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Aviation History
1971
1971 - 0036.PDF
34 NIGHT MISSION ... heavier stuff in clips of five and seven rounds goes off way behind. Tonight we are lucky—no "golden BB." The golden BB is that one stray shell that gets you. Not always so lucky. One night we had four down in Death Valley—that's just south of Mu Gia Pass. Only got two people out the next day, and that cost a Sandy (A-l) pilot, "And if the big guns don't get you, the black karst will," goes the song. It is black, karsty country down there. Soon I have no more ammunition. We, the gunship and I, gravely thank each other, and 1 pull u"p to thirty or so thousand feet, turn my navigation lights back on, and start across the Lao border to my home base. In spite of an air-conditioning system working hard enough to cool a five-room house, I'm sweating. I'm tired. My neck is sore. In fact, I'm sore all over. All those roll-ins and div ing pullouts, jinking, craning your head, looking, always looking around, in the cockpit, outside, behind, left, right, up, down. But 1 am headed home, my aircraft is light and more responsive. Too quickly I am in the thick, puffy thunder clouds and rain of the southwest monsoon. Wild, the psychedelic green, wiry, and twisty St Elmo's fire flows liquid and sur realistic on the canopy a few inches away. I am used to it—fascinating. It's comforting, actually, sitting snugged up in the cockpit, harness and lap belt tight, seat lowered, facing a panel of red-glowing instruments, plane buffet ing slightly from the storm. Moving without conscious thought, I place the stick and rudder pedals and throttles in this or that position—not so much mechanically moving things, rather just willing the craft to do what I see should be done by what the instruments tell me. I'm used to flying night missions now. We "night owls" do feel rather elite. 1 suppose. We speak of the day- pilots in somewhat condescending tones. We have a black pilot who says, "Well, day pilots are OK, I guess, but I wouldn't want my daughter to marry one." We have all kinds: quiet guys, jokey guys (the Jewish pilot with the fierce black bristly moustache who asks, "What is a nice Jewish boy like me doing over here, killing Buddhists to make the world safe for Christianity?"), noisy guys, scared guys, whatever. But all of them do their job. I mean night after night they go out and get hammered and hosed, and yet keep right at it. And all that effort, sacrifice, blood going down the tubes. Well, these thoughts aren't going to get me home. This is no time to be thinking about any thing but whal I'm doing right now. 1 call up some people on the ground who are sitting in darkened, black-out rooms, staring at phosphorescent screens that are their eyes to the night sky. Radar energy reflecting from me shows them where I am. I flick a switch at their command and trigger an extra burst of energy at them so they have positive identification. By radio they direct me. crisply, clearly, to a point in space and time that another man in another darkened room by a runway watches anxiously. His eyes follow a little elec tronic bug crawling down a radar screen between two converging lines. His voice tells me how the bug is doing, or how it should be doing. In a flat, precise voice the radar controller keeps up a constant patter—"Turn left two degrees . . . approaching glide path . .. prepare to start descent in four miles." Inside the cockpit I move a few levers and feel the heavy landing gear thud into place and then counteract the nose rise as the flaps grind down. I try to follow his machine-like instructions quite accurately, as I am very near the ground now. More voice, more commands, then a glimmer of approach lights, and suddenly the wet run way is beneath me. 1 slip over the end, engines whistling a down note as I retard the throttles, and I'm on the ground at last. If the runway is heavy with- rain, I lower a hook to snatch a cable laid across the runway that connects to a friction device on each side. The deceleration throws me FLIGHT International, 7 fanuaiy 1971 violently into my harness as I stop in less than 900ft from nearly 175 m.p.h. And this is a gut-good feeling. Then the slow taxi back, the easing of tension, the good feeling. Crew chiefs with lighted wands in their hands direct me where to park; they chock the wheels and signal me with a throat-cutting motion to shut down the engines. Six or seven people gather around the airplane as the engines coast off, and I unstrap and climb down, soaking wet with sweat. "You OK? How did it go? See anything, get anything?" They want to know these things and they have a right to know. Then they ask, "How's the airplane?" That concern always last. Wc confer briefly on this or that device or instrument that needs looking after. And then 1 tell them what I saw, what I did. They nod, grouped around, swear softly, spit once or twice. They are tough, and it pleases them to hear results. The crew van arrives, I enter and ride through the rain—smoking a cigarette and becoming thoughtful. It's dark in there, and I need this silent time to myself before going back to the world. We arrive and, with my equip ment jangling and thumping about me, I enter the squad ron locker room, where there is always easy joking among those who have just come down. Those that arc suiting up are quiet, serious, going over the mission brief in their minds, for once on a night strike they cannot look at maps or notes or weapon settings. They glance at me and ask how the weather is at The Pass. Did I see any thunderstorms over the Dog's Head? They want to ask about the guns up tonight, but know I'll say how it was without their questioning. Saw some light ZPU (automatic weapons fire) at The Pass, saw someone getting hosed at Ban Karai, nothing from across the border. Nobody down, quiet night. Now all they have to worry about is thrashing through a couple of hundred miles of lousy weather, letting down on instruments and radar into the black karst country and finding their tar gets. Each pilot has his own thoughts on that. Me, I'll start warming up once the lethargy of finally being back from a mission drains from me. Funny how the mind/body combination works. You are all "hypoed" just after you land, then comes a slump, then you're back up again but not as high as you were when you first landed. By now I'm ready for some hot coffee or a drink (sometimes too many), or maybe just letter writing. A lot of what you want to do depends on how the mission went. I debrief and prepare to leave the squadron. But before I do, I look at the, next day's schedule. Is it an escort? Am I leading? Where are we going? What are we carry ing? My mind unrolls pictures of mosaics and gun-camera film of the area. Already I'm mechanically preparing for the next mission. *< 0 * And so it goes—for a year. And I like it. But every so often, especially during your first few months, a little wisp of thought floats up from way deep in your mind when you see the schedule. "Ah no, not tonight," you say to yourself. "Tonight I'm sick—or could be sick. Just really not up to par, you know. Maybe, maybe I shouldn't go." There's a feeling—the premonition that tonight is the night I don't come back. But you go anyhow and pretty soon you don't think about it much anymore. You just don't give a fat damn. After a while, when you've been there and see what you see, you just want to go fight! To strike back, destroy. And then sometimes you're pensive— every sense savouring each and every sight and sound and smell. Enjoying the camaraderie, the feeling of doing something. Have to watch that camaraderie thing though —don't get too close. You might lose somebody one night and that can mess up your mind. It happens, and when it does, you get all black and karsty inside your head. I leave the squadron and walk back through the ever- present rain that's running in little rivulets down and off my poncho. The rain glistens off trees and grass and bushes, and a ripping, tearing sound upsets the balance as another black Phantom rises to pierce the clouds. •
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