We had a good example of the weather problem the day we lost Pete—the visibility was so bad you couldn’t believe it. We had been reporting this to the head shed for several days, but were unable to convince anyone that it was too poor to work in safety. The show must go on. Although Pete was relatively new to us, he had made a great impression, and he had a wealth of experience to back it up. He was supposed to have been our next new squadron commander and with this in mind, we had him out setting his fingernails dirty in all the areas we flew in. That day he was flying number two and finding out what the wingrnen felt like in the nasty visibility of the near North. The big headquarters executed his flight to work with a forward air controller flying a slower prop aircraft, who would direct the fighters against targets he had identified on the ground. We figured the visibility would make the forward air control portion of the mission a loser from the start, but they had to go, and sure enough, by the time they arrived in the area, the airborne controller had aborted the mission because even in his slow prop job, he could not see his hand in front of his face, to say nothing of having adequate visibility to control high-speed fighters against pinpoint, sensitive targets. The controller had a change in plans for them and sent them out on their own to work an area that was no better as regards visibility but far less sensitive.
Once in the newly assigned area, the lead knew they had their hands full, and as he searched for his target and attempted to roll in on it, he instructed Pete not to go lower than 10,000 feet, but to attempt to keep him in sight as he attempted to split the murk. The lead hurtled down the chute, but lost all visual contact and bombing references, aborted the pass and recovered his altitude on instruments. Back on top, ready to give it a second try, the lead attempted to call his number two man on the radio, but to no avail. He stayed up on top and milled around over the target area trying in vain to locate his flightmate by visual or electronic means, until low fuel forced him to drop his bombs on a target of opportunity that he was able to see and head for home as he alerted the rescue forces that his wingman was among the missing. The rescue people searched in vain, and the only thing other fighters called in to support the rescue managed to locate was an active heavy radar-controlled gun battery. When the lead recovered at home base, we found several hits in the underside of his aircraft, but he had no knowledge of when or where or how he had taken the hits. It was supposed to be an easy one, but we had one bird shot up, and we never again heard from, or about, our prospective new squadron commander.
The weather system that made the visibility so bad moved further north, but then we lost John on a well-traveled route in the easy area that everybody knows waxes hot and cold. I was in command of the force that day and we launched on the primary target way up there in the face of a weather report that looked impossible. Someone up the line got the same impression, but not until we were on the tankers, and we were diverted to a series of alternates that we had sagely planned for in advance. After .sorting out mission planning cards and target photos, and jamming now worthless maps into odd corners of the cockpit, we all got squared away, and the flights split away from what had been the strike force to go after their individual and lesser defended targets. I was the first flight across the line and as John’s flight entered behind and to the north of me, his flight leader further split his flight into elements, and he took one half of his assigned route, while John with his element took the other.
John flew over the spot he eventually bombed but elected to continue to the northern end of his route while lowering his fuel load to make his Thud lighter and more maneuvera-ble, and taking a good look at the entire route. When he swung back over the desired area, he set up his element and rolled in on his run without opposition, but he didn’t like the way the run looked and figured he could do better with another try, so he aborted the pass and pulled back up over the target for his third exposure over the same point. His number four man had rolled in behind him as instructed and had completed his bomb run, leaving no doubt in the minds of those on the ground as to what the Thuds were after. John readjusted his position, rolled in again, and, sure enough, got hit hard as he was dropping his bombs. The ground gunners had received all the tracking practice they needed and knew they had one in their sights, and when they opened up, they did their job well. He got the nose up and managed to get a little way past the target before she locked up on him and he had to step out.
We found out later that afternoon that there was plenty of firepower in that desolate section of the world, and later intelligence info indicated that the target he had picked was a sizable “group of well-organized and well-equipped troops who were moving south with their weapons. If we had been able to control the winds, we probably could have recovered him, but the wind was blowing directly in his face as he leaped out, and no amount of pulling or tugging on the risers could keep him from drifting backward, and he landed right smack where the enemy troops were. By the time I had responded to the Mayday call, he had hit the ground directly on the road he had been bombing, and he and his chute had disappeared the instant he touched down. It was quite apparent what had happened, but we still wa.nted to be sure. I had the exact spot pinpointed by both coordinates and description, and when I arrived, the flight lead and number two had been forced to head for the tanker for fuel, and the number four man, on his first combat mission, was somewhere between disoriented and lost. Once again I was running a Rescap, and the first thing I did was locate the neophyte number four man and get him squared away and on his way back to the tanker. He later turned out to be one of our shiny lads, but unfortunately he was killed in a midair collision toward the tail end of his tour, as he himself was shepherding a then-new sport around.
When the first Spad arrived on the scene, I found myself and my number two man as bottom cover and we were able to get the Spad almost over the spot, yet displaced a couple of miles to the north to take advantage of the protective cover of the hills. The Spad and I decided that the only way to determine whether further rescue was feasible or necessary was for him to take a close look at the spot where we knew John had hit the ground. We figured that if we both headed west for a few miles, he could stay on the deck with his slower aircraft and turn in toward the spot while I could light the burner and pull my element up several thousand feet as I did a wingover to the left to line up with the road. The combination of the burner noise and the up and over maneuver was calculated to get their attention, and then we could roll in and race down the road with our cannon blazing while the Spad came in on the treetops. Halfway down the road, about over the spot where we had seen John, I would light the burner again and do another wingover and come back down the road shooting up the south side as he passed the spot and broke north for the cover of the hills. We executed the maneuver, and as I approached firing range, I noticed that the hills sloped rather abruptly upward on both sides of the road, making in effect a valley. Small arms, .50 caliber and who knows what all else spit from every rock and ditch along the roads and up into the foothills, and I realized that we had stumbled onto at least a battalion of North Vietnamese regulars. Those guys were dug in, and they were loaded, but it still looked like good shooting for me for the first few rounds. I fired, and then the stupid gun jammed and not another round passed through it that day. I cursed the gun, and I cursed the troops on the ground, and I flew to the spot and started around, knowing full well that my gun was done, but that the Spad was behind me doing his part. Around we went for part two and this time I felt like I had a toy airplane flying through real bullets as I pulled the trigger on the dead cannon and screamed for nobody’s edification but my own, “Drop dead, you bastards.”