Lucky’s Bridge (Vietnam Air War Book 2) Read online

  Lucky’s Bridge

  Tom Wilson

  Copyright © 2015 Tom Wilson

  This work is dedicated to Tom (USAF), Mike (USN), Gavin (USAF), Chris (USMC) and Diane (USAF)—five strong, patriotic and yet very different individuals—and to all the sons and daughters who would dare to fight to keep the American dream alive.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As Lucky's Bridge was conceived, and then as the writing progressed, I received constant support, and valuable criticisms and ideas from Andrea. After the work, originally entitled Bridges, was submitted, Mr. Joseph Pittman suggested the new title as well as several beneficial changes. Mr. Greg Tobin, and then Mr. Tom Dupree, worked to smooth the way at Bantam.

  Several close friends reviewed the manuscript for authenticity. Lieutenant Colonel Billy Sparks, USAF (Ret.), put his uncannily prodigious memory to work on historical background. Colonel Jerry Hoblit, USAF (Ret.), was also, once again, a lifesaver. Although the first time, when we flew a combat tour over North Vietnam, was more dramatic, this one was also appreciated. Both of those former combat fighter pilots, to whom their country owes so much, provided technical details about tactics, military aircraft, weaponry and support equipment which I had either not known or had long forgotten. Lieutenant Colonel Ed Gamble, USAF (Ret.), contributed information about Special Operations aircraft and procedures, and covert insertion and withdrawal of Special Forces long range reconnaissance patrols. Colonel Chuck Sloan, USAF (Ret.), supplied details about RF-4C combat recce efforts. My buddy, Colonel Mike Gilroy, USAF (Ret.), once again reviewed and corrected descriptions of sophisticated enemy weapons. Any errors should not be blamed on them, but on my indiscretion, hard-headedness, and desire to weave a somewhat simplified tale.

  I would also like to acknowledge the present and former maintenance, weapons, logistics and support men, pilots, Wild Weasel bears, aircrew members, POWs, intelligence officers, Special Forces members, grunts, wives, and many others, whose war stories and vignettes were borrowed, reshaped, disguised and included herein.

  Thank you all.

  CONTENTS

  BOOK I: Fluid Four Formation

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  BOOK II: 45° Dive Bomb Maneuver

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  BOOK III: SAM Evasion Maneuver

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  POSTSCRIPT

  TRUTH & FICTION: Missing Man Formation

  TRUTH & FICTION

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BOOK I

  Fluid Four Formation

  Headquarters Seventh Air Force, Tan Son Nhut Air Base, Saigon, Republic of Vietnam

  Peacemaker toiled diligently through the day, maintaining the war plans with the finickiness of an old-maid librarian, ensuring that each change and deletion was properly logged and inserted into its document.

  When he finished with his labors at an hour well into the evening, for the volume of his work was endless, he again examined the latest entries on the primary-targets list, paying special attention to the ones just approved for transmittal to the units. His final official act of the long workday was to survey his desktop carefully and then those of his co-workers, to ensure that no one had left out a classified document. He went around the large office and twirled the knobs of the seven safes and penned his initials on their cards to show he'd checked that they were locked. Only then did he sign off the room as secured.

  He trotted down the stairs and hurried down the hall to the security desk, where he showed his badge to the security policemen. They joked about him working late to brownnose his boss, and he told them not to get too much sleep on the job.

  Peacemaker emerged from the building thinking he was surrounded by Stone Age military mentalities. As he walked toward a nearby base bus stop, he ran the target coordinates over and over in his mind.

  Ten minutes later the blue Air Force bus dropped him off at his barracks. His buddy Gino was there, champing to go downtown and griping because he was half an hour late. He changed into civvies. Gino didn't quit bitching until they were outside and quick-walking toward the gate.

  They took a taxi to the Blue Pheasant and sat in their customary dark corner near the loud and awful live band. He quietly drank Pepsi while Gino guzzled beer and whooped at the strippers, whom they knew by their Americanized first names. Suzee, Doreece, and then Katee smiled plastic expressions and moved woodenly as they took it all off.

  By the end of a second tune Katee was nude, and she'd begun to caress herself with handfuls of mineral oil. She glistened and dripped as she moved her hands over herself, and Gino sucked on appreciative breath. She cupped her small breasts and aimed pelvic grinds toward the audience, and that caused Gino to glaze over. He stood and tottered toward the side entrance. He'd go around to the back, where they'd open up for him so he could claim her. Gino boasted he was so well liked by the girls that he could take his choice, and that furthermore he got it free. The simple shit didn't realize he was being subsidized by the American press.

  Someday when it was all over, maybe he'd tell Gino how he'd unwittingly helped to bring truth to Americans back home.

  Peacemaker drained his glass of Pepsi and casually turned to look at the man sitting at the bar. The skinny reporter from API glanced at him, then back to Katee as she squirmed and dripped her oil onto the filthy stage floor. Finally the tune ended, and Katee abruptly stood and scampered backstage to Gino. Another stripper took her place, wearing an abbreviated cowgirl outfit and grinding to the tune of "Rawhide."

  Now began the dangerous part of the game.

  If Americans were truly free, Peacemaker would simply go over and chat with the reporter. But Americans were not free. They'd been maneuvered into an evil war by the lies of the political/industrial/military establishment, and the fascists were jealous of their secrets. The cretins at his workplace, starting with the stupid colonel who ran his department, were paranoid about information leaks, and if they knew what he was doing . . .

  But it was his right—no, his duty—to help bring truth to the people. The reporter was an American, for Christ's sake, and the American public should know what their own military was doing. It wasn't as if he were passing information to the North Vietnamese, although he'd wondered if even that would really be so wrong. Perhaps if they knew, the civilians could be moved from the target areas and innocent lives saved.

  He gave Gino a couple more minutes to connect with Katee, then carefully flattened a bar napkin onto the tabletop and pulled out his U.S. government–issue pen. He carefully wrote:

  20/210753–1055108, 205054–1064323—NEW TGTS BEING PLANNED: KEY BRIDGES IN RP SIX

  On the twentieth, three days hence, American pilots would bomb the thermal-power plants at the coordinates in Hanoi and Haiphong. He felt bad t
hat he couldn't provide Time Over Target information as the reporter also wanted. He didn't know if the tidbit about the plan the colonel was working on, to destroy critical bridges in North Vietnam, would be useful, but the reporter said he could use such nuggets. Good background, he'd called them.

  He double-checked his figures, looking closely in the dim light to make sure they were legible. He liked his handwriting to be as orderly and precise as his mind.

  He wadded up the napkin and placed it into the empty ashtray, then motioned carelessly toward the bar. A grinning waitress hurried over. She cleaned the table thoroughly before taking his order for another Pepsi. When she left, the apprehension left him, replaced by a serene knowledge that he'd done the right thing.

  A few minutes later Peacemaker watched the reporter stroll out without a backward glance. He would take the crumpled bar napkin to this fancy apartment across town and begin to write his press release. After the airplanes had flown their bombing missions, the reporter would file an in-depth report that the Americans had bombed the power plants and killed innocent humans there. He might even say that he'd gained his information through an anonymous high government official.

  Peacemaker felt a tingle of conscience about what he'd done, but he quickly tempered it. They were printing all sorts of military secrets in the newspapers back home, and those had to he coming from others such as he. A surge of righteousness coursed through him, smothering the doubts.

  The Pepsi arrived, and he sipped and watched with a bored expression as a new dancer took the stage. He hoped Gino would hurry with Katee so they could find a restaurant, eat, and get on back to the base. He had a busy day facing him tomorrow, and Peacemaker was never late.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Thursday, April 20th, 1220 Local—1967, Takhli Royal Thai Air Force Base, Thailand

  The noonday sun permeated every substance and shadow, creating raw heat, which rose in shimmering waves from the tarmac spiderweb of parking areas, taxiways, and the long runway. It was the dry season, and with each puny stirring of wind, red dust boiled up to cover everything with ancient Siamese grime.

  Like other peoples native to tropical areas, the Thais knew to live and move slowly and to conserve their energies when the sun was high overhead. The loud, profane men who had come from halfway around the world toiled doggedly in spite of the heat, as if challenging the sun's authority over the world below.

  From birth the men had been taught that anything was possible if they wanted it bad enough and worked hard enough to get it.

  Staff Sergeant Larry Hughes

  "She's loaded and ready, Sarge," said the brawny and sun-bronzed load-team leader.

  Staff Sergeant Lawrence (NMI) Hughes looked over the Aircraft/Ordnance Load form. "Any problems?"

  "Nope. Had a little trouble crankin' in the ammo, but the problem's with the autoloader, not your bird."

  Larry Hughes nodded. The M-61 Gatling cannon had better be okay. A week earlier a pilot had reported that his rounds had gone wild when he'd taken a high-angle snapshot at a MiG. The gun shop said they couldn't find a problem. At his insistence and under his watchful eye they'd boresited the gun again. Then he'd personally tweaked and fine-tuned until he was convinced the six spinning barrels were precisely aligned. Hughes was satisfied only when everything on his airplane worked, and worked right.

  He watched as the motorized MJ-1 loader roared off for another cradleful of general-purpose bombs and the load crew trudged to the next bird in the line, joking and laughing with the crew chief there. One more and they'd be finished reloading all the squadron aircraft. Seventeen of the 354th's twenty-five assigned airplanes had flown this morning. Sixteen would fly combat sorties to various North Vietnamese targets in the afternoon. Eight of the sixteen would, like Larry Hughes's bird, join aircraft provided by the other two squadrons to make up the alpha strike, which meant they'd be sent to bomb the most dangerous targets. He'd been told this one was a particularly difficult mission. It was unlikely all the aircraft would return.

  Like the load crew, Larry Hughes was stripped to the waist. His coal-black skin glistened. Sweat tickled as it ran down his chest and his back, soaking his fatigue pants, gathering in rivulets to flow down the insides of his legs. Ropes of muscles bunched and played across his back and shoulders as he moved. He was rock-hard and lean, surely in the finest physical condition of his life. Eighteen and twenty-hour workdays had done that for him. Once-pleasant features now looked habitually weary, and the mouth, once graced with an easy smile, was entirely too serious. He was twenty-three years old, but worry lines had formed and were beginning to mar his handsome face.

  Hughes had been at Takhli for three months, and this was his third assigned aircraft. Two months earlier he'd waited for his first one to land after the early-morning combat mission, watched as other aircraft taxied in and were parked, and heard the voice inside him say it would be okay, that the pilot had likely just been delayed or maybe taken a hit and been forced to land at one of the forward bases. Then reality had arrived as the line chief drove up in his battered pickup to give him the bad news. His bird wasn't coming back. When Hughes asked one of the pilots, he learned the airplane had been hit by a surface-to-air missile. When he asked if the lieutenant had been rescued, he'd been given a terse shake of the head.

  Hughes had turned in the aircraft forms. Then, feeling as if he'd been punched in the stomach, he'd wandered aimlessly to the NCO Club bar. After his fifth Budweiser he'd realized the beer was just screwing with his mentals, making him sadder and the pictures of the lieutenant sharper. He'd left the club and begun to walk and think.

  Had it been something he'd forgotten or done or not done? He'd walked all the way to the main gate, then several miles around the inside perimeter road, walked until his legs felt like lead, until a security police patrol stopped to tell him to get the hell off the perimeter road before he surprised one of the sleepy Thai guards and caught a load of double-aught buckshot. They'd given him a ride back, and he'd returned to a lonely corner of the all-night NCO Club bar to drink a few more beers.

  The next morning the gruff line chief had assigned him a new bird, just flown in from the overhaul depot in the states, and Larry Hughes had begun the acceptance inspections with a king-sized hangover. He'd not stopped checking and tightening and tuning and fussing over the aircraft until 0200 the following morning. Only then did he declare the immaculate airplane ready for its maiden combat flight.

  That afternoon a swarthy captain had crawled out of the crew van wearing his parachute, survival vest, and g-suit and hauling his map bag. He'd acted especially nervous, so Larry had guessed they were going to another tough target.

  He thought often of that afternoon, how he'd apologetically mentioned the aircraft's few remaining minor problems, how the pilot had listened with less than full attention. Remembered the captain crawling up the ladder and into the cockpit wearing a distant, wistful look. Recalled the whine of the start cart, the engine start-up, and running smoothly through the ground-check procedures while he spoke on intercom to the pilot. Finally the big fighter was taxied out of its parking place, and he'd saluted, the sharpest he could muster. The swarthy captain had acknowledged with a grim-faced nod.

  Major Lucky Anderson, who'd been leading the flight just behind the captain's, had searched Hughes out after that mission to make sure his questions were answered. The big bird had come apart in the air in a violent explosion just as it settled into its dive-bomb attack on the target. That's when we're most vulnerable, the major had told him, because we're predictable and make an easy target. Probably a direct hit from an antiaircraft artillery round in some vital area. It was nothing Hughes could have prevented, he'd told him.

  But Larry Hughes would never know for sure. The Thunderchiefs were rugged and built for combat, and seldom just blew up like that.

  After that second one, the gruff line chief, a canny senior master sergeant fighting his third war, had sent Larry off to Bangkok on a three-day R
and R he'd neither wanted nor enjoyed. When he'd returned, he'd found himself assigned to aircraft 59-1820, an aging hangar queen with too many flying hours and a reputation for developing unexplainable gremlins at precisely the wrong moments. After forty-two hours of constant labor, the squadron maintenance officer, a major, had ordered him to return to his quarters and get some sleep. Eight hours later he'd been back at work because, just maybe, if he toiled hard enough, his airplane would bring back the pilots who flew it.

  The former hangar queen had now been flown on forty-three consecutive combat sorties and had neither been hit nor received a serious write-up from a pilot. Every time one of them mentioned anything, any slightest complaint, Larry Hughes tackled the problem as if it were real and serious. The pilot who'd flown aircraft 820 that morning had congratulated him on having the best bird in the squadron, maybe in the entire wing.

  Now she was reloaded with bombs and ammo and again prepared for combat. Was she really ready? Had he done everything possible?

  He examined the first lieutenant who crawled out of the crowded squadron crew van. Tall and rugged looking, with a hawk's beak, eyes that were dark and flat, and a copper hue to his skin, he walked with the graceful, sure strides of an athlete. Expressionless at first, he finally swung the bulky parachute from his back and cast a smile toward Hughes.

  First Lieutenant Billy Bowes

  First Lieutenant William Walter Bowes propped his parachute at the base of the ladder leading up to the cockpit and nodded to the black staff sergeant waiting nearby with the Form One, the loose-leaf document that gave the history of the aircraft and its various past illnesses.

  He looked up at the fighter. He'd been flying F-105's for four months, had started his checkout in Thuds shortly after Christmas, but he was still impressed. It stood so tall you could walk upright under its nose and wings, and you had to climb up twelve feet before you could crawl over the canopy sill into the cockpit. It weighed fifteen tons when it was clean and dry, and you could add several tons of fuel and weapons before it began to strain under the load. Sixty-seven feet from Pitot boom to tail. Only thirty-five feet between the tips of the sharply swept wings, but they were sturdy and carried no fuel cells, and if you took a flak hit in a wing, you didn't care nearly as much as you would in a wet-wing fighter like an F-4 Phantom. It was big, yet a radar reflector came down when you extended the nosegear, because the Thud was so sleek the radar-approach controllers had trouble picking it up on their precision radars. So fast and stable, you could fly it at Mach one right down on the deck and feel easy doing it, making tiny corrections that would be impossible with other fighters.