Before The Memories Fade

Dan Lee marveled at the rugged beauty of the terrain. It was desolate and foreboding, punctuated by sharply rising ridges of limestone karst. A plume of water spewed forth from a chasm below and spilled into a lush valley, forming a river that ran to the northwest. There were patches of white sandy beach and backwaters with aquamarine pools where elephants were bathing. The mist from the cascading waterfall formed an arching rainbow in the mid-day sun. Laos was a hauntingly beautiful land when viewed from twenty thousand feet in an air-conditioned cockpit. In five minutes they had crossed the Annamite Mountains into North Vietnam...

“Broker, let’s clean ‘em an’ green ‘em.”

“Roger… Two... Three... Four.”

The flight of Thuds dropped their external fuel tanks and armed the bomb release panels. The loop in the river that looked like a catcher’s mitt was ahead and slightly to the right. Dan’s navigation had been good. Their radar warning scopes started to come alive, indicating that the enemy missile sites had picked them up. It was time for them to slice down out of the missile envelope.

“Broker, go line abreast.”

“Two... Three... Four.” The wingmen drew abeam their leader and spread out until there were five hundred feet between them.

“Standby for the break. Ready... ready... NOW!”

Dan plugged the afterburner of the big J-75 engine, rolled inverted, and pulled it straight through, his wingmen in position. They went screaming over the river at five hundred knots dead on course for Nong Binh.

Dan saw the first spray of orange tracer coming up before he reached the airfield boundary. A web of red, and yellow dots joined it immediately. They were shooting everything they had straight up and the pilots had no choice but to grit their teeth and press on ... Dan hit his pickle button at the airfield perimeter and the weapons interval meter began its countdown. There was a bright flash on his right. “Three’s gone, lead.” Dan said nothing. He was sweating out the end of the run trying to ignore the intense ground fire. Suddenly they were out of it, and the three Thuds turned south down the valley, hugging the terrain to evade the missiles defending the airfield. Dan passed a high bluff on his right that jutted down into the alley. He turned Broker Flight west behind it to mask them from the enemy gunners and took them up steeply to twenty-four thousand feet when they were out of range.

“Anybody see a chute?”

“I saw his canopy come off, lead.”

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