Thud Ridge (25 page)

"Royal—Carbine."

"Carbine—Royal two. Go." This told us that another cog had slipped into place. The emergency standby rescue controller, Royal two, had scrambled from far to the south and had progressed far enough into the area to assume his role of on-scene controller. We could hear him all the way up to the area where we orbited, looked and waited.

"Roger, Waco is low and Tomahawk is coming up this frequency to relay."

"Roger, Roger, understand, thank you."

"Royal—Tomahawk on."

"Roger, Tomahawk, how long will you be able to stay in the area?"

"We'll be able to stay about forty-five minutes."

"Roger, understand forty-five minutes, and are you groomed for Migs?"

"Affirmative."

"Rog, and I am not reading anyone else up there. Are there any others up there we can use for Cap?" Once again it was apparent that there was confusion within the control element as to what they had to work with.

"Roger, Waco, a flight of four, Carbine with three, Oakland with four and Neptune with four plus the Phantoms in the area."

"Carbine two, you still getting the beeper?"

"Not at this time." The beeper has a limited range, even at altitude, and Carbine must now have realized that they had left the beeper behind in the area of the Rescap.

"Carbine one—two here. Let's go button three for one.”

Such a switch, going to a less commonly used radio channel for one minute, is the only way you can talk to your flight members when the chatter gets real bad, and Carbine two wanted to talk with his leader in private, high in the unfriendly skies of the North.

Completing the channel change he checked in, "Carbine two."

"One. Go ahead."

"Rog, I think our number four got hit just prior to Leo getting hit."

"You do?" The tone of startled disbelief was pitiful, such a familiar voice that you could almost see the leader's face. He didn't want to believe that he had lost another good young kid but he already knew it was true. Why else no contact with Bob? Nobody had seen him or talked with him in the last few crazy minutes. Bob was brand-new when he walked into our wing. He had been through the normal training routines, but the cocky little lieutenant was on his first real job in the fighter business and he progressed well. He had earned his spurs on some of the toughest ones we had, and was now one of our sharp-eyed wingmen enjoying the respect of his comrades, but his progress had come to a flaming halt against a hilltop in North Vietnam. Did he get out of the aircraft? Who knows—I don't even know what happened to the machine, but now I know what that second pillar of smoke meant. This was all quite difficult to explain to his parents later, especially by mail. His Dad wrote that Bob's mother had been ill since being notified—could I tell him more? I didn't know any more. Bob's Dad said he had taught Bob to be a good woodsman and that he could go for days in the hills—did I think he had a chance of being in the hills? I didn't know.

This meant that there was only one of the lieutenants left in the squadron. We had received a group of them all at once and they were all great kids. Now there was only one left. The guys in the squadron took care of that the same evening, partly to boost the spirits of all concerned and partly to break the hex. Although the remaining lieutenant had a couple of years to go before anyone would be seriously considering him for promotion to captain, the squadron jester announced that the air in the local area was obviously unhealthy for lieutenants, and that from now on until the end of his combat tour all squadron members would address the surviving lieutenant as brevet captain. They made believe they didn't have any lieutenants and the lad in question successfully completed his tour with one real and one imaginary bar on his shoulder.

The question of what happened to Bob was unanswered, but the question of the beeper that was stuck was now pretty well answered. Carbine one and two, the two surviving weasels, were out of the immediate rescue area en route to the tanker and they could no longer hear the screeching monster. Leo and his Bear were on the ground and Leo had checked beepers off on the radio. Four was down in the area and one of his beepers was the culprit. If we could have isolated it earlier, who would have filled in for him? Would the shoot-down have gone the same? For sure the Rescap would have gone better without the noise. I wonder if he was fiddling around in the cockpit trying to reach his beeper when he got bagged? I don't know. Iri. this business it is not too profitable or comforting to think too much about the ifs.

"Royal—Carbine."

"Carbine—Royal. Go ahead."

"Roger, I cannot locate my number four man. He was on the wing of number three. I cannot get him to respond. There's a possibility he's down in the same area, over."

"Roger, so that would be Carbine three and four, positively three and probably four."

"Roger, I only personally saw one aircraft in flames. It went into a spin just as they ejected. I saw two good chutes from number three, that's a two-seater. Number four was a single-seater with one man in it. I never saw it but I can't raise him now."

"Roger, can you cycle off the tanker and go back in now?" Royal wanted Carbine and his wingman to refuel and return to the rescue area.

"Roger, if I can be sure that neither one of our beepers is active. Are you getting that now, four—or two—are you still getting that?"

"Not at the present time."

"Roger, Carbine one and two can go back in."

"Roger, you can contact control for a tanker and let us know on this frequency when you come back in."

Carbine lead switched the surviving half of his flight to the radio frequency monitored by the waiting tankers and began the lonely trip back to refuel. Here for a few minutes he was in a different atmosphere. The challenge is to find the tanker, get the fuel and get back into the fray quickly. Nobody is shooting a.t you out here, but the intermission is not particularly relaxing. You alwajrs feel like hell when you lose a guy, and when you lose more than one it is downright grim. In his two-place machine Carbine lead
and
his Bear groused at each other as they searched for the tank and tried to reconstruct the scene. In the two-place job you chatter at the other guy over a mike that is hot all the time. In a single-seater, you talk to yourself.

"Wonder what hit him?"

"Hmm?"

"Wonder what hit him?"

"Crap, I don't know."

"I heard somebody call Sam but they never did give their call sign."

The tanker rendezvous was going at about the normal pace it always assumes when the air is charged with emergency. You can't get the right people to talk to you. Carbine lead was bouncing from channel to channel on the radio but none of the tanker control radars would respond and offer the desired steer to contact with the tanker.

"Balls." But calling the wrath of all the unnamed gods down on the controllers is to no avail and the only thing you can do is press toward the area where you think the tanker will be and try to get in contact with him yourself for a freelance hookup.

A cross volley of curses from front and back seat was interrupted by my call ringing through on emergency channel. I was still back in the area running the low cover and waiting hopefully for the rescue craft I assumed to be on the way.

"Hello, Carbine three—this is Waco. Turn off the beeper if you read me, please."

Carbine realized that they were probably the only ones who had the answer to the beeper question. "Could be Carbine four's beeper. You better tell Waco lead."

"Carbine four is on the ground."

"That's what I said, Waco lead and the rest of the people don't know Carbine four is down."

The radar control trying to get the tankers and fighters together was coming into focus on the gravity of the problem, but they burst onto normal and emergency channels only momentarily as they and the tankers sought to establish contact. As they talked, I was receiving a call from Leo on the ground and was reassuring him, "Roger, Leo, you're loud and clear. In about twenty-five minutes we should have some choppers up for you. The whole force is covering you, over."

"Leo, you need to climb the hill, over." I thought I had him in ideal position and I knew I had the force necessary to cover the operation. All I needed was to run the fuel shuttle smoothly and wait for those pickup machines.

"Tomohawk—Waco. Relay to Royal again to move the whole tanker fleet up north. Be sure they know we have the whole force in here Rescapping for those guys."

Carbine lead plodded on, and as it was becoming increasingly apparent that refueling was going to be a problem, the frontseater and the backseater thought out loud to each other.

"Crap."

"Two stinking airplanes."

"I'm telling you, I just can't believe it."

"Did you plot that on the map?"

"I don't have a map."

"How many miles were we out from that place we were going to?"

"I've got the coordinates here."

Back at the scene I ha,d spotted the first of the ground activity and was passing details to the downed crew. "OK, Leo, one of you is on one side of the hill and the other on the other side—just around the bend. You're OK around the bend, but there're some houses further down., WATCH OUT, there's someone walking out on the road!"

I was now very concerned about the somebody on the road but Royal, fulfilling his duties as overall airborne controller of the rescue, broke through the wall of noise on the radio in a desperate search for information. I acknowledged and was shocked at their answer, "Waco, there's a possibility that the number four man might have gone down too. Would you see if you could get me any information on that?"

"Can we work on another frequency Royal? All I can hear is beepers. You want to go to twenty?"

Many miles to the south, Carbine had wound up working mutual steers with the tanker he had finally contacted on the radio with no help from the ground controller. They had found each other and were setting up the busy pattern of refueling that was to be used again and again that afternoon and evening.

"Rog, Tanker, all I need is gas for one and two. Three and four are down and we need a full load so we can get back in there."

"Rog, Carbine, we'll give all we got. Incidentally, nobody has any contact with control."

"That's about average. If you can get them, tell them that Waco, the force commander, is going to base all his minimum fuel departures from the rescue area on the fact that all the tankers will be north of the normal post-strike refueling area."

"Rog, if we can ever get them on the other radio we'll relay that."

As they moved into position behind the big bird that was to pass them the critical fuel, I was too far away to hear Carbine flight on the radio, but later review of all of the tapes tied the whole thing together. I was having fits back in the area trying to listen to Leo, pass information to him and keep others off the radio. "Whoever is yakking on emergeney frequency get off. Leo, you're just too hard to understand. Move that mike away from your mouth a bit and try it again. In the meantime, stay put and stay out of sight. We've got somebody coming for you."

The guys in the two-place aircraft have a different job, not necessarily one that I would care for as a full-time occupation for myself, but they love it and they do a fabulous piece of work. They are strapped in that two-place monster together and where one goes the other goes, unless fate spares only one when things go sour. They realize that they are in it together, even more than any two strike pilots. They work together like a piece of precision machinery whether they like each other or not, and in addition to having to listen to everyone else in the sky, they have to listen to each other from engine crank to shutdown. Their hot mike system is installed so that when you want to talk to the other man you do not have to activate any switches or mike buttons. This is great when you need it, but you can get awfully tired of listening to both yourself and your playmate breathing for four hours. The two-place hot mike seems to make two-man aircrews feel they have to talk to each other. While I personally prefer a bit more silence when I have work to do, I will admit it helps to say something or to hear somebody else who may be as confused as you are yourself. The weasels wind up barbing each other constantly just as two close and mutually dedicated friends would do over a casual drink at the bar. Carbine one and his Bear were shook about the time they were refueling, and they talked.

"Four zero—this is Carbine. I'm so damn heavy I can't keep this beast in the sky back here. How about a little toboggan?"

When you refuel, tobogganing is sometimes necessary as the fighter has to slow down to speeds that are compatible for both fighter and tanker, and any trade of that nature is bound to compromise somebody's performance. Once a heavy fighter gets into that position, especially if he has any sort of a load on board the machine, he is hanging on the engine. You get into that awkward attitude where you have some of your flaps extended, you have backed way off on the power in order to get into position, and you have killed your flying speed almost completely. You are so close to stalled out that you need full power from the engine so you can hang up there by brute force. Sometimes this is still not enough and you simply fall off the end of the boom and sink.

One remedy is for the tanker to drop his nose to form a more compatible profile so that you are both falling down hill together, or tobogganing. This is fine if weather, altitude separation and all that will allow it, and providing the tanker changes attitude smoothly. Quite often the tanker crew has been allowing George, the automatic pilot, to fly the aricraft because George can actually do a smoother job, and when they cut George out and manually take control, they tend to be too positive. When the ham-handed human pushes the control forward and the nose dumps with that huge mass of metal and fuel rotating up and over its own nose, it gets wild. The fighter pilot is already extended to his maximum control and engine power limits or else he would not have had to call for the toboggan, and when the great beast's tail rises in his face, the fighter usually manages to porpoise from positive to negative G forces while junk flies around the cockpit and that stinking fuel turns to fiery fingers of fumes that reach into the cockpit and stab at your eyes, nose and mouth. Even with a tight mask and 100 percent oxygen, you can't get away from those fuel fumes and they just plain hurt. You can feel and taste every raw corner of every sinus in your head and at times you involuntarily cry so hard you can't even see the tanker in front of you. Anything more than a momentary shot turns your stomach inside out and the sickening dizziness hangs on for some time until your body has purged the fumes.