Cojones de Bronce: Flying on fumes over the tonkin Gulf

Flight Journal, Jun 2000 by Gillcrist, Paul

How could I ever forget him? He did a very courageous thing, putting himself in great jeopardy-for me-and he did it with such casual grace that, contemplating it now-31 years later-my throat still constricts.

It was a pleasant spring day-sunny skies, balmy breeze, blue sea and a bluer, cloudless heaven. What more could a VF-53 carrier pilot ask? Except, of course for those goddamned sea snakes! As I walked forward on the flight deck toward my airplane, I looked oy the starboard catwalk at the surface of the Tonkin Gulf. It almost made me sick. As far as the eye could see, hundreds of thousands of sea snakes slithered through the water in clusters of a dozen or so. They ranged in length from about two to five feet. A yellowish green color, they swam just below the surface of the water with only their heads sticking out. Our intelligence officer had briefed us on them before we arrived in the Gulf the first time; he told us they were the most poisonous reptiles on the planet. The thought of parachuting into water filled with those hideous things made my stomach churn.

Our flight headed inbound to a highly defended target near Hanoi, North Vietnam. The year was 1968; the mission was photographic reconnaissance to assess the damage done by a strike just 30 minutes earlier. Since it was such a highly defended target, I decided to go in as a photo escort armed with four vice-two Sidewinder air-to-air missiles. Our normal load out was two of the deadly missiles-one each mounted on a single pylon on either side of the airplane's fuselage just aft of the cockpit. The reason for this was aircraft weight. Our tired, old F-8E Crusaders had grown in weight over the years because of structural beef-ups and the addition of electronic warfare equipment and deceptive electronic countermeasures devices. The weight had become a problem, since each additional pound of gear meant one less pound of fuel to trap aboard ship.

At first, it didn't seem to matter much; it was nothing more than a minor operational restriction that we had to abide by. But gradually, as the airplane's empty weight increased, we began to realize that our number of landing opportunities was decreasing by one for every 200 pounds of increase in empty weight. Nighttime landing attempts used three times more fuel. So, for every 600 pounds of increase in the empty weight of the airplane, one attempt to land was eliminated. (Back at the Pentagon in 1974, I did a study for my own personal interest. Using the A-4, F-8, F-4 and A-7 as examples, I found that on average, a Navy tactical carrier airplane grew in empty weight at the rate of one pound per day of operational life. The accuracy of that rule of thumb was startling.)

So it was, after careful consideration, that I opted for the fourmissile configuration because, after all, we were entering MiG country. Who knew? I might need the extra two Sidewinders. As was the standard practice, the photo pilot flying an RF-8 took the flight lead. I was his escort and his protection if the North Vietnamese decided to send out their MiGs. We "coasted in" about 20 miles south of Haiphong at the "speed of heat," as usual, and I found that because of the drag associated with the extra missiles, I was using a lot more afterburner than the photo plane.

The target-a railroad bridge between Haiphong and the capital city of Hanoi-was heavily defended, but we already knew that. Nevertheless, the quantity of flak was startling, as it always was. They were waiting for us; they knew that it was U.S. policy to assess bomb damage after each major raid. I was flying a loose wing on the photo plane, scanning the area for MiGs, of course, but also for flak because I knew that the photo pilot, Ed, would soon have to bury his head inside his photo-display shroud for the final few seconds of the run to be sure that the bridge span was properly framed in the camera's field of view. Neither he nor I wanted to mess up this run and have to come back again. That would be too much! During the actual picture-taking part of the run, when the photo pilot was too occupied to observe flak, I would strafe the most likely source of flak in the vicinity of the target. It always made me feel better, since just sitting there being shot at is always unpleasant and unnerving.

Just as Ed settled down for the photo portion of the mission, which took an eternity of about five seconds, I heard a low SAM warble (radar lock-on) followed immediately by a high warble (SAM launch), and my heartbeat tripled in an instant. I was on Ed's left flank and saw the SAM lift off at about 4 o'clock, maybe only 10 miles away. There was a huge cloud of dust around the base of the missile as it lifted off; it leveled out almost immediately and accelerated toward us. There was nothing I could do but call it out, knowing that Ed would have to break off his run at the very last minute. (I think the North Vietnamese knew precisely what they were doing). There was no way Ed could stay in his run because the missile was accelerating toward his tail at an astounding rate. My mouth was dry as I keyed the microphone.