Hero Found: The Greatest POW Escape of the Vietnam War (6 page)

Dieter made a new circle of friends in Hillsborough when he “popped his head over the fence” during a neighbor’s pool party, and was invited to join in. The partygoers included Jeffrey “Scooter” Ryan and Cliff Hoffman. Ryan, a future lawyer, considered Dieter “gregarious and innovative.” Hoffman, a sun-bleached swimming coach with lots of girlfriends of his own, saw Dieter as “a nice icebreaker—you could throw him into any situation and see what happened.” Dieter was appreciated by his new friends for being clever with anything mechanical. And there was this bonus: anyone locked out of a house or car could go to Dieter for help, as he could “break anything open.”

Dieter received his associate of arts degree in January 1963. Soon thereafter, he crossed the bay to Alameda Naval Air Station and applied for the NAVCAD program, which did not take applicants older than twenty-five. He found the written test so difficult that he thought he had flunked. Three weeks later, he was informed that he had passed, and was scheduled for a physical examination. After meeting all the physical requirements, including 20/20 uncorrected vision, he signed his navy enlistment papers on April 12, 1963—only one month before the birthday that would have barred him from the program. He entered the navy with the rank of naval aviation cadet—not yet an officer but above an enlisted man. Once he completed officer candidate school as well as basic and advanced flight training—usually done in eighteen months—he would receive a commission and be assigned to active duty as a naval aviator. If he washed out of the program at any point prior to becoming an officer and a pilot, he would be sent to the fleet as an enlisted man.

Ordered to report to Pensacola Naval Air Station, Dieter was informed that aviation cadets were not allowed to bring private cars to the base. But
he had no intention of parting with his home on wheels. He loaded the van and hit the road for Florida. With no time to fix a bad transmission, he had only two working gears: second and third. The cross-country trip took ten days.

In a parking lot outside the main gate at Pensacola, Dieter located an officer’s car by the telltale blue sticker on the left front bumper. He pulled over so his van was blocking the vehicle, then got out and dropped from sight.

A few minutes later, an old VW van pulled up to the main gate at the naval air station that served as the primary training base for all navy pilots. The armed U.S. Marine at the gate spotted the officer’s blue sticker on the front bumper, snapped to attention, and saluted smartly. The van with a surfboard and skis strapped on top proceeded slowly through the gate.

Dieter Dengler was in the navy now, and closer than ever to flying.

Dieter checked into the Pensacola
Pre-Flight Regiment as new cadets were arriving loaded down with golf bags, tennis rackets, hunting rifles, radios, and other personal property, most of which “screaming and yelling” U.S. marines, who were to be their drill instructors, ordered boxed up and shipped home. Dieter sailed past the scene with only his toothbrush, duly impressing the marines, who had no way of knowing that he had left everything else inside the vehicle he was not supposed to have on base.

Every week thirty to forty cadets arrived to begin training. The new class was assigned to the indoctrination battalion for the first two weeks. From his military experience, Dieter recognized the regimens and routines that followed as a way to weed out those individuals who were found to be unsuited for the military or to “get guys to quit” who weren’t highly motivated.

One morning Dieter’s class was ordered to run to the beach—the cadets ran or marched everywhere—and shovel sand into empty garbage cans, which they hauled back to the barracks. They were ordered to spread the sand throughout the barracks. When they finished, a drill instructor (DI) informed them there would be an inspection in an hour and “not one grain of sand” was to be found. When the DI left, there was a collective groan. Then everyone went to work cleaning up the sand, sweeping with brooms as well as bare hands, wiping surfaces down with wet rags and swabbing the deck.

The exercise brought back painful memories for Dieter. In the two years since his discharge from the air force, he had relished his freedom and independence. Now, he was again a military peon carrying out punitive and capricious orders. But he could take it because he knew that soon it would end and he would be learning to fly. There was “no hardship hard enough” to keep him from staying the course to realize that dream.

For the first two weeks they went through rigorous physical drills and testing. After that, Dieter’s class—minus several cadets who did not make it through indoctrination—moved to Second Battalion, where they were assigned to four-man rooms and different instructors for the final fourteen weeks of pre-flight training. From then on they attended classes six days a week. Much of the curriculum had to do with military history, traditions, and etiquette, although there were also challenging academic courses, such as trigonometry.

Outside the classroom, there were sessions in trampoline, wrestling, rope climbing, swimming, and running. To graduate from pre-flight, cadets were required to pass water-survival tests. They had to demonstrate acceptable form in the sidestroke, breaststroke, and crawl in one of three outdoor Olympic-size pools, called training tanks by the instructors. Also, they had to tread water for thirty minutes without touching the side of the pool, jump off a twenty-foot tower and swim the length of the pool underwater, and swim laps wearing a flight suit and shoes. Dieter had taken his first swimming lessons at age six, and by age ten had progressed to the next level, which included river and lake swims. In Germany, everyone at age fourteen went through a final level of swimming instruction involving making water rescues and administering first aid. By his mid-teens, Dieter had become an excellent swimmer.

Pre-flight cadets had to post a qualifying time over an obstacle course that wound through a wooded area and included ropes to be climbed, walls, barriers, water and mud holes, balance beams, and other impediments to overcome while running in the heat and humidity of the Gulf coast. With his natural endurance and agility, Dieter had no problem completing the obstacle course in the required time.

No one made it through pre-flight without successfully escaping from the Dilbert Dunker, a water-crash simulator named after a cartoon character who appeared in posters and training pamphlets during World War II: a hapless aviator who never did anything right. The purpose of the apparatus was to train personnel to get out of a plane after ditching at sea. One by one the cadets climbed a tower and were strapped into a cage that sledded down a twenty-five-foot ramp and plunged into a pool. After hitting the water, the cage sank and flipped upside down. The cadet had to get out of the restraint harness, exit the cage, and then swim to the surface and give a thumbs-up signal. Safety swimmers with scuba gear were underwater to assist if the cadet couldn’t get free or panicked. In that case, the cadet would have to take repeated rides until he made it out without assistance. The simulated crash underwater was “all fun” to Dieter. He escaped on his first attempt, and thereafter took several more rides just for enjoyment.

Ordered one afternoon to report to the instructors’ office at the front of the barracks, Dieter by then knew the drill. A cadet was to stand at attention before the closed door, rap hard on the wall three times, request permission to enter, and stay at attention until granted permission. Dieter did everything as he had been trained, right up to knocking with such gusto that his fist went through the wall. He was sent to the top sergeant, a marine who looked as if he had single-handedly won a few major firefights in his day. He looked up at Dieter, his eyes narrowing. “Made a hole in my wall, did ya?” The sergeant started to smile, then stopped. “Kinda guy we need more of around here.”

Not long after that, during marching practice, Dieter was asked to lead the battalion with one slight variation: he was to count cadence—“Left, two, three, four”—in German. With that, Dieter led the cadets across the parade field, barking out commands. “
Links
,
zwei
,
drei
,
vier
.” Instructors and officers within earshot—many of them veterans of World War II—
stopped whatever they were doing, and turned toward the bizarre scene of naval cadets being drilled like German storm troopers. Dieter soon had a new role as cadence counter, and the performance of the pre-flight class that drilled in German was repeated many times, including on weekends when admirals and other senior officers in their dress whites were in the viewing stands, hooting with delight.

Halfway through pre-flight, Dieter’s class had not yet been allowed to leave the base. One Sunday afternoon when the cadets were given a couple of hours to write letters home and attend to other personal matters, Dieter slipped out to his van, changed into civilian clothes, and drove out the main gate. He headed to Pensacola beach, put on swim trunks, grabbed a towel and a cold six-pack he had picked up, and headed across the sandy beach. He staked out a spot close to the water, spread out the towel, and opened a beer, all without realizing that sunning twenty feet away was one of the instructors, with his wife. The DI looked up, and their eyes met. Dieter tried to turn away, but it was too late.

Dieter was summoned not long after returning to base. Although the DI had said nothing at the beach, he reported Dieter’s unauthorized absence and beach excursion. Now, standing at attention before some of the same officers and instructors who had been so pleased with his unique skills as a cadence caller, Dieter was in trouble. He admitted everything, including having an unauthorized vehicle on base. After enduring much yelling in his face, Dieter was informed that “anyone else would be kicked out” for the same infractions. However, owing to his exemplary record so far and the overall goodwill he had built up, he would be allowed to finish with his class, under strict conditions. Although the class would soon be allowed time off base on weekends, he would be restricted to base for the rest of pre-flight. Also, he was to perform extra duties. A chastened Dieter promised to obey the new rules. One more slipup in his last eight weeks of pre-flight, he was warned, would result in his expulsion from the NAVCAD program and his assignment to the fleet as an enlisted sailor.

While other cadets were catching rays at the beach or dancing with the local women who flocked to Pensacola’s clubs and bars on weekend nights to meet future naval officers, Dieter marched around the sprawling base with his rifle at his shoulder. He would be ordered to dig a hole by hand, take his
gun apart, toss the parts into the hole, and bury them. The next day, he had to dig up the parts, clean and oil them, and reassemble his rifle for inspection.

When their sixteen weeks of pre-flight ended, Dieter’s class lined up on the parade grounds before the viewing stands. Those with four-year college degrees were awarded their commissions as new ensigns, but Dieter and the other NAVCAD cadets would not become officers until they completed flight training. After the ceremonies, however, they all headed to the same place: Saufley Field, a naval auxiliary air station ten miles north of Pensacola, which since its opening in 1940 had provided primary flight training to all student naval aviators.

For more than a decade the first plane flown by would-be naval aviators was the T-34 Mentor, a propeller-driven, single-engine military trainer produced by Beechcraft beginning in 1953. Its two-seat tandem cockpit held a student pilot and a flight instructor, usually with the student in front and the instructor in back. Each had his own controls and instruments. With a top speed of only 160 miles per hour at full power,
^*
the T-34 was known for its stability in flight and its aerobatic capabilities.

The late-summer Florida morning was already heating up when Dieter met his flight instructor on the tarmac at Saufley Field. The flight line was filled with parked T-34s painted in white with
NAVY
in blue letters on the fuselage. Not bothering with pleasantries, the instructor launched into his first-flight familiarity spiel that he had no doubt delivered hundreds of times. They circled the T-34 for a pre-flight check, which concluded with a warning on the dangers of walking into a spinning propeller, an encounter which, Dieter was advised, inevitably resulted in dismemberment or death or both. On that note, Dieter went first up the narrow walkway at the root of the wing alongside the fuselage, stepped onto the front seat, and sat down. The instructor leaned in, pointed out various controls and instruments, then made sure Dieter was strapped in.

The instructor issued a final admonishment. If Dieter became airsick on his inaugural flight and vomited in the cockpit, he would receive a “down”
on his record. If a student received three downs during primary flight training he would wash out. Considering that primary lasted for months—ample time to get more downs for any of a multitude of reasons, including not doing a flight maneuver correctly or failing to answer an instructor’s question correctly—receiving a down on one’s first flight was not the best way to start out. Dieter was not particularly worried, because by then he had flown commercially a few times and had never felt any queasiness in the air.

The flight in the T-34 that day was unlike anything Dieter could have imagined. Rather than enjoy the view of the surrounding countryside or appreciate his first flight in a navy plane, he went from being pushed down into his seat by positive g-forces that made him several times heavier than his normal weight to being pulled against the harness in the opposite direction by negative g-forces. As the instructor whipped the plane into gravity-defying spins and loops, it was all “shockingly uncomfortable.” With no time to enjoy anything, Dieter became dizzy and disoriented. He felt his stomach flip-flop and knew his breakfast was about to take flight, too.

Remembering the warning of his instructor, Dieter looked desperately around the cockpit for a receptacle but saw nothing that would work. He reached down and clawed at the laces of one of his flight boots. He got the boot off just in time, and retched into it again and again.

After landing, Dieter put the boot back on, laced it up, and climbed out of the cockpit. Leaving the rear seat, the instructor headed up to the front of the cockpit and stuck his head inside the open canopy. Catching the familiar scent of vomit, he searched the cockpit for incriminating evidence, but much to his frustration found nothing.

Dieter Dengler was on his way to becoming a navy pilot.

Eight weeks later, after soloing in six hours and learning to fly the T-34—and “loving every minute of it”—Dieter was sent to Whiting Field in Milton, Florida, twenty miles northeast of Pensacola, for additional training.

While almost anyone can learn how to fly with enough instruction, the navy wanted student aviators who learned quickly and were soon ready to move on to the next stage. In fact, a student who failed to progress rapidly—
in the classroom or in the cockpit—was soon dropped from flight training.

Whiting, doubtless the only airfield in the world named after a former submariner—Kenneth Whiting, a 1908 graduate of the Naval Academy who was later taught to fly by Orville Wright—was where naval flight students learned formation flying and acrobatic maneuvers in the T-28 Trojan, a propeller-driven, single-engine trainer built by North American Aviation. Like the T-34, it was a stable aircraft and relatively easy to fly, but the T-28 had more power and speed, equaling the performance of a World War II fighter.

It was in the T-28 that students first flew by instruments only, while wearing a dark canvas hood that blocked any view of the outside world, as the instructor sat in front ready to take over if necessary. In this setting, students were taught to “believe the instruments, not their senses,” as they practiced making precise turns, climbs, and descents. A pilot can develop temporary spatial disorientation due to misleading information sent to the brain by sensory organs like the inner ear—a state that occurs most often in limited visibility—and think the plane is doing something it is not, such as turning or climbing when in fact it is in level flight. Many pilots, suffering from vertigo, crash only because they are confused as to which way is up or down. It is essential for pilots to realize that under certain conditions—such as rain, fog, clouds, or nighttime—the senses that serve them well on the ground can be wrong in flight. They must learn to trust their instruments. For naval aviators, who often operate in adverse conditions over a shapeless swath of ocean that blends into the sky without any visible horizon while they are trying to locate and land on an aircraft carrier bobbing in a heaving sea, learning to fly their instruments is vital.