Run Run Cricket Run, page 17
He turned on the navigation lights, a bright red rotating beacon on the tail, a red light on the left-wing tip and a green light on the right. The gunners cut loose. Tracers burned a fiery red path toward the airplane from the east, from the trail. Sam avoided them easily since they were relatively far away. But it had the desired effect. Kratz screamed so loud he didn’t even need the intercom to be heard.
“What in the hell are you doing. Are you crazy? Turn the lights out!”
“Tell you what, you find me a truck, and I’ll turn the lights out.”
“There aren’t any trucks here!” shouted Kratz.
“Then take me to where they are.” Sam’s voice was completely calm.
“Okay! Turn east!” His voice was raspy, desperate.
Sam turned east. He left the lights on and continued to dodge the flak. Sam was perhaps the most experienced pilot in the squadron. Like any experienced Nail, he dodged flak not by dramatic maneuvers, but by slight changes in direction, enough to make the red balls move left or right on the windscreen. If they were moving, they could not be a collision course.
The A-1s assigned to them for the evening checked in.
“Nail, Zorro 33 Flight, two A-1s with nape and four funnies apiece.”
“Good evening Zorros. We’re on the 105 at 60 off the NKP Tacan. Call when you have us in sight.”
“Roger that. We’re almost there. Hell, that’s not you with the lights on is it?”
“Wanted to make sure you found us. You Zorros are not all that competent at navigation.”
Kratz finally spoke over the intercom. “There are about 20 trucks under us. Drop a mark and please turn off the lights. Hold to the west.”
Sam rolled the O-2 up on its left wing and looked down. The trucks were easily visible looking down through the trees because they were using headlights due to the lack of a moon. The trucks were moving, barely, because of the craters and mud holes in the road. Road crews were trying to push trucks stuck in mud and bridge the craters in front of the convoy. Sam, like the other Nails, never ceased to marvel at the ingenuity and persistence of the North Vietnamese. He turned off the navigation lights, but not the shielded red tail beacon only visible from above to the fighters. He then dropped two ground flares about five seconds apart when he was directly over them. The parachute flares behind them burned out.
Even with the navigation lights off, the flak continued to stream up from every direction although the tracers were becoming more random without the twinkling lights to guide them. Sam continued to keep his cool, not making any abrupt moves, even if the tracers were not moving but appearing as red balls growing bigger as they got closer. When the trajectory looked too close for comfort, Sam banked slightly a few degrees one way or the other until the red balls appeared to move left or right. Then he slowly rolled wings level and watched them go by. The closer ones made the characteristic sound of sheets ripping as they went by, audible even over the airplane engine noise. His coolness under fire was driving Major Kratz to higher and higher levels of exasperation mixed with fear and nausea. Reacting calmly to anti-aircraft fire was not only Bad Sam’s standard flak evasion procedure, as well as the more experienced Nails, but it gave him great satisfaction because it was driving Kratz insane.
“Nail, Zorro 33 and 34 are overhead. We have the marks and your beacon to the west of them.”
“Well, shit hot!” Sam radioed back. “Let the party begin. The trucks are moving very slowly southeast. They are just inside the western-most mark. Have at them. Your first nape drop should light them up well enough to give your succeeding drops better visibility. We will be well west at 6,500 feet.”
Zorro lead responded. “Roger that. Two, wait for my drop and then mix up the headings. I’ll pull off north and orbit at 7,500 to see what we can see.”
“Zorro 2, Roger that.”
Zorro lead hit just inside the western-most mark and the napalm ran along the ground like a surging river for almost 200 feet. It consumed four trucks instantly. As they burned, at least two exploded, meaning they were carrying ammunition to the war in South Viet Nam.
Maybe it saved a few of the grunts in the South, thought Sam.
Thank God, they’re distracted from me, thought Major Kratz. Seconds later a string of 15 or more red tracers, obviously from a 23mm, came up from behind and under the nose of the O-2, climbing a few thousand feet higher before culminating in an orgasm of sparkling white flashes, as the rounds detonated at the end of their predetermined existence. It ruined the few seconds of peace the major was enjoying; he wished he was a praying man, but he wasn’t. He didn’t know how. The old saying about there being no atheists in foxholes didn’t apply to Kratz.
The evening progressed in like fashion for another 20 minutes. The A-1 pilots mixed up their drop headings and chatted between themselves as the Nails witnessed the action from a semi-safe distance from the strike. Most AAA rounds fired in the direction of the O-2 were random shots from the gunners below who were guessing where to shoot except when the A-1s reached the low points in their passes. Then, the North Vietnamese got a brief glimpse of their adversary’s aircraft even though they were flying black airplanes. The A-1s would be lit up by the raging orange flames of the jellied gasoline as they dropped. The gunners below would attempt to swivel around and get a shot. It was a cat and mouse game, but it was a game in which either the cat or the mouse might be the victim.
The strike continued for another 20 minutes; as the Zorros made their last drop, Sam counted 23 trucks burning or destroyed, their carcasses black smudges of what they once were.
“Nail, Zorro flight is Winchester, so we’re going to head back. See you at the Nail Hole. Drinks are on us.” Winchester was slang for out of ordnance.
Bad Sam keyed his mic, “Zorro, you guys are shit hot, and I mean that in all sincerity. Great work, and it’ll be a cold day in hell before you buy a drink in the Nail Hole. I’m going to try my best not to step on your fingers at the party.”
The Zorros didn’t respond. Sam assumed it was because they were probably peeing in their flight suits, both from laughing so hard and from pulling all those Gs for almost half an hour.
Years later, when Sam’s eyes were so dim he couldn’t pass a driver’s test, he would remember this mission and many others like it. And he would wonder, as most Viet Nam veterans would, what the hell it was all about and what he had accomplished to make the world a better place.
19
Heavy Hook
At 0500, Ted Thatcher and Lt. Steve Johns, the carnation-growing navigator, entered the Nail Hole, sweaty after a night mission which ended two hours before sunrise. It was still dark, and the sun wouldn’t come up for another hour. Captain Bill Stancil, Nail 23, Thatcher’s pilot training classmate, came in the door right behind them, all of them looking for the same thing, boiled eggs for breakfast. Thatcher started the coffee pot, not because he thought coffee would help him sleep better, but because there was nothing else suitable for a breakfast beverage. They all sat down at the bar and started cracking eggs, waiting for the coffee.
“So, how did you do last night?” asked Bill Stancil.
“Eighteen ... half carrying ammunition.”
“Damn!” Stancil shook his head and took his first sip of the coffee.
“Have you or your Green Beret friends in Heavy Hook seen an increase in truck counts?” Thatcher wasn’t asking to be polite. He knew his pilot training classmate was way ahead of the standard Intel reports because the Green Berets were feeding information hourly. The Nails flying with them, such as Bill Stancil, knew what was happening on the trail hours before the rest of the Nails heard it at their own pre-takeoff briefings.
“Hell yes. To be honest, scheduling airstrikes on everything we find is getting to be problematic. They move this stuff around so fast our Intel is often worthless after half a day. I’ve been here six months and I can see a big increase in NVA activity. B-52 strikes based on our Intel are getting to be less and less effective. The 12 or more hours it takes to get a B-52 strike in the pipeline means a lot of our stuff is hitting nothing but dirt. The road cuts made by the B-52s are still helpful, but the NVA logistics are getting better every day.”
“Are the Heavy Hook guys seeing any increase in the threat to their ground operations?”
Bill Stancil didn’t hesitate. “Absolutely. They’re having to run more and observe less. There was a time when they could camp out for a week or more. Now they’re lucky to get a few days before the shit hits the fan.”
“Well, watch your six. I’m going to hit the hay. What time are we having dinner tonight?”
“I land at about 1400, so any time after that is fine.”
“Alright. I’ll meet you back here about 1600.”
Bill Stancil, Nail 23, took off one hour before sunrise; this allowed him to be in place to monitor Trail Watch Team Beethoven as first light appeared. Sgt. Mrozek, the Green Beret ‘back seater’ in the OV-10 was a veteran of over 20 Trail Watch missions and was paired to fly with Stancil, still a relative newcomer to Heavy Hook. The two had quickly become a well-oiled team, having at least two close calls necessitating more than half a dozen airstrikes in support of emergency exfils. An exfil on the Ho Chi Minh Trail was the extraction of a Trail Watch team and was rarely done neatly and cleanly, according to the pre-arranged schedule, because the teams were operating in a very fluid environment. The NVA patrols were constantly looking for the teams, which they knew were always on the trail somewhere.
Today’s mission was to be a standard check in to ensure Beethoven was secure after a night of trail observation. Green Berets had a long and distinguished history of furnishing much of the Intel concerning truck traffic and other activities on the part of the NVA. Their efforts were among the riskiest of all Viet Nam operations. Once inserted on or near the trail by Jolly Green crews, they were on their own. If discovered, they called for an exfil, an emergency rescue, while running like hell to a location safe enough for a Jolly Green pickup. The Nails flying in support of this mission could not employ airstrikes in support of the teams at night. So, the Nails operated mainly from first light to an hour after sunset although they could serve as communication facilitators 24 hours a day in the event of an emergency.
There were many heroic stories told of the Trail Watch Team exploits and some were even funny. One was about an indigenous team member who was a Montagnard, an important part of the team because of their jungle survival abilities. ‘Yards’, as they were affectionately known, were not Vietnamese: they were a mountain people descended from, but no longer similar, to Chinese. This particular Yard left the team’s carefully constructed hiding place in the middle of the night to relieve himself. Right in the middle of doing so, he was tapped on the shoulder by a North Vietnamese soldier who told him it was his turn to take guard duty. Needless to say, the team quickly and quietly exited the area. Today, though, the Heavy Hook team didn’t suspect anything out of the ordinary.
Team Beethoven had been left in a secure location perched on a piece of karst that would have required a vertical attack of over 100 feet of very rough rock. There was no significant hostile activity near their location in the last two days and their observations on the truck traffic and other activity was valuable. Several airstrikes based on their Intel were conducted. Secondary explosions occurred, meaning munition shipments were part of the truck traffic. A dozen more trucks carrying rice, and seven trucks towing artillery pieces were all destroyed as well. All of these trucks were camouflaged and parked in a truck park just off the trail. An airborne FAC would never have found them.
Airborne FACs could cover a lot of territory, but the NVA were quite adept at transmitting aircraft positions to each other via radio. What was on a dirt road one minute could easily be covered with camo or hidden under trees in the next. Once a FAC left a given area, information was transmitted to the other North Vietnamese and the trucks in the now-safe area started running again. The ground watch teams were invaluable in observing and reporting trail activity when the noise of airplanes was absent and the NVA activity was done in the open.
As Nail 23 reached an altitude high enough to allow radio reception, Sgt. Mrozek made a call to Beethoven and was immediately informed of a serious problem. The team, despite its seemingly secure location, was discovered. As was standard protocol, they headed for high ground to pre-established pickup points. The team booby trapped whatever supplies they didn’t absolutely need with grenades and high-tailed it out of their location. By the time Nail 23 reached the original location, the team was over a mile away on another piece of high ground, spread out like a covey of quail in a circle, weapons pointing outward. In the jungle, locating the team from the air with precision was not easy, so Stancil ordered fighter support and waited without getting too close and giving away their position. His request to Hillsborough was for some A-1s from NKP, but he was able to snag some A-7s from a carrier, diverted to him by Hillsborough, the airborne command post.
The four A-7s, Bobbin Flight, checked in so Stancil dropped down to a few hundred feet, located the team visually, and began directing the attack. The Heavy Hook team suggested some coordinates based on what they were hearing. The NVA used whistles to direct their troops. Based on the noise, Beethoven’s team leader called for a drop around 200 meters east of their position. Stancil made a low pass and spotted the exact location of the enemy soldiers. They made the mistake of firing, and the flashes gave them away.
He marked the target with a Willy Pete. He then asked each of the A-7s to drop two of their 12 Mark 82s on the first pass. As usual, they were right on target. He continued the process until the ground team heard no more gunfire. By then, the A-7s were out of ordnance and returned to their ship.
The Jolly Green Giant flight, consisting of two CH-53 helicopters, Jolly Green 1 and 2, and four A-1s, ‘Sandy Flight’, checked in five minutes out. Bill Stancil gave them the standard briefing on target elevation, the headcount of Green Berets on the ground, and the observed gunfire. The Sandy flight leader, Captain Jim ‘Jimbo’ Powell, assumed the role of on-site commander and went to work. He dropped down to tree top level and scoured the ground below his A-1, looking for any sign of enemy activity while the other members of his flight observed from above, also looking for any sign of hostile action. Seeing and hearing nothing, he led his flight in a coordinated drop of CBU 29, the cluster bombs that shot stainless steel pellets over a football-field sized area. The Green Berets were also a player in this phase of the exfil since they were the only ones who could hear enemy gunfire. After multiple low level CBU drops and passes all around the area with no sign of hostile activity, they reported no noise. Nail 23 and Sandy 1 both agreed the risk was minimal and Stancil advised Jolly Green 1 the area appeared safe.
Jolly Green 1 began the let down from its secure holding area, lowering cables with Jungle Penetrators to the Beethoven Team. Just as the cables were within reach of the ground watch team, a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG), fired from somewhere on the opposite side of the Ho Chi Minh Trail from the Heavy Hook Team, hit the Jolly Green in the tail rotor, rendering the Jolly Green completely uncontrollable. The fiery, tragic crash of the helicopter took only seconds, and the fireball that ensued left no doubt the crew of Jolly Green 1 were killed instantly.
It would be impossible to describe the sick feeling of both the Trail Watch Team members still on the ground and the aircrew members who witnessed the tragedy. Sandy Lead was on the radio instantly telling Jolly Green 2 to move to even safer territory. There was no one to blame. This was, unfortunately, not uncommon, part of the ‘fog of battle’. The fact this wasn’t the work of an anti-aircraft gun, but a shoulder-fired RPG, made the situation even more tragic. An anti-aircraft gun was much easier to locate than a camouflaged soldier with a camouflaged tube only five feet long. The enemy soldier was certainly a pro, knowing how to remain hidden and safe during the sweeps from Stancil, the attacks from the A-7s, and the CBU drops from the Sandys.
“Chicago, Sandy 1, where did that come from?”
“It came from the bend in the road east of us. It was an RPG.”
“Sandy Lead, Nail 23. I was overhead watching. I know about where it came from.”
“Mark it, Nail. Sandys follow me to the south and watch for the Nail’s smoke. Let’s obliterate that son of a bitch. Use your Mark 82s.”
The Sandys pulled off to the east. Bill Stancil rolled in and fired a single Willy Pete. It impacted 300 meters away from the team in a brushy area on the other side of the trail. There was no reaction from the ground, probably because the soldier or soldiers were trying hard to be invisible.
“Hit my smoke,” radioed Nail 23.
“Sandy Lead is in hot.”
“Two’s in.”
“Three’s in.”
“Four’s in.”
The four A-1s created a huge crater in the landscape. The marked target was obliterated. The area around the white smoke became instantly denuded of vegetation for over 300 meters. It left little doubt that whoever was there was now dead.
“Sandy, Nail 23. That asshole is now in hell.”
“Roger that. Sandys let’s set up a daisy chain and kill every monkey within 500 meters of the team. Follow my lead. Let’s use our Mini guns.”
The SUU-11 minigun came with 1,500 rounds of ammunition and A-1 pilots could spray bullets effectively using the rudder pedals to push the nose of the A-1 left and right. As an anti-personnel weapon, it was ideal because the guns spread so many lethal projectiles so quickly and thoroughly. The A-1s spent five more minutes flying in a circle 25 meters from the team to over 300 meters out.
Sandy Lead called for the second pickup attempt and Jolly Green 2 didn’t hesitate. He flew aggressively down to the team and the hoist pulled up all team members in record time. As the chopper pulled up and away, the Sandys followed in close formation. In a matter of a few minutes, they were out of gun range and heading for NKP.
In an act few non-combatants could ever imagine, the crews of both the Jolly Greens flew into a hostile area to rescue American soldiers, knowing there was a probability of enemy fire during a maneuver requiring them to hover in one position. They didn’t hesitate. If that realization was not enough to demonstrate bravery on the very highest scale, the second Jolly Green crew had watched their fellow squadron mates and personal friends die a horrible death. Did they hesitate? Hell no! It was no wonder the Jolly Green crews were the most highly decorated airmen in Southeast Asia.
