Military Memories
by Lyle StoufferCLARK AIR BASE, ISLE OF LUZON, PHILIPPINES
After settling the family back in Tucson, I had to get back into the Air Force routine as I headed for Udorn with a stop in the Phillippines. The tropical jungle survival training near Clark Air Base was something new and different. We had lots of rain instead of snow as we had in our previous escape and evasion exercises.
The monsoon season was well in progress. We were given about an hour to go try to find a secure hiding place in the underbrush before the Negritos (local natives) were sent out to locate us. We thought we were individually well hidden but on several such ventures, we were all soon rounded up.
The instructors said the Negritos could smell us out. We obviously were on a different diet. They did treat us to boiled chicken that had some roots (something like turnips) and some local bulbs (much like green onions) that should have been called delicious if we had not seen the rain drenched chicken they had snared in a trap before it was prepared.
We didn’t have a concentration experience like we had out of Spokane but they did show us some of the snakes and small animals we might encounter in the event that we had to survive in the Asian jungle. I was most impressed by the cobras and king cobras.
UDORN ROYAL THAI AIR BASE,UDORN, THAILAND
We arrived at Udorn Air Base in mid August 1967 via C-130 aircraft that brought us there from Bangkok. Most of my classmates from Mountain Home were on the same flight. Gene Milsapp had gotten an extra two week delay en route to relocate his family in Texas and Lt. Kownacki had arrived prior so I didn’t have the Clark stopover with them.
Udorn was located about 35 air miles south of Vientiane Laos in the north central part of Thailand. The Mekong River was the borderline between Thailand and Laos in this area and ran east and south down through Cambodia and back into Vietnam near Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) before dumping into the South china Sea. A 25 miles circle around Vientiane was the limits of a no fly zone over that city.
Our first flight as a crew was an orientation flight limited to in country Thailand and we were given a couple of targets to help us in the orientation. One was the railroad bridge over the River Kwai west of Bangkok and the other was a logging camp operation in the northwest part of Thailand. No problem with either but got pictures of lots of working elephants at the logging operation.
The great amount of effort in the RF-4 and RF-101 units assigned to the Vietnam conflict was expended in the real time information gathering vein. Our missions can be described in basically three categories: pre strike, post strike BDA (bomb damage assessment) and targets of interest.
The people at 7th Air Force in Saigon who set up the requirements for the recce effort were veiy knowledgeable in our capabilities and would task us for specific coverages of targets by speed, altitude, camera angles etc. with parameters of maximum and minimums in most cases. It was up to us to plan our mission to accomplish their requirements in a variety of situations. We often times did not know the purpose of the information we were gathering. We knew that it would be used for target studies by strike forces, in the case of pre strike missions and evaluate results of a strike on post strike recce missions. Targets of interest often aroused our curiosity because we had little or no knowledge of what the information we were tasked to get would be used for.
Our first flights into North Vietnam were on the wing of experienced crews and usually into Route Paks I, II or III. These we considered low threat areas although we usually attracted a few tracers from 37mm, 57mm or ZPU quad AAA machine guns. I was a senior major among the replacement crews so I was put on an early flight to Route Pak VI (the Hanoi/Haiphong area) on the wing of a Major John Stavast /Navy. Lt. Venanzi to run the railroad from Thai Nguyen to Hanoi. This was the mission on September 17, 1967 when we had four surface to air missiles (SAMs) fired at us. Since we both had jammer pods operating I’m sure they couldn’t accurately track us so they barrage fired in our direction in hopes of getting a “hit.”
The SAM II missiles were 22feet long, 18 inches in diameter and had a proximity fused warhead that would scatter a doughnut shaped dispersal of fragments for a good distance. The range of the proximity fuse was 250 yards. They had a boost rocket unit that got the missile launched and the rocket motor would take over and accelerate to 3500 mph. The booster would separate and
fall back to earth. The command trailers for these missiles had an acquisition and tracking radar that we were jamming with our jamming pods. Had we not been jamming, the operators would be able to place cursors on our radar return and the missile would be able to intercept and destroy that target.
We had aboard our aircraft an RHAW unit (radar homing and warning) that would tell us when we were being scanned by their radar. If they were going to fire a missile they would have to go to a high PRF (pulse recurrence frequency) in order to provide guidance to the missile. In addition to a visual presentation on the RHAW indicator, we would get an aural signal as well.
We called it the rattlesnake signal since it would go from a low hum to a rattlesnake like vibrato and we could see what azimuth the threat was coming from on the RHAW gear.
On that 17 September mission, we had just turned right at the northwest end of Thud Ridge and were headed for Thai Nguyen to start our camera run south to Hanoi. We started some evasion action at Major Stavast’s voice commands and three of the missiles passed by us beyond their lethal range. The fourth one exploded between my aircraft and Major Stavast’s and it appeared to be closer to the lead aircraft. Just as we were turning onto our target run at Thai Nguyen, Major Stavast announced the loss of his PC#1 hydraulic system.
About hallway through our 60 mile run to Hanoi, Major Stavast reported that his utility hydraulic system indicated a failure. Right after completing a right turn at the end of our target run, Stavast’s aircraft did a violent pitch-up and went out of control. We had been traveling at about mach 1.3 so the lead aircraft was very violently tumbling. I started a right hand orbit around the tumbling wreckage. I told Lt. Kownacki to call Red Crown (the Navy destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin) for rescue as the crew was bailing out. After calling in our coordinates in code, an answer came back from Red Crown that if the coordinates were correct to “Get the hell out of there.” We were orbiting directly over the northwest part of the city of Hanoi. No rescue effort was going to be initiated and I had seen two parachutes opening so not much more we could do.
We “got the hell out of there.” It felt quite lonesome on the way home from our first mission to Rte Pak VI. The events of that day certified me as lead qualified for flights into Rte Pak VI (we nicknamed them flights into the barrel because of the notoriously heavy defenses there. I was to fly a total of 26 flights into the barrel before my tour of 100 North Vietnam missions was completed.
The normal procedure after a combat mission was to be met by the “bread van” that would make us and our gear to the intelligence debriefing and then to the photo procession unit to debrief the mission with the Pis (photo interpreters) after our camera films were developed.
Not so this day. We were met on the ramp by a staff car driven by my squadron commander and he said General “Three Fingers” Jack Ryan wanted to talk to us. Four star General Jack Ryan was the current commander of PACAF (Pacific Area Air Forces) and though his office was in Hawaii he happened to be on a tour visiting bases in Thailand where US Air Forces were operating from. He obviously wanted to be in our post mission agenda as our first stop.
After introductions, Three Fingers Jack dismissed all but myself and Bill Kownacki from the 11th TRS squadron commander’s office. His first question was to the point, “What the hell happened up there.” I gave him a pretty detailed account of what I recalled. He seemed satisfied with my report and then he asked if I thought anything could have been done differently that might have resulted in a more favorable conclusion to the mission. I told him I thought that what occured could not have been forecast before hand and that we as a flight dealt with things as they came up, as best we could. He then said he was personally glad we were back safely on the ground.
We then proceeded to intelligence debriefing and a shot each of that good old combat whiskey “Old Methusalem.” I was a little disappointed in Lt. Kownacki’s comments. I’m not sure he saw what was happening because when it was his turn to talk he would say “Major Stouffer said”look, there is a SAM at 11 o’clock. Look, there is another one. Look at that. That one was pretty close." Not once did he say he saw them. He must have been looking at his watch to see what 11 o’clock looked like. After the lead aircraft pitched up he did see that but then Major Stouffer told him to send the coordinates to Red Crown to get SAR initiated. While he was accomplishing that task he said he heard Major Stouffer say “look there is one parachute and then a little later he said there is another chute.” The only thing my back seated saw was the lead aircraft when it was going out of control.
About one week later I flew as the lead aircraft with my old buddy Major Gene Millsapp flying as my #2. The target was vertical photography of Kep Ha Barracks located on the northeast railroad about 60 miles northeast of Hanoi in Rte Pak #6. We came in on a northwest heading from the Gulf of Tonkin and were over the coast of North Vietnam near Cam Pha, north of Haiphong. It was very weird because we got no indications that the SAM radars were even picking us up, no AAA bursts visible and as far as we could tell, no one was shooting at us with any kind of weapon. This was Major Millsapp’s first mission in to Rte Pak #6 and I think he got a false sense of security since it appeared so easy. I could tell his adrenalin was fairly high because he broke the silence on our tactical UHF radio frequency by shouting in the clear “Shoot, you yellow bellied bastards. Let’s see what you’ve got.” I think this was the only mission of the 26 I had to Rte Pak #6 where I saw no indication of defensive reaction. We got to the target and took home good photos, like a piece of cake.
The next mission Gene Millsapp had to Rte Pak #6 he was leading a flight of two when they didn’t get to their target because they were chased by 2 MIG-2 Is and had to take evasive action and leave for home base early.
This action caused a little stirring in the “head shed” as we called higher headquarters. The people who make decisions there decided that the answer to that problem was to take a pair of F- 4 fighters equipped for air to air combat along with a flight of RF-4s on a target run in the high threat area of Rte Pak #6.
On October 3, 1967 a mission was set up to run a photography coverage of the northeast railroad from Lang San near the Chinese border down to Bac Ninh just short of the Doumer bridge. We accomplished a preflight briefing with the F-4 crews at Ubon Air Base via secure land line. We got airborne and rendezvoused with the F-4 flight as they were coming off of a top off of fuel
from a tanker over the Gulf of Tonkin.
With only RF-4s on this type target run, we would normally fly it about 1.3-1.5 Mach since we would normally jettison our empty 600 gallon centerline fuel tank and have only the underwing supersonic tanks and ECM pods on the pylons. The F-4s were unable to do anything supersonic since they were heavy on fuel and had missiles hanging from MIRs and TIRs so they were in a high drag condition so we had to count on about .94 to .96 on the target run. So far so good as we turned to a Southwest heading down the railroad at Lang San. We started getting indications that the AAA and SAM radars were painting us and prior to reaching the end of our run we could see there were several High PRF strobes in a variety of azimuths. I was in right pod (1500 ft.diagonally and 1500 ft vertically) on leader’s right side with the two F-4s tucked in fairly close behind each of us. At Bac Ninh L/C Larry Pool called splice left. This is 135 degrees of left bank and pull hard. The F-4s had been briefed of the maneuver and had decided that each would follow on the RF-4s. A total of 9 SAMs had been fired at our formation but were pulling lead to intercept where they thought we would be if hadn’t suddenly changed our direction in our splice maneuver.
The lead F-4 maintained a position on the RF-4 lead and I could see both of those two aircraft and assumed my pod position on the lead RF-4. The #2 F-4 had a close view of a couple of SAMs coming at us when we went inverted at the start of the splice and had taken his own evasive actions. As we headed toward the Gulf of Tonkin, the lead F-4 was calling for his #2.
At first no response, then came the reply that was was down at low altitude and had lost visual contact with us. When we gave him our approximate position and heading he spotted us and rejoined.
At the debriefing of this mission as we were unanimous in our disapproval of fighter escort of recce. We did not like to run a fairly long target run at subsonic speeds and the fighter aircraft had no desire to make long runs down heavily defended railroads and being thought of as good targets. They liked the armada raids with Wild Weasel aircraft threatening the defenses when they went for their targets.
As far as I know, the recce escort by fighters was not tried again.
I was kept pretty busy after that mission. The wing commander at Udorn was “qualified” in RF- 4C aircraft and like to fly wing on either me or Major B. J. Martin or another flight commander. Major Sanford. Col. Victor Cabas would select the mission from the frag order (fragmentation) and he would pick who he wanted to fly with. The one mission that I really remember was the target of Dien Bien Phu. I think the colonel picked that mission out of curiosity to see where the French made their last stand before exiting Vietnam. I think he was so fascinated with sightseeing and watching the constant puffs of smoke from the quad ZPU antiaircraft units that I suddenly found him out in front of me, as we made our target run, rather than maintaining his pod position on my right rear. He apologized later but no harm done. He got back in formation when I reminded him of his slight error.
VIETNAM RECONNAISSANCECONTINUES
Another mission that I remember well was with a Lt. Col Graham, who was duty officer at the Wing Command post at Udorn, who wanted to fly wing on a Rte. Pak #6 mission. The target was a military compound near Yen Bai on the northwest railroad and the Red River which both originated in China and ran through Hanoi and ended up near Hai Phong.
This is one time that I went from North Station( a TACAN station on top of a mountain near Xam Nua, northern Laos) at tree top level to the barracks near Yen Bai and did a pop-up maneuver, took the required photos and went back to tree top level to exit back to North Station and then cruising altitude back to Udorn. We got shot at by small arms and light AAA but received no damage. L/C Graham was a very verbal witness to my capabilities after that.
The extraordinary efforts to keep that North Station TACAN in friendly hands and operating is a totally different stoiy. I don’t know enough to report it but I do know that there were occasions that it was inoperative when reports were that the Pathet Lao had overrun the facility and a few days would pass before possession was reversed and the tacan operating.
On October 25, 1967, the airfield at Phuc Yen (just northwest of Hanoi) was attacked and bombed for the first time. Those of us Rte Pak #6 lead qualified, drew straws to see who would be the first recce flight to BDA (Bomb Damage Assessment) after that attack. Major B.J. Martin got the first go and reported a real milk run with no significant defensive efforts against the flight.
On October 26, the Phu Yen Airfield was again attacked and I was assigned to record photos of the BDA and also to get current photos of the Paul E. Doumer Bridge over the Red River on the northeast railroad just north of Hanoi. Lt. Col. John Craw, also a duty officer at the Wing command post, chose to fly the mission as my wingman.
Since we were assigned the two targets, I decided to go from North Station to a point on the Red River, a few miles northwest of Phuc Yen Airfield before making a right turn to my target run heading. We went into medium afterburner after the turn toward Phu Yen. The request had indicated photos were desired between 8,000 and 10,000 feet above the terrain. We had descended to 20,000 feet prior to the target run and the burners and descent to about 10,000 feet we were soon supersonic. Shortly after passing over Phuc Yen we started getting some flak patterns from 85 mm and 100 mm AAA. We were jinking (constantly varying altitude) between 8 and 10 thousand feet in hopes that the pattern would be at a different altitude if we didn’t stay on one altitude during the run. The distance between Phuc Yen and the Doumer bridge is only about 60 miles and we were at about 1.3 mach when an apparent 85 mm flak burst fairly close and forwards on the right of my aircraft was encountered. My aircraft was hit by many of the fragments of the burst. The first indications were loss of cabin pressure and the right engine EGT (exhausted gas temperature) started exceeding limits. I discontinued afterburner on the right engine but the temperature on the damaged engine still was excessive. I pulled it to idle and the engine was still running and the EGT came back into limits. With this action, I was rapidly decelerating and though the left engine was still in burner, the yawing to the right was inducing lots of drag.
I had announced that I was hit to my wingman but L/C Craw’s immediate response was “I think we’re ok. We are almost to the bridge.” Suddenly he was in left pod formation but was passing me. He then transmitted “My God, don’t slow down now they are really hosing us.” As we made our right turn after passing the bridge, I was finally able to inform him that I had to pull power off on the right engine because of flak air burst damage.
Mercifully the defenses didn’t know where we were heading and we received no further hostile fire.
I hated to shut down the right engine in the event I might need a little power from it later on. I did try advancing the throttle a few times but each time the EGT would rise too rapidly so I left it at idle the rest of the way home to Udorn.
On the way back to North Station in Laos, we reported a successful mission and the damage that we had encountered. Gen. Momeyer, the overall Air Force commander at Saigon, passed a message to our flight that he acknowledged the damage to the lead aircraft but requested that if #2 had good coverage of the targets that he should proceed to a tanker and fly to Saigon, South Vietnam for recovery. L/C John Craw declined and said he would not leave his battle damaged lead aircraft. The general must have wanted those pictures pretty bad because he then had a T-39 jet fly to Udorn to get the results to take directly to Saigon ASAP.
All the way back to Udorn I could smell burning rubber. I tried to think of what was rubber and could have burned. My only thought was the aircraft tires and I may have a little more than a minor difficulty on landing. Because of the right engine limited in power; I would not have boundaiy layer airflow on the wings so I would have to keep my landing speed up and a chunk of the flak must have damaged the uplock on my tail hook since it wouldn’t latch in the “up” position. I could cycle it but it would immediately drop into the action position instead of locking in the up position.
When I requested the front end barrier on the runway be removed for my landing, I got a response that the wing commander had never seen a front end barrier engagement and requested that I do so. I immediately said I was diverting to Ubon. My tail hook problem, my required higher landing speed, my concern for possible damage to my tires all added up to increasing my odds against a successful landing of any sort. After a few minutes of discussion among themselves, I got a radio call that I should continue to Udorn and that the front end barrier was being removed. After I lowered my gear for a straight in approaching to landing, John Craw did a visual inspection of my gear and tires and reported all A-ok. I touched down with the tail hook dragging and stopped short of the middle barrier on the runway. I was met by lots of fire engines and emergency people but all was under control.
Why the burning rubber odor? We found later that a large fragment-of the flak burst had penetrated the cockpit under the right canopy rail and had continued downward, missed my butt by a very narrow margin, and entered my seat kit, which contained my one-man rubber life raft, that would have hung under my parachute on an over water bailout. It melted nine holes after breaking up when it struck the end of my C02 inflation cartridge.
I was presented with the damaged C02 bottle and the largest chunk of the shrapnel when they discovered what had caused my burning rubber concern.
I had a compact tape recorder and I was able to send home some of the unclassified comments on my missions and any personal greetings to and from the family were exchanged primarily in that manner. I did receive care packages with home cooked edibles and I got a small disassembled Christmas tree that adorned my room for several weeks.
One significant personnel action that I had to go through was forecasting where I would like to go and what I would like to do at the SEA tour. I liked the RF-4 and this new mission and I thought Kadena AF, Okinawa; Sculthorpe, England and Misawa AF Japan sounded like good RF-4 assignments. If I couldn’t get an assignment in the RF-4,1 thought duty at Luke, Williams or Davis Monthan bases in Arizona would be great.
ADC personnel had requested Air Force personnel advise me of a by name assignment to an F101 fighter interceptor squadron at Grand Forks ND as the squadron operations officer. What a staggering blow.
I can thank Mary Jo that this assignment never came to fruition. Col. Joe Guynes was in Tucson getting a check out in F-4 aircraft before returning to duty as Deputy Director of Operations of 5th Air Force headquarters at Fuchu AF, Japan. When he asked of my assignment and she informed him of my Grand Forks destination, he asked if I would like to go Japan from Vietnam. She assured Joe that she didn’t have to ask me but the answer was a definite “Yes.” My assignment was soon changed to become fighter officer in the Air Defense office of 5th Air Force, Fuchu, Japan.
Ironically, Gene Millsapp was enviouS of the F101 ops officer assignment when I received word of it and when I told him of my change, he volunteered for the North Dakota assignment and got it.
I have detailed some of the more exciting missions of the first half of my Southwest Asia combat tour. I was about half completed by November 1st and the Wing Commander needed an additional duty officer as an electronics countermeasures officer. There was a requirement for the wing to send an officer to Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, to attend a two week course. The 13th Tactical Fighter Wing at Eglin AFB was equipped with three squadrons of F-4D Phantom II aircraft and were scheduled to rotate in the Wing’s entirety to Udorn AB. They were scheduled to be using a newly designed ECM pod that had not been used up to this point in SEA. I was selected because of my electronic background and I was being granted a two week delay after the Nellis course before returning to Udorn AB.
Mary Jo was not the least bit excited about this because air crews were normally granted a two week leave at the halfway point of the tour and usually met the wives in Hawaii to spend the leave with the wife. I got to spend two weeks with MJ at our home in Tucson after she joined me at Nellis while I attended the ECM course. She never thought that was anywhere close to the two weeks in Hawaii deal.
The 13th TFW from Eglin arrived soon after I returned to Udorn so I was busy with some aircrew and maintenance personnel briefings on their ECM pods they would be carrying on their missions. Also they were anxious to hear a first hand account of what they could expect in the hostile environment that they were about to enter.
Early in December 1967 I was tasked for about a month of night missions. When we went on night missions, we stayed on nights until relieved by other crews. I flew 26 missions while on nights and they were all North Vietnam flights. There were basically four different types of flights and we rotated through them with the four or five other crews on night duty.
The most harrowing of the night missions was going to Rte Pak #6 as a single aircraft. If there were no cloud layers it was a piece of cake to fly in to the Hanoi area at treetop level and check the clear blue sky and notice the moon and stars and exit still pretty close to treetop level. If there were cloud layers, we were required to climb up through them and record their density and number and thickness of layers. Usually a real Fourth of July display with AAA opening up around you. I never took any hits but a major Brendan Foley and his back seater never came back from that mission and were declared “killed in action” later on after the hostilities were over. Luckily only two of my weather check flights did I have to climb up to measure clouds.
We had single side band low frequency radio contact with the command post at Saigon (Blue Chip) and would report the weather as soon as possible so execution of frag orders could commence.
Another night mission was a SLR (side looking radar mapping) run up the east coast of North Vietnam to almost the Vietnam/China border. We were over the Gulf of Tonkin the entire way and about seven to 10 miles away from their anti aircraft defenses but they usually kept us busy with all sorts of early warning and tracking radars. The purpose of these flights was primarily so the intelligence people could keep track of the ships from around the world that were hauling munitions and supplies into the Haiphong harbor.
It also gave a nightly look at the nighttime activities of the North Vietnamese at the ferries and truck activities at Hue, Quang Tri, Dong Hoi, Vinh and other interesting coastal locations. We didn’t have a direct cockpit display of what our radar was seeing and mapping but it was developed soon after our landing.
One of the night aircraft was tasked every night to a CAP mission (combat air patrol) We were given an orbit at a loiter altitude until given a target struck by B-57s, C-130 gunships, B-26s or any of the night attack units to plan a run and get a low altitude photo flash run and take the pictures home.
I was assigned this CAP mission when the cloud cover at low altitude was pretty wide spread.
The ABCCE (airborne command/control communications) aircraft, Alley Cat by call sign, had me go to the refueling KC-135 aircraft three times to take on 12,000 pounds of fuel before I got a target assignment for BDA on some trucks left burning on the Ho Chi Minh trail south of Mu Gia pass. When we got the photo coverage and got back to Udorn, we had more than 6 Vi hours flown on that mission.
The fourth type of night recce mission was going for night low altitude photos of a predetermined target. The most common of these targets were the ferries at Dong Hoi and Quang Tri and segments of the Mekong River where nighttime boat and barge traffic was almost always active.
I was returning from an assigned run on Hue one night and as we passed north of the Tchepone Airport in Laos we observed lots of truck activity, with headlights on, maneuvering on the large asphalt surface. We reported this activity to Alley Cat, the ABCCC on station. They requested that if we still had the equipment capability, after our target run, that we should get a photo record of that activity. We made a 10 cartridge photo flash run over the airfield at about 1500 feet above the ground and by the time we got to about the 6th cartridge flash, we had more tracers around us than we had ever seen before. To think that only a few of the total bullets meant for us were tracers put a lump in our throats to say the least. We didn’t take a single hit but it taught me a lasting lesson on sticking my neck out too far.
Lt. Bill Kownacki was still my back seater through all my missions to this point. He was still giving me occasions to think that he had a lot of dust between his ears rather than good usable gray matter. Night missions should have been a breeze since about the only cameras we used at night were the split verticals and we had to use the Infra Red mapping so the photo interpreters could positively identify our flight path and location when we took night photography.
Side looking radar was only used for the SLR run up the Vietnam coast. Immediately after take off I would run through a check list for the navigator to prepare for the night mission. The IR mapping head had to be cooled down with liquid nitrogen and the split vertical cameras needed to be cycled to insured we had a photo capability. As I covered each item after take off, because they were not accomplished while still on the ground, the navigator was to accomplish these items and give the usual “roger” that he had taken the proper action.
On one night CAP mission we were assigned a target. The normal procedure was to turn up the cockpit lights and decide on the map how we would approach the target and when planning was complete, we would douse the lights and start a descent to the coordinates selected for the start of the target run. On this particular night after starting descent the Kownacky back seater said “oh Dam” on the intercom. He followed that with “I forgot to cool down the IR.” I was so mad I bounced his helmeted head off both sides of the canpoy as I rapidly moved the control stick side to side several times. Back to orbit for 15 more minutes for IR cool down before descending again.
MY FINAL VN RECONNAISSANCE
We were assigned definite times on designated night targets so we wouldn’t conflict with any other scheduled activity involving other aircraft in that area. We were assigned a time on target and we always reported not later than three hours prior to that time to the squadron operations building to complete all necessary planning and make a definite take-off time that would get us to the target on time.
The transportation to the Operations building from the living area was almost three miles distant and the squadron had a bread truck type van to haul aircrews and had frequent scheduled runs during the day and specific runs to meet aircrew schedules at night. I didn’t care for counting on the van so I had purchased a 175 cc Honda motorcycle (electric start) so that I was always sure of meeting my schedule.
Bill Kownacki not only counted exclusively on the squadron van but he had been assigned the additional duty of care and maintenance of the van. Fuel, lubrication, scheduled preventative maintenance and the like were scheduled by my back seater Bill.
One night we were scheduled to photo the ferry at Quang Tri and I arrived at Ops plenty early. Three hours prior to target time came and went and no navigator. I tried to locate him by phone without success. I had the mission all planned and was delaying final briefing when the other member of my crew showed up more than an hour late. Why: You might have thought a lot of things, like me, before he explained that the van and a civilian auto had made contact and Bill had gone to the motor pool to get the necessary accident damage forms and a briefing on what to do next. Were we in a combat zone flying combat missions on satisfying regulations of support operations that could be accomplished anytime?? Somebody tell Bill Kownacki. He doesn’t listen to me!
While I was gone for a month at Nellis AFB and home for Thanksgiving, Bill Kownacki was making himself available as a spare navigator for those Wing officers that still wanted to fly missions but had no assigned navigator. I think Bill crewed with three other pilots beside me but none of them ever wanted a second flight with him.
I had flown 80 North Vietnam missions with Bill when the sun began to shine for my future. The word had gotten out that there must be a more acceptable endeavor for Bill and he knew he was the favorite on my list. The Wing was tapped to locate three volunteers to operate night scopes as the second crew member for night work of the 0-2 FACs out of NKP (Nakam Phenom) located in Thailand, east of Udorn on the Mekong River.
I got to fly with real live navigators for my final 20 NVN missions. I flew with five different navigators after Bill and they were all extremely well qualified.
I had a couple of unique day missions toward the end of my tour. I was to lead a newly assigned aircrew on a mission to Vinh, NVN. When we were preflighting the aircraft prior to take off, the chief of maintenance approached and requested that I get rid of the 600 gal centerline fuel tank on my flight. It was leaking fuel and their many attempts to stop them had failed. It was not normal to jettison the center line unless we were on a mission to Rte Pak #6 where supersonic flight was programed. The two underwing 450 gal tanks were supersonic rated and never dropped. I promised him I would oblige. After the target run at Vinh we were on the way home and the centerline tank was empty so I asked Lt. Schryver, the wingman to move out to the side so he could watch the tank as it was jettisoned. Normally when the jettison button is pressed, two pucks simultaneously strike for and aft plates on the top of tank and it shears the two hangers of the tank that are engaged in the uplocks. It didn’t follow the plan. The front plate was pressed into the tank and the rear of the tank went down normally. As the tank was still partially attached it started beating the underside of the aircraft and airflow over it caused it to hit the underside of the right wing in the aileron area. As it tore up the honeycomb construction of the right aeleron, the aircraft sharply rolled to the left to completely upside down. By the time I recovered from the violent roll and righted the aircraft, the tank was gone but considerable damage to the aircraft was still with us. Lt. Schryver’s first comments were “Wow, are you guys all right?” No trouble in landing but we had to report the damage and were met with all sorts of emergency equipment.
The Wing Commander, Col. Victor Cabas, was extremely angry with me for tearing up a perfectly good airplane that would take a few weeks of work to get it airworthy again. The chief of maintenance got me off the hook when he told the CO that he had directed the tank jettison.
Another day mission that should have been a real milk run turned out to be anything but. We were tasked to photo the road areas around a lake we called Christmas Tree Lake, not far north of the DMZ in NVN. This was considered a low threat of hostile defenses. We were making several runs since the road made many sharp directional changes. We suddenly got SAM search and tracking indications on our RHAW gear. We were at about 3,000 feet above the ground ahd the SAM signal was coming from or right rear quarter. Could hardly believe it because intelligence had never reflected any SAM action in this area. Still discussing this unique discovery on intercom with the navigator when the SAM signal suddenly indicated High PRF which we learned long before was necessary to guide the surface to air missile from the ground control unit.
I banked hard right and sure enough, there were two missiles airborne in our direction. They looked like they were still under launching boost but I didn’t wait to find out. I banked back hard right and headed for the tree tops. 1 saw no more of the missiles as they continued skyward.
We reported the strange activity to ABCCC and they seemed to be already aware of the SAM activity and gave us a heading for Ubon AF and a request that we recover there and get a quick turnaround for another flight ASAP. While our aircraft was being refueled we were told that we would lead a flight of four F-4 Phantoms with air to ground armament back to the area of the SAM activity.
By the time we got back to Christmas Tree Lake, there were no more signals and no hostile fire of any kind and the SAM control unit had obviously anticipated the response and had packed up and moved on.
I had already been nicknamed “Magnet Ass” by the wing commander because of my seemingly
extraordinary tendency to attract SAMs and these last two made the total after me or a fligHII was in a whopping 32. This was more by far than other members of the squadron. Prior to this mission SAMs had never been reported as defenses in Rte Pak #1 or #2.
During Tet of 1968 President Lyndon Johnson decided to show the North Vietnamese that he would like to meet them soon at the peace table and directed a cessation of all hostilities by US and friendly forces. The NVN forces looked at that action quite differently. They openly increased activity of moving forces, munitions and supplies south to strengthen their positions further south in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
Although the fighter/bomber forces were grounded, the reconnaissance effort was greatly increased to record the NVN activity. A good example of this was a mission I had to photo the Quang Tri ferry and activity around it. I made one run over it and my cameras recorded 157 army trucks either on the ferry, just off the feny or waiting to get on the ferry. We had some AAA activity but not nearly as heavy as it would have been if the threat of being attacked had not been lifted.
Tn February 1968 I was requested to respond to the Intelligence facility at Udorn to re-debrief the mission that I had flown on September 17, 1967. That was when Major John Stavast and his navigator, Lt. Venanzi, had lost control of their aircraft and had to bail out over the outskirts of the NVN city of Hanoi. Of particular interest was for me to reiterate that I had seen two parachutes after the crew bailed out. On September Iff, 1967 we had heard Hanoi Hanna, the English speaking announcer (with a very British accent I might add) announce on her nightly radio broadcast from Hanoi that some pitchfork wielding Vietnamese hero rice farmers had captured a Yankee Air Pirate, identified as a US Air Force Lt. Venanzi. No mention from any source available to the intelligence community that Major Stavast had been captured or imprisoned.
I couldn’t add much to my original post flight debriefing but the guys behind the “green door” were still trying to get answers and they had me in to discuss those facts two more times before I finished up my tour at Udorn in mid April of 1968.
FINAL MISSION APRIL 1968
The final mission of my 100 NVN that determined the end of my full SEA tour was one that was very special for more reason than it was my last one.
In the spring of 1968, an RF-101 pilot had completed his 100th NVN mission at Udorn and it was a common practice for someone accomplishing this to put on a final air show over the base prior to landing. This particular pilot put on a spectacular aerobatic show but went beyond the capabilities of the aircraft, lost complete control in a notorious pitch-up and had to bail out. He survived and the aircraft crashed away from people and buildings.
The reaction of the wind commander (still Col. Victor Cabas) was immediate ceasing of all 100 mission demonstrations unless an official operations plan of the desired activity was properly presented to and approved in writing by the wing commander. . .and flown exactly as presented in the plan if approved.
We had four pilots and two navigators who were approaching 100 NVN so we decided to all finish on the same day and to present a plan that would involve some four ship formation activities. The plan was approved by the Wing CO and April 13, 1968 was set as the date.
Each of the pilots, Maj. B.J. Martin, myself, Maj. Gene Millsapp and his navigator, Lt. Smith, and Maj. Ed Jones and his navigator, Lt. Kapke were the 100 mission people and were all given targets to accomplish prior to joining up for the final show.
Our first pass over Udorn Air Base was in a four ship diamond formation with Major Martin in lead, Stouffer on the right wing, Millsapp on the left and Jones, the #4. The second pass was an echelon right prior to landing. Prior to making his left break for the landing approach Maj. Martin fired off 24 each 2.3 million candlepower cartridges from his left side launcher. Since this was directly over the runway and each cartridge sounds like a howitzer shot, it made a much talked about impression on those watching from the ground.
We taxied to the parking area as close to a formation of four as the taxi strip would allow. Not only were we met by Col. Cabas but he had requested the base photography shop to have good coverage of the activity. We were each ceremoniously dunked in the large steel tankful of rancid water, the “klong” as we nicknamed the dunk tank, and shared a few bottles of champagne.
I was given a complete set of the official photos and cherish them to this day.
The 13th of April until the 18th of April, 1968, was spent packing bags and more than a little celebrating in the bar for the fact that my job was done in SEA.. Partly the five day delay before departure was getting a seat on World Airways (the AF contract airline for transportation around the far east and Asia) that didn’t fly from Bankok to Yakota AB every day. On the 18th though, I took the daily C-130 shuttle to Bangkok and boarded a 707 to Yakota.
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