Obviously we were not talking about a conventional dive-bomb approach to the target where considerably more ceiling and visibility would be required. We were talking about armed reconnaissance under substandard conditions that would perhaps uncover lucrative targets and allow us to destroy them and still get our forces safely back out of the area. A challenging assignment to be sure, one fraught with danger and that could only be proven by actual flight. Gordo prepared himself and his people most thoroughly for this mission. The thoroughness and attention to detail demonstrated in this assignment were to appear to me many times in the future as he devoted the same energy to the more mundane tasks that I laid on him. He picked his day quite well. He picked a day when the visibility was rotten, a day when the clouds were practically on the ground, and he picked a tough target. This was to be the true test and he pulled no punches nor did he make anything easy for himself. He laid it on as realistically as physically possible.
Inbound to his target he was forced down in heavily defended areas by the clouds and the rain to altitudes sometimes as low as 100 feet above the ground. When he arrived in his selected area, he conducted a successful armed reconnaissance under about the worst possible conditions. His preflight planning and his talent paid off as his flight was able to destroy several automatic-weapons sites that fired on them while they were in the process of spotting and destroying a fuel convoy. The fuel truck drivers and convoy masters obviously never expected the stupid Americans to come hurtling at them out of the clouds and rain through which they were driving their trucks with a sense of security and safety. Gordo and his boys dispatched them as well as the flak sites along the way which had been bent on protecting the convoy. Although he had already completed a highly successful mission, his day’s work had really just started for him. Having expended most of his ordnance, he took his flight back up through the weather and back out of the hot area to the post-strike refueling area. As he hooked up on the tanker for the fuel that he would need to get him back to home base, he was informed that another pilot, Finch two, had been shot down north of the Red River in the heart of the heavily defended zone he had just left.
He took on a full load of fuel and promptly made himself available for Rescap. He turned and headed back into the country where he knew the weather was poor and where he could now expect fully aroused defenses, even more alert than they had been in the previous portion of his mission. The best weather that he had going back in was 800- to 1,000-foot ceilings with rain. With this backdrop he was a perfect target for the many guns in the area as the gunners knew the exact height of the cloud deck for fuzing purposes and were also able to spot him quite easily as they looked up toward the cloud deck. He had the further disadvantage of having to move slowly enough to be able to search carefully for the downed pilot, which is a difficult assignment even under ideal conditions.
He searched in the hottest corner of North Vietnam under poor conditions for thirty minutes and as he approached the area he had worked before, the weather, getting worse all the time, again forced him down to 100 to 200 feet above the ground. He was unsuccessful in his search and when he could not find the downed pilot he was forced to return to the tanker for more fuel. At those altitudes and at the power settings that he was using, the fuel consumption was fantastic and time on target was short. Gordo was not the only one searching for the downed Finch two, as Finch one, the lead aircraft in Finch flight, had gone back and attempted the same type of search that Gordo had undertaken. Unfortunately, Finch one was not as successful in his search efforts as Gordo, and by the time Gordo returned to the tanker for his second poststrike refueling, he was informed that Finch one had also been shot down. He again picked up fuel and headed back into the same mess, now realizing that he had two people to look for, that the chances of success were not great and that the probability of a safe exit was diminishing with each exposure. He never faltered as he accepted the challenge and reentered to do everything he could, even if it meant losing himself, to try to save two of his nameless buddies who had been downed.
Back on the job again, he received an additional surprise. Although the SAMs are supposed to have a low-altitude limitation, we have seen several occasions where they have been launched and have performed at altitudes at which they are not supposed to be able to perform. As Gordo plodded through the rain and murk under the low ceiling, he found, much to his amazement, that a SAM was headed directly for him. The SAM was not arching up above the weather, the SAM was coming at him underneath the weather. It was difficult to see and it was difficult to orient upon, but there it was, pressing in on him at the terrific speed that the SAM can generate as it accelerates. This left him with a difficult decision. If he went up into the weather he would lose his ability to keep visual track of the SAM’s progress toward him. He would also lose contact with the ground and this would disrupt his search pattern while he spent priceless time and effort seeking an area where he could safely bring his charges back out underneath the low clouds. If he went up he would also be moving back into an area that was more compatible with the SAM’s tracking capability. On the other hand, it was no secret that he was in the area and every gun that could be brought to bear on him was after him. To descend now, especially under the hazardovis weather conditions, was a pretty risky business, but he chose that as the best of the two available courses, and down he went and up came even more of the ground fire that had claimed two Thuds in the past hour. The ground fire was fierce, but he out-maneuvered the SAM so that it crashed into the ground, and somehow or other he came back up through that hail of fire being thrown at him.
As he continued his search he found something he wasn’t looking for. It seems that the day before one of the reconnaissance pilots from another wing had crashed and had been given up as lost, captured, killed or who knows what. While searching for Finch one and Finch two, Gordo suddenly heard a beeper, maneuvered his aircraft to locate the beeper and found, to everyone’s surprise and amazement, the pilot who had gone down the day before. He had been sitting coolly in the jungle, waiting for possible rescue but certainly not expecting it under the horrible weather conditions prevailing that day. Spotting the downed pilot from the day before, Gordo alerted the search and rescue forces and called for more Rescap plus Spad and chopper support to come in and get the pilot out. While he was orbiting, pinpointing the position and calling on the radio to advise the rescue controllers of the situation, SAM again sought him out, and he was faced with the same situation all over again. He again went down to the deck through the withering hail of fire, outma-neuvered the SAM, came back up out of the ground fire and found himself still flying, with still more to do.