We went to the big steel mill one day with a wind that was forecast out of the south at 20 knots, and that is a fairly tough wind to compete with in the solution of the bombing problem. My assigned portion of the complex was the northernmost of three large buildings whose long axis faced almost due east and west. To hit my target, with the reported winds, I had to displace my aiming point to the south of the building, or into the wind. My run was a good one and the sight picture as I aimed and pressed the bomb release button was just what I wanted. We found out from pilot reports that the bombs got a surprise. The wind was 20 knots all right, but it was from due north, not from due south. Fortunately for my ego, Ho Chi Minh had the foresight to slide the southernmost of those three buildings right under my two 3,000-pound bombs and I clobbered it, preserving my accuracy record—no thanks to the weatherman.
It was such a target, refragged through a combination of these factors, that set the stage for a story about one of our older warhorses. As one of our more venerated heads, he was flying in the number three spot on one of our nastier assignments when we returned for about our tenth strike on a hot little railroad and bridge area. The place had claimed many of our Thuds and people, and the claims were valid. The place was hot to start with, and as we returned time after time, the North Vietnamese figured they could make the best of a good thing by moving more guns into the area, which they promptly did. Someone figured it was worthy of another strike. We hadn’t thought so when it gobbled up five Thuds over a couple of days from the Avis wing, and we hadn’t thought so a few days ago when we had been there, but we were on the way back. On the most recent one, I had been leading the wing and our warhorse had been leading one of the other flights. We had split just before the target and as I came off target, SAM appeared in two flights of two. The first two went between my flight and his and turned his number two man, one of our fine young captains, into three long stringy globs of flame and junk that seemed to stop and hang over the target like a grotesque oriental lantern. The second two SAMs goofed and hugged the deck. They -went out of sight, in perfect formation only a few hundred feet above the ground, accelerating to full speed in a wild chase to the northeast and the Chicom (Chinese Communist) border—but none of us were there. I’ve got that picture locked in my memory and would love to be able to paint it.
I could tell from the transmissions within his flight that the old warhorse would much rather have been up there in the number one spot. We entered, did the job, faced the problems, and suddenly were on the egress route. Everyone was so tense that anything different that had happened would have been welcome. Halfway back to the water, he blurted out in his unmistakable tones, “Lead, if you would kindly slow down a bit, it might be possible for some of us back here to catch up with you and rejoin.”
Lead came back with “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but we’re behind you.”
There was a short pause while the veteran contemplated a suitable reply to fling at the fledgling flight lead he had obviously not followed properly. “Well, in that case we are in good shape,” he retorted.
But he couldn’t win. Number four piped up with “Now that we have that straightened out, three, how about slowing down so I can catch up with you.”
5. The All-American Boy
Every night except Sunday at five o’clock, we had what we called a stand-up briefing. The reason we omitted Sunday was that we liked to have some indicator of time passing, do something different once in a while. So Sunday no stand-up, but every other day at precisely 1700 we launched into a, routine that took thirty to forty-five minutes depending on how formal you wanted to make it. When I first got to the wing, I personally felt that the stand-up was a little too much of a show affair and that we could save some time and effort and still get the job done. Our deputy commander for operations at the time was Col. Aaron J. Bowman, and Bo shared my views. Whenever the boss was not on the scene, Bo or I would run the show, depending on who was available, and we would compete to see who could cut the affair down the most. I managed to get it down to seventeen minutes, by urging everybody on and not tolerating the wandering self-effacing approach. One night when I was still airborne, and the boss was gone, Bo took it and pared it down to fourteen minutes, then, in one super push after that, I got it down to twelve minutes. But it didn’t work. Because the boss was there much of the time and liked a very thorough briefing, both Bo and I gave up the capusle idea and went along with the program.
We spent thirty to forty-five minutes each day going through, first of all, our schedule for the next day, how many of what aircraft hauled in how much freight and mail for the past day, our statistical results for the present day showing how many missions we were fragged for versus how many we flew; then we compared our statistics with those of our sister F-10S wing at Korat, the Avis wing. (Nobody can afford to be second statistically these days and if the figures aren’t right, you figure them a different way.) We then went into the intelligence portion that covered, in quite some detail, the accomplishments of each flight launched during the past twenty-four hours, and then came a few appropriate comments from our intelligence officer on trends in the air war up North or pertinent points from the overall world situation. We next looked at some visual presentations plotting the primary targets for the next day and then the weather officer would get up on the platform and give us his WAG (wild ass guess) on the probabilities of getting into the target the following day. He covered the outlook in all target areas, in the refueling areas, and of course, gave a familiar TV-type outlook for our own homedrome plus the other fighter bases in the area. Next came a dozen or more statistical masterpieces in viewgraph form from the maintenance guy. These were designed to dazzle you with detail and prove that we never did anything wrong. The detail included all facets of the operation, past, present and forecast for the next day, and wound up with a statistical and numerical rundown on the nature and quantity of all of our on-hand aircraft spare parts and munitions. Then came the photo officer who spelled out how many feet of film went through how many of which type cameras, plus a breakout of which cameras worked, which did not work, and again a monthly percentage of success. Next to last on the program was the safety officer who harangued on ground, air and missile safety to include the detail of which Thai driver dented which contractor’s fender on which truck. The temptation to editorialize during this phase must have been great, and coming as it did at the tail end of a long hard day, this pitch often went wide of the mark.
The finale came when the boss got up on the platform and discussed anything he wanted to discuss. He ranged from what had happened to future plans. Mostly we talked about visitors for the next day and how we would operate in spite of them. It was a good gimmick, and it sort of kept you up to speed on what was going on; however, I found that after listening to it every day for months it lost some of its effect, upon me at least. One thing that we did have on occasion that spiced up the stand-up was the presentation of awards to our aircrews and to our support folks.