Pamper Control, Camp Evans, Viet Nam

I was on duty January 20, 1972 with 1st Lt. Jay Schwarz. Jay was flight following a Huey from Phu Bai when we heard a call on Guard (emergency channel) from a pilot who had just lost his wingman and had seen them eject from their aircraft. We had him change to Pamper’s frequency and he described that he could see the downed airmen near where the main road crossed into Laos. When the army pilots heard this they said they could pick up the downed flyers. We plotted the location on our wall map and directed the Huey in that direction. I don’t think the army pilots realized at the time that their newly agreed to mission would take them into Laos, but they pressed ahead. Vietnam is not very wide where we were, only about 40-50 miles to Laos, and the Huey was several miles west of Phu Bai when this all started, but after they had been heading west for several minutes they were expressing some apprehension. (As controllers we had no command authority to direct any pilot. Our role was to provide a little safety in what was otherwise a chaotic environment.) This is when the F-4 pilot said that he had a visual contact on the downed flyers and if they could get on the ground they would definitely be able to pick them up. That was all the Huey pilots needed to hear. They pressed ahead without saying another word. They were able to pick up the downed pilots without incident and turned for home but they were running low on fuel and it was getting dark. Camp Evans is about 20 miles northwest from Phu Bai so the Huey pilots decided to land there. One of the F-4 pilots came to the trailer (a refrigeration van from an old 18-wheeler) where our radar scopes were in order to use the land line to call is home squadron in Da Nang. He wanted to report they had been picked up and were  uninjured. Then he began answering questions as to why he’d lost the aircraft. It was a little like listening to someone telling their dad why they had wrecked the family car. 

Here is the entry from Viet Nam Air Losses by Chris Hobson, page 218.

"20 January 1972

 F-4E Tail No. 67-0247 

421 Tactical Fighter Squadron

366 Tactical Fighter Wing, USAF, Da Nang

Capt CJ Davis (survived)

Capt RK Venables (survived)

The second Phantom lost on the 20th was a Stormy FAC aircraft that was taking part in a bombing mission on a section of road on the Ho Chi Minh Trail about 20 miles west of Khe Sanh. The aircraft was hit in the fuselage by 23mm AAA and burst into flames. The crew ejected a few miles from the road and were eventually rescued by a US Army helicopter."

The epilog to this story is that the Huey was airborne on a maintenance test flight and there was only a pilot and co-pilot, no door gunner, no armament of any sort. It wasn’t until the downed pilots had been brought aboard was anybody armed. The Army pilot’s commander wanted to court martial them for violating a standing order by flying into Laos and the Air Force wanted to decorate them for bravery. I never did hear how that turned out, but my vote is absolutely for bravery. 

Panama Control, Monkey Mountain, Vietnam 

Near the end of my tour in July 1972 it was a routinely busy day on scope when a Navy A-7 I was flight following back to his carrier called saying his number 2 wingman had been hit and had ejected from the aircraft. Then in rapid succession he reported that his number 1 wingman had been hit and also ejected. They were located between Hue and Da Nang and about ten miles inland. I gave him heading and distance to Da Nang and told him to squawk emergency. He then said he had been hit, losing altitude and was “stepping over the side” (apparently Navy jargon for abandoning ship). So in the space of a couple of minutes where I once had a flight of three aircraft I now had none with pilots floating to the ground.

I have always been haunted by this, I think mainly because I never knew what had happened to these guys and because it had happened so close to Da Nang. Were the North Vietnamese really that close and armed with the Soviet’s new shoulder held surface-to-air SA-7 missiles? How else could they have been shot down? Here is the entry from Viet Nam Air Losses by Chris Hobson, page 232.

"July 17, 1972

F-4D Tail number 66-8772

497 Tactical Fighter Squadron

8 Tactical Fighter Wing, Ubon, Thailand

1Lt GK Tushek (survived)

Captain Wayne Gordon Brown (KIA)

A-7C Tail number 156792

VA-86 US Navy, USS America

Cmdr. William D. Yonke (survived)

A-7C Tail number 156771

VA-86 US Navy, USS America

Lt DK Anderson (survived)

In a remarkable incident a Night Owl FAC Phantom and two Navy Corsairs were lost on a night mission about 20 miles southwest of Hue’. The Phantom was guiding the Corsairs to a target using its LORAN navigation system to pinpoint the target. The three aircraft were in close formation as the A-7’s dropped their Mk82 bombs simultaneously on the Phantom’s mark. One of the bombs exploded prematurely damaging all three aircraft. The Phantom became a mass of flame and both the crew ejected from the aircraft but Captain Brown was badly injured. At first light an OV-10 arrived on the scene and spoke to both survivors on their emergency radios. Captain Brown had injured his back and was unable to move. The FAC called in a strike to secure the area around the survivors and shortly afterwards a pair of Skyraiders arrived followed by two HH-53’s. One of the helicopters descended below the low clouds but had to abort the rescue attempt when strong winds and turbulence over the mountains, in addition to ground fire, and almost crashed. However, before the next rescue attempt could be made gunshots were heard by 1Lt Tushek near where Captain Brown was thought to be hiding and the rescue commander could not regain radio contact with the Captain. The winds abated a little so the rescue forces returned just before sunset and an HH-53 from the 37th ARRS eventually winched 1Lt Tushek to safety in most difficult conditions caused by weather, terrain and enemy action.

Both Corsairs had also been damaged in the incident and Commander Yonke’s aircraft caught fire. He turned towards the coast but lost control as the fire burned through the flying controls. The CO (Commanding Officer) of VA-86 ejected just south of Hue’ and was soon recovered. His wingman, Lt Anderson, managed to make the coast but was losing fuel rapidly and flamed out about 15 miles northeast of Da Nang. He was rescued by a USAF SAR helicopter. Malfunctioning ordinance had been a minor but persistent cause of aircraft attrition in Southeast Asia."

So it had been friendly fire and not Soviet SA-7’s and it was an Air Force F-4 and two Navy A-7’s. Based on the above description, I believe the pilot I was talking to was Lt Anderson. The thing I remember most during the radio exchange with Lt. Anderson, was his demeanor. His voice never wavered or showed any excitement. It was as if we were sitting in the O-Club enjoying a beer. I’m relieved to learn he survived.

Panama Control, Monkey Mountain, Vietnam

The tankers were KC-135’s, a version of the four-engine Boeing 707. The fighters were all Air Force and primarily F-4’s and F-105’s. A tanker cell consisted of three KC-135’s, separated by 500 feet of altitude and one-half mile in trail. The lead tanker was the highest of the three. Typically, each tanker would receive a flight of three or four fighters. The fighters, laden with bombs, would take-off with minimum fuel and would go on tanker not long after being airborne to fill-up before making their bombing runs. At the time Monkey Mountain controlled one refueling area, about 10 miles off the coast from Hue. The fighters would come out of Northern Thailand in flights of three or four and in rapid succession. The F-105’s always went on the lowest tanker at 7,500 feet and the two flights of F-4’s on the next two tankers at 8,000 and 8,500 feet altitude. Just prior to each refueling session we would receive a classified message from 7th Air Force detailing the fighters by call-sign, aircraft type and which tanker was theirs. Once all the scheduled fighters were with their assigned tanker, the lead tanker would be released to their own navigation and head north. In the spring of 1972 we were bombing North Vietnam basically with everything we had. (see Operation Linebacker - Wikipedia) The fighters would return to Thailand through Laos with refueling controlled by radar sites in Thailand. Occasionally we did refuel a returning fighter and those were almost always emergencies, low on fuel, battle damage or both. I conducted over 1,000 rendezvous during a five-month period starting in March 1972.

I remember one refueling session as being particularly intense. The tanker cell arrived early in the morning as scheduled. I was seeing cloud formations on the radar screen and the tanker pilot was reporting limited visibility at refueling altitudes. I directed him to what appeared to be a hole in the clouds several miles across and asked if he could set-up an orbit with a standard turn rate in the clear area. He replied that he thought that would work. Normally we just ran the tankers on an oval track telling them when to turn to head back the opposite direction, but this would be a circle with a constant banked turn. The fighters started to arrive, and I explained what we had going on and then joined each flight on their tanker. Once they were all in position I released the tankers to their own navigation and they headed north with “chicks in tow”. So it worked, at least from my vantage point. But I don’t hear what the pilots are saying to each other. When the tankers came back to head home they would check-in on our traffic control frequency and our Senior Director would flight-follow them back to the hand-off point for their home base at U-Tapao, Thailand. The tanker pilot told my Senior Director that Panama 19 should be commended for conducting one of the best refueling sessions he had seen. I suggested that comment be placed in my performance evaluation. Pilots complementing controllers did not happen very often.

I arrived at Mt. Laguna Air Force Station, near the top of a 7,500-foot-high mountain due east from San Diego, California in November of 1969. Mt Laguna AFS was a Back-Up Intercept Control (BUIC III) Detachment of the 751st Air Defense Group located at Luke AFB, Arizona. Our primary mission was to assume air defense of the California coast in the event the SAGE Center at Luke became unable to perform that role. We also took over the active air defense role once a week during the night shift. All other time was devoted to training, both simulated and live aircraft. Our most frequent intercept training was with a California Air National Guard unit that flew F-102’s out of Ontario, California (call sign x-ray lima, XL). The F-102 was a sub-sonic delta winged aircraft with limited capability as an interceptor. We also controlled Air Force F-106’s out of Oxnard AFB and Hamilton AFB (call sign alpha hotel, AH). The F-106 was a more modern version of the 102, super-sonic and data link capable, armed with nuclear tipped air-to-air missiles.

The training area we used was called Whisky-291 (W-291) and was a VFR (visual flight rules) air space, reserved for general purpose military training southwest from San Diego. Consequently, there were usually Navy aircraft in the air space too. One exercise I remember consisted of two F-102’s and one EB-66. The EB-66 was to be the target and was able to deploy electric-countermeasures for the 102’s to practice against. The countermeasures also presented problems for our radar and I lost track of where it was. There was air traffic in the immediate vicinity I mistook for the EB-66 and directed the 102’s to that target. When the 102 pilot asked if I knew where the EB-66 was, I knew I had a problem. What I thought was the target turned out to be two Navy F-4’s who weren’t too happy having been jumped by two Air Force 102’s. Apparently none of the pilots filed a report as I never heard another thing about the incident.

 Another training mission I was the controller for was night time intercept training for the F-102’s and a B-52 target. We had reserved two contiguous air spaces over the Los Angeles basin called Big Bear and Twentynine Palms. I don’t remember the exact altitude for the reservation, but it was high, probably around 30,000 feet. As you might imagine there was a lot of air traffic in the Basin, especially into and out of LAX and presumably, at a much lower altitude. Consequently, it was hopeless to give the pilots you were controlling meaningful traffic calls. This was the only time I was in close control of a B-52, either simulated or actual, and I was not familiar with its turning radius. On one occasion during one of the intercept passes the B-52 sloshed out of the airspace. I asked the B-52 pilot to “expedite” the turn and he replied that he was. But it wasn’t enough. The next day I learned that a Lear jet pilot had filed a near-miss complaint after landing at LAX and described the aircraft as a B-52. I braced myself for an inquiry but one was never called. The B-52 pilot had not reported a near miss, so it could have happened any time during the training session. The Los Angles Air Traffic Control Center’s response to the complaint was that the Lear jet was at an unauthorized altitude for a proper approach into LAX. No one asked me if I had allowed the aircraft out of the airspace and I did not volunteer the information.