Thud Ridge (16 page)

While this was going on, all my other flights were active and Carl and Phil both managed to get a confirmed Mig out of their head-on hassles coming off target. My wingman pulled up off the deck after shaking his Sams and got himself a probable to go with my probable. Things then turned into a three-ring aerial circus as the Phantoms, who were in the area with us, wanted into the act and had come down to our altitude. They had managed to get two Migs who had been on our tails on the way into the target and they wanted more. About this time I spotted another Mig spinning down to earth that one of our guys had hammered. Rob got one with a missile and it was a beautiful hit. The entire rear end of the Mig was burning, and you could see the skeleton of the aircraft as it burned and went straight line all the way across the valley in a descent, never wiggling, and hitting at the base of the Ridge. (I never have seen any chutes from any of the Migs we have hit.) Here we had Phantoms going round and round, Migs going round and round, and Thuds going round and round. Our total bag for the effort, which took only a few minutes, was six Migs destroyed and two Migs damaged and probably destroyed.

The Phantom troops got a little concerned when our guys started hosing off those Sidewinders because from some angles the Mig and the Phantom look quite similar, and in a fast-moving fray, it is easy to get a silhouette where they look very much alike. Once you fire that missile, it has no sense and just tries to do what it is supposed to do, look for a hot tail pipe. Once our Sidewinders started flailing through the air and Migs started falling out of the sky and guns rattled all over the area, one of the Phantom drivers said, "Hey Chief, they're shooting Sidewinders. Let's get the hell out of here," whereupon they lit the burners and went back up to altitude and allowed us to finish up our work. We got a call from the Phantom wing boss that evening congratulating us on the fine work but protesting that Mig-killing was supposed to be their business.

After Rob got his Mig, he was quite low on fuel as he had been in burner for a long time. He was also right down among them at the edge of Phuc Yen, and had maneuvered to a spot behind us where he had managed to corner two Migs at his six o'clock position, a clever maneuver calculated to get you shot down. He called his plight and indicated that he was in trouble. I turned the force back toward him as he pushed his bird right down on the grass and got going as fast as he could. With the speed that the bird has at that altitude, he was able to shake his pursuers and we again turned the force out of the area. That was quite a wild melee and I think, perhaps more than any one day, taught those Mig drivers some respect for the combined forces that were lined up against them.

This was the environment that Crab flight, with Bob as Crab two, had to penetrate that day—all the way down to the bottom of the Ridge, bomb, turn, and- all the way back. As they turned the corner at the north end of the Ridge, their 650-gallon external tanks were dry and they elected to drop them, since by then the Mig opposition was obviously up and ready to tangle. They pickled the tanks, pushed the power up and started down the Ridge at about 580 knots. Knife flight was just ahead of Crab and was the first flight actually to get wrapped up with the Migs. When they called a flight of four at ten o'clock high, the Migs were pickling their tanks, which they also do to lighten their load prior to engaging, and Knife started a slow turn into them. Knife didn't want to start a radical turn as that would take him away from his desired run-in and defeat the purpose of the mission itself. This was one of the Migs' goals, and if they could draw us off course or get us wrapped up in something that would force us to drop our bombs, their mission had been accomplished. But Knife did start a gradual turn into the Migs to keep them in sight and also to keep them from getting into position on any of our flights prior to or during the bomb run itself. Crab lead spotted the Migs also, but seeing that Knife flight had them under surveillance, he announced to his flight that these particular Migs were not a threat to Crab flight.

Crab lead called for afterburner and was forced to descend down toward a cloud deck that was about 4,000 feet above the ground. He dropped down to be in a better maneuvering envelope should he encounter more Migs, to be better able to combat the Sam launches he fully expected and also to align himself better for the bomb run he would have to make despite the marginal cloud conditions. The target itself was a particularly tough one to find, a dinky little thing that blended with the surrounding terrain and construction. The radio chatter was really picking up about this time—in fact, it was so dense with all the Mig and Sam warnings and everyone shouting directions and commands that it was almost impossible to interpret what was going on. This is a real problem and once it starts, it just keeps getting worse and worse and is almost impossible to stop. About the time all four Crab flight members had secured a good burner light, Crab three spotted a Sam heading for the flight from the three o'clock position and hollered on the radio, "Take it down, take it down." This is a most difficult situation, in that you see something that you know you have to tell other people about in a desperate hurry to protect them and to protect yourself, and the temptation is to blurt it out as quickly as possible without using the proper call sign. The result is that everyone in the air immediately gets a shot of confusion and wonders who is talking about whom.

The desperate question, "Who is that call for?" almost always triggers a return call and further increases the critical chatter level.

Crab three felt that he had alerted the flight and for self-preservation he broke sharply down and below number four. At this stage four was concerned with keeping three, his element lead, in sight, and he was also nervous about the Sam heading his way. He pushed over violently on the stick. After a control movement such as this, especially at speeds of about 600 knots, the aircraft reacts violently. All his maps, charts and checklists, in fact even the fuel selector knob which is part of the control panel, flew up into the air and filled the canopy and windscreen. Everything that was not tied down came up. Four's immediate reaction was to pull back on the stick and he entered a porpoise. A porpoise is a vertical oscillation where you are just a step behind the aircraft and can't physically keep up with the machine; each control movement only serves to exaggerate the problem. In other words, when you are heading down, your reaction is to pull back on the stick and you usually pull too much. You may already have pulled back enough but by the time it takes effect you have probably gone too far and need to come back the other way, so the cycle repeats and you go up and down in increasingly violent gyrations and find that you can't see where you're going or what you are doing. It is better known as a J.C. maneuver. The best way to get out of it is to let go of everything and say, "OK, J.C., you've got it. I'll take over when you get it straightened out." The control situation, plus the visibility limitations caused by things flying around the cockpit, the close proximity to the ground, a Mig trying to set up on the flight and a Sam coming their way was further complicated as all the guns at Phuc Yen opened up, and there are many, many guns at Phuc Yen. This flight was in severe trouble early in the run.

Number four finally let go of the stick which was about the only thing he could have done to get out of this porpoise condition; he could never have caught it, especially with his bomb-load, and after riding through a few more violent ups and downs, the aircraft dampened itself out to the point that he could regain control. As things began to come back into focus for number four, he observed the lead element, that is, number one and number two, high and out to the right and screamed out to them that they had Sams coming at them from their nine o'clock toward their one o'clock. The Sams streaked across the lead element but far enough away so that they did not detonate. Crab lead, while trying to dodge the Sams, which he did successfully, called out three Migs at the flight's three o'clock position. Perhaps you can feel the tempo of this thing increasing, and you must remember that it is all crammed into the space of a few minutes. The three Migs in the three o'clock position were initiating an attack at the same time another call went out, again without a call sign or an identifier. The call was to Crab lead and told him that he had Migs at his six o'clock positioning also initiating an attack, and telling him to take it down. To add one more twist to this rapidly compounding situation, Crab lead had lost the stability augmentation system on his aircraft. This is the device that dampens out control pressures and oscillations and allows you to fly rather smoothly even at high speeds. Without it, it is almost impossible to maintain even straight and level flight, and turning or climbing or diving the aircraft is impossible to do smoothly. When he heard this call of Migs at his six o'clock position, Crab lead had no choice but to believe the call and was forced to push his nose down. In no time, without control augmentation, he too was in a violent high-speed porpoise that threw him all over the sky. At that speed and with that bombload on, Crab lead found himself only seconds from the target and, for all practical purposes, out of control. This put Bob, in Crab two, in the difficult position of trying to stay on the wing of his leader, not daring to separate yet faced with an impossible aircraft-positioning job. He had to avoid being run into as well as face all the other problems at hand. In the attempt to maintain position, he too entered a porpoise condition. As he was bouncing out of rhythm with the lead he popped up about 500 feet above the lead and suddenly his aircraft pitched violently down and to the left. In other words, this translated him from the right wing position with the element sitting over on the left-hand side, through a pitching motion, and down and to the left into a new position underneath three and four. By this time, the entire situation was completely out of control. There were tremendous speeds and weights involved and these massive weights were flung through extreme maneuvers that exceed the control capabilities of the machinery and of the men. With the defense's guns shooting heavily from the Phuc Yen area, Sams firing from all quadrants, especially from the city itself, and Migs in the area but backed off momentarily in order that the close-in defenses might have their chance, the situation had become nothing but grim.

Number two bottomed abruptly and stopped the downward pitch or porpoise almost as if he had gained control of the machine. Actually, he was probably hit at some time during the porpoise, perhaps when he was forced up high above the leader. He apparently took a vital hit at that time that knocked his aircraft down and to the left and the abrupt bottoming probably occurred when he caught the aircraft and at least momentarily regained control over the machine. As he bottomed, his bombs and tanks separated from the aircraft, which would indicate that he knew he had been severely hit and that he did not have adequate control of the aircraft and needed to get as much of the weight off the aircraft as he could by hitting the panic button, a switch that electrically jettisoned all external loads. His hope was that a lighter load and a change in airspeed might give him a chance to control his wild machine. The big problem was that he did not have any place to move at a time like that, especially with an aircraft as sick as his obviously was. If he went up all by himself, he would in all probability have been gobbled up by the Migs who were just waiting for a stray to fall out of the formation, or, for the instant, he would more probably have been hit by the Sams which were thick in this area close to downtown Hanoi. If he went down, he would have been faced with the intense small-arms and automatic-weapons fire that even extended down to handguns; and don't ever think that a handgun can't knock down a big bird if it hits the right spot. When the bugle blows and thousands of people lie on their backs and fire small-caliber personal weapons straight up in the air, woe be unto him who is unfortunate enough to stray through that fire.

Without freedom of movement, he was pretty desperately trapped. In this case, it didn't make too much difference because Bob came on the radio and said, "Crab two is hit." This, of course, alerted everybody to the fact that one of our guys was in bad trouble and there was an out-of-control aircraft traveling close to 600 knots in the immediate vicinity. A vital hit in a sensitive area of the Thud will very rapidly deplete the hydraulic systems that operate the flight control systems. The degree of depletion depends on the location and nature of the hit, but once that pressure is gone, the controls go with it and there is no way to control the aircraft even momentarily. This was the plight of Crab two; he was riding in a hurtling, out-of-control, heavyweight monster in the middle of a hostile environment determined to kill him if at all possible. Thus, only seconds after he had been hit, Bob apparently lost all control and knew that he was about to hit the ground. He evaluated his position in who knows how many microseconds, and had no choice but to take the high-speed ejection right in the middle of a hail of lead from all sides, rather than simply crash and be destroyed along with his dead aircraft. He called and said, "I'm bailing out," and out he went, right into the inferno of Hanoi under attack. His aircraft hit the ground at a speed in excess of 500 knots.

The two-ship element, led by Crab three, had become understandably confused during the wild gyrations that had occurred and initially thought that Crab one had struck the ground out of his wild porpoise. In an area like that there is absolutely nothing you can do for a pilot who has jumped out, you can't really even stop and look. If you observe the impact of the aircraft, it is strictly by chance. Anyone who stood still or retreated long enough to even try to find out what was going on would also be shot down. So that's part of the code, the name of the game. Anyone who is hit and has to jump in that area does it strictly solo.

It took this particular flight a while to sort things out and get organized coming back out of the target area, and there is little doubt that this particular strike will go down in the annals as one of the wildest and toughest rides that any flight has ever had to go through. They did manage to get reorganized and return to base safely.