The word was that the C-130s going into Khe Sanh were taking terrific beatings. They were receiving hits inbound; some had flat tires and engines out of commission. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have to change a tire or have an engine repaired on the ramp at Khe Sanh.
On February 4, we were on the schedule again. Since our last flight, the aircrew members had been issued steel pots (metal helmets) and flak jackets, as well as the usual survival vests containing .38 pistols, emergency radios, and first aid kits. We were loaded down unbelievably. As we trudged on board the aircraft, we looked like a bunch of refugees. The steel pots and flak jackets couldn’t really be worn in the aircraft. I assumed they were intended to be worn if we got stranded on the ramp at Khe Sanh. Or, these days, just about anywhere. I threw my stuff down in the narrow aisle just behind the copilot’s seat where I intended to sit. I wanted the new pilot to sit in the left seat so he could gain a little experience. When he came on the aircraft, he was wearing his flak jacket and his steel pot. I watched as he worked his way around the lead-shielded pilot’s seat and struggled to fit himself into the seat. After watching him struggle for a few moments, I told him that he probably wouldn’t be able to fit in the seat wearing all that equipment and that he should throw his gear in the aisle. It really was a comic sight. Then I remembered my clumsiness when I first arrived in the unit, when I wasn’t required to deal with flak jackets and steel helmets. I wondered what my reaction would have been if, when I first arrived in-country, I had flown into places like Cu Chi or Bao Loc, much less Khe Sanh under fire. I recalled that the sight of the Tuy Hoa runway in the sand had caused me to swallow hard.
Our first hop was down to Nha Trang to pick up a load of ammunition. Our destination out of Nha Trang was Dak To. The field at Dak To was much more challenging for a newcomer, but it was long enough that I had decided to let him make the landing there. We departed Nha Trang on a direct route to Dak To, heading north-northwest. The sky was cloudy and grey, a high overcast above us as we cruised up at 4500 feet.
About ten miles southeast of Dak To, I called the tower and requested landing information. There was no answer. I called again. Still no answer. I rechecked the radio frequency. Dave Risher and I had just flown in there six days earlier, so I was fairly certain we had dialed the right frequency.
Suddenly a breathless voice on the radio said, “Aircraft calling Dak To tower, be advised we are under mortar attack. Do not land. Hold your position and wait for further instructions.”
I looked towards Dak To and could see the hills that provided the backdrop to the field. Over the field there was a dark cloud of smoke. As I looked, another burst of black smoke appeared against the base of the south hill.
We were now within five miles of the field and could more clearly see the details of the scene. The smoke was beginning to thin, and two helicopters were in the process of lifting off. Men and vehicles were moving about on the runway. The voice came on the radio: “Aircraft calling Dak To, say type and position.”
I responded that we were a C-130 five miles southeast of the field.
“What cargo do you have on board?”
“Four pallets of ammunition.”
A pause. I imagined they were debating the value of running the risks of having us land. The decision probably depended on how badly they needed ammunition.
Then the voice said: “We are still in a state of alert, although mortar fire has ceased for the time being. There is a large enemy force in the hills north of the field, and another attack could occur at any time. Be advised we received a mortar hit just past the midpoint of the runway. There is a large hole in the runway with numerous mortar shell fragments around it. You’ll have to land within the first 2000 feet of the runway. Advise intentions.”
“What about mortar fragments on the good part of the runway and the ramp?”
“We’ve got men out right now sweeping the affected areas. If you avoid the area of the direct hit, you should be okay.”
“We’ll give it a try.”
“Roger. Cleared to land at pilot’s discretion.”
I engaged the autopilot, unbuckled my seat belt, and started to get out of my seat. “Looks like we’d better change seats,” I told the other pilot. He eased out of his seat, squeezed past me, and I moved in. We tried to avoid tripping over the pile of gear each of us had thrown in the aisles. Once I was squared away, I disengaged the autopilot and leaned forward for a better look.
The approach to the field was clear. But there was no question of setting up any kind of downwind because that maneuver would have placed us in the vicinity of the hills where the attack had come from. So we would have to shoot a straight-in approach. Fortunately, I remembered the layout of the field from our visit to Dak To the previous week.
As we descended on final approach I could see the large black spot ahead where the mortar had hit, dead center on the runway. Numerous large shell fragments lay on the dirt strip around it. I aimed directly for the end of the runway. Idle power. Over the stops. Brakes. Into reverse. Full reverse. On the nose-wheel steering. More brakes. We slowed with runway to spare.
After we landed, men with brooms and shovels returned to their clean-up tasks around the mortar hole. They had wisely moved to the sides of the runway during our approach. Smoke was rising from two other locations west and north of the runway.
I taxied slowly into the offloading area to the south, scanning the ground in front for large pieces of metal. There were too many pieces of debris to avoid; I hoped that none of them were large, sharp fragments. We pulled into the ramp, and Virg opened the cargo doors. We left our engines running. They kicked up dust in the faces of the ground troops, but that couldn’t be helped. The tower cleared us to taxi and take off any time we thought it necessary if the mortar attack should resume.
While we were stopped during the offloading, I asked Ed Scholes to inspect the tires to see if any fragments had become embedded in them. He reported that as far as he could see, our tires were clean.
While we sat on the ground, I scanned the hilly terrain in front of us for signs of smoke or fire that might indicate that a mortar had been fired. It occurred to me that had the mortar attack taken place ten minutes later, or had we arrived ten minutes earlier, that still-smoking hole in the runway could have been us. Or what was left of us.
“Cleared to taxi,” said the tower after we had been offloaded.
We taxied slowly to our right and moved out on the runway. I positioned the aircraft at the end of the runway, almost on the overrun. We were taking off toward the mortar hit and needed all the room we could get. While we were offloading, the men with brooms and shovels had cleared away most of the large fragments, so we could use the runway up to the edge of the hole the mortar shell had made. I hoped we would be fully airborne before we neared the mortar strike. I also hoped that the mortar crew that had launched that shell so accurately wouldn’t decide to launch another one while we were taking off.
I ran the engines up to full power, depressing the tops of the rudder pedals with my feet to hold the brakes. Then, about the time I knew Ed would be worrying about the engine temperatures, I released the brakes. We leapt forward with that comforting lurch that indicated we had good power and no load. We accelerated rapidly, and the scorched spot of earth quickly approached. Then I lifted the nose, and we were up and over the mortar hole, climbing rapidly.
The tower alerted us to helicopter activity on our right side, so I held the takeoff heading to the northwest, even though we would be flying directly across the hills that bordered the field. As we climbed out of the valley, two Army gunships maneuvered on our level to the right. While we watched, one of them fired two rockets directly into the ridge line; the rockets slammed into the trees just below the peak of the hill. The white smoke that trailed in the wake of the rockets seemed like a rope tied to harpoons that were being fired into the humped back of a passive, immobile, tree-covered leviathan. Another Huey was firing its machine guns into the ridge line farther to the east.
We continued our climb and then began a gradual turn to the right, rolling out on a northeast heading. As we looked back to our right, we could see the Hueys hovering around the top of the hill like bees attacking an intruder. Beyond the ridge line, smoke continued to rise over the field at Dak To. Al gave us the heading for our next stop, Danang.
It was no surprise where we were going from Danang. We had our usual load for Khe Sanh, four pallets of 105 mm rockets. But just as we leveled off on our climb out of Danang en route to Khe Sanh, the fire light on number two engine flickered briefly and then blinked on.
Just what I needed—a fire on number two with a full load of ammunition. But when I looked out the window at the engine, the prop was spinning as usual. The engine appeared to be operating normally, and we could see no sign of fire.
Ed Scholes picked up the Form 781 and said, “The engine has been written up before. Apparently the sensor wire works itself loose and rubs against the side of the engine.”
“So the problem is with the sensor and not the engine?” I asked.
Ed nodded.
So what should we do? Ignore it and go to Khe Sanh? Or return to Danang and get it fixed? If the problem was only a loose wire, it really was a small problem. But what if it was something else, not just a loose wire? And did I really want to land at Khe Sanh with a malfunctioning fire warning system on one of my engines? Damn.
“Let’s go back to Danang and have it looked at,” I said.
That was probably a good decision. What was not as good a decision was my telling Danang approach control that we had “sort of an emergency.”
Approach control said either it was an emergency or it wasn’t. I said okay, then, it was. That meant ten minutes of questions: how many people on board? what was our cargo? how much fuel? what exactly was the nature of the emergency? and so on. We orbited for about a half hour while some other aircraft landed in front of us. But the fire light remained illuminated the whole time, though it did flicker every once in a while. I decided we had better shut the engine down or they wouldn’t believe we had an emergency. When we lined up on final, I could see the fire trucks waiting for us at the side of the runway, about halfway down. The fire trucks followed us all the way into the ramp area.
“Well,” Ed Scholes said, “at least maintenance will pay attention to this write-up.”
A half hour later we were on our way to Khe Sanh again. “How’d they fix it so quickly?” I asked. Ed gave me a wink, and answered, “Duct tape.”
The weather at Khe Sanh had deteriorated. There was a thin low cloud deck over the field, about 500 feet above the runway. Above it were more layers. We had flown into the area at 6500 feet, between broken layers. We couldn’t fly the established instrument approach into Khe Sanh because any aircraft that had tried it had received intense ground fire on short final. At a place like Tan Son Nhut, landing under a 500-foot ceiling was almost VFR conditions. But a 500-foot ceiling at Khe Sanh provided no sure clearance from the hills that surrounded the field on the south, west, and north.
How could we get into a field that was blanketed by clouds and had no usable instrument approaches? The advice from the air liaison officer, operating from one of the bunkers, was, “Look for a hole in the deck and come in underneath.” Were there any holes in the deck in the vicinity? “Other pilots have reported small breaks in the clouds to the west.” The west: over the border. Above the hills that extended into Laos. Right on top of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
We flew over Khe Sanh, which we could vaguely see through the cloud deck below us. Smoke was rising from one or two locations, but otherwise the field seemed quiet.
“Al, can you get a fix on Khe Sanh on your radar in case we start wandering around over here?”
“Roger. It stands out real good.”
We continued on a westerly heading, scanning the deck below us for breaks in the clouds, doubtful we would find a decent hole to let down through. The ALO had been talking to two other C-130s since we checked in on frequency, one on the ground about to depart, the other inbound to the field. Suddenly we saw a C-130 far below us about to drop through a small hole in the clouds. It dipped through an opening little larger than the aircraft itself and then vanished from sight, heading toward Khe Sanh. It seemed totally unlikely that such an approach was feasible.
We continued to orbit in the area for the next fifteen minutes. I kept my eye on that small hole; from our altitude it appeared tiny, too small, and if I had not seen another C-130 drop through it I would have bet it couldn’t be done. Then came the go-ahead call from the ALO—the other 130 had departed and it was our turn. We were cleared in. I called for the gear down and half flaps and began a descent at 145 knots. Once again I found myself led onward by the immutable in-country law: if the aircraft in front of us had made it, we could too. As we approached the opening in the clouds, which still seemed preposterously small, we could see that the cloud layer was relatively thin, though solid, and that we could probably maneuver safely beneath it. We dropped down through the hole on a heading for Khe Sanh, committed now whether we liked it or not.
The visibility beneath the cloud deck was good. We had come down above a narrow plateau which stretched towards the northeast to Khe Sanh. We could see hills on our right and left. I doubted we were 200 feet above the scrub and bush that covered the ground. We were approaching the field over relatively flat and open terrain, countryside not likely to harbor any large gathering of hostile forces. At least I hoped not; we were so low that it seemed anyone on the ground could have hit one of our props with a well-thrown rock.
“How are we doing, Al?” I asked. “What’s our position?”
“Six miles to the field. Come right five degrees.” His steady, even voice gave me confidence.
“How are the engine instruments, Ed?” Other than quick glances at airspeed and heading, I wasn’t looking inside the cockpit.
“Everything looks good.”
“Stand by to set full flaps,” I said to the new pilot in the right seat. I was a little worried about him; he was moving his hands nervously next to the yoke. I was afraid he might grab the controls and give a vigorous pull up to get away from the ground. Ed ran the rest of the before-landing checklist while I scanned an approaching ridge line.
“The field should be on the other side of that rise,” Al said.
I pulled the throttles back slightly to reduce the airspeed. It dropped to 135, then 130. I hesitated to reduce the speed any further because I wasn’t sure what we would see when we cleared the rise. In my mind I envisioned what it would look like from the other side, a picture I had had ample opportunity to imprint in my mind on my previous trips into Khe Sanh.
Here came the low hill that marked the western boundary of the field. The cloud layer appeared to be resting on it. We were so low that we would have to climb slightly to clear the rise. Just as we came up to it, I could see the east end of the runway extending in the distance.
“Flaps full!” I called. We cleared the rise by feet. There was the runway, stretching away at a 20-degree angle to the right. We were in the process of overshooting it. Throttles to idle. Right bank—too much for this low altitude, but I was not about to circle around and try it again if I could help it. Back pressure. Airspeed falling off. Adjust the trim. Hold the nose up. A little right rudder. We were lining up with the runway and descending down the east side of the rise towards the west end of the runway. Left bank. Add a little power.
Ed called out the airspeed for me: “One twenty. One fifteen. One ten.”
We were over the end of the runway. A little more back pressure to slow the descent. Landing assured. Power to idle. Riding the thin edge of controllability, we touched down within 100 feet of the west end of the runway. A firm touchdown. Power to ground idle, stop, lift into ground idle, then reverse thrust range, pause. Feet on the brakes. Release the yoke. Left hand on the nose wheel steering.
“Clear to reverse,” Ed called.
I pulled all four throttles back as far as they would go. The props growled into reverse pitch, and as I stepped on the brakes, the aircraft slowed noticeably. We were thrown forward slightly against the shoulder straps attached to our seats.
We slowed to taxi speed and turned off at the far taxiway. Our ground roll was somewhere between 1000 and 1500 feet. Probably my best landing at Khe Sanh, and certainly my shortest. Not bad considering I had never landed to the east there before.
“Clear to open the cargo door,” I called, and Virg Hill had the cargo door coming open even before we turned into the ramp. We taxied to the southeast corner of the ramp, pausing for a few seconds for the upper cargo door to raise fully and the lower cargo ramp to lower to within three inches of the ground.
I taxied forward slowly, throttles in ground idle, riding the brakes. “Ready to offload,” Virg called. I depressed the brakes slightly, and the forward-rocking motion of the aircraft temporarily released pressure on the cargo compartment pallet locks, which Virg quickly unlocked.
“Pallets unlocked,” he called out. I released the brakes and advanced all four throttles. The aircraft accelerated quickly, and the four pallets dropped out, one behind the other, plop, plop, plop, plop on the ramp.
“Pallets clear,” called Virg. “Hold your position while we see if anyone wants a ride out.”
As we waited nervously, I surveyed the area around us, looking from the south on my left around to the north on my right. The skies were gray and dark; wisps of fog and cloud were attached to the hills to the north. There were a couple of mortar shell holes off to the left. It was a scene of complete destruction and desolation.
A few weeks ago I had parked the aircraft and walked over to the chow hall for Christmas dinner. Now the chow hall was gone—pulverized by mortar attacks. Then there had been maintenance and supply shacks, a tower, rows of helicopters in neat revetments. Now all except a few revetments had been leveled by the mortar and rocket attacks, and the entire population lived in bunkers, trenches, and tunnels, below the surface of the ground like burrowing animals. Enough heavy equipment had survived to keep the runway and ramp in operation and to repair a few revetments. But the place now looked like a dump, a collection of refuse and garbage.
It was strangely quiet. The low-lying clouds cast a muted, gray-blue light over the field. The cloudy weather prevented any close air support from Air Force and Navy fighter-bombers, and the only flying activity that I saw was some helicopters nosing around the ridges to the north. But the clouds seemed to have an inhibiting effect on the North Vietnamese forces as well because we had not seen any explosions or other signs of hostile action while we had been on the ground. But then, we had not been on the ground all that long—probably no more than three minutes.
“How long do you think C-130s will continue to land here in these conditions?” Ed asked.
“As long as they need supplies,” I said. “Or until they get one of us. And that’s bound to happen sooner or later.”
“No one’s coming,” said Virg. “Let’s get out of here.” He closed up the cargo section, and we moved out onto the runway. With no cargo and a reduced fuel load, we accelerated quickly and were soon airborne. We left the flaps down until we entered the protective environment of the cloud deck, where the lights of our anticollision beacon illuminated the darkness that seemed to be enveloping Khe Sanh. There were no more aircraft into Khe Sanh that day, ours was the last mission of the afternoon. We flew back to Tuy Hoa in relative silence.
That night my brother came over from his camp. He said getting back to his unit had not been a problem. Apparently all the fighting had been on our western perimeter, and the route to the Army camp was on the south side.
The next day we flew back to CCK, arriving shortly before eight in the evening. When we went through the squadron ops building, we saw that we were scheduled to go back into Vietnam in two days. My fourth in-country shuttle in a row. We had a day and a half to rest, relax, and recuperate.
“Oh, by the way, did you guys hear about Dallman?” someone asked us. No, we hadn’t heard.
Howard Dallman, my old KC-97 squadron commander at Selfridge AFB, and a member of the 345th for several months, had flown into Khe Sanh on February 5, the day after our last flight there. He had apparently flown a straight-in approach to the west, descending out of an overcast, and had taken heavy ground fire on landing that had started a fire in the cargo compartment. The wooden crates that contained the 105 shells they were carrying had started to burn. While Dallman was maneuvering the aircraft on the ground, his copilot, Captain Roland Behnke; the navigator, Gerald Johnson; and the flight engineer, Sergeant Charles Brault, had gone back into the cargo compartment to help the loadmaster, Sergeant Wade Green, put out the fires, spraying the smoldering crates with their on-board fire extinguishers.
While they were putting out the fires and unloading the pallets of ammunition, an enemy bullet put a hole in one of the tires. With some help, they were able to change the tire, all the while under mortar attack. Eventually they flew the aircraft out of Khe Sanh. They had experienced my worst nightmare. Later Dallman was awarded the Air Force Cross, and the rest of the crew received Silver Stars.