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thedrifter
02-06-03, 01:28 PM
http://www.military.com/pics/vn1097HANOI_1l.jpg
A flight of three McDonnell-Douglas F-4J Phantoms of VMFA-333 trolls for MiGs. Known as "the Shamrock Squadron" for its tail markings, VMFA-333 was the first Marine F-4 unit to fly combat missions from an aircraft carrier off the coast of Vietnam. (J. M. Shotwell)

The SAMs and AAA were formidable enough, but adding air-to-air combat with MiG-21s made Hanoi raids especially harrowing.

By Colonel J.M. Shotwell, U.S. Marine Corps (ret.)

"Red One, this is Red Crown. Got a bandit at your six o'clock, two-two-nine at nine miles."

"Roger. Red Flight, let's go port."

Bud (Marine Captain John "Bud" Linder), my pilot in Red Two, slammed our McDonnell-Douglas F-4J Phantom jet into a tight left turn. I strained to find the North Vietnamese MiGs before they spotted us. That was unlikely; the Soviet-built Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21, given the incongruous NATO code name "Fishbed," was not much larger than half the size of our F-4 Phantoms, was almost as fast -- capable of Mach 2 -- and much more maneuverable. Red Crown, the radar controller aboard USS England (CG22), a positive identification radar advisory zone (PIRAZ) ship in the Tonkin Gulf, monitored the MiGs for us that day, September 10, 1972.
Bandits Attacking

I was less worried about the MiGs than I was about their buddies on the ground. We were just over the suburbs of Hanoi (code-named "Bull's-eye"). An engagement with MiGs would place us directly over the greatest concentration of North Vietnamese Army (NVA) anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) and surface-to-air missile (SAM) batteries. In a dogfight we might be too busy trying to bag a MiG to dodge all the flak from below.

"Red One from Red Crown, bandits attacking. I repeat, bandits are attacking."

By the time we'd steadied our turn, my electronic countermeasures gear was lit up and buzzing like a pinball machine. That meant enemy fire control radar had painted our aircraft. "Red Flight from Crown. SAM launch, vicinity Bull's-eye."

A loud warble and a flashing red light told me that a SAM missile had indeed selected our aircraft as its target.

"Red Two's got a singer high," I said. I twisted my head as far as I could in the cramped rear cockpit and saw neither MiGs nor missiles.

Where Were The MiGs?

"Airburst!" said Bud over the intercom. A SAM detonated off our starboard wing. It could have been yards away or a mile. We felt no impact. The puffs of prickly flak we'd dodged since we took our station southwest of Hanoi were getting thicker. And closer. And where were the MiGs?

"Bogey dope, Red Crown," demanded L'il John (Captain John D. Cummings) from Red One, the lead aircraft of VMFA-333 flight, our Marine fighter-attack squadron.

"Red One, Red Crown. Bandits now at your two-two-eight at seven."

Million-Dollar Pistol Operator

L'il John, like myself, was a radar intercept officer (RIO). A RIO's job in a dogfight included operating radar to detect and track enemy aircraft, and helping his pilot, in the forward cockpit, to maneuver the fighter into a position where he can fire one of the Phantom's missiles.

The F-4J model, flown by Navy and Marine Corps squadrons, was akin to a multimillion-dollar pistol. Unlike the Air Force's F-4E Phantom, which had an internal 20mm cannon, the F-4J had a maximum of eight big bullets -- four Sparrows and four Sidewinders -- to expend on targets that could move at supersonic speed through three dimensions and shoot back. Close coordination between the tandem cockpits of the Phantoms was essential.

In an air engagement, a good RIO was worth his weight in fine Scotch. An incompetent RIO was just so much dead weight. L'il John was worth about 120 pounds of Chivas Regal. He was only 5 foot 4, but at age 39 the former enlisted Marine had the build and stamina of a high-school halfback. He'd already flown more than 500 combat missions in Vietnam.

Things Go Awry

"Red One from Red Crown. Bandits attacking again." I tried to find them on my radar, but it was useless in the glare of the afternoon sunlight. Normally I carried a rubber scope boot to shield the screen from the direct light, but I'd left the thing aboard the aircraft carrier when I'd detoured through the head on my way to the preflight briefing. Some guy was probably sitting there right then, wondering what that black rubber thing was hanging on the tissue roller. It was one of many things that would go awry on this mission.

Another occurred after "the Bear" -- the flight leader, Marine Major Lee T. Lasseter, L'il John's pilot and our squadron's executive officer -- called for tank jettison. Bud pulled a couple of Gs as he punched off our centerline external fuel tank to cut down on aerodynamic drag during the engagement. When he pushed the nose back over, everything that wasn't strapped down flew toward the top of my canopy. I'd left my flight bag open, and its contents -- maps, frequency cards, checklists, cookie crumbs -- floated like big snowflakes throughout the cockpit until a resumption of gravity brought them down, mostly to the floor and out of reach.

L'il John, far more focused than I, picked up the MiGs on his radar. "Gotta target high, gang. Let's go after 'em....
Ten left....Steady up....He's at nine miles. We're losing overtake. Gotta get some speed now."

The Bear lit his plane's afterburners, which gave the engines rocketlike thrust and a flaming exhaust. A split second later I felt the acceleration as Bud fired our afterburners. We were well into the supersonic envelope, hur-
tling through the air at more than 12 miles a minute.

Blown System And Tail Chase

L'il John lost sight of the MiGs when his AWG-10 radar died. The AWG-10 was not the most reliable system in the best of circumstances. The shock of locking onto an actual enemy target probably blew its transistors. But Red Crown monitored the intercept on his radar.

"This is Red Crown. Bandits on your one-niner-niner at eight."

"Roger, roger," answered L'il John.

"Bandits at two-oh-five at eight. Bandits headed southwest. Bandits now your two-oh-four at eight."

It was a tail chase, I realized. These guys weren't going to fight us. They were baiting us. We were over Hanoi headed inland. The farther in we went, the greater our chances of getting blown out of the sky or simply falling out of it because of fuel depletion.

Phantom Versus MiG

The Phantom is little more than two huge jet engines strapped together with a couple of stubby wings and a radar in the nose. Add two average-size guys strapped to the ejection seats, and an F-4 will tip the scales at about 20 tons. To propel a chunk of metal that heavy to twice the speed of sound or send it spiraling into the stratosphere takes two giant huffers -- the J-79-GE-10 jet engines, each capable of producing up to 17,900 pounds of thrust. They're incredibly powerful, but in a supersonic engagement those power plants could go through a tank of fuel in minutes. I'd heard tales of fighter crews who had downed MiGs only to flame out over the Hanoi Hilton. Hardly an even trade.

So far, no Marine Corps aircrew had shot down a MiG during the entire Vietnam War. The last Marine squadron had pulled out of the country several months before we arrived at Yankee Station, an operational area about 100 miles out to sea in the Gulf of Tonkin, on USS America. The only other Marine squadrons still in the fight were based at a desolate, dusty airfield at Nam Phong, Thailand, known to Marines as the Rose Garden -- something the Marine Corps didn't promise to prospective enlistees in a popular recruiting poster of the time.

Throughout the war, Marine F-4 units were relegated to close air support for troops on the ground. Naping (dropping napalm), strafing and low-level dive-bombing were vital to the grunts but gutter work for the proud Phantom, arguably the Free World's finest fighter jet at the time. Since VMFA-333 was the first Marine F-4 squadron to fly combat missions from an aircraft carrier, we were assigned the same missions as the Navy Phantoms: air to air, trolling for MiGs. We did some bombing over the South, but we were there mainly to protect the fleet and bombers. Most of the time, enemy aircraft stayed away, perhaps out of respect for the Phantom's lethality. Two months before America reached Yankee Station, Navy Lieutenant Randy Cunningham and his RIO, Lt. j.g. Willie Driscoll, had downed three MiGs in a single flight -- one had been flown by one of North Vietnam's top fighter pilots, the infamous Colonel Toon. With two previous MiG kills to their credit, Cunningham and Driscoll -- flying an F-4J from USS Constellation -- became the first and only Navy aces of the war. From then on, the North Vietnamese pilots gave wide berth to the sea-based Phantoms.

Missile At Seven O'Clock

On this particular mission we were assigned as the MiG CAP, the combat air patrol directed specifically against MiGs. In a Navy Alpha strike -- a coordinated attack involving all seven or eight squadrons aboard a single carrier -- the MiG CAP F-4s were sent in ahead of the bombers to stations surrounding the assigned target. We were there to ward off any enemy planes that might try to thwart the strike by hassling the slower attack aircraft. The MiG-21 presented the greatest threat to the strike force. The fastest and most sophisticated aircraft in North Vietnam's air force, the MiG-21 could pack up to four radar-guided air-to-air missiles and a twin-barreled 23mm gun.

continued....

thedrifter
02-06-03, 01:31 PM
My electronic countermeasures gear loudly signaled the imminent arrival of a SAM. "Red Two, singer high!" I shouted. I saw the missile at my 7 o'clock. Long and narrow -- a flying telephone pole with a warhead. Bud jerked our warplane directly toward it. It was like charging at a striking cobra, but it worked. The little radar in the missile's nose broke its lock when our relative velocity abruptly increased. The SAM went stupid, careened wildly for an instant, then exploded, a bright white flash amid tangerine smoke and black shrapnel shards. Our aircraft buffeted and dipped its nose, and I reached for my ejection handle. But then we leveled off.

Up There Alone

Once again I said a brief, silent prayer of thanks that Bud was my pilot. Prior to carrier cruises, pilots and RIOs were paired to fly their missions as a team. In most cases the partnership was based on friendship or chemistry. I regarded Bud as my best friend, but my deeper motivation for asking him to be my pilot was his extraordinary flying prowess. He'd earned his private pilot's license as a youngster and looked at his tour in the Marines as an opportunity to hone his aviation skills and build up flight time to enhance his chances for acceptance by a major airline. A devout Christian, he had no lust for combat. While many of the pilots saw our deployment as a path to glory, Bud just loved to fly.

"How's it lookin', Bud?" I asked.

"Not sure. Gauges look good. Stick response okay....
Red Lead, Red Two. Can you check me over real quick? We got some vibration off that SAM."

But where was Red One? While we were concentrating on evading the missile, we'd lost sight of our lead. For a queasy moment we were up there all alone.

Unknown Silver One

"You got us in sight, Red One?" I asked. After a very long second, I heard, "Uh -- rog. Check your two o'clock high."

We saw him, a speck among lots of puffs of AAA bursts. It was hard to tell how much flak had been aimed at us. The smoke -- gray, white or black depending on the size and type of munitions -- usually lingered in the sky for a while after the rounds detonated.

Red One moved in to inspect us. "Looks good, Bud. Don't see any holes or leaks....Crown, Red One. Where's our bogey?"

"Bandits headed north at nineteen miles. Break engage. You've got another bandit. Bandits now your three-oh-six at nine, heading south-southwest."

"Roger, pulling starboard," came L'il John's voice.

"Red One, Crown. Aircraft down from your strike. Call is Silver One."

Silver One? Was that an A-7 Corsair II or an A-6 Intruder? I couldn't remember from the preflight briefing. The pilot could have been someone I'd had Post Toasties with that morning.

"Roger, you have his position?"

"Negative....Your bandits are now three-one-eight at twelve. Looks like they're headed north."

They were sucking us in again.

My electronic countermeasures gear loudly signaled the imminent arrival of a SAM. "Red Two, singer high!" I shouted. I saw the missile at my 7 o'clock. Long and narrow -- a flying telephone pole with a warhead. Bud jerked our warplane directly toward it. It was like charging at a striking cobra, but it worked. The little radar in the missile's nose broke its lock when our relative velocity abruptly increased. The SAM went stupid, careened wildly for an instant, then exploded, a bright white flash amid tangerine smoke and black shrapnel shards. Our aircraft buffeted and dipped its nose, and I reached for my ejection handle. But then we leveled off.

Up There Alone

Once again I said a brief, silent prayer of thanks that Bud was my pilot. Prior to carrier cruises, pilots and RIOs were paired to fly their missions as a team. In most cases the partnership was based on friendship or chemistry. I regarded Bud as my best friend, but my deeper motivation for asking him to be my pilot was his extraordinary flying prowess. He'd earned his private pilot's license as a youngster and looked at his tour in the Marines as an opportunity to hone his aviation skills and build up flight time to enhance his chances for acceptance by a major airline. A devout Christian, he had no lust for combat. While many of the pilots saw our deployment as a path to glory, Bud just loved to fly.

"How's it lookin', Bud?" I asked.

"Not sure. Gauges look good. Stick response okay....
Red Lead, Red Two. Can you check me over real quick? We got some vibration off that SAM."

But where was Red One? While we were concentrating on evading the missile, we'd lost sight of our lead. For a queasy moment we were up there all alone.

Unknown Silver One

"You got us in sight, Red One?" I asked. After a very long second, I heard, "Uh -- rog. Check your two o'clock high."

We saw him, a speck among lots of puffs of AAA bursts. It was hard to tell how much flak had been aimed at us. The smoke -- gray, white or black depending on the size and type of munitions -- usually lingered in the sky for a while after the rounds detonated.

Red One moved in to inspect us. "Looks good, Bud. Don't see any holes or leaks....Crown, Red One. Where's our bogey?"

"Bandits headed north at nineteen miles. Break engage. You've got another bandit. Bandits now your three-oh-six at nine, heading south-southwest."

"Roger, pulling starboard," came L'il John's voice.

"Red One, Crown. Aircraft down from your strike. Call is Silver One."

Silver One? Was that an A-7 Corsair II or an A-6 Intruder? I couldn't remember from the preflight briefing. The pilot could have been someone I'd had Post Toasties with that morning.

"Roger, you have his position?"

"Negative....Your bandits are now three-one-eight at twelve. Looks like they're headed north."

They were sucking us in again.

[img]http://www.military.com/pics/vn1097HANOI_2l.jpg
Afterburners blazing, a Phantom is catapulted off the deck of USS America. The F-4Js flown by Navy and Marine Corps squadrons were armed with four Sparrow missiles and four Sidewinders for air-to-air combat. (J. M. Shotwell)

"We're five-point-oh," Bud transmitted, indicating we were down to only 5,000 pounds of JP-5 jet fuel. At first I thought that maybe we'd taken a hit after all and were losing gas. Then I realized what had happened. Since I didn't have a fuel gauge in my cockpit, I hadn't caught the mistake, and it was as much my fault as Bud's. I'd failed to remind him to transfer the fuel out of the external tank early in the flight. He normally did it automatically, and I'd become complacent. As a result, the centerline we'd jettisoned earlier -- the one that had probably landed in somebody's chicken coop -- was full of precious gas.

Too Close For Comfort

I tried to do some quick mental math to determine whether we had enough fuel to get to the coast. Our rescue odds were much better if we ejected over water. If we parachuted over land, our best chance of survival would be immediate capture by the NVA. As POWs we'd be political capital, and they might just let us live. Less desirable was a confrontation with local denizens. A North Vietnamese farmer wasn't likely to be very hospitable, especially if American bombs had just creamed his water buffalo. Or his daughter.

While all this went through my head, we were getting farther from the MiGs and closer to the buffer zone around the Chinese Communist border. An F-4 can normally outrun a MiG-21 in straight and narrow flight, but we were constantly having to reel our airplanes around to evade all the junk.

"Red Crown, Red One. We're going to have to break it off and get some fuel. Has the strike group egressed?"

"Affirmative. Going feet wet now."

"Roger. Red Flight's coming starboard to one-three-zero. Red Two, what's your state?"

"We're four-point-two." That was about 20 minutes worth at the rate we were burning. That might get us to the coast, but making it back to the ship was out of the question. We'd have to rendezvous with an airborne tanker as soon as we got out of enemy range. We descended to 1,500 feet. At lower altitudes enemy radar would have trouble tracking us because of ground return interference. We were still drawing a few flak bursts and an occasional SAM warble, but they were having to fire optically and not getting too close.

But Not Close Enough

"Red Two from Bear, what's your state?"

"Red Two's two-point-niner."

"Red Crown from Red One. We'd like a tanker to meet us as close to the coast as God'll allow."

"Stand by. I'll see if I can find one. Raygun 521, Red Crown. Raygun 521, Red Crown, over."

We were down to 2,500 pounds of fuel, and I could see only dry land around us. The terrain below must have been strategically irrelevant, since it looked virtually unscathed by war. There were a few little round ponds -- water-filled bomb craters -- but nothing like the destruction around the Demilitarized Zone, Hanoi or Thanh Hoa. It was dark green and lush below, beautiful in another context. Patches of thick vegetation divided the little farms and villages. I even saw something that looked like a church -- a little brown building with a steeple and a cross. A good omen? I wondered. Our squadron had been lucky so far. No losses due to accident or combat action after nearly two months on station.

Our good fortune extended back through our previous cruise, which also had been accident-free. Because USS America was based in Norfolk, she was normally deployed to the Mediterranean. Exactly one year before this mission, we had been anchored in Soudha Bay, off the barren, rocky western coast of Crete, on call in case Middle East tensions escalated to a degree requiring U.S. military intervention.

continued.....

thedrifter
02-06-03, 01:32 PM
At that time our biggest concern centered on whether military operations might interfere with a much anticipated port call in Athens, where many of us planned to meet our wives. The war in Vietnam, half a planet away, seemed to be winding down and very remote.

The Shamrock Squadron

For the Marines of VMFA-333 -- known as "the Shamrock Squadron" for the three cloverleaf patterns on the tails of its aircraft -- fate took a hairpin turn on March 30, 1972, though we didn't know it at the time.

Our squadron, based at the Marine Corps air station at Beaufort, S.C., was getting ready for a second Mediterranean cruise on America when the North Vietnam-ese launched a massive invasion of South Vietnam that became known as the Eastertide Offensive. Three heavily reinforced NVA divisions trooped across the DMZ to attack the fire support bases along the border, and more NVA divisions attacked farther south at Kontum and An Loc. It was Hanoi's test of America's "Vietnamization" program, President Richard M. Nixon's plan to gradually turn over the conflict to the South Vietnamese. By 1972 there were fewer than 100,000 American troops in the war, which had reached a force of about a half million in 1969. There had been a corresponding reduction in U.S. air support. After Hanoi's March 30 incursion, President Nixon ordered the Pentagon to beef up the sea and air attack forces in Southeast Asia for an all-out airborne retaliation against the North.

Bandit In Sights

USS Constellation had orders to head for home, which meant that only two carriers would be left on Yankee Station. The decision to divert America from the Mediterranean to the western Pacific was highly classified prior to our deployment. Some Marines in our squadron showed up the night before departure with surfboards in tow, visions of Majorca and the Riviera swimming in their heads. Word had leaked out to the anti-war community, though. When the tugboat team dislodged America from Norfolk's Pier 12 on June 5, 1972, some 30 demonstrators in canoes and small sailboats had stretched in formation across her bow in a frail attempt to prevent the ship from leaving on schedule. Coast Guard ships had swiftly swept them out of the way.

"Red One, Red Crown. Bandit on your one-three-seven at seventeen, and he's very low." I wondered where he'd come from.

"Get on the scope," said Bud over the intercom, unaware that I didn't have a scope boot. With L'il John's radar out, I was the only hope for locking the enemy on the scope for a head-on launch of a Sparrow radar-guided missile. I hunched over the radar with my nose about a half inch from the screen to try to shield it from the glare. The bandit was low, but so were we. I leveled my antenna. At first I saw nothing but green snow. I reduced my gain control and made out a little blip above the ground clutter. I locked onto it, and an attack presentation popped up on the screen. The overtake looked good. It was him.

"Red Crown, Red Two's got radar contact," I announced. Dead ahead. Eleven miles. We were closing at 1,200 knots, in range for a Sparrow shot within seconds. "Red Crown, Red Two. Copy me?" Where was Crown? They had to clear us to fire. We were in optimum range, and the bandits weren't turning this time.

"Red Crown, Red Crown. How do you read? Over!"

Friendly Fire Avoided

"Red Flight from Crown. Disregard! Disregard! Break it off! It's friendly. I repeat. Bogey is friendly." Seconds later two Air Force Wild Weasels zipped by to our port. I imagined the pilots giving us congenial little waves, blissfully unaware we'd nearly vaporized them.

"Red Two, what's your state?" asked L'il John.

"One-point-five."

"Red Crown, anything from Raygun tanker?"

"Nothin yet. We're still tryin'."

"Better hurry. Gonna be suckin' fumes in a minute."

The Bear Stays Silent

The Bear hadn't said anything to us over the air about blowing a full centerline fuel tank. He knew what had happened but was far too professional to ream us over the air. He'd wait until we got back. And even then he wouldn't yell. He never needed to raise his voice. When the Bear was displeased, he had a glare that could turn a young officer's blood to cherry slush. In contrast to his diminutive RIO, Bear was 6 foot 3 and 220 pounds of solid muscle -- plus another 50 pounds of assorted other tissues that I suspected were nerve endings camouflaged as fat cells. He had a bull's head planted directly on expansive shoulders, no neck to speak of and a nonregulation handlebar mustache, from under which a big stogey protruded when he wasn't in the cockpit.

The Bear passed us the lead as we crossed the coast. Red Crown had reached Raygun tanker and switched him over to our frequency.

"Raygun 521, this is Red Crown. You have two fox fours just going feet wet. Need gas pretty bad."

"Roger. I can give 'em four thousand apiece," came the response from the tanker.

"Raygun 521 from Red Crown. Vector two-seven-zero. Red Flight, your Texaco now your zero-nine-three at twenty, in a port turn."

Reaching The Tanker

The tanker was one of the ship's A-6 Intruders that we fighter jocks liked to call pregnant guppies -- very ungainly looking but highly sophisticated all-weather bombers that could be fitted with four big external refueling tanks. As we pulled in behind it, the tanker was already trailing its drogue. We had 700 pounds of gas left. Suckin' fumes. Bud extended our in-flight refueling probe, which jumped out -- plock -- from beside my canopy. As we approached Raygun, I steered Bud to the drogue. On the first attempt to hook up with the tanker, the probe, an appendage about 4 feet long, pressed against the top of the basket. The fuel line buckled, then oscillated, and the drogue rap-rap-rapped across our canopies.

After the hose stopped swaying, we began another approach. We were at just under 500 pounds of fuel. "Okay, Bud, a little to the right this time. Steady...
steady...looks good....Got it!"

Back To Safety

We took our gas, headed back to the carrier and trapped (landed) uneventfully. I was anxious to return because it was Thursday. Thursday night was usually steak night in the officers' wardroom. If I hurried, I could down a couple before our next mission.

When we pieced together the flight during the debriefing, I learned that at one point the MiGs we had tracked were nearly between us and the strike force, which had been about 20 miles southeast. The MiGs turned west, away from the strike force, when L'il John locked them in on his scope, possibly lighting up their electronic countermeasures gear and chasing them off, eventually to the north. Had they turned east, they might have tangled with the strike force, disrupting the ground attack and possibly exterminating some of the friendlies. Maybe our flight had accomplished something after all. As years separate me from the mission, that's what I choose to believe.

Snapshot Of The Old Jet

Two decades later, Bud, L'il John and I sat in bleachers in a huge hangar where a restored, freshly painted F-4 was displayed nose to nose with its successor, the smaller, sleeker F-18 Hornet. In a brief but poignant ceremony, the commandant of the Marine Corps, a tall, lean man with a constellation on his collar, recounted the deeds of VMFA-333 since World War II, highlighting the day that the Bear and L'il John had downed a MiG-21 -- September 11, 1972. That had been the day after our harried flight together. Then the commandant presided over the deactivation ceremony. Our former squadron had become a decimal point in the peace dividend.

Someone had stenciled the Bear's and L'il John's names under the Phantom's canopies for the ceremony. After the band and troop formation paraded out of the hangar, we paused for snapshots by the old jet. The cavernous building seemed haunted by the absence of the Bear, who had died a few years earlier.

Another Peace Dividend

A few squadron veterans lingered around the plane, reluctant to leave. A young staff sergeant drove in a tow vehicle and politely asked us to move along. I asked him what he was going to do with the F-4. "Haul it over to the maintenance hangar," he said. "It's just a shell. Been gutted for parts. Scrape that shiny paint off and it's a rust bucket. It'll be salvaged for scrap metal."

As we left the hangar, the old warhorse was towed out to the tarmac and out of sight. I'd like to think that she'll be reincarnated one day as the chassis of a stealth prototype, but more than likely she wound up as rods reinforcing the concrete of some shopping mall. Another peace dividend.

Sempers,

Roger