Then someone awoke to that lonely cry of emergency to the north and the radio spoke to us, “Aircraft on emergency, what’s your problem?” I spit out my answer as tersely as I could but I obviously did not have the regular crew chief, as I got the most frustrating of answers, “Stand by.”
I couldn’t stand by and barked back, “Listen, I can’t stand by, I have two Thuds at minimum emergency fuel and I have got to get to a tanker right now. Give me a steer to the nearest tanker, quickly, or we are both going to flame out.”
As I looked over the side at the rough green carpet below I subconsciously remembered that this was the area where the little people skin captives alive. Some of the more vivid horror stories I had heard made a fast lap around my head, only to be jarred out of position by my friendly controller’s reply to my desperate plea, “Emergency aircraft—this is control. I am having trouble hearing you and don’t quite understand your problem. Proceed further south and give me a call later and I will set up a tanker for you.”
Balls, better that clod should have been looking down at these headhunters than me. I hoped he fell out of his swivel chair and bumped his little head on his scope. The tankers screamed at him and Ken and I both screamed at him and he wouldn’t come back up on the air. But someone in that center must have heard and understood, because within about thirty seconds a new voice came booming through loud and clear from the center, but unfortunately as he shoved Clodley out of the way and took over the scope, he must have alerted all other control agencies within a zillion miles that he had two birds about to flame out, because all at once we had more help than we could use. They all wanted to help now, and they all wanted to do it at once. Within sixty seconds we had calls from every ground operator who could get a hand on a mike and who could make his mouth work. They each wanted us to cycle the emergency equipment, they each wanted an identifying turn or a dogleg, and they each wanted a detailed explanation of the problem. It was tough to get a word in edgewise but Ken finally managed to get through with “Boss, I’m down to five hundred pounds.” I had seven hundred and either quantity is about enough to take a Thud around the block, and that’s all.
The next two minutes were critical and it was clear that the controllers were out of control. I held the mike button down for a few seconds hoping to cut a few people out and announced, “OK, all control agencies shut up and listen. This is Wabash lead. I’ve only got a couple of minutes of fuel left and I must have a tanker. Now, whichever one of you has good contact with me and has me identified for sure, take control of me. Sit back and take a deep breath and go to work. You’ve got to do it right and if you don’t I’m going to park these two birds in the jungle, and so help me if I do, 111 walk back and kill you. The rest of you get off the air.”
One kind soul accepted the challenge and tried to get with the program, but he was; unsure of himself and his resources and he was stumbling. When Ken came through with “Two hundred pounds, boss,” I figured we had about had the stroke.
Then out of nowhere came the clear voice of White tanker. “Wabash—this is White. I think I have a beacon on you. I’ve passed all the gas I am authorized to for the day, and I just have enough to get back to home base, but if you are hurting as badly as I think you are I’m willing to give it a try. Have to land at an intermediate base and get my wrist slapped. Deviation from plans, you know.”
At last. Someone who sounded like he knew what was going on. “Rog, White—Wabash here. You call the shots but make it quick.”
“OK, Wabash, turn to zero nine zero and drop down to twenty-four thousand. I should be about forty miles back on the inside of your turn. OK, Wabash, roll out, roll out. Steady on. Now look at eight o’clock. Eight a little low.”
“OK, Ken, we’re going past him. There he is about seven to you. A little low.”
“I got him and I’m showing zero on the fuel.”
“I’ve still got two hundred pounds. Go get him. Pull your nose up and roll back to your left. You’ll fall right down on top of him.”
As Ken rolled up over his left shoulder and let the big nose fall through, there that big fat beauty was, and Ken’s engine started chugging as the pumps reached for the last drops of fuel.
“White—Wabash two. Got you in sight and I’m naming out now. Toboggan. Go down. Go down. I’m flamed out. Hold two fifty and go down. Come on fellows—give me a chance—toboggan.”
“White, he’s flamed out, STUFF THAT NOSE DOWN. He’s got to coast up to you. Don’t miss, boomer.”
As the big load with the lifesaving fuel pushed over into a dive, the now silent Thud coasted into position behind him and Ken almost sighed as he said, “Come get me boomer.” And the sarge in the back end of the tanker lay on his belly, took hold of the controls of his flying refueling boom, aimed one time and rammed the boom into the Thud’s nose. As the hydraulic locks bit into the receptacle, Ken was hooked up and being towed along for the ride. As the fuel poured into his tanks and the engine restarted, I was delicately charging into position on his wing as my fuel needle bounced on and off the empty mark. As his tanks registered a thousand pounds he disengaged and slid to the side while I moved into the slot, and before I chugged to silence the same expert gentleman stuck me and the fuel flowed. After I filled up, Ken came back on the boom and filled up and we left for home.
“Nice save, White. Where are you going to land?”
“I’ll have to go into your place.”
“Good, we’ll see you on the ground. Beautiful crew, and that boomer is absolutely gorgeous.”
“Glad we could help. See you later.”
All the way home I didn’t even talk to the various control guys whose areas we passed through. They were all very efficient now that we didn’t need them, and it was not because I was pouting that I didn’t talk. I just didn’t trust myself to speak to them at the moment, as I am sure that I would have hurt someone’s feelings. My next task was to get on the phone to my big bosses, which I did as soon as I got on the ground and again thanked White Tanker for his save.
One of Ken’s additional duties, for he was a wing staff weenie, was running our Standardization and Evaluation program. Even in war we got inspected by inspection teams of as many as forty-five men from each of our headquarters, as often as four times a year. They stayed in Bangkok and commuted to the jungle daily in our gooney bird. It was an almost unbelievable farce, but they got combat pay for it. Among the other things we had to do to satisfy the inspectors was to document each pilot’s proficiency at least once each six months, and our Stan-Eval guys had to complete and file a two-page report, with lots of signatures on it, documenting their flight checks on each of our pilots. I figured that if we had to play this silly game, then each time a Stan-Eval guy flew in a flight of four to Hanoi, the other flight members who made it back safely had demonstrated “proficiency,” and they were automatically credited with a flight check, and another absurd square was filled on another absurd chart. A few days after we landed from this particular flight, Ken stopped by the office and advised, “Boss, you were due for a headquarters proficiency flight check,” and handed me my report card. It said, “Colonel Broughton was given a proficiency evaluation while flying as Force, Commander on a combat strike mission. His demonstrated ability to command and control an entire strike force is outstanding. He was able to cope with several critical and unforeseen problems with cool and decisive action. Flight was debriefed.” We almost laughed ourselves sick.
It takes a lot of manevivering of forces and some significant changes in plans to mount a sizable rescue effort such as we would need to try what I wanted to try. I thus had to convince those further up the line that we could be relatively sure of gaining something from the effort. If you launch for this purpose, you have to give up some more routine mission that you are scheduled for and this often causes raised eyebrows in some quarters. I guess they knew I felt quite strongly about this one and since we had verified the fact that there were signals coming from the area, and since we knew that Joe had been on the ground and in good shape, I got the OK for the next day. We provided the fighter cover and configured for that specific mission. The rescue people came up with the Spads and the choppers and we prebriefed to rendezvous crossing the border. We staggered our fighters so we could have good cover through both the search and the rescue, should that come to pass. It didn’t come to pass. The Spads looked and got nothing. No noise and nothing visual. We escorted them back out through the quiet countryside where nothing moved, and nobody even fired a round that we saw. That was officially the end of the attempt. We had done all we could.