Eagle Station Part 14

I don't care if he was in the Navy in World War Two, I think he hates the military." Warming up to the subject, Sal shook a trowel at Whitey as she spoke. "Call it off? Winston wouldn't have done it that way."

"No," Whitey said as he walked over and put his arm around his best pal, "he wouldn't. But there is more to this than that."

He stood back from her. "I think he will announce his decision to stop all the raids right before the election. I think he will use the lives of all those men to get the public to vote for Humphrey."

"Oh, Whitey, I can't believe that. He wouldn't be that cynical-I'm surprised that you are."

Whitey shook his head. "Just wait, Sal. I have a plan I want him to listen to, but if he won't ... then it's coming. I can feel it in my bones."

0700 Hours LOCAL, MONDAY 14 OCTOBER 1968 Thailand Office OF THE COMMANDER, Thailand 8TH TACTICAL FIGHTER WING UBON ROYAL THAI AIR FORCE BASE Kingdom OF THAILAND Colonel Stanley D. Bryce was the Wing Commander of the famed 8th Tactical Fighter Wing, a position that historically (with one exception) had led to promotion to brigadier general.

The one exception had been a commander who had mistakenly imposed teetotalling at the Officer and NCO clubs, in the a.s.sumption that it was good for men in combat. "Stan the Man" Bryce conducted a daily ("That's seven-days-a-week daily," he was quick to point out) meeting with his four squadron commanders (all lieutenant colonels an or rt annister, commander of the Phantom FACs. The purpose of the meetings was to pa.s.s information up and down the chain of command about any item that affected combat operations. Things that affected combat operations ranged from available aircraft and air-crew s to morale and discipline problems.

Bryce was a well-built man who stood six feet, with smooth black hair combed flat, gray eyes, and broad shoulders. He had a square and pleasant face, his sharp eyes complementing an feelaggressive up-thrust chin. He was a former footballer from the University of Georgia, where he had received his commission from the Air Force ROTC. He sat behind his desk, which displayed a large teak carving of command pilot wings and his name.

Colonel Al Bravord, Bryce's Director of Operations for the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing, sat quietly to one side on a red vinyl couch, smoking a pipe. He had white hair surrounding a bald pate like a monk's tonsure.

A former sergeant pilot who had had many fighter kills to his credit in World War II and Korea, he had quiet and una.s.suming mannerisms, a steel-trap mind, and eyes like a twenty-year-old sniper.

Both colonels and the five unit commanders wore flight suits.

Court's black flight suit matched that of the commander of the 497th Night Owl squadron.

The meeting was almost finished. All the happenings of the previous twenty-four Hours had been gone over: who had been shot down, who had been saved, what targets had been destroyed, what targets needed to be restruck, how the maintenance, electronics, armament, and weapons people were performing. The meeting was an easy give-and-take until Bryce's final question.

"Bannister, how many trucks have your Phantom FACs killed in the last four weeks?"

Court consulted his notes. "Sir, we've killed seventeen trucks in the last four weeks." The Phantom FACs had been operational for eight months.

"And how many sorties did your men fly during that time and how many strikes did they put in?"

"We fly about thirty per week, so that's one hundred twenty in the last four weeks, sir." He calculated rapidly. "And we put in about seventy night strikes."

"Your sortie-to-truck kill ratio is not very impressive," Bryce said.

"I'm getting pressure from 7th Air Force."

Seventh Air Force at Tan Son Nhut Air Base outside of Saigon in South Vietnam was in a jumbled command chain combined with l3th Air Force in the Philippines. The two Air Force commands ran the out-country (anything other than South Vietnam) air war and reported to CINCPAC (Commander in feelChief, Pacific), a Navy admiral who answered to the Department of Defense.

Up to 31 March 1968, the Department of Defense had been under the stewardship of Robert Strange McNamara. Until he had been replaced by Clark Clifford, McNamara had run the DoD and the Vietnam War in an incredibly personal and inept manner. Whereas previous Secretaries of Defense had expended their energies and talents ensuring a good logistics base, adequate budget appropriations, and public support for the military, McNamara had taken over operations as if he were the top general of the combined armed forces.

Some said Jack Kennedy had created a monster when he had hired McNamara and his whiz kids from the Ford Motor Company in 1961 to clean up the defense procurement monolith that encouraged duplicate and costly weapons. It was a monster that maybe Kennedy could have controlled, but President Lyndon Baines Johnson could not. Only the top members of the military knew that, for one year after JFK's a.s.sa.s.sination in November 1963, President Johnson had barely inquired as to the status of the pending Vietnam conflict, much less given direction to McNamara-who had felt free to do as he wished.

Ever a slave to the bottom line, McNamara had inst.i.tuted a few needed reforms. They had been inst.i.tuted, however, at the expense of a line of communication and trust between the military and McNamara and his boys.

As one grizzled admiral had put it, "Better cholera than McNamara."

In a few deft strokes fueled by monumental ego, McNamara had replaced the traditional steel links in the chain of command with telephone wire and radio circuits and computer paper from which he demanded bottom-line information. How many bombs and bullets expended to ensure a body count of enemy dead commensurate with good Ivy League management principles?

Bannister and the others at his level knew they had to produce quantifiable results, which were given to them after each sortie as BDA, Bomb Damage a.s.sessment. They would dutifully report their BDA to the debriefing officer, who would enter it into the big DoD computer. Not being veterans of World War II or Korea, where the position of the front line was more important than bean-counting, McNamara's men feelthought this was how a war was run.

"No, sir," Court responded to Bryce's comment, "the truckkill count is not impressive. What is impressive is that truck traffic on the Trail at night has just about come to a halt. And since day strikes have stopped the traffic flow during daylight Hours, that means the Trail is almost bottled up. Which fulfills one of the CINCPAC mission requirements: stop the flow of traffic down the Ho Chi Minh Trail day and night."

Al Bravord spoke up. "I'll tell you what is impressive, Stan," he said, looking at the Wing Commander. "These lads have destroyed nearly four hundred guns."

Bryce nodded. "Bannister, how do you account for such a discrepancy, destroying so many more guns than trucks?"

"First off, sir, to me, stopping the traffic flow is accomplishing our mission. I compare it to fighters defending a target.

Sure, they'd like to shoot down the attacking bombers, but their mission is to ensure the targets are not destroyed. If by attacking the bombers they force them to jettison their ordnance before reaching the target area, then they have saved the targets. If they can shoot down some bombers while accomplishing the mission, fine. But the original mission to protect the targets was achieved. Our original mission is to stop supply movement.

We're doing it. As far as killing so many guns, we can see them when they shoot far easier than we can see trucks, so it's relatively easy to take them out."

"Do you think you can get more truck kills if you equip the Phantom FACs with harder weapons? Replace your marking rockets with bombs, for example?" Bryce asked.

"No, sir, I don't. First off, our job is to find the trucks, then call in strike aircraft to kill them. That's the whole mission and purpose of the Phantom FACs. We don't need bombs the strikers carry the bombs.

We need the marking rockets to show the strikers where their targets are. But there is something else I want to bring up. We can't see the trucks unless the night is exceptionally clear. We need night eyeb.a.l.l.s.

And the enemy isn't dumb. Right now they hole up off the road when they hear us coming down the Trail. But they will soon start rolling again, using more deceptive methods once they realize they aren't being hammered so much. Then the traffic will pick up and the supplies will start getting through to South Vietnam again."

Bryce dismissed the other commanders and asked Court to stay behind.

Bravord remained on the couch.

"I know how hard you worked to get this unit going," Bryce said, "and now you are telling me it may become ineffective."

"Yes, sir, it may." Court paused. "I briefed exactly this subject a few weeks ago to you and to Ops and Plans at 7th."

Bryce looked exasperated. "It didn't take. It's a big war. Let's go over it again. What did you tell them? What did you tell us?"

he corrected himself.

"I said the statistics of supplies moving down the Trail prove we have cut traffic dramatically. The flow is definitely less.

Then I said that if they wanted more night truck kills, we'd have to have a way to see at night."

"Starlight scopes are too big?" Starlight scopes were electronic light-amplifying devices that looked like fat telescopes.

"Too big, too clumsy, and they restrict vision too much. Like trying to look at the Trail through a toilet paper tube."

Bryce nodded. "You're interested in the AC-130s we're getting, is that it?"

"Yes, sir, Major Hostettler worked out a plan where we could suppress flak for them as well as augment their firepower."

d.i.c.k Hostettler, as the wing intelligence officer, spent much of his time with the wing weapons and tactics officers, devising new ways to kill. The AC-130 gunships were huge four-engined(turboprops with over 4,000 horsepower each) transports under modification to carry 7.62mm, 20mm, and 40mm guns firing from the left side of the fuselage. Future plans called for a 105min gun to be mounted in the plane. The original idea called for the big gunships to go out along the Trail and hunt trucks. They were being outfitted to carry radar, low-light-level TV, infrared heat sensors, and a unit to detect the emanations from spark plugs.

In his briefing to 7th earlier that year, Court had gotten wound up, something young majors shouldn't do when talking to full bird colonels.

He had said he and his Phantom FACs were having trouble killing trucks.

He said they had dropped a lot of flares, called in a lot of strike birds, dumped a lot of ordnance, caused a few secondary explosions, but had few positive truck kills, although they had wiped out plenty of guns. He had said that their airplanes humming along the Trail dropping flares gave the gomers plenty of advance warning to pull over and watch the fighter pilots make little karst rocks out of big ones. While Court had gotten his point across, 7th was chock-full of men with more experience and higher rank than Major Courtland Edm. Bannister. Men who had their pet ways to win the war, and fast FACs on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, day or night, wasn't one of them. The only really high-ranking man who had stopped in at Court's brief had been Major General Milton Berzin, 7th AF Director of Operations. He had done so because he had played a role in getting the Phantom FACs set up in the first place and was interested in any of their activities and their successes. With him had been his a.s.sistant, Colonel Tim Mayberry.

"I think you have a good idea there," Bryce said. "Get down to Tan Son Nhut and liaise with their advance party at 7th. Take Hostettler if you need him."

"Yes, sir," Court said and departed.

1030 Hours LOCAL, TUESDAY 15 OCTOBER 1968 HQ, 7TH AIR FORCE.

TAN SON NHUT AIR BASE, SAIGON.

REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM.

Court landed his F-4D Phantom, with Major d.i.c.k Hostettler in the backseat, on runway 25 Left, Tan Son Nhut Air Base. He was directed by Ground Control to park in the transient aircraft area. He did so, shut down, and was met by a blue flight-line van, which took the two men to Base Operations. From there they were picked up by a Motor Pool taxi.

Both men wore black flight suits. Hostettler, standing 5'10' and weighing a muscular 220, filled his like a guard on a football team which he had been at West Point. The taxi dropped them off at the large 7th Air Force Headquarters building.

Twenty-four Hours a day, 7th AF was a droning beehive of activity. From the big building came the command and control of 70,000 airmen and pilots, and 1,500 airplanes on twenty bases in South Vietnam and Thailand. Additionally, 7th also had operational control over 400 more airplanes based in the Philippines, Okinawa, and Guam. Commander, 7th AF, a four-star USAF general, worked directly as the deputy for air for COMUSMACV, four-star Army General William Westmoreland.

Court and Hostettler found the small office of the advance AC-130 party, Lieutenant Colonel Jack Nailor, in charge. "I got your TWX," Nailor said, referring to the message Court had sent about their visit. He was a dark-haired man with a thin angular face. He looked tired. "I'm d.a.m.n short of time but your thesis intrigues me. You two really think fighter aircraft can help a gunship kill trucks, do you? Suppose you show me how." He pointed to a small blackboard next to a map of Southeast Asia.

Hostettler took some chalk and drew a squiggly line across the board.

Along the line he made several small rectangles at one-inch intervals.

"These are trucks along the Trail. Show me the attack pattern your gunship would fly."

Nailor drew a series of loops crossing the road, followed by a three-quarter circle. "We have three phases," he said. "Search, detect, attack. In the search phase we use all our sensors to detect heat, movement, metal, and/or spark plugs." He pointed to the loops.

"These are the search loops over the Trail. Once we detect a target, we set up for a firing pa.s.s." He pointed to the three-quarter circle and explained the basic firing geometry for a side-firing gunship.

"Unlike you fighter guys, who must align the longitudinal axis of your aircraft with the target and dive in a straight line toward the target, we set up an orbit and shoot laterally from the gun ports on the left side of our C-130." He smiled and paused for a moment. "You might find it interesting to know that the original idea came from missionaries in South America trying to make contact with Indians. They made pylon turns over them and let down a bucketful of trinkets on a rope." In a pylon turn the pilot maintains a constant ground reference point off the low wing of his aircraft. "What we do, instead of letting down a bucket of goodies, we sight down the line and let down a stream of lead. The pilot looks through a gunsight out his left window and aligns crosshairs on a digital display. He tells the gunners which guns he wants and presses the b.u.t.ton on his control wheel. He has his choice of four 7.62mm miniguns or four 20mm M-61 Vulcan Gatlings, or both at the same time.

We only have one C-130 test bird in the theater-we call it Gunship Two because it's a follow-on to Spooky, the AC-47.

Later birds will have 40mm cannons instead of the 7.62 and maybe someday a 105mm tube." He frowned. "You probably know we've lost several of the early Spookys on the Trail. The threat got too high and they had no night capability beyond what the pilot's eyeb.a.l.l.s could do. That's another reason we have the C-130: besides carrying more and bigger guns, all its sensors provide night vision. And flying at night gives the airplane a great measure of security from non-radar-directed guns."

"And that's where we Phantoms come in," Court said. He drew several wide circles above those of the gunship search and-attack patterns. "We can have one bird at a time orbiting your gunship and tuned to the same radio channel. You orbit from 8 to 10,000, we orbit from 15 to 18,000.

If anybody shoots at you, we see it and give a warning as well as roll in on the gun. You move to a safer area while we either take out the gun or call in strike birds to take out the gun. Secondly, and here is the most important point, when you find a series of trucks, we augment your firepower. You shoot up a few and make some flamers, or you can mark with tracers, or you can throw out a few of those burning logs that make a good night beacon to show us where the trucks are. Same as before, we roll in or we call in strike birds to help you kill the trucks."

Nailor grinned. "You sound like you're begging, Bannister.

I've heard of your Phantom FACs. New outfit, isn't it? Running out of a mission already?"

"Not exactly," Court flared. "I just think if we work together we can come up with a more efficient way to kill trucks." He tapped the map next to the blackboard and pointed to the hydra-headed black band coming from North Vietnam through the mountain pa.s.ses of Mu Gia and Ban Karai into Laos, then farther south in Laos to re-emerge into South Vietnam.

The areas the Ho Chi Minh Trail hydra pa.s.sed through Laos were code-named Steel Tiger and Tiger Hound. "And there are going to be a lot more of them. Now that we can't hit north of the 20th parallel, the trucks are going to have it pretty easy transiting North Vietnam from Hanoi down to Laos and the Trail."

Hostettler broke in. "Preliminary intell reports and aerial recce photos show about a 50 percent increase in southbound truck traffic in North Vietnam headed toward the Lao border."

He placed a staff study on a corner of Nailor's desk. "All the details and diagrams are in here."

Nailor checked a schedule board on the wall. "The gunship is on a tight test schedule. It's really a breadboard model on which we try out the new sensing equipment and guns. Right now it's working the ground support mission in 11 Corps. After that we are scheduled to fly out of Ubon for six weeks. Some of the time is scheduled for fire control harmonization flights on the Chandy bombing range, some of the time to fly the Trail and see what we can see, all at night, of course. I'll try to work out something with the higher-ups to let you guys fly with us and try out your plan. I can't guarantee permission on this test phase. It would be a cinch to try later this fall or early next year when we get all the birds in place. I'll let you know soonest." He picked up Hostettler's staff study. "Meantime I'll study this and pa.s.s it on to the 7th AF Directorate of Tactical a.n.a.lysis."

"You have a call sign yet?" Court asked.

"Yeah-Spectre."

Court and Hostettler went back to the flight line, cranked up, and were back at Ubon by 1700 Hours.

Enroute, Chef Hostettler said he and Grailson had had a long talk about the bash for the Jollys and Wolf Lochert that was to take place that very night. Chef said they had prepared several colorful and, they hoped, memorable events. Court would see.

After they landed, Hostettler scurried off. "Gotta hustle," he yelled over his shoulder. "The party starts in two Hours."

1330 Hours LOCAL, TUESDAY 15 OCTOBER 1968 SITUATION Room, THE WHITE HOUSE.

WASHINGTON, DC.

On the first level of the White House bas.e.m.e.nt, down a corridor past uniformed civilian security guards, was a crowded room with a low acoustical tile ceiling and no windows. Called the Situation Room, it was the nerve center that received all the processed communications and reports from the Pentagon and other important agencies. Clattering teletypes labeled with major wire service logos spouted news and intelligence from around the globe. There were pneumatic tubes to send and receive messages throughout the building, and a teletype hot line for Moscow that operated via the secure Pentagon communications net. On the wall were four clocks with Washington, Saigon, GMT, and what was called official Presidential time that President Lyndon Johnson kept regardless of where he was.

The overhead lights were low; the information screens cast a green tinge over the military and civilian duty officers. Tiny colored action lights were sprinkled over a map of the world on the far wall. From within the main room (the command post), and down a few steps was another room with a long, highly polished oak conference table and pull drapes on the walls that covered maps of current hot spots. There was an a.s.sortment of telephones, three of which were secure connections to vital military installations. Among the telephones was a direct line to the Prime Minister of Great Britain. Others went direct to American emba.s.sies throughout the world.

The President walked in and sat at the conference table.

Major General Whitey Whisenand entered behind him, carrying his battered USAAF issue briefcase. He suddenly remembered to b.u.t.ton the top b.u.t.ton of his tunic. He had just come from his small office and, preoccupied with the President's sudden demand to hear his plan, had forgotten to check until just now.

The open top b.u.t.ton of the four on his tunic was his way of showing he was an old-time fighter pilot. The tradition had started in World War 1, when the flamboyant fighter pilots in their wood-and-cloth crates had found the high-b.u.t.toned collar of their uniforms too restricting and took to leaving them open. The tradition had been pa.s.sed down to those who now wore the blue Air Force single-breasted uniform tunic whose collar ended in lapels that lay flat. Whitey had another more permanent manifestation that he had once worn the equipment of a jet pilot. During the war in Korea he had crashed on takeoff when the engine in his F-80 had failed. The resultant fire had burned his hands and the part of his face not covered by his oxygen mask. The white unburned area of his face, in contrast to the rosy red burn marks, made him look as if he had just removed his oxygen mask after a long flight.

The President sat heavily in his chair and looked up. "Just tell me something I can manage," he said in an exasperated voice, ready, finally, to hear the plan Whitey Whisenand had put together. "Like, how do I stop the flow of supplies down Ho's Trail through Laos without flattening Hanoi? Or without, as your General LeMay once said, bombing them back to the stone age? I try to be nice to Ho Chi Minh and where does it get me?"

Be nice to Ho Chi Minh? Whitey mentally shook his head, then remembered something he had studied recently. He said to LBJ, "I want to quote someone for you before I begin. Clausewitz says the following in his book On War: 'Kindhearted people might, of course, think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat an enemy without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this to be a true goal of the art of war. Pleasant as it sounds, it is a fallacy that must be exposed. War is such a dangerous business that the mistakes which come from kindness are the very worst."'

LBJ waved his hand as if at a pesky gnat. "All right, all right.

I don't need the thoughts of some long-dead German. Just tell me how I stop the flow of supplies."

"Mister President, you have always had the entire JCS to answer that question. Not to mention your Secretary of Defense."

The President fixed Whitey with a scornful look. "Let me show you what Mister McNamara wrote about bombing just before he left office. You've never seen such a load of horses.h.i.t." He pawed through a manila file folder and handed Whitey a Department of Defense memorandum sheet.

The tragic and long drawn-out character of that conflict in South Vietnam makes very tempting the prospect of replacing it with some new kind of air campaign against North Vietnam. But however tempting, such an alternative seems to me completely illusory. To pursue this objective would not only be futile, but would involve risk to our personnel and to our nation that I am unable to recommend.

Whitey made no comment. Instead, he walked to one of the wall drapes.

Johnson made an exaggerated sigh. "It won't do any good, but go ahead, show me your plan."

Whitey pulled aside the drape to reveal the map of Southeast Asia he had prepared. He pointed first to the rail lines from China and the seaports that funneled war materiel into the Hanoi area.