Tales of the Whale

Flight Journal, Apr 2005 by Cleaver, Thomas McKelvey

Douglas A-3 Skywarriors to the rescue

MID-MAY 1967 MARKED THE HEIGHT of the first phase of the air war over North Vietnam. As the last of the 16 Douglas A-4 Skyhawks from VA-212 ("The Rampant Raiders" of the USS Enterprise Alpha Strike) unhooked from his KA-3B, Lt. Cmdr. Don Alberg (of the VAH-4 "Fourunners") took up a new racecourse heading. He and three other A-3 Skywarrior pilots were to stay on this course for 30 minutes until their charges went "feet wet" and fuel-thirsty as they egressed from an attack on Hanoi.

After about 10 minutes, one of the Skyhawks took a hit, and its pilot, Lt. Cmdr. Arvin Chauncey, ejected only 50 miles outside the capital of North Vietnam. Four F-8 Crusaders from VF-24-"The Red Checkertails"-took up ResCap for him. "My flight leader, John Wunsch, notified Hollygreen 898 and 899-numbers three and four of our flight-that they would assume responsibility for tanking the strike on egress and that he and I [Hollygreen 896 and 897, respectively] would stay to cover the ResCap. Everything was standard procedure. All we needed now was for the rescue helicopter from the Task Force 77 destroyer screen to arrive and pick up Lt. Cmdr. Chauncey."

No matter how routine any military mission may be, the vagaries of the weather and the mechanical reliability of the equipment can always change the routine into the memorable.

"About the time the strike group went 'feet wet,' on their way out, we heard from the task force that our chopper had a mechanical abort and that they were launching a backup." Soon, Alberg's and Wunsch's were the only U.S. airplanes in the vicinity. "We kept calling the task force about the chopper but didn't get a solid answer. The ResCap leader detached two F-8s to tank with us. At last, the third helicopter they launched was reported inbound."

The helicopter was coming from the Enterprise itself, rather than from an escort ship, so it was coming from more than 100 miles off the coast-a good hour at best speed. In any rescue, time is of the essence, and this one was beginning to look very iffy. Alberg's two tankers again provided fuel for the thirsty F-8s and maintained position. As the last two F-8s went "feet dry" inbound to the site of the rescue attempt, Alberg was watching his own fuel status with increasing anxiety. "We were close to 'bingo' for our internal fuel," he recalls, "but the helo was nowhere in sight, and the F-8s weren't going to make it back to the carrier without another hookup."

Eventually, after what seemed like much longer than an hour, the helo hove Into view and headed inland. Alberg was at 10 minutes of fuel, and Wunsch was at six. The tankers needed tanking fast! "I called on all the tanker frequencies, and a KC-135 reported he was nearby. I asked his altitude, and he was at 28,000 feet. We were at 1,500 feet, so no way would we have enough gas to climb up to him. He said he'd come down."

When the big Boeing arrived, Wunsch made the first hookup to take on 30 minutes of fuel, and Alberg followed him. "He got his fuel and I moved in. I had trouble hooking up because the Air Force system with the basket is different from that of the Navy; with the Navy, if you hit the basket and put the tip in with a push, you'll screw up the hose and it won't feed. With the Air Force, it's just the opposite. I probed three times for maybe five minutes and was really sweating a flameout and a crash because I couldn't get a hookup, and then they got around to telling me this." Connection at last made, Alberg breathed more easily as his fuel-gauge indicators moved upwards.

Meanwhile, the rescue mission had failed in the most heartbreaking manner: the North Vietnamese captured Lt. Cmdr. Chauncey while the helicopter was still five minutes away. The F-8s had remained on station longer than they should have; when they left North Vietnam, each had less than 10 minutes' fuel. Having just solved the difficulty of hooking into the basket, Alberg's KA-3B was only beginning to take on fuel. "I had about seven or eight minutes' fuel on board and couldn't unhook. They couldn't wait. I deployed my hose, and the F-8s came in one at a time and took on fuel from me while the 135 fueled us. Fortunately, our intake system was faster than our delivery system, so we brought in more than we needed to keep flying." The KC-135 had been on station to take care of two F-104Cs, so there was fighter escort while this complicated aerial ballet took place within sight of the enemy coastline.

With the F-8s on their way home, Alberg dropped back so that his wingman could take on enough to get back to the Enterprise, and the two A-3 crews thanked the KC-135 crew for their help. The Air Force tanker had burned so much fuel at low altitude that it could not return to Thailand and had to recover at Danang. "Several weeks later, we got word that the crew of the KC-135 had been brought up by ComSeventhAirForce on a charge for abandoning their assigned post and would be court-martialed. We let the Air Force know that these guys had saved two A-3s and four F-8s-a total of 10 aircrew, who would definitely not have made it home feet dry had the Air Force not saved us. So, instead of a court-martial, each crewman was issued a Distinguished Flying Cross! We got a pat on the back and a 'Well done, men' from the Task Force Commander."