Thud Ridge (35 page)

The first thing I had to do was find a circuit breaker. A circuit breaker switch in a fighter is an obnoxious little piece of black plastic that looks something like the eraser and the top half inch of a lead pencil. Each breaker controls one of the many electrical systems or inputs that makes a complicated weapons system tick. There are so many of them that the least essential are not even in the cockpit but are in compartments throughout the aircraft, where the pilot has no control over them in flight. If one of the external breakers pops in flight you have lost that system for the duration. The designers took the zillion most important breakers and placed them in the cockpit, so the pilot could have the opportunity to check and reset some of the electrical systems when necessary. The problem is that there is not enough room for them and they are strung out in lines, globs and little bunches in all the remote corners of the pit that are unusable for other major components. Many of them are on the sides and behind the pilot, and a midget standing up in the seat and looking backward might be able to peer under and behind the seat and armrests and make out the minute lettering and number code that identifies one black pimple from another. When you are strapped in, especially with combat gear on, you can forget all that. Many of them you cannot see, and some of them you can hardly reach. You have to know where they are and, if you can reach them, operate them by feel. While Ted was getting the guns off my back, I was fighting the G forces and the oscillation as I forced my now heavy arm and left hand down and back along the left console panel behind my left hip in search of the stability augmentation switch. If I could find it and 'disengage it, I would cut out the entire control augmentation system, and while this would give me a spooky set of controls in all the aspects of pitch, roll and yaw, it should at least cut out the frantic and incorrect outputs that were wagging my tail with such alarming force.

I found what I thought was the right one and managed to hook a thumb and finger under its narrow top lip, and I got it out about the time Ted got the gunners' heads down. The instant I got it out I leaned on the right rudder with my right foot, as that was the direction I thought I was swinging toward at that instant. My hope was to lock onto one direction of oscillation and break the swing from side to side, and it worked as the bird slid to the right in an uncoordinated but single direction skid. The instant I felt response I threw out the speed brakes to alter my trajectory, honked back on the throttle, horsed back on the stick, then immediately rammed the throttle full forward and lit the burner as I eased off on the right pedal. She was a long way from being a stable bird, but she responded, and the nose eased up as she waddled and bumped toward the sky above the treetops on the hills that were now under me,.and I cleared the mountaintops by less than I like to think about. She was wiggly, but she was flying, and Ted had made it back up from his valley floor excursion.

I had only one of my other flights still working in the area, my Sam chasers, only a few miles to the south and east of me, and they still had a full load of ordnance. I called them into the area. They had no trouble finding the spot and were on the scene by the time I got my now slow-turning beastie around the corner and headed to the west and south. They needed only a quick description of the target, and each one of them picked a separate cluster of buildings and let fly with bombs. The results were spectacular and they got four secondary explosions out of four, with one the telltale white of ammunition, and another the black thick smoke spiral of fuel.

That place was loaded. I had to hurry back to the base to report my find and figure out the best way of exploiting it.

Hurrying was not the answer for me for the following hour or so. My wingman had pulled up alongside of me to take a good look at the condition of my tail feathers, and he advised that the hole was huge and was in effect,a jagged cut directly through the vertical fin and out the other side. The forward edge of the fin was held on only by the angled leading edge of the fin itself, and wires and loose skin flapped in the hole where supporting members and their covering aluminum skin used to be. His advice was simple, "Slow down before you tear that damn fin off." I would have gone no place but down if I had torn it off, so slow down I did. I would have liked to go home at a comfortable low altitude and a low speed, but we had been working well to the north for some time and I had to have a shot of fuel to make it back. That meant up to altitude for the tanker, and I was a bit concerned about how my charge would handle up there, but we struggled up to 27,000 feet for our tanker. She didn't handle too well, but I figured she was good enough so that a cooperative tanker crew and a good boomer could handle rne. I explained my problem to the boomer on the radio, and as I sat behind him, looking like an unhappy worm suspended by a string tied around his middle, he took careful aim and stabbed me the first try. I scarfed up a full load of fuel, just to be sure I had enough in case of any problems in the landing phase, and limped homeward thinking again how lucky we were to have such a good bunch of tanker troops on our side.

The landing was uneventful. I just backed way off from the runway and came driving in on a flat approach using minimum control pressures. There were many "ohs" and "ahs" as I taxied in and parked my wounded bird, and we found on looking at her on the ground that I had taken several small hits along with the big one. Our information man wanted a picture of me standing there with my head through the hole for a news release, and the maintenance guy and the factory representative wanted one for their bosses, but I refused. I have never allowed a picture to be taken of me with any one of my shot-up aircraft. I have had several friends who have posed for some rather spectacular photos of that type, and an amazingly high proportion of them are very dead from subsequent battle damage. I confined my activities to telling my crew chief to go steal an aft section off some sick bird that was down for maintenance, slap it on our rear end and get the painter to change the numbers. Of the F-105's flying today there are few that do not exist on parts from other F-105's.

We debriefed very thoroughly to be sure that we had all seen the same things on the ground and then got the intelligence staff working on all the pictures and background information that they could dig up on the area. What their effort boiled down to was some third-rate pictures that were extremely old and the information that the area had been a live target some time ago but had been dropped from active to inactive because of damage reported in the past and lack of recently reported activity. We were obviously not up to speed on developments in that little valley and that made our find all the sweeter. It might have gone inactive for a while, but it was obvious from the trucks, guns, buildings and secondary explosions we had observed that morning that this was no longer the case. I got on the horn to the big headquarters, described my jind in the most glowing terms I could conjure up, and asked for permission to take an entire strike wing into the place the next day to see what I could do about cleaning all that equipment out while it was still sitting in one spot. Response was not immediate, but I eventually got the go-ahead and my wing was delegated to my own control for only the second time in the entire tour. The headquarters intelligence types went to work for us also but only managed to come up with a few more outdated photos of the general area. I put the planners in my operations section to work, checked their initial efforts and gave them the go sign, and went about some of my other duties while looking forward to the early morning mission the next day.

We were all hot to trot the next morning and anticipation even took some of the sting out of the two-thirty alarm clock. The plan was simple. We would have two flights of Phantoms in the area and they would patrol between our force and Hanoi so we could feel relatively sure that the Migs would not get in our hair. I wanted to be able to concentrate on getting this job done completely the first time, and for once I was content to leave the Mig-sweep work to someone else. We would refuel and all drop off the tankers together, and I would lead into the area and give a go or no go on the weather. The rest of the flights would displace themselves behind me so that we would not bunch up in the limited airspace over the valley, and after I had worked I would call the succeeding flights in one at a time. I intended to orbit far enough away from the target to stay out of their way while they were working, but close enough so I could monitor their work and insure that we got the areas I wanted.

I was disappointed that the weather was not holding to the forecast we had received the night before and it did not look too great. At first the headquarters folks did not want to release us, but I got on the horn and was able to talk them into letting us go, and shortly afterward I pulled into the number one spot in the arming area with my strike force in tow.

The arming area is a strange little piece of concrete adjacent to the end of the runway that provides the last respite and physical check of both man and machine before the launch. It is a hectic spot, saturated with ground crews and supervisors who must constantly hustle to insure a smooth flow of aircraft onto the runway. They have to hurry carefully to guarantee that the aircraft is completely ready for the challenge ahead, yet they can't afford any delay in the flow of traffic. A few minutes wasted in this crucial spot compounds rapidly into delayed takeoffs and delayed tanker rendezvous, and can compromise the timing and success of the entire effort. The crew is under the control of a senior sergeant who positions himself midway between the yellow painted lead-in lines that each pilot follows as he places his nosewheel on the spot that will line him up parallel to the next bird, with his nose pointing out into the boondocks to guarantee maximum safety should some piece of ordnance misfire during the arming process. It is always hot out there and as each fighter swings into and out of the pad, the stinging exhaust from the tail pipe adds to the heat. The noise and vibration is so intense that the standard ear protectors provide only minimal protection to the ground crews working there, and it is necessary to rotate the arming crews constantly to preserve their hearing.

As the crewman assigned to each particular spot directs the pilot into position, the first move is up to the pilot. He checks all his cockpit switches and when he is satisfied that all ordnance is in a safe condition, he merely holds both hands up in the air to say, "OK, men, go to work. I won't shoot you or drop a bomb on your toes." Once the signal is given, the ground crew swarms all over the bird. One group checks all the external weapons to be sure that nothing has vibrated loose while moving from the parking area to the runway, and then they pull the safety pins or set the switches that bring the bombs, rockets and guns to life, ready to detonate on command. Another crew covers every inch of the outside of the bird, looking for hydraulic or fuel leaks, loose panels, cut tires or any little unnoticed flaw that could cost us a man and machine over hostile territory. If they find something wrong, it represents the height ojf frustration to be sent back to the chocks when you have done all the preparation that is required to get to this point, but in this spot rank means nothing. If a two-striper says he doesn't like the looks of the machine about to launch, colonel or lieutenant, back to the parking area you go. There is no telling how many people and machines this system has saved for us, as there are many things that can go wrong with a temperamental machine from engine crank to takeoff, and the old routine of simply kicking the tire and lighting the fire is definitely passe.

The pilot is busy during this period racing through the checklist to be sure he has not overlooked even one small switch setting, as once he pulls out of this pad it is too late to worry about details. It is also the spot to take a big suck on the plastic tube that leads to the thermos full of ice water behind the seat, and shift into the mental high gear that the next several hours will demand. This is a serious moment inside you, too. Fighter pilots are like racing drivers in that disaster always happens to someone else—not them. Yet, here for a few moments things sit still and the immensity of the personal challenge is very real.

Although I never bothered to inquire into the religious habits of my pilots, I was impressed by the numbers who made it to the chapel for one service or another, and I can tell you for sure there are very few atheists in the arming area. When you watch comrades fall from the sky day after day you realize that it is going to take some help and guidance from a level above your own to hack the course.

We always had at least one of our chaplains in the arming area, and day or night, rain or shine, they were there for every launch. While the crews were bustling about the birds the chaplain would move down the line from one aircraft to another, bless the man and the machine and give you a cheery thumbs-up signal. I usually showed the arming area and the launch of a strike to our important visitors, and I was surprised to find that a few of our supposedly more important types found the sweating men of the cloth somewhat hilarious as they moved amid the din of battle preparations. (Many of these visitors were the kind that usually traveled in the back end of a super gooney bird and got only close enough to the war effort to collect the same sixty-five dollars a month combat pay that the fighter pilots earned.) But nobody sitting in the driver's seat of a Thud thought it was at all funny.

Two of our chaplains stood out from the crowd. I confess to being an Episcopalian snob who finds the-general run of military chapel activities less than completely attractive, but during this tour I was greatly impressed by a quiet Armenian Baptist and a charging Irish Roman Catholic. They were both very much a part of our operation, and they considered the pilots and ground crew on the flight line their primary charges for the year they worked with us. The Baptist was from California, and like many Airnenians from that area epitomized by J. C. Agejanian, automobile racing's most colorful promoter, shared with me an interest in automobile racing. He was the kind of man I liked to talk to, and he seemed to impress all of us the same way. I did not spend as much time with the Roman Catholic, but when things got sticky he was always there to help. I always got a special sense of well-being from their thumbs-up.