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.