“Waco—Carbine. You gonna stay this frequency or go to strike channel?” Now that’s a nice polite reminder from the weasels I had briefed that we would switch channels as we crossed the river. I guess Carbine lead was ready to go to the noisy channel. Everybody else would be on that one and we would get to listen to our Phantom escorts go through their preflight briefing that they should have accomplished back on the ground—but it was a necessary evil.
“Waco flights to ten, button one zero.” And again, the staccato check-in followed by my final preparatory command, “Clean ’em up, green ’em up and start your music.” All was now go.
“Dallas flight, let’s get rid of the tanks,” served to announce that our escorts were in the area, and more important, everyone must watch out as they were in the process of dropping those damn tanks through our ranks again. We never did figure out why they had to drop them right on top of us, and I can assure you that a 20-foot-long fuel tank in the face can ruin your entire day.
“Weak guns at twelve o’clock low,” came from Carbine lead and then he said “Negative SAMs.” This was a very significant call. The lead weasel was scanning the scene and he had no indications of any SAM prelaunch activity. While it only takes them a few seconds to launch a SAM, they must go through some prelaunch activity and they were not yet engaged in it.
Next came the most significant call of the day—or what could have been the most significant. Had it been accomplished properly, it could have saved us three Thuds and four people. The flight indicator call sign was garbled and all you could tell was that it was one of the Phantom escort flights. “Drumfphe—Aaah—got two SAMs at nine o’clock level.” But the weasels had no indication of SAM activity and they don’t miss that. Had Mig-21’s sneaked behind and below the weasels and launched a pair of air-to-air rockets at the trailing element of Carbine flight? I think so. Was this the first time that one of the escort drivers had seen a missile in flight? Was he so steeped in SAM briefings that a SAM was all he correlated with something white streaking through the sky with fire on the end? Did the adrenaline garble ids transmission? By his nine o’clock positioning on his call, did he indicate that he was between the Migs and Carbine flight, and that the missiles were already on the way and eating up the precious few seconds between a break call and missile impact? I think so.
“What was that?” indicated that another escort member had not understood his flight mate.
“He called two at nine level, SAMs.”
“No joy.” The flight lead didn’t see them. He was out of the ball game—and the game was lost.
“Negative contacts. Guns low at twelve o’clock. Very strong guns.” Again the expert weasels in Carbine flight saw no SAMs. They had to be air-to-air missiles.
“There’s a flight behind us, Carbine.” The last chance. Who said it? Who was it? This was all in seconds., as fast as forty people could talk at the same time.
“Say again.” The radio noise was intense.
“There’s a flight behind us. Rog, that’s Finch.” Who in hell was Finch? Were those the Migs?
“Signals up now, moderate indicator, you’re thirteen miles from launch. Still have very strong guns at nine and a signal—a very strong signal—may be a presentation.”
Two of them see it now. “OK, Carbine, he’s looking at us, twelve o’clock.” But that indicated a direction exactly opposite that from which two white objects with fire on the end were now accelerating through the sky.
And again the unidentified and unintelligible voice came from the escort. “OK, we got a SAM at:—ughh—Thrush flight.” Who the hell was Thrush flight? Who was talking? Was Carbine four already down in flames and did someone see air-to-air missiles on the way toward Carbine three? I think so.
And then my chief weasel, one of the nicest and most intense men I have ever known, made his last intelligible airborne transmission, and he made it in his usual precise and definite manner. “This is Carbine three. I’ve flamed out. Carbine three flamed out. Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.”
The radio exploded. “Rog. You’ve got flame coming out—”
“This is Waco lead. They’re at nine level. Take it around to the right—all Waco flights to the right.” I had Leo’s aircraft in sight and ordered all my flights to turn to cover him.
“Number three, you’re out of control. Get out—GET OUT!”
“I’ll get a fix.”
“I got two chutes—two chutes, I got a fix.”
“Look at the chutes.”
“Pull up so we miss them.”
“OK, who in Waco has them in sight?” I did not see the chutes at first.
“I got them up there about eight thirty.”
“Carbine lead has the two chutes at about sixty-five hundred feet.” The ground gunners were shooting at the chutes on the way down but they didn’t hit them. No sporting blood up there.
“OK, this is Waco lead. We’ve got two guys out and in chutes and we’ve got a pretty fair chance of getting them. We’re still far enough back to do some good so we’re calling the whole thing off and going Rescap.” I ordered my sixteen attacking fighter-bombers, my remaining weasels and escort flights to a new task, and all but one flight of four responded at once.
“Waco, you want us to go on?” came from Oakland, who somehow had missed the intent of the whole operation and was still on course for the original target. Although it made no sense, and although it made no difference in the situation we were faced with at the instant, I was so furious at him for being out ahead by himself, I think I would have punched him in the nose if I’d had him in front of me. Your emotions get quite high in a situation like that. Little things jar you when they don’t go right.
Now, having diverted the force from the briefed strike, my job was to organize and control this rescue operation as best I could. You have to alert the rescue guys and give them all the details, and you have to arrange the flights you have on the scene so that you can give maximum cover to the people on the ground and also cover the rescue machines when they arrive. At the altitudes you have to work on a rescue, the fuel goes pretty fast because you have to keep your speed up or you are liable to join those on the ground. You also have to stay close enough to the downed crew to strafe if necessary to keep the enemy away from them while waiting for the rescue machines. This is difficult to do in a high-performance jet with a little bitty wing like the Thud and it becomes difficult to cover those on the ground without falling out of the sky as you rack the bird around in a tight turn it was not designed for. I gave Carbine the job of getting the rescue forces on the way and I took the low cover. I stacked Tomahawk, Oakland and Neptune flights up at higher altitudes so they could conserve fuel and also watch out for more Migs. That way I could stay until my fuel got low, bring the next flight down in the exact location of the downed crew and then I could depart for the tanker to pick up more fuel and return to the scene. We could shuttle the other nights through the same routine while we got all the tankers we could obtain as far north as they could come. As I circled, I remember noting two plumes of smoke that looked like aircraft impacts against the hills. I noted them as I watched the two doll-like figures floating down with occa:sional red tracers from the ground guns arcing over them, but my thought was that their aircraft must have broken apart and impacted in two sections. The energy available for creative thought is limited at a time like this and it was especially so> at the eastern end of my orbit when I found some 37-millimeter guns intent on curtailing my Rescap activities. They weren’t close enough to the guys in the chutes to hurt them so I just called their position out to the other flights and left them alone. No sense in shooting them up at the moment. Just in case we didn’t get our guys out, a bunch of shot-up gunner’s families would probably not do them any good. I was quite confident that we had things set up as well as we could, and I looked forward to barbing Leo that night back at the base as to how come he had been shot down.