The Ravens: The True Story of a Secret War (2 page)

He was also dated. The young pilots thought of Steve Canyon as a bit much. John Wayne looked battered and cynical beside Canyon with his breathless and unquestioning patriotism, hunk’s courage, clean-cut good looks, and Boy Scout philosophizing. The young forward air controllers, unbaptized by fire as yet and uncertain of what the realities of war had in store for them, laughed off Steve Canyon and concentrated on steeling themselves against flying in Vietnam.

Later, as the months went by, a small number of them would increasingly wonder about the Steve Canyon Program. What sort of outfit in such a straitlaced and bureaucratic service as the United States Air Force could possibly be modeled on a character like Steve Canyon? The pilots joked about Canyon’s old-fashioned virtues - honesty, patriotism, bravery, adventurous spirit, and general all-round copper-bottomed Americanness - although they were the qualities which most hoped to emulate. The Air Force wag who gave the program its name could not have dreamed how accurately he had described the sort of man the mission needed, or how many potential Canyons there would be willing to join it.

The young pilots who went to Vietnam to fly as forward air controllers arrived pumped up and ready for action. They had a wide range of training behind them and were convinced of their status as an elite. They had not been unwillingly drafted and rapidly processed into some ground-pounding grunt, but were volunteers who had survived the stringent weeding-out processes of pilot training. The most romantic and adventurous of those who had volunteered to fly were certain that the ultimate manner in which to pursue the war was as a fighter pilot, a figure who had emerged from World War II as the most glamorous in the air - the very top of the pilot pecking order. The fighter pilot was viewed as a man with dash, derring-do, and a special edge of courage that singled him out from all others. The young trainee at pilot school yearned for the day when he would be allowed to sit on the bar of the officers’ club and sing:

There are no fighter pilots down in hell.

The place is full of queers, navigators, bombardiers,

But there are no fighter pilots down in hell.

Fighter pilots possess an overweening arrogance, an almost messianic egocentricity and self-confidence that borders on the obnoxious. This can be tedious for anyone not committed to the system of narrow absolutes that constitutes the fighter pilots’ world. But then, by definition, such a person has no value. To those steeped in the lore of flying, especially those who go through the intense indoctrination of the Air Force Academy, these things are carved as if in stone.

The dream of young romantics destined for the war was to earn an opportunity to duel with a Russian MiG, one on one and head to head, up in the wild blue yonder over North Vietnam. But it is the fate of romantics to be disillusioned, and most would-be pilots were soon forced to accept that being given a fighter was little more than a dream.

Anyone who had survived the obstacle course of pilot training recognized the statistical improbability of becoming a fighter pilot. The trainee pilot lives in perpetual fear of being washed out for the most minor infraction. The first obstacle on the course is a flight physical, which claims its quota of victims. This is followed by the Air Force Officers’ Quotient Test, in which a potential candidate for pilot training has to convince his examiners that he is both, officer
and
pilot material (only
rated
- that is,
pilot
- officers count). Of those who go forward into pilot training, a high percentage flunk in the very early stages, doomed by persistent airsickness, a slowness in acquiring the ability to read aerial maps, or a hundred other possible failings. The entire year of training is one long, uphill haul, with casualties and failures throughout.

At the end of it all the survivors earn their wings. The very top students are given fighters - if luck is on their side and there are aircraft available. The others have to settle for the despised transport or bomber - not as bad as navigating, but the terms fighter pilots use for those who fly bombers for Strategic Air Command (SAC pukes) and transports (trash haulers) indicate their disdain.

The disappointment a young pilot feels - especially if he has passed out as a distinguished graduate - when he fails to get a fighter is crushing. His aspirations have relegated him to a world that by his own definition is perpetually second-rate.

But during the Vietnam War the word went around that a pilot who had not received a fighter assignment could volunteer for another combat flying job that was rapidly gaining the reputation of being as righteous, dangerous, and terrifying as a fighter pilot’s. The job was that of forward air controller. Combat FACs were easy targets for the enemy and suffered high casualties, and as a result there was always a slot for any young pilot who wanted to volunteer.

A FAC did not have the glamour of flying a high-tech jet, but his role was dignified by danger. He took enormous risks to coordinate air support for ground troops, working with slow, low-flying aircraft (described by the Air Force as ‘noncosmetic’). Of the twelve Medals of Honor awarded to Air Force personnel for bravery in the Vietnam War, two went to forward air controllers.

A good FAC needed a fighter pilot’s mentality but was obliged to operate at the pace of a World War I biplane. Until as late as 1971 the FACs flew Cessna O-1 Bird Dogs, fore-and-aft two-seater, high-wing monoplanes, most of which had been built for the Army in the early 1950s, although production continued until 1961. The Air Force felt the plane was inadequate for its task in Vietnam. The plane had no armor, lacked self-sealing fuel tanks, its range was only 530 miles, it carried too few marking rockets, and its maximum speed was 115 mph (although 60 knots was more likely when configured for combat). In addition, its ground-looping characteristics made it unforgiving to the uninitiated on the taxiway. (Pilots did not like to turn their backs on the O-1 until it had been taxied to a halt, the engine turned off, and the wings tied down.) Eventually, the Cessna 0-2 was introduced to replace the older plane. This was a modified business aircraft with double the range of the O-1 and the ability to carry twice as many rockets. Although it too was insufficiently armored, the Air Force felt it could serve as a stopgap until enough North American OV-10 Broncos were available. The Bronco had been specially designed for the job, with a glass canopy providing excellent visibility, armor, rockets, bombs, and machine guns.

The FAC was essential to every aspect of the military operation in Vietnam. It was his job to find the target, order up fighter-bombers from a circling airborne command and control center (AB Triple C) or ground-based direct air support center (DASC), mark the target accurately with white phosphorus smoke rockets (Willy Pete), and control the operation throughout the time the planes remained on station. And after the fighters had departed, the FAC stayed over the target to make a bomb damage assessment (BDA), which he relayed to the fighters and airborne command. Putting in a strike meant that you were busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest, the pilots said.

The FAC also had to ensure that there were no attacks on the civilian population, a complex and constant problem in a war where there were no front lines and any hamlet could suddenly become a part of the combat zone. As early as 1961 it became established policy that all tactical strike aircraft - fighters, fighter-bombers, and gunships - would be under the control of a FAC, who cleared combat strikes with local civilian officials. FACs worked in every one of Vietnam’s forty-four provinces and became a prime source of combat intelligence. When major U.S. ground combat units were first sent to Vietnam in 1965, each battalion was assigned a number of FACs, whose role became that of local air commander.
[4]

The initial training of the FACs was undertaken by the Air Commandos, and young pilots were sent to the base at Hurlburt Field, Fort Walton Beach, Florida. The Commandos flew all the special-operations airplanes - old prop fighters and adapted transports with not a cosmetic one among them - and performed a wide variety of strange missions not usually associated with the Air Force. The Air Commandos were given the clandestine, classified operations, and their school was designed to put a young FAC through his paces.

A FAC also had to know how the Army worked. At the Air and Ground Operations School he was taught the difference between a platoon and a brigade, how soldiers operated in the field, the way artillery was used, and so on. The Army had insisted that any FAC working fighters near troops be fighter-qualified himself, believing that such a pilot would be safer and more competent. It was the Army’s illusion that the Air Force would respond to this requirement by filling all the FAC slots with old-time combat-experienced fighter pilots. Instead, the Air Force took the young FAC, gave him eighty hours of flying time in a fighter, trained him in fighter-weapons delivery to give him an idea of what it was like to deliver ordnance from a high-performance airplane, and then declared him fighter-qualified. At first the FACs were trained in Phantom F-4s, but the expense proved to be prohibitive, so they were relegated to T-33 Shooting Stars, the cheapest jet fighter-trainer available. Pilots thus qualified were ‘A’ FACs, the only group allowed to direct ordnance near American troops. ‘B’ FACs were not required to be fighter-qualified, but could direct ordnance near South Vietnamese, Korean, or Australian troops. It is unlikely the Allies were aware always of these distinctions.

Survival schools came next. At water survival in Homestead, Florida, a pilot learned what to do if he was shot down over the ocean and was left to bob on the waves in a one-man boat. Scooped from the sea, the FAC was sent to Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington, where he was subjected to interrogation in conditions replicating a North Vietnamese prison camp.

After Fairchild he was sent to the Far East for the final and most challenging survival training - Snake School. This was the Jungle Survival School in the Philippines. There were lessons in recognizing edible and inedible jungle roots and berries, how to deal with the sort of medical problems that might be encountered, and E&E - escape and evasion. (One instructor urged his students to imagine themselves as so much 10-weight motor oil, effortlessly slipping downhill through grass.)

Clear distinctions began to emerge among the pilots during the courses at the various survival schools. There were those who treated the whole thing as a prank, something to be endured and shrugged off, while others went through each stage of the training as if their lives depended on it. The second group began to take pains, almost without knowing it, to distance themselves from the first. War was still only a word to all of them, but there were those who intended to be fully prepared when it became real.

Once in Vietnam there was one final step before being allowed to join the war - the in-country checkout at FAC-U (FAC University) in Phan Rang, headquarters of the 14th Air Commando Wing. A combat tactics instructor sat in the back seat on the local area checkout rides. The FAC would be given a set of military grid coordinates - two letters and six numbers, which came over the radio in the form ‘X-Ray Uniform 436457’ - check his map, fly to the area, and orbit. He would then stand by to receive a ‘two-ship’ (pair) of fighter-bombers. Once the fighters arrived, the pressure was enormous. Handling the radio traffic alone would fray the average man’s nerves to breaking point: the FAC maintained constant radio contact not only with the airborne command post but with the unit on the ground and each of the individual fighters. In a large operation he might be talking to a couple of other FACs as well and to as many as five sets of air - pairs of fighter-bombers - stacked in layers above him awaiting their turn.

The FAC would then roll in and mark the target with smoke - which had to be accurate - and direct the fighters onto it: ‘Cleared in hot - hit my smoke.’ (‘Hot’ meant that the guns and ordnance on a fighter should be armed; the ‘smoke’ came from the FACs marking rocket.) Technique apart, the instructor was watching the new FAC to see if he could operate under pressure. After a few dummy tree-busting runs a FAC was supposed to be ready for the real thing, known in the trade as the ‘dollar ride.’

After what seemed to be a lifetime of training flights, the day arrived when the FAC took off in his spotter plane to go out and find the enemy, to kill or be killed. Suddenly it was real, the war at last, and almost always it came as a surprise. The FAC would be out with an instructor in the backseat as usual, honing his technique in some area or other, when the airborne command and control center would come up on the air to give the radio frequency of a certain ground unit and the coordinates of its location.

The first time it happened for John Wisniewski he was sent over to a South Vietnamese Army commander who had a target of Vietcong troops. Beside him, in the right seat of the 0-2, the instructor was rubbing his hands together. ‘Got something now!’

The SVA commander described the target over the radio. ‘I’ve got this house and it’s full of VC.’ Wisniewski checked his maps and circled the house beneath him. ‘See it?’ the commander asked. ‘You got it? I want you to kill them.’

Wisniewski felt the breath leave him as if he were winded. ‘Now it was no longer in the jungle blowing trees away. It was people. I could see them. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. What is this? Some guy I can’t see is telling me those figures running around down there are VC. I don’t know who they are.’

The Vietnamese commander grew impatient. ‘Bad guys.
I want you to kill them!
’ he repeated.