“OK, Waco may have to put somebody higher to relay. Stand by, I’ll be right back.”
“Waco—Carbine.”
“Yeah, go ahead.”
“I just talked to Royal and they said it would be forty minutes before they could get anyone into the area, and I told him that you would be in the area and would be in charge.”
“OK, get those tankers as far north as you can get them so we can hit them in a hurry.”
“Rog, I passed two good chutes and contact with the front seat, and he would like to have someone high over your position for radio relay.”
“OK, Tomahawk, you’re the top guy. You go high, OK?”
“Rog. Tomahawk, let’s go rescue freq.”
In the background a feeble transmission from far to the south forced itself through the beeper scream and gave us another indication that the wheels were turning and that we had hope of getting our boys out. “OK, Chopper lead—Royal. I’ve got you on my radarscope, and the fighters are in the area. They have tally on the two who are down and Waco is in charge. Both people landed safely and they have voice contact with one now, over.”
“Royal—Carbine.”
“Carbine—Royal two. Go.” This told us that another cog had slipped into place. The emergency standby rescue controller, Royal two, had scrambled from far to the south and had progressed far enough into the area to assume his role of on-scene controller. We could hear him all the way up to the area where we orbited, looked and waited.
“Roger, Waco is low and Tomahawk is coming up this frequency to relay.”
“Roger, Roger, understand, thank you.”
“Royal—Tomahawk on.”
“Roger, Tomahawk, how long will you be able to stay in the area?”
“We’ll be able to stay about forty-five minutes.”
“Roger, understand forty-five minutes, and are you groomed for Migs?”
“Affirmative.”
“Rog, and I am not reading anyone else up there. Are there any others up there we can use for Cap?” Once again it was apparent that there was confusion within the control element as to what they had to work with.
“Roger, Waco, a flight of four, Carbine with three, Oakland with four and Neptune with four plus the Phantoms in the area.”
“Carbine two, you still getting the beeper?”
“Not at this time.” The beeper has a limited range, even at altitude, and Carbine must now have realized that they had left the beeper behind in the area of the Rescap.
“Carbine one—two here. Let’s go button three for one.”
Such a switch, going to a less commonly used radio channel for one minute, is the only way you can talk to your flight members when the chatter gets real bad, and Carbine two wanted to talk with his leader in private, high in the unfriendly skies of the North.
Completing the channel change he checked in, “Carbine two.”
“One. Go ahead.”
“Rog, I think our number four got hit just prior to Leo getting hit.”
“You do?” The tone of startled disbelief was pitiful, such a familiar voice that you could almost see the leader’s face. He didn’t want to believe that he had lost another good young kid but he already knew it was true. Why else no contact with Bob? Nobody had seen him or talked with him in the last few crazy minutes. Bob was brand-new when he walked into our wing. He had been through the normal training routines, but the cocky little lieutenant was on his first real job in the fighter business and he progressed well. He had earned his spurs on some of the toughest ones we had, and was now one of our sharp-eyed wingmen enjoying the respect of his comrades, but his progress had come to a flaming halt against a hilltop in North Vietnam. Did he get out of the aircraft? Who knows—I don’t even know what happened to the machine, but now I know what that second pillar of smoke meant. This was all quite difficult to explain to his parents later, especially by mail. His Dad wrote that Bob’s mother had been ill since being notified—could I tell him more? I didn’t know any more. Bob’s Dad said he had taught Bob to be a good woodsman and that he could go for days in the hills—did I think he had a chance of being in the hills? I didn’t know.
This meant that there was only one of the lieutenants left in the squadron. We had received a group of them all at once and they were all great kids. Now there was only one left. The guys in the squadron took care of that the same evening, partly to boost the spirits of all concerned and partly to break the hex. Although the remaining lieutenant had a couple of years to go before anyone would be seriously considering him for promotion to captain, the squadron jester announced that the air in the local area was obviously unhealthy for lieutenants, and that from now on until the end of his combat tour all squadron members would address the surviving lieutenant as brevet captain. They made believe they didn’t have any lieutenants and the lad in question successfully completed his tour with one real and one imaginary bar on his shoulder.
The question of what happened to Bob was unanswered, but the question of the beeper that was stuck was now pretty well answered. Carbine one and two, the two surviving weasels, were out of the immediate rescue area en route to the tanker and they could no longer hear the screeching monster. Leo and his Bear were on the ground and Leo had checked beepers off on the radio. Four was down in the area and one of his beepers was the culprit. If we could have isolated it earlier, who would have filled in for him? Would the shoot-down have gone the same? For sure the Rescap would have gone better without the noise. I wonder if he was fiddling around in the cockpit trying to reach his beeper when he got bagged? I don’t know. Iri. this business it is not too profitable or comforting to think too much about the ifs.
“Royal—Carbine.”
“Carbine—Royal. Go ahead.”
“Roger, I cannot locate my number four man. He was on the wing of number three. I cannot get him to respond. There’s a possibility he’s down in the same area, over.”
“Roger, so that would be Carbine three and four, positively three and probably four.”
“Roger, I only personally saw one aircraft in flames. It went into a spin just as they ejected. I saw two good chutes from number three, that’s a two-seater. Number four was a single-seater with one man in it. I never saw it but I can’t raise him now.”
“Roger, can you cycle off the tanker and go back in now?” Royal wanted Carbine and his wingman to refuel and return to the rescue area.
“Roger, if I can be sure that neither one of our beepers is active. Are you getting that now, four—or two—are you still getting that?”
“Not at the present time.”
“Roger, Carbine one and two can go back in.”
“Roger, you can contact control for a tanker and let us know on this frequency when you come back in.”
Carbine lead switched the surviving half of his flight to the radio frequency monitored by the waiting tankers and began the lonely trip back to refuel. Here for a few minutes he was in a different atmosphere. The challenge is to find the tanker, get the fuel and get back into the fray quickly. Nobody is shooting a.t you out here, but the intermission is not particularly relaxing. You always feel like hell when you lose a guy, and when you lose more than one it is downright grim. In his two-place machine Carbine lead and his Bear groused at each other as they searched for the tank and tried to reconstruct the scene. In the two-place job you chatter at the other guy over a mike that is hot all the time. In a single-seater, you talk to yourself.
“Wonder what hit him?”
“Hmm?”
“Wonder what hit him?”
“Crap, I don’t know.”
“I heard somebody call SAM but they never did give their call sign.”
The tanker rendezvous was going at about the normal pace it always assumes when the air is charged with emergency. You can’t get the right people to talk to you. Carbine lead was bouncing from channel to channel on the radio but none of the tanker control radars would respond and offer the desired steer to contact with the tanker.