Hamfist Over the Trail (9 page)

“You'll see that, after a few weeks, you'll know our AO like the back of your hand,” Boss noted. “I was told you had to leave FAC-U early, so we have a lot of stuff to brief that they didn't teach you at Hurlburt.”

And brief me he did, non-stop, until it was time to head out to the airplane for a quick preflight and launch. To be honest, I felt a bit overwhelmed, but Boss said that's how he felt a few months ago, and it would come together pretty quickly.

The airplane was parked in a fortified revetment. Each airplane had its own separate revetment. We conducted the preflight inspection, and it was pretty standard, other than the rocket pods. They were full: seven 2.75-inch folding-fin white phosphorus aerial rockets, called “willie petes”, in each pod. In training, we had only flown with four willie petes, two in each pod. The weight and drag of fourteen rockets would really affect airplane performance.

After the preflight inspection, I started to get into the airplane.

“Not yet, Ace,” Boss remarked, “Time for the most important part of the preflight.” He was standing by the edge of the revetment. He had unzipped his flight suit from the bottom and was urinating on the revetment.

“I got into this habit of pissing on the revetments before every flight,” he continued. “It brought me luck. Then, about two months ago, Major Walters told me to get my ass into aircraft 443 and get airborne ASAP for a high-priority SAR. So I jumped into 443, didn't even have time to preflight. Naturally I didn't have time to piss on the revets.”

“I went to the target, it was Delta 43, and that nine-level gunner nailed my ass as soon as I got over the target area. I managed to bail out a few miles away from Delta 43, and the Jolly Greens actually got to me before they picked up the survivor. But I decided then and there I would never again fly without pissing on the revetments.”

I stood next to Boss and peed on the revetment also. Then we climbed into the airplane. Boss got into the left seat. That surprised me, since I had been flying from the left seat throughout all my training, and would always be in the left seat once I got checked out.

“This will be your dollar ride,” he said, referring to the Air Force tradition of having an easy first ride in a new airplane. “I'll take the left seat today, and you can pretend you're my FAN.” Seeing the puzzled look on my face, he continued, “You may have noticed some guys in the squadron have navigator wings. They're our Forward Air Navigators. We use them at night to look through the starlight scope to spot targets.”

DaNang had two long, parallel north-south runways. As we taxied out for takeoff, I heard the distinctive roar of the two J79 engines of an F-4. I instinctively looked over toward the runway, and didn't see an F-4. Instead, I saw a plain O-2, without rocket pods.

“What's that about?” I asked.

“Oh,” Boss answered, “that's an O-2B, a Bullshit Bomber. The Bullshit Bombers have huge speakers and fly around at night playing funeral dirges. The gomers are real superstitious, and if they get scared enough they come over to our side.”

“More superstitious than you?” I asked, thinking of his ritual of peeing on the revetments.

“Oh, lots more. The funeral sounds are part of the Chieu Hoi Program. They also drop Chieu Hoi leaflets.”

“What's Chieu Hoi?” I asked.

“I think it's Vietnamese for 'Time to surrender' or something like that,” he answered. “The Bullshit Bombers use their tape players and speakers to make themselves sound like F-4s on takeoff. That's what they do for fun.”

22

January 2, 1969

We took off on runway 35-Right and turned east to climb out over the ocean. I hadn't flown in the O-2 with fully loaded LAU-59 rocket pods before, and was really surprised how sluggish the climb performance was.

“That's China Beach down there,” Boss remarked as we passed over the coast. “It's going to seem like the hardest part of the mission is getting to the AO. We need to contact DaNang Arty on fox mike and find out if we conflict with any artillery fire.”

We tuned the FM transmitter to the frequency for DaNang Artillery Control. They would be able to inform us of all artillery firing in the area, including shells coming from navy ships that were firing at targets inland.

“DaNang Arty, this is Covey 212, request arty coordinates.” Covey 212 was Boss's call-sign.

The response came back rather quickly. “Covey 212, we have fire from DaNang 050 for 17 to 260 for 28, from DaNang 130 for 6 to 280 for 21, and DaNang 245 for 15 to 290 for 34. Max height 5000 feet.”

The points were radial and distance from the DaNang TACAN. We plotted the points on our local area chart, and it was obvious we couldn't proceed directly to our target area, to the west, unless we flew right through the lines of fire.

“Okay,” Boss asked, “what do you think we should do?”

“Well,” I answered, “it looks like the only way we can get to the target area is by proceeding south for about twenty miles, and then heading west.”

“Yes, and that would probably make sense in a jet,” he responded. “But in an O-2, it will take us an extra 15 minutes of flying time, and that will limit the amount of time we have in the AO. How about we just fly through the arty – it's a big sky.”

“You're the boss, Boss,” I replied, with a really uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.

As soon as we were finished talking to DaNang Arty, Boss tuned the ADF receiver to the frequency for Armed Forces Radio Service, and I heard the strains of a Beatles song.

“I want you to get used to listening to more than one radio at a time. The best way to do that is to practice listening to AFRS on ADF”

We turned and headed out to the west, continuing to climb until we reached 7000 feet. Every now and then we'd hear what sounded like a jet going by.

“Another arty shell that missed us,” Boss commented.

Big sky indeed.

Our AO was central Laos, called Steel Tiger. During the briefing Boss explained that it was a free-fire zone, and we'd always be able to find a target to employ fighters on. Being a free-fire zone meant that we didn't need to get clearance to expend on any target we would find. Anything we saw would be fair game.

Sometimes, Boss explained, we'd have fighters assigned to us in advance, with a scheduled rendezvous time and place. Today, however, we'd just have to contact the airborne Direct Air Support Center. The call-sign for the DASC was Hillsboro for daytime flights, Moonbeam at night.

“Hillsboro and Moonbeam operate as the DASC for all of Steel Tiger. They're in a C-130 out of NKP, and can get us any air assets we want on fairly short notice,” Boss said.

We flew west for about 50 minutes. The terrain kept getting higher and more rugged, with dense, triple-canopy jungle covering virtually every landmark, other than rivers and lakes. The only way to navigate was by reading contour lines on the 1-to-50.

Boss pointed off to the right. “That's the A Shau Valley. There are 10,000 NVA down there looking at us right now.”

Ten thousand North Vietnamese Army soldiers watching us right now! Again, I had an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“Let's light 'em up a little,” Boss suggested. “I'm supposed to show you our alternate marking procedure, anyway.”

He reached into the pocket behind my seat, and grabbed two smoke grenades. He wrapped a large rubber band around the handle of one of them.

“Open your window,” he said. He then handed me the smoke grenade with the rubber band. “Hold it outside the window.”

I held the grenade outside the window. I hadn't realized how strong the slipstream was at 120 knots.

“Pull the pin and drop the grenade,” he instructed. “Be sure to hold it well outside the window. If you drop it into the airplane, we're really fucked.”

I pulled the pin and dropped the grenade.

“Now do the same with the other grenade, the one without the rubber band,” he said.

This time, when I pulled the pin and dropped the grenade, the grenade handle immediately snapped into the ARM position.

We started a hard turn to the left, then, after 90 degrees of turn, reversed turn to the right.

“Now,” Boss noted, “you see that smoke trail? That's from the grenade without the rubber band. In the daytime, if the fighters have a hard time seeing you and the target area, sometimes you can use a grenade to draw a vertical line in the air.”

“Now let's see where the smoke grenade landed.”

After a brief wait, we saw a plume of white smoke billow up from the jungle.

“If you're ever winchester on rockets, you can still mark targets,” he remarked. “We always have at least four smoke grenades in the pocket behind the right seat.”

“One question,” I asked, “What do you mean winchester?”

“That means the aircraft is fully expended, out of ammo. The fighters say it all the time to tell us they don't have any more ordnance.”

I guess it was due to this being my first flight into a combat area, or my apprehension about all those eyes looking at us, but I really had to urinate.

Boss could see me squirming. “Got to piss, right? Happens all the time.” He reached into the pocket behind my seat and produced a plastic pouch containing a sponge. “This is a piddle pack. We always have a stash of them in the seat pocket. I think you can figure out how to use it.”

He was right – I figured it out with no problem. As I filled the piddle pack, it expanded to about the size of a football. “Now what do we do with this?”

“Well, Hamfist,” Boss remarked, pointing out the window, “if we can drop grenades on the gomers heads, we can drop bags of piss also.”

I tossed the bag out the window and it disappeared into the slipstream. I had a momentary mental picture of an NVA soldier walking through the jungle, when a bag of urine lands on his head. Not even close to payback for that rocket attack.

“What's that clicking sound?” I asked. I had been hearing it ever since we had gotten over the higher terrain. It sounded like someone repeatedly opening and closing the cap on a Zippo lighter.

“Oh,” Boss said, “That's small arms fire. You can't see it in the daytime. Not really anything to worry about, since we're pretty high. At night it looks like a bunch of strobe lights going off. You'll see.”

“I don't really sweat the small arms fire,” he continued. “It's the heavy stuff they have on the trail we have to worry about. ZPU, ZSU 23-4 and 37 mike mike. We can't really see that in the daytime, either, unless it gets really close. Your first night flight will water your eyes, though.”

Boss pointed off toward the distance in the direction of north. There was a confluence of several rivers that joined into the shape of the letter “H”. He pointed it out on the chart. “That's Tchepone. It's right outside of our AO. You don't want to go there. It's a good place to get your ass shot down.”

I nodded silently.

Boss tuned the VHF to Hillsboro's frequency. “Hillsboro, Covey 212 entering the AO.”

Hillsboro responded, “Roger Covey 212. We have plenty of air assets if you need them. Two flights of F-4's, a two-ship of F-105s, and we may be getting some Navy A-7s that weather diverted from their primary target.”

“Roger.”

Below us we could see a brown dirt road winding in and out of the jungle. Boss pointed down at it, and then pointed to the corresponding area on the chart.

“That,” he said, “is the Ho Chi Minh Trail.”

23

January 2, 1969

The Ho Chi Minh Trail – the trail - was the long artery that ran from Hanoi, in North Vietnam, through Laos and branched out to arteries that continued into South Vietnam. It was the way the NVA resupplied their troops and brought the 122 millimeter rockets they would fire at us and at the civilian population.

Back at Laughlin, Jack the FAC had told a bunch of us student pilots about the trail when we were in pilot training. He'd said he liked to picture some poor coolie carrying a rocket on his shoulder, all the way from Hanoi. “He slogs through the jungle, fighting off insects, reptiles and tigers, getting his ass bombed day and night, and finally gets down to Saigon, after about two months. He hands the rocket to his commander. The commander sets it up, fires it off and then says, 'Okay, Nguyen, go back to Hanoi and get me another one!'” Every time told the story he laughed so hard it looked like he was crying.

The airplane noise was noticeably louder with the window open, but we could still communicate with no problem on interphone. Still, Boss had raised his voice a bit ever since I opened the window.

“That's Delta 27, and marks the eastern end of our AO. The DASC knows these delta numbers, and can find the air assets that are closest to us when we call for fighters.”

As we entered the AO, Boss reached up to the fuel selectors in each wing root and moved the switches to AUX.

“We've been flying long enough to make room for the bypass fuel to go back into the mains.”

Although I hadn't flown with fuel in the AUX tanks in training, I knew that the O-2 fuel system always returned some unburned fuel from the injection system back into the main tanks. We needed to make room in the main tanks for this returned fuel before we used any fuel from the AUX tanks. That was the reason we burned from the main tanks first.