Lords of the Sky: Fighter Pilots and Air Combat, From the Red Baron to the F-16 (65 page)

In the F-4 an allowable steering error (ASE) circle and a “death dot” pipper were used. The circle would “breathe” depending on the target’s range and grow larger as the distance decreased. A pilot put the pipper inside the circle, and when geometry and range were within parameters for a launch, the death dot changed from white to green. If the launching aircraft could be forced to defend itself or the radar lock was broken by target maneuvering, then the missile went “stupid” and missed.

Called the “pit,” the rear cockpit was designed for a naval radar intercept officer who worked the fire control systems. He wasn’t a pilot and couldn’t land the jet, so there was no reason for good visibility. This caused problems when the USAF inexplicably decided to make the Phantom a two-pilot aircraft yet changed none of the unfriendly rear-seat features. This practice also meant that when one plane went down you lost two pilots.
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Needless to say, the USAF policy was eventually changed and a weapons system officer (WSO) or EWO rode in the back instead depending on the type of fuel. By the 1964 Tonkin Gulf incident, thirteen of thirty-one Navy squadrons were flying the F-4B, and the USAF 555th TFS (Triple Nickel) had F-4Cs. Ross Fobair and the 45th TFS deployed to Ubon in 1965, and the Marines of VMFA-542 and 531 deployed to Da Nang.

So when Gen. William “Spike” Momyer gave Olds approval for his plan, it was with the F-4C, each loaded with four AIM-7E radar guided missiles and four AIM-9B Sidewinders. They also jury-rigged a QRC-160 ECM pod to each jet and took off on January 2, 1967. Well aware that their communications were monitored, they used F-105 call signs for the administrative parts of the flight, such as takeoff and air refueling.
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After leaving the Red refueling track, normally used by Thuds, they flew the tighter F-105 formation up into North Vietnam. Crossing the Black River, the seven flights of Phantoms headed east toward Dog Pecker, just like strikers would on their way to Thud Ridge. Turning southeast down the ridge, the first three flights of four, led by Robin Olds of course, spread out for their sweep down the Red River Valley. The timing was all built around the sweep. It was hoped that everything they’d done up to that point would get the North Vietnamese airborne to intercept what appeared to be F-105s. While the MiGs got their nasty shock, three of the other flights would arrive and cap over the enemy bases so any survivors couldn’t land. The last flight would take up position between Thud Ridge and the Chinese border to intercept any MiGs running north to hide. It was a good plan, simple and easy to execute like all good battle plans.

Except the MiGs didn’t take the bait.

Olds got to the southern end of the ridge over Phuc Yen and had to turn around back to the north. This complicated things, as there were now friendlies, the other incoming F-4 flights, out in front coming south. This meant no BVR shots were possible, so a visual ID would have to be made. In other words, a dogfight. And that’s what happened.

The MiGs were late getting off the ground because of bad weather so they came shooting up through the overcast, drooling with anticipation, and ran straight into the first twelve Phantoms. In the blink of an eye
they
became the targets, and seven of them went down in flaming pieces. Nguyen Van Coc, future commander of the Vietnamese National Air Force, was one of those shot down that day. He later recounted:

The MiG-21s were taking off one by one, and each of the first four was shot down by Phantom IIs. The same fate was waiting for the leader of the second formation. This serious loss was due to . . . indecisiveness in the Central Command Post and a faulty concept—we expected F-105s.

Not one American fighter was lost.

Robin Olds was the quintessential combat fighter pilot commander. Whereas Albert Ball and Hans-Joachim Marseille were great warriors, Olds took it a step further. Undeniably a first-class flyer, he was something more. Like Boelcke, Hawker, or George Davis, Olds was a thinker and a
leader
. A few months later, while attacking industrial targets in Thai Nguyen, two F-4s were badly hit by ground fire. The first one, flown by Capt. Bob Aman, was losing fuel so quickly he’d never make the Laotian border. Capt. Bob Pardo was flying the second damaged jet and had Aman lower his tailhook, then used his own F-4 to push his buddy toward safety.
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With one engine on fire, Pardo got the pair as close to Laos as possible, then both crews ejected. They were all picked up, and four irreplaceable lives were saved. But someone sitting safely behind a desk at Seventh Air Force Headquarters decided that it was all just showboating by some cowboy fighter pilot; what’s more, it was a direct violation of USAF regulations. Never mind that four Americans were alive and well, fit to continue the fight and not dead on a hillside or in the Hanoi Hilton. Believe it or not, an investigation was started.

Olds flew directly to Saigon and without regard to his own career personally intervened with Spike Momyer. The whole ridiculous investigation disappeared and Pardo earned a well-deserved Silver Star.

Two months later Colonel Olds came off a strike west of Thud Ridge critically low on fuel and barely managed to rendezvous with Orange 56, a KC-135 out of Clark AB in the Philippines. Normal practice is to take a few thousand pounds of fuel (enough to decrease the pucker factor), then go back for more when everyone was breathing easier. When all the Phantoms cycled through, Olds moved back in to top off. To his astonishment, he found the refueling boom that passed gas from the tanker raised and stowed.

“Hey,” Robin yelled, “wait a minute . . . give me my fuel.”

“We’re Bingo. Returning to base.”

“Bingo, hell! You don’t know what Bingo is! Give me some fuel!”

The tanker guy wasn’t budging. “No, we’re Bingo, headed home.”

Fuming and with less than 300 pounds of gas left (about two minutes of flying time), Colonel Olds replied, “OK, I have a couple of Sidewinders left. I’m going to drop back behind you, and before I punch out, I’m going to pull the trigger. Put your parachutes on.” The boom immediately came down.

His willingness to defy bureaucracy in the name of common sense, to lead from the front, and to get the mission done regardless of the imposed constraints made Olds a legend. Of course, none of this endeared him to PACAF and the Pentagon, so they began scheming to get him out of Southeast Asia. Olds was nowhere near the 100-mission limit, but he had bagged a few MiGs and was famous enough for the North Vietnamese to put a $25,000 bounty on his head.
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All good reasons, the Pentagon decided, to relieve him as soon as he got five kills and bring him home. So rather than leaving his wing by becoming an ace again, at least a dozen times Robin set up kills and let his wingmen shoot the MiGs. Keeping his men alive by being there and leading combat missions was more important than kills or careerism. One of his pilots, another MiG killer, said it like this: “The Robin Oldses of this world are born for combat, not the Pentagon, and I would have flown as his wingman over Hanoi in 1967 even if we had been armed with .45-caliber pistols!”

A lord of the sky, indeed.

BY LATE 1967
the North Vietnamese economy was in tatters. American airpower had severely damaged or destroyed bridges, power plants, roads, and petroleum facilities. There was bitter division within the Hanoi government as well; one faction believed in reunification through political means, while the other held that only through force could Vietnam be joined. This latter group was supported by Red China, which feared that a drawn-out conventional war would pull them in as it had in Korea. The political, negotiating faction was backed by the Soviet Union and, in either case, Vietnam was wholly dependent on the big Communist powers to continue the war. Both sides also knew that the North could not win a conventional conflict against the United States.

A protracted guerilla war was the only type of fight that made sense. It would wear down the political will in Washington and further erode any remaining popular support among the American people. Going offensive, Hanoi ultimately decided, was the best way to accomplish this. If surprise was achieved and a great victory won, then it would show the United States that the North would continue at any price, that there was no point in more Americans dying, and that the South Vietnamese were not worth fighting for. It would also demonstrate to both China and the Soviet Union that the war could be won if they continued providing weapons and aircraft.

This offensive began early on the morning of January 21, 1968, when the Marine Combat Base at Khe Sanh was attacked. Thanks to effective reconnaissance and information from a defecting North Vietnamese officer, the Americans were quite ready. However, there were three NVA regular divisions of about 20,000 men arrayed against three battalions of the 26th Marines. The base was geographically important, as it lay south of the DMZ along Route Nine—a perfect location for long-range patrols and interdicting nearby sections of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Like Dien Bien Phu, Khe Sanh was surrounded by low hills and suffered from bad weather. The overland paths to the base were constantly harassed by the Viet Cong, so resupply by air was crucial.

The North Vietnamese intended on using Khe Sanh to pull in U.S. and ARVN (Army of the Republic of South Vietnam) resources to divert attention from what was coming next. On January 30, the Tet Offensive erupted, overrunning everything in its path
except
Khe Sanh. NVA and Viet Cong forces attacked most of the provincial and district capitals, plus Hue and Saigon, where the U.S. embassy was captured for eight hours. Caught by surprise, American and ARVN forces nevertheless fought back ferociously, and the assault rapidly lost momentum. Even so, it took nearly two weeks to liberate Saigon and over a month to recapture Hue.

All through this the Marines held on, but there’s no doubt Khe Sanh would’ve fallen without air support. Possibly emboldened by their similar success against the French, the Vietnamese seemed to have forgotten whom they were fighting and badly underestimated the American response, both militarily and politically. Lyndon Johnson, rather surprisingly, had decided that Khe Sanh would be no Dien Bien Phu and ordered it held at all costs. Operation Niagara was the all-out air support operation for the beleaguered base. For the first time, all Navy, Marines and Air Force air units involved were unified under the Seventh Air Force commander, General Momyer.

A controversial figure, Momyer was nevertheless a front-line aviator with two hundred missions, eight kills, and three Silver Stars to his credit. By this time in his career he was a fine general, though not necessarily a good commander—and there is a difference. Nevertheless, he
knew
tactical airpower, and the results bore that out. Some 450 combat aircraft per day were flying coordinated missions into the Khe Sanh area. When the siege finally broke the USAF had flown 9,691 sorties, with 7,098 from the Marines, and the Navy finished with 5,337 combat missions. More than 39,000 tons of bombs had been dropped, sometimes within 1,000 yards of the defensive perimeter. Ground-directed bombing (GDB) was used by the Marine Air Support Squadrons (MASS) with great success via their TPQ-10 close air support system.

Fielded during World War II, this system was employed with A-26 bombers, and command guidance was sent directly to the pilot direction indicator. Ever the pioneers with close air support, the Marines enthusiastically used GDB with their Corsair night fighting squadrons in Korea.
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Skyspot was the USAF equivalent and was used for night and bad-weather deliveries of B-52s and usually F-100 fighters. Skyspot had a slightly better accuracy, 11 yards versus 50 yards, but both computed a weapon release point based on inbound course, friendly locations, and winds.

Yet despite this unequivocal demonstration of properly used tactical airpower, a halt of offensive operations above the 20th parallel was called in March 1968. It was a test, Washington believed, to ascertain Hanoi’s intentions and their willingness to negotiate. During the monsoon shift, springtime weather was atrocious anyway, and air operations would be minimally affected. Senior military commanders had all watched the Korean War drag on as a result of the “fighting and talking” strategy and had no wish to repeat it now. The North Vietnamese immediately began rebuilding their rail network and repairing the marshaling yards at Kep and Thai Nguyen. Air Defense networks were expanded, fresh ammunition was brought in by sea, and the NVAF continued to rebuild.
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A permanent halt was called on October 31, 1968 (incidentally, three days prior to the U.S. presidential elections), and all bombing stopped. Escorted reconnaissance missions into North Vietnam, known as “protective reactive” flights, were permitted, as was the continued interdiction of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. American domestic support for the war had fallen from 70 percent in 1966 to 42 percent by the fall of 1968. Incoming U.S. president Richard Nixon announced that he would begin a withdrawal of ground forces, so as always, Hanoi took advantage of the lull to rebuild and, in this case, to expand.

Well aware that the existence of South Vietnam depended on American air support, the North Vietnamese air defense system was considerably strengthened, and much of it, including three SAM regiments, moved toward the DMZ. Seven anti-aircraft regiments deployed below the line, meaning that South Vietnamese airspace was no longer a safe haven. The numbers of MiG-21s increased from thirty-eight remaining in 1968 to nearly a hundred in 1971.

By this time the protective reactive flights more resembled Navy Alpha strike packages rather than reconnaissance missions. But their efforts weren’t on a scale large enough to really slow the southward Communist flood, and on March 30, 1972, Hanoi launched what become known as the Easter Offensive. More than 40,000 NVA regulars crossed the DMZ supported by field artillery and tanks. The new SA-7 man-portable surface-to-air missile (MANPAD) was also deployed. Called a Grail, the SA-7 was a simple, rugged, and cheap infrared system. Though it had a very short range, because it was a heat seeker it gave no warning unless the launch was seen visually, so it took a fearsome toll of slow-moving U.S. helicopters and FAC aircraft. The ARVN 3rd Division collapsed, and to Hanoi’s surprise, the Americans began redeploying tactical assets. Seventh Air Force had been down to less than five hundred aircraft but quickly built up to the thousand-plane mark. Five aircraft carriers were put back on Yankee station, and on May 8 Washington allowed the war to be fought as it should have been in 1965. More than three hundred sorties per day were flown, including massive B-52 raids, and all six North Vietnamese ports were mined. With no seaborne resupply, the NVA ran out of ammunition in just ten days.