I welcomed New Year’s Eve, 1968, flying across the International Dateline before landing in Saigon’s Tan Son Nhut Air Base, assigned to the 366 Tactical Fighter Wing. The intake clerk asked, “What are you doing here?” I learned some stateside clerk typed 355th instead of 366th. This clerk said, “You need to get to Da Nang”. “Where’s that?” I asked. “The other end of the country,” he said. He told me to hang around the operations shack and tell them I needed to get to Da Nang. A couple of days later, finally got there. Was this any way to run a railroad?
The clerk in Da Nang asked, “Where’ve you been? You’ve been AWOL for two days.” “Take it up with my travel agent,” I said, showing him the original, incorrect orders. I figured, “What are they gonna do, send me to Vietnam?”
To save face, he said, “I’ll have to look into the matter”. For all I know, he’s still looking into it.
Later, I discovered if you were jump (parachute) certified, you’d collect an extra $55 a month, whether or not you actually made a combat jump. I calculated the number of bottles of rum this would account for and went to see my commander. The US had helped the South Vietnamese organize and run a “jump school.” The old man said I could go IF the South Vietnamese okayed it. Visions of an additional monthly allotment of 8.333 fifths of rum danced in my head as I awaited the designated school date.
Not long before my start date, the SVN pilot and navigator made a slight miscalculation and dumped their South Vietnamese parachutists into the middle of a buncha bad guys. Not one of the jumpers made it out alive. So much for my monthly extra 8.333 fifths of rum.
Instead of jumping, I thought, how about combat flying? I wasn’t “flight certified,” but I found a pilot who thought he could use an extra pair of eyes on his Forward Air Control missions. What could possibly go wrong? As an aside, there’s a reason they don’t ask old men like me to do these things…we know better.
So, I’d go for a ride with the FAC. We’d get an intel briefing about where we might find the bad guys, get a compass heading, and fly off – but not into the sunset.
The normal drill was to “investigate” our given Area of Operation. When we spotted anything interesting, we’d call for fighter-bombers from Danang. The distance that took us an hour of flying was accomplished by the F-4s in a few minutes.
I should describe the Cessna 02. Any garage you can get your car into would almost accommodate TWO Cessna 02s. They were tiny and cheap, at $50,000 per copy. They had two props, one pulling from the front and one pushing from the rear. Should one engine fail, the other would surely be all you’d need to stay airborne, right? Of course not. These were simply civilian planes meant for easy, low, slow flying. They were militarized by painting the American flag on the side.
They were not-so-affectionately known as flying bathtubs. The bad guys loved these aircraft because they were such easy targets. In fact, the percentage of Cessna 02s shot down was greater than for any other fixed-wing aircraft. Only helicopters had a higher loss percentage, so you’d never catch me flying in one of those. I’m not stupid. Why would the bad guys want to destroy the little 02? Because they knew anytime the 02s showed up, the F-4 bombers would soon follow.
I remember sitting shoulder to shoulder with the pilot. Doors were clear plexiglass and reached from the roof to the deck. It was like sitting on a flagpole at 2,000 feet. All the radio gear behind the seats meant two things: 1. You sat nearly against the windshield, and 2. There was no room to wear a parachute. Cogitate on that for a while.
How was the 02 armed…it wasn’t. Under each wing was a pod of white phosphorous rockets used for marking targets for the F-4s. The drill was to wait for the F-4s to arrive. They’d circle above us while we dove with a vengeance and fired off a smoke rocket. If that didn’t agitate the bad guys, nothing would. My practice, and I highly recommend it, was to close my eyes during the dive and rocket release. When the pilot pulled out of the dive, heading for a safer altitude and gravity pushed me back into my seat, I’d open my eyes. What was there to recommend the strategy? I’d seen enough tracers coming up from target areas to last me a long time. I didn’t need to see anymore. I figured if I couldn’t see them, they couldn’t see me.
Next, we’d circle the target at a higher altitude while the F-4s rolled in below us and dropped their ordinance. When they were done, we’d circle, low and slow, to observe for bomb damage assessment. Next, depending on our fuel level, we’d either go looking for another target or return to Da Nang.
For me, the highlight of the return was that I often got to pilot the aircraft. Piloting is pretty simple. You can go left or right, up or down. The only thing you cannot do is go backwards. Oh, I should mention one other thing you should avoid… going into a flat spin. That’s where you descend straight down, wings parallel to the ground, spinning like a pinwheel. It makes a real pilot really nervous. Don’t ask me how I know.
There was a small plastic sign screwed to the dashboard. It said, “no aerobatics.” I asked the pilot about the rationale. He said it was because the Cessna 02 had the glide path of a stone. What he meant was should anything bad happen to the aircraft, the likelihood of limping home was pretty small. That was food for thought – or maybe not.
Any normal day, I’d go to sleep around noon and wake up around 5 PM and have dinner. Each evening, before going on duty at midnight, we’d stand around outside, telling lies and drinking…not so much to end up drunk…just enough to take the edge off. Some edges were more robust than others. One particular night in February, during the Tet Offensive, we divided our time between drinking and avoiding rocket attack injuries.
On my way to a bunker, I got to hear the unforgettable whir of shrapnel passing close by overhead. After the “all-clear” was sounded, I returned to find my bottle of Ron Rico 151 was shattered. Son of A! Some of that shrapnel found our favorite drinking location. That put a crimp in our routine.
Several years later, at the Paris Peace Accords, there was talk of reparations. Did my bottle of Ron Rico 151 come up for discussion? Of course not. Those scoundrels still owe me six dollars.
Written by Tony Lolli.