Hamfist Over the Trail (12 page)

After a few minutes, we heard Magpie flight check in, and Boss had them authenticate. They sounded different from the fighters I'd heard previously.

“They're Aussies,” Boss explained. “The Magpies are B-57s out of Phan Rang. You're playing FAN tonight, so be sure to keep track of all of our information. Just like before. Start time, end time, target coordinates, ordnance, BDA, the works.”

“Got it.”

When Magpie flight was overhead, they couldn't see us.

“Not a problem,” Boss transmitted, “I'm going christmas tree now.”

With that, he turned on every light on our airplane: navigation lights, rotating beacon, and landing light.

“Okay, Covey, we have you in sight.”

“Roger,” boss transmitted, “set up a wheel to the left and I'm going to see if I can get this guy to open up on us. If he starts firing, you're cleared in hot from wherever you are at the time. Just keep me informed of your direction.”

Boss rolled into a 120-degree bank and brought the airplane nose around to the target area in a 30-degree dive. He armed up the rocket pod and fired off a willie pete.

Firing a rocket at night was a totally different experience from daytime. The rocket motor left a trail of sparks all the way from the airplane to the ground. The rocket hit the ground with a bright flash.

If going christmas tree wasn't enough to show the gomers where we were, the light trail from the rocket did the trick. The triple-A opened up on us with bright orange tracers. Boss jinked the aircraft out of the way.

“Looks like a quad-23,” Boss said, then he transmitted, “Magpie, do you have that triple-A? Cleared in hot.”

In his Australian accent, Magpie lead responded, “Got it, Covey, I'm in from the north. Number two will come in from the north also.”

“Roger. Make your break to the west. I'll be holding off to the east.” Boss swung the airplane around to a north heading, and he watched the target area out of his left window.

“Uh, Boss,” I suggested, “don't you think we should turn off the lights now?” I was really getting uneasy being lit up like, well, Christmas.

“If I turn off our lights, the gunner will probably start firing at Magpie when he pulls off target. I want him to shoot at us, so Magpie will be able to get a bead on him.”

I was really starting to wonder what I had signed up for.

The gunner opened up on us again just as Magpie rolled in, and again we jinked out of the way. Magpie's bombs were really close to the target. Maybe 20 meters short.

“Magpie two, put your bombs 20 meters south of lead's bombs. You're cleared in hot.”

It was hard for me to keep track of where everyone was, since Magpie flight was blacked out. Right after he dropped his bombs, Magpie two called, “Two's off.”

At the same time, the gun started firing at Magpie Two. Then, almost instantly, it was engulfed in Magpie Two's bombs.

“Shit hot,” Boss transmitted. “Do you guys have any more ordnance?”

“Sorry, Covey, that's all we have.”

“Okay, you're cleared to RTB. I had you on target at 35, off at 45. BDA one 23 mike mike destroyed. Unknown KBA. Great job, guys.”

We did some more VR, then headed back to DaNang.

“I guess you noticed how much ground fire and triple-A you can see at night.”

I nodded.

“Well, don't forget, they're shooting at you in the daytime also. You just can't see it as well. That's why I like flying at night. When you can see the triple-A, it's not all that hard to jink out of the way. Kind of like not getting hit when you play dodge ball.”

I swallowed hard. I had never been very good at dodge ball.

27

March 1, 1969

I was scheduled to fly a day mission, but needed to attend a squadron meeting in the morning. Most of the guys in the squadron were in attendance, other than the night fliers and the guys who were out on missions.

The squadron had a rather large briefing room that was occasionally used for mass briefings. A young Lieutenant was standing at the front of the room, waiting to speak to us. He was wearing fatigues, rather than a flight suit, and didn't have any wings on his uniform, so he was obviously a ground-pounder.

There appeared to be a tree growing out of the floor at the front of the room. That got all of our attention.

“Gentlemen,” the Lieutenant began, “it's eight o'clock, so let's get started. My name is Lieutenant Waller, from Operation Task Force Alpha.”

“TFA,” he continued, “is the operation to track enemy movements along the trail. This,” he motioned to the tree, “is actually an artificial tree with acoustic and seismic sensors. We plant these along the trail by dropping them from F-4s from Ubon, and then we interrogate them from EC-121s flying along the Thai border.”

I looked carefully at the artificial tree, and it sure looked real.

Lieutenant Waller brought out a large map, maybe three by four feet, mounted on a cardboard backing. It had a plot of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

“We have these sensors along most of the trail now, and can give you real-time information on truck activity. We can receive their movements from the seismic sensors, and we have linguists listening to the acoustic microphones. When we have a lot of trucks moving toward a delta point, like here,” he pointed to Delta 43, “and not continuing on to the south, we know there's a truck park or trans-shipment point close by. We'll pass that information on to your Intel folks, and you'll know where to direct your attention.”

“Yeah,” Speedbrake whispered to me, “I really want to direct my attention to Delta 43.”

After the briefing, we all went to the front of the room to examine the tree close up. Even from right next to it, I couldn't tell it wasn't a real tree.

Lieutenant Waller could see I was impressed.

“Nobody can tell they're phony,” he said. “We've got some recordings you wouldn't believe. Some of the gomers have had sex with their camp followers right next to our com-mikes and didn't know we were recording them.”

I was looking forward to having access to the TFA data. Maybe it would help me get better BDA.

It was time for me to fly a solo day flight. Lieutenant Waller had confided to me that, even though the information had not been officially disseminated to Intel, there really was a lot of activity around Delta 43. He hadn't just been making it up for illustrative purposes.

I decided it was time for me to get a closer look at Delta 43.

I entered the AO and made my way to the vicinity of Delta 43, but kept well off to the east. I flew a racetrack pattern from north to south, and used my gyro binoculars to look for activity in the area.

I just couldn't see anything that looked like a good candidate for a truck park. But, even with gyro stabilized binoculars, it was difficult to see very much from far away. I needed to get closer.

I carefully edged nearer to Delta 43, and everything seemed to be going well. I kept varying my heading and altitude, and started to think that this Delta 43 reputation was a bit overblown. I headed south from Delta 43 to see if I could find anything further down the trail.

Suddenly there was a loud BANG right behind my aircraft, and the plane pitched down violently. I'm not sure which emotion I felt more: fear, or being pissed off at myself for being dumb enough to turn my tail to that gunner and giving him a clear shot at me. That son of a bitch had nailed me.

I pulled back on the yoke and nothing happened. Now I was really getting scared. I tried to bank the aircraft, and the flight controls appeared to operate correctly in roll mode. I was preparing to bail out, since the aircraft was now in a fairly steep dive.

Then I thought, what the fuck, I'll try the elevator trim. It worked! I was able to fly the aircraft using the electric trim. It turned out, the trim cable went out through the right tail boom, and the elevator cables went out through the left boom. Apparently, my elevator cables had been cut by the explosion, but my trim cable was fine. I was still flying. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Just when I thought I had everything under control, the rear engine quit. Now I was in deep shit. The rear engine was the critical engine, and I was only about 4000 feet above the terrain. I jettisoned my rocket pods, feathered the rear prop, headed west toward Saravane, and gave a call on GUARD frequency.

“Mayday, mayday, mayday. Covey 218 has taken a hit. I have flight control problems and lost my rear engine. I'm west of Delta 43, headed toward Lima 44.”

Hillsboro came back on GUARD. That surprised me, since I had assumed they only operated on VHF.

“Roger, Covey 218. We have contacted King and they are scrambling the Jolly Green from NKP. We'll have them head toward Lima 44.”

It was comforting to think that help was on the way, even though there was no assurance at all that I would make it to Lima 44.

As soon as I jettisoned my stores I had slowed to Best Glide Speed, 93 knots. I was not able to maintain altitude, but my sink rate was minimal, perhaps 300 feet per minute. I looked out ahead and could see Lima 44. It was hard to tell if I would make it or not.

I dialed zero mills into my gun sight, and looked at Lima 44 with reference to the pipper. It wasn't moving. It looked like I might just make it. Or maybe come up a little short. And then a funny thing happened.

My asshole started twitching. I had heard about people munching on their seat cushions with their ass, and I'd thought it was just an expression.

“I'll be damned if I ever tell anybody about this,” I muttered to myself.

I kept the landing gear up until I was absolutely sure I would make it to the runway. On short final I put the gear handle down, and the airplane sagged a little as those humongous gear doors opened and created all that drag. Since the hydraulic pump was on the front engine, at least I didn't need to pump the gear down.

I touched down on brick one, and my asshole stopped twitching. I cleared the runway, and there was a nondescript “follow me” vehicle with a Laotian driver waiting to marshal me to a parking spot. I shut down the front engine and exited the airplane. It felt good, really good, to be on the ground.

I looked over the airplane to see how badly it had been damaged. It didn't look too bad. There was a hole from shrapnel in the rear engine cowling, and another hole in the left boom. Other than that, the airplane looked perfectly airworthy. The decision of whether it would fly again was well above my pay grade.

Within five minutes of my arrival, there was an HH-53, Jolly 22, landing alongside my parking spot. I hopped on board and we took off.

I'd never been in a helicopter before. It was a really different experience, with all kinds of unfamiliar vibrations. The pilot in the left seat kept looking back at me and grinning.

It was a short flight to Nakom Phenom Air Base, NKP, sometimes called “naked fanny”. When we landed, the left seat pilot came back to where I was sitting, and removed his helmet. It was Vince Garner, my room-mate from senior year at the Academy! I hadn't recognized him with his helmet on and his visor down.

“Vince! You're a real life-saver.”

“
How you been, Ham? Long time no see. There's an extra bed in my hooch. Let's get you settled in and have some mission booze.”

“That sounds great to me, but I think I need to contact Covey Ops.”

“Yeah, King takes care of all that. They'll get you a phone patch through to DaNang. Come with me.”

It was really great to see Vince. This wasn't the first time he had saved my ass. Five years earlier, when we were room-mates during doolie summer, he had made my bed for me in the morning after I had gone to sick bay in the middle of the night. I was still at the Flight Surgeon's office when the room inspections started. When the senior cadet came by to check our room, my bed passed inspection. It was a big deal at the time.

Vince escorted me into the Command Post, and we used a secure phone line to call Covey Ops. Major Walters sounded relieved to hear my voice.

“Hamfist,” he said, “I want you to take the rest of the day off at NKP. You could use some time away from DaNang. I'll arrange for a C-130 flight for you tomorrow.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You're welcome. One more thing, Hamfist. Have somebody point you to a massage parlor, and get yourself a rub-and-scrub. That's an order.”

“Yes, sir.”

28

March 1, 1969

It was really great to see Vince and catch up with him. We went to his hooch, and he found me a bed and a place to put my flying gear. Then we headed to the NKP O'Club.

“You're not going to believe how many classmates we have here,” he said. “Dave Marshall and Dick Fisher are both flying Spads out of here, and I work with them all the time on SARs. We'll meet up with them at the club.”

Going to the NKP O'Club was like old home week. I recognized several guys from my past life, either jocks who were in classes ahead of me at Laughlin, or some guys from some of the senior classes at the Academy.

We ran into Dave and Dick at the Club, just as Vince had predicted. It was really neat to get together with three classmates and catch up with what was happening in our lives since graduation. Dick and Dave had both gotten married right after graduation.