The victim’s wingman was on Cunningham’s tail. As Cunningham tried to drag him out for Brian Grant, Grant said he had two on his own tail and couldn’t help. Both American pilots plugged in their burners and accelerated away from the MiGs, then pulled into the vertical and went over the top at fifteen thousand. Jettisoning their external belly tanks, they started down… to find eight MiG-17s below them in a defensive wheel, with three F-4s mixed in.
The VF-96 executive officer, Commander Dwight Timm, came squirting from the furball with three Communist fighters hot after him, two MiG-17s and a 21. Cunningham slid in behind, hoping to destroy a MiG before it shot down Timm.
Meanwhile four MiGs were after Cunningham. Driscoll called them out. When the North Viets opened fire, Cunningham reversed hard, and the trailing fighters overshot to a trail position, just a bit too far to shoot if he kept his speed up.
He was trying, yet he had to somehow get the MiG-17 trailing Timm. Above this drama four MiG-21s were watching. Driscoll kept an eye on them.
Finally, after repeated calls, Timm broke hard right, and Cunningham launched another Sidewinder. Jim Fox, in Timm’s backseat, witnessed this ’winder kill, which he said traveled the length of the silver fighter and blew it to bits. The pilot ejected behind Timm’s F-4 and Cunningham had to jink hard to miss the falling body.
Above them the four MiG-21s were rolling in to join the fight. Cunningham turned under them and ran out behind them, accelerating and diving. Commander Timm was already on his way east. Although the F-4s were grossly outnumbered, other American pilots were also knocking down MiGs.
As they headed for the coast, Cunningham told Driscoll, “It sure is a shame to quit when we have all this gas and there are all kinds of MiGs.” At that time the whole aerial action had taken approximately two minutes.4
Randy Cunningham and Willy Driscoll now had four MiGs to their credit, including the two they shot down earlier in the year.
As they headed for the coast, another MiG-17 appeared dead ahead, heading straight for them. What followed was amazing in its rarity, a classic jet-age dogfight between dissimilar aircraft. As Cunningham said, “The enemy liked to fight in the horizontal for the most part, or just to run, if he didn’t have an advantage.”
The MiG could out-turn its opponents below about four hundred knots, and its three guns in the nose were deadly. The F-4, like all American fighter-bombers, had more fuel capacity and had to be able to carry ordnance, so it was larger, heavier, and had more powerful engines, which means it could out-accelerate the MiGs and go faster. What the Phantom couldn’t do was get into a turning fight with a more maneuverable airplane. And the Phantom had no guns, only heat-seeking Sidewinders and radar-guided Sparrow missiles.
Each pilot attempted to use the advantages his plane had over his adversary to get into a position that allowed him to kill his enemy. It was strength versus agility in mortal combat.
When the approaching MiG opened fire, Cunningham pulled into the vertical, intending to go straight up and come back down on his circling enemy. To his amazement the MiG pilot came into the vertical after him. In an instant they were canopy to canopy in a vertical scissors, a position that would allow the slower MiG to get behind the F-4, so Cunningham disengaged by plugging in his burners and powering ahead, only to find the MiG pilot blazing away behind him.
Cunningham went over the top and accelerated away toward the MiG’s six o’clock, a classic disengagement. Then he turned around and started back in.
The two fighters ended up in another vertical scissors, this time going slower and slower. Cunningham disengaged again, and came back for a third time. Now, as the MiG joined him in the vertical climb, the American pulled his power to idle and popped his speed brakes. The MiG-17 shot out ahead of him for the first time.
Apparently the Vietnamese pilot stalled, because his nose fell through and he started straight down toward the earth. Using his afterburners, the F-4 pilot held his steed aloft and ruddered it around. The Sidewinder growled. He fired, and even though the missile was looking down at the heat of the earth, it tracked.
The ’winder exploded against the MiG-17, which continued down at a 45-degree angle until it smashed into the earth.
Victim number five. Cunningham and Driscoll were aces, the only Navy flight crew to achieve that status in the Vietnam War.
But they weren’t home yet. They were still hanging it all out over North Vietnam amid a swarm of enemy fighters.
As Cunningham told it in his book Fox Two, Driscoll shouted on the intercom,
“Duke, check ten o’clock: MiG-17 rolling in on us!” Irish had his eyes open. We had 550 knots, so I pulled nose high into the attacking craft and told Willy, “Here comes number six.” Just then Matt Connelly, who had been watching the fight, yelled out, “Duke, get the hell out of there! There are four 17s at your seven o’clock.”
I saw Matt with his nose on us, just as he fired a missile. I thought, “Matt, Jeez, you’re shooting at us!” His Sparrow went right over our tail and back to our seven o’clock… where four 17s were in pursuit! Matt’s desperate missile shot did the trick as the Sparrow went sailing into the center of the formation—they looked like fleas evacuating a dog, splitting off in every direction to get out of the way.5
Still trying to get out of North Vietnam, Cunningham and Driscoll headed for the coast. Incredibly, the Phantom was bounced by three more MiGs. They used their F-4’s raw power to escape and continued east for the safety of the ocean. Then SAMs were in the air. One exploded near Showtime 100. Cunningham continued to climb in afterburner.
After an estimated forty-five seconds the Phantom yawed hard right. The hydraulic systems were losing pressure quickly. As Cunningham said, “Fear, that ever-present companion, wanted to run the ship. ‘What now, Cunningham?’ raced through my mind.”6
At that moment the pilot remembered how another Navy F-4 pilot had handled a similar loss of hydraulic pressure. He jammed the stick full forward, locking the stabilator in a slightly nose-up position. Without control of the stabilator, he began rolling the aircraft using rudder and power.
Cunningham and Driscoll barrel-rolled twenty miles through the sky, trying for salt water as the aircraft burned just aft of the cockpit. An explosion rocked the fighter, but they were still over land, corkscrewing along.
Accompanied by other F-4s and A-7s, they crossed the coast as they lost their last utility hydraulic system and another explosion racked the burning fighter. Now the rudder was useless. The F-4 stalled and began spinning.
Driscoll initiated command ejection. Much to their horror, Cunningham and Driscoll found themselves descending into the muddy mouth of the Red River. While still in the air, they heard on their emergency radios the welcome voice of helicopter pilots inbound.
As other American planes discouraged North Vietnamese small boats, the chopper scooped up the wet crew and took them to USS Okinawa (LPH-3). From there they were flown back to the Constellation to heroes’ welcomes.
Within a few days Randy Cunningham and Willy Driscoll were flown to Saigon for a press conference, and from there they went to Washington to be decorated with Navy Crosses. Their war was over.
The third and final victim of Showtime 100 that busy May 10 was a MiG-17 supposedly flown by a NVAF ace, Colonel Nguyen Toon, also known as “Colonel Tomb.” Well after the war the “Tomb” character was revealed as bogus, probably the result of poorly translated radio intercepts. But whatever the MiG-17 pilot’s name, he was wounded or killed when a Sidewinder hit his plane. Even if the missile explosion had only incapacitated him, he died when his shattered MiG struck the earth.
Fighter combat in the skies has been called the greatest game. It’s played for blood, kill or be killed, up there in the sky where there is no place to hide.
On May 10 other American fighters were also scoring against MiGs. The Navy added five more, for a total of eight, and the Air Force downed three while losing one of their own. In all, eleven MiGs were slain t
hat day in three engagements, for a loss of two US fighters. That one-day total was the American record in Vietnam, and it has not been matched, forty-six years later.
And it was on May 10 that Air Force Captain Steve Ritchie, flying with the 555th Fighter Squadron from Udorn, Thailand, scored his first kill in an F-4. He would go on to score four more that summer, becoming the Air Force’s only Vietnam pilot ace. Ritchie’s May 10 backseater, Captain Chuck DeBellvue, would help another pilot shoot down MiGs and wound up credited with six, the highest total in the Vietnam War.7
There was no rest at Ubon that week. On Saturday, May 13, with improved visibility, the Eighth Tactical Fighter Wing’s Wolfpack flew toward the Dragon’s Jaw. It was a complex, global mission—the sort of work at which the US Air Force excelled. As novelist and analyst Tom Clancy related, “It took everything the ordnance shop and contractor tech-reps at Ubon could put together, including some specially-built three-thousand-pound LGBs.”8
On the flight line Colonel Miller’s ordnance crews had armed sixteen Phantoms with nine three-thousand-pound M118 LGBs, fifteen one-ton Mark 84 LGBs, and forty-eight Mark 82 five-hundred-pound iron bombs.9
They also loaded all five Pave Knife laser-designator pods. The first two flights each carried two pods, on the leader’s and Number Three (second element) aircraft. The fifth pod went to the third flight leader.
As Lieutenant Colonel Rick Hilton explained, “The M118s had soft cases and would not survive a delayed detonation, so they were set to instantaneously detonate upon impact, with the hope of weakening the upper structure. The Mark 84s were set to delay detonation to achieve some penetration before exploding. Since the leader and Number Three had the Pave Knife pods, they each carried two Mark 84s and one M118. Flight members Two and Four each carried two M118s and two Mark 84s.”10
The briefing warned aircrews of reduced visibility in the target area: hazy with some cloud cover. The prevailing wind was forecast from the west—contrary to the normal on-shore flow—so each flight commander and his wingman would target the bridge’s east abutment. Numbers Three and Four would hold high until the lead element bombed, allowing smoke and dust to settle or blow away for improved visibility.11
Colonel Richard G. Horne, wing director of operations, led off early that morning as the leader of Jingle Flight. Pilots ran their throttles full forward, pushing both throttles through the detent into full afterburner, and rocketed away from Ubon’s Runway 05-23 into the Siamese sky.
Taking off next was Captain David L. Smith’s Dingus Flight of the 433rd Squadron, while the squadron CO, Lieutenant Colonel Rick Hilton, was third with Goatee Flight—as Hilton put it, “batting cleanup” for the precision munitions. Lieutenant Colonel D. C. Vest’s Cowslip Flight from the attached Fourth Tactical Fighter Wing comprised the caboose at the end of the aerial freight train, flying F-4Es, each carrying a dozen Mark 82 five-hundred-pound iron bombs. The aerial armada set course for Thanh Hoa, 339 nautical miles away.
The bombers were supposed to follow four Phantoms with chaff dispensers into North Vietnam while other fighters trolled for MiGs. However, the two chaff flights, Brenda and Bertha, had trouble with the tanker rendezvous and arrived too late to participate. Meanwhile Jingle Four aborted with a flight-control problem, leaving fifteen strikers to continue the mission.12
Eight minutes out from the Dragon’s Jaw Bridge the strike force saw that the weather was marginal. As predicted, the Tonkin clouds sided with the defenders, obscuring the target, worse than predicted at briefing.
While the strikers stalked the area, awaiting a chance to attack, the chaff flight checked in with Colonel Horne, who did not want to wait for them amid an alerted defense. “Jingle, confirm you don’t want Brenda and Bertha in.”
“That’s right, babe. It’s too late.”
The chaff leader, Major Robert Blake, replied, “Roger, making a port turn down here.”
“That’s right, get out of here.… You can loiter a little bit in case we need you for something else.” Horne wanted the chaffers outside Thanh Hoa’s SAM belt, or envelope.
At length Horne thought he saw an opportunity and rolled in. But partway down the slide he aborted his run and told his second section to drop. Apparently Jingle Three and Four missed the bridge; circling overhead, Rick Hilton and his backseater, Bill Wideman, in Goatee One, looked for hits but saw none. Wideman advised, “Triple-A coming up at us.”
All the while flight leaders tried to keep track of one another. Probably Horne’s backseater asked, “Jingle [Flight], are you off target?”
“Jingle Three and Four are off.”
Then Dingus Flight, led by Captain Dave Smith, requested clearance to roll in. As Hilton explained, “D. L. must have had the same question that Bill and I had: Where is our leader and his element, and what are they going to do now?”
But Horne said, “If you have the target, you are cleared in.”
“Dingus Three, are you off?” Smith asked his element leader.
“Three and Four are off.”
Hilton recalled, “I do not know if it was D. L. or his element’s good results, but I saw two bombs hit the center of the bridge. Unfortunately, the bridge was still intact.”
And the visibility was getting worse. Hilton said to his guy in back, Wideman, “I can’t see it. Can you?”
“I think it’s about nine o’clock.”
“I know where it is, but I can just barely make it out.”
In one of the great understatements of the war, Wideman replied, “It’s gonna be a bastard.”
Circling protectively nearby, the MiG CAP Phantoms continued tracking the mission’s progress.
“Jingle Flight, where did you go in from?”
Colonel Horne answered, “From twenty-two [thousand]. Jingle is still at the target, holding high.”
In Goatee Lead, Hilton and Wideman hunted the Dragon through the gloom. By now the clouds and haze were so thick that patches of the ground were obscured. Still under fire, Goatee Flight added “an orbit or two to find the bridge.”
Wideman muttered, “Come on, Bridge, where are ya?”
At that point an electronic screech intruded from the Phantom’s radar homing and warning (RHAW) gear. Hilton told Wideman, “I hope the RHAW works out.”
Then…
“There it is! Right… there!” Hilton exclaimed.
“Okay, I got it,” Wideman replied. “I can barely see it, but I got it.”
The plan Hilton had briefed was that he and Wideman would roll in on the bridge and drop their three bombs. Then, circling at ten thousand feet, they would continue to illuminate the western span while Goatee Two dropped his four weapons. Numbers Three and Four would complete the attack.
But the cloud cover changed all that. So Hilton improvised, instructing his flight, “Okay, tighten it up. We’re all going in together.”
And they did just that. The four Phantoms dived through the murky air toward the bridge as the laser pods shined down their death rays. Each pilot punched off his weapons, and Hilton continued down, illuminating the bridge for the LGBs.
Then the Dragon disappeared in a succession of flashes. Hilton tightened his pullout. Watching from the backseat, Bill Wideman exclaimed, “Okay, there’s an impact!”
Actually, there were about fourteen impacts.
Hilton radioed, “Good job, fellows.”
Meanwhile a MiG CAP Phantom called, “Who’s that at nine o’clock? About three miles.”
A wingman replied, “He’s in a dive, so probably a bomber.”
The timing indicates this was Colonel Horne, perhaps making another effort. If so, apparently no additional hits resulted.
Meanwhile, in Goatee One, Rick Hilton and Bill Wideman exchanged thoughts. “God, it was almost impossible to see in that haze.”
“Yeah, very tough but I had it. When you said ‘I got it’… we were going through 10,000 feet and I was holding it [the laser] as well as I could. Well, I got it back just in time for an explos
ion. I don’t know. Want to take another orbit around it?”
“Uh, yeah, just to look at it.”
“Boy, there’s a hell of a lot of smoke…”
“Sure is.”
Meanwhile Lieutenant Colonel D. C. Vest, leading Cowslip Flight with iron bombs, reported, “We’re about two miles out.”
Horne asked, “You’re the last flight, right?”
“Rog…”13
Cowslip Flight plunged for the bridge. Straddling the span, four dozen Mark 82s—five hundred pounds each—added their explosive power to the damage the LGBs had done.
At the west end the Dragon emitted a shrieking, mournful howl as high-tensile steel warped, buckled… and failed.
As the F-4s screeched away, clouds of smoke and haze prevented immediate assessment. Still, Colonel Miller was confident enough that when the Phantoms got on the ground back at base he sent a “flash message” to Seventh Air Force headquarters and the Joint Chiefs in Washington stating that the western span “might be interdicted.”14
At Ubon the aircrews were exultant. They knew they had delivered the Dragon a mighty blow. Eleven Phantoms with LGBs—fifteen Paveway one-ton Mark 84s, nine laser-guided three-thousand-pound M118s, and forty-eight dumb five-hundred-pounders—had walloped the bridge and left it badly damaged. Best of all, the strikers got away clean despite lingering in the flak zone.
After debriefing, Rick Hilton went to his trailer to tape record a special message for his wife. He had barely begun when the telephone rang. Dick Horne, the mission commander, wanted the squadron leader to know that the 433rd had buckled the west end of the bridge. Hilton allowed the tape recorder to keep running:
“Well, as you know, sir, I’ve bounced a few off the top of that thing before, and it was almost personal.”
Horne replied that the Air Force had lost many planes and pilots over Thanh Hoa.
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