Hamfist Over the Trail (8 page)

“Too bad about Mitchell,” he said. “I hate it when an FNG gets shot down. We didn't even get a chance to know him.”

He looked through the pages of a manila folder he was holding. “Looks like you were DG in your pilot training class. We don't get many of those.”

“Sir,” I asked, “I noticed the sign on the door said your name was John, but you introduced yourself as Walt.”

“It's this way, Lieutenant. Everybody here has a moniker. It's kind of like a nickname. We typically use their real name to come up with something that sounds similar, or else we use something unique to come up with a name. You met Balls Balser in the bunker. And, of course, you met Speedbrake, our squadron welcome officer. Walt Walters seemed like a natural for me.”

“What kind of name is Speedbrake?”

“Oh. During his first tour he was flying thuds. He came off a target over Hanoi and was rejoining his flight with a lot of overtake. He extended his speed brakes to slow down for the rejoin, and forgot to stow them. He almost ran out of gas on the way home because he needed so much power to stay in formation. He picked up the name Speedbrake after that, and it stuck. It even followed him here.”

He paused for a moment, deep in thought. “I guess we'll call you Hamfist.”

I was dumbfounded. “Hamfist” was an aviation term that referred to a person who's a really poor pilot. “Sir,” I stammered, “I'm not sure why you're calling me that.”

“Well, the way I see it,” he answered, “we can either call you Handjob, because it sounds like Hancock, or Hamfist, because it sounds like Hamilton. Your call.”

It didn't take me long to decide. “I guess I'm Hamfist.”

Major Walters got up, opened the door to his office and stood in the doorway. “Gentlemen,” he called out. When Major Walters started to speak, everyone pretty much stopped what they were doing and looked our way.

“Let's have a hymn for Hamfist Hancock.”

As if on cue, in unison, everyone in the room intoned, “Hymn, hymn, FUCK HIM!”

Then everyone cheered.

I was now officially a Covey.

20

January 1, 1969

We hung around the squadron for about an hour more, getting to know the guys who were there. They were all O-2 drivers, since the OV-10s only flew in the daytime.

“We have O-2s and OV-10s,” explained Fish Fisher, “and the OV-10s don't fly at night, so everyone here is an O-2 pilot.”

“Why don't the OV-10s fly at night?” I asked.

Balls was walking past us, overheard my question, and ventured, “Because they're pussies!”

Fish continued, “Well, they have a big bubble canopy, and it causes a lot of reflections that make it almost impossible to see targets at night or use a starlight scope. The gomers can hear the difference between an OV and an O-2, and they send their movers on the trail if they hear an OV at night.”

He was using terminology I hadn't heard before. “What's a starlight scope?” I asked, “And what the hell is a gomer?”

“You'll see the starlight scope on your first night flight. It's basically a telescope that amplifies light so you can see in pretty much total darkness. And a gomer is, well, one of the bad guys. It's an official acronym the Intel people use for Guy On Motorable Enemy Route. We pretty much call all the Vietnamese gomers,” he answered. “But not to their faces.”

Suddenly, everyone in the room stopped talking. They didn't snap to attention like when a general enters a room, but they did stop talking and stand up. The Squadron Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Ryder, had arrived.

He spotted us three FNGs right away, and came over to us and introduced himself. It was obvious from the ensuing conversation that he had read our personnel files and gotten to know something about each of us.

He looked over at me and said, “Sorry to hear about your friend Lieutenant Mitchell.”

I silently nodded.

He spotted Major Walters in the corner. “Hey Walt, let's have Speedbrake drive these guys over to the Covey hooch and get them settled in.”

When he heard his name, Speedbrake came over. “C'mon guys,” he said, “Let's get you settled in.”

We piled into the squadron Jeep and headed out across the base to the Covey hooch, about two miles away, with Speedbrake driving.

“You're not going to
believe
the Covey hooch,” he remarked. “Probably the best quarters in all Vietnam. Certainly the best at DaNang. A lot of jocks think Gunfighter Village is better, but we have individual air conditioning units, and they only have central air.”

“Gunfighter Village,” he continued, “is where the F-4 jocks live. When the F-4 first came out, it didn't have a gun, only missiles. When they finally had a centerline gun pod for the bird, the first unit to receive it was the 366
th
, here at DaNang. From that time on, everything they did was Gunfighter this, Gunfighter that. All of their aircraft use the call sign Gunfighter. I'd say up to half of the flights we control in the daytime are Gunfighters.”

I was a bit confused. “I thought we only fly the O-2s at night.”

“No, not exactly,” he responded. “The OV-10s only fly during the daytime, but we fly around the clock. We have squadron aircraft departures every three hours. The OV-10s take off at 0900, 1200, and 1500, and we take off at 1800, 2100, 2400, 0300 and 0600. It takes about an hour to reach our AO. We stay on target for about two hours, then we RTB. So each mission is about four hours.”

“Actually,” he said, after thinking what he had just told us, “the OV-10's get to the AO in about a half hour, so they're on target about three hours. Anyway, this way there's always overlap over the target area with previous and following FACs.”

“And,” he added solemnly, “you don't have to wait very long for an on-scene commander if you go down.”

We pulled up outside an austere building. It looked like a standard military barracks. When we entered, I could see that there were individual rooms on each side of a long hallway. About halfway down the hallway was a short connecting hall that connected to another long hallway. From above, the building looked like the letter “H”. The latrine and showers, and a washer and dryer, were located in the short cross hall.

Our names were already on the doors to our rooms, written on sheets of paper and attached with thumb tacks. I went into my room and put what little items I had on the empty bed. It was apparent that I would be sharing a room with Fish.

The room was really pretty nice. Probably better than the VOQ at Hurlburt. Fish had his side of the room decorated with fold-outs from Playboy Magazine, and there was a large Akai reel-to-reel tape deck on the desk near his bed. A window air conditioner was running, keeping the room comfortably cool. Fluorescent light fixtures were in the ceiling, and there was a table lamp on each desk. The two beds were on opposite sides of the room.

I unpacked my A-4 bag and put my clothes in the dresser on my side of the room. I expected my hold baggage would arrive in the next day or two, with the rest of my belongings. I put my personal items in the desk on my side of the room, and placed the photo of Emily on the right corner of the desk. She could watch me while I slept.

After about fifteen minutes, we met up with Speedbrake, as agreed. It was probably obvious from our faces that we weren't all that impressed.

“You probably don't think this is so special, right?” Speedbrake asked.

“It's not bad,” I replied.

“Let me tell you what you'll see if you visit your friends who aren't Coveys, even the Gunfighters. They'll be lucky to have running water, they'll be damned lucky to have toilets, and they'll be super-lucky to have air conditioning. Guys, this is about as good as it gets!”

Just then the telephone in the hallway rang. Speedbrake answered it, listened for a few seconds, said “Thanks” and hung up.

“That was Ops. They said there's going to be an Arc Light about ten miles west of the base in five minutes. Follow me.”

We walked around to the north side of the building, where there was a ladder leading up to the roof of our hooch.

“Let's go up to up topside to get a good view.”

We all climbed the ladder and gathered on the flat rooftop. There was a low wall about three feet high surrounding the roof, and there were some outdoor tables and chairs. Obviously, this was a gathering place of sorts. I wondered, briefly, how they had gotten the furniture up there with only a ladder.

Speedbrake pointed up, way up, in the sky. “Here they come!”

I followed his hand and saw, barely visible, a line of B-52s spaced about a mile apart, flying in trail formation. They must have been well above 20,000 feet.

And then I saw what looked like an endless barrage of bombs falling from the airplanes. At first, they looked so small I could hardly tell they were bombs.

“Look at that!” Speedbrake yelled. “
One hundred six
fucking bombs on every one of those babies! Wait till you see them hit!”

And then we saw the first set of bombs strike the target area. And then the next set of bombs. And the next. The bombing just seemed to never stop. I tried to determine how many B-52s were on the bombing run, but I lost count after about twenty.

This was not pinpoint bombing, it was total annihilation carpet bombing.

About thirty or forty seconds after we saw the bombs hit the target area, we started hearing the explosions and feeling the concussions. Even at this distance, the overpressure was immense. I was really glad there was a low wall surrounding our patio. It gave me a feeling of security that I wouldn't get blown off the roof.

“This is the nearest Arc Light I've seen. The bad guys must really be getting close to base,” Speedbrake commented. He looked off to the west at the immense cloud that had formed over the target area. “I don't think they'll be coming back for a while.”

21

January 2, 1969

The previous day I had gone on a walk around the compound to see what was near our hooch. We were located over a mile from Gunfighter Village, and had pretty much everything we needed, other than a BX, right in our compound. The chow hall was a stone's throw away, and the O'Club was only a block further.

The O'Club had a big sign that read “DOOM Club”. It was an acronym for DaNang Officers Open Mess. Large green footprints were painted on the sidewalk outside the club, put there by the rescue helicopter squadron.

The HH-53 helicopters that performed the Search and Rescue – SAR – mission were called Jolly Greens. The large footprints signified the Jolly Green Giant, like the vegetable brand. The Jolly Greens flew as slow as the O-2, and they ventured into the most hazardous locations in North and South Vietnam, as well as Laos, without hesitation. It was pretty much a certainty that Jolly Green drivers never bought their own drinks at any O'Club in Vietnam.

I got up at 0300 hours and went to the chow hall across the street from our hooch. They were open around the clock, and breakfast was a super deal, at 27 cents for all you can eat.

The reason I was up so early was that Major Walters had notified me the previous evening that he wanted me to fly the 0600 mission. Although the briefing was scheduled for 0430, I wanted to get to the squadron a little early, and it would take me probably 30 minutes to walk the two miles to the squadron.

Walking two miles was no big deal. Walking two miles in the sweltering heat was something else. I was sweating profusely when I walked into Covey Ops and felt the blast of cool air.

I arrived exactly on schedule, and met with the Combat Tactics Instructor Pilot who would be with me on my flight. The CTIP on this flight, Boss Boston, was a pilot I had known at Laughlin. He was two classes ahead of me in pilot training, and had only been in Vietnam a little over three months. After three months, he was already considered an “old head”.

For a fully-qualified combat-ready pilot, the typical schedule rotation would start with the early evening mission, the 1800 launch. After a week of flying the 1800 mission, the pilot would then cycle to the 2100 mission for a week. Each week the pilot would cycle to the next later departure until he flew a week of the 0600 launches, then he would get a week off from flying. During the week off from flying, he'd typically have some administrative duties around the squadron and maybe a day or two off.

Flying the 1800 and the 0600 missions gave the O-2 pilots a chance to see the AO in the daytime, which was important for situational awareness. The schedule of mostly night flying, however, made it difficult for the O-2 pilots to perform a lot of normal activities, like making doctor and dental appointments, taking care of administrative functions at base offices, and shopping at the BX when we were not flying, since we would usually be sleeping during the daytime.

Our mission planning started with a briefing from the squadron Intelligence Officer, a junior Captain. He issued us plastic-covered “1-to-50” charts, with potential targets marked in grease pencil. The 1-to-50 designation meant that one inch on the chart represented 50,000 inches on the ground.

The 1-to-50 was the perfect chart for a FAC aircraft flying at a groundspeed of about 120 knots. Significant geographical features were easy to see on the chart, but it wasn't too detailed. A smaller scale chart would show more detail, but it would be too easy to “fly off the edge of the chart”, requiring additional charts. As it was, we needed to carry numerous charts to cover the entire AO. The next larger scale was the 1-to-250, which would have been easier to carry, but didn't show enough detail for FAC duties.