About 0600 on 27 July 1965, I had a hand shake me awake and tell me that I didn’t need to get up for my scheduled mission brief since I was now on Iron Hand One, the first SAM raid. I pretended to be asleep for as long as possible to be cool and then went to the CRUB for a breakfast martini with Paul. We left for INTELL as soon as we could and found the mission order. It was the absolute most incredible bunch of crap imaginable. The 563rd was to hit a SAM site, the one that had fired three days earlier, using three flights of four F-105Ds in trail with only one-mile spacing between flights. The ordnance listed was rear-dispensed bomblets (CBU-2) dropped from 50 feet and at 360 knots. My Grandmother knew more about targeting than that! The next two flights were ordered to carry Napalm and also drop from 50 feet and 360 knots. The idiocy of DOD was now apparent to all. If you tell anyone that you are going to hit him and then give him almost a week’s notice, any half-wit can figure out that the place will be empty and/or well defended. To over-fly an extremely well defended complex at 50 feet and 360 knots is a suicide order. The Japanese had better sense when they sent out their Kamikaze. To exacerbate an already insane order, have all aircraft fly at the same altitude, airspeed and attack from the same direction, with close intervals. I may have been a Slick Wing Captain, but I certainly knew better that that. HQ USAF, HQ PACAF, and 2AD all passed this load of excrement down without demur. I had been taught that you were supposed to, or at least try to, keep some of your troops alive.
We truly bitched, whined and moaned. Major Brown got on the horn and tried to talk to Saigon at least three times. The Yakota Squadron Commander also gave it his best shot, all to no avail. What we asked was to change the ingress and egress, change the altitudes, and drop at least 500 knots. At no time did we ever request not to hit the site. We were ordered to go as directed WITH ZERO CHANGES! The 563rd was ordered to have 12 aircraft hit the SAM site and 12 aircraft from the Yakota squadron were to hit the ‘Supporting Barracks’. Korat had the same order for a SAM site less than 10 miles from ours. The Time-on-Target (TOT) for both sites were the same and the directed routes to and from insured that we would be almost head on with the Korat aircraft. It appeared that DOD also tried to schedule a mid-air collision.
We realized that we could comply with the order or mutiny, so we went to the squadron and briefed this insanity. Major Brown led the first flight, Major Harris led the second, and Paul was leader of the last flight, Hudson. All of the wingmen were volunteers. Paul never spent much time on routine details and this day his briefing was very brief. He said, “Well, we’re going to takeoff with four. I wonder how many will land? Let’s look at the photography and figure out what the hell we might be able to salvage.” Jack Brown stuck his head in and told us to screw the airspeed restriction and to hold 540 knots from our letdown point to the target. We completed what little we could do and suited up for the debacle.
Takhli was most fortunate to have an outstanding Chaplain, Father Frank McMullen. Father Mac started the Takhli tradition of blessing, complete with sprinkling, every aircraft that took off anytime day or night. This day Father Mac, who often attended our briefings and flew with the B-66 guys, came to the line and blessed each of pilot before takeoff. He climbed up the ladder of my Thud just before start engine time and gave me absolution along with his blessing. I was raised as a Methodist and was definitely not used to a guy wearing a shawl to either bless or absolve me. I decided that I needed all the help I could get and was truly thankful for the gesture. We launched on time and headed north.
We flew into central Laos at 28,000 feet and then let down to 50’, held 540 knots, and headed for our Initial Point (IP), Yen Bai, on the Red River. In July ‘65, Yen Bai had more guns than Hanoi, yet, it was a mandatory checkpoint in the tasking message. DOD strikes again. Paul did not over-fly Yen Bai since he is at least as smart as a chicken and we hit the Red River at 50 feet and started for the target two miles behind the second flight.
Almost immediately we started to have 37MM flak burst directly over our flight path. 37MM guns do not have a fuse that will detonate on proximity, ergo, all of the rounds had to have been manually set to detonate at a fixed time that corresponded with the range from gun to target. It was absolutely obvious that they knew we were coming and at what route. The reason that the 37MM rounds were high was that the guns could not be depressed any more. We flew either down the Red River or over its edges for about 40 miles, always with 37MM bursting over us. When we hit the confluence of the Red and Black Rivers, we left the river and flew over rice paddies for the next 25 miles to the SAM site. A B-66 took a picture looking down on one of our flights and they were leaving rooster tails in the paddies. We started to take hits from small arms and 50-caliber equivalent Automatic Weapons as soon as we left the river. I was hit 12 times between the IP and target, all small caliber. As we neared the SAM site, we came under fire from the 37MM and 57MM weapons that had been brought in to protect the site. We counted over 250 37mm and 57MM guns and a horde of Automatic Weapons around each site when we finally got the post-strike photography. Korat’s experience was similar to ours. We underwhelmed them a ton. I saw what looked like a Missile propped up against a pole and a couple of huts in the cleared area of the site when we were about a mile out. There were no vans or other service equipment normal to a SA-2 site. Surprise, Surprise, it was a dummy site! It was hard to see much since Jack Brown’s flight had hit the area with eight CBU-2s with all 19 tubes dispensing bomblets. Major Harris’ flight had dropped 24 Napalm cans. We dropped 24 more cans into the mess. As our first flight hit the target, Walt Kosko, flying TWO was hit and only made it back to the Black River before he had to punch out. As I dropped, I saw Kyle Berg’s aircraft on fire from in front of the inlets past the ‘burners. The aircraft slowly pulled up, rolled right and went in. Marty Case, who had gone through Cadets with Kyle, called “Bailout, Bailout” and then “No way, he went in!” Paul started to pull up through a hail of bursting flak to co
