Run Run Cricket Run, page 12
The Nail Hole was quiet when Thatcher got off the TUOC Trolley. Roger ‘Mad Dog’ Brown was eating boiled eggs and watching the news on TV. President Richard Nixon named diplomat David K. E. Bruce to head the U.S. delegation to the peace talks in Paris with North Vietnam and the Viet Cong. They both laughed, knowing there wasn’t a chance in hell the North Vietnamese would ever negotiate anything meaningful.
“How’d you do today?” asked Brown.
“Hit a tank farm and a POL pipeline. Bastards put a shrapnel hole in my wing.”
“Doesn’t it just piss you off when they do that?” Brown was laughing.
“It does. Makes me feel unwelcome.”
“Maybe we should leave.” Brown stuffed the whole egg in his mouth.
“Maybe we should. From what they we’re seeing on TV it looks like that might be a reality in the near future.”
The two pilot training classmates continued their discussions, reminisced about pilot training at Moody Air Force Base, and were still there late that night as the Nail Hole became, once again, an oasis in the middle of a war that seemed to have no end.
12
MiG
Mark Tinga, Nail 52, was proud of his Indian heritage. His father was a construction worker who specialized in assembling the huge girders of skyscrapers, walking on thin ribbons of steel hundreds of feet above the ground. But he died of pneumonia, incurable by tribal medicine and unseen by the white doctors whom his father would have never consulted.
Mark excelled in reservation school and got an appointment to the Air Force Academy. After graduation came pilot training. Like most pilots, he wanted, more than anything in the world, to fly fighters. When Mark and his classmates graduated three months later, the only openings were in bombers, cargo, and tanker aircraft. Mark took KC-135 aerial refuelers, but like most pilots, refused to give up his dream to fly fighters.
When he walked onto his first base in North Dakota, he went immediately to the personnel office and volunteered for Viet Nam in any fighter available. He was told that because of the Air Force investment in his KC-135 training he couldn’t leave North Dakota for at least a year. So, he waited. At the end of the year, he was promised an F-100. After his belongings were packed and was on the way to Luke Air Force Base in California, he received a telegram with two names on it, one advising some major he was to report to Luke AFB for training in F-100s. The second name was Mark’s. His orders were revised. He was to report for training in OV-10s at Hurlbert Field, Florida. Air Force politics not only screwed Mark, but the name of the guy who did it was on Mark’s orders. He was probably the son of a politically connected father, Mark surmised. Mark redirected his household goods shipment, resigned his commission effective two years hence when his commitment was up, and got commode-hugging drunk.
Since becoming a Nail at NKP however, Mark learned F-4 pilots had essentially become bomber pilots since the air war over North Viet Nam had ended. They took off, flew at high altitude to a target marked by a FAC’s smoke rockets, dropped their bombs on the smoke which marked targets they often could not see through the trees, and in mere minutes headed back to base, often without really seeing the results of their efforts. That certainly didn’t diminish their bravery in any way, but it did remove most of the satisfaction of being a hunter: the thrill of the hunt, the satisfaction of finding the prey with nothing but one’s own powers of observation, and the moment of truth as the trophy was added to the game bag through a carefully placed shot. As a Nail, however, Mark got to spend hours hunting, probing the trail, memorizing every twist and turn. Like his ancestors of old, he knew when something was out of place, even if it appeared normal. It might be a clump of bushes, normal in every respect, except, it hadn’t been there the day before. Because of his keen powers of observation, Mark was killing trucks and guns at a rate faster than anyone in the 23rd TASS. Whether it had anything to do with his Indian heritage he didn’t know, or care. All he knew was he was having more fun than he had ever imagined.
There were two choices for FACs in terms of finding targets. First, they could follow the leads of the target planners at NKP who analyzed everything from infrared photography to the reports of SOG (Special Observation Group) units on the trail. While well intentioned and competent, the planners were no match for the fluid nature of events on the trail. Trucks or supplies there yesterday were not likely to be there today. The brilliance of the North Vietnamese leaders, beginning at the top with General Giap, would ultimately win the war. No one knows how many airmen lost their lives in Laos thinking they were bombing trucks hidden in the triple canopy jungle, but who were only bombing yesterday’s truck parks surrounded by today’s anti-aircraft guns. ‘Tree Parks’ was a Nail term for sites that once had demonstrable value, such as trucks, supply stashes, or fuel farms, but which had been abandoned due to the NVA practice of rotating their inventory frequently. Since trucks were usually hidden under trees, sometimes the only way to discover their presence was to blow the trees away.
The second option open to FACs was to find their own targets. In a high-threat anti-aircraft environment, this could be accomplished more safely from the mandated 5,000 feet above the ground using binoculars, lots of jinking, and lots of patience. In Mark’s case, flying high was too unproductive and he was not patient. His motto was “Patience Hell!” He perfected ways of getting lower, sometimes right on the treetops without getting hit. He would sneak around a hill or karst formation from the opposite side of the target at tree top level, engines at flight idle to reduce noise, grab a quick peek under the canopy of trees or into the mouth of a cave, gun the engines, and then zoom back around the hill before gunners could get the muzzle covers off their guns. To hide the anti-aircraft guns effectively, they were usually placed at the base of the mountain near the trail and could not effectively shoot toward the mountain.
Normally, Mark’s sneak peek tactic worked, but it wasn’t perfect. He landed his planes on four separate occasions with battle damage. Fortunately, and as strange as it may seem, Mark was always lucky enough to get hit by shrapnel from 23mm or 37mm flak guns. A direct hit from small arms fire, and he would have been washed up. A bullet hole from a rifle would have been a sign announcing, “I flew a little too low today.” Upon landing, the evidence could result in disciplinary action. A direct hit from an anti-aircraft gun, on the other hand, could be fatal because the warheads were mini-bombs, steel casings filled with gunpowder and a detonator fuse. There might not be an airplane left to leave. Shrapnel hits, however, were a common occurrence because of the high volume of anti-aircraft fire at all altitudes over the trail and weren’t even questioned. Most of the FAC aircraft had a few metal patches on the skin of the planes because most FACs had been hit by shrapnel which left jagged holes, not neat round circles.
Late one afternoon, Mark completed his preflight and was soon circling his favorite hunting ground, Ban Karai Pass. This was one of the most heavily traveled passes allowing the trucks access from North Viet Nam into Laos only 12 miles from the DMZ and South Viet Nam.
“Hillsborough, Nail 52. I have a gun; anything extra for me?”
“Negative, 52. The F-4s for your fragged target are inbound now. You can use your judgment on how to split the ordnance.”
The fragged target was a pre-arranged target selected by intelligence teams based at NKP. It was a suspected truck park just south of Mu Gia pass, close to the dirt road right on the border of North Viet Nam and Laos, about ten miles north of Mark’s current position. Mu Gia Pass was famous among Southeast Asia airmen because it once was the main pass from North Viet Nam into Laos. Demonstrating its strategic importance, Nails had designed a shoulder patch for their party suits depicting red tracers crossing in midair with the words, “Ski Mu Gia Pass” emblazoned in silver thread on a blue background. Ban Karai Pass to the south, closer to South Viet Nam, had eclipsed Mu Gia in traffic, but Mu Gia was still very much in play. Target selection for any given day was often based on sensor readings from either acoustic or seismic readings. They could be useful if fresh, but Mark didn’t give a damn about a sensor reading: he was looking right at an anti-aircraft gun, a confirmed sighting. Nevertheless, he had no choice but to make the rendezvous with the fragged fighters, but he made a mental note to come get the gun later. He headed for the pre-planned target at Mu Gia. It took a few minutes to reach the target coordinates but he couldn’t see anything through the trees. The only option was to probe around the triple canopy jungle using the F-4 Phantom’s Mark 82s, 500-pound bombs. A secondary explosion, or a truck uncovered by the first blast, would confirm the Intel.
“Nail 52, Bobbin 20 flight inbound to your location. Two Fox 4s. Eighteen Mark 82s each.”
“Roger Bobbin. Call FAC in sight.”
“Roger that, Nail. We have you now. OV-10 circling left over Mu Gia.”
“OK. Targets at 2,500 feet. Suspected truck park. No wind. Heavy threat area. Six apiece the first pass. South to north. Break toward your pencil.”
Mark’s terse instructions gave the Phantoms the roll-in heading and the target’s elevation. The comment about the pencil, which was in the left shoulder pocket of the flight suits, told them which way to break coming off target without alerting any gunners who might understand a few words of English that the F-4s were breaking left coming off the target. Mark didn’t tell them there was not a high probability of hitting anything on the first pass because he was guessing. He was intentionally withholding 12 bombs per plane to use on the confirmed gun at Ban Karai after the fragged target was hit. As he was speaking, he rolled inverted, pulled the Bronco’s nose down, rolled out wings level, and fired a single Willy Pete at the brown earth 3,000 feet below his aircraft. He then pulled back up to 5,000 feet and off to the east across the border into North Viet Nam.
“Hit my smoke.”
After a minute to align with the target, the lead F-4 called in, “Lead’s in. FAC in sight.”
“Cleared hot,” Mark radioed back.
“Two’s in, FAC in sight.”
“Cleared hot.”
The standard air strike procedure for fighter bombers, absent any other instructions from the FAC, was to roll in one after the other, adjusting their bomb drops as necessary to ensure total target coverage. Another advantage was to allow the second or succeeding aircraft to hit any guns showing up as the lead aircraft dropped. More than two passes were begging for trouble since the gunners below could adjust their fire as well. Often the FAC would simply command, “one pass, haul ass.” In this situation, there was a good possibility of hitting something simply because Mu Gia Pass was a choke point. It was a narrow, constricted pass where a lot of trucks and supplies were invariably hidden nearby; a few bombs might uncover something hiding in the weeds.
F-4, F-4, fly so fast. Can’t see shit, can’t hit your ass, Mark sang softly to himself, as he did whenever he worked F-4s, his envy boiling over.
The lead F-4, Bobbin 20, did a fair job. His projectiles hit only 25 meters from the smoke, enough to damage, but not destroy, any unhardened target, had one been there. Their plumes of dust spiked skyward, followed by rolling flames and black smoke which quickly dissipated. The second F-4, Bobbin 21, which should have adjusted his release based on the lead’s bombs, rolled in too quickly and hit the same spot. Mark wasn’t surprised. Wing men were often a little light on hours, and the demands of the Viet Nam conflict required sending them into combat far earlier than usual. Several had flown into the ground on night bombing runs. The daily Snoopy cartoon on the bulletin board at the Operations Center once displayed a macabre sense of humor. “Put the next F-4 three clicks north.” Snoopy the cartoon FAC sitting on his doghouse was grinning, but it was only funny to pissed-off Nails like Mark.
“All right,” Mark radioed. “Let’s try one more pass. Six apiece, 100 meters north of your last drop.”
The F-4s rolled in again. Flak intensified, which it normally did anytime an attack was occurring, and the sky was soon filled with black puffs of smoke. The puffs numbered from seven to over a dozen telling Mark both 37s and 23s were opening up. The noise of the OV-10 engines precluded hearing air blasts. However, experienced FACs always looked up as well as down, knowing that often the only clue they were being shot at were the airbursts above them.
Mark’s cavalier attitude suddenly took a sharp turn, “Bobbin 21’s hit!” screamed a frightened F-4 pilot over the radio. “WE’RE ON FIRE. PUNCHING OUT!”
Mark wheeled his plane around and caught sight of two parachutes deploying on the North Vietnamese side of the target. Both the front and back-seater of the second F-4 made safe ejections. Their aircraft, missing one wing, hit the ground with a large explosion amid a huge cloud of dirt. The parachutes were good news, so far, in a very tense situation. Mark had seen aircraft going down with no chutes, a sickening sight to FACs anywhere in Southeast Asia. The first time it happened to him, he choked up, something he never admitted to anyone. This time, he felt a temporary sense of relief, but there was much work to be done. He got right to it.
“Hillsborough, Nail 52. We have an F-4 down near Mu Gia. Two good chutes.” The call was made on his UHF radio to the airborne command post; simultaneously, the lead F-4 was broadcasting the same message on guard channel. This channel was specifically reserved for emergencies, but Mark didn’t use it because he was already talking to the only person who could help, the battlefield coordinator at the airborne command post, Hillsborough.
“Nail 52, Hillsborough. Roger. I’ll divert another flight of F-4s from a strike in Sector III. Scrambling Sandys and Jolly Greens now.”
“Roger, Hillsborough. Please send Nail 24 up from Sector III until the Sandys get here.”
“Roger that Nail.”
Mark was watching the two chutes descend and could see they were the targets of massive gunfire. Airbursts were turning the blue sky black. Occasional puffs of white smoke indicated even heavier guns. He used the distraction of the gunners to begin searching for their locations, and after ten minutes found what appeared to be a complex of guns, probably four 37s surrounding a big gun, probably a 57mm radar guided gun in the center. As usual, the guns were well camouflaged with netting and vegetation in the tree line just off the main body of the trail. The intense gunfire left puffs of smoke and gave them away. Mark couldn’t wait for something to throw at them. So, he didn’t. He rolled in and fired a salvo of white phosphorous rockets at the installation.
“52, Nail 24 overhead at 6,000. Good hit. Probably killed the gunners but not the guns. I’ve got it marked.”
“Roger 52. Good to have you here. Let’s do what we can to locate the other guns before the Sandys get here.”
“Roger that.”
“Nail, this is Bobbin 20. We still have five minutes of playtime and 12 Mark 82s.”
“Roger that Bobbin. Let’s keep you in reserve in case we need some quick help on the ground.”
Mark didn’t know if a battalion of troops would charge the pilots but guessed they probably would observe their landing area and wait until nightfall. Five more minutes wasn’t much of an advantage, but it was better than nothing.
The F-4 pilots finally landed, their parachutes deflating rapidly in the still hot air. One landed on one side of the North Viet Nam border, one in Laos. The lead pilot called in on his survival radio.
“Nail, Bobbin 21 Alpha. I’m going to try and make it to the small karst formation to the north of me. There’re guns all over the place. It sounded like constant gunfire all the way down.” The voice was strained, reflecting obvious pain and barely disguised fear. Alpha was the call sign for the front seater, the pilot. Bravo was the backseat pilot.
“Bobbin 21 Bravo, are you on?” Mark could see the backseater. He had discarded his parachute and was running uphill on ground devoid of all vegetation from years of bombing. Heading for high ground was a bedrock principle of escape and evasion. He didn’t answer Mark.
“Nail 52, Bobbin 20: I’ll monitor Bravo from up here so you can concentrate on Alpha.”
“Roger, 20. Sandys should be here soon. I’m going to drop down a little and see what I can. Watch for the guns.”
“Roger that. You better jink like a hummingbird.”
“Yeah, like a shitting hummingbird.”
Mark dropped down to 2,000 feet above the ground, twisting and turning his OV-10 aggressively. Calming himself, he keyed his mic. “Bobbin crew, don’t worry. The whole damned Air Force is on the way. There are two of us overhead now and the Sandys will be here in about 20 minutes. Two more F-4s have been diverted as well. Bobbin 21 Bravo, you OK?” He was being far more optimistic than he really was.
“Roger, Nail. Don’t know what hit us. I’m heading for trees uphill of me. I’ll try to get to ... Alpha …”
He almost used his front-seater’s name over the radio, which was a no-no, but caught himself in time. While he waited for the rescue team, Mark thought briefly of how disappointed he was at not getting an F-4 assignment out of pilot training and then realized how ridiculous those thoughts were. It could have been him on the ground. No helicopter could possibly survive in this environment. It was going to take a lot of work to get these guys out. The next ten minutes were spent gun hunting, but the gunners were not cooperating; they undoubtedly knew what was coming next. A nice fat target called a Jolly Green Giant helicopter.
“Nail 24, got anything?”
“Nothing. They’re holding their fire for you know what.”
“I know. I figured that out too.” The Nails continued circling, flying at different altitudes in opposing directions to confuse the North Vietnamese as much as possible. After ten more minutes with no confirmed targets, the lead F-4 pilot called.
“Nail, Bobbin 20 is bingo fuel. Have to RTB. What can we hit before we go?”
“Bobbin, let’s cut the road north of the crew in the event they’re here overnight. The pass there is in a narrow V shape 500 meters long with steep slopes on either side. I won’t mark it because it will just give them advance notice, but you can’t miss it. That will delay North Vietnamese ground troops from just swarming in. Do your best.”
