Carrier-borne Combat Viêtnam 1964-1973
Air-to-air warfare in Southeast Asia began on 3 April 1965 when a US Navy strike force of four F-8Es bombing the Thanh Hóa Bridge was attacked by MiG-17s. One Navy aircraft was damaged during the engagement. Until 17 June, on which day a US flight of F-4Bs downed two MiG-17s with Sparrow missiles, aerial engagements had been infrequent. By mid-1965 the air-to-air contest was well inderway. The aerial battles in Viêtnam bore little resemblance to the dogfights of World War II or even Korea. The equipment had become so sophisticated and the speed of aircraft so significantly increased that it took coordination and teamwork to kill a MiG. Every air-to-air encounter involved the ability and training of many people - support personnel, ground crews, strike and protective flight air crews and the airborne and ground-radar operators. Unlike the air-to-air engagements of previous wars, in which a single pilot pitted his aircraft against a single opponent, some modern aircraft required two-man crews, working as an integrated and well-disciplined team.
RF-8G Crusader of VFP-63 ‘Eyes of the Fleet’ is catapulted off the flight deck of the USS Kitty Hawk, which was deployed to SE Asia in September 1963. The RF-8A of Lieutenant Charles ‘Chuck’ F. Klusmann of VFP-63 (PoW-escaped) was the first jet shot down and ejection of the air war in SE Asia, on 6 June 1964. F-8Es of VF-211 ‘Fighting Checkmates’ from the USS Hancock were the first to tangle with NVAF MiG-17s, on 3 April 1965, when eight MiG-17PFs of the 921st ‘Sao Đỏ’ (Red Star) Fighter Regiment from Nội Bài northwest of Hànôi attacked a USN strike force attacking bridges at Hàm Rồng. The gun camera in the lead MiG, piloted by 31-year old Captain (later General) Phạm Ngọc Lan, revealed that his cannons had set an F-8 ablaze, but Lieutenant Commander Spence Thomas landed his damaged Crusader at Đà Nẵng; the remaining F-8Es returning safely to their carrier. Lan had to break off low on fuel and he crash landed on the banks of the Đuống River.
F-4B-19-MC Phantom BuNo 151485 of VF-21 ‘Free Lancers’ dropping Mk 82 Snakeye bombs over Việtnam. VF-21 was assigned to Carrier Air Wing 2 (CVW-2) aboard the aircraft carrier USS Midway (CVA-41) for a deployment to Việtnam from 6 March to 23 November 1965. During a combat air patrol on 7 May 1968 this aircraft, now with VF-92 on the Enterprise, was part of a section of five F-4Bs led by Lieutenant Commander Ejnar S. Christensen that became engaged in a running fight with several MiGs of the VPAF 921st Regiment north of Vinh. BuNo 151485 was shot down by Nguyen Van Coc for his seventh aerial victory after he fired two R-3S Atoll missiles from an altitude of 4,900 feet. The F-4B burst into flames and crashed into the sea. Christenson and his Radar Intercept Officer, Lieutenant (jg) Worth A. Kramer ejected safely from their aircraft before impact and were recovered a short time later.
The Korean War had shaken the military might of America and it led to far-reaching changes in the equipment it would need to fight any similar war anywhere in the world. The Navy replaced its F9F Panther and F2H Banshee straight-winged jets with the F-4 Phantom and the Vought F-8 Crusader became the standard carrier-based fighter, although propeller-driven aircraft, like the Douglas A-1 Skyraider,56 still had a role to play. Ed Heinmann’s Douglas A-4 Skyhawk was designed to replace the Skyraider and fulfill a multiplicity of roles for the Navy, including interceptor and nuclear weapons carrier, but for a while both aircraft served alongside each other when war broke out in South-East Asia. The Republic of South Viêtnam was created in July 1954 using the 17th Parallel to separate it from the Communist North. However, Hồ Chi Minh’s Viêt Minh forces, led by General Võ Nguyên Giáp, planned to take over control of the South using a new Communist guerrilla force called the Viêt Công (VC) or National Liberation Front (NLF). The VC campaign increased in intensity in 1957 and finally, in 1960, Premier Ngo Dinh Diem appealed to the United States for help. In 1961 ‘special advisers’ were sent in and later President Lyndon B. Johnson began the first moves, which would lead to total American involvement in Viêtnam.
When, in 1964, two Crusaders were brought down during a reconnaissance mission over Laos, the USAF flew a retaliatory strike on 9 June against AAA sites. On 2 August, against the background of open warfare in Laos, and increasing infiltration across the North/South Viêtnamese border, North Viêtnamese torpedo boats attacked the destroyer USS Maddox in international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. The destroyer was cruising along a patrol line in the northern region of the Gulf in order to gather intelligence as part of Operation ‘Plan 34A’. This was a covert campaign that started in February 1964 and it was intended to deter the North Viêtnamese from infiltrating the South. One of the torpedo boats that attacked the Maddox was sunk by a flight of four F-8E Crusaders led by 40-year old Commander James Bond Stockdale of VF-53 from the Ticonderoga, who made several strafing runs on the boats, firing their 20mm cannon and Zuni unguided rockets.57
During the night of 4/5 August Maddox, now reinforced by USS Turner Joy, returned to its station off the North Viêtnamese coast to listen for radio traffic and monitor communist naval activity. Shortly after a covert South Viêtnamese attack on a coastal radar station near Cua Rim, the two destroyers tracked on radar what they took to be enemy torpedo boats. Debate still rages whether there really was any North Viêtnamese boats in the vicinity of the two destroyers. Apparently no attack developed and no boats were seen by the pilots of the aircraft launched to provide air cover. However, the incident was enough to force President Johnson into ordering Operation ‘Pierce Arrow’, a limited retaliatory raid on military facilities in North Viêtnam. On 10 August the US Congress passed what came to be known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which was as close as the US ever came to declaring war on North Viêtnam but which actually fell far short of that. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident also resulted in a major increase in US air strength in the Southeast Asia theatre and saw US involvement change from an advisory role to a more operational role, even though US aircraft and airmen had been participating in operations ever since they first arrived in the region.
A-4C 149574 of VA-153 ‘The Blue Tailed Flies’ is launched from the deck of the USS Coral Sea off Viêtnam in 1965. On 25 June this Skyhawk and Commander Peter Mongilardi, CAG, Carrier Air Wing 15 was leading two other Skyhawks on an armed reconnaissance mission when he spotted a small bridge over the Sông Cho River about 10 miles northwest of Thanh Hóa. As the formation rolled into the attack, Mongilardi’s aircraft was struck by 37mm flak. The first CAG to be lost in the war, he had been lucky to survive damage to his Skyhawk during the 29 March raid on Bạch Long Vĩ when he had to be ‘towed’ back to the carrier by a tanker as his aircraft was leaking fuel almost as fast as it was receiving it.
On 17 June 1965 two VF-21 ‘Freelancers’ F-4Bs from the USS Midway (CVA-41) scored the first MiG kills of the war when they attacked four MiG-17s south of Hànôi and brought down two with AIM-7 Sparrow missiles. L-R: Commander Louis C. Page; Lieutenant John C. Smith; Lieutenant Jack E. D. Batson, Page’s Radar Intercept Officer; and Lieutenant Commander Robert B. Doremus, Smith’s RIO.
On 24 August 1965 on a mission to hit the ‘Dragon’s Jaw’ Bridge at Thanh Hòa Lieutenant Commander Robert B. Doremus (pictured after his release on 2 February 1973) and Commander Fred Augustus Franke, commander of VF-21 were shot down in their F-4B and were held prisoner for 7½ years in Hànôi.
The political and physical restrictions on the basing of us aircraft in South Viêtnam was to some extent solved by the permanent stationing of aircraft carriers in the South China Sea. By the end of August four aircraft carriers, the Bon Homme Richard (CVA-31), Constellation, Kearsarge and Ticonderoga had arrived in position in the Gulf and started a pattern of line duty that continued until August 1973. The carriers and their protecting forces constituted the US 7th Fleet’s Task Force 77, which in March 1965 developed a pattern of positioning carriers at Yankee Station in the South China Sea off Đà Nẵng from which to launch attacks against North Viêtnam. On 20 May TF 77 established Dixie Station 100 miles southeast of Cam Ranh Bay from where close air support missions could be mounted against South Viêtnam. The carriers developed a system that normally kept each ship on line duty for a period of between twenty-five and thirty-five days after which the carrier would visit a port in the Philippines, Japan or Hong Kong for rest and replenishment of supplies. Each carrier would normally complete four spells of duty on the line before returning to its homeport for refitting and re-equipping. However, the period spent on line duty could vary considerably and some ships spent well over the average number of days on duty. The establishment of Dixie Station required the assignment of a fifth carrier to the Western Pacific to maintain the constant presence of at least two carriers at Yankee Station and one at Dixie Station. By the summer of 1966 there were enough aircraft based in South Viêtnam to provide the required airpower and Dixie Station was discontinued from 4 August.
Operation ‘Pierce Arrow’ began in the early afternoon of 5 August with twenty aircraft from Constellation (ten A-1H Skyraiders, eight Skyhawks and two F-4 Phantoms) attacking the torpedo boat base near the coal-mining town of Hon Gai northeast of Hànôi while twelve more (five Skyhawks, four Skyraiders and three Phantoms) from the same carrier struck the Loc Chao base. Simultaneously, the Ticonderoga dispatched six F-8E Crusaders to the torpedo boat bases at Quảng Khê and Bến Thuỷ and 26 other aircraft to bomb an oil storage depot at Vinh. Unfortunately, President Johnson’s premature television announcement that the raids were to take place may have warned the North Viêtnamese who put up a fierce barrage of anti-aircraft fire at all the targets resulting in the loss of two aircraft. Lieutenant (jg) Richard Christian Sather’s Skyraider from VA-145 was hit by AAA while on its third dive bomb attack and crashed just off shore from Thanh Hóa. No parachute was seen or radio emergency beeper heard and it was assumed that Sather died in the crash, the first naval airman to be killed in the war.58 Skyhawk pilot, 26-year-old Lieutenant (jg) Everett Alvarez Jr of San Jose, California, stationed aboard the Constellation in VA-144, who was on his first tour since graduating as a pilot in 1961 also took part in the ‘Pierce Arrow’ attack on torpedo boats at Hon Gay. During the night he had taken part in the abortive hunt for North Viêtnamese torpedo boats. Alvarez, who had been assigned his objective in advance, recalled years later: ‘I was among the first to launch off the carrier. Our squadron, ten airplanes, headed toward the target about 400 miles away - a good two hours there and two hours back. It was sort of like a dream. We were actually going to war, into combat. I never thought it would happen, but all of a sudden here we were and I was in it. I felt a little nervous. We made an identification pass, then came around and made an actual pass, firing. I was very low, just skimming the trees at about 500 knots. Then I had the weirdest feeling. My airplane was hit and started to fall apart, rolling and burning. I knew I wouldn’t live if I stayed with the airplane, so I ejected and luckily I cleared a cliff.’
Alvarez landed in shallow water, fracturing his back in the drop. Local North Viêtnamese militia soon arrived and took him to a nearby jail, where he was briefly visited by Prime Minister Pham Van Dong, who had been coincidentally touring the region at the time. Alvarez became something of a celebrity - the first of nearly 600 American airmen to be captured by the Communists during the Viêtnam War. Transferred to Hỏa Lò the notorious prison built in Hànôi by the French in 1896 which American PoWs held there until 29 March 1973 would nickname the ‘Hànôi Hilton’ he was held until the signing of the cease-fire agreement more than eight years later. Unable to get Alvarez to volunteer anything more than his name, rank and serial number, the North Viêtnamese isolated him in a squalid cell where huge rats darted about at night. Meanwhile he was kept on a starvation diet - including feathered blackbirds - which gave him chronic dysentery. ‘Suddenly I was thrown into this medieval environment and kept thinking, ‘God, why me?’ Alvarez recalled. ‘I fully expected the door to open and someone to say he was here to take me home. But as the days went by, I didn’t know how much longer it would be.’ Held in solitary confinement for fifteen months, Alvarez struggled to maintain his sanity by keeping the past alive in his mind. ‘Everyone, all the PoWs, looked up to Ev,’ says Paul Galanti who was captured two years after Alvarez. ‘He was one of those optimists who always thought we would get out the next day.’ Alvarez’s spirit was nearly broken in his seventh year of captivity, when the North Viêtnamese handed over correspondence announcing that his wife had divorced him, remarried and given birth to a child with her new husband. Everett Alvarez was released in Operation ‘Homecoming’ on 12 February 1973. He was known to other PoWs as the ‘Old Man of the North’ due to his longevity in the PoW camps.
Following the establishment of TF 77 aircraft carriers in the South China Sea in August 1964 it was six months before the US Navy was again in action although thirteen naval aircraft had been lost in accidents over Southeast Asian waters during this time. Although air strikes against North Viêtnam were part of President Johnson’s 2 December plan they were not immediately instigated. However, VC attacks on US facilities at Sàigòn on 24 December and Pleiku and Camp Holloway on 7 February caused President Johnson to order the first air strike against North Viêtnam since ‘Pierce Arrow’ in August 1964. In retaliation, the order was given for a strike from carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin. On 7 February ‘Flaming Dart I’, as the strike was code-named, saw 49 aircraft launched from the decks of the Hancock and Coral Sea against Viêt Công installations at Đồng Hới, while the Ranger sent thirty-four aircraft to bomb Vit Thu Lu. The new strike, code named ‘Flaming Dart I’, was due to be flown by the US Navy from the carriers Coral Sea, Hancock and Ranger. The targets were at Đồng Hới and Vit Thu Lu while other targets were hit by VNAF A-1s. The raid was led by Commander Warren H. Sells, Commander of Hancock’s Air Wing 21. In the event, monsoon weather forced the thirty-four aircraft of Ranger’s strike force to abort their mission against Vit Thu Lu but Đồng Hới’s barracks and port facilities were attacked by twenty aircraft from the Coral Sea and twenty-nine from the Hancock. The strike was carried out at low level under a 700 feet cloud base in rain and poor visibility. An A-4E Skyhawk from the Coral Sea, flown by Lieutenant Edward Andrew Dickson, a section leader of a flight of four aircraft of VA -155 was lost. (Dickson had had a miraculous escape from death just one year earlier when he was forced to eject from his Skyhawk over the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California during a training exercise. His parachute failed to deploy properly but he landed in a deep snowdrift that broke his fall causing only minor injuries.) About five miles south of the target, Dickson reported that he had been hit by AAA and requested his wingman to check his aircraft over as they commenced their run in to the target. Just as the flight was about to release its bombs, Dickson’s A-4E was seen to burst into flames, but despite a warning from his wingman, he continued with his bomb run and released his Snakeye bombs on target. Dickson headed out towards the sea but his aircraft became engulfed in flames and, although he was seen to eject, his parachute was not seen to deploy, and the aircraft crashed into the sea about half a mile offshore. There was no sign of Lieutenant Dickson in the water despite a SAR effort that continued for two days.
F-4B-21-MC Phantom BuNo 152218 of VF-21 ‘Free Lancers’ armed with two AIM-9B Sidewinder missiles and an AIM-7 Sparrow over Viêtnam in 1965. VF-21 was assigned to Carrier Air Wing 2 (CVW-2) aboard the aircraft carrier USS Midway (CVA-41) for a deployment to Viêtnam from 6 March to 23 November 1965. BuNo152218 was lost with VMFA-323, MAG-11 based at Đà Nẵng on 10 January 1966 after one of its bombs exploded prematurely. 1st Lieutenant R. T. Morrisey and the pilot, 1st Lieutenant G. E. Perry ejected, the latter sustaining major injuries.
The ‘Flaming Dart I’ mission of 7 February did not appear to have the effect on the North Viêtnamese that Washington had hoped for. On 10 February the Viêt Công struck at an American camp at Quy Nhın causing serious casualties. The immediate response to this was ‘Flaming Dart 2’, flown the following day59 when a total of ninety-nine naval aircraft from the Coral Sea, Hancock and Ranger were sent against NVA barracks at Chánh Hóa near Đồng Hới. The target was attacked in poor visibility with low cloud and the Coral Sea suffered two aircraft and one pilot lost on this raid. The first to be brought down was Lieutenant Commander Robert Harper Shumaker’s F-8D Crusader of VF-154, which was hit in the tail (possibly by debris from his own rockets) when he was pulling out from an attack on an anti-aircraft gun position. The aircraft’s afterburner blew out and the hydraulic system must have been damaged as the F-8D soon became uncontrollable forcing Shumaker to eject over land although his aircraft crashed a few miles off shore from Đồng Hới. Shumaker’s parachute opened about thirty feet above the ground and he broke his back on landing for which he received no medical treatment. A few minutes after Shumaker’s Crusader was shot down another wave of aircraft hit the Chánh Hóa barracks and another aircraft was lost. Lieutenant W. T. Majors of VA-153 from the Coral Sea in an A-4C was also attacking enemy AAA, using CBU-24 cluster bombs. After delivering his bombs he climbed the Skyhawk to 4,000 feet and set course for the carrier. However, his engine suddenly seized and could not be relit. Faced with no alternative, Majors ejected over the sea but was picked up almost immediately by a USAF rescue helicopter. Bomb damage assessments at Chánh Hóa showed that twenty-three of the seventy-six buildings in the camp were either damaged or destroyed during the raid.
In March, Operation ‘Rolling Thunder’, an air offensive against North Viêtnam, was launched and the Navy’s first strike took place on 18 March when aircraft from the Coral Sea and Hancock bombed supply dumps at Phu Văn and Vinh Sơn. The US Navy’s second ‘Rolling Thunder’ mission, on 26 March, resulted in the loss of three aircraft out of seventy dispatched. The ability of the North Viêtnamese air defence system to monitor US raids was a concern even in the early days of the war and the targets for this mission were radar sites at Bạch Long Vi, Cap Mùi Rắn, Hà Tĩnh and Vinh Sın. Lieutenant (jg) C. E. Gudmunson’s A-1H Skyraider of VA-215 from the Hancock was hit on his sixth pass over the target at Hà Tinh but he managed to fly to Đà Nẵng where he crash-landed about five miles west of the airfield. Commander Kenneth L. Shugart’s A-4E Skyhawk of VA-212 from the Hancock was hit on his second run as he dropped his Snakeye bombs on the radar site at Vinh Sơn. Shugart headed out to sea as the aircraft caught fire but the electrical system failed, forcing him to eject about ten miles off shore. He was picked up by a USAF helicopter. Lieutenant C. E. Wangeman, an F-8D pilot in VF-154 on the Coral Sea, did not realise that his Crusader, actually the Coral Sea Air Wing Commander’s aircraft, had been hit as he was attacking an AAA site at Bạch Long Vi. However, after leaving the target area his aircraft began to lose oil pressure and his wingman observed an oil leak. Wangeman climbed to high altitude and he managed to fly the aircraft for over 200 miles before the engine seized and he was forced to eject twenty miles north of Đà Nẵng. He was rescued by a USAF rescue helicopter.
A-6s BuNos 151789 and 151798 of VA-85 from the USS Kitty Hawk. On 21 April 1966 BuNo151798, flown by Commander Jack Elmer Keller and Lieutenant Commander Ellis Ernest Austin, and another Intruder took off just before dusk for a night attack on the heavily defended Tan Loc barracks and supply area on the coast ten miles north of Vinh. On the run in to the coast, Keller’s wingman had a problem and broke away to dump his bombs on Hon Mat Island, after which he waited for his leader to return. It was Keller’s intention to fly past the target then turn over high ground and bomb the target before heading straight out to sea. The wingman saw a bright flash, which he initially thought might have been a bomb explosion, but at the same time the Intruder disappeared from an E-2 Hawkeye’s radar screen. It was thought that the Intruder was either shot down or flew into high ground during the run in to the target.
On 29 March the Coral Sea’s air wing returned to Bạch Long Vi Island, which it had visited three days earlier. Again, seventy aircraft were despatched on the mission including six A-3B bombers from VAH-2. Three aircraft were lost in the first wave as they were attacking AAA sites around the target. Commander Jack H. Harris’ A-4E Skyhawk in VA-155 was hit during his low level bomb run causing his engine to wind down. Despite attempts to restart the engine the Commander had to eject over the sea close to the target but was picked up by a Navy ship. VA-154 pilot, Commander William N. Donnelly’s F-8D Crusader was hit during his first attack and his controls froze as he was making his second pass. He ejected at 450 knots at about 1,000 feet with the aircraft in an inverted dive and was extremely lucky to survive the ejection with only a fractured neck vertebra and dislocated shoulder. He came down in the shark-infested waters four miles north of Bạch Long Vi and for 45 hours he drifted in his life-raft, which sprang a leak and needed blowing up every twenty minutes. Twice during the first night he had to slip into the water to evade North Viêtnamese patrol boats that were searching for him. Fortunately he was spotted by an F-8 pilot on 31 March and was picked up by a USAF HU-16 Albatross amphibian. Another squadron commander, Commander Pete Mongilardi of VA-153, was almost lost when his A-4E was hit and had to be ‘towed’ back to a safe landing on the Coral Sea by a tanker as the Skyhawk leaked fuel as fast as it was being pumped in. Lieutenant Commander Kenneth Edward Hume’s F-8D in VF-154 was hit by ground fire as he was firing his Zuni unguided rockets at an AAA site on the island. A small fire was seen coming from the engine and Hume attempted to make for Đà Nẵng but after a few minutes the aircraft suddenly dived into the sea and although the canopy was seen to separate there was no sign of an ejection.
A USMC F-8 streaks past the explosion of another F-8’s bomb at Đà Nẵng in early 1966 before dropping his own munitions.
On Sunday 12 June 1966, 40-year old Commander Harold ‘Hal’ Marr, CO of VF-211 ‘Flying Checkmates’ equipped with F-8Es aboard the Hancock, became the first Crusader pilot to shoot down a MiG when he destroyed a MiG-17 51 miles northwest of Hảiphòng with his second Sidewinder missile at an altitude of only fifty feet.
The battle against the North Viêtnamese radar system continued on 31 March with further raids on the Vinh Sơn and Cap Mui Ron radar sites involving sixty aircraft from the Hancock and Coral Sea. Lieutenant (jg) Gerald Wayne McKinley’s A-1H in VA-215 from the Hancock was hit by ground fire during its second low-level bomb run and the aircraft crashed immediately. By this time both the USN and the USAF were flying regular missions over the Hồ Chi Minh Trail in Laos in an attempt to staunch the flow of arms and other supplies from North Viêtnam to the Viêt Công in the South. On 2 April Lieutenant Commander James Joseph Evans of VA-215 from the Hancock flying an A-1H was shot down by AAA north of Ban Mương Sen during an armed reconnaissance mission while in the process of attacking another AAA site.
In March 1965 the decision to interdict the North Viêtnamese rail system south of the 20th parallel led immediately to the 3 April strike against the giant 540 feet by 56 feet Chinese-engineered Thanh Hóa road and rail Bridge which stands fifty feet above the Song Ma River. The bridge, three miles north of Thanh Hóa, the capital of Annam Province, in North Viêtnam’s bloody ‘Iron Triangle’ (Hảiphòng, Hànôi and Thanh Hóa) was a replacement for the original French-built Bridge destroyed by the Viêt Minh in 1945, blown up by simply loading two locomotives with explosives and running them together in the middle of the structure. Now a major line of communication from Hànôi seventy miles to the north and Hảiphòng to the southern provinces of North Viêtnam and from there to the DMZ and South Viêtnam, it was heavily defended by a ring of 37mm AAA sites that were supplemented by several 57mm sites following these initial raids.
Shortly after noon on 3 April USAF and USN aircraft of ‘Rolling Thunder’, ‘Mission 9-Alpha’, climbed into South-East Asian skies for the bridge, known to the Viêtnamese as the ‘Hàm Rồng’ (Dragon’s Jaw). Lieutenant Colonel Robinson Risner, a Korean War ace, was designated overall mission coordinator for the attack. He assembled a force consisting of seventy-nine aircraft - forty-six F-105s, twenty-one F-100s, two RF-101C’s tasked with pre and post-strike photographic reconnaissance runs over the target and ten KC-135 tankers to refuel the aircraft before they crossed the Thai border. The F-100s came from bases in South Viêtnam, while the rest of the aircraft were from squadrons TDY at various Thailand bases. Sixteen of the forty-six ‘Thuds’ were loaded with pairs of Bullpup missiles and each of the remaining thirty carried eight 750lb GP bombs. The aircraft that carried the missiles and half of the bombers were scheduled to strike the bridge; the remaining fifteen (and seven F-100s) would provide flak suppression. The plan called for individual flights of four F-105s from Koran and Takhli which would be air refuelled over the Mekong River before tracking across Laos to an initial point (IP) three minutes south of the bridge. After weapon release, the plan called for all aircraft to continue east until over the Gulf of Tonkin where rejoin would take place and a Navy destroyer would be available to recover anyone who had to eject due to battle damage or other causes. After rejoin, all aircraft would return to their bases, hopefully to the tune of The Hàm Rồng Bridge is falling down.
On 2 December 1966 during a night armed reconnaissance mission A-4Cs 145143 piloted by Commander Bruce August Nystrom (top) and 145116 (above) flown by Ensign Paul Laurance Worrell from the USS Franklin D Roosevelt disappeared near Phúc Nhạc, 50 miles down the coast from Hảiphòng. Worrell had been heard by another flight to warn his leader that he had a SAM warning. Commander Nystrom told the wingman to commence evasive action and then announced a SAM launch. A pilot some distance away saw two flashes on the ground about a minute apart, which were probably SAM launches, followed by two explosions in the air. It was assumed that the two Skyhawks were either hit by the SA-2s or flew into the ground trying to evade the missiles. The SAMs downed four American aircraft that day. Nystrom had been flying with the Navy since 1948 and had flown the F4U Corsair during the Korean War as well as the F8F Bearcat and the F2H Banshee. He joined VA-172 as executive officer in December 1964 and assumed command of the Squadron on 23 December 1965. In July 1985 the Viêtnamese returned the remains of Paul Worrell.
The sun glinting through the haze made the target somewhat difficult to acquire, but Risner led the way ‘down the chute’ and 250lb missiles were soon exploding on the target. Since only one Bullpup missile could be fired at a time, each pilot had to make two firing passes. On his second pass Risner’s aircraft took a hit just as the Bullpup hit the bridge. Fighting a serious fuel leak and a smoke-filled cockpit in addition to anti-aircraft fire from the enemy, he nursed his crippled aircraft to Đà Nẵng and to safety. The ‘Dragon’ would not be so kind on another day. The first two flights had already left the target when Captain Bill Meyerholt, number three man in the third flight, rolled his Thunderchief into a dive and squeezed off a Bullpup. The missile streaked toward the bridge and as smoke cleared from the previous attacks, Meyerholt was shocked to see no visible damage to the bridge. The Bullpups were merely charring the heavy steel and concrete structure. The remaining missile attacks confirmed that firing Bullpups at the ‘Dragon’ was about as effective as shooting BB pellets at a Sherman tank. The bombers, undaunted, came in for their attack, only to see their payload drift to the far bank because of a very strong southwest wind. 1st Lieutenant George C. Smith’s F-100D was shot down near the target point as he suppressed flak. The anti-aircraft resistance was much stronger than anticipated. No radio contact could be made with Smith, nor could other aircraft locate him. Smith was listed MIA and no further word has been heard of him.
The last flight of the day, led by Captain Carlyle S. ‘Smitty’ Harris, adjusted their aiming points and scored several good hits on the roadway and super structure. ‘Smitty’ tried to assess bomb damage, but could not because of the smoke coming from the ‘Dragon’s Jaw’. The smoke would prove to be an ominous warning of things to come.
The USN mounted two raids against bridges near Thanh Hóa on the 3rd. A total of 35 A-4s, sixteen F-8s and four F-4s were launched from the Hancock and Coral Sea. Lieutenant Commander Raymond Arthur Vohden of VA-216 from the Hancock who was flying an A-4C Skyhawk was hit by small arms fire during his first bombing run during an attack on a bridge at Động Phổ Thông about ten miles north of the ‘Dragon’. His wing-man saw the aircraft streaming fluid and the arrester hook drop down. Soon afterwards, Vohden ejected and was captured to become the Navy’s third PoW in North Viêtnam. The raids were the first occasion when the Viêtnamese People’s Air Force employed its MiG-17 fighters, thus marking a significant escalation of the air war in Southeast Asia. During this raid three MiG-17s attacked and damaged a Crusader when four of the F-8Es tried to bomb the bridge. The F-8E pilot was forced to divert to Đà Nẵng. This was the first time a MiG had attacked a US aircraft during the war in Southeast Asia. Captain Herschel S. Morgan’s RF-101 was hit and went down seventy-five miles southwest of the target area, seriously injuring the pilot. Captain Morgan was captured and held in and around Hànôi until his release in February 1973.
Commander Richard M. Bellinger describes his victory on 9 October 1966 when he destroyed a MiG-21.
RF-8G 144624 of Detachment 42, VFP-62 on the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt. This aircraft was lost on 6 September 1966 during a photographic reconnaissance mission when it was last seen to be manoeuvering close to the water about 10 miles off shore from Thanh Hóa before it crashed killing the pilot, Lieutenant (jg) Norman Lee Bundy. The crash was thought to have been a misjudgement of altitude above the sea.
When the smoke cleared, observer aircraft found that the bridge still spanned the river. Thirty-two Bullpups and ten dozen 750lb bombs had been aimed at the bridge and numerous hits had charred every part of the structure, yet it showed no sign of going down. A re-strike was ordered for the next day.
The following day, flights with call signs ‘Steel’, ‘Iron’, ‘Copper’, ‘Moon’, ‘Carbon’, ‘Zinc’, ‘Argon’, ‘Graphite’, ‘Esso’, ‘Mobil’, ‘Shell’, ‘Petrol’ and the ‘Cadillac’ BDA (bomb damage assessment) flight, assembled at IP to try once again to knock out the ‘Dragon’. On this day, Captain Carlyle ‘Smitty’ Harris was flying as call sign ‘Steel 3’. ‘Steel 3’ took the lead and oriented himself for his run on a 300 degree heading. He reported that his bombs had impacted on the target on the eastern end of the bridge. ‘Steel 3’ was on fire as soon as he left the target. Radio contact was garbled and ‘Steel Lead’, ‘Steel 2’ and ‘Steel 4’ watched helplessly as ‘Smitty’s aircraft, emitting flame for twenty feet behind, headed due west of the target. All flight members had him in sight until the fire died out, but observed no parachute, nor did they see the aircraft impact the ground. ‘Smitty’s aircraft had been hit by a MiG whose pilot later recounted the incident in ‘Viêtnam Courier’ on 15 April 1965. It was not until much later that it would be learned that ‘Smitty’ had been captured by the North Viêtnamese. ‘Smitty’ was held prisoner for eight years and released in 1973. Fellow PoWs credit Smitty with introducing the ‘tap code’ which enabled them to communicate with each other.
BuNo149993 A-4E of VA-163 ‘Saints’ from the USS Oriskany taking on fuel from KA-3B tanker 138974 of VAH-4 from the same carrier in the summer of 1967. On 26 May 1970, now with VA-152 on the USS Shangri-La this Skyhawk was abandoned during a tanker mission when the engine suddenly lost power. It was suspected that the A-4E had ingested fuel into the engine air intakes as the aircraft was taking on fuel from another tanker. The pilot survived and was picked up safe and sound.
MiGs had been seen on previous missions, but for the first time in the war, the Russian-made MiGs attacked American aircraft. ‘Zinc 2’, an F-105D flown by Captain James A. Magnusson, had its flight bounced by MiG 17s. As Zinc Lead was breaking to shake a MiG on his tail, ‘Zinc 2’ was hit and radioed that he was heading for the Gulf if he could maintain control of his aircraft. The other aircraft were busy evading the MiGs and Magnusson radioed several times before ‘Steel Lead’ responded and instructed him to tune his radio to rescue frequency. Magnusson’s aircraft finally ditched over the Gulf of Tonkin near the island of Hòn Mê and he was not seen or heard from again. He was listed MIA. Captain Walter F. Draeger’s A-1H (probably an escort for rescue teams) was shot down over the Gulf of Tonkin just northeast of the ‘Dragon’ that day. Draeger’s aircraft was seen to crash in flames, but no parachute was observed. Draeger was listed MIA. The remaining aircraft returned to their bases, discouraged. Although over 300 bombs scored hits on this second strike, the bridge still stood. From April to September 1965, nineteen more pilots were shot down in the general vicinity of the ‘Dragon’.
The threat of MiG activity over Southeast Asia resulted in increased efforts to provide combat air patrols and airborne early warning and the F-4 Phantom and F-8 Crusader were tasked with air defence of the fleet and protection of strike forces. On 9 April two Phantoms of VF-96 on the Ranger were launched to relieve two other aircraft flying a BARCAP (Barrier Combat Air Patrol) racetrack pattern in the northern Gulf of Tonkin. However, the first aircraft to launch crashed as it was being catapulted from the carrier. The aircraft’s starboard engine failed during the catapult shot and the aircraft ditched into the sea but both Lieutenant Commander William E. Greer and Lieutenant (jg) R. Bruning ejected just as the aircraft impacted the water and were rescued. Lieutenant (jg) Terence Meredith Murphy and Ensign Ronald James Fegan were then launched and took over as section leader with a replacement aircraft flown by Lieutenant Watkins and Lieutenant (jg) Mueller as their wingman. As the two Phantoms flew north they were intercepted by four MiG-17s that were identified as belonging to the air force of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. The two Phantoms that were waiting to be relieved on BARCAP heard Murphy’s radio calls and flew south to engage the MiGs. The air battle took place at high altitude near the Chinese island of Hainan and Murphy’s Phantom was not seen after the MiGs disengaged. The aircraft was thought to have been shot down by the MiGs but a Chinese newspaper claimed that Murphy had been shot down in error by an AIM-7 Sparrow missile fired by another Phantom. One of the MiG-17s was seen to explode and was thought to have been shot down by Murphy during the dogfight but it was never officially credited due to the sensitivity of US aircraft engaging Chinese aircraft. Murphy’s last radio call was to the effect that he was out of missiles and was returning to base. Despite an extensive two-day SAR effort no sign of the Phantom or its crew was ever found.
On 8 May the US Navy mounted its first raid against a North Viêtnamese airfield when Vinh air base was attacked by a strike force from the Midway. Commander James David La Haye, the CO of VF-111, was attacking the airfield’s AAA defences with Zuni unguided rockets and 20mm cannon fire when his aircraft was hit by ground fire. The Crusader was seen to turn towards the coast with its wings level but streaming fuel until it crashed into the sea a few miles offshore near the island of Hon Nieu. No attempt at ejection was seen although the pilot had radioed that his aircraft had been hit. About six hours after the strike on Vinh airfield Detachment A, VFP-63, Midway’s photographic reconnaissance detachment flew a BDA mission to assess the damage done to the target. During the run over the airfield Lieutenant (jg) W. B. Wilson’s RF-8A Crusader was hit by ground fire and sustained damage to the fuel tanks, hydraulic system and tail fin. Despite the damage and loss of fuel, Wilson managed to make for the coast and fly south towards a tanker where he took on enough fuel to reach the carrier or Đà Nẵng. Unfortunately, soon after taking on fuel, two explosions were heard from the rear of the aircraft as either fuel or hydraulic fluid ignited. The aircraft’s controls froze and Lieutenant Wilson ejected over the sea about thirty miles off Đồng Hới from where he was rescued by a USAF Albatross.
Midway’s run of bad luck continued. On 27 May the US Navy flew a strike against the railway yards at Vinh, one of the most frequently hit targets in the southern part of North Viêtnam. Commander Doyle Wilmer Lynn, CO of VF-111 was attacking an AAA site near the target when his F-8D Crusader was hit by ground fire. Lynn, who had been one of the first Navy pilots to be shot down in South East Asia when his Crusader was shot down on 7 June 1964 over the Plain of Jars, radioed that the aircraft had been hit and the F-8 was seen to go out of control and hit the ground before an ejection could take place. On 1 June in preparation for further attacks on the railway yards at Vinh, the Midway sent Lieutenant (jg) M. R. Fields, one of its Detachment A, VFP-63, photographic reconnaissance RF-8A Crusader pilots, to check the state of damage and to see which areas needed to be attacked again. At 500 feet over the target the aircraft was hit by ground fire which damaged its hydraulic system. Fields felt the controls gradually stiffening as he raced for the sea. He was fortunate to be able to get over thirty miles from the coastline before the controls eventually froze solid and he was forced to eject. He was soon rescued by a USAF Albatross amphibian.
On 29 July 1967 an electrical anomaly discharged a Mk.32 Zuni rocket on the flight deck of the USS Forrestal in the Gulf of Tonkin killing 134 men, injuring 161 and writing off 21 aircraft.
A-4 Skyhawks of VA-146, F-4Js of VF-143, A-6 Intruders, an A-3B, RA-5C Vigilante and a RA-3B Skywarrior of VAP-61 painted glossy-black for night sorties over the Hó Chi Minh Trail in Laos on the crowded flight deck of the USS Constellation (CVA-64) in 1967. A few RA-3Bs operating with VAP-61 (and to a lesser extent, VAP-62) were usually based at Đà Nẵng but occasionally deployed to carriers at Yankee Station in the South China Sea off Đà Nẵng.
Next day two more Midway aircraft were lost. During a raid on a radar site a few miles south of Thanh Hóa, an A-4E flown by Lieutenant (jg) David Marion Christian of VA-23 was hit by AAA when pulling up from its second attack with Zuni rockets. The aircraft caught fire immediately and Christian radioed that his engine had flamed out. It could not be confirmed if Christian ejected from the stricken Skyhawk before it hit the ground. Thirty minutes after the aircraft was lost, an EA-1F Skyraider of Detachment A, VAW-13 arrived from the Midway to co-ordinate a SAR effort for Lieutenant Christian. As the Skyraider was about to cross the coast at low level near Sam Son, east of Thanh Hóa, it was hit by ground fire and crashed. The Midway lost its fifth aircraft in three days on 3 June during an armed reconnaissance mission in the ‘Barrel Roll’ area of Laos. Lieutenant Raymond P. Ilg’s A-4C Skyhawk of VA-22 was hit by AAA over Route 65 near Ban Nakay Neua, ten miles east of Sam Neua. The aircraft caught fire and Ilg ejected immediately. He evaded for two days until he was picked up by an Air America helicopter.
On 20 October 1967 with both legs shattered by North Việtnamese anti-aircraft fire, Lieutenant (jg) Denny Earl successfully lands his VA-163 Saints A-4E Skyhawk BuNo 149959, AH-300, aboard the USS Oriskany. Six days later this same Skyhawk was shot down over Hànôi. The pilot, John S McCain, spent 5½ years as a PoW. (USN)
On 17 June two VF-21 ‘Freelancers’ F-4Bs from the USS Midway (CVA-41) scored the first MiG kills of the war when they attacked four MiG-17s south of Hànôi and brought down two with radar-guided AIM-7 Sparrow missiles. One of the F-4Bs was flown by Commander Louis C. Page and his radar intercept officer, Lieutenant Jack E. D. Batson. The other was flown by Lieutenant John C. Smith and 33-year old Montclair, New Jersey-born Lieutenant Commander Robert B. Doremus his Naval Flight Officer (NFO) also serving as Radar Intercept Officer (RIO). They were each awarded the Silver Star. Lieutenant Commander Doremus citation for first of two Silver Star’s reads: ‘…Engaging at least four and possibly six FRESCO aircraft, Commander (then Lieutenant Commander) Doremus accounted for one confirmed kill and contributed to a second confirmed kill by the other F-4B aircraft in the flight by diverting the remaining enemy planes from their threat to the US striking forces. With heavy antiaircraft fire bursting throughout the patrol area, his crew relentlessly maintained their vigil and pressed forward their attack, seeking out and destroying the enemy aircraft and thereby preventing damage to friendly strike aircraft in the area.’
On 24 August on a mission to hit the ‘Dragon’s Jaw’ Bridge at Than Hòa, Doremus was flying with thirty-eight-year old Brooklyn, New York born Commander Fred Augustus Franke, commander of VF-21 in F-4B call sign ‘Sundown’ when they were hit by a SAM SA-2 at about 11,000 feet near the village of Phủ Banh, north of Than Hòa. They both successfully ejected and were captured in the rice fields almost immediately but his wingman had reported seeing no chutes, so they were declared killed in action (KIA).60
Catapult bridle cables are hooked up to an A-7A Corsair of VA-147 ‘Argonauts’ and F-4B Phantom 153014 of VF-21 ‘Freelancers’ on the flight deck of the USS Ranger in the Gulf of Tonkin on 14 December 1967. On 28 April 1968 153014 was pulling up from its attack on storage caves at Ben Thuy, just to the south of Vinh when AAA set the port wing on fire and the port engine had to be shut down. Lieutenant Commander Duke E. Hernandez headed out to sea but within a few minutes the starboard engine also caught fire, the hydraulic system failed and the aircraft went out of control so he and Lieutenant (jg) David J. Lortscher ejected close to a SAR destroyer about fifteen miles offshore. They were quickly rescued by a Navy helicopter. Lortscher ejected from another F-4 near San Diego on 14 September 1970 and again on 22 September 1971 when the canopy of his F-4 separated. On 15 October 1973, during an exchange posting with the Royal Navy he ejected from a Phantom for the fourth time. Hernandez had ejected from a Phantom during a raid on Hảiphòng on 16 December 1967.
On Sunday 12 June 1966 forty-year old Commander Harold ‘Hal’ Marr, CO of VF-211 ‘Flying Checkmates’ equipped with F-8Es aboard the Hancock became the first Crusader pilot to shoot down a MiG when he destroyed a MiG-17 fifty-one miles northwest of Hảiphòng with his second Sidewinder missile at an altitude of only fifty feet. ‘I’ve waited eighteen years to do that,’ Marr, of Roseburg, Oregon, said. He was also credited with a probable after blasting more MiGs with his 20mm cannon. He was one of a flight of Crusader pilots flying Combat Air Patrol for a flight of A-4 Skyhawks that were attacking the Đại Tấn military area, twenty-four miles northwest of Hảiphòng. Marr and his wingman, Lieutenant (jg) Philip V. Vampatella, aged twenty-six of Islip Terrace, New York were flying at 2,000 feet when the MiGs appeared from the east. ‘We were flying in the missile envelope around the Hảiphòng-Hànôi area,’ Marr said. ‘We wouldn’t be flying very high and take the chance of getting a telephone pole (missile) shoved into us.’ When Vampatella spotted the MiGs, he flew his plane into them and overshot them. For the next four minutes, at speeds between 350-550 mph and as low as fifty feet, Marr and the pilot of the communist jet banked and turned to get into position to shoot. Marr maneuvered his Crusader behind the MiG and fired a heat-seeking Sidewinder missile, which missed the MiG and streaked to earth. Marr was alone in the fight. Vampatella and a third pilot ran out of 20mm cannon ammunition and were low on fuel and returned to the ship. Marr manoeuvred his aircraft around and fired again at the MiG. ‘The missile clipped the tail off and it went right into the ground,’ Marr said. Marr sighted another flight of MiGs and the chase began again. Having used both of his Sidewinders on one MiG, Marr only had 20mm cannon fire, which he began firing at a second MiG. He hit it and saw parts of the plane’s wing fly off. Low on fuel and short on ammunition himself, Marr returned to his ship. The F-8 enjoyed the highest kill ratio of any fighter engaged in the Việtnam air war.
Nine days later, on 21 June, Lieutenant Vampatella shot down another MiG-17 while covering a rescue attempt to bring home an RF-8 pilot shot down earlier. On 9 October an F-8E pilot, Commander Dick Bellinger, CO of VF-162 from the Oriskany became the first Navy pilot to destroy a MiG-21 when he obliterated one of the enemy fighters with heat-seeking missiles during an escort mission for A-4s from the Intrepid.
At 1525 hours on 27 July 1965 Archie Taylor, commander, Det 4, Pacific Air Rescue Center (PARC) was notified that there was a downed pilot, southwest of Hànôi and not far from Hànôi. He was said to be in the river. Then at 1530 the word came in a second aircraft was down. A HH-43 ‘Pedro’ launched from LS-98 at 1532. They were next notified there was a mid-air collision about ten miles southeast of Udorn in Thailand at 1540. One chute was spotted. The accident was between two F-105Ds returning from their mission in the North. Then at 1549 Udorn reported that ‘Cedar 2’ was down just west of Hànôi. Two B-57 Canberra bombers were launched from Đà Nẵng. At 1610 the SAR force informed all hands that men were down ‘in the ring’ (in the middle of enemy forces) and that ground defences were southeast of the downed crew members. At 1620 Archie noted that another F-105D call sign ‘Dogwood’ was down, also up near Hànôi. ‘Dogwood’ was working with SAR forces on the radio, operating as a kind of controller, which meant he was on the ground and in pretty good shape. At 1650 the HC-54s controlling the SAR mission were told to stay out of the ring. A call also went out at this time to see if a HU-16 Albatross was on its way.
On 10 January 1968, F-4B 151506 (pictured) and F-4B 151499 of VF-154 on the USS Ranger, flew a radar-directed bombing mission over low cloud in Laos. As the aircraft set course for the return trip to the Ranger the leader inadvertently homed onto the TACAN of the northern SAR destroyer instead of that of the carrier. When the Phantoms broke out from the cloud they were over 100 miles from the Ranger and the aircraft had to be abandoned over the South China Sea when they ran out of fuel. All four crewmen were rescued.
F-4B BuNo150466 ‘Old Nick 204’ of VF-111 ‘Sundowners’ dropping Mk.82 500lb ‘buddy bombs’ using navigation fixes, over North Viêtnam with BuNo149457, ‘Screaming Eagle 113’ from VF-51 ‘Screaming Eagles’, both on the USS Coral Sea. BuNo150466 was lost on 2 September 1970 with VMFA‑115, MAG‑13 USMC at Chu Lai in a ground accident when taxiing to fuel pits. Three ground crew were killed.
Two heavily armed A-6A Intruder attack aircraft of VA-156 in the Gulf of Tonkin in July 1968 during a combat mission flown off the USS Constellation (CVA-64). On 18 December 1968 154150 now with VA-196 was shot down by ground fire 70 miles West of Đà Nẵng during a daylight ‘Steel Tiger’ strike. Lieutenant (jg) John Richards Babcock and Lieutenant Gary Jon Mayer were killed.
At 1710, a CH-3C Jolly Green ‘call sign Shed 85’ fired up his engines and was aloft by 1714. At 1743 another HH-43 was launched. At 1845 a report came in that ‘Canister Flight’ had a good location on ‘Dogwood’ and that he was okay. ‘Canister’ also reported that a CH-3C was about to go in after him. At 1905 ‘Healy 1’ who was flight lead said ‘Healy 2’ went in to the river and ‘Healy 1’ saw a dingy but never saw the pilot. ‘Healy 1’ was running out of fuel and had to leave and on his way out he reported seeing boats within 300 yards of the dingy. After getting refuelled and returning to the scene, ‘Healy 1’ saw nothing in the area. Also at 1905 a CH-3C was hovering over ‘Dogwood’ who was hiding in the woods but could not get at him with the hoist. So he looked for a place to land. At 1915 the SAR force reported picking up ‘Dogwood’ and all the SAR forces were on their way out. Dogwood was picked up and rescued.
This entire sequence of events was part of Operation ‘Spring High’, which was the first strike against Soviet SA-2 surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites. The NVN introduced SAM missiles in the summer of 1965. Up to this point, the NVN felt it could get by with its anti-aircraft artillery (AAA), fighter aircraft and radar network. After all, many of the US air attacks were largely symbolic, so as not to cause undue concern in the USSR and China. Slowly but surely the US ramped up to hit the radar networks and other more important targets.
Captain William J. Barthelmas, Jr. flying F-105D ‘Pepper 02’ in the 357th TFS out of Korat RTAFB was KIA, hit by a SAM thirty miles from Hànôi. Major Jack G. Farr, flying F-105D ‘Pepper 01’ crashed in Thailand, obviously trying to make it home and was also killed. They were on their way out after hitting a SAM site thirty miles west of Hànôi. Barthelmas was apparently hit by a SAM but he was able to make his way back to Thailand. ‘Pepper 01’ of course stuck with him. On their way back to Thailand, ‘Pepper 01’ inspected ‘Pepper 02’ and said, ‘I can see daylight right through you.’ The battle damage was severe. The conjecture is Barthelmas’ hydraulics gave out and his aircraft unexpectedly pitched up. ‘Pepper 02’s tail slammed into ‘Pepper 01’s cockpit. Bathelmus ejected but his parachute did not fully open. He is said to have landed in a rice paddy alive, but with multiple injuries. Tragically, he drowned in the paddy. Also tragically ‘Pepper 01’ was sufficiently damaged that he crashed about ten miles south of Ubon RTAFB. Farr did not eject and was killed.
Captain Walter Kosko, flying F-105D 624257 ‘Healy 02’ in the 563rd TFS out of Takhli targeted a SAM site thirty miles west of Hànôi and reportedly was hit by AAA. He landed in a river and drowned. Kosko was part of a flight of four F-105Ds out of Takhli on a bombing mission over Phú Thọ Province. AAA fire was said to be intense. There was an explosion near Kosko’s aircraft and he reported he was hit and had smoke in his cockpit. He later ejected and flight members saw a fully deployed chute in the water and survival gear, but there was no voice contact and no beeper after ejection. His colleagues on the mission tried to find him even through heavy hostile fire, but to no avail. Later attempts to find his remains revealed that he was down in the Black River. US forces searched the river but could not find him. He was later declared dead - body not recovered.
Captain Kile Dag Berg flying F-105D 610113, call sign ‘Hudson 2’ in the 563rd TFS at Takhli and Captain Robert B. ‘Percy’ Purcell flying F-105D 6224252, call sign ‘Ceader 2’ in the 12th TFS out of Korat were both shot down about forty miles northwest of Hànôi and taken prisoner. Both men’s target was the barracks at Can Doi and they both were reportedly hit by AAA.61 Right after he dropped his napalm Berg’s aircraft was seen on fire from in front of the inlets past the afterburner. It slowly pulled up, rolled right and then crashed. Berg ejected at fifty feet and 540 knots which blew some panels in his chute and without a doubt gave him ‘one helluva jolt’ as well.
Captain Frank J. Tullo, flying F-105D 624407 call sign ‘Dogwood 02’ in the 12th TFS out of Korat, was rescued. Tullo’s group had entered the fray after most of the beating took place. Their job was ‘to clean up’ Tullo said when he arrived over the target area. ‘To a good Catholic boy, this was a description of hell.’ The enemy fire was the worst he had seen and the burning fires and smoke below was a cauldron. Tullo said they approached at about 200 feet and 700 knots. Right away he was hit, his fire warning lights blazing. ‘Dogwood 01’, Major Bill Hosmer, came over to take a look. Hosmer told him to get rid of his tanks and rocket pods to lighten the aircraft. Flames were now trailing about 200 feet behind him. He was still flying and had control. They were still over Hànôi. Hosmer told him to bail out, but Tullo refused, saying he could still fly. He wanted to make it to the hills of ‘Thud Ridge’- a north-south mountain range between US bases in Thailand and Hànôi - where a bail out might result in a rescue. But the aircraft then lost control and he had to bail out, but again, at the speed he was travelling, he really got whipped around on the way out. From his parachute Tullo could see Hànôi about twenty-five miles away. Once on the ground, he hid his chute and called on the radio and made contact. But his partners were running out of fuel and had to leave. After some time on the ground and attempting to climb up a hill, which was what they were taught to do - make the enemy climb the hill and if they do, then you are close to the top and can go over the top of the hill and try to hide - he heard an A-1H Spad, call sign ‘Canasta’ who had a good indication that ‘Dogwood 02’ was okay and that a CH-3C Jolly Green was closing in. ‘Canasta’ Flight consisted of two Navy A-1Hs. Then two F-105s came by and Tullo contacted them. They asked him to pop smoke so they could get his location. Tullo refused, fearing he would give away his location to the enemy, as he knew the enemy was coming to his area. Some enemy started climbing the hill; Tullo dug in to hide and the enemy troops moved away and down the hill. The hill strategy seemed to work.
Viêtnam People’s Air Force (NVNAF) Soviet- and Chinese-built MiG-17Fs and their pilots in North Viêtnam.
The CH-3C flown by Captain George Martin USAF was at NKP and was flying to LS-36 to pull SAR alert, call sign ‘Shed 85’. His USAF crew consisted of his co-pilot, Lieutenant Orville Keese, ‘hoist mechanic’ Sergeant Curtis Pert and pararescueman Sergeant George Thayer. Martin was told to divert to get ‘Dogwood 02’ but he had to land at LS-36 to drop off supplies and passengers and could not hover the way he needed to for a rescue with such a heavy load. After landing at LS-36, his number two engine warning lights indicated they had overheated; a condition which would normally mean he was grounded. But he was Tullo’s only chance at that moment. He was worried he would not be able to restart his engines, informed the crew he felt they should go get Tullo; the crew agreed, the engine started without a hitch and off he went. He had little idea of where he was going other than to head for Hànôi. About fifty miles from Hànôi he was met by ‘Canasta’ flight, flown by Lieutenant Commander Ed Greathouse and Holt Livesay from VA-25 embarked aboard the USS Midway. It was getting late, dusk was coming. ‘Canasta’ reported to Tullo he had a chopper and flew directly over Tullo’s position, with ‘Shed 85’ right behind him. Tullo expected something like a HH-43 Pedro and had never seen one this big. It turns out this would be the CH-3C Jolly Green’s first rescue. The Jolly crew had a very hard time pulling Tullo up the hoist, which was not yet designed for this kind of work. And, of course, the CH-3C’s engine started to overheat again but he lifted up, dragging Tullo through bushes etc into the air and finally found a spot where he could let him down on the ground. Tullo got out of his harness and the Jolly landed about fifty feet away. Incredibly, now they started receiving hostile fire from the ground. The ‘Jolly’ had all kinds of problems, an overheated engine, coming darkness, and clouds at altitude. Plus the crew had no maps of the area. The ‘Jolly’ crew hollered at Tullo to board. He did, diving through the door and off they went. Martin pointed the Jolly in the direction of LS-36 which was surrounded by enemy. LS-36 lit up landing lights by igniting flares in fifty-five gallon drums and Martin landed the CH-3C with all hands in one piece.
The notorious Thanh Hòa (Dragon’s Jaw’) bridge.
Napalm attack on a suspected Viêt Công position.
This was the farthest north a successful rescue had been made. Just a few weeks earlier, Captain Martin and his crews were flying support missions with the CH-3 in Florida! So here they are, now in the Việtnam War, flying a beat-up old CH-3 on a SAR mission, no previous SAR experience, a rigged up winch to pull up the downed aircrew member and they were penetrating deeply into the NVN and conducting the first CH-3 rescue mission in the war.
‘Spring High’ involved more than a hundred Air Force, Marine and Navy aircraft. A pair of EC-121 radar planes monitored VPAF (NVNAF) activity, directing the combat air patrol. Ten electronic warfare craft jammed the enemy radars. A dozen Phantoms and eight more F-104 Starfighters flew air cover. There were fifteen KC-135s for aerial refuelling and a search and rescue flight to recover downed aircrews. On the cutting edge, forty-six F-105s hit SAM sites and nearby barracks presumed to house the defenders with napalm and cluster bombs. Four RF-101s then streaked past to photograph the targets for bomb-damage assessment. ‘Spring High’ cost four F-105s over the targets, plus one more damaged so badly the aircraft lost control making an emergency landing at Udorn, colliding with its escort and destroying both warplanes. All the losses were inflicted by flak, not SAMs. One pilot was rescued. Damage assessment showed that one of the target-SAM sites had been a dummy and another was unoccupied. The Soviet Union did not respond openly, but Moscow secretly accelerated its shipment of SAMs to North Việtnam. These engagements in the summer of 1965 marked the beginning of a whole new facet of ‘Rolling Thunder’. Henceforth the air campaign featured extensive efforts to neutralize VPAF surface-to-air-missile installations. In fact, SAM site attacks were a major element in the next bimonthly plan for the air effort.’62
On 29 August Lieutenant Henry S. McWhorter of VFP-63, USS Oriskany flying RF-8A callsign ‘Corktip 919’ on a photo reconnaissance in Nghe An Province, North Việtnam when he was hit by enemy fire about twenty-five miles northwest of Vinh. Both he and his wingman had encountered heavy AAA at 8,000 feet. They took evasive action. McWhorter’s wingman reported him flying straight and level, but with no canopy or ejection seat. The wingman concluded the AAA hit in a location that fired off the ejection seat and probably killed McWhorter. The wingman reported McWhorter’s landing gear coming down as a result of the damage to the hydraulic systems. The aircraft entered a gentle glide until it hit the ground. Two A-1s were on the scene five minutes after the crash and said they saw a chute leaving the aircraft. However, other reports said no chute was sighted. A HU-16 Flying Albatross also responded, but had to abort due to an engine loss. Another one came to the scene, but again, no contact. There was no beeper heard. He was listed as killed/body not recovered as the assessment was that there was a slim hope of survival.63
Lieutenant Allan Russell Carpenter, born 14 March 1938 in Portland, Maine got his navy wings in November 1963 and flew A-4 Skyhawks in VA-72 in Viêtnam in 1965 on the USS Independence. ‘We operated as most ships did in air wings for three or four days or a week in South Viêtnam getting the ship exercised and pilots and equipment all ready to go and then we moved north and started flying missions. North Viêtnam in 1965 was exciting because we were putting our skills to use in the environment that we had been trained for. We were, after all, combat pilots and now it was our first exposure to combat. However, the ground and air defences were not what they later became. We flew road reconnaissance flights and we bombed bridges and some army barracks and things like that. Eventually my squadron was involved in the first attack on a mobile SAM site in North Viêtnam. My commanding officer led that flight and we destroyed the site. We developed tactics as a result. We lost a significant number of people on that cruise, many of whom I would see later in prison in North Viêtnam. On 13 September 1965 my roommate [Lieutenant (jg) Joe Russell Mossman] was shot down and killed in the southern part of North Viêtnam. We got home in early December.
An F-8D of VF-111 ‘Sundowners’ about to be launched from the No.2 catapult. During the Viêtnam War, VF-111 were based at NAS Miramar, California with the squadron making seven deployments to Southeast Asia, flying 12,500 combat sorties. In 1967-68, VF-111 deployed a less-than-full-strength detachment from USS Intrepid (CVS-11).
‘We enjoyed a few weeks off before the Navy had decided to move all the A-4s to Cecil Field in Florida. It took a while to get the squadron set up in its new digs and learn our way around. Then we started training because our squadron had been picked in Washington to turn right around and make another WestPac cruise from the east coast, on the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt, leaving in June. We stopped in Rio de Janeiro on the way, which was a nice break and then crossed the equator a time or two again. We got on the line in August 1966 and things were different this time around. Again, we spent a few days down in South Viêtnam getting ready. And I had been promoted at that time to lieutenant in the Navy. I was a flight leader; a combat veteran. I was also experienced in the ‘Iron Hand’ SAM suppression mission, which were kind of risky. In the air force it was called ‘Wild Weasel’.
‘The defences had improved considerably from 1965. There was a lot of flak. There were more MiGs in the air and a lot more surface-to-air missiles. Over the course of time the aircraft that I was flying in was hit on seven different occasions, one of which on 21 August 1966 resulted in very serious damage to the aircraft. I was able to make it back to the ship but could not wait around until they could clear the deck and get me back on board and I was forced to eject from my aircraft which was fully engulfed in flame. I was in the vicinity of the ship and at low altitude and relatively low airspeed and so it was a somewhat uneventful ejection. I was picked up by the ship’s helicopter and brought aboard, given a shot of whiskey and told to get some rest. Then the next morning I was the first aircraft launched off the ship, the old theory being that you get back on that horse that threw you before you get scared. And it seemed to work. I continued flying missions and in the interim we went back and forth to various ports. We went into Japan twice and got to see a little foreign culture and do some shopping, sending things back to my wife Carolyn.
‘We were back on the line on 1 November 1966. My mission on that day was to lead a flight of three A-4s, providing SAM suppression for a flight of photo F-8 Crusaders taking pictures of Hảiphòng Harbour, shipping and docks. After that portion of the mission I was to lead my flight on up the coast toward the border with China looking at coastal installations and seeing if we could find any patrol boats or vehicular traffic or trained traffic that we could attack in North Viêtnam. Unfortunately, that didn’t come to pass. The SAMs came on line. I was monitoring their radars and could tell that they were on line searching and when they launched the missiles I could hear them tracking. I looked down. It was a pretty dark, very rainy, miserable day everywhere except right where we were. For the first time in North Viêtnam I saw a light on the surface. These people were being pretty foolish to allow a light to be shown in a combat environment. The light got bigger and brighter and suddenly I realized that it was a SAM. I launched a Shrike anti-SAM radar missile at the site. It tracked properly and destroyed the radar trails. I followed up by leading my flight of three in an attack on a site. I was armed with four- or five-inch rockets from my first run. My wingers just had 500lb bombs. The flak was intense and it was big stuff; 85mm for the most part, some 57mm but not the little 37’s and 57’s that we normally encountered. Right in the pull-out over the target the place was in a shambles which gave me a lot of satisfaction. But about that time as I was pulling out I heard a very loud explosion. The airplane shook and my fire warning light came on. I knew that I’d been hit and I’d been hit hard. I told my wingmen that I had been hit and that we were headed inland. It only made sense to turn around and come back out and I just might as well drop my bombs on the way. So I said, ‘let’s put the bombs on them on the way out’ but the airplane was progressively either coming apart or failing to work the way it was supposed to. A lot of the systems fell off the line. Eventually, in the turn coming back around, I decided to just clean everything off on the bottom of the airplane and just drop it inert. All the bombs, drop tanks; everything that was on the bottom of the airplane came off, which made me go a lot faster than my wingmen because I was at a hundred percent power.
MiG-17Fs of the Viêtnam People’s Air Force (NVNAF) taxi out.
Sparrow and Sidewinder-armed F-4B-27-MC 153045 of VF-114 ‘Aardvarks’ from the USS Kitty Hawk (CVA-63) over the Gulf of Tonkin in March 1968. This aircraft was the US Navy’s final MiG killer when a Việtnam Peoples Air Force MiG-17 flown by Senior Lieutenant Luu Kim Ng was shot down by Lieutenant Victor Kovaleski and Lieutenant James R. Wise of VF-161 ‘Chargers’ from the USS Midway, near Hải Phòng, using an AIM 9 Sidewinder heat-seeking air-to-air missile. This was the last air combat victory by a US aircraft during the Việtnam War.
‘I headed back towards Hảiphòng harbour. My intent was to climb to altitude. By this time I had heard from my wingman that I was on fire and I was burning bad and he was advising me to get out. I didn’t want to get out of an airplane which seemed to be taking me where I wanted to go, so I just stuck with it. (Later he told me that all he could see was a fire ball with two wing tips sticking out of it). I got up to about 5,000 feet with the intention of going to 9,000 feet but at 5,500 feet the stick and the right rudder pedal went all the way in the right-hand corner and the airplane started a non-commanded rudder roll. By the time I could take stock I was almost inverted. Pilots just don’t really want to jump out of an airplane inverted. I had plenty of altitude so I let it go. I didn’t pull the power back because I didn’t want to be hanging forward in the straps. That’s not a good way to eject. By the time I came around to full upright the nose was forty-five to sixty degrees nose down. I was at full power and a clean airplane. I was accelerating pretty rapidly. I looked down at my air speed indicator and the needle was moving quite rapidly. It was passing 550 knots at that time when I pulled the face curtain to eject from the aircraft because there was no control anymore. I had already stowed my kneeboard and my flashlight and other things that might be in the way and could hurt me. I had two options for getting out. One was a handle between the legs which you would pull. I had used that first time and thought that was pretty neat. But the second time I was going so fast. The face curtain was designed to protect your face from damage from a high speed ejection and I decided to use it. I kept my knees together, my back up against the seat and my elbows in at my side and grabbed the face curtain with both hands and pulled. I heard the canopy go off, felt the rush of air and the noise level increased incredibly. It felt very much to me as though I might be lying on the ground between the railroad tracks as a freight train or passenger train rushed over. It was very loud. I continued to pull and felt the seat fire. Once the rocket stopped firing I was immediately separated from the seat and it started trailing behind me. I was still holding on to the face curtain. I lost a grip with one arm. The other arm caught the wind stream and my shoulder dislocated. The humeral head broke several pieces off the top of the arm and it started flailing around out in the wind. I felt the curtain cutter fire and it released and the elbow popped out. My right shoulder was already dislocated and the left was now dislocated and it broke, too, so, for a little while I was holding the curtain in my left hand and both arms and legs were flailing around and I was corkscrewing through the air at around 600 mph. The A-4 seat was not designed to protect you at those speeds. The pain was incredible. I didn’t see how anybody could survive that kind of pain. You think of it abstractly. You’re not screaming or yelling or anything like that. I guess this is what it’s like to die. Never having died before I wasn’t sure, but it seemed reasonable that that’s what it was like. It was quite conceivable that my arms could have been torn from my body. And then I could feel the chute pack snap open and suddenly I was just hanging in the chute. When the seat fires the force of gravity was supposed to be about 19 Gs. So you would very briefly weigh nineteen times more than you would normally weigh. The opening shock of the chute had to be almost twice that.
F-4B-28-MC BuNo153065 of VF-114 ‘Aardvarks’ is recovered on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk (CVA-63) in the Gulf of Tonkin after a combat mission over North Viêtnam on 21 April 1968. VF-114 was assigned to Carrier Air Wing 11 (CVW-11) aboard the Kitty Hawk for a deployment to Viêtnam from 18 November 1967 to 28 June 1968.
‘I opened my eyes because I had them closed. And now I had a new problem to face because I was totally blind. But you react as you had been trained to do. I reached up with both hands to release my oxygen mask but it was not in its normal position. I kept reaching but I had no glove on this hand because it had been torn off in the ejection. I finally came right up against something hard and smooth and it seemed like it was wet. And I thought ‘that’s my skull’. I snapped the oxygen mask off and threw it away and reached up. The front of the helmet was around my right ear. So I grabbed the side of the helmet with my right hand and pulled around and suddenly I could see. It was one of the best feelings I’ve ever had. I was just in time to see where my aircraft had impacted the water. It had gone in almost vertically close to a mile below me. There was a big cloud of water and steam and smoke coming up. My right shoulder hurt like the devil but it was somewhat functional. The left arm didn’t work. There was no shoulder there.
‘I got my personal survival radio out with one hand and called up and said, ‘I’m okay, but don’t pick me up.’ I couldn’t get it back in the place where it was supposed to go and I could only get half of my flotation equipment inflated and I was getting close to the water. I hit going pretty fast and went down fairly deep. I was in Hảiphòng harbour. The canopy immediately started to pull me through the water. Just before I ran out of air the tugging on the chute suddenly stopped and I popped to the surface.
‘I still wasn’t out of the woods. I only had partial inflation of my flotation equipment. I was riding quite low in the water and it didn’t take long before I could feel something tugging at my legs. The risers on the chute had wrapped around my boots and with the waves moving me up and down I was gradually sinking and being pulled down by the chute. I couldn’t get the other part of my floatation inflated and I was within five or ten minutes at the most from drowning. I had to tip my head back to be able to get a breath of air occasionally but I could see two or three sailing vessels coming toward me. As they got closer I could see that they all had guns. My wingmen were flying cover for me trying to keep the boats away but I found out later that the guns jammed in both of my wingmen’s’ airplanes. You don’t really want to drop a bomb to try to save your buddy because you’re liable to kill him so they dropped their drop tanks trying to scare the boats away and keep them from picking me up, but they weren’t dissuaded at all. And the flak was awfully heavy. I found out later that a helicopter was on its way to get me but he got shot up pretty badly and had to turn around and go back. The next thing I knew there was a boat pulling up alongside me and a guy pointing a rifle at me and screaming very excitedly in Viêtnamese. He kept motioning up as though he wanted me to lift my arms up. I would have been happy to lift them up to show them that I was no threat but I couldn’t. I think the handle of my pistol could be seen by my chin and he was probably looking at that and figuring when I had an opportunity I was liable to try to shoot him. So I decided that he was more than likely going to shoot me before they could get me on board. I wondered what that was going to feel like. And if it hurts, how long will it hurt? But he didn’t shoot. One of the men on board reached down and grabbed my left hand to try to pull me up onto the boat. I screamed in pain. He let go, reached around and grabbed my other arm. That shoulder was dislocated too and I screamed again in pain. They just kept pulling and found the chute was pulling me down. Somehow they got that loose. I think they just cut it with a machete. And the next thing I knew I was on the deck of the boat. I had become increasingly aware that there was an awful lot of noise. A guy with a .30 calibre machine gun on a bi-pod with another guy directing him was trying to get good shots at my wingmen. I could see one of the guys coming in really low making a high speed pass and I wanted him to get out of there because he’s just going to get shot down. Just as he got in to where this guy with the machine gun started to fire, the boom came around. It probably weighed three or four hundred pounds and it caught him right in the back and pushed him over. Whew, the gun just started firing down in the water. Each time he started shooting at my wingmen, the boom would catch him in the back and down he’d go. And one time the other boat was in the way and he strafed right across the deck. It was a moment of slight humour and every little bit helps. Then things got quiet. The airplanes went away. I could hear some in the distance. The triple-A stopped firing.
A-7A Corsair ‘602’ of VA-27 ‘Royal Maces’ attached to CVW-14 preparing to launch from the USS Constellation in 1968.
F-4B 3011 of VF-213 after trapping on the USS Kitty Hawk in the Gulf of Tonkin on 28 January 1968. F-4B-28-MC BuNo 153068 (behind with ‘115’ on the nose) was flown on 18 May 1972 by Lieutenants Henry A. ‘Bart’ Bartholmay and Oran R. Brown, on their first combat mission over North Việtnam when they shot down a MiG-19 with an AIM-9 Sidewinder near Kep Air Base, northeast of Hànôi. On14 January 1973 when BuNo153068 was flown by Lieutenant Victor T. Kovaleski and Ensign D. H. Plautz of VF-161 ‘Chargers’ from the USS Midway (CVA-41) this aircraft was hit by 85mm AAA about 10 miles south of Thanh Hóa and began leaking fuel. After flying offshore the crew ejected and were rescued. This was the very last US aircraft lost to enemy action during the Việtnam War.
A heavily armed A-6A of VA-35 ‘Black Panthers’ heads for a target over North Viêtnam on 15 March 1968 while operating from the nuclear powered carrier USS Enterprise (CVAN-65) at ‘Yankee Station’. Combined USN and USMC A-6/KA-6D losses during the war in SE Asia totalled 67 aircraft.
‘The people on the boat took off my helmet and then my torso harness, my G suit, my boots and my flight suit and left me in just my underwear. I still hurt pretty badly and they tied a rope around my right arm, the good arm. Then they opened up a hatch in the deck and pitched me into it head first. My feet caught by the edge of the hatch - they put the hatch cover back down, holding my feet outside and the rope outside. But I was head first down into the hold which was probably about three feet to the bottom. The hold was about a third full of water but there was also oil. It was pretty yucky. And it was over my head. It was another opportunity for me to drown and I wondered just what that would be like, drowning in fuel and water and fish guts. But I decided ‘do the best you can to live’. So every time the boat rocked in my direction and I got one side of my face above water, I’d take a big breath of air and hang on until I got a chance to do it again. And that’s how I breathed until they were able to get the boat into shore. It was low tide apparently and we stopped probably 2- or 300 feet from shore. They opened the hatch cover, pulled me out. I was a real mess by then. They got me to the side of the boat and tossed me overboard and there were several civilians in the mud out there with bamboo poles. They laced me up somehow and wrapped my shoulders around the other pole and tied me on to it and four of them started carrying me across this mud flat into this village. They had tried to get me to walk but I also had a broken leg and I couldn’t walk. I didn’t know about the broken leg until they wanted me to walk on it.
Lieutenant Allan Russell Carpenter, an A-4 Skyhawk pilot in VA-72 who was shot down and taken prisoner on 1 November 1966.
Captain Carlyle S. ‘Smitty’ Harris who was shot down on the raid on the bridges near Thanh Hóa on 3 April 1965 and taken prisoner. He was held prisoner for eight years and released in 1973.
Commander Doyle Wilmer Lynn, CO of VF-111 who was shot down and killed by ground fire in his F-8D Crusader on 27 May 1965 during an attack an AAA site. Lynn had been one of the first Navy pilots to be shot down in South East Asia when his Crusader was shot down on 7 June 1964.
Lieutenant Commander Richard Danner Hartman, pilot of one of three A-4Es of VA-164 lost on 18 July 1967. Hartman ejected about twenty-five miles south of Hànôi and evaded the North Viêtnamese for three days until he was eventually captured and was either killed at the time of capture or died soon after in a PoW camp.
In 1973 Americans welcomed home their returning Viêtnam prisoners of war, among them Lieutenant Colonel Robinson ‘Robbie’ Risner. During 33 years of service, he fought in three wars and on two separate occasions received the Air Force’s highest award, the Air Force Cross.
Skyhawk pilot, 26-year-old Lieutenant (jg) Everett Alvarez Jr. in hospital in 1973 after his release.
Commander Frederick H. Whittemore, the executive officer of VA-212 on the Bon Homme Richard who was shot down on 20 July 1967 and was rescued by a Navy helicopter. Commander Whittemore was lost at sea while serving with VA-93 on 11 April 1968 on a ferry flight in a A-4F.
‘Eventually they got me to military people who took me to pier side in Hảiphòng. It was after dark by then and they transferred me to an army vehicle. They had at least one English speaker who could communicate with me. And they took me a ways blindfolded and in the back of a covered truck. It was very noisy outside. It seemed like there were millions of people around. And they kept getting closer and closer to a centre of activity. And even through the blindfold I could see some light. Eventually they took the blindfold off and I found that I was probably in the central square in Hảiphòng. There were lights all around and wall-to-wall people, just packed as tightly as they could get and there was a roped-off area that was probably 50 feet on one side by a hundred feet on the long side. It was kind of like a boxing ring. Remember, I was wearing my underwear and had a rope tied to me. They took me to the edge of this roped-off area and as soon as the crowd saw me they quieted down. They took me to the edge of the area and pushed me out into it and they had taken the rope off my arm. I didn’t know what they wanted. I looked back at the guy who was in charge and he made some sort of a motion which I didn’t understand. Then he got angry and he indicated he wanted me to walk around that roped-off area. I took maybe five steps and the crowd started screaming at the top of their lungs. The ropes came down and I was surrounded. I was at least fifteen or twenty feet away from the army guys. It was a pretty scary situation. I was on my feet with a broken leg, two broken and dislocated shoulders and broken arms. Not feeling too spiffy at all. And here I was now suddenly surrounded by people. Most of them were shorter than I was and they hit me. As badly hurt as I was it was really no big deal. I said, ‘let them hit away. You’re not going to hurt me much more than I’ve been hurt.’
USS Ranger (CV-61) launching a bomb-laden A-7 Corsair from her waist catapult, during operations in the Gulf of Tonkin in January 1968.
F-4B BuNo153006 of VF-154 flown by Lieutenant (jg) J. Quaintance of Honolulu, Hawaii, attached to Carrier Air Wing 2 aboard the USS Ranger (CVA-61) dropping bombs on an artillery site north of the DMZ to provide air support for the 3rd US Marine Division in February 1968. This aircraft served later with VMFA-314 at Chu Lai.
‘The ‘Voice of Viêtnam’ that night announced that they had captured an American pilot and I was the only one who’d been shot down. They said they had captured several American pilots, one of them alive, which was their way of exaggerating. They took me to a hospital and the next night they took me to Hànôi in the back of a truck covered up with a tarp and drove through the front gate of Walo Prison. I didn’t know it at that time, but I assumed that I was in Hànôi. I was in prison a total of six years and four months.’64
Phantoms and MiGs met each other in the sky over Viêtnam on many occasions throughout the first half of 1967 and American crews also continued to run the gauntlet of SAM missiles and ground fire. On 24 March Lieutenant Commander John Cooley ‘Buzz’ Ellison, pilot of an A-6A Intruder in VA-85 ‘Black Falcons’ on board Kitty Hawk was lost along with his bombardier/navigator Lieutenant (jg) James Edwin Plowman during a four-aircraft night strike force SAM suppression mission against Bắc Giang Thermal Power Plant near Kep in North Viêtnam. SAM sites, light, medium and heavy AA batteries, automatic weapons and small arms defended the target. (John Ellison had been forced to abandon an A-6A on 15 May 1966 when the aircraft was unable to take on fuel as it was returning from a mission). After the crew radioed that they had released their bombs the Intruder was tracked by radar (probably by an E-2 Hawkeye) to be about ten miles north of their planned course. The radar plot disappeared in Hà bắc Province when the aircraft probably fell victim to AAA. One source claims that Ellison made voice contact with a SAR force but neither crewman was rescued or ever heard from again although rumours persist that at least one of the men was held captive in China. However, after the end of the war when China released the US airmen who had been shot down over Chinese territory, neither Ellison nor Plowman was amongst them.
F-4s of VF-84 ‘Jolly Rogers’ on the USS Independence (CVA-43) off Viêtnam in September 1965. VF-84 ended its association with the Independence on 27 January 1969. Their new home would be the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt. BuNo151478 was shot down near Đại Lãnh/An Hoa, South Viêtnam serving with VMFA-122 at Chu Lai on 7 June 1970. 1st Lieutenant Kurt Michael Wilbrecht died in the crash. 1st Lieutenant W. T. Pepper ejected and was rescued by helicopter.
Vought F-8 Crusader of VF-162 ‘The Hunters’ about to be launched from the port cat of the USS Ticonderoga (CVA-14) in the Gulf of Tonkin in July 1969. (via Bob Gaines)
On 18 May 1967 Lieutenant Robert John Naughton of VA-113 from the Enterprise, who was on his second tour in Southeast Asia and flying his 194th mission, led another pilot on an armed reconnaissance mission during which they attacked the Đồng Thương railway bridge, ten miles northeast of Thanh Hóa. As the aircraft started a 30-degree dive to fire a pod of unguided rockets it was hit by ground fire. The aircraft burst into flames, probably having taken a hit in a fuel line or tank and within seconds Naughton lost control of the aircraft and ejected. He was captured and spent the rest of the war as a PoW until released on 4 March 1973. Commander Kenneth Robbins Cameron, the executive officer of VA-76 on the Bon Homme Richard led an attack on the trans-shipment point ten miles north of Vinh. This was an important facility where supplies could be transferred from the railway, which terminated at Vinh, to the main coastal road that fed other roads heading south. Cameron rolled in to attack the target from about 10,000 feet but during the dive his aircraft was hit by AAA and Cameron ejected. He was captured but, according to the Viêtnamese, he died on 4 October 1970.65
The 19th of May - Hồ Chi Minh’s birthday - proved to be one of the worst days of the war when the first Navy raids on targets in Hànôi itself resulted in the loss of six aircraft and ten aircrew over North Viêtnam. The three participating carriers, the Enterprise, Bon Homme Richard and the Kitty Hawk each lost two aircraft. The first Alpha strike of the day was on the Văn Ðiển military vehicle and SAM support depot near Hànôi, which had already been bombed on 14 December 1966 when two aircraft were shot down. Among the first aircraft into the target area was the CAP flight of F-4s from VF-96 led by Commander Richard Rich, the Squadron’s executive officer. Volleys of SAMs were fired at the formation forcing the aircraft down to a lower altitude, which was dangerous due to the intense AAA and small arms fire. Commander Rich’s aircraft was damaged by an SA-2 that detonated close to the F-4. Two minutes later, with the Phantom even lower, a second SAM was seen to explode close to the aircraft at which point a command ejection sequence was initiated by the NFO. Rich’s back-seater, Lieutenant Commander William Robert Stark was knocked unconscious by the ejection and suffered compound fractures of the lower vertebrae, a broken arm and a broken knee. He landed about twenty miles southwest of Hànôi but there was no sign of Commander Rich, who is presumed to have been killed in the crash.
The Kitty Hawk’s CAP flight fared no better when it took over about an hour later and it also lost one of its F-4s. The SAMs were still being fired in great numbers and despite violent evasive manoeuvres, Lieutenant (jg) Joseph Charles Plumb’s aircraft in VF-114 was hit in the belly by an SA-2. The aircraft became a mass of flames and the engines wound down rapidly. As the tail section began to disintegrate, Plumb and his back-seater, Lieutenant (jg) Gareth Laverne Anderson decided that it was time to leave and ejected near Xan La, twelve miles southwest of Hànôi. Plumb recalls being captured by peasants and thrown into a pen where a bull buffalo was goaded by the villages into charging the pilot. Luckily, the animal was less than enthusiastic about the whole affair. The two fliers were incarcerated in the ‘Hànôi Hilton’.
One of the waves of bombers that attacked the Văn Ðiển depot consisted of six Intruders from the Enterprise. When the formation was thirty miles southwest of Hànôi they began to receive warnings on their APR-27s of Fan Song radar signals, which meant that they were being tracked by a SAM site. ‘Fan Song’ got its name from its horizontal and vertical fan scanning antennas and its distinctive sounding emissions, which could be picked up by the B-52’s warning equipment. ‘Fan Song’ performed two functions: target acquisition and missile guidance. It acquired as many as four targets before firing. After launch, it guided up to three SA-2s against one target. (The North Viêtnamese sometimes placed the radars away from the missiles to make the site harder to destroy.) The SA-2 missile had a solid fuel booster rocket that launched and accelerated it and then dropped off after about six seconds. While in boost stage, the missile did not guide. During the second stage, the SA-2 guided and a liquid-fuel rocket propelled it to the target. The success of the system depended almost entirely on the skill of its seven-man missile crew; the battalion commander, a fire control officer, three guidance officers, a plotter and a missile technical officer in their un-air-conditioned command van. Flying at 12,000 feet, Lieutenant Eugene Baker ‘Red’ McDaniel of VA-35 saw an SA-2 coming towards his aircraft so he rapidly jettisoned his bombs and made a hard right turn, but the missile exploded directly in the path of the A-6. The hydraulics must have been hit as the aircraft became uncontrollable after a few seconds and the crew ejected about twenty miles south of Hànôi. His NFO, Lieutenant James Kelly Patterson, broke his leg on landing but hid for four days as enemy forces searched for him. A Fulton extraction kit was dropped to him on the morning of the 21st but it was recovered by North Viêtnamese troops before he could reach it.66 One of his last radio messages was to say that he was moving further up a hill to avoid enemy forces. Jim Patterson was not seen in any of the PoW camps in North Viêtnam but information suggests that he had been captured. ‘Red’ McDaniel was captured almost as soon as he touched down and suffered very badly at the hands of his captors.
F-4Js 155870 of VF-143 ‘Pukin Dogs’ and 155838 to VF-142 ‘Ghostriders’ are prepared for launching from the USS Constellation (CVA-64) in 1969, when in August the carrier returned to Viêtnam for a fifth combat deployment. Following an initial 20-day period of supporting strikes in South Việtnam as well as Laos, Constellation sailed to Defender Station in the Sea of Japan, which had been created as a result of increased tensions on the Korean Peninsula. On return to Yankee Station on 1 November the ‘Connie’ conducted her 100,000th arrested landing. During a mission on 28 March 1970 the VF-142 crew of Lieutenant Jerome E. Beaulier and Lieutenant Steven J. Barkley downed a North Việtnamese MiG-21.
An F-4 Phantom of VF-142 Ghostriders is launched from the flight deck of the Attack Aircraft Carrier USS Constellation (CVA-64) in the Gulf of Tonkin on 24 February 1970. This squadron was assigned to Carrier Air Wing 14 aboard the Constellation from 11 August 1969 to 8 May 1970.
Launching a A-6A of VMA(AW)-224 from the USS Coral Sea on 9 May 1972.
A special raid on the North was targeted at Hànôi’s thermal power plant. The attack was made by just two A-4s, equipped with Walleye TV-guided bombs and escorted by four A-4 ‘Iron Hand’ aircraft and twelve F-8s, six for flak suppression and six for fighter escort. During the raid on the power plant both of the ‘Bonnie Dick’s Crusader squadrons provided aircraft for the CAP over this ‘hot’ target. However, the SAM sites that had wrought such havoc in the morning were still active. Lieutenant Commander Kay Russell of VF-211 was the leader of a six-plane escort flight that engaged a number of MiG-17s just to the west of Hànôi. As the Crusaders were chasing the MiGs away from the target area, Lieutenant Commander Russell’s aircraft was hit first by ground fire and then by an SA-2, which caused the aircraft to burst into flames and the pilot to lose control. Kay Russell ejected and was quickly captured. A total of four MiGs were shot down by the F-8s during the engagement. Six F-8s of VF-24 were assigned the flak suppression mission during the Hànôi raid. This flight also had to contend with MiGs and SAMs but it was the intense anti-aircraft fire that brought Lieutenant (jg) William John Metzger down. He had chased MiG-17 away from the target but as the Crusader was climbing through 1,500 feet it was hit twice in the fuselage by AAA. One of the anti-aircraft shells tore a hole in the cockpit and wounded the pilot in the left arm and leg and broke his right leg. Metzger ejected about ten miles west of Hànôi and was soon captured. He was eventually released along with Lieutenant Commander Russell on 4 March 1973. The Walleye attack on the power plant failed as the bombs were released at too low an altitude to guide to the target. However, two days later another Walleye attack scored a direct hit on this important target.
An A-7E bombing the Hải Dương road and railway bridge in North Viêtnam in 1972. Note the bombed remains of a second bridge further up river.
Guerrilla soldiers search the wreckage of A-7C 156798, flown by 26-year old Lieutenant (jg) Stephen Owen Musselman of VA-82 ‘Marauders’ which was shot down on 10 September 1972 when an ‘Iron Hand’ flight of Corsairs from the USS America was attacking SAM sites during a Linebacker raid in the Hànôi area. As the aircraft approached Hànôi from the south, a large number of SAMs were fired and Musselman and the other members of the flight started to take evasive action. A missile was seen to hit Musselman’s aircraft forcing him to eject about five miles south of the city. The Viêtnamese returned his remains to the USA on 8 July 1981. (Doàn Công Tinh).
The final loss on what came to be known in Navy circles as ‘Black Friday’ was an RA-5C reconnaissance aircraft of RVAH-13 from the Kitty Hawk. Lieutenant Commander James Lloyd Griffin and Lieutenant Jack Walters were tasked with obtaining BDA photographs of the Văn Ðiển depot, which had been attacked about four hours earlier. As the aircraft made its initial turn over Hànôi for its photo run it was at about 3,500 feet and doing around 700 knots. The aircraft was next seen to be engulfed in flames and flying in a north-westerly direction. About ten miles from the city the Vigilante suddenly pitched up and the forward fuselage started to break up. Both crew ejected from the flaming, disintegrating wreck and apparently both men were taken to the ‘Hànôi Hilton’ but survived only a few days, whether as a result of their injuries or from torture is not known.
Despite the heavy losses of the previous day, the Navy was out in force again on the 20th. An Alpha strike on the Bac Giang thermal power plant near Phủ Lạng Thương, about twenty-five miles northeast of Hànôi, resulted in the loss of the A-4 flown by Commander Homer Leroy Smith, the CO of VA-21267 who was leading seventeen aircraft from the Bon Homme Richard. He had just pulled up, having launched his Walleye bomb when his Skyhawk was hit by AAA and burst into flames. Accompanied by his wingman, he headed for the coast but was forced to eject about twenty miles north of Hảiphòng. Like Griffin and Walters, Commander Smith was apparently taken to the ‘Hànôi Hilton’ but survived only a few days and was reported to have been tortured to death.68 On 21 May the Navy again raided the Hànôi thermal power plant and the Văn Ðiển depot. The raid on the thermal power plant was accompanied by several sections of Crusaders dedicated to flak suppression but one of these aircraft fell victim to the intense anti-aircraft fire around the target. Lieutenant Commander R. G. Hubbard of VF-211 on the Bon Homme Richard was jinking to avoid the flak when his aircraft took a hit in the afterburner section. The afterburner nozzle was stuck in the open position and fuel was leaking from the aircraft but fortunately did not ignite. Hubbard was escorted out to sea where he refuelled from a tanker before flying to the ‘Bonnie Dick’. However, when the gear was lowered, the hydraulic system must have ruptured and the aircraft burst into flames. Hubbard ejected and he was picked up by one of the carrier’s Seasprite helicopters.
A strike on the Văn Ðiển SAM and vehicle support depot also resulted in the loss of a single aircraft and the rescue of its crew. The TARCAP flight was once more provided by the F-4Bs of VF-114 on the Kitty Hawk. One of the Squadron’s Phantoms was flown by Lieutenant H. Dennis Wisely, who had shot down an An-2 Colt biplane on 20 December 1966 and a MiG-17 on 24 April 1967. His back-seater was Ensign James ‘Jim’ H. Laing. Their F-4B was hit as it was retiring from the target at low level. The TARCAP flight had evaded three SAMs but came down low and ran into intense flak. The aircraft was peppered with automatic weapons fire and suffered failures of the hydraulic and pneumatic systems. The pilot decided to make for Thailand rather than risk the gauntlet of the intense air defences between Hànôi and the coast. The decision was a wise one as the aircraft crossed the Laotian border before becoming uncontrollable, forcing the crew to eject near Sai Koun, eighty-five miles southwest of Hànôi. Jim Laing’s parachute started to open the instant his ejection seat fired with the result that he broke an arm and sprained his other limbs. Both men were picked up safely by a USAF HH-3 after a Navy SH-3A had to be abandoned in Laos after running out of fuel during the first rescue attempt. This was the second ejection and rescue for Ensign Laing who had been shot down with Lieutenant Commander Southwick on 24 April.
On 24 May Lieutenant (jg) M. Alsop of VA-93 from the Hancock was taking part in an attack on a target ten miles southwest of Ninh Binh when he felt his A-4E hit by an anti-aircraft shell. He headed due south for the coast with the engine making ominous rumbling and grinding noises. Once out to sea the engine flamed out and Alsop ejected about fifteen miles off Thanh Hóa, from where he was picked up by a Navy helicopter. Two days later the MiG base at Kep was a target for the Hancock’s A-4Es. Twenty-five year old Lieutenant (jg) Read Blaine Mecleary of VA-93 was flying in the flak suppression section, on his 56th mission of the war and had just reached the target area at 13,000 feet when his aircraft was hit by AAA. With the aircraft performing a series of rolls to the right, Mecleary managed to fly about twelve miles to the east before having to give up the unequal struggle and eject. ‘When I ejected I was badly injured due to the 600+ mph winds blasts and was unable to walk for about two months. I was held prisoner in seven different prison camps in and around Hànôi and one about ten kilometres south of the Chinese border. Like most other American PoWs I was tortured with ropes for military and political information. On 4 March 1973 after sixty-nine months and five days I was released.
Viêtnam People’s Air Force (NVNAF) MiG-21 pilots.
On 30 May the SAMs claimed their tenth and final victim of the month during a raid on the Do Xa trans-shipment point fifteen miles south of Hànôi. Commander James Patrick Mehl, the executive officer of VA-93 aboard the Hancock, who was piloting an A-4E, was leading an ‘Iron Hand’ section in support of the raid and started to receive warnings of SAM activity near the target. The section evaded one missile but as Mehl started to climb through 16,000 feet to fire a Shrike, his aircraft was hit by another SA-2. He tried to make for the sea but was forced to eject near Hung Yên and was immediately captured. On 31 May a series of raids by the Air Force and the Navy was flown against targets at Kep on the final day of the month. Four Skyhawks of VA-212 from the Bon Homme Richard were on their way to Kep airfield when they encountered intense anti-aircraft fire about twenty miles northeast of Kep. Lieutenant Commander Arvin Roy Chauncey’s aircraft was hit in the engine and caught fire. He turned towards high ground and jettisoned his stores but the aircraft lost power and he was forced to eject. He was captured and joined the rest of his shipmates in the ‘Hànôi Hilton’. Like most of the others, he was released on 4 March 1973. When Lieutenant Commander Chauncey’s aircraft was hit, his flight called for SAR assistance and stayed in the area to protect their leader and the SAR forces when they arrived. However, Lieutenant (jg) M. T Daniels almost suffered the same fate as the Lieutenant Commander when his aircraft was hit by AAA about eight miles northeast of Kep. He headed out to sea in search of a tanker but with his radio inoperative he was unable to rendezvous and take on fuel. Unable to refuel he found a SAR destroyer and ejected close by when the Skyhawk’s engine flamed out. He was picked up by the destroyer’s Seasprite SAR helicopter.
On 22 June the Hải Dương railway bridge was attacked by a flight of A-4Es from the Hancock. Like all bridges in North Viêtnam, it was well defended with numerous AAA sites of various calibres. Lieutenant Commander James Glenn Pirie of VA-93 was pulling up from his attack and jinking violently when his aircraft was struck twice by anti-aircraft fire. With the aircraft on fire and the engine winding down, James Pirie ejected near the bridge and was quickly captured. Six days later Commander William ‘Bill’ Porter Lawrence, the CO of VF-143, led a flak suppression section of F-4Bs during a raid on an important trans-shipment point ten miles northwest of Nam Định, a city in the Red River Delta about forty-five miles southeast of Hànôi. His back-seater was Lieutenant (jg) James William Bailey, a veteran of 183 combat missions over Southeast Asia, having flown with VF-143 on board the Ranger in 1966. The Phantoms were at 12,000 feet and were preparing to roll in on the target when Commander Lawrence’s aircraft was hit by 85mm flak. With the aircraft’s hydraulics failing, Lawrence released his CBUs on the target and had difficulty in pulling out of his dive before part of the tail section separated from the Phantom. The crew ejected and were captured and suffered the usual torture and beatings.
On 30 June four A-4C Skyhawks were launched from the Intrepid to hit the Bến Thuỷ thermal power plant on the Song Ca River just south of Vinh. One of the pilots was Lieutenant LeGrande Ogden Cole, who was on his second tour on board the Intrepid having flown 100 missions from the ship in 1966. In the face of intense flak the Skyhawks rolled in one after the other to bomb the target but Lieutenant Cole’s aircraft was not seen after the attack started. However, Cole’s wingman did report seeing a large explosion and fire to the south of the target which at first he thought was a stray bomb. When Lieutenant Cole failed to rendezvous with the rest of the flight it was surmised that he had been shot down. Photographs of the target area taken by an RF-8 showed no sign of the Skyhawk’s wreckage and no SAR beeper or radio transmissions were ever heard.
Launching an A-6A of VMA(AW)-224 the “Fighting Bengals’ from the USS Coral Sea (CV-43) on 9 May 1972. On 29 September 1956 the squadron became the first Marine unit to operate the A-4D Sky-hawk. In 1965 the Bengals deployed to South Việtnam and for almost a year operated their ‘Scooters’ from Chu Lai. On 1 November 1966 the squadron acquired the A-6 Intruder and was re-designated VMA(AW)-224. As part of Carrier Air Wing 15, the squadron completed six line periods on Yankee Station and participated in numerous operations including the historic Operation ‘Pocket Money’ mining of Haiphong Harbour.
The last Navy aircraft lost during the month of June was a VA-146 A-4C Skyhawk from the USS Constellation which was on an armed reconnaissance sortie over North Viêtnam. A metal bridge was seen near Thiệu Ăng, thirty miles southwest of Nam Định and the aircraft rolled in to drop their bombs. As Lieutenant John Michael McGrath was pulling up from the target his aircraft was hit in the wing by AAA causing sudden and total loss of control. McGrath ejected immediately but his parachute only just opened as he fell through some tall trees. During the ejection and subsequent landing he broke and dislocated his arm and fractured a vertebra and a knee. Further injuries were suffered during the torture sessions soon after arrival at the Hànôi Hilton.
During a raid on the railway yard at Hải Dương on 2 July, Lieutenant (jg) Frederick Morrison Kasch, an A-4B pilot of VSF-3 from the Intrepid was just pulling up from his bombing run when his aircraft was hit by AAA, causing partial engine failure. He trimmed the aircraft in the hope of reaching the coast and was accompanied by his wingman as he flew thirty-five miles to the south. However, as they approached the coast near Lục Linh, Kasch was down to 500 feet and he was advised to eject. His wingman lost sight of him as Kasch was flying so slowly and when he came round again all he saw was the wreckage of Kasch’s aircraft among some houses. There was no sign that Kasch had survived. On 4 July an Independence Day raid on the railway at Hải Dương resulted in the loss of an A-4C and its pilot, Lieutenant Phillip Charles ‘PC’ Craig of VA-15 aboard the Intrepid. Craig had flown 100 missions on a previous tour. The raid itself was successful and the aircraft headed back to the coast. However, despite radio calls from Lieutenant Craig indicating that he had reached the coast, he did not rendezvous with the rest of the formation and could not be contacted on the radio. A SAR mission was quickly mounted but found no trace of the pilot or his aircraft. North Viêtnamese radio later reported that two aircraft had been shot down during the raid. Although this was inaccurate, as only one Skyhawk was missing, it was assumed that Craig had indeed been shot down near the coast to the south of Hảiphòng.
On 9 July the USS Constellation mounted a strike on the main Hảiphòng POL (Petrol-Oil-Lubricants) storage site. A formation of A-4Cs of VA-146 was approaching the target at 12,500 feet and was just about to roll in when a volley of SAMs was launched against them. One of the SA-2s hit Lieutenant Charles Richard Lee’s Skyhawk and blew its tail off. The aircraft entered a slow inverted spin until it hit the ground about ten miles southwest of Hảiphòng. Lee was not seen to escape and was probably incapacitated by the SAM detonation. At almost the exact same moment that Lieutenant Lee was being shot down, a SAM battery scored another hit a few miles away to the northwest. The Intrepid’s aircraft were targeted at the Army barracks at Ban Yên but before they arrived at the target they also encountered SAMs. Lieutenant Commander Edward Holmes Martin, the executive officer of VA-34, who was on his 19th mission over North Viêtnam, was leading the formation at about 10,000 feet and was taking evasive action but an SA-2 exploded close to his aircraft and peppered the Skyhawk with shrapnel. The aircraft caught fire and quickly became uncontrollable forcing Martin to eject about ten miles south of Hải Dương. He was quickly captured and spent the rest of the war in various PoW camps until his release on 4 March 1973.
On 12 July, two days before the Oriskany officially took its place back on the line on its third tour of duty off Southeast Asia; it lost its first aircraft. A VA-163, A-4E Skyhawk was launched for a training flight as part of the pre-combat training programme but the aircraft left the deck with insufficient airspeed and crashed in the sea after the pilot ejected. The Navy lost a Skyhawk of VA-212 from the Bon Homme Richard on its way to a strike on the railway at Mai Truong in North Viêtnam. Lieutenant Commander J. H. Kirkpatrick was five miles south of Hải Dương when his aircraft was hit in the port wing and fuselage by ground fire. The aircraft suffered hydraulic failure, fuel pump failure, an unsafe undercarriage indication and a loss of engine power. Soon after crossing the coast about fifteen miles south of Hảiphòng, with the aircraft barely able to stay airborne, Lieutenant Commander Kirkpatrick ejected. He was rescued by a Navy SAR helicopter.
On 14 July, on its first day on the line, the Oriskany suffered its first combat loss. Lieutenant (jg) L. J. Cunningham’s A-4E in VA-164 was hit by AAA as it attacked barges on an inland waterway near Gia La, fifteen miles southeast of Vinh. The aircraft was hit in the nose and the engine must have then ingested debris as it started running rough on the way back to the carrier. By the time Cunningham reached the ‘Mighty O’, flames were coming from the engine exhaust and the aircraft was obviously in no shape for a carrier landing. He ejected at very low level close to the carrier and was rescued by a Seasprite from the Oriskany’s HC-1 detachment. A flight of VA-76’s A-4Cs from the Bon Homme Richard was sent on an armed reconnaissance mission in search of PT boats when the aircraft came under fire just off the coast near Van Ly, twenty-five miles south of Nam Định. The ‘Spirits of VA-76’, assigned to Air Wing 21, reached the coastal waters of Viêtnam in January 1967. One of the aircraft was hit in the port wing by an anti-aircraft shell, which caused a fire in a rocket pod carried under the wing. The rockets exploded and the debris caused the engine to fail. Lieutenant J. N. Donis ejected about fifteen miles off the coast and was picked up thirty minutes later by a Navy helicopter. Commander Robert Byron Fuller, the CO of VA-76, born 23 November 1927 in Quitman, Mississippi, who had started his flying career in 1952 in the F9F-5 Panther and had flown 110 missions in Southeast Asia, led a strike against the Co Trái railway and road bridge near Hung Yên on the Red River in Hai Hung Province, twenty miles southeast of Hànôi. Just as the aircraft commenced its attack it was rocked by the explosion of an SA-2 missile but Commander Fuller delivered his bombs before he encountered any control problems with his aircraft. The Skyhawk’s tail was seen to be on fire and fuel was streaming from a leaking tank. As the aircraft started rolling uncontrollably, the pilot ejected and was soon captured. Fuller was the second CO that VA-76 had lost within eight months. He had taken command of the Squadron on 6 December 1966 when Commander A. D. McFall was accidentally killed during a night launch in the Pacific. During captivity Fuller was subjected to torture by ropes, leg irons and twenty-five months in solitary confinement. He spent sixty-eight months in captivity and was finally released on 4 March 1973 during Operation ‘Homecoming’.69
A-7E BuNo156831 of VA-146 ‘Blue Diamonds’ ready for launching from the flight deck of the USS Constellation (CVA-64) in the South China Sea for a strike on a target in South Viêtnam on 25 April 1972.
On 16 July the Oriskany’s Air Wing was having a rough return to combat, losing its third aircraft in as many days. Before the month was over, the ‘Mighty O’ would lose a total of ten aircraft in combat and three in accidents. Lieutenant Commander Demetrio A. ‘Butch’ Verich of VF-162 flying an F-8E Crusader who had been shot down on 18 August 1966 during the Oriskany’s second war cruise and was leading the flak suppression element of three F-8s during a raid by A-4s on the Phủ Lý railway yard, thirty miles south of Hànôi. As the formation approached the target it came under attack from a SAM site. Verich started a split-S manoeuvre to evade two of the missiles but his aircraft was hit by a third SA-2 as the Crusader was diving through 5,000 feet. The aircraft began to disintegrate and Verich ejected immediately. His position was only about sixteen miles south of Hànôi when he landed so he was most fortunate to be rescued by a Navy SH-3 of HS-2 from the Hornet at first light on the 17th after fifteen hours on the ground close to an AAA position. The helicopter pilot, Lieutenant Neil Sparks, was awarded the Navy Cross for his courage and skill in rescuing the pilot. The helicopter had spent a total of two hours and twenty-three minutes over North Viêtnam during the rescue, much of that time under fire.
The 18th turned out to be another bad day for the Oriskany with the loss of three A-4Es and one pilot. VA-I64 mounted a raid on the Co Trai railway and road bridge, which had been the target just five days earlier. Lieutenant Commander Richard Danner Hartman had successfully bombed the target and was leaving the area when his aircraft was hit by AAA. The Skyhawk caught fire and Hartman ejected about twenty-five miles south of Hànôi. Encouraged by the success in recovering Lieutenant Commander ‘Butch’ Verich on the 16th, a SAR mission was quickly organised and aircraft from VA-164 orbited over Hartman’s position to provide protection. However, this was an extremely ‘hot’ location and after about twelve minutes another A-4 was hit by anti-aircraft fire. Lieutenant Larrie J. Duthie was jinking to avoid being hit but there was so much flak in the sky that there was very little chance of avoiding it for long. His flight controls began to fail and his oxygen supply failed, probably as a result of the oxygen tank being hit and burning its way through the aircraft’s structure. Duthie came down near Nam Định. Worse was to follow a little while later as a rescue attempt was made by an SH-3 but was beaten back by strong anti-aircraft fire. One of the escorting A-4Es from Duthie’s section was hit as it pulled out of a forty-five-degree dive to launch Zuni rockets against gun positions. Lieutenant Barry T. Wood noticed his fuel gauge was rapidly unwinding, indicating a fuel leak so he jettisoned his ordnance and made for the coast. He ejected about eight miles out to sea and was picked up by a boat from a SAR destroyer, the USS Richard B. Anderson. Meanwhile both Navy and USAF rescue forces were attempting to reach Lieutenant Duthie. In the face of intense ground fire that damaged several helicopters and escorting aircraft, an HH-3E piloted by Major Glen York made a successful pick up. York was awarded the AFC for this daring rescue. The next day a SH-3A from the Hornet’s HS-2, piloted by Lieutenant D. W. Peterson, attempted to reach Hartman once again. The helicopter was hit by ground fire and crashed, killing all on board including the pilot and Ensign D. P. Frye, AX2 W. B. Jackson and AX2 D. P. McGrane. Following this tragedy the SAR mission to rescue Lieutenant Commander Hartman was reluctantly called off. It had cost the Navy two A-4s and a helicopter with the lives of four men. Meanwhile, through all the activity overhead, Lieutenant Commander Hartman was in hiding on a karst hill and in radio contact with his flight. He evaded the North Viêtnamese for three days and was resupplied by air during this time. However, he was eventually captured and was either killed at the time of capture or died soon after in a PoW camp. His remains were returned by the Viêtnamese on 6 March 1974.
Douglas EKA-3B Skywarrior BuNo 142661 from Tactical Electronic Contermeasures Squadron VAQ-135 Det.5 ‘Black Ravens’ refuels Vought F-8J Crusader BuNo 150660 from VF-211 ‘Checkmates’ off Viêtnam. Both squadrons were assigned to Carrier Air Wing 21 (CVW-21) aboard the aircraft carrier USS Hancock (CVA-19) for a deployment to Viêtnam from 7 January to 3 October 1972.
On 19 July the Go Trai railway and road bridge, which had been the scene of the losses on the 18th was hit again. Once more the raid resulted in tragedy and for VF-162 this raid was exactly a year from a raid on the same target with similar tragic results. Commander Herbert ‘Herb’ Perry Hunter, the executive officer of VF-162, who had previously flown as a member of the Blue Angels aerobatic team, was leading the flak suppression element during the raid when his Crusader was hit in the port wing by 57mm anti-aircraft fire. The fuel tanks in the wing were ruptured and the aircraft’s hydraulics partially disabled. Commander Hunter and his wingman, Lieutenant Lee Fernandez, crossed the coast and headed towards the Bon Homme Richard, thinking it was the Oriskany. The damage to the aircraft meant that two bombs could not be jettisoned nor could the Crusader take on fuel. The Crusader’s wing was unusual in that the entire wing was raised at the leading edge to give more lift during the approach and landing. However, Commander Hunter could not raise the wing and attempted a landing with the wing in the normal flight position. The aircraft hit the deck hard and fast, missed the arrester wires, wiped off its landing gear and plunged over the side into the water. Commander Hunter may have been stunned as he hit the deck as he was found floating under water with a partially deployed parachute. This traumatic incident, together with his moral opposition to the war and an eyesight problem, badly affected Lieutenant Fernandez who later turned in his wings and then retired from the Navy.
On 20 July a series of strikes on the My Xa POL storage facility, fifteen miles northwest of Hảiphòng, resulted in the loss of two Navy A-4E Skyhawks on the 20th. The first aircraft was hit in the tail by AAA as it climbed to commence its attack on the target. Commander Frederick H. Whittemore, the executive officer of VA-212 on the Bon Homme Richard, disconnected the flight controls after experiencing complete hydraulic failure. He was only able to control the aircraft by using the horizontal stabilizer and rudder but nevertheless flew out to sea before ejecting sixty miles east of Hon Gai. As the aircraft meandered thirty degrees either side of the desired heading and its altitude varied involuntarily between 2,000 feet and 6,000 feet, it is a miracle that Whittemore managed to position himself over the water where he could be rescued by a Navy helicopter.70
Another raid on the My Xa POL storage site later in the day resulted in the loss of a VA-163 Skyhawk from the Oriskany. Approaching the coast about twelve miles east of Hon Gay, Lieutenant R. W. Kuhl encountered light flak and felt his aircraft hit and his engine start to vibrate. Kuhl lost his radio and the cockpit began to fill with smoke, forcing him to turn back. He continued out to sea but as he approached the northern SAR destroyer, which was positioned about 45 miles south of Hon Gay, the aircraft became uncontrollable and he ejected safely.
On 25 July a truck convoy was spotted near Hà Tinh, twenty miles south of Vinh by a section of two VA-163 A-4Es from the Oriskany during a night armed reconnaissance mission. Under the light of flares dropped by one of the Skyhawks, Lieutenant Commander Donald Vance Davis started his strafing run but was either shot down or flew into the ground by accident. It was apparent that the pilot had not survived the crash. On 29 July a KA-3B of Detachment G, VAH-4 on board the Oriskany suffered a double engine failure while on a tanker mission over the Gulf of Tonkin about 150 miles northeast of Đà Nẵng. Unable to rectify the problem, all three crew abandoned the aircraft but only the pilot was found and rescued.71
On 29 July one of the greatest tragedies of the war in Southeast Asia occurred as the result of a Simple electrical malfunction. The Atlantic Fleet carrier Forrestal (which in 1955 had been the first carrier built to handle jet aircraft) had left Norfolk, Virginia on 6 June after a major refit and was assigned to TF 77 on 8 July. After working up in the South China Sea, the Forrestal took up her position at Yankee Station on 25 July for her combat debut off Viêtnam. Four days later, after flying just 150 combat sorties; she was limping away from Viêtnam towards Subic Bay in the Philippines for temporary repairs before returning to Norfolk, Virginia on 14 September for a major refurbishment. On the morning of 29 July as a launch was under way, a stray voltage ignited a Zuni rocket pod suspended under F-4B 153061 of VF-11. One of the rockets fired and zoomed across the deck to hit a VA-46 A-4E fuel tank, causing a chain reaction of explosions and fire on the flight deck. The Skyhawk pilot, Commander Fred D. White, was incredibly fortunate to escape and be rescued by his plane captain. The aircraft on the deck were soon well ablaze, the fire fed by over 40,000 gallons of aviation fuel together with bombs and other ordnance. Bombs detonated, blowing holes in the armoured deck through which fell burning fuel and ordnance that set fire to six lower decks. After the inferno was eventually brought under control the next day, a total of 134 men were dead, sixty-two more injured and twenty-one aircraft destroyed with another thirty-four damaged.
A-6A Intruder BuNo155668 of VA-85 ‘Black Falcons’ attached to CVW-14 on the USS Constellation (CVA-64) dropping Mk.81/82 ‘Snakeye’ 250lb General purpose bombs with Mk.14 TRD (Tail Retarding Device) attached over Viêtnam.
On 31 July the Oriskany had had an extremely tough re-introduction to combat in Southeast Asia with the loss of twelve aircraft and seven airmen since the ship started combat operations on 14 July. An SA-2 claimed the last victim of the month. Lieutenant (jg) Charles Peter Zuhoski of VF-111 was flying as escort to an ‘Iron Hand’ operation to the east of Hànôi. The aircraft found what they were looking for and started manoeuvring to avoid a volley of missiles. Lieutenant Zuhoski was climbing through 11,000 feet when his aircraft was hit in the rear fuselage by a SAM. The engine seized and, with the rear of the aircraft a mass of flames, the pilot ejected and landed near the village of Ngủ nghỉ, ten miles east of Hànôi. Like many pilots now coming into Southeast Asia, Charles Zuhoski was on his first operational tour of duty after completion of flying and combat training. He joined VF-111 in March 1967, got married on 3 June, departed Alameda on the Oriskany on 16 June and became a PoW on his 14th mission on 31 July. He was released by the North Viêtnamese on 14 March 1973.
During April-July 1967 the Navy accounted for another dozen enemy aircraft but one of its worst days occurred on 21 August when three A-6A Intruders in a four-plane strike force of Milestone flight from VA-196 ‘Main Battery’ aboard the Constellation were shot down during a raid on the Duc Noi rail yards five miles north of Hànôi. The naval strike was unleashed at exactly the same time as the USAF strike was going in at Yên Vinh nearby. The Intruders were led by Commander Leo Twyman Profilet, the CO of VA-196 and a veteran of the Korean War where he had flown ninety-eight combat missions in the Skyraider. The Intruders’ route from the coast-in point had been uneventful with the exception that the cloud base was between 3,000 feet and 5,000 feet and storm clouds were building up. Further along their route they received indications of launched SAM missiles and observed bursting 85mm AA fire. Lieutenant (jg) Forrest G. Trembley in the Intruder flown by Lieutenant (jg) Dain V. Scott reported that they had been hit and were advised to reverse course and return to the coast. Trembley transmitted that they were experiencing no difficulty and that they would proceed to the target rather than egress alone. Several SAMs had been launched at this time and a transmission was made, ‘Heads up for the Air Force strike’ which was being conducted in the vicinity of the Intruders’ target. Commander Profilet and Lieutenant Commander William M. Hardman were hit in the target area. As Profilet’s aircraft rolled into a thirty degree dive from 7,500 feet, an SA-2 exploded close by, which badly damaged the aircraft’s starboard wing. A few moments later the wing came off and the aircraft cart-wheeled towards the ground. The crew ejected and landed close to Hànôi and were quickly captured and taken to the ‘Hànôi Hilton’. Profilet and Hardman were on their 59th mission together when they were shot down. A total of fifty-one SAMs were fired at the Constellation’s aircraft during a series of strikes on this day.
Of the three remaining Intruders of ‘Milestone’ flight, two of them, flown by Lieutenant Commander Jimmy Lee Buckley and his bombardier-navigator Lieutenant Robert J. Flynn and his bombardier-navigator Lieutenant (jg) Dain V. Scott and Lieutenant (jg) Forrest G. Trembley became separated from the deputy leader in the other aircraft but were tracked on his radar screen and those of an orbiting E-2 Hawkeye and on the Constellation itself. Flynn was well-known throughout his Air Wing for carrying his cornet with him on combat missions with which to sound the US Cavalry charge into a keyed microphone just before roll-in. The two Intruders flew northeast away from the target but instead of turning out to sea they continued heading northeast until they crossed into China, almost 110 miles from Hànôi. It was possible that low cloud and thunderstorms forced them to head further north than had been planned and they apparently missed their pre-planned turning points. Whatever the cause, when the aircraft crossed into Chinese airspace they were attacked and shot down by Chinese MiG-19s and the event was loudly proclaimed on Peking Radio.
A-4F Skyhawks of VA-55 ‘Warhorses’ of Attack Carrier Air Wing 21 (CVW-21) on the flight deck of the attack aircraft carrier USS Hancock (CVA-19), armed for a mission over Viêtnam on 25 May 1972. Skyhawks NP-501, -505, and -510 belong to VA-55; NP-316 to VA-212 ‘Rampant Raiders’, NP-412 and NP-416 to VA-164 ‘Ghost Riders’. The aircraft are armed with Mk 82 (500 lb and Mk 83 1,000lb bombs.
On 31 August on the last day of the month the Oriskany dispatched ten A-4E Skyhawks from VA-163 ‘Saints’ and VA-164 ‘Ghost Riders’ against a railway bridge at near Hảiphòng. A concerted campaign had started the previous day to isolate Hảiphòng through which about 85% of the North’s imports arrived. As the ships bringing in the supplies could not be attacked or the harbour mined, the only alternative was to try to cut all routes out of the city. About thirteen miles southwest of Hảiphòng on the approach to the target the formation encountered a volley of SAMs. One of the missiles exploded directly in the path of Lieutenant Commander Hugh Allen Stafford and his wingman, Lieutenant (jg) David Jay Carey. Stafford was flying at about 16,000 feet and the force of the explosion blew him out of the cockpit of his aircraft still strapped to his ejection seat. Fortunately, his seat separated and his parachute deployed automatically and, although badly injured, he was lucky to survive at all. Lieutenant Carey, who was on his first mission over North Viêtnam, was also in trouble. His engine wound down and the rear end of his aircraft was on fire. He ejected from the aircraft and, like his leader, was quickly captured. A few minutes after the first two aircraft went down, the aircraft of Lieutenant Commander Richard Clark Perry, the leader of the VA-164 element, was hit by another SA-2. Streaming fuel, Lieutenant Commander Perry turned out to sea escorted by two other VA-164 aircraft. About two miles off the coast, the aircraft became uncontrollable and Perry ejected. A SAR helicopter was already on the scene and a helicopter crewman saw Lieutenant Commander Perry hanging limp in his parachute. When he entered the water he failed to surface and when the para-rescue man reached him he was found to be dead, probably from a chest wound. As the parachute lines were twisted around the pilot’s body and the North Viêtnamese were firing mortars at the helicopter from the shore, Lieutenant Commander Perry’s body had to be left in the water.
On 24 October 1967 seven hours after Kep airfield was bombed, the Navy and Air Force made a coordinated attack on Phuc Yên, the first time this major air base had been attacked. The raid was accompanied by several flights of Phantoms that flew CAPs over various points in North Viêtnam. Radio Hànôi announced that, in the afternoon, eight US warplanes had been shot down and that a number of pilots had been captured. Two of the losses were F-4B Phantoms of VF-151 ‘Vigilantes’ from the Coral Sea. One was crewed by pilot Commander Charles R. Gillespie the CO of VF-151 who led one of the Phantom sections and his NFO (Naval Flight Officer or navigator), Lieutenant (jg) Richard C. Clark, the other, by Lieutenant (jg)’s Robert F. Frishmann and Earl G. Lewis, which were brought down by SAM missiles during a strike on the Hànôi, Hảiphòng and Vinh Phuc region of North Viêtnam.
As the raid was flying down Thud Ridge, still thirteen miles north of the target, it was engaged by a SAM battery. Commander Gillespie saw one of the SA-2s and dived to 14,000 feet to avoid it but moments later the aircraft was hit by another missile that the crew had not spotted. The aircraft burst into flames and the hydraulics failed, leading to loss of control. The cockpit filled with smoke, the intercom went dead and Gillespie had to use hand signals to order abandonment. He ejected safely but was not able to tell if his NFO escaped from the aircraft although other members of the section reported seeing two parachutes. It seems that Lieutenant Clark did not appear in any of the PoW camps. The other members of Gillespie’s flight remained overhead near Thud Ridge to provide cover for any possible rescue attempt. About fifteen minutes later another Phantom was hit by a SAM. Lieutenant Robert F. Frishmann was flying straight and level at 10,000 feet when it was damaged by a missile that exploded behind the Phantom. One of the engines failed and caught fire but before the crew could take any action another SA-2 exploded just in front of the aircraft. The Phantom immediately rolled out of control and both crew ejected. Frishmann thought his NFO had been killed but the pair met up after more than four hours on the ground. However, both men were found and captured by the Viêtnamese. Frishmann’s arm was badly injured when the SAM exploded but a North Viêtnamese doctor operated on the arm removing the elbow joint and shortening the arm by eight inches.
On 26 October the Navy lost two A-4Es and an F-8E Crusader to North Viêtnamese SAM batteries. The first aircraft was lost during another raid on Phuc Yên. Commander Verlyne Wayne Daniels, a Korean War veteran having flown Skyraiders with VA-155 in 1953, had returned to his old squadron in 1967 as executive officer of VA-155 operating from the Coral Sea. On 26 October he was leading the second division of Skyhawks towards the target area at about 9,000 feet when a barrage of SAMs was fired at the aircraft. Daniels started evasive manoeuvres but his aircraft received a direct hit from an SA-2 that hit the rear fuselage. The aircraft was engulfed in flames and went out of control when the hydraulics failed. Commander Daniels ejected about fifteen miles northwest of Thai Nguyen and was soon captured. A little later in the morning the Oriskany launched an A-4E strike on a thermal power plant at Hànôi. Again the target was well protected by SAM batteries and two aircraft were shot down. Lieutenant Commander John Sidney McCain of VA-163, who was flying his 23rd mission, was in the leading division of the raid but as he started his dive on the target his aircraft was hit by an SA-2, which blew most of the starboard wing off. Unable to control the remnants of his aircraft, McCain ejected over Hànôi itself and landed in Truc Bach Lake, a small lake in the city. During the high-speed ejection he broke both arms and his right leg and was barely able to save himself from drowning. Lieutenant Commander McCain was captured and spent the next five years as a prisoner until released on 14 March 1973. About an hour after McCain had been shot down, another raid of twenty-five aircraft from Oriskany attacked the thermal power plant at Hànôi. A flight of four F-8Es of VF-162 was assigned to flak suppression but one of the aircraft had to return to the carrier with a malfunction. As the three remaining aircraft approached the target the flight received SAM warnings and the Crusaders took immediate evasive action. Two SAMs were fired and Lieutenant (jg) Charles Donald Rice’s aircraft was hit by a missile at 15,000 feet as the F-8 was inverted during a split-S manoeuvre. The aircraft’s port wing was blown off and Rice ejected to land three miles northwest of Hànôi. He was quickly captured and imprisoned in the ‘Hànôi Hilton’.
On 19 November two more VF-151 F-4Bs were lost. Switchbox flight from VF-151 was providing TARCAP coverage in the vicinity of Hảiphòng during strikes by aircraft from the Intrepid on airfields and bridges near the city. The two Phantoms were stalking a flight of MiGs when they were themselves engaged by other MiGs just south of Hảiphòng. The MiGs were from Gia Lam but were operating undetected from a forward airfield at Kiên Ân. Lieutenant Commander Claude D. Clower’s aircraft was hit by an air-to-air missile and its starboard wing was blown off. Clower ejected and was captured but Lieutenant (jg) Walter O. Estes may have been injured as he was not seen to escape. Moments later Lieutenant (jg) James F. Teague’s aircraft was also hit and damaged. The NFO, Lieutenant (jg) Theodore G. Stier, thought that the aircraft was hit by cannon fire from a MiG but it is also possible that the aircraft was damaged by debris from Clower’s aircraft, which had just exploded close by. Stier, a veteran of 155 missions, ejected but his pilot was not seen to escape from the aircraft.
On the night of 30 October 1967 a lone A-6 Intruder jet aircraft was launched from a Seventh Fleet carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin. Its target was in Hànôi - the most heavily defended city in the world and perhaps in the history of air warfare. For this single-plane strike, the pilot, Lieutenant Commander Charles Hunter and the bombardier-navigator, Lieutenant Lyle Bull were awarded the Navy Cross for ‘extraordinary heroism’ and performance ‘above and beyond the call of duty’. This is their story.72
The previous afternoon was like many others. The two had coffee in the stateroom Bull shared with another bombardier-navigator from their unit, VA-196. Bull had just finished the planning for a routine night hop in which they would be going after trucks in North Viêtnam. Finding and hitting moving targets in complete darkness was no trick for the crew or the highly sophisticated electronic black boxes in the A-6 Intruder. ‘Piece of cake,’ they called it. They discussed the mission thoroughly, but Bull did the actual planning. The pilot looked over his navigator’s work very carefully, but, as was usually the case, made no changes.
The final weather briefing was scheduled for 1800. There was time to relax. It was only 1630 - until a phone call from the squadron duty officer changed their plans. ‘Better get down to IOIC73 Lyle,’ said the duty officer, ‘you’re going to Hànôi tonight.’
In IOIC Lieutenant (jg) Pete Barrick, the squadron air intelligence officer, was ready for them. Charts were spread out on a long table. While Barrick left to get the target folder, Hunter and Bull glanced at the air defence charts of the Hànôi area, noting fresh red markings which indicated new surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites. In addition, hundreds of black dots showed anti-aircraft gun positions and in the vicinity of their target - the Hànôi railroad ferry slip - it was almost solid. Hunter said one approach looked as bad as another. This was to be a singleplane strike. The success of the mission depended entirely upon one A-6 and its crew. Barrick, Hunter and Bull studied the target carefully. The photography of the area was good. Exact measurements were made to provide precise inputs for the computers in the aircraft. The Hànôi air defences were evaluated. Hunter’s initial impression was right; there was no ‘best’ way to get in or out. It was going to be rough because Hànôi was loaded. Leaving IOIC, the two of them went up to the forward wardroom for a quick dinner. The meal was served cafeteria style. There was a short waiting line made up mostly of their squadron mates. ‘Stand back, you guys, here come Charlie and Lyle. They go first. This may be their last meal,’ said one of the young officers. The two aviators laughed self-consciously and moved to the head of the line. There was more joking, but pervading it all was the uncomfortable feeling that perhaps the well-intended humour was getting too close to the truth.
F-4J 155799 of VF-92 with F-4J-35-MC 155800 of VF-96 (behind) on the USS Constellation (CVA-64) in early 1972. 155800 was flown by Lieutenant Randy H. ‘Duke’ Cunningham and Lieutenant (jg) William P. Driscoll on 10 May on a flak suppression flight on a raid on Hải Dương when they destroyed three MiG-17s. Their third kill made Cunningham and Driscoll the first aces of the Việtnam War as they had previously shot down two MiGs on 19 January and 8 May. They had little time to celebrate their new ‘ace’ status. They headed out towards the coast passing several more MiGs but as they approached Nam Định, climbing through 16,000 feet, their aircraft was damaged by an explosion from an SA-2 missile. Shrapnel peppered the rear underside of the fuselage and the starboard wing tip was blown off. Soon afterwards the hydraulics started to fail. They reached the coast but the aircraft was on fire and started to spin so Cunningham and Driscoll ejected about five miles out to sea. They were soon rescued by SH-3 Sea King helicopters from HC-7 and were taken to the USS Okinawa.
On 10 May 1972 Lieutenant Randy ‘Duke’ Cunningham, pilot of a VF-96 F-4J Phantom operating from the Constellation and Lieutenant (jg) William P. ‘Irish’ Driscoll his RIO became the first American aircrew to qualify as aces solely as a result of action in Viêtnam when they downed their third, fourth and fifth MiGs.
The whole squadron knew Hànôi for what it was - a closely knit web of anti-aircraft guns and SAM sites. There were at least 560 known anti-aircraft guns of various calibres in the area Hunter and Bull were to flyover. Thirty MiG aircraft were based within a few seconds’ flying time from their target. They knew full well that the flight would be opposed by fifteen ‘hot’ SAM sites; sites that had been firing with devastating accuracy in previous days. During intelligence briefings, they were told that the North Viêtnamese were transferring additional defence firepower to protect their capital city. Hunter and Bull did not discuss the fact that they might not make it back. After all, six other crews from their squadron had gone through the heart of Hànôi three nights before. They took missiles and flak, but they all came home without a scratch. But that strike was different. It was one of the first strikes to hit in the area of the railroad ferry slip and it obviously took the North Viêtnamese defenders by surprise. The planes shot through with ten-minute separations, but each successive aircraft encountered steadily increasing defensive fire. Six SAMs were fired at the last plane.
Commander Robert Blackwood, the squadron’s executive officer, returned from the raid convinced that the luxury of surprise would not be available to any more multi-plane strikes going into Hànôi, but a single plane might make it. He discussed the alternatives available with the task force commander, as well as the odds of success and survival. They both knew that shore-based as well as carrier-based aircraft had taken a terrible ‘hosing down’ in the Hànôi area. The Admiral was convinced that there was no single best way of accomplishing this mission, but he also believed in making frequent variations in tactics. If they were to achieve surprise the strike would have to go in low and at-night. Could the A-6 do it? Hunter and Bull would be the first to know.
The launch, when it came, was much the same as the many that had preceded it. The catapult hurled the twenty-seven-ton aircraft down the deck with the always impressive acceleration force that, in a space of 230 feet, propelled the aircraft to an air speed of 150 knots. The A-6 was airborne from its home, the attack carrier Constellation. The lone Intruder swept over the beach at the coast-in point they called the ‘armpit,’ an inlet north of Thanh Hóa and south of Nam Định. The planned approach to the target used the rocky hills to the southwest of Hànôi in order to take advantage of the radar ‘masking’ which they provided. Absolute minimum altitude would be the only way the A-6 would be able to stay below the lethal envelope of a radar-guided SAM. The jet, moving at 350 knots, was now at an altitude of 500 feet.
As the jet flew to within eighteen miles of the target, a signal flashed in the cockpit, indicating that a SAM radar was locked on the A-6. Immediately Hunter snapped, ‘Take me down.’ With precision accuracy, Bull guided the pilot by search radar down to 300 feet, with the jagged hills rising on either side. At the lower altitude, their instruments indicated they had lost the SAM lock-on. In the radarscope, Bull could see only the ridges of the hills on both sides above them and the reflection of the valley floor below. Four miles straight ahead was the Initial Point (IP), a small island in the Red River. The IP would be the final navigational aid en route to the target. From this spot, distance and bearing had been precisely measured to the railroad ferry slip. Both the pilot and navigator had to work as one if the mission was to be a success.
With his eyes fixed on the radarscope, Bull placed the crossed hairs on the IP in his radar screen. At the proper instant, Hunter was ready to turn on the final in-bound leg to the target. And again the warning flashed that another SAM radar had locked-on the A-6. Hunter eased the craft down to less than 200 feet and he moved the stick to the left as the A-6 passed just short of the island in the Red River. The target was now ten miles ahead. The SAM warning signal did not break off with the drop in altitude. As the Intruder flew at near treetop level, Hunter and Bull could see a missile lift off from its pad. The SAM was locked-on and guiding perfectly toward the cockpit of the Intruder. Hunter waited until the last second and then he yanked back on the stick, pulling the aircraft into a steep climb. With the nose of the A-6 pointed almost straight up, the SAM exploded underneath it. The laden bomber shook violently, but continued into a modified barrel roll, topping out at 2,500 feet. At the peak of the high-G roll, the A-6 was on its back. Bull raised his head and could see the ground beneath him lit up by flak. The Intruder rolled out close to the target heading. Bull fixed his attention on the radarscope, noting that the radar cursors had stayed on the target through the roll. ‘I’m stepping the system into attack,’ he told Hunter.
Something caught his eye and he looked up. ‘I have two missiles at two o’clock, Charlie,’ Bull announced. ‘And I have three missiles at ten o’clock,’ was Hunter’s cool reply. Evasion was virtually impossible with five missiles guiding in on the A-6 from two different directions. Hunter quickly manoeuvred the plane, dropping the A-6 to 50 feet. The terrain, illuminated by flak, appeared to be level with the wing tips. Bull could clearly see trucks and people on the road below. They were now only seconds from the target. The five missiles guided perfectly in azimuth, but could not reach down to the A-6. Bull sensed that the missiles exploded above the canopy, but he didn’t look up. His attention was momentarily fixed on the ground where multiple rows of anti-aircraft guns were firing at the aircraft. He watched the muzzle blasts as the jet shot past each row. They were like mileage markers along the road to the ferry slip. Then came the searchlights, scanning the sky as if celebrating the opening of a giant new supermarket. Some illuminated the Intruder momentarily, but could not stay with the speeding aircraft. Now they were on the target. On signal, Hunter eased back on the stick and the bomber moved up to 200 feet. The next three-and-a-half seconds would be critical to the accuracy of the bomb drop. Hunter must hold the wings level and the course steady, so that Bull and the computers could do the job they had come so far to accomplish. The weapons, eighteen 500lb bombs, fell toward the ferry slip. Feeling the loss of nearly 10,000lbs of dead weight, Hunter pulled the A-6 into a hard right turn. The aircraft was turned into an outbound, southeast heading and Hunter, giving the Communist gunners a run for their money, began manoeuvring the A-6 up and down, back and forth. Again the SAM warning was given - four more missiles were locked on the Intruder. They followed, but could not track the Intruder through its evasive manoeuvres and they exploded above and behind.
F-4J BuNo 153787 of VF-74 ‘Be-Devilers’ of Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 8, recovers aboard USS America (CVA-66) off Việtnam 1972.
They passed over another flak site without incident and then they were safely on their way back to the Constellation. For the first time Charlie Hunter and Lyle Bull had time to realize what they had been through. Only a limited number of military airmen have challenged the main battery of guns in the Hànôi area of North Viêtnam. Fewer yet can claim membership in the elite group who have successfully flown unescorted, at night, over North Viêtnam’s capital city. For those of the latter group, certainly, any subsequent, new experience promised to be anticlimactic.
Early in 1968 President Johnson forbade all strikes further than the 19th Parallel and on 1 November he ordered a halt to all bombing of North Viêtnam. The next incoming President, Richard F. Nixon, confirmed this policy in January 1969 and the ban on bombing of the North remained in force until May 1972 when the North Viêtnamese offensive prompted Nixon to authorize a resumption. ‘Linebacker I’ as it was called began with raids against road and rail systems, to prevent supplies reaching the Communists operating in South Viêtnam. On 8 May A-6 Intruders sowed minefields in Hảiphòng, Hon Gai and Cẩm Phả in the North and in five ports in the South. At this time the North Viêtnamese had one of the best air defence systems in the world, with excellent radar integration of SA-2 SAMs, MiGs and AAA. Losses, though, were kept to within acceptable limits.
The period 10 May to 15 October 1972 produced all four American aces (three USAF and one USN) of the Viêtnam War.74 On the 10 May strike (the second that day) two Navy fliers - Lieutenant Randy ‘Duke’ Cunningham, pilot of a VF-96 F-4J Phantom and Lieutenant (jg) William Driscoll, his RIO - operating from the Constellation became the first American aircrew to qualify as aces solely as a result of action in Viêtnam when they downed their third, fourth and fifth MiGs before their F-4J was hit by a SAM and went down off the coast. Two MiG-17s latched onto Cunningham and Driscoll’s wingman 1,000 feet behind. Just as Cunningham turned the F-4 around the enemy pilot made the fatal mistake of momentarily exposing his underside in a vertical climb. Cunningham fired off a Sidewinder and the MiG-17 exploded. Cunningham turned away and tried to lure another MiG into his wingman’s line of sight, but the F-4 pilot had his hands full with other MiGs and Cunningham was forced to disengage. Scanning the sky Cunningham and Driscoll spotted another F-4 with two MiGs on its tail and another off to the right. Cunningham picked out the nearest MiG-17 and let him have it with another Sidewinder. The enemy jet exploded and the pilot ejected. This action brought four MiG-21s down onto the double MiG killers and the outnumbered Phantom crew knew it was time to head for the open sea and home. Nearing the coast Cunningham spotted a MiG-17 and, needing just one more for ace status, he decided to try to shoot it down. The two Americans tacked onto the MiG and a vicious, twisting dogfight ensued. Cunningham realised that this was no ordinary MiG pilot. Neither side could gain the initiative and finally Toon broke off, probably low on fuel and headed for home. The Phantom crew gained their first advantage. Now above and behind him they seized the opportunity to fire their one remaining Sidewinder at the retreating MiG. The heat-seeking missile locked on to the enemy’s tailpipe and blew the jet to pieces. Cunningham had always said a SAM would never hit him. But now, as he turned for home near Hảiphòng, his F-4 was hit by one of the long telegraph pole-shaped missiles. It failed, however, to bring down the jet. Cunningham managed to fly the badly damaged Phantom back to the Constellation, where at 10,000 feet the two men ejected into the sea. They were picked up by a CH-46 helicopter from the Okinawa and returned safely to a hero’s welcome aboard their own carrier where the two fliers, who had scored their two previous victories on 19 January and 8 May when they destroyed a MiG-21 and a MiG-17 respectively, shared their victories with their colleagues.75
Lieutenant Commander John Sidney McCain III, an A-4E Skyhawk pilot, after being released from captivity in Hànôi in 1973. Almost killed in the 29 July 1967 USS Forrestal fire, on 26 October 1967 he was shot down, seriously injured and captured by the North Viêtnamese flying his 23rd bombing mission over North Viêtnam when his was shot down by a missile over Hànôi. McCain fractured both arms and a leg ejecting from his Skyhawk and nearly drowned when he parachuted into Trúc Bạch Lake. Some North Viêtnamese pulled him ashore and then others crushed his shoulder with a rifle butt and bayoneted him. McCain was then transported to Hỏa Lò Prison, nicknamed the ‘Hànôi Hilton’. Although McCain was badly wounded, his captors refused to treat his injuries, beating and interrogating him to get information; he was given medical care only when the North Viêtnamese discovered that his father was a top admiral.
Cunningham and Driscoll - Call sign ‘Showtime 100’ - had begun their mission as part of flak support for a strike group attacking Hải Dương railroad yard. After delivering their ordnance they were attacked from 7 o’clock by two MiG-17s firing cannon. ‘Showtime 100’s wingman called ‘break’ and the MiGs overshot. The F-4J crew fired a Sidewinder, which hit the MiG and it burst into flames before impacting on the ground. Eight MiG-17s were then seen in an anti-clockwise orbit around the target area at 10-15,000 feet and four more dived in column from the Northeast. Just south of Hải Dương ‘Showtime 100’ fired their second Sidewinder which knocked the tail off a MiG-17 whose pilot ejected. ‘Showtime 100’ met their third victim head-on. Cunningham pulled up into a vertical scissors manoeuvre with the MiG-17, which was firing its cannons. After about three minutes the MiG pilot tried to disengage but Cunningham manoeuvred into the enemy’s 6 o’clock position and fired another Sidewinder. The MiG-17 pitched over and impacted the ground with a resulting explosion and fireball. Cunningham and Driscoll attempted to exit the target area but were jumped by a fourth MiG-17 and the F-4J crew attempted to engage but broke off when another F-4J crew called four more MiG-17s at ‘Showtime 100’s 6 o’clock position. Cunningham broke away and accelerated toward the Gulf of Tonkin but at 16,000 feet his F-4J was hit by a SA-2 fired from the vicinity of Nam Định. No RHAW was observed by the crew although Cunningham spotted the SAM just before impact and Driscoll observed an orange cloud after the burst. The Phantom’s hydraulic systems progressively failed and both crew were forced to eject about five NM from the mouth of the Red River. Cunningham and Driscoll were rescued by a helicopter from the Okinawa and returned uninjured to the Constellation.
Unrestricted use of air warfare finally forced the North’s hand. During 18-26 December 1972 ‘Linebacker II’ operations - all-out, intensive aerial bombardment of industry, communications, ports, supply depots and airfields in the Hànôi and Hảiphòng areas by the USAF, USN and USMC - were among the most effective of the war. Pilots who flew the missions claimed that the North Viêtnamese had ‘nothing left to shoot at us as we flew over. It was like flying over New York City.’ When the Communists indicated their desire for a peace settlement on 30 December, the bombing above the 20th Parallel was halted, although missions below the 20th Parallel continued for the first half of January 1973. A peace agreement was signed in Paris on 23 January 1973 and all air operations ceased four days later.
Viêtnam cost the Americans 58,022 dead and brought the USA worldwide condemnation for its role in South-East Asia. The USAF and USN could at least draw some solace from the fact that their final intensive campaign had persuaded Hànôi to seek an end to the war and conclude a peace treaty. Although all US ground forces were withdrawn from South Viêtnam, air raids into neighbouring Cambodia and Laos continued until August 1973. Both countries then fell to the Communists and the North turned its attentions to the final take-over of South Viêtnam. Inevitably, the South, now without US military support, collapsed under the full might of the Communists’ spring offensive. On 12 April 1975 the American Embassy in Sàigòn was evacuated and 287 staff were flown to carriers offshore. On 29 April 900 Americans were airlifted by the Navy to five carriers. Next day Sàigòn was in Communist hands and the South was under the control of North Viêtnam.
Endnotes for Chapter 8
56 The AD Skyraider (re-designated A-1 in 1962) remained in combat until 1968.
57 On his next deployment, while Commander of Carrier Air Wing 16 aboard the carrier USS Oriskany (CV-34), he was shot down over enemy territory on 9 September 1965. Stockdale ejected from his A-4E, which had been struck by enemy fire and completely disabled. He parachuted into a small village, where he was severely beaten and taken prisoner. Stockdale was held prisoner in the notorious Hỏa Lò prison (The Hànôi Hilton’) for the next seven and a half years. As the senior Naval officer (Stockdale was the highest-ranking naval officer held as a PoW in Viêtnam), he was one of the primary organizers of prisoner resistance. Tortured routinely and denied medical attention for the severely damaged leg he suffered during capture, Stockdale created and enforced a code of conduct for all prisoners which governed torture, secret communications and behavior. In the summer of 1969, he was locked in leg irons in a bath stall and routinely tortured and beaten. When told by his captors that he was to be paraded in public, Stockdale slit his scalp with a razor to purposely disfigure himself so that his captors could not use him as propaganda. When they covered his head with a hat, he beat himself with a stool until his face was swollen beyond recognition. When Stockdale was discovered with information that could implicate his friends’ ‘black activities’ he slit his wrists so they could not torture him into confession. Stockdale was released on 12 February 1973. His shoulders had been wrenched from their sockets, his leg shattered by angry villagers and a torturer and his back broken. He was awarded 26 personal combat decorations, including the Medal of Honor (in 1976) and four Silver Stars. During the late 1970s, he served as President of the Naval War College. He died aged 81 on 5 July 2005.
58 The North Viêtnamese eventually repatriated his body in August 1985. Results claimed for Operation ‘Pierce Arrow’ included the destruction of 90 per cent of the petroleum storage facility at Vinh together with the destruction or damage of an estimated 25 torpedo boats, representing two-thirds of the North Viêtnamese force. In an incident unrelated to Operation ‘Pierce Arrow’, an F-8E Crusader of VF-191 on Bon Homme Richard was lost through engine failure during a training flight in the South China Sea. Lieutenant W. D. Storey survived. Việtnam Air Losses, Chris Hobson (Midland Publishing 2001).
59 A more far-reaching response was a plan agreed by President Johnson to send four tactical squadrons to Southeast Asia and thirty B-52 strategic bombers to Anderson AFB, Guam. On 13 February the President authorised the start of operation ‘Rolling Thunder’, a sustained bombing campaign against military targets in North Viêtnam, the first mission being flown on 2 March. Viêtnam Air Losses, Chris Hobson (Midland Publishing 2001)
60 Franke and Doremus were held prisoner for 7½ years in Hànôi. They were released on 2 February 1973.
61 Berg and Purcell were released with the other PoWs in February 1973.
62 Talking Proud Archives - Military HH-43 SAR pilot’s diary, 1964-1965, Viêtnam: from diary entries by Archie Taylor, commander, Det 4, Pacific Air Rescue Center (PARC), October 1964-May 1965 edited by Ed Marek.
63 Remains were found in 1987 and identified as those of Lieutenant McWhorter. These remains were returned to his family in February 1987. Talking Proud Archives - Military HH-43 SAR pilot’s diary, 1964-1965, Viêtnam: from diary entries by Archie Taylor, commander, Det 4, Pacific Air Rescue Center (PARC), October 1964-May 1965.
64 Adapted from an interview by Reed Graham of the Library of Congress.
65 Several PoWs reported that Commander Cameron was with them until that month but was in poor physical and mental health, by then having spent most of his time in solitary. When other prisoners were about to be moved from one part of the ‘Hànôi Hilton’ to another, guards told the PoWs that Cameron was in the camp hospital. He was never seen again until his remains were repatriated on 6 March 1974. Việtnam Air Losses, Chris Hobson (Midland Publishing 2001).
66 The Fulton system consisted of an inflatable balloon and harness that enabled the airborne recovery of a person from the ground. It was used primarily by Special Forces and intelligence agents.
67 Commander Smith had been awarded the Silver Star for leading an attack on the Bac Giang POL (Petrol-Oil-Lubricants) depot on 30 June 1966 and had dropped the Navy’s first Walleye bomb during an attack on the Sam Son Army barracks on 11 March 1967. Việtnam Air Losses, Chris Hobson (Midland Publishing 2001).
68 He was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for his part in the attack on the Bac Giang thermal power plant. Homer Smith’s remains were handed over by the Viêtnamese on 16 March 1974. Việtnam Air Losses, Chris Hobson (Midland Publishing 2001).
69 Robert Fuller retired from the United States Navy as a Rear Admiral in 1982.
70 Commander Whittemore was lost at sea while serving with VA-93 on 11 April 1968. Việtnam Air Losses, Chris Hobson (Midland Publishing 2001).
71 Ensign Bruce Merle Patterson and AE2 Charles David Hardie were KIA. This aircraft had only just been converted in June to KA-3B tanker standard at the Naval Air Rework Facility at Alameda, California. Việtnam Air Losses, Chris Hobson (Midland Publishing 2001).
72 Hanoi Tonight by Lieutenant Commander William S. Graves, Public Affairs Officer, US Seventh Fleet Attack Carrier Striking Force. (US Naval Institute Proceedings July 1969).
73 Integrated Operational Intelligence Center.
74 Remarkably, between January-June 1967 USAF jets shot down 46 MiGs, including seven MiG-17s by two Phantoms and five F-l05s on one day, 13 May. From April-July 1967 the USN accounted for a dozen MiGs.
75 Cunningham and Driscoll had shot down their first MiG on 19 January when the second of two Sidewinders fired blew the tail off a MiG-21. It was the 112th MiG brought down in the war and the tenth to fall to a Navy fighter. Cunningham and Driscoll scored their second kill on 8 May when they downed a MiG-17 with another Sidewinder.