The SAM site that got him didn’t have to be there. We let it be there. Why? As fighter pilots, none of us could understand or accept the decision to allow the SAMs to move in and construct at will, but then fighter pilots must be different.
Yes, fighter pilots are a different breed of cat. The true fighter must have that balls-out attitude that immediately makes him somewhat suspect to his superiors. You can’t push for the maximum from your troops, yourself and your equipment and win any popularity contests. You are bound to tangle with nonfighter supervisors and with the support people up the line who wouldn’t have a job if it were not for the airplane drivers. This they don’t understand in many cases, and fighter pilots don’t know why they don’t understand it. Good fighter pilots move fast, and they do what looks like the thing to do to get the job done. They are prone to ignore the printed word when it conflicts with something real and human and physical. This does not always make them the darlings of all those involved in the defense business, but take a look at the history of aerial warfare and see who is always in there slugging—the fighter guys. War is our profession.
I’ll give you a “for instance” of how they get into trouble.
This fine gent was one of our strongest and he could handle the full spectrum of jobs within the fighter field. He had gone the staff route when appropriate and had the well-balanced background needed to get to the spot where he could run a squadron in combat. He was a fierce competitor and a fearless airman who always put himself where flying leaders belong—right up in the number one spot, flying combat. Restrictions and regulations have been heavy upon us for many years and you learn to live with or around them. Only a small portion of the total force physically puts the instruments to test in a shooting situation, and those who do, attempt to comply with the rules as best they can. The rule book tends to fade a bit at times but we are all aware of the basic constrictions under which we live.
One of the most difficult restrictions to understand was the one put upon our troops where the SAM sites started rearing their ugly heads in North Vietnam. The sites look like nothing else in this world, and it did not take a great deal of smarts to figure what they were up to. In that the fighter pilots felt most personally involved with these budding sites, and in that they knew the end product was meant for them alone, they were most anxious to dispatch them the moment they started to appear up North. What could be more logical to a stupid fighter pilot than to knock these potentially dangerous developments off the face of the earth as soon as they appeared? But we obviously did not understand the big picture. We did not visualize the merit of allowing the free movement of construction equipment and people as they scratched out the sites and stockpiled the equipment and missiles. We failed to see the logic of allowing them complete freedom until the first six sites were finished and firable before they became targets. We also failed to see why the next sites entering the construction phase got the same immunity as the first six even after the first six were firing. Perhaps I should be more impressed with the importance of protecting blond-haired, blue-eyed missile experts shooting at me. Sorry—I’m not. But, protected they were, and the direct order was out that you would not attack these sites. Period. That’s it. No questions please.
The man I am discussing accepted these dictates with the same degree of distaste as many others, but they were the rule. He was on a late afternoon mission way up North and things got hot and heavy as usual during his bomb run. As he pulled off the run, he came under exceptionally heavy fire and as he horsed his Thud to avoid this unexpected fury, he fojind himself looking into the middle of one of the six partially completed sites. The thing was full of construction equipment and people and they were scurrying about their task of getting the defense position ready to shoot at him with the least possible delay. The delay would probably not be too great, as the site had missiles already on hand. The supporting guns were well ahead of schedule and they were already in good positions that had allowed them to cover him as he came off the target, and they were still in fact giving him fits. Those following him would get the same welcome and the chances of losing people were high.
This was the time for action and he plugged in the burner, pulled his Thud up and over the top and attacked the site with his cannon, the only armament he had left. He shot up a storm. He blew up construction gear that burst into flame. He ripped open SAM fire-control gear that would never be recovered to fire at us. He ignited SAMs that raced about the area like fiery snakes gone wild and chasing their masters, and he shot the guns and the gunners who were shooting at him.
When he got back to the base and went through his debriefing chores, he was asked the routine question—did you see anything unusual? “You bet your ass I did,” he replied, and gave them the full scoop on his destruction of the SAM site, which promptly entered the mechanized reporting system that takes the information to everyone in the government who makes more than forty cents an hour. The difference between debriefing on the late mission and briefing on the early, early mission is only a few hours and he had himself set to go on the first one in the morning as the target was hot and he was the natural one to lead. He had a quick bite of food, a couple of hours of sleep and went back to work.
He got off on schedule the next morning, long before the sun popped into view. He was over the target area of Hanoi before the frenzied telephone calls came cascading down the line of command. Instructions were that he was to be immediately grounded, and court-martial charges were to be prepared against him for striking an unauthorized target. It was academic. By the time the telephone was hung up and confused and bewildered supervisors at wing level tried to figure out what to do, he had been shot down. Ironic? It’s more than that, it’s sick.
It’s sick because we handcuff ourselves on tactical details. First, we oversupervise and seem to feel that four-star generals have to be flight leaders and dictate the details of handling a type of machinery they have never known. Second, we have lost all sense of flexibility, and we ignore tactical surprise by insisting on repeated attacks without imagination. Third, our intelligence, and the interpretation and communication of that intelligence, is back in the Stone Age. Fourth, our conventional munitions are little improved over 1941 and those who insist on dictating the ultimate detail of their selection, fuzing and delivery do not understand or appreciate their own dictates. (This, of course, assumes that they have adequate quantities and varieties on hand to be selective.) Fifth, we have not advanced far enough in the field of meteorology to tell what we will have over the homedrome an hour from now. Our degree of accuracy on vital details like bombing winds over the target is abominable. Sixth, many of our high-level people refuse to listen to constructive criticism from people doing the job. The refusal to listen to anything that is not complimentary to our system is costing us people and machines. In defense of my tirade, I hasten to add that pilots do miss, but when they do, it is usually because there is too much stacked up against them. They certainly don’t miss from lack of desire, because when it is your head that is on the block, you spare no physical effort to do the job properly, knowing that if you don’t, you will be back to try again.
Unfortunately, hit or miss, we often find ourselves repeatedly fragged against targets that have already been bombed into insignificance except for the defenses that are left, and reinforced, to capitalize on our pattern of beating regular paths to each new target released from the “Restricted” list.