Oriskany’s fourth line period started much like the third. By this point, operations on Yankee Station had begun to take on a deadly routine: no real aim to Rolling Thunder despite losses and new restrictions being constantly imposed from on high. From the start, the Johnson administration imposed a 30-mile restricted area around Hanoi and a 10-mile restricted area around Haiphong. The administration also imposed a similar 25- to 30-mile-wide buffer zone along the North Vietnamese border with China, with similar restrictions. In September, worried that any violation could lead to even greater restrictions, service leadership changed these restrictions into prohibitions. Attacks on targets within populated areas were to be avoided at all costs. Prohibited areas of 10 and 4 miles were placed within the restricted areas of Hanoi and Haiphong, respectively. Targets within those areas required specific White House authorization. There was no restrike authority for targets within prohibited areas. Such actions served only to further disenfranchise the pilots risking their lives. The men realized quickly that the administration and military leadership had no idea of the operational realities the men faced. While the JCS added their own restrictions, they pushed McNamara to expand the air war, but their recommendations were vetoed by the administration as being too risky.1 Thus, the only increase in Rolling Thunder while Oriskany was in port was in the quantity and quality of the North Vietnamese defenses.
The unknown status of aviators shot down over North Vietnam also proved to be a source of great consternation. Aviators had no way of knowing if their friends were dead or alive or if they’d even survived being shot down. The men simply vanished. CAG made an educated guess before deciding their status: KIA or MIA. It was a gut-wrenching decision with far-reaching consequences, especially for the wives and children. If a man was declared dead, his widow could perhaps move on with her life. If he was not, she was stuck in purgatory, with no help offered by the U.S. government and certainly not by the North Vietnamese. That the United States and North Vietnam did not have diplomatic relations compounded the problem. There was simply no way to ascertain an aviator’s fate. As Oriskany returned to the Gulf of Tonkin, the North Vietnamese published snippets of a letter they purportedly sent to the International Red Cross. They claimed that since there was no formal state of war, U.S. pilots shot down over the North were not prisoners of war and would be treated as war criminals. It was an omen of what awaited men should they be shot down, and it did little to help morale.
In late September, as Oriskany sailed for Subic Bay, the First Cavalry Division (Airmobile) arrived in An Khe, South Vietnam. As the first elements of the dramatic troop increase announced in July, their arrival had far-reaching implications as U.S. ground forces rapidly began offensive operations. Oriskany arrived on Yankee Station on 30 September and immediately commenced flying. For the next five days the air wing flew mostly armed reconnaissance missions, slowly getting back in the saddle after almost three weeks of not flying. Cdr. Bob Spruit arrived on 4 October, relieving Lt. Col. Charles Ludden as CAG. The arrival of this veteran A-4 pilot was welcomed by the attack squadrons, because his experience helped relieve the pressure on the small cadre of men leading missions.
The air wing’s first day of strikes for the line period was 5 October. In the attempt to stem the flow of supplies south, destruction of bridges became one of the main efforts. The air wing planned and launched two strikes against a small railroad bridge near Kep. The strikes weren’t successful, as the bridge was left standing despite several hits. The day also marked the air wing’s first loss to SAMs. The commanding officer of VF-162, Cdr. Dick Bellinger, and his wingman, Lt. (junior grade) Rick Adams, flew BARCAP during the strikes. Aggressive fighter pilots often pushed their orbits closer to land in the hopes of tangling with MiGs during these mind-numbing missions. Bellinger and Adams were no different, and their CAP point put them in close proximity to Haiphong. While crossing the coast at 30,000 feet, Bellinger noticed two SAMs launch and begin tracking his and Adams’s flight. He radioed a warning to Adams, who never heard it and thus never took evasive action. One missile exploded just behind Adams’s Crusader, causing severe damage to his aircraft. With the recent North Vietnamese announcement of war criminals fresh on his mind, Adams stayed with his burning plane. Better to take his chances with a burning plane that was still flying than to risk the fate that awaited him on the ground. With Bellinger coaching him, Adams flew his Crusader 40 miles out to sea. At one point, Adams nearly ejected before thinking better of it. Eventually, the burning Crusader exploded, and he pulled the ejection handle. As Adams came down in the water, Bellinger set up an orbit over Adams, flying so low that Adams could see into Bellinger’s cockpit.2 An SH-3 helicopter from the Midway eventually picked Adams up and delivered him to USS Galveston (CLG-3) on the northern SAR station. While there, he was treated for second-degree burns on his hands. Before Adams’s eventual transfer back to Oriskany, word of his coolness under pressure and decision to fly a burning plane out to sea and relative safety spread around the entire fleet and quickly led to his legendary status.
The bridge campaign continued. On 7 October Lt. Col. Ed Ruddy planned and led a joint air force and navy strike on a bridge near Vu Chau, a small hamlet along the Song Thuong near Kep airfield. Because the target was near the Chinese border, the raid received plenty of scrutiny from the Johnson administration and the senior military leadership, all of whom were concerned about the potential to violate the restricted areas. The mission finally gave Ruddy the opportunity to prove the value of the idea he’d pitched to Stockdale in August. Planes from the Coral Sea had bombed the bridge the previous day; however, it was still standing. That day’s strike had also seen the first VPAF MiGs since the summer. An F-4B from VF-151 claimed to destroy a MiG-17, though in reality the crew had just damaged it.3 The Oriskany strike was a success. Capt. Ross Chaimson and Capt. John Dolan achieved direct hits on the bridge with their 2,000-pound bombs, dropping the north span and twisting the remainder off the abutments. A concurrent strike by air force F-105s destroyed rail tracks and approaches to the bridge to the point that follow-on strikes could be diverted to other targets. The mission’s success provided fleeting hope that Rolling Thunder could succeed within the imposed constraints.
While aviators continued bombing bridges, civil unrest at home began. The seeds of dissent sown during the civil rights movement began to coalesce, with U.S. involvement in Vietnam as the focal point. As involvement grew in Vietnam, so too did the outrage on campuses. Student movements began as early as March with protests organized by the Vietnam Day Committee in Berkeley. The Berkeley movement called for the International Day of Protest on 15 October, resulting in the biggest demonstrations to date, with one hundred thousand people protesting across the country and Europe. The antiwar sentiments continued to grow, crystallizing around the debate caused by the bombing.
The bridge campaign continued as interdiction efforts began to focus on the northeast railway between Hanoi and China. In one of the largest Alpha strikes yet, air force fighters joined planes from USS Independence (CVA-62) and Oriskany to hit the Bac Can rail bridge and Thai Nguyen highway bridge on 17 October. Due to their close proximity to China, the raids once again resulted in severe scrutiny. Because of the targets’ close proximity to a known SAM site, the raids were accompanied by a group of Iron Hand aircraft authorized to strike the site. The strikes were a success, although they did not come without cost. Both bridges were destroyed. Five Iron Hand aircraft from the Independence found the SAM site and destroyed transporters, launchers, and guidance vans. Explosions caused one SAM to ignite and snake around the area, causing even more destruction.4 This marked the first success of the Iron Hand mission since its inception more than two months earlier.
The strike packages were not as fortunate. Though Oriskany lost no planes, six were severely damaged by the ferocious AAA. The Independence air wing took the worst losses, losing three F-4B Phantoms to the intense AAA. Six men were lost: Lt. Roderick Mayer and Lt. (junior grade) Robert Wheat, Ens. Ralph Gaither and Lt. (junior grade) Rodney Allen, as well as Lt. Cdr. Stanley Olmstead and Lt. (junior grade) Porter Halyburton. With three crews down in North Vietnam, a rescue was attempted. Four Skyraiders from Oriskany flew to the scene. They met heavy resistance, including the first SAMs launched at Skyraiders, and the attempt failed. VA-152 couldn’t even get close enough to determine the fate of the downed men. Only Olmstead and Halyburton were declared dead, while the others were simply missing. Olmstead and Halyburton’s Phantom had been hit and crashed into a ridge. It happened so quickly that no radio calls were made, and no one saw an ejection. Other aircraft flew over the wreckage and determined there was no possibility of survival. In reality, however, Halyburton had survived. Though his wife and family were notified of his death, it took a year and a half before the U.S. government discovered the truth.5
Despite their lack of losses to North Vietnamese defenses during the day’s strike, Oriskany still managed to lose a Crusader due to weather. As the monsoon season began, the weather began hindering flight operations throughout the gulf. In spite of extremely poor weather and a pitching deck in rough seas, the BARCAP was still a requirement. Capt. Ross Chaimson was unlucky enough to be flying during the proverbial dark and stormy night. He struggled to land and on his second attempt crashed into the ship’s pitching flight deck. Chaimson miraculously managed to get airborne again before losing control of the airplane. He ejected and was picked up by Oriskany’s SH-2. It was a very rough day on Yankee Station, and at this rate, losses could not be sustained without severely impacting the rest of the navy.
Weather prohibited further strikes, and Oriskany closed the line period with a limited number of sorties, mostly armed reconnaissance and BARCAP. As she left the line, it was a repeat of the September process: transit to Subic Bay to off-load severely damaged aircraft and then on to Hong Kong for a well-deserved break.
As Oriskany commenced her fifth and last line period of the deployment, destroying North Vietnamese bridges remained the priority. With unfettered access to supplies from Haiphong, the defenses continued to grow. Pilots now saw SAMs on every mission. With only marginally effective equipment for detecting and locating SAM sites, pilots’ tactics improved, albeit slowly. Small numbers of preproduction AGM-45 Shrike missiles showed great potential, but there were insufficient quantities. By September the few remaining were ordered to be held in reserve until production began.6 In August the air force began its Wild Weasel program, named after the notorious animal that goes into its prey’s den to kill it. The air force took specially trained electronic warfare officers (EWOs) and paired them with fighter pilots in modified F-100 Super Sabres.7 Their job became hunting and killing SAM sites. The crews would not arrive until late November, however, and in the interim both services continued to collaborate in an attempt to suppress the SAM threat.
The largest Alpha strike to date was scheduled for 31 October. In another collaborative effort, aircraft from Oriskany and Independence joined air force fighters for a sixty-five-plane strike against the Bac Giang bridge near Kep. Once again, the presence of SAM sites near the bridge forced aviators to come up with unique solutions to the problem. Oriskany fielded a division of Skyhawks from VA-163 to perform Iron Hand, with authorization to attack any SAM encountered. If no SAM site was found, pilots were instructed to bomb the bridge.8
The air force also fielded eight F-105s from Takhli, Royal Thai Air Base (RTAB) for Iron Hand. Because the air force had not yet equipped their aircraft with APR-25s, they had no hope of finding the SAM sites. The day before the mission, Oriskany sent two A-4s to Takhli to act as pathfinders for the F-105s. VA-164’s executive officer, Cdr. Paul Engel, and Lt. Cdr. Dick Powers flew to Thailand. Engel blew a tire upon landing, leaving Powers to lead the mission. If all went as planned, Powers would find a SAM site using his APR-25 receivers and lead F-105s from 334 and 562 TFS in to bomb it. Powers and the F-105s launched on the mission, and after refueling, they headed north. At their planned descent point, a solid overcast blocked the route. Powers continued regardless, leading the eight Thunderchiefs through the clouds. Finally below the weather, they raced toward the target, which was surrounded by hills on each side and weather above. Powers succeeded in leading the flight through 600 miles of uncharted, cloudy, mountainous terrain, managing to arrive at the target precisely at the prebriefed time to support the strikes by Oriskany and Independence. One SAM site was quickly destroyed by the Oriskany’s Iron Hand package, which homed in on the gigantic smoke trails left by several SAM launches.
As they arrived in the target area, Powers transmitted to his flight, “I’ve got ’em on my nose, starting my run.” As he did so, more SAMs launched off his right wing. He split the F-105 flights to attack the multiple sites. Powers delivered his Snake Eye bombs from 150 feet as the F-105s popped up to medium altitude to begin their dive-bomb deliveries. Thunderchief pilots watched in horror as withering ground fire tore through Powers’s A-4. Gary Barnhill remembered the moment:
My turn. I lit the burner and popped up to about 7500 feet, Powers’ emergency locater beacon screeching in my headset. As the nose came up, I clearly remember saying aloud to myself, “Oh Crap, I don’t want to do this.”
During that brief dive bomb run, which seemed an eternity, there was a sharp knocking sound, like a fist on a door—it was enemy ground fire hitting the plane. . . . The anti-aircraft hits caused multiple red and yellow emergency lights to blink incessantly. I transmitted my intention to get to the water off Haiphong before ejecting. Radio chatter was understandably chaotic. Each Thud pilot was individually living his own hell, jinking violently to get away from the unrelenting ground fire.
Alone and doing 810 knots on the deck (that’s right, Buddy, 810 knots!) I slowly overtook a Navy F-8 Crusader as if passing a car on the freeway. We exchanged gentle pathetic waves as if to say: “Oh, Hi there, don’t know you, but hope you’re having a nice day?” I swear it was the most surreal moment of my life.9
With his aircraft on fire, Powers attempted to climb. He made it to 200 feet before ejecting. Although he was seen waving to his wingman, and his SAR beeper was briefly heard, attempts to contact him via radio failed. Powers was never seen or heard from again. He never arrived in a POW camp, and American prisoners never saw him or heard of his name being listed among their fellow prisoners. In 2014 declassified intelligence documents revealed that North Vietnamese soldiers immediately took Lt. Cdr. Dick Powers prisoner. Chinese troops engaged in road construction nearby overpowered his captors and summarily executed him.10
The raid on the bridge was considered a success. Despite the fierce defenses, Cdr. Harry Jenkins led planes from both carriers to destroy the bridge. The Iron Hand aircraft successfully destroyed four SAM sites.11 Previous to this mission, most raids experienced one or two SAM launches. During this raid, however, airplanes dodged nearly twenty SAMs—the profound effect of the Communists’ ability to supply North Vietnam.12 Besides Powers’s loss, AAA severely damaged seven Oriskany aircraft, including one F-8 that had to be craned off the ship in San Diego at the end of the cruise. The air force fared little better. Gary Barnhill eventually made it back to Thailand. His F-105 was so badly damaged that it required over 4,000 man hours to prepare it for ferry elsewhere for more extensive repairs.13
The air force had been so impressed by Powers’s skill and tenacity that the men who flew the mission pleaded with their leadership to award him the Air Force Cross. They made their point, and the paperwork was submitted, although the award was eventually changed to the Navy Cross. No matter the service or the award, the posthumous award did little to ease the pain of Powers’s loss.
With losses continuing at a steady rate, the ability of CSAR forces to rescue downed airmen in North Vietnam and the Tonkin Gulf became of utmost importance. The need to save fellow airmen from an unknown and possibly terrible fate only added to the sense of urgency, no matter the cost in men and equipment. The day after Powers’s loss, VA-152’s Lt. Gordon Wileen and Lt. (junior grade) Eldon Boose provided RESCAP for one of the most daring rescues thus far. AAA hit Capt. Norman Huggins’s RF-101 during a photo reconnaissance mission near Haiphong. Huggins managed to fly out over the harbor before ejecting. He came down near a small island and swam ashore but promptly changed his mind after villagers on the island began shooting at him. As Huggins swam away from the shore, he found himself in a pistol duel with several villagers who swam after him. With Wileen and Boose strafing nearby junks, an HU-16 Albatross amphibious aircraft landed on the water to rescue Huggins. With the downed pilot finally onboard, the Albatross took off and flew to Da Nang.14 The successful CSAR was the first recovery that far north, though it proved more important to morale than to the war effort. If a pilot was in trouble, he stood a chance and might be saved if he could make it to the relative safety of the gulf.
Early November saw a marked increase in the number of Alpha strikes. Weather permitting, pilots on the Oriskany flew, on average, two Alpha strikes a day. The defenses they encountered grew exponentially, and it was not uncommon for more than 50 percent of aircraft on each strike to receive combat damage.15 Cdr. Harry Jenkins led another Alpha strike on 5 November, bombing the Hai Duong highway and railroad bridge, located in the Red River valley between Hanoi and Haiphong. The strike consisted of eight Skyhawks and eight Crusaders loaded with 2,000-pound bombs. On the way to the target, the aircraft met little resistance, but as they began their bomb runs, AAA suddenly became heavy and accurate. VMF(AW)-212’s Capt. Harlan Chapman’s Crusader was hit by 57 mm fire during his dive. With his aircraft tumbling out of control, he ejected. Reconnaissance photos showed him descending in his parachute; however, because of the target’s location, no rescue was possible, and he was captured immediately. Another five of Oriskany’s aircraft suffered some degree of damage. Iron Hand aircraft destroyed a SAM site being built and partially occupied; however, the bridge was still standing, necessitating another strike. The air wing’s next attempt to bomb Hai Duong would have disastrous results with larger implications for the U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
The night of 6–7 November bore witness to the superhuman efforts required of the CSAR forces. Lt. Col. George McCleary, the commanding officer of the 357th TFS at Korat, RTAB, had been shot down on 5 November, and severe weather prevented any attempt at rescue. The next day, rescue forces attempted to find him and paid heavily. Losses began with two A-1Es and one CH-3C and grew steadily worse. The CH-3, one of two specially modified rescue helicopters in Southeast Asia, was flying at 3,000 feet to stay away from small arms fire when the crew started taking AAA fire. With the helicopter on fire, the crew actually bailed out (all aircrew on Jolly Green rescue helicopters carried parachutes as part of their survival equipment). Three of the crew parachuted into a village and were captured. The flight engineer, S.Sgt. Berkely Naugle, forgot to unhook his gunner’s harness, which prevented him from parachuting to safety. In reality, it saved him. As he struggled to release himself from the burning helicopter, it separated him from the rest of his crew. When he finally freed himself, he came down unnoticed. While the rest of his crew was captured, Naugle came down on a karst ridge roughly 20 miles southwest of Hanoi. In the Gulf of Tonkin, Lt. Cdr. Vernon Frank and his crew from HS-2 were the airborne CSAR alert in their SH-3 Sea King, call sign Nimble 57. Vernon and his crew overheard the radio chatter and volunteered for the rescue. As Vernon and his crew of four headed into North Vietnam, the remaining two A-1E escorts from the downed Jolly Green met them to provide escort. As they approached the wreckage of the CH-3, one of the A-1Es called that he was hit and then vanished into a cloud. With nighttime rapidly approaching, Nimble 57 could not accept any delay due to their low fuel state. The flight searched in vain to find the missing A-1E until Nimble 57 was forced to return to Independence to refuel.
Onboard Oriskany, the executive officer of VA-152, Cdr. Gordon Smith, had just finished debriefing an armed reconnaissance mission when he was notified of the ongoing crisis. He asked to be launched but was denied due to impending nightfall (no rescue had ever been attempted at night). The chance of any survivors making it through the night was not good, so Smith pressed his case to Adm. Ralph Cousins’s staff. He was eventually given permission to launch along with Lt. Garry Gottscholk. While Nimble 57 refueled, the two Skyraiders arrived overhead Staff Sergeant Naugle.
As it grew dark, ascertaining Naugle’s position became even more difficult. Unbeknownst to Smith and Gottscholk, Naugle was in a niche on the ridge that blocked any transmission of his survival radio except in one direction. Three 37 mm AAA sites located nearby made the task even more dangerous, though in the darkness they had been unable to hit the searching aircraft. Before Smith could bring in a helicopter, they had to know Naugle’s exact position. According to Smith,
I wanted to get a helicopter in there, but we certainly needed a better location first. I tried to make voice contact on [Naugle’s] survival radio, but to no avail. We could hear him try to transmit, but all we were receiving was a “rasping” noise. Apparently, he could hear us but we couldn’t hear him. I asked him if he had a flashlight. Nothing in response.
I asked him several other things—I don’t remember what—and finally I mentioned a cigarette lighter. I told him that I was going to make a run on where I thought he was, and when I came close, he was to light the lighter. I did, and he did, and there he was off to our left.16
With Nimble 57 returning for the rescue, Smith had to figure out exactly how he was going to guide the helicopter to Naugle in the darkness. With Gottscholk directing from above, Smith flew over Naugle’s position, flashing his lights as he flew over Naugle. With the correct location, they could now guide the helicopter. In Nimble 57, Lt. Cdr. Vernon Frank was worried whether he’d spot the survivor, to which Smith replied, “He’s the one with the cigarette lighter.”17
The nighttime rescue went exceedingly well. Smith and Gottscholk turned on their lights to draw fire away from Nimble 57. At some point, Smith became disoriented down low and actually flew into a tree! It scared the hell out of him, but they continued suppressing AAA sites. With Naugle safely aboard Nimble 57, Frank flew for the gulf. It was a small victory, because there were still five men on the ground, including the original survivor, Lt. Col. George McCleary. Smith and Gottscholk then picked up a second emergency beacon after Naugle’s rescue. With Naugle’s radio now off, they could home in on this new position. The multiple emergency beacons, all transmitting on the same frequency, had been one of the reasons why Smith had been unable to pinpoint Naugle earlier in the evening. Smith and Gottscholk had been airborne for nearly five hours now, and their fuel state was critical. Smith began coordinating another rescue and, for their relief, hoping they could rescue the next survivor at daybreak. Smith continued:
At that point I figured that if we left within the next few minutes, we had barely enough fuel to get back to the ship. I concluded that Gary had a bit more than I did because I’d wasted a lot tooling around making runs. Nevertheless, it was clear that both of us were in trouble. I advised the ship that, if necessary, I’d remain on scene until I could affect a visual hand off, and if I didn’t have enough fuel I’d ditch in Brandon Bay.
Suddenly, Adm Ralph Cousins came on the horn, identified himself and directed that I head home NOW. I responded that he was cutting out, that I was transmitting blind, and that I intended to wait for relief.18
Two F-4 Phantoms eventually arrived to relieve the Skyraiders. Smith quickly grew frustrated with them. In the darkness, the Phantom crews proved reluctant to fly low enough to spot the survivor. It didn’t help that AAA sites were still active, their tracers illuminating the darkness. CSAR was the realm of Spad drivers, and their expertise could not be matched.
With Gottscholk already returning to the Oriskany, Smith began the harrowing flight back, resigned to ditching. As Smith crossed the coast, he was surprised to find the Oriskany 40 miles closer than he’d expected. As he descended through the weather, he spotted the ship just 7 miles ahead. Smith recalled, “The LSO came up on the radio and told me that we wouldn’t change frequencies, and to call the ball. I came back with ‘507 Ball. State Zero.’ His calm response was ‘Roger Ball, Roger Zero.’ I landed without any fuss.”19 Gordon Smith landed with no fuel—his engine was literally running on fumes. He then headed into the ship to brief Admiral Cousins on the night’s CSAR. With the debrief complete, Smith grabbed Lt. Gordon Wileen as his next wingman, as well as Lt. Cdr. Paul Merchant and Lt. F. Howe, to brief the next RESCAP. Smith insisted on going, as he was now intimately familiar with the area.
Even though Oriskany was operating on the noon to midnight schedule, her flight deck crew respotted the deck and launched the four Skyraiders in the predawn darkness. The flight escorted Nimble 62, another HS-2 Sea King, flown by Lt. (junior grade) Terry Campbell and Lt. (junior grade) Mel Howell. In the early morning, clouds had settled into the valleys, though as the day broke they began to dissipate. Smith commenced searching beneath the clouds for any possible avenue of approach for the helicopter. Unfortunately, during the early morning hours, the North Vietnamese had brought in several more 37 mm guns. Now, in addition to waiting for the weather to improve, the Americans needed to suppress the new guns before attempting any rescue. As Smith climbed back above the clouds, he realized Nimble 62 had drifted out of position. Just as he began to key his microphone to tell them of the danger, AAA hit the helicopter. As was becoming all too common, the crew could hear the guns shooting at them. Howell even asked his crew what they were shooting at, to which they responded that they weren’t shooting but taking hits.20
The helicopter staggered from the volume of hits, and the rescue quickly came apart. Howell dove the helicopter into nearby clouds to escape further punishment. As it popped back out, the helicopter streamed fuel. Neither pilot could see due to the fuel vapor inside the cockpit. Then it caught fire. Fortunately, crewmen Merle Huseth and John Cully were standing ready with fire extinguishers. They quickly put the fire out, but the helicopter had lost prodigious amounts of fuel. Then Wileen called to say that he’d been hit.
Smith faced the difficult choice of escorting the stricken Sea King or his wingman, Wileen. He chose the helicopter and ordered his wingman to head for the water. Nimble 62 initially headed for the water as well; however, they only had 1,000 pounds of fuel left and were losing 200 pounds a minute. They wouldn’t make it. Smith instructed Nimble 62 to fly southeast, away from the water. He later recalled:
Of course he thought I’d gone completely insane, but we finally talked it out. Besides, I told him to “Trust me”—and he did.
About thirty-five miles ahead was a 5500 foot hill, which I think is the tallest point in North Vietnam. The top is barren, and it is extremely remote. I’d often thought that if I ever found myself on the ground in that region, that’s where I’d want to be. I figured that it would take days for the bad guys to get there. As the countryside got more remote, the helicopter was losing fuel at a faster rate than we previously thought, and it was going to be very tight.21
As the helicopter came to a hover over the mountain, the pilots began questioning Smith’s choice. The mountain had a clear top with a cliff on one side and thick jungle on the other. The clear area had recently been logged and was covered with stumps, leaving the pilot little choice but to set the helicopter down on the stumps. Then the motors died from fuel starvation. When Smith radioed to tell them he’d have another helicopter there to pick them up within the hour, the response was, “We trusted you so far, didn’t we?”
The drama continued with the rescue of Nimble 62. A single-engine Sea Sprite from USS Richmond K. Turner (CG-20) approached the crash site. The SH-2 hoisted John Cully aboard but was unable to hover at altitude. With only one engine, the combination of weight and altitude proved too great. The pilot made one more effort and succeeded in snatching Merle Huseth with the jungle hoist. The helicopter literally fell off the mountain, gaining speed to generate lift out of the hover, with Huseth dangling beneath the helicopter as they flew down the mountain. The Sea Sprite made one more pass, with the crew waving good-bye to Campbell and Howell, both of whom were rescued by a Jolly Green CH-3 a short while later. After stopping at several landing zones in Laos, the pilots eventually made it to Thailand via Air America before they met Independence at Cubi Point. A-1s eventually destroyed their helicopter so that it could not be salvaged from its remote mountaintop location.22
Lt. Gordon Wileen’s Skyraider suffered a complete hydraulic failure. The bottom side of his aircraft was full of holes, and he couldn’t extend his landing gear. Rather than ditch his aircraft alongside Oriskany, Wileen opted for a gear-up landing at Da Nang. Smith had already landed at Da Nang and witnessed Wileen’s landing:
I sorely wanted to see what we could do to go back and get that poor bastard we’d left in that Karst eighteen miles from Hanoi. It was clear though that we’d never get approval to mount another effort under the circumstances.
Besides, I was getting tired, and it was showing. I hadn’t had any sleep in the last thirty hours, and I’d been airborne for more than fifteen of the last twenty-two. The adrenaline rush was gone and I was having a sinking spell. . . . I watched him come in and everything was perfect—a real professional job. After giving “Gordie” a hug and downing four cups of coffee, I returned to the ship. Another day in the Tonkin Gulf.23
Smith clearly understated the formidable effort he and the CSAR forces put forth. In a twenty-two-hour period, he had been airborne for seventeen hours and twelve minutes. Both he and Wileen received Silver Stars for their efforts during the two rescues. Two more A-1Es were seriously damaged before the search was finally called off. When it was all over, rescue forces had lost two A-1s, two valuable rescue helicopters, and a total of five airmen. An additional four A-1s had been severely damaged. The rescue attempts during the previous two days were a testament to the dedication of the CSAR forces. Their willingness to make sacrifices so that downed airmen might live greatly improved pilot morale at a time when many were beginning to question the rationale behind Rolling Thunder.
It would take years for Oriskany’s role in the rescue to be fully told. Resigned to ditching following the night rescue, Smith surprisingly found the ship much closer than he expected. Captain Connolly listened to the rescue unfold over the radios, and once he realized that Smith likely couldn’t make it back, he acted. According to Smith, “He cleared the bridge of all personnel except for himself and the officer of the deck, Lt(jg) Bruce Bell, and headed west in violation of all the rules. He wanted no witnesses and he swore Bell to secrecy. There is no question that without Connolly’s aggressive action I would not have made it back that night.”24 Connolly’s actions spoke volumes. Not many men would have risked their ship and career by sailing far west of Yankee Station and into shoal waters to save a man under the cover of darkness. But Connolly did, thus cementing himself in the hearts of Oriskany’s men. It was, after all, just another day in the Tonkin Gulf.
While the rescue saga had been unfolding, Oriskany launched yet another strike. The previous day, reconnaissance drones had found two occupied SAM sites near Nam Dinh. Led by VA-164’s executive officer, Cdr. Jack Shaw, the Iron Hand strike successfully destroyed one site, but it also lost one aircraft. Aircraft from Independence received orders to conduct a follow-on strike to destroy the remaining SAM site, which they did. VA-163’s Lt. Cdr. Charlie Wack had been the Oriskany’s sole loss. He had been hit before reaching Nam Dinh, declaring that he “hadn’t hauled those bombs all the way just to jettison them a few seconds short of the target.” He continued with his bomb run and helped to destroy the site. Coming off the target, his engine developed severe vibrations. He barely made it out to the gulf before his wingman reported flames burning through the fuselage. Wack waited until his flight controls quit working before he finally ejected 15 miles offshore. He spent a mere seventeen minutes in the water before being picked up by an HU-16 piloted by Capt. Joe Kirby. Upon landing in Da Nang, Wack became somewhat of a celebrity, as no naval aviator had been rescued and brought to Da Nang. Air force personnel, from flight surgeons to colonels, as well as the crew that rescued him, plied Charlie Wack with drinks. When the COD showed up to ferry him back the next day, Wack felt so bad that he quipped, “I sure hope I don’t get shot down again. I couldn’t stand the hangover!”25
The Iron Hand missions had a devastating effect on North Vietnamese missile crews. The attacks hit the 236th Missile Regiment, destroying two of the regiment’s four missile battalions and the regimental technical support battalion responsible for assembling and transporting missiles to the regiment.26 Though the attacks took the 236th Missile Regiment out of action for some time, the psychological effect was even more profound. Unlike most North Vietnamese soldiers, missile crews consisted of educated urban youth unfamiliar with the strain of war and trained more on technical matters than in combat and political ideology. As Iron Hand efforts gained momentum, such attacks could make entire missile units waver, afraid to fire a missile for fear the launch would expose them to attack by American aircraft.27
By mid-November the end of the line period loomed, thus signaling the end of the eight-month cruise. Oriskany’s pilots began to secretly believe that they might actually survive to the end. Pilots averaged one hundred missions or more over North Vietnam. They were exhausted, and it began to show. Complacency became an issue as pilots grew numb to the dangers they faced on a daily basis. By 10 November poor weather covered the entire Tonkin Gulf. With the arrival of monsoon season, the air wing only managed two days of combat over the next week. This taxed men’s already frayed nerves as mission upon mission was canceled. The two days they did manage to fly proved extremely costly.
On 13 November Cdr. Harry Jenkins and Lt. (junior grade) Vance Schufeldt launched in their Skyhawks for an armed reconnaissance mission near Dong Hoi. As it was one of Schufeldt’s first missions over North Vietnam, Jenkins selected a quiet area with little activity and very few defenses. The river crossing they intended to bomb appeared unnavigable, so they decided to bomb a road junction south of Dong Hoi. Jenkins recalled:
On the day I was shot down, if that had been one of my earlier missions, there is no way that gunner would have gotten me. I’d just seen so much flak, and had been hit several times. I was just tired, I guess, and not thinking. . . .
On the way to the junction, about ten miles from the coast, I passed a clump of trees where it looked like a lot of traffic had driven, very easily a truck park. Schufeldt orbited and I went down very low, maybe ten or twelve feet off the ground, looking under the trees. Nothing was around, and I wasn’t going particularly fast because it was a quiet area.
Pulling off and heading toward the coast, I heard a gun start firing. I looked back and could see these two streams of tracers from a 37mm, a twin mount, almost dead astern from me. If this had been on one of my first flights—and I’ve thought of this moment a thousand times—I would have turned hard left because the gunner tracking me would have overshot. But there was a little broken overcast at about 4,000 feet and my intent was to just pop up into the overcast, figuring he’d lay off. So I pulled up, but I wasn’t going fast enough to really pull up hard; and with the easiest shot in the world, just a dead astern-on shot, he hit me. The first round, I think, must have been directly in what we call the hell hole area, just aft and under the seat where the control junctions, electrical busses and all are. My controls were immediately disconnected, the stick wouldn’t do a thing, just like a noodle.28
The Vietnamese captured Jenkins almost immediately. His fellow pilots didn’t know that, however, and spent some time looking for him. Before they quit, four A-1s from VA-152 were severely damaged. Just like Wileen’s a week prior, Lt. Douglas Clarke’s A-1 took extensive hits underneath the wing, and he too landed gear up in Da Nang. Cdr. Albert Knutson, the commanding officer of VA-152, took control of the RESCAP. His Skyraider ended up with twenty-six holes in it.29 There were no more quiet areas in North Vietnam, and losses were becoming difficult to sustain. In the two weeks since the line period began, five aircraft had been shot down. Twenty-seven had been damaged, some severely enough that they needed to be craned off for further repair. It would get worse before the ship left the line. The losses being incurred during Rolling Thunder and the costly battles now being fought by the new ground forces combined to shake civilian leadership. They had perhaps the greatest impact on Robert McNamara, altering his belief in the war that he helped orchestrate.
After its arrival in September, the First Cavalry Division had begun conducting offensive operations in the central highlands of South Vietnam. A major battle had been brewing ever since. As monsoon rains ended in the mountains of Pleiku province, three regiments of the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN), more commonly known as North Vietnamese Army (NVA), planned to lay siege to the American Special Forces camp at Plei Me. The siege was a ruse. The NVA planned to draw the helicopter-borne soldiers of the First Cavalry into the jungle in order to engage them and see how well they fought. It took a month of costly operations before both sides eventually met in the battle of the Ia Drang valley.
The ensuing battle raged from 14 to 18 November and consisted of multiple bloody engagements at different helicopter landing zones (LZs). The cost was staggering. In just four days at LZ Albany and LZ X-Ray, 234 American soldiers were killed, with an additional 240 wounded. Both sides claimed victory that day. The North Vietnamese believed they could survive the ferocious firepower of American artillery and airpower if they could only get close enough to prevent its use. The Americans came away believing in a strategy of attrition. If they just killed enough North Vietnamese soldiers, then maybe North Vietnam would cease supporting the insurgency. From this point forward, body counts became the tool by which the United States measured progress.30
While the First Cavalry Division fought for survival in the Ia Drang valley, Oriskany received an equally crushing blow. Because of their failure to previously destroy the bridge at Hai Duong, the target remained a priority. With targets released every two weeks, the bridge remained on top of the list until the next one came out. The North Vietnamese knew this and prepared their defenses accordingly.
The next strike was scheduled for 17 November and involved over forty aircraft from Oriskany and USS Bon Homme Richard (CVA-31). The strike went poorly from the start, proving extremely costly in both lives and aircraft. Heavy AAA began from the moment the aircraft crossed the coast and never subsided. VMF(AW)-212’s Capt. Ross Chaimson was the first loss when 37 mm AAA hit his Crusader during the ingress. The hit destroyed his electrical system. Unable to drop his bombs, unable to talk to anyone, and with no way of navigating, he flew back toward the gulf. With no electrical system, he also had no way of transferring fuel, and his engine eventually quit due to fuel starvation. Fortunately, he was near Bon Homme Richard when it occurred, and he ejected safely. Chaimson was quickly rescued by a Seasprite from the carrier.
Over the target, AAA hit Lt. Cdr. Roy Bowling’s Skyhawk. A 37 mm round neatly severed the horizontal stabilizer from his A-4 with catastrophic results. The entire strike group was escaping the area at low altitude, and without a stabilizer, Bowling’s Skyhawk became aerodynamically unstable and plunged into the ground. Lt. Larry Spear was flying behind Bowling when it happened and thought he had seen a parachute. A quick turn overhead revealed nothing, though Spear called for RESCAP. Unfortunately, Bowling had been shot down in a heavily defended area west of Haiphong, between the port city and Hanoi.
Over the Tonkin Gulf, the CSAR alert proceeded to the crash scene. Lt. Cdr. Eric Schade and the air wing operations officer, Lt. Cdr. Jesse Taylor, arrived overhead amid intense AAA. They could see the wreckage and a parachute, but the AAA was too heavy for a rescue. Then both Skyraiders were hit. Schade managed to make it back to the Oriskany. Taylor did not. Schade’s badly damaged aircraft was barely flyable, resulting in a hard landing that destroyed the wing spar. His aircraft was written off. Taylor’s A-1 caught fire before he reached the coast, and though he tried to ditch at sea, the plane crashed in coastal marshes close to the shore southwest of Haiphong. Jesse Taylor was killed in the crash, and though a helicopter crew attempted to recover the body, they were driven off by intense ground fire.
Taylor’s loss was especially painful. He had enlisted in the navy during the Second World War and had sailed with VB-11 aboard the USS Hornet (CV-12) in 1944. Following the war, he joined the naval reserves and became a naval aviator during the Korean War. In September Taylor had been selected for commander but had not yet been promoted. He had just taken over duties as the air wing operations officer from Cdr. Paul Engel. The job of air wing operations officer was seen as a stepping stone toward eventual selection as the commanding officer of a squadron—something Engel accomplished when he departed to become the executive officer of VA-164. A fighter pilot by trade, Taylor volunteered to take the mission in order to familiarize himself with the many different aircraft flown within the air wing. It was an unnecessary but calculated risk. The navy posthumously awarded him the Navy Cross and eventually named the USS Jesse J. Taylor (FFG-50) in his honor.
The raid failed to destroy the bridge. Although the approaches were cratered and some boxcars were destroyed, the bridge still stood. Another strike was required, and the defenses would be even greater. Similar to the ongoing battle in Ia Drang, the cost was staggering. The Oriskany lost three aircraft to AAA, with another six heavily damaged, two of which would be stricken from inventory. The mission cost over half the airplanes assigned to hit the bridge. The Bon Homme Richard fared better, with two A-4s damaged and one F-8 lost. Cdr. Robert Chew, the commanding officer of VF-194, managed to fly his crippled Crusader out over the gulf before ejecting. To add insult to injury, Oriskany lost a fourth aircraft that night. Once again, the BARCAP had been launched despite poor weather, and 1st Lt. Gary Piel crashed his Crusader into the ship while trying to get aboard. The ensuing fireball flung wreckage across the flight deck and injured many sailors.31 Losses of this magnitude should have garnered headlines back in the United States, but they were overshadowed by the ongoing battle in the Ia Drang. American involvement in Vietnam suddenly exploded into an open-ended and massive commitment of American men, money, and matériel to a war that Defense Secretary McNamara began suspecting would be difficult if not impossible to win.
The country was not prepared for the war it was now in. In the wake of Ia Drang, the first telegrams to shatter the lives of the innocent began arriving. The war was new, and the casualties to date had been so few that the military did not yet have casualty-notification teams. Later in the war these teams would personally deliver the bad news and stay to comfort a young widow or elderly parents.32 Even the navy’s leadership struggled to realize the magnitude of American involvement. Wynn Foster remembered the period wryly:
Near the end of the 1965 cruise, I’d lost my CAG, my skipper, my operations officer. I was really down in the dumps for about two weeks and trying to act like a new, fresh caught, recently promoted CO.
I sat down to read message traffic and there’s a message exhorting the hell out of everybody for not having made their contributions to Navy Relief. To have gone through two combat missions that day and then read that sort of thing—it was hard to imagine people whose mental set was still that way.33
Everyone, including the military, was taken totally by surprise by the magnitude of the casualties that burst on the scene during those four days in November.
The war had grown beyond what President Johnson and his advisors had ever imagined in early 1965. But all was not lost—not yet. For most civilian and military leadership running the war, the evidence of a tougher enemy just underlined the need to roll up their sleeves and get on with the job: send in more troops and weaponry till Hanoi caved.34 But attitudes began changing, especially among the aviators cheating death several times a day. Wynn Foster noted the change among VA-163: “As a squadron, we went out ready to win the war and came back quite a different crew of people, a lot more mature and maybe with a little bit of cynicism. Out went a bunch of Jack Armstrong, All-American Boys going to win this war. By December of 1965, all of us realized it was not a winnable war. It was obvious to us, and obvious to everybody flying over there, we couldn’t hit the North Vietnamese where it hurt.”35
The men realized the absurdity as sortie production became an end in itself. Pilots were well aware of this dichotomy and mocked it in an attempt to mask their growing frustration with the war. Again according to Foster, “At naval air stations back in the States, posters prominently reminded pilots and other aviation personnel, ‘Of all our operations, SAFETY is paramount!’ In Ready Room Five, the flight-scheduling officer Larry DeSha, after working hours to juggle the availability of the pilots against a frequently amended daily mission plan, posted his own notice: ‘Of all our operations, GETTIN’ THEM SORTIES OUT is paramount!’”36
The shift in attitudes was apparent elsewhere in the air wing. Prior to the 1965 cruise, VF-162’s Lt. Bud Flagg had written to Charles Schulz, asking for permission to use a Snoopy caricature on their airplanes. Schulz, a World War II veteran, readily agreed. In a nod to the nose art that adorned aircraft in the Second World War, VF-162 painted emblems of Snoopy riding a Sidewinder missile on the tails of their Crusaders. The use of such an influential and hugely popular cartoon character spoke to the naïveté of many in the early days of Vietnam.
Such notions changed after November 1965. Most Americans still backed the war, though dissent grew steadily. In early November, Norman Morrison, a Quaker activist, immolated himself at the Pentagon to protest the war. At the end of November, Coretta Scott King, among others, spoke at an antiwar rally of about thirty thousand in Washington DC in the single largest demonstration to date. On that same day, President Johnson announced the significant escalation of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, from 120,000 to 400,000 troops, with the option for another 200,000 on top of that. American involvement in Vietnam now began to poison everything from international relations to domestic politics. It even began to threaten Johnson’s Great Society. In a bid to save his domestic agenda and disguise the true cost of the war, Johnson would fight the war on the cheap, against the advice of all advisors, both political and military. There would be no mobilization of reserve units, no declaration of a state of emergency to permit the military to extend the enlistments of its best-trained and most experienced men. Instead, the war would be fed by stripping units throughout Europe and the United States of men and equipment, while a river of new draftees flowed in to do the shooting and dying.37
Oriskany’s involvement in Vietnam during 1965 came to an uneventful close on 26 November as she departed Yankee Station for Subic Bay. As she continued across the Pacific, a divided Johnson administration deliberated yet another bombing pause. The recent uptick in losses both in the air and on the ground, with little improvement to the situation, led McNamara to summarize his views in a memorandum to President Johnson on 30 November: “It is my belief that there should be a three or four week pause in the program of bombing the North before we either greatly increase our troop deployment to Vietnam or intensify our strikes against the North. The reasons for this belief are, first, we must lay a foundation in the minds of the American public and in world opinion for such an enlarged phase of the war, and second, we should give North Vietnam a face-saving chance to stop the aggression.”38
It is worth noting that military leadership was not involved in the decision. In fact, Adm. U. S. Grant Sharp was not privy until President Johnson announced it during the Christmas truce. The “hard-line” pause, as it became known, was doomed to failure. Both the North Vietnamese and the United States used the pause to their seeming advantage. Just as McNamara intended, President Johnson used the pause to show the American public that he was serious about peace before announcing the even greater escalations that had already been planned. The North Vietnamese viewed the supposed peace initiative for what it was: a thinly veiled excuse for further escalation. They used the period to strengthen their defenses under the continued goal of winning the war and achieving national unity under Communist control.39 The pause had major implications. It exposed a rift among the president’s advisors. It created an even bigger rift, if not an outright chasm, in civil-military relations. Moreover, for the men who eventually resumed the bombing, it meant even more casualties as they faced North Vietnamese defenses, which had had thirty-seven days to resupply and fortify. In 1966 the American air campaign would be met with even fiercer resistance, resulting in even greater casualties.