Combat Reflections of a USAF FAC in the Vietnam War.

Part III

The most inherently dangerous assignment of my 24-year USAF career was flyingO-1 Bird Dogs at about 80 knots against concentrations of 37mm Antiaircraft Artillery (AAA). After I started flying combat along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in February 1967, however, my first three close calls were all with other Americans fliers.

The first came on 1 March on a beautiful afternoon in Steel Tiger. I was still trying to master the role of high man. Major Young, who had been my nemesis during much of my combat checkout at Nakhon Phanom (NKP), was low man in the other O-1. The weather east of the Annamite Mountains must have been crummy, because the Navy was diverting pretty heavily to us from their primary targets in North Vietnam. Major Young and I were orbiting just east of CHARLIE, an interdiction point on the North Vietnamese's main infiltration route through Central Laos. As high man, I was working the rendezvous with Sunglass Lead and his flight of A-4 Skyhawks so Major Young could direct their bombs against CHARLIE.

During the rendezvous, the high FAC gave the inbound fighters an approximate location to fly to. In those years before the Global Positioning System was even on the drawing boards, we offered a reference of radial and distance from the TACAN at NKP. For those of you wondering about TACAN-equipped Bird Dogs, we didn't have a TACAN. We carried maps with radials and distance arcs drawn on in black marker. We lived by map-reading, so we picked off our approximate location from the lines on the map. I had told Sunglass Lead to bring his fighters to the 107-degree radial at about 80 miles from Channel 89. As the fighters got closer, the high FAC described visual references (river bends; prominent karst peaks; bombed-out road intersections, etc.) that might be obvious to the high flying fighters. We looked for the fighters; they looked for the O-1s.

Sunglass Lead asked where we were in relation to an airstrike he could see. I looked toward the horizon and saw smoke rising from the jungle about five miles south. I saw a fighter pulling off the target and trailing some kind of white vapor. The vapor reminded me of wingtip vortices that become visible under certain atmospheric conditions when an aircraft makes a high-G pullout. I didn't believe I could see wingtip vortices from that distance, however. Although I was unsure of what was happening at the other strike, I had a strike of my own to worry about. I told Sunglass Lead the FACs were a fewmiles north of the strike.

Minutes later, I looked to the west of CHARLIE and spotted two A-4s approaching about 500 feet above my altitude. I called out on the strike frequency, "Sunglass Lead, we're at your twelve o'clock," then added for Major Young, "Sir, they're at your eleven-thirty, just above us." Still a rookie FAC, I looked back at my maps and notes for the next briefing items I needed to cover before turning the strike flight over to Major Young. Major Young looked toward the fighters and got a terrifying surprise. The approaching fighters salvoed their bombs. The two A-4s flew over our O-1s. The bombs hurtled beneath us. Someone's dropping bombs on us," Major Young screeched on the radio. That didn't make a lot of sense to me, but his call got my attention. I racked my O-1 into about 45 degrees of bank and looked down. Bombs had just exploded east of CHARLIE, beneath where we were holding. For the next few seconds, confusion reigned as we tried to figure out what had happened. In addition, the four A-4 pilots of Sunglass flight probably tried to orbit two O-1s that were not at twelve o'clock, as the high FAC had just reported. Sunglass eventually found us, and Major Young directed the strike.

After landing, we finally solved the mystery. My roommate, Chic Randow, Nail 68, had been directing two A-4s against a target near Route 91. As the second A-4 dropped a bomb, flames enveloped the Skyhawk. The bomb had exploded just after release. The A-4 emerged from the fireball with the pilot still in control. Jet fuel streamed from Skyhawk's punctured tanks. The fuel left a white vapor trail, which I had happened to see from up by CHARLIE. The pilot of the crippled Skyhawk started a sweeping turn to the northeast, swinging around toward his aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin. The flight leader joined up to escort his crippled wingman. He asked Chic where the A-4s could jettison their remaining bombs. The answer was to dump the bombs over any motorable road. By coincidence, the next road the Navy pilots crossed was Route 911 at CHARLIEthe area Major Young had under surveillance.

All four FACs and Chic's Skyhawk pilot recovered safely in Thailand. The Navy lieutenant hung around with us for 3 or 4 days. By the time the A-4 was ready to be flown back out to the carrier, it had the requisite number of black Crickets stenciled on it to commemorate its visit to the Crickets of the 23rd

TASS.

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Three weeks later, I was flying as high man en route to the Trail. We were at about 6,000 feet cruising down the Big Roostertail, a long ridgeline paralleling our operational area about 30 miles west of the main road. Riding in the back seat was the captain who headed up the Photo Detachment at NKP. We were fairly relaxed since we were still a few minutes away from the guns. I spotted an exhaust trail nearly straight ahead and picked out a RF-4C headed northwest along the roostertail. I called out the visual contact to the low man and judged that the RF-4C would pass head-on about 300 feet above us and a little to my right. That was going to be a bit closer than the F-105s and F-4s hurtled by during strikes but didn't seem to be a problem - until the photo-reconnaissance bird was almost on top of us and started a descending right turn. I rolled my O-1 inverted and began the first part of a split-S before rolling us upright again. By then, there wasn't anything to see as the RF-4C was long gone. I yelled on intercom, Did you see that?" The captain said, Yeh, and my heart's just a beatin!'" In retrospect, I decided that the crew in the RF-4C probably had us in sight and decided they'd give those guys in that O-1 a thrill. And they did!

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On 17 April, I was directing Electra, a pair of F-105 Thunderchiefs out on Route 23. I had been having the Thuds run in from the west and pull off to the south. I was holding to the north of the target at about 6,000 feet. I had my high man holding off to the east so he'd be out of the way. As the second F-105 pulled of from dropping his six 750-pound bombs, Electra Lead asked if they could make a second pass with their Gatling guns spraying the jungle alongside the road.

Since Route 23 the least-defended of the major routes south through Steel Tiger in Central Laos, the strafing run wasn't particularly dangerous for the F-105s. I cleared them in for another pass from the west. The Thuds pulled back up to nearly 20,000 feet, which was where they normally rolled in from on attacks along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. (The rules for Laos called for the USAF fighters to pull out by 4,500 feet along the Trail to minimize losses.) The distance between FAC and fighter made even an F-105 a pretty small dot, but that was back in the days when I had young eyes. Sometimes I could spot a puff of fuel vapor as the pilot came out of afterburner upon reaching altitude. At other times, I cleared the fighters down-the-chute before I had reacquired them visually after the initial rendezvous. FAC rules said we should have the fighter in sight before clearing it for attack, but we couldn't have gotten most of the fighters in if we had followed that rule religiously.

I had had Electra in sight to the west a bit before he called in for attack clearance. I cleared Electra in hot for guns knowing they would be coming from a little more northwest than west. I scanned that sector, looking for the dark dots that should seem to grow out of the clear blue sky. Seconds passed, and I didn't pick up Electra flight. I began scanning a wider sector to the northwest and still didn't see them. A few seconds later, my wingman shouted, "Break it off!" on the strikefrequency.

With my head really on a swivel, I spotted the F-105s coming almost directly at me from the north. My diary entry for the day says, Went by pretty dang close: 100 feet to 100 yards." I don't know how close all those 20mm shells were when they went by, but they were enough to disintegrate an O-1. I thought about telling Electra that it didn't count toward being an Ace if you shot down the FAC.

Three years later I was talking to a friend who had flown F-105s in Southeast Asia during that same time period. I said, Maybe you were the Thud driver who nearly shot me down." My friend looked interested and said, Were you in that F-4?" I was afraid to ask him about the incident he was referring to.

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Von Clauswitz referred to the Fog of War to describe the confusion that develops in many combat situations. Sometimes there were disadvantages in flying at only 80 knots. Sometimes the slow speed and maneuverability of an O-1 worked in our favor. As a Cricket FAC flying O-1s out of NKP, you never knew what each day would bring.