It was a warm night at the Cubi Point Officer's Club, far from the combat that was stirring in Vietnam. The four of us had just flown in from Iwakuni, Japan to Subic Bay in the Philippines and were scheduled to leave early the next morning for Vietnam. We would be the first Marine A-4 combat squadron in Vietnam, and I would be leading the flight.
Nursing a Cuba Libre, relaxing from the trip in, I played with my thoughts about what tomorrow would bring. There would be an 800 mile flight over the South China Sea to Vietnam. Given the range of the A-4, it would mean an airborne refueling somewhere over the ocean so we could make the 800 miles safely. Once we left the shores of the Philippines we wouldn't see land until the coast of Vietnam showed up on the horizon. I looked around our table at the other pilots who would be in my flight: Scotty, a First Lieutenant who wanted to fly but questioned the whole "Vietnam thing"; Denny, another First Lieutenant, Harvard grad and the best pilot of all the younger guys; and Marv, recently promoted to Captain, nicknamed "Troll" because he always jumped out from under the bridge and snarled at First Lieutenants. None of us had experienced combat; all were untested. I absently fingered the condensation on my drink. What would combat be like? How would we stand up to the challenge? What would our first mission be like?
The following morning we taxied out as the sun was rising at our backs. It would be high in the sky when we reached Vietnam.
I climbed away from the Philippine shores, three A-4's tucked into my sides, one on the left and two on the right. As we climbed out, I could feel the excitement. Every time I looked at the individual planes I got an energetic thumbs up. When we reached cruising altitude, I gave the sign for the flight to move out into a cruising formation.
The South China Sea spread out below us. Flying over an ocean is a solitary act, a feeling of complete detachment from the earth, a feeling of loneliness. There are no mountains, no grasslands, no cities to provide perspective. No roads leading to destinations. There is just the unrelieved immensity of water. As Emily Dickinson wrote, "Into deep Eternity/ Bred as we, among the mountains,/ Can the sailor understand/ The divine intoxication/Of the first league out from land?"
This feeling is intensified in the cockpit of the A-4. The cockpit is small and cramped. Many of us called it the womb. Climbing out of it after a long flight is like a fetus being birthed, wet through and through from sweat. It was said that if a pilot over six feet tall had to eject he would leave his legs below his knees behind, chopped off by rim of the instrument panel. (I was sure that the story was apocryphal; but since I was not six feet I didn't worry about it.)
The TACAN needle, our main navigation device, stayed steady, locked on to the Subic Bay behind us. Soon it started swinging aimlessly, unable to read Subic's signal the farther we left land. This added to the feeling of being alone: four planes at 35,000' heading due west toward a designation that we couldn't see. We knew, however, that there were two refueling planes ahead of us and we just waited for the TACAN to lock onto them...and it did. We were about two and one half hours out of Subic and the plan was to refuel so we would have enough to continue on to Vietnam. The TACAN needle started to hover back and forth directly ahead of my plane. First it swung 15 or 20 degrees to each side searching for the refuelers, and then slowly it steadied and locked on to the refueling planes.
Once in TACAN contact, I searched for the two tankers. They would be heading due west at 20,000 feet. I spotted them well below and ahead of us and gave the signal to the flight to start our descent and radioed, "Tanker Full, this is Hatred lead, we're about twenty miles behind, beginning descent with four ready for a drink."
The reply came back, "Got you, Hatred on our scope. What do you want...regular or leaded? We don't take credit cards, by the way, cash only."
"Tell you what, Tanker Full," I rejoined, "come visit us at Chu Lai, Vietnam and drinks are on us."
This repartee belied the importance of this part of our flight. If we couldn't refuel for whatever reason, we would have to return to Subic Bay and the mission would be aborted because we wouldn't have enough fuel to continue on to Vietnam. If there is anything an aviator hates with a passion it is a cancelled mission.
So, we descended and swung in behind the tankers, which were abreast of one another with their refueling baskets streaming behind, one from the right side and one from the left of each tanker. These were long hose-like refueling lines with a large circular basket-shaped device on the end. I broke the flight up and signaled each one to take one of the baskets so there were four of us refueling at the same time. In the A-4, the refueling probe is on the right side of the plane, even with its nose. To refuel, it is relatively easy to slowly move into position matching your airspeed with the tanker's, stop just short of the basket and tell the tanker, "Ready to plug." Once you get the okay from the tanker, a slight increase of airspeed sets your probe into the basket and you just fly formation until you have taken on the full load of fuel needed. I plugged in and looked across the tankers and there were three A-4s looking like hummingbirds taking on the sweet nectar of gas.
Our mission would go on.
Once the refueling was completed we rejoined and started a climb to our required cruising altitude heading for Vietnam.
Three hours later I saw the shore line of Vietnam. We were about 30 minutes out and the TACAN locked on to the radio beam at the airfield at Chu Lai. As we knew from our earlier briefing, to call Chu Lai an "airfield" was a definite misnomer. The closer we got to the shoreline, the more I looked for the "airfield." I finally spotted it. It looked like someone had drawn a short faint line of ink on a large, blank piece of sand-colored paper. Our briefing had told us not to expect much more than 3000' of runway. Since we normally landed on 8000' or more, Chu Lai's strip looked miniscule in comparison. It was put down about a week before our arrival by a contingent of Marines. Not only was it small, it was made up of a number of steel plates called Marston Matting linked together to form a landing strip, which when landed on flowed ahead of you like a wave of steel, the force of the airplane pushing the plates billowing out in front of you. Also, because it was so short, we had to make a simulated carrier landing, arresting and catching a steel cable spread across the matting. So, this meant after a six-hour hop across the South China Sea, including airborne refueling, we had to concentrate on a "carrier-type landing."
Earlier as we sat around the table at Cubi Point, I said that I would kick the ass of anyone who missed the wire and had to take a bolter: add power and wave off to try again. I didn't want the first flight of Marines landing in Vietnam to look like a bunch of recent graduates from some Air Force training.
Everyone made it on their first attempt.
As I taxied off the matting, I noticed a large crowd gathered around the flight line. I saw parked behind them a transport plane with a Flag Officer's flag painted on the fuselage. I knew right away that the Commanding General of the First Marine Air Wing had flown in from Danang, north of Chu Lai, and was waiting for us. Also mixed in the crowd were people holding cameras and notepads...reporters waiting for the story of our arrival. Seeing all of that I waited for each of my flight to make their landing and taxi up to me. I gave them a signal to form up in the formation we had flown in from the Philippines. If they wanted a show, we would give it to them. But as I got closer to the parking area I also spotted bombs and rockets loaded on ordnance carriers and a rack of eight JATO bottles. JATO is short for Jet Assisted Takeoff, used to launch A-4s loaded with ordnance from a short runaway. I knew that JATO would be used for all our missions until the long runway was built. But why was it placed next to where we were going to park?
I soon found out.
Crawling out of the plane I saw the general waiting for me. I walked up to him, saluted and he said, "Welcome, to Chu Lai, Captain. Are you ready for your first mission?"
"Yes, sir," was my quick reply, thinking that he meant first thing next morning, which would give us time to recuperate from our trip from the Philippines.
The general continued, "Get to the operations tent, they have an important target for you and your flight to hit right away."
It took me a few seconds to realize that our first mission was minutes away, not hours. The ordnance ready to be loaded I saw taxiing in was for us. Holy Christ, I thought, my mind racing ahead, somewhat numbed by the news but excited at the same time.
The general snapped me out of my brief stupor, "Get cracking, Captain, they're waiting for you."
I gathered up my flight and told them what was going to happen as we sprinted to the ops tent. All of them were babbling with excitement. "Jesus, let's go." "What target?" "Hell I don't even know where I am, let alone find a target." "Is that stuff I saw on the ordnance carts for us? Do we have time to hit the head, I need to take a leak."
We scrambled into the ops tent sounding like an excited flight of crows. We finally quieted down and thirty minutes later we were briefed on our target. With the buildup of Chu Lai, the Vietcong had wormed their way into the perimeter of the base, "in the wire," and were launching nightly rocket attacks trying to destroy the runway, hitting the living quarters, and generally causing havoc. The targets would be the rocket launchers and any VC we spotted. We were told to look out for ground fire.
The general wanted them wiped out and that was our mission.
By the time we got to our planes they were loaded with eight Snakes. Snakes were 250 lb bombs that had fins on their tails which would open at low altitude, acting as breaks and allowing them to be dropped low and at close quarters to the target, making them very accurate.
Also, each of our planes was loaded with two JATO cans to assist our takeoffs. They would thrust us into the air so we could get to takeoff speed before we ran out of runway.
I strapped into my cockpit still soaked with sweat from the trip in as the Chu Lai sun beat down like a fireball, making it impossible to touch the skin of the plane. The aluminum canopy rails seared my gloved hands.
I taxied into position, received clearance from the tower for takeoff, rammed the throttle forward and kicked in the JATO. My head slammed backward with the combined force of the engine and JATO. It felt like I was on a rocket as I hurtled toward the end of the runway, which was coming up fast. I reached takeoff speed, lifted into the air, sucked up my landing gear, made a hard left turn that took me over the South China Sea, pickled off the JATO cans into the ocean, and looked back to see if Denny was making his takeoff. He was into his run, and I swung in a wide circle to follow him as he became airborne and got rid of his JATO cans. I came up onto his wing and signaled him to join me as we waited for Marv and Scotty to make their takeoffs and join us as we headed to the target.
The target was only three miles away and the general had told me that he and everyone else on Chu Lai would be watching the "air show"... his words.
I made contact with a Marine reconnaissance team that was shadowing the VC and would be acting as our ground contact.
"Recon Alpha, this is Hatred approaching the target."
"Got you, Hatred. We can sure use you. We've got a nest of gooks in our sight. Make a pass on a heading of 185 and you should see them off your right wing tucked into a small stream bed. We're 100 meters from them on your left. Expect ground fire as we've seen them carrying .50 cal."
I signaled my flight to stay at altitude as I made a run to spot the VC hiding in the stream bed. I rolled over on my back, pulled the nose of the plane sharply through the horizon, rolled upright, leveled my wings and started my run. I had made this maneuver hundreds of times in practice and it felt the same. This time, however, I was not bombing some painted circles on the ground. I saw the VC running for cover as I was in my run. I let two of my Snakes go and they hit in the middle of scattered VC.
"Hit my Snake," I radioed back to my flight and saw Denny start his run followed by Marv and Scotty. I pulled up and made a hard left turn to see multiple Snakes exploding along the stream bed.
"Right on target, Hatred," shouted Recon Alpha. "They're running all over the place. Keep pouring it on."
We were on target for about 15 minutes when Recon Alpha called us off. "It looks like you took care of them, Hatred. Good work. I don't expect we'll see any rockets from them tonight. See you back at Chu Lai."
When we landed at Chu Lai we were met by the Operations officer of the First Marine Air Wing and congratulated on our mission. I didn't see the general's plane; he had already flown back to Danang. I thought, so much for his audience at the air show.
Our first mission gave us the taste of combat, and as we talked about it our first evening "in country," sitting on the sands of the beach of the South China Sea, we were excited. "Did you see those VC running as our Snakes dropped right in the middle of them?" "I think I saw a couple of bodies flying through the air." "Boy, Recon Alpha sure sounded pumped up." "Will we have another mission tomorrow?" "I bet that's the last time the VC creep into that part of the wire." "The Marines have landed, that's for sure."
Our first mission turned into hundreds more. There still was the excitement, but now it was muted, not buoyant or carefree. The missions, however, never turned into just a "job." When a mission received ground fire from the VC .50 caliber machine guns, and the crimson "beach balls" floated by the canopy, we knew it was not fun and games. When a mission called for attacking troop movements through the Ashau Valley, in weather that demanded tight 4g turns at 500 feet anywhere from 180 knots to 450 knots, we knew it wasn't a sport. When a mission called for supporting Marine ground troops with the VC operating only yards away, and our nape and Snake had to be dropped with unerring accuracy or we would kill our own, we knew it wasn't a game without any scorecard.
As we climbed out of the A-4 after each mission, the ground crew would ask, "How'd it go?" Sometimes it took a deep breath or two depending on the mission, but generally we responded, "Okay, one more under the belt." But we would also walk away realizing how far we had come from that "first mission.
© 2007 by Bruce B. Rutherford.