|
Capt Jim Terry, F-105, 17th Wild Weasel Squadron I flew the F-105G “Thud” Wild Weasel out of Korat Royal Thai Air Force Base, Thailand, during my combat tour from February ’72 to February ‘73. During that time I experienced several incidents that have became part of my war story repertoire. Those stories get better upon every retelling, and this is one of them. On Oct 23rd the air war over the North had entered a transition phase. After directing several months of fighter strikes into the Hanoi-Haiphong area (Operation Linebacker), President Nixon ordered a partial bombing halt, and subsequent strikes were restricted to south of the 20th parallel, about 60 nautical miles south of Hanoi. Three days later on Oct 26th Secretary of State Kissinger made his famous “Peace is at hand” speech. (1) For several months since the April ‘72 Easter invasion of South Vietnam by the North, B 52 Arc Light strikes had been moving slowly north from their initial targets in and around the DMZ, and they were now being conducted regularly as far north as the 19th parallel and beyond. On the night of Nov 7th, Election Day back in the States, I was leading a three ship of Thuds in support of two BUF strikes into central North Vietnam. Number two was flown by Howie Towt and number three was flown by Larry Funk—all three of us were USAFA ’68 classmates. (None of our “bears”, Electronic Warfare Officers in our back seats, were Zoomies.) All our tactical maneuvering was single ship on this mission. The BUF’s first target was a little east of Quan Lang airfield, about 30 nm inland from the narrow “waist” of North Vietnam just south of the 19th parallel and about 40 nm northwest of the North’s coastal city of Vinh. The second target was the airfield proper. This was a night mission, and no moon was evident. The weather was a very ragged undercast with the tops varying between 11,000 and 12,000 feet. It was clear at our altitude, but there was no discernible horizon. There must have been a high overcast, because I don’t recall seeing any stars. It was very dark! The first bombers aborted their run, although we never heard any divert words and never found out why they didn’t release. We drove “feet wet” for gas and, after refueling, returned to the target area to escort the second set of bombers. They planned to attack from the west and drive straight across North Vietnam to the coast for their egress. Through timing I set up on the north side of the B-52s on a parallel course, planning to be abeam the target when the bombs starting hitting the ground. Just before TOT, the clouds lit up right under my nose as a SAM was launched from a few miles east. (2) I called out the divert code words to the BUFs and began maneuvering to attack the site. My bear that night, Doug Julsen, identified missile guidance commands, but we never intercepted any target tracking radar signals. Unfortunately, our anti-radiation missiles needed the TTR for homing, so I was unable to shoot at an active signal. Instead, I visually estimated the range to the SAM site, lit the Thud’s afterburner, and pulled up straight ahead to launch an AGM-45 Shrike missile. Without an active signal, my hope was that my ARM would be starting its descent at about the same time the SAM operator would turn on his TTR to make final intercept corrections. (3) Because of what happened next, I don’t recall if the TTR was ever turned on. After the Shrike departed my aircraft, the SAM was still beneath the clouds but blocked visually by the Thud’s nose, so I recovered from my pull up by rolling left into a sloppy, dished out split-S turn toward the north. As I pulled back to wings level, the SAM came out of the clouds. It looked closer than normal, so I began a hard right turn into it…and immediately went into the tops of the clouds! This was not deliberate. The inside of the clouds were the same lit-up color as the SAM’s plume, so I continued my high-G pull for a moment to defeat the SAM’s intercept. I then got my head back in the cockpit and discovered that I was upside down. So I used the gages to roll wings level and then looked outside again. The clouds were still lit up, so I rolled right and pulled again. Back inside to see the resulting unusual attitude and rolled wings level once more. Another glance outside and the glow was still with me. So I pulled another time. Sometimes I’d be 30 degrees nose high, other times I’d be 30 degrees nose low and inverted. But the glow was always with me. As I repeated this cycle an interesting thought struck me, so I disengaged the afterburner. And the light on the inside of the clouds went away. The SAM was nowhere near us, and I had been trying to dodge the glow from my own burner! I could have pulled G’s all night, but I never would have been able to escape that light. My combat diary tells me that we were at about 4,000 feet MS when I initiated a steep controlled climb, and we reached 15,000 feet in no time, much quicker than my trusty Thud could usually climb that high. I didn’t notice my airspeed, but I must have been smokin’! Later we looked at the map and decided that, although we didn’t know exactly where all this occurred, we weren’t too far from some hills to the west that exceeded 4,000 feet. There’s an old saying that “God looks after fools and little children.” That saying was proven to be right on that dark and stormy night. I don’t know what my bear was thinking during all this, but after we left the target area and began our flight back to Korat he said, “Boy, I sure earned my banana split tonight!” But we stopped by the bar first. 1.Those of us engaged in the conflict were wondering
if the war might be over soon, and it was. But it took the unprecedented
B-52 Christmas bombings in and around Hanoi (Operation Linebacker
II) to finally make peace and the return of our POWs a reality. |