Wright lived to fly fighters, and the F-105 Thunderchief was his favorite. It was the Cadillac of combat jets—big, comfortable, easy to fly, and damn near indestructible. He returned the salute and taxied to the flight line.
The major had flown 100 combat missions during the Korean War and 140 more during Vietnam. He commanded one squadron that suffered such heavy losses over North Vietnam that it had to be disbanded. Still, he couldn’t get enough of aerial combat. Though married and the father of four, he was prepared to die for his country at any time.
The tower cleared him for takeoff at about ten p.m. His wingman was nearby; they’d fly the last two F-105s to Osan. Wright pushed his throttle forward and his jet began to roll. He ignited the afterburner and the plane rocketed into the night sky, a cone of fiery red streaming from its exhaust nozzle.
Wright got to the South Korean air base around midnight. Snow skittered across dark runways. Ground crews were hastily uploading bombs to 105s that had arrived earlier. It was much too late to prevent the capture of the Pueblo, and General McKee had called off that operation. Now Wright’s squadron was about to be handed a new, more dangerous mission.
The major strode into the run-down flight operations building and got on the scrambler phone to Fifth Air Force. He knew virtually nothing about the Pueblo, but a high-ranking officer in Japan told him about its importance. If the communists were permitted to dismantle and study the ferret’s contents, the officer said, U.S. military secrets would be “compromised for ten years.” The Navy didn’t know for sure how much classified material Bucher had gotten rid of, or indeed whether he’d disposed of any.
Wright asked what his orders were.
“I want you to sink that ship at all costs,” his superior replied.
“All costs?” Wright asked, the implications hitting him. “Does that mean all of my twelve airplanes?”
“That’s right. I want that ship sunk. The Navy lost it, and we’re gonna sink it.”
Wright’s small band of pilots was likely to be met over Wonsan by a wall of antiaircraft fire and a horde of MiGs; the Americans’ chances of survival were virtually nil. Nonetheless, the major swung into action. He told the Osan maintenance officer to remove his jets’ drop tanks and attach more bomb racks. That meant his men wouldn’t have enough fuel to get home in the unlikely event they got away from Wonsan in one piece. But they’d have extra bombs to do the job.
Another complication was that no one knew whether the Pueblo’s crew was still aboard or not. Wright wasn’t thrilled about the possibility of bombing Americans, but orders were orders.
He and his operations officer began planning the mission route and tactics. As the two men worked, excited pilots kept barging into the room, offering to help. Wright finally had to shoo them to another part of the building, saying he’d brief them in a couple of hours and they should get some sleep. But there were no blankets and only a frigid concrete floor to lie down on, and the men were too keyed up to sleep anyway.
The pilots filed into a shabby briefing room at about five a.m. on January 24. They still didn’t know what the Pueblo looked like or where it was in Wonsan’s capacious harbor. The Navy had sent over two officers to tell them as much as they could. Wright knew his men would be taken aback when they learned of the mission’s one-way nature, and he tried to think of a way to lighten the mood. One of the Navy briefers inadvertently provided it.
“Gentlemen,” the naval officer began, “your target is to sink the Pueblo.”
Wright couldn’t resist a joke. “’Scuse me,” he drawled. “I know what a pueblo is in Arizona; it’s where the Indians live. I don’t think any Indians are livin’ over here.”
The Navy man acted as if he’d been insulted. The Pueblo was a ship, he said, an intelligence ship, and it had to be destroyed. Unfazed, Wright asked whether the briefer had any pictures of the Pueblo. He didn’t. Well, Wright asked, how were his people supposed to find it? How were they to know which ship, out of perhaps dozens in Wonsan harbor, to bomb? The Navy officer paused for a few seconds, thinking.
“Did you see the movie Mister Roberts?” he finally asked.
Wright had.
“That’s exactly what the Pueblo looks like.”
Wright turned to his pilots. “We’re gonna sink Mr. Roberts’s ship,” he said, his broad smile triggering raucous laughter. Then he got up to explain how they’d do it.
The F-105s would fly northeast out of Osan as low and fast as possible. At 600 miles per hour, flight time to Wonsan was 25 minutes. As they neared the harbor, the pilots would hit their afterburners and hurtle up to 17,000 feet. On the way up, Wright and his ops officer each planned to pick out a ship they believed was the Pueblo. If they agreed, the entire squadron would dive-bomb that target. If they disagreed, the planes would divide into two groups and attack both ships. The big jets dove like winged anvils, plunging nearly two and a half miles in 30 seconds. The pilots would have ten seconds to aim.
The final phase of the attack posed a delicate problem for Wright. His orders were to take out the Pueblo at all costs, and he intended to do that. His pilots needed to know that no one was to leave Wonsan as long as the Pueblo remained afloat. But he couldn’t simply order them to crash into the ship; military law and custom, not to mention basic morality, prevented commanders from telling subordinates to commit suicide.
The major chose his words carefully.
“Here’s the rules: If that ship is still floating and you’re the last one alive, go back around and sink it.” He had a family on Okinawa, he said, but he wasn’t leaving Wonsan until the spy boat went under.
Wright didn’t directly order a kamikaze assault. After all, the last surviving pilot theoretically could send the Pueblo to the bottom with a well-aimed bomb or by riddling it with cannon fire. But that wasn’t what the squadron leader meant.
“Does everybody understand what I’m telling you?” he asked.
One pilot pulled back the corners of his eyes until they became slits. “Ah so, Major,” he said, mimicking a Japanese accent.
The pilots climbed into their jets in the predawn darkness. They’d had no time to pack winter clothes before leaving Okinawa, so they wore only thin green flight suits. A red flare was to signal takeoff.
Wright and each of his men sat alone in a freezing cockpit, waiting for what probably would be the last flight of their lives.
The train bearing the Pueblo crew wheezed and clanked to a halt. A voice announced that they’d reached their destination and would leave the coach in order of rank with their hands up, in the abject manner of criminals. The Americans were untied and their blindfolds removed.
They were supposed to keep their heads contritely down, but Schumacher let his eyes slide up the body of the man sitting opposite him. It was Bucher. The captain’s big eyes shone with anger and he was kneading his deadened hands in frustration. Max walked up to him.
“Now we will take you off the train,” he said. “Captain, you first, then the others.”
Bucher didn’t move. For several long moments, he glared coldly at Max. Finally he rose and led Schumacher, Lacy, and Tim Harris down the aisle and out the door.
Small suns exploded in the captain’s face as North Korean news photographers took flash pictures of him stepping onto the passenger platform. Adding to the blinding brightness were the klieg lights of TV cameramen, eagerly recording the humiliation of the American spy chief and his lackeys. Bucher brought his hands down to shield his eyes; a soldier batted them back in the air with his rifle.