Please continue any and all such tales. I very much enjoy the tales, and also your writing style. I especially appreciate that all this stuff comes from the very center of the NO BS ZONE!
Greg -----Original Message----- From: Mercedes [mailto:mercedes-boun...@okiebenz.com] On Behalf Of WILTON via Mercedes Sent: Tuesday, October 07, 2014 4:24 PM To: mercedes list; WILTON Subject: [MBZ] OT - non-political B-52 tale - PHUC YEN Another non-political B-52 tale: PHUC YEN By Wilton Strickland By December 13, 1972, my B-52 (Big Ugly Fat Fellow - BUFF) crew from Kincheloe AFB, MI, had completed our normal six-month temporary duty tour flying Operation Arc Light bombing missions from Guam and U-Tapao, Thailand to Vietnam. We had spent about half the time flying out of Guam, the other half flying from Thailand. Because our gunner had already had several other Arc Light tours and there was not a significant shortage of gunners in the theater, he was allowed to return home. Officially, our crew was no longer there, but the five officers on the crew were held for several more days to fly extra missions as individual substitutes on other crews. Co-pilot, EW (electronic warfare officer) and I chose to return to Thailand to fly the extra missions. The original plan for the trip home, 'til we were extended, had been for us to fly a bomber from Guam to the Boeing Plant at Wichita, KS, about 14 or 15 Dec. After we were extended, though, the plan was for us to go home on a Kincheloe KC-135 tanker about 23 or 24 Dec. The tanker would be flying from U-Tapao to Guam the night of 23 Dec. I wanted to fly the extra missions from Thailand, because the mission length from Thailand was less than a third that from Guam, and I also had a new microwave oven and a motorcycle in boxes in a storage room on Guam that I wanted to take home. I had planned to take the items home in the BUFF, but now that I was going to be a passenger on a tanker, and because a weight limit had recently been placed on passenger luggage, I had to work out a way to get my excess included with the tanker crew's stuff. I could do that much more easily if I traveled from Thailand to Guam with them before going on to Michigan. After returning to U-Tapao, I temporarily joined a crew from Westover AFB, MA. The captain I was replacing was back home being treated for high blood pressure. (My blood pressure was about to get a significant boost!) By Dec 18, I had flown three very routine and uneventful missions to targets just south of the 20th parallel in North Vietnam with this crew. Things began to change drastically, though, on Dec 18th. Because we had not flown our normal daily schedule of a cell of three bombers taking off every hour throughout the day on the 18th, we BUFF crewmen suspected something bigger must have been coming. By noon, when schedules were posted for nearly 50 crews to attend pre-mission briefings in late afternoon and early evening, we knew something big was up. When the curtains were drawn to reveal our targets at the beginning of our pre-mission briefing, we knew we were finally going to fight the Vietnam War the way most of us thought it should have been done years before. Forty two B-52D's from U-Tapao and eighty nine B-52D's and G's from Guam were going to attack strategic targets in and around Hanoi that night - we were finally going to take the war "home" to the North Vietnamese government. We were going to destroy their war-making capacity - petroleum production and storage facilities, assembly plants, rail transshipment yards, power production and transmission systems, communications and command and control systems, airfields, surface-to-air missile (SAM) storage and launch sites, and much more. These facilities and systems were vital to the enemy's war effort and had contributed directly to the loss of many American and South Vietnamese lives throughout the war. Many of these potential targets, however, had been off limits to attack by American airmen for most of the war. This was the opening night of Linebacker II, called by many "The Eleven-Day War," the no-holds-barred bombing campaign which finally persuaded the North Vietnamese to negotiate a settlement ending US involvement in the war. Immediately, during the pre-mission briefing, though, several of us saw possible serious problems with the tactics. All bombers were going in-trail (one behind the other) at the same altitude (35,000 to 36,000 feet) northbound along the same route about 150 nautical miles (NM) west of Hanoi to a point about 100 miles northwest of the city before turning southeast and splitting off to go to separate targets in and around Hanoi. Long before we could get to this major turning point, the enemy air defense forces would know our spacing and altitude - part of their gunnery/firing problem was already solved before we turned inbound toward the targets. My crew's target was Phuc Yen airfield about 10 miles north of Hanoi. Just as we were releasing, I heard a call on the radio from Red Crown (US Navy ship in the Gulf of Tonkin monitoring all air activity in the area), "Bandit on final at Phuc Yen." (Don't you know he got a surprise on that landing - a MIG-21 trying to land at the same time as 324 500-pound bombs were impacting on the same runway and vicinity!) Immediately after release, we made a hard right turn over downtown Hanoi, withdrawing to the west and doing evasive maneuvers (zigzagging) at 450 knots. My view was of nearly a carpet-like layer of anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) bursts (flak) below us interspersed by many streaks of light marking the paths of surface-to-air missiles (SAM's) which reached our altitude and higher, but none came very close to my aircraft. It seemed to take forever to withdraw against a head wind of nearly 120 knots - ground speed of about 330 knots but much less straight-line ground speed because of the zigzagging to evade missiles. Our gunner, in the tail of the aircraft, reported several more SAM's fired at us from the rear. As we passed over and near Hanoi on this and subsequent missions, I could not help but think of the Americans who had been held as prisoners of war (POW's) for several years and were now within only a few miles of me in their dungeon cells on the ground below. I hoped that the sounds of the B-52's overhead and the many bombs exploding near them would lift their spirits and reassure them that they had not been forgotten - that the "cavalry" had finally arrived. Throughout the entire bomb run and withdrawal, as on most other nights during this campaign, we could hear in our radio headsets multiple emergency locator beacons of BUFF crewmen already downed. These signals are transmitted by a small radio on each parachute harness and are initiated when the chute deploys. The volume of the beacons increased as we approached Hanoi, rising to a crescendo over Hanoi, and slowly decreasing 'til we could no longer hear them as we departed the target area. It was an upsetting reminder that we were leaving some of our comrades-in-arms behind, a few likely already dead. I learned later that three BUFFs were lost this night. After we had finally cleared the Hanoi area and turned southbound to U-Tapao over western North Vietnam and Laos, we heard the pilot of another B-52 calling for assistance, saying they had been hit by a missile, they were at 10,000 feet southbound, had lost all instruments and lighting, were losing fuel, did not know where they were and were asking for vectors to a suitable base. An American air traffic control facility at a base in NE Thailand came on the radio and began giving assistance. Because the pilot of the stricken bomber knew the approach at U-Tapao very well, and because the aircraft was flying reasonably well, he decided to proceed to U-Tapao. (The officer in charge of U-Tapao air traffic control, LtCol Prentiss Ollis, later confirmed my memory of the following, most of which I overheard.) When the wounded bomber got within radio range of U-Tapao, approaching from the north, the pilot informed air traffic control that he would be landing on runway 18 (heading of 180°). The DO (Deputy Commander for Operations, a colonel) relayed messages via the controller that he wanted the stricken bomber to land on runway 36 (heading of 360°). The DO and the pilot argued back and forth several times, with the pilot insisting that he was going to land on 18, "I have minimum instruments, I have the runway in sight, I'm losing fuel; I don't know how much fuel is left; I don't think I can make it to 36!" The controller replied, "The DO doesn't want you on 18 in case something else happens. The DO ORDERS you to land on 36." The pilot of the stricken bomber retorted, "You tell the DO to stick that order up his ass! I'm landing on 18!" I quickly chimed in with a resounding, "ATTABOY!" (Col. Ollis told me that he cleaned up the pilot's response to the order slightly when he relayed it to the DO.) Lucky for all of us, the bomber proceeded to a safe landing. Later, in the hallway of the operations building, waiting for our post-strike debriefing, the DO approached me and said, while shaking his head in disbelief, "That boy was determined to land on 18." My reply was, "Indeed, he was, and we all ought to give him another ATTABOY for it." I never knew why he approached me with such a comment. A few seconds later, my crew went in to our debriefing, and I never saw the DO again. I understand that, by the time he spoke to me, he had already been relieved of his duties. _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com All posts are the result of individual contributors and as such, those individuals are responsible for the content of the post. The list owner has no control over the content of the messages of each contributor. _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com All posts are the result of individual contributors and as such, those individuals are responsible for the content of the post. The list owner has no control over the content of the messages of each contributor.
