Although there was no disregarding our orders from Saigon, we were pretty sure that we would get skunked on weather on the mission for this day, and, even worse, we would leave little doubt in the enemy’s mind as to what we were after.
The weather beat us time after time and forced us to the non-satisfying alternate targets, but the word for this particular day was try again. We went through the normal routine, and as we departed the tankers we got our force nicely lined up in their appointed positions and headed once again into the delta area. As we switched over to the radio -frequency we would operate on during this strike, we found the radio channel already full of noise and active from all the others in the air. It was so noisy on this particular day that I activated the miniature Japanese tape recorder I had stuffed in the back of my cockpit and connected through my headset. I knew that this would be a noisy one and I wanted to have it all on tape to restudy after we returned.
“This is Nash four five here, ah, weather looks pretty sloppy. We’re in position at this time.”
The simple “Rog, copy” indicated that his mate understood and was ready to go to work.
His boss was obviously not pleased with the weather outlook and the protective blanket that it provided for the SAMs working underneath it. “Rog, I’m just crossing by the little islands. Pintail is the force leader and, ah, let’s stay pretty close together today. It doesn’t look very good.”
Adequate time had passed since the command to change radio channels and our flight leads were mechanically checking to insure that their charges were on the right channel and ready for action. Don started the parade with “Pintail check.”
He was greeted with a sharp “Two.”
“Three.”
“Four.”
“Elmo check.”
“Two.”
“Three.”
“Four.”
Before the rest of the flights checked in, Don announced an aircraft problem with “Pintail three—lead here. I’ve just lost my Doppler.” That was about average. The Doppler is a precise piece of navigation gear that is a beauty when it works. You had to tell the rig where you were by setting some knobs and gadgets over a fixed geographical point, and from then on, it will tell you all sorts of good things like where you are, how to get where you want to go, and how fast you are really getting there. When you are moving at a pretty fast clip in an area where there are no aids to navigation other than what you can see, it is an important gadget. When you can’t see anything, as we couldn’t on this day because of the cloud cover, it becomes very close to vital. The only problem with the mechanism was that it was about as temperamental as a batch of black boxes could get, and believe it or not, it seemed to have the uncanny ability always to go ape when you needed it most. Our maintainers had a barrelful of statistics to prove how great the system was and nobody other than the participating pilots took the repeated complaints too seriously. There are superior navigation systems that have been available for some time, but they never computed out as cost effective. Charles Blair, who has flown solo over the North Pole twice in single-engine fighters to prove a navigational point, can tell you better than I that our support people have failed to procure a better navigational mousetrap.
Don’s call on the Doppler failure was old hat, and simply meant in this case that he was on top of an undercast over hostile territory and that the machine was feeding him false information that made it most difficult to maintain his position accurately, and made it impossible for him to move the force in the precise manner that was necessary if he was to hit an exact spot and avoid all other spots. Anything less than the exactly correct solution can cost you people, aircraft, and bombs other than on the precise target. One of number three’s duties was to know as much about the flight’s location and progress as the lead did and to fill -the gap by steering the flight when the lead ran into the Doppler problem. I answered, “OK, ah, swing about, ah, five degrees to the right,” and the navigational problem had become mine.
“Mallard check.”
“Two.”
“Three.”
“Four.”
“Harpoon check.”
“Two.”
“Three.”
“Four.”
“Harpoon three, take the left,” indicated that Harpoon three had not done his homework or had not assimilated the instructions at the briefing, thus causing his leader to clutter up the airways with a useless call in order to get his chicks in the proper fighting position.
“Waco check.”
“Two.”
“Three.”
“Four.”
When someone else is forced to do the steering, the lead usually gets nervous. He knows that the element lead is perfectly competent, providing his gear is working properly, but it is sort of like letting your wife drive the car in traffic. She is OK, but—The sweat factor is increased by the fact that the leader always knows he has bought the entire show, and that if anything goofs, it is still his baby doll regardless of who is steering. If all the cockpit indications would just go away when the gadget breaks, you could ignore the problem to a degree, but they don’t. They feed you all sorts of crazy readouts, and you can’t ignore the tapes, dials and pointers that whir improperly in your face.
“Pintail three,” Don called to me, “how does this heading look?” Don knew we were approaching the critical point where we had to turn to intercept Thud Ridge at the right point for the run on the heartland.
I gave him, “Swing another five degrees left, Pintail,” as I lined him up on the turnpoint with a last-minute correction. Then as my indicators looked through the murk for me and told me that the time was right, I headed the force in on the run. “OK, we’re swinging our turnpoint now, Pintail. Go ahead and turn.” If we had wandered too far upriver on this heading, we would have been advised of our error by a volley from all the big guns that guard Ho Chi Minn’s hometown. They were just like a combination stoplight and turn indicator. I know they didn’t mean to help, but they were bound to get your attention.
The squadron was down in the dumps, there was no doubt about that, and one of my first challenges as a commander was to get to know them and try to strike the chord that would get them up again, but without the loss rate that they had suffered before. Strangely, the boss never told me that I had that for my first job. Nobody even mentioned it. It was just something you knew if you had the touch.
The new squadron commander had taken the reins shortly before my arrival, and I was amazed to find a rapidly balding, rather slight Ph.D. at the helm. I have a master’s degree myself and I sometimes wonder if that was really necessary, but this guy was a doctor. A forty-plus doctor driving the Thud and leading his people up North and, like the rest of us, receiving a $2.16-a-day combat bonus. I confess .to a bit of wonderment as to whether or not he was the desired solution, but that was short-lived. Don made one of the best and nicest—which to me is strangely important—fighter commanders I have ever met. There was no doubt that he had been exposed to the higher education routine and he looked the part, but like me he had had enough of the school kick and wanted only to be the best possible leader and airman. Much later when he received an assignment forecast that pointed him back into the Ph.D. area, he was most disturbed. You could tell upon occasion that he had been away from the business for a while and that the challenge of running his maintenance complex was new to him. You could tell that he had been at school during that portion of his career when many of his rank were learning the intricacies of administration and control of airmen, but you could also tell that he was very smart and it seldom took more than a casual suggestion to steer him. It is fun to be able to command that way; I despise the cumbersome rule by sheer dictate and fear so popular in portions of the Air Force.