As he approaches the end of the first ten missions he will find his flight leader priming him more and more on things like the performance envelope of the Mig. He will learn where the Mig is at its best and where it is weakest. He will find what his particular leader expects when he calls “break” and throws his flight into a hard turn or into violent evasive action to avoid being shot down by an enemy aircraft. There will be no doubt in his mind that he will jettison, or toggle, his bombload short of the target only as a last-ditch life-or-death alternative.
If a Mig or anything else makes him toggle short of his target, he has been defeated. Moreover, in this war that pits high-speed fighters against small, hard-to-see targets in the middle of politically sensitive areas, he doesn’t want to give the enemy a chance to repeat his old song about bombing civilians. He must disregard the fact that “civilians” working in and around the big rail yards and those manning the supply dumps and the vehicle repair shops are the backbone of what he is fighting against. They don’t wear uniforms—they just haul ammunition. The first time he goes to Viet Tri he will be shot at from the “hospital,” but this is of no import. He must be accurate. Even if he gets in the life-or-death spot, the Thud driver will avoid the population. I cannot guarantee the precise detonation point of every bomb that has left every one of our aircraft over the North, but I can guarantee that I have never seen a Thud driver guilty of wanton bombing. We had several who should have toggled their loads but did not because the bombs would not have gone on their target. They got killed for their trouble.
By the time he -learns enough Thai to know that nit noy means “a little thing” and C H I Dooey means “sorry about that,” he will be through the first ten and ready to go against the North. The first time he pulls into the arming area as a member of a big strike force and watches the modified two-place Thuds take off with their wild weasels intent on killing the SAMs, who will be trying to kill him, his mouth will be unbelievably dry. Perhaps SAM will seek him out, or perhaps a Mig will put on a little air show for him and send a heat-seeking Atol missile his way. Perhaps a comrade will fall, and if the comrade is fortunate enough to get his parachute open, the automatically activated electronic emergency beeper will etch its screech on his memory forever. For sure the guns will fire on him, and for sure he will be impressed as he moves along Thud Ridge and uses North Vietnam’s own terrain to mask or block the view of the radar operators on the other side.
He will feel like a big man when he gets back from that first one up North, and that he is.
Copyright
POPULAR LIBRARY • NEW YORK
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Copyright © 1969 by Jacksel M. Broughton
Introduction copyright © 1969 by Hanson W. Baldwin
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 69-16959
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