There were also good things about a strike on Viet Tri. Most targets in North Vietnam were very tough to pinpoint from any distance out, and you were thus fighting right up to the last second to be sure that you set your pattern of attack properly. But if you had any sort of acceptable visibility and cloud cover, you could plan and implement an attack on Viet Tri from 50 miles out. The landmarks were big and they were easy to read. They went down the line just like a batch of stepping-stones, and where the big hook in the river pointed directly to the target itself, there was even a reservoir directly in front of you to say, “pull up now.” The target complex was also large enough so you could pick the most promising impact area with ease. I had picked Viet Tri this time because I wanted to lead the flak suppression flight and get another crack at those two big gun batteries to see if I could beat them.
In an attempt to achieve some degree of surprise, I held the force together until we were almost at the target. When we were nearly ready to race for bombing altitude I swung my SAM chasers out to the side to block for both sections while we bombed. I split my second section on to a slightly divergent course to the right that lined them up with Phu Tho while I pressed straight ahead for the hook in the river. The drill worked like a fine watch and everyone was in perfect position as I started to roll upside down over the real estate occupied by the two big gun batteries so that I could easily let my nose fall through in a good steep bomb run on them the minute they opened up. I had briefed the rest of my flak suppressors to split away from me as I approached the apex of my pull for altitude, and they slid off to other quadrants of the target to cover the threat from all sides, and left me all alone in the ring with the two big gun pits.
I glanced out the side as I rolled, and quickly identified the area, but as I arched upward through 12,000 feet there was no fire from the big guns, only some small stuff from a bit farther north. I couldn’t understand this and” wondered if we had actually surprised them. I could not hope for a fully effective strike unless the guns showed, by firing at me, where they were and which ones were active that day. I floated a little more and when there was still no appreciable action I wondered if perhaps we had really knocked them out for good on the last trip. I was usually quite comfortable in a vertical rolling maneuver or when hanging upside down looking at the ground through the top of the canopy (probably due to my long tour in front of the Air Force demonstration team, looping and rolling my way around the world), but things got a bit sticky on this one. You can only hang upside down and push up for a limited number of seconds before you run out of everything, including guts. I was running out rapidly, all the garbage, including the bombs, wanted to go down, and it was apparent that I was going to accompany them in that direction before too long. I could have fallen through and hit the general area of the guns but that would probably have been a waste of bombs.
I ran out of everything, with still no show of life from my primary objective and had to make up my head in a hurry. The strike aircraft had been right behind me and had already bombed, and the first billows of smoke and debris from the rail yard testified to their success. While I had not bombed the big guns, I had at least insured their silence while my troops did their job and got out of the way. I found out later that one of my trusty wingmen had knocked out a six-gun 85-millimeter site in one of the other quadrants, while my other two wingmen hammered smaller emplacements, so the suppression job was accomplished. In my awkward position, upside down and with my nose pointed in almost the opposite direction from my preferred attack heading, it would have been most difficult to get a good run on those guns even if they opened up at that stage of the game, and the best I could have looked for was a solo recovery going the wrong way back toward Hanoi. I knew I had an instantaneously fuzed load of bombs that would do little damage to the tracks or to rolling stock, but I also knew that there was a dandy choke point with a bunch of transshipment buildings at the far end of the yards that would be Ideal targets for this load. I let the nose fall through, a maneuver about which I had little choice, and rolled the wings 180 degrees so that I now faced toward the end of the yards. I could trade some of the altitude gained in my previous gyration for much needed airspeed, and I launched on a dive-bomb run as the choke point floated obligingly up into my sights.
As I floated away from them, those two big sites opened up with all they had and really covered me on my run. Since I had cat-and-moused them until the force was past, they had no other targets, and I think they used their entire daily quota of ammunition on me. It: turned into a surprisingly pretty dive-bomb run, and when I looked at some film later I saw that I had a perfect hit that blew the cluster of buildings to smithereens; the walls of one building south of the tracks traveled through the air all the way to the north side. All the troops had done good work and when we compared notes and assessed damage we found that we had started several good-sized fires, triggered three large secondary explosions, destroyed thirty-five railroad cars, destroyed the two largest buildings in the choke point area, cut the tracks in twelve places and knocked out the six-gun 85-miliirneter battery. The flights at Phu Tho had also done good work and had closed the choke points at both ends of their yards while saturating the tracks and cars in between. Not bad for the start of a day’s work, and we got everybody out without taking a hit.
I was feeling quite satisfied with the drive and precision of my troops as we headed out of the target area and moved toward the south and west. We were fat on fuel, and the weather looked favorable so I decided to take my boys hunting in my favorite area. We were about halfway to Hoa Binh when my SAM chasers, who were still screening between Hanoi and our flights, began to chatter about SAM launches. Three of the four Thuds in my flight had suffered from equipment problems since takeoff and we were not in shape to take SAM on at this particular moment. When I took a quick glance at the terrain, it was not difficult to see that I was very close to the area where SAM had clipped me before, and I took my troops into an evasive exercise just on general principles. Sure enough, SAM zipped over the top of the spot we had been occupying shortly before and charged on aimlessly to detonate himself in frustration at finding only empty air. I won’t swear to it, but I think he came from the same site that had hosed me before.
We stayed low until we were down around the Black River when I figured we were in position to pick up some altitude and hunt. Then came the Migs to complete our exposure to all the defensive elements for the day. From the various calls on Mig position, the hastily drawn mental picture indicated that we could look for action in our area and it took only a couple of sweeps of the head before I located a Mig-21, all set up on a quartering head-on pass on us. He had good position and plenty of altitude, and he was really moving as he closed toward missile launch range from my ten o’clock position. I called the break and started a turn into him that increased the closure rate considerably and compounded his tracking problems to the point that he figured he could not score on that pass. My wingman and my element were up in perfect position and as the 21 whistled overhead, I started a reverse that would allow us to keep him in sight. He used his superior turning capability and pulled up and over in a wingo-ver that put him at about our four o’clock position as he started his second run. Our Thuds, relatively light on fuel, responded well to the full load of coal we poured on them, and as the element crossed underneath me and pulled up into position, the Mig found himself looking right down the axis of the scissors we had prepared for him. He could hardly have pressed the attack on either element without exposing himself to another pair of hungry Thud drivers. It took him only a second or two to realize this and he deferred. He wrapped that little beauty into a diving inverted turn as he disengaged and streaked back for the sanctuary.