Chapter 15: Sidewinder One

Turning onto a course of 260 degrees, at an altitude of 40,000 feet with an indicated airspeed of 550 knots, I engaged the autopilot, then relaxed and let Iron George fly the aircraft for a while as my mind replayed the events of the morning. I'd hated leaving Mae and Buzzy, but on the other hand as long as I was now the ranking man in this outfit and the people I commanded were in combat, my place was with them. I was still thinking of my family when I crossed the Vietnamese coastline.

Contacting Air Traffic Control, I changed my IFF settings to the codes Captain Sullivan had provided me, gave them my 'Sidewinder One' call sign and stated my destination as Bien Hoa AB. They cleared my aircraft back in-country and provided me with a course, altitude and a list of checkpoints for the short flight to my new base. I jotted their information on my canopy in grease pencil, thanked the Controller, and then switched my UHF radio over to our squadron's assigned frequency and my TACAN to the Bien Hoa beacon. It showed my position as 60 miles out at a heading of 010 degrees.

As the DME range indicator was winding down toward 25 miles, a voice came over the UHF radio on Guard channel. "Sidewinder, this is Bird Dog. I'm about 3,000 feet below you at your 10 o'clock. We have a little problem down here. What's your weapons load?"

I don't know how he knew my call sign, unless it was from the broad red stripe on the tip of my vertical stabilizer, the hallmark of the 512th Fighter Squadron.

"Guns only Bird Dog, but I've got a max load of 20mm if that will help any. What's the problem?" I replied.

"See that patch of bright green foliage below me and a little to the right? That's a bamboo thicket and there's a Marine Recon patrol pinned down in there. The bad guys are dug-in under that tree line just to the west of them, about eighty yards away. I was hoping you had a load of nape (Napalm) we could drop on them to divert their attention while the good guys boogie on out of the area, but seeing as how you've only got guns, let's try a couple passes for effect," he suggested.

"Rodger that, Bird Dog. Can you mark where you think they're located," I replied.

"Rolling in now," he replied curtly.

I saw the little Cessna O-1 wing-over and make a dive for the tree line. As he approached the tree line he fired a Willy-Pete (White Phosphor) marking rocket, and then broke hard left with a line of tracer fire tracking him, but it never quite catching up.

"Hit my smoke, Sidewinder," he announced calmly.

I double-clicked my transmitter, winged over and dove on the target he'd given me. Swooping in low over the bamboo thicket, I selected all four guns and then waited until the gun sight piper on my windscreen settled on the base of the white smoke cloud. Squeezing the trigger, I held it down as I did a little toe- dance on the rudder pedals, sweeping the nose of my aircraft back and forth. I could see the impact of my 20 mm cannon's incendiary rounds winking in a solid line fifty or sixty yards long, centered on the smoke of the marking rocket.

I broke hard right and went around for another pass. "That should' a got their shorts in a wad," Bird Dog commented laconically, and then added, "Still wish we had a load of nape though."

That gave me another idea. I'd flown over from Clark drawing fuel from my external tanks, which were now both down to about 100 pounds of fuel. I still had a full load of fuel in my internal tanks, which was more than enough for the remaining flight to Bien Hoa.

Calling Bird Dog, I told him of my plan to jettison my external fuel tanks on the enemy position, and in case they didn't explode on impact, requested he follow me in and light them off with his Willy Pete's.

"Damn, never seen that done before, but it just might work. Let's have a go at it," he exclaimed. "I'll contact the Marine unit and tell them that as soon as they see the fireworks start, to haul ass out the back door. Let's do it!"

As I circled back around to line up with my target once more, I moved my fuel selector switch to "Internal" and checked that the fuel was now flowing properly from my internal tanks. Lining up on the tree line again, I hit afterburner, and when I reached what I thought would be the best release-point I yanked the stick back hard into my gut and hit the 'jettison external stores' switch. I felt the tanks release and watched them arc gracefully in under the overhanging branches.

At first I thought I had cut it too fine, as the trees seemed to block my egress route, but my faithful steed came through and I cleared the treetops ... but just barely. I thought I might have even flown through some of the smaller topmost branches. Looking in my mirror, I could see at least a hundred yards of the tree line were now fully engulfed in angry red flames and it was spreading rapidly. I could also see the Marine patrol moving out, double-timing smartly down the dirt path away from the area.

Bird Dog congratulated me on another good pass and went back in to make a preliminary bomb damage assessment (BDA). Climbing back to 30,000 ft, I leveled off and proceeded on to Bien Hoa. From this altitude, the variegated browns and greens of the jungle, broken only by occasional muddy brown streams and small village clearings, gave a deceptive sense of peaceful tranquility.

A few minutes later, I was in the landing pattern at Bien Hoa. As I turned onto final I realized I was following two other F-100s, also with red bands at the top of their vertical stabilizers. We established spacing, touched down, and I followed them back to our squadron's parking area. On the taxi in, I noticed that the base was a beehive of activity. In addition to my fighter squadron, there were two other F-100 squadrons, a wing of C-130s, a wing of B-26 light bombers, a number of O-1 FAC birds and various assorted other aircraft that appeared to be either in transit or involved in some kind of special Black Ops.

Shutting down my bird, I popped the canopy and the hot, humid afternoon air, heavy with the odor of rotting vegetation, benjo ditches (or whatever the hell they called open sewers over here), and hot JP-4 assailed my senses like a damp, odorous mist.

I had removed my helmet and safety harness by the time a crew chief got the boarding ladder hung on the canopy rail. Climbing down out of the cockpit, I found I had managed to draw a considerable crowd; the two pilots I'd followed in, the temporary squadron commander who I was relieving, and what seemed to be every crew chief on the flight line.

The first question was from one of the pilots I'd landed with. Examining my blackened gun ports, he asked incredulously, "How did you manage to get into a gun fight on a ferry flight, sir?" "Well, I ran into a crazy FAC in an O-1 that needed a little help extracting a patrol from an ambush," I replied with a grin.

While he was mulling that over, the Maintenance Officer said, "I thought this bird went out this morning with ferry tanks. Did you have to jettison them when you got into the fire fight?"

"Nope, Bird Dog was screaming for nape and closest thing I had to napalm were the two ferry tanks with a small amount of JP4, and apparently a shit-load of fumes, left in each of them. They were damned effective though, we managed to start one hell of a fire in under that tree line. The last time I saw the Marine patrol, they were humping down the dirt road back toward camp ... and no one was shooting at them!" I grinned.

"Wait a minute ... Did you say this FAC's call sign was 'Bird Dog'?" asked one of the pilots.

"Hot Damn! He's on his first flight in-country and he manages to hook up with Pappy Wallace, the craziest Forward Air Controller in theater!" one of the other pilots exclaimed with a grin. Just then the crew chief, who had been checking out the underside of my aircraft and placing ground safety pins in my landing gear struts, duck-walked out from under the left wing and handed me a short tree branch with a few leaves still attached. Handing it to me he commented, "This was jammed into one of your external tank mounting brackets sir. I thought you might want to keep it as a souvenir."

One of the other pilots laughed and remarked, "Damn Major, you must have pulled up just a bit later than you'd planned!"

After retiring to the squadron admin section, I asked Jim Johnson if there was any further word on the fate of Major Williams. His reply was that a patrol had located the wreckage of his aircraft this morning; the ejection seat was missing, and they located a 'chute tangled in a tree a few hundred yards away. There was no sign of John, so the assumption was that he punched out and either wandered away or had been captured by the enemy.

As I hadn't eaten since breakfast, I asked Jim if there was any place I could get something to eat. He replied that the best place this time of day would probably be the flight line snack bar.

As we settled onto stools at the snack bar counter and gave the Vietnamese girl our orders, a short, chunky Chief Warrant Officer of indeterminate age, dressed in a rumpled gray flight suit, wearing an Australian go-to-hell hat and scuffed clay-stained cowboy boots, slid onto the stool next to mine and ordered lunch. Jim grinned across at him and commented, "Hey Pappy, I heard you met up with our new squadron commander this morning."

The scruffy little CWO looked me over carefully, and then asked, "You were Sidewinder One sir?"

"Sure was, Mr. Wallace. We made a hell of a team while it lasted. Sorry about not having any nape loaded but I don't usually carry that stuff on a ferry flight. I was just arriving from Clark when you called me," I replied. He grinned at me and said, "Shit sir, that trick with the drop tanks worked pretty damn slick, and at least we made them Marine ground-pounders real happy." About that time, our lunch arrived and the conversation ended.

As we finished, Pappy announced he was scheduled to fly another mission in a few minutes, so he departed for the flight line while Jim and I returned to our squadron area. On the way, I asked Jim about Pappy's official capacity in the FAC squadron. He replied that Pappy was their senior pilot and was also in charge of 'Tactics and Training' for his squadron. He'd been doing this sort of work since Korea. I mentally filed that bit of information away for future use.

Arriving at the BOQ, I got assigned a room and then went back to the office and spent what was left of the afternoon going through the squadron's files and reviewing the pilot's flight schedules. By 1630 I was about ready to call it a day when the phone rang. It was Colonel McIntire, our wing commander, welcoming me aboard and inviting me, and any of my squadron pilots who were available, to a Dining-In ceremony at the Officer's Club that evening at 1930 hrs.

I tried to beg off, saying my luggage hadn't arrived from Clark yet and I wouldn't have a Class-A uniform until it did.