By this time in our war, a SAM site that revealed itself was fair game, one of the targets we liked to destroy. This guy was wide open and had showed his colors to an entire strike force loaded for bear. The three dust pillars from the launch pad stretched upward like three large surveyor’s poles saying, here, right in the middle of these three, here is SAM, and nothing SAM’s masters could do would make those indicators disappear for several minutes. It was a great target, the kind a fighter pilot loves. There would be guns protecting the site, more missiles on the launch rails and maybe more in concealed storage, and that silly little control van in the very center. A few loads of bombs could do a lot of good in the middle of that site. It would have been a legal decision nobody could criticize, but the thought wouldn’t go away that he was the leader, the guy who had to get this wing and another wing in and out of that gruesome rail yard. He was also the guy they were depending on to draw that flak at the yards and then paste it good so that all following could have a better chance of completing their runs. He knew it was going to be hard as hell to straighten this gaggle out after the SAM-evading maneuvers and get a decent run at the target, but the yards were the target, the one they had briefed on for so long, the one they wanted to knock out so badly so they wouldn’t have to come back here for it again. The decision was instantaneous and automatic and Geeno squared his forces away and pushed for the yards already coming into view at 600 per.
(I faced a similar one about that time when I was suppressing the flak around a cozy little spot closer to town. The flak was fierce and my course took me right over the hallowed sanctuary of Phuc Yen airfield, which was still off limits. As I pulled up there were four Mig-21’s in run-up position on the end of the runway, getting ready to take off and jump the guys behind me in the force. They, of course, were taboo as their wheels had not yet bounced off the concrete, but I had weapons on board that would leave no big pestholes for identification and it would sure be great to knock those four out all at once. But the guys behind me could probably outdo the Migs, one way or the other, and I knew that the flak in front of me would get nothing but more accurate unless I hammered it for the guys behind me. I pressed on to suppress the flak. As advertised, they rolled down the runway, sucked up their gear, made a 180-degree turn, and were all over the second flight behind me. It’s probably a good thing that I didn’t cream those four Mig-21’s as somebody would have squawked about it, and with my luck they would have court-martialed me. I’m so dumb about things like that, I probably would have told the truth anyway. Hindsight is wonderful.)
Geeno’s problems were compounding rapidly and as he reached up for bombing altitude he found the cloud deck lowering right over the target and another decision was upon him. The weather wasn’t as good as it had looked and the flights were coming up from behind like sue hundred. Was it good enough? Could these pros get in under here, knock the target out and get back out with their skins? The microsecond evaluation by the trained eye said yes—yes they could change the mechanics of their prebriefed attack, they could convert dive angles and airspeeds and sight pictures to change the amount of lead angle required to get the bombs in there. They could get whatever altitude the clouds and the gunners Would give them and as they rolled in, they could tell how high they were and what the angle was to the desired impact point and they could tell when it looked just right and bomb and get the hell out of there. Yes, it was a go, and Geeno so announced on the radio.
The dizzy guns didn’t light up the way they should have. The fire was only light and yet he knew that a goodly portion of the defenses in the North were concentrated down there. To bomb on the minuscule elements that revealed themselves would have helped, but only a little. What was the matter with those clods, were they asleep? Surely he hadn’t surprised them, not after they had been hosing SAMs at him for five minutes. He went as high as the clouds would allow and he had to make a move right away. This was Geeno’s big decision, the instantaneous awful decision of a lifetime and he did the unheard of. He stayed up on top, and he calmly circled over the wildest array of weapons ever assembled in the his-,tory of ground-to-air warfare. He circled because they would not fire at him and if they did not show themselves he could not blast a channel for Ms strike aircraft and some of his boys would get hurt.
As he swung past the end of the yards, SAM broke the relative lull and the seventh, eighth and ninth launches of the day reached for him. As he swung violently out of their guidance capability he tried to set his lead element up to bomb the newly revealed and threatening site, but his evasive gyration had not only thrown the SAMs off, it had swung him out of position to strike the site as its defending guns let fly all the lead they owned, since their charges had revealed their position during launch. His third and fourth aircraft, in the second element, were in good position, and satisfied that they could knock out this threat, he directed them to hit the site, calmly turned his back on them and proceeded to weave his way between the clouds and the rising crescendo of heavy gunfire that now committed itself fully from the other end of the yards. Those were the ones he wanted, the big ones that had remained hidden and were now making up for lost time.
He somehow made it back toward them and knew he had found the target he wanted. Two bombloads were on the SAM site and he still had his own and his wingman’s bombs for these guns. Up and over he went for his bomb run and the timing was great as the first strike flight was approaching their own roll-in. He had to hurry—but not too fast. SAM had other ideas and, in the day’s duel between Geeno and SAM, SAM was not to be denied. A site commander who had remained concealed must have realized the gravity of the threat with the suppressors on the run and the strike birds right on their tail, and he salvoed all six of his SAMs directly at Geeno in a desperate attempt to get this wild one who had flaunted the strongest of defenses by loitering above them. There was no warning and there was no evasive action. All six SAMs guided perfectly, all six proximity fuzes functioned, and Geeno was obscured in a six-sided puff ball of ugly red, brown and gray.
His Thud flew out the other side of the blossoming cloud, faltered for a moment, then rolled over for its final dive. His wingman had been wide of the burst and his bombs did the job. I hope Geeno knew.
Things were still moving at breakneck speed and the strike force was at work. There was no faltering, no hesitation, just deadly split-second precision work. You don’t look for anybody else and you don’t think about anybody else during these seconds when your ass belongs to Uncle Sam. Most of the time you can’t assimilate anything else, and you definitely can’t analyze it until later anyway; nor, even if you could, could you do anything about it. Each one of us understands that, but we don’t particularly care to dwell on it. The strike was a beauty and everyone put them right in there and everyone got out. Everyone, that is, except Geeno—the fighter pilot commander who bet his life that he could knock out the toughest guns in the world and save his buddies.
8. The Longest Mission
Pilots get to be a superstitious lot as they approach that magic 100-mission mark. You can’t get a 95-mission man to change his flying suit or wear a different pair of gloves—they won’t do or wear anything differently. One friend of mine got a St. Christopher medal from his wife when he had only about five missions to go. He quickly put it in his footlocker reasoning, “Whatever I’ve got going for me now, I don’t want to change.” Another clown got hit on his ninetieth but made it back and swore he wasn’t ever going to change his drawers or his socks until he got that hundredth mission.