrier. If a trainee got himself into a death spiral and wouldn’t let go of the stick, a punch to the arm by his right-seat trainer would get him to let go.

  When the U.S. decided to turn the air war over to the Vietnamese, converting this diminutive jet trainer, which stood only waist high, into an armed Vietnamese Air Force fighter was an easy choice. The U.S. equipped the plane to carry four five-hundred-pound bombs and a 7.62 millimeter Gatling-style machine gun mounted in the nose—enough of a weapon system to provide close air support. But even with wingtip-mounted fuel tanks, which added weight and limited its destructive payload, it could not carry enough fuel to drop bombs north of the DMZ and return. Notwithstanding, the Dragonfly did not have the electronic countermeasures needed to penetrate the North’s radar defenses. The U.S. wanted it that way, fearing a South Vietnam group commander would go rogue and attempt an attack deep inside North Vietnam that would end any diplomatic solution to the war.

  Trung, now hiding by the chain link security fence, chuckled and said to himself, “If we pull this off, what fun to see the faces of the South Vietnam Air Force pilots when they wake up to find the planes gone and a truckload of spare parts stripped from the maintenance hangar. Even more fun when we turn their own weapon against them—striking a blow against both the South and the United States.”

  Trung’s hijacking of a USAF F-5 fighter from Tan Son Nhut and bombing the Presidential Palace had won him accolades from his superiors. The story grew more bold and daring as Trung’s gambit was told and retold throughout the North Vietnamese Air Force.

  His daring caught the attention of the North’s Air Force General Van Tien Dung, who summoned Trung to his office. “You have a new mission, Comrade Trung. We are putting together a select band of fighter pilots. You will be in command. Your mission is to infiltrate Pleiku Air Base and steal the Dragonflies right out from under the noses of the South Vietnamese Air Force.” The general added with a thin smile,” Of course, this is voluntary, Captain.”

  Trung was speechless. He could only utter, “General, I accept the mission.”

  “Good, your comrades are waiting for you. Six good pilots. All of them have combat experience. They trained in Russia as MiG-15 fighter pilots. You have six days to turn them into A-37 pilots.”

  * * *

  “Comrades,” Trung began as he addressed his assembled aviators, “you have been selected to serve in an elite squadron and join me in a dangerous mission. You’ve earned your place because of your bravery, your loyalty, and your skill as fighter pilots.

  “I remind you,” Trung went on, “this is a voluntary mission. Before we go one minute further, I must caution you. It is one thing to strafe a truck convoy from five hundred feet or provide close air support when you know you are protecting your brothers in arms on the ground. But if you cannot sneak up behind one of our countrymen from the South—someone whose mother looks like your mother—pull his head back and slit his throat, you may leave the squadron right now. No one will think less of you.” Trung waited a full minute, making eye contact each of his pilots. Not one of them seemed to even blink.

  With that, Trung introduced the pilots to their two training officers. They had been pilots with the South who were captured when the North overran Da Nang and immediately capitulated by taking a loyalty oath to North Vietnam. In addition to their skills as pilots, they both spoke and read English and were able to translate a stolen A-37 flight manual into Vietnamese.

  None of its members had ever been in the cockpit of an A-37. Their training officers drilled them using cardboard cutouts with the instrument panel and controls drawn on them. The second their students sat in an A-37, they wanted the pilots to be comfortable enough with the controls to get the planes off the ground and fly them northward to a secret runway. Once there, they could practice their attack.

  “You learned enough Russian to fly a MiG, and now you will learn enough English to fly the Dragonfly. As they say in Texas, it’s gonna be a piece o’ cake! Yee-ha, doggies!”

  The six squadron members sat dumfounded, looking at one another. If they knew any English at all, it certainly was not Texas English.

  But Trung, who had spent plenty of time in the Lone Star state, got the gag immediately and chimed in, “Okay boys, rodeo time!” For the first time, Trung cracked a smile, giving the entire squadron permission to laugh over a joke they didn’t understand at all.

  * * *

  As night fell and the South Vietnamese airmen retired to their quarters, the base lights came on dimly. Since there were no night missions planned, the air traffic control tower was unmanned. The main gate was secured by a young corporal who hadn’t even been born when Vietnam liberated the country from the French. A hundred yards or so from the gate sat another soldier, a sergeant, in a low wood tower that had been erected to protect the flight line from a sapper attack. He sleepily manned a .50-caliber machine gun and was the last obstacle before anyone could reach the neat rows of Dragonflies, resting between corrugated steel revetments. The rest of the defenses were left up to a single patrol that drove inside the double perimeter fence and concertina wire that encircled the base. The trip around the base, inspecting for breaches, took a half hour at least—that is, if the soldiers on patrol didn’t stop to take a nap.

  “Why sneak under the fence like chickens?” Trung reasoned, when he came up with the idea for the heist. No, we are going to come through the main gate, like soldiers, Trung thought as he walked, or rather staggered up to the sentry who was sitting on a low plastic chair outside the guard shack. Trung dropped the half-empty bottle of Jim Beam on the ground to be sure the clink of glass hitting the pavement got his attention.

  “Hey! Who’s there?”

  Nothing. Trung ambled closer to the guard who began to approach him.

  “Hey old man, what are you doing here? The base closed hours ago. You should have left with the other papa-sans.” He shook his head in disgust at the spectacle of a drunken old man. “Come on. Let me help you find your way out,” he said as he walked toward the stranger, who staggered a little more now. This forced the guard to prop him up.

  “I’ll point you toward home,” he told him and as he grabbed him by his elbow, and walked him toward the main gate. After one, or maybe two steps, Trung whirled; a quick uppercut to his solar plexus dropped the guard to the ground instantly.

  Trung quickly dragged him off the pavement, where he tied his hands and ankles and gagged him. Soon, a South Vietnam Army truck—or at least that is what it was painted to look like—pulled up to the gate. Trung, who now manned the guard shack, got out holding a clipboard he had found inside. “Don’t rush it. Don’t panic. This is just another routine delivery,” he told himself as he pressed the button to open the gate and let the truck pass. Remember to stop at the guard shack, in case anyone is watching. This has to look normal, he thought, hoping the driver would remember the plot and not rush past him.

  The driver stopped. He was sweating in sheets and had wet his pants. But he remembered to stop. He was driving a very special cargo, six pilots right onto an enemy base, along with a handful of soldiers who would clean out the maintenance hangar of any spare parts they can get their hands on. “Stay calm. We are almost there. One wrong move and we fail,” Trung told the driver, as he pretended to check off something on his clipboard. He beckoned him to pass.

  Trung turned to wave to the machine gunner,
giving him a thumbs-up sign to let the truck drive onto the tarmac. The truck made a quick turn right, then left to the maintenance hangar, which was unguarded and cloaked in darkness.

  One by one, the pilots climbed down from the truck. They proceeded toward the planes, from the rear away from the dimly lit flight line. There were only three guards, and the steel walls that protected the planes would prove to be their undoing. They could not see one another, so they could not join forces to repel their attackers, nor could they tell whether the arriving pilots were friend or foe until it was too late. The guards were dead in seconds.

  Meanwhile, the truck entered the maintenance hangar and the soldiers pulled equipment and parts from the shelves. “Take the electronic equipment,” Trung had told them during their planning sessions. They packed the truck with anything that even remotely looked electronic: gauges, radios, and a couple of boxes marked TACAN RECEIVER. They ignored aluminum parts that were bulky and could be fabricated by their own maintenance people if need be.

  After packing the truck, they drove unhurriedly to the sentry shack, where one of the soldiers crept inside, and pressed the red button to open the main gate. The truck drove through the open gate, while the soldier, pressing the button to close the gate, ran as fast as he could before the gate clunked shut and got back inside the truck.

  By now the six planes, with Trung in the lead, followed each other closely down the taxiway toward the end of the three-thousand-meter runway. Though it was not in the plan, though they were supposed to launch in complete darkness, Trung decided, at that instant, to put on a show for his enemy. For airstrips without control towers or for those with towers that are only manned during daylight hours, pilots can turn on the runway lights from the cockpit. They simply click the mic five times in three seconds so they can light the runway and take off or land safely—especially handy in an emergency.

  Trung couldn’t resist the temptation. “Should I do it?” he shouted in the cockpit. “Hell, yeah! Yee-ha!”

  Click. Click. Click, click, click.

  With one big snap, the entire runway—all three thousand meters—lit up on both sides with ribbons of brilliant white lights all the way to the outer marker.

  That will get their attention, Trung thought, as he turned onto the runway and eased his Dragonfly into the wind. After making the turn he held fast, his feet hard on the brakes. He pushed the throttle to the firewall, revving the engine to thirty percent power, then sixty, then ninety. The engines screamed. He watched the gauge, waiting for the needle to hit ninety-eight percent. “Wait for it … Wait for it.” It felt like every rivet would shake loose from the wings.

  As the engine power reached ninety-eight percent, then ninety-nine percent, Trung released the brakes and the plane, straining at the thrust of its twin turbines, lunged forward and blasted its way into the sky in less than one thousand meters.

  The glow of the jet engines shone like a comet against the black sky, guiding his fellow aviators, who followed in quick succession and disappeared into the starlit night.

  Monday, April 14

  ON THEIR WAY TO THE AIRPORT, Pham stopped at the bank so Matt could withdraw the cash he would need when he landed in Saigon. She had to call in favors from her airline friends, but she managed to get him booked on the next flight out from San Diego. While he was in the bank, she searched up and down the radio dial for news out of Saigon. What she heard wasn’t good.

  “You look like a bank robber with your wife driving the getaway car,” she said as Matt hurried back to the car.

  “Thirty-six hundred was all I could get,” he said. “The rent is paid and we’ve got a hundred or so left in cash hidden in the freezer. That’s everything. It will have to do.”

  * * *

  Matt took one look around as he boarded his plane and realized it was not a typical flight filled with vacationers and Vietnamese ex-pats visiting relatives. There were only a few passengers, all men in their early twenties and thirties. Some were dressed in fatigue shirts and pants—the “boonie suits” they wore when they served in Vietnam. Many of them sported shoulder-length hair and beards. All were aboard for the same reason. They needed to get to Saigon, collect the people they left behind, and get out fast.

  After the usual seat belt briefing and advice on water landings, the captain announced, “Welcome aboard Pan American Flight 842. Our final destination is Tan Son Nhut International Airport Saigon, South Vietnam.” The pilot left the cockpit door open.

  Pan Am had scheduled the flight with one goal in mind. The airline was not going to abandon its employees in South Vietnam if the North invaded Saigon. The office managers there had been instructed to round up every employee and their family members and get them ready to depart the country. Some had been sleeping at the office for days, waiting for the flight to arrive. Flight 842 was now on its way to collect them.

  “Folks, this is your captain,” the pilot announced. “Air Traffic Control is telling me we may not be able to land at TSN.” The captain spoke with an easygoing Oklahoma drawl and made this news sound as routine as a weather report. It was anything but.

  “Seems there were a few artillery rounds aimed at the airfield during the night. They tell me this kind of harassment has been going on awhile, but only overnight when there are no landings or takeoffs. So we should have nothing to worry about. But the upshot of all this is that our flight time and final destination will depend on whether the runway is still there for our arrival.”

  Matt absentmindedly fidgeted with the backpack he held on his lap during the announcement and then closed his eyes. He was dozing off when a female voice woke him. It was one of Pham’s stewardess friends.

  “Matt! Pham told me you’d be on this flight. Where is she?”

  “She wanted to come, but I figured I could move a lot quicker solo. Besides, there are five in her family and me—that makes six—that we have to get to the airport—we can all fit on a Honda.” Matt was joking, but then he turned serious. “I’m going to Saigon to get her family out while there’s still time.”

  “Let me see if the captain can get a message to Pan Am on the ground in Saigon. Our office is still officially running, but I don’t know for how long. It’s a mess. Maybe someone there can get word to Pham’s parents, let them know you’re coming and have them come to the office before it gets worse.”

  “Great! Pham is working on getting a message through herself. One way or another we’ll reach them,” Matt added hopefully.

  “This is the captain again. We’ve gotten word that the situation on the ground has deteriorated. Washington has also designated us a DOD flight, which means we’re now flying under orders of the Secretary of Defense. Officially, no commercial passengers can ride on my bus. That means we’re all in the army now, fellas,” he joked.

  A few minutes later came the bad news: “We have been ordered to divert to Bangkok where you’ll be met by gate agents to arrange return flights for you.”

  The passengers erupted.

  “Are you nuts?”

  “Hey, captain,” a passenger shouted. “Give us a break!”

  “I didn’t fly twenty-seven hours here for nothing!”

  “Hey, Captain! How about I kick your ass outta the left seat and take over? This would be a piece of cake after flying C-130s in-country.”

  “Hey, need a navigator? I flew ’52s over ’Nam. I think I can find TSN.”

  The passengers began gathering in the aisles in groups, trying to figure out whether force or diplomacy was the right approach to convincing the pilot that it was Saigon or nothing. A few passengers started talking about hijacking the plane and forcing the pilot to take them to Saigon.

  In an effort to quell the anger, the captain made another announcement: “Hey, fellas, I’m only here to drive this bus. Even if we land in Saigon, DOD won’t let Pan Am take on commercial passengers, whoever you came in to pull out won’t be going on this flight. You are going to have to rely on refugee flights out of the Air For
ce side of TSN. That’s assuming the runway will still be open.”

  The captain’s words didn’t help, but Matt’s soft-spoken manner and youthful looks did. People never felt threatened by him, so joining the hijack group that seemed to be the most volatile, Matt said, “Let’s at least get the captain to radio Washington. DOD can’t let a bunch of GIs—Vietnam vets—come halfway around the world for nothing. It’s worth a try.”

  Pham’s stewardess friend walked Matt to the flight deck and told the captain, “This is Matt Moran, Pham’s husband—you might remember her, she’s a travel agent in San Diego. Anyway, he’s family.”

  “I’m sorry, but it’s out of my hands. I can’t violate ATC procedure, much less DOD. They’ll pull my ticket. And I’m too close to retirement for that.”

  “I’m not asking you to do anything illegal,” Matt interrupted. “But come on—you can push back on DOD. You can make them reverse their decision. I’m sure the Secretary of Defense doesn’t want to hold a news conference about how American war veterans had to abandon little babies in a war zone because of DOD ‘policy.’”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll try,” the captain agreed, if only to get the persistent former Marine off his back.

  Then Matt poured it on, “Think about how this will look in the newspapers: ‘Vietnam Vets Hijack Pan Am Flight to Rescue Loved Ones after U.S. Says Leave ’em Behind.’ Oh, and wait until these guys—and their wives—all start writing to their Congressmen …”

  “All right, you can knock off the violins. I said I would give it another go. No promises though.”

  After twenty minutes or so, Matt emerged from the flight deck flashing a thumbs-up sign to the passengers, and the captain announced, “We’re going to Saigon, boys. We’ve got enough seats for four hundred return passengers. Make that four-oh-one with one in the jump seat. Nah, make that four-sixty if we have children sitting in laps, four-sixty-six if we use the toilets for seats!”