At least two hours before the first start-engine time, the mission commander gathers all of his charges together and conducts a very detailed briefing on each of the three probable missions. Somewhere in this time frame the decision will be made in Saigon as to which target we will attack (we say we are executed). The decision is flashed through the combat operations net to the mission commander, quite often too late to make for comfortable timing in the still necessary internal flight briefings, physical transit to the aircraft, and launch of the strike force. You can bet that if a subject addresses itself to the primary job of attacking the enemy, the wing weenies have worked it over long before our throttle jockey walks out to his Thud.
If we now have our driver matched with a machine, we need to talk about what we are going to do with him. He will normally be sent into action as one member of a flight of four aircraft. This flight will be sent against a target of its own, or will be part of a strike force or group of flights all tasked to strike the same target. Each flight of four will be given a phonetic designator to facilitate identification and radio conversation. If we assume a call sign of Wabash, the flight leader would be known as Wabash one or Wabash leader. Wabash two would fly on the leader’s left wing, and together they would be the lead element of the flight. Wabash three is known as the element leader and is the second in command of the flight. He flies on the right side of the leader with Wabash four on his right wing.
We can utilize our combinations of men and machines in several ways. If we launch them to bomb a specific-building or piece of real estate, they are on a strike mission. If we launch them with instructions to look up and down a certain road or to roam a narrow geographical area and attack the best target observed by the flight leader, they are then on an armed reconnaissance, or armed recce. If their announced purpose is to participate in a rescue attempt, they are on Res-cap. Anytime you are monitoring someone or something below, you are Capping, or on Cap. If our aircraft are being used to help the ground forces achieve some specific objective, they are providing close support. This support can be directed by a forward air controller, or FAC, who flies a slower aircraft and drops marking devices on the target, or it may be directed by radio or visual signals from the ground. If we send fighters to protect other aircraft from attack by enemy aircraft, they are escorting. When the forces are available, escort by faster, more maneuverable aircraft is desirable for slower aircraft or aircraft involved in a mission that demands all of their attention or all of the capability available in their machine.
Our fighter-bomber pilot is concerned with putting the bombs and rockets that he carries onto the target. Just as he must have internal wing support to get into the air, he must have airborne support to achieve his goal. This support includes photographic and electronic reconnaissance aircraft whose mission differs from his own armed recce only in that their goal is to find, record, and identify, as opposed to destroy. It includes aerial refueling support from huge tankers whose only task is to pump fuel through a tube in their tail and into a receptacle in the nose of the fighter. Overloaded fighters use a great deal of fuel when they accomplish maximum performance maneuvers. They must depend on ground radar stations, manned by a group known as controllers, to steer them and the tankers to a common piece of sky where they can accomplish the mandatory fuel transfer.
The helicopter has assumed a place in the direct combat support of the attackers. These choppers can stand still over a downed pilot and hoist him to safety, if the chopper can locate him and if the chopper can survive the two-way trip and the pickup. To find a downed pilot and steer the chopper to his position we use old propeller aircraft which are less vulnerable to small-arms fire from the ground, yet faster than the chopper. They have the ability to stay airborne for long periods and the heavy load of bombs, rockets, and guns they can carry allows them to harass the enemy on the ground near the downed pilot and thus protect both the pilot and the chopper.
But our GI pilot worries little about all these other folks at the start of his tour as he is more concerned with perfecting his own techniques. He knows that North Vietnam is split into six segments called Route Packages, and he knows the defenses are lighter in the southernmost package—Route Pack 1—and get tougher as the numbers increase to Route Pack 6—the northernmost segment. Although he will fly his first ten missions in the easiest of the areas, the first one is still bound to be an exciting event. When he starts to taxi out for that first takeoff, the bombs and rockets on his aircraft are inert due to the safety clips inserted in the fuzes. When he gets to the arming area at the end of the runway and the arming crew pulls those red-flagged clips out of the system, those munitions are armed and ready to go. He is carrying live ordnance and he is off to combat.
His first few missions will be scheduled in good weather where he can see the ground and the other aircraft around him—Visual Flight Rules, or VFR. After he has had a chance to respond properly to the numerous changes in radio channels by following his leader’s instructions to “go to button three”—a switch to channel three—without making the wrong move and losing contact with the rest of the flight, and after he has accepted fuel from the tanker in sequence with the rest of his flight—or cycled off the tanker—in the bright sunshine, he will no longer be scheduled selectively for good weather. He will get to perform under IFR, or Instrument Flight Rules, when the weather is bad and when he flies only by position on his leader if he is a wingman, or only by reference to his flight instruments if he is leading others.
On his first few missions he is almost sure to use more fuel than any of the other flight members. He knows that he must maintain flight integrity and that he must go where his leader goes. Except for a few seconds on the dive-bomb run itself, he must maintain tallyho, or visual contact with all his flight-mates. This is not always easy to do with a big bombload, and until he learns the tricks, he will make up time and space by lots of burner. The afterburner, which gives additional power but on the Thud engine consumes fuel as fast as you could pass it through the necks of six milk bottles at once, is activated by simply pushing the hand-held throttle sideways. The flight leader is responsible for steering properly, or maintaining the correct heading, and he is responsible for putting all of the flight in the right place at the proper airspeed. If the wingman fails to respond to his leader’s actions properly, he can plug in, or stroke the burner, to cover up, but his fuel supply will tell the story. Each mission has an established minimum-fuel radio call to enable the leader to make fuel plans based on the man with the least fuel. It will be the new man who reaches this state first and calls bingo.
There is a good chance that during these early missions he will learn that what we call switch actions are not always as simple as they seem. There are nine separate switches that must be activated to insure that the bombs will leave the aircraft properly during the dive-bomb run, and the pilot sets them up when he crosses into enemy territory and the flight leader calls, “Clean ’em up, green “em up, and start your music.” If he forgets one—and when things get rough this is possible—it may cost his life. He had better learn to jink properly during these missions. That is the art of weaving, bobbing, twisting, and turning to avoid enemy gunfire as you come off the dive-bomb run. They used to call me the Super linker, but I never got hit coming off a target.