Subject: The Entirely Marvelous Adventures of Bill and Ed
by Ed Rider
(Disclaimer: This tale was written from the viewpoint of a pilot. The events described actually happened. However, for the sake of humor, I have “somewhat” emphasized Bill’s discomfort in some situations. There is no intention to disparage the honored profession of Air Navigation.)
Adventure One
It was June of 1967. The 8th TAC Bomb Sq. (the “Yellowbirds”) was at Clark AB, Philippines, partying at the 21 Club and flying on the largest practice bomb range in the Pacific. The 13th TAC Bomb Sq. (the “Redbirds”) was at Phan Rang AB, South Vietnam, partying at the 21 West Club and flying on the largest unrestricted bomb range in the world. I was a Yellowbird. The two squadrons flip flopped every two months. While at Clark, we had occasional trips to Japan for various reasons, one being the delivery and pick up of aircraft undergoing IRAN (inspect, repair as necessary) at the Mitsubishi factory at Gifu near Nagoya. These were highly sought after missions because they allowed a chance for shopping where the dollar was almighty. The only problem was that you were required by custom and courtesy to take along myriad shopping lists from people not so fortunate.
It finally was my turn to go and I was crewed with a navigator that I had never flown with before. I will only identify him as “Bill” since I have no contact with him and he may not want to be identified in this article. We were to deliver a B-57 to Gifu and pick up one that had been IRANed (Inspect Repair As Necessary). To avoid the hassle of a refueling stop on Okinawa, we decided to go non-stop. I had a secret fuel management system that let me get more range from the B-57 than most could. I ignored the instructions in the Dash 1 concerning the sequence that fuel tanks should be consumed and flew with an aft center of gravity (CG) during much of the mission.
We flew on the Oceanic Airways used by airliners and navigated using Low Frequency Radio Direction Finding (LFRDF). Bypassing Okinawa, all was smooth and quiet. Very quiet. The airlines communicate using High Frequency radio (HF) or Very High Frequency radio (VHF). We had only Ultra High Frequency radio (UHF) which is line of sight and so we could not talk to nor hear anyone after we left the Philippines until we got within range of Kagoshima, Japan. When we were about 100 miles out from Kagoshima, from 45,000 feet we could see the thunderstorms that were building over the islands. This caused us some concern because the factory runway at Gifu was Visual Flight Rules (VFR) only.
A weather check was in order and Bill was just about to contact Kagoshima Radio and check the weather at the Nagoya airport, which is near Gifu, when I saw a red warning light in the cockpit. The main inverter had failed. It supplied AC power to all the important instruments, such as the attitude indicator, the gyro compass, and the Automatic Direction Finder (ADF). It also supplied power to the TACAN (Tactical Air Navigation), the IFF (Identification Friend or Foe), and the Instrument Landing System (ILS). I switched to the standby inverter and it failed immediately. We were not in immediate trouble because we were in clear air with visibility 93 million miles. But it would be a little tense if we had to make a radar ground controlled approach (GCA) in bad weather using only the information available from the turn needle, side slip ball, vertical velocity indicator, and altitude and airspeed. For heading we had the standby compass, commonly called the whiskey compass because it floats in alcohol. It swings wildly in any kind of turbulence and is generally useless for precision approaches. I had practiced hundreds of such approaches and successfully completed a few for real and was not overly worried. It just meant that we would not land at Gifuif the weather there was not VFR but at a U.S. military base with American GCA controllers.
When Bill attempted to contact Kagoshima Radio we discovered why it had been so quiet for the past two hours. You guessed it! No UHF radio. This made the situation a little more interesting. Now we had to find a runway to land on without the help of anything other than our eyeballs and wits. If we could not find one clear of clouds we would just have to find a way to get under the clouds and hope they were not sitting on the ground. We were getting closer to the Japanese Islands now and from 45,000 feet I could see that the clouds extended past the north shore. A narrow strip of the south shore was visible. It looked much worse in the direction of Gifu with thunderstorms building. I knew that Itazuki Air Base was somewhere near the west end of the island and near the north shore because I had read stories about the F-80s flying out of there on combat sorties during the Korean war. Just the name brought back memories of my pilot training days when we aspiring fighter pilots would drink beer at happy hour and sing “Itazuki Tower, This is Air Force 801” and “Throw a Nickel on The Grass, Save a Fighter Pilots’ Ass”. So I asked Bill to pull out his topographical map and locate it. He pulled out a map about the size of a sheet of typewriter paper that had all of East Asia on it. You could cover all the islands of Japan with the end of your thumb! What is a navigator for? At that point I would have traded him for 200 pounds of fuel.
And speaking of fuel, we did not have many options left. If we continued on toward Gifu and it was socked in we would not have enough to make it back to Itazuki. So we had to find Itazuki. I started a screaming decent to the portion of the south shore that was visible. My plan was to get under the clouds, find a valley that crossed the island, and emerge on the north shore. Then we would look for Itazuki while staying under the clouds. This worked out quite well but a lot of farmers probably spent the rest of the day trying to catch their water buffalo. The clouds were almost on the ground and I maintained enough airspeed to pull up through the clouds if my valley came to a dead end. Bill was somewhat unhappy. We found the north shoreline in due course and I was about to ask Bill to flip a coin to see if we turned left or right. Then it occurred to me that the west end of the island was much closer and it made sense to try that way first. If we did not find Itazuki we would not have to return so far to search in the other direction. Two hundred feet put us in the clouds and visibility was about a mile. I stayed just within sight of the shoreline to keep my orientation. After a while, to our sorrow, we came to the end of the island without having sighted anything that resembled an Air Base. We turned back to retrace our steps and I realized we had not timed our sojourn to the west and would not know when we were back where we started. Not that it would make much difference. The fuel gauge was unwinding like one of those crazy clocks you see in bars that run backwards to Happy Hour. When the needle reached its resting place it would not signify a happy hour. Bill was somewhat unhappy.
About this time, I started paying closer attention to the terrain under us. It consisted almost entirely of small (and I mean SMALL) farm plots with many rock fences and canals. The roads were one lane crooked mud trails. The beach was out of the question. It was craggy rocks. I told Bill to start looking for any level piece of ground 1500-2000 feet long. Again, Bill was somewhat unhappy. Once I spotted an old WWII runway and my heart leapt with joy. But a closer inspection revealed 8 or 10 canals cut through its 3,000 foot length.
The situation was now beginning to get a little dicey. One must start thinking about the unthinkable. We just might have to get out and walk. I asked Bill to help me look for some smoke to indicate which way the wind was blowing. His comment was that it made no difference because there was no place to land. I patiently explained that it did make a difference because before we punched out I would have to aim the aircraft out to sea to avoid casualties on the land. I wanted us to drift back over land so we would not have to swim. Again, Bill was somewhat unhappy.
At this point our fate was almost decided for us because we almost crashed into some radio towers. I snatched the control stick back and we cleared them by a few feet. While I was gently easing us back down out of the clouds using the few instruments I had available, a light went off in my head. I had seen towers arranged like that thousands of times while making instrument approaches.Four fifty foot towers in a square with another in the center. In the old days when pilots “flew the beam”, these range stations were the primary means of navigation. If you were on the “beam” you heard a constant tone. If you strayed left or right, you heard “dot dash” or “dash dot”, A or N, I forget which was which, but even before I became a pilot they were made obsolete by ADF equipment. They were now used as Outer Marker Locators (OML). This is a LF radio beacon located at the point where an aircraft begins its final decent to the runway. While I was gingerly trying to find it again without running into it, I told Bill to get out the ILS approach sheet for Itazuki and tune in the OML. When I was a young Staff Sergeant, I was an Airborne Electronics Technician working on, would you believe it, the B-57. I knew that the ADF receiver still worked without AC power; only the ADF did not work. In other words, we could hear the identifiers but the ADF needle would not point to the station. The approach sheet also gave the final heading and distance to the runway. With this information in hand, I found the towers again, aligned myself as best I could onto the final approach heading, and eased up enough to get over the top of them. We got a strong increase in volume as we approached the towers and a very brief cone of silence as we passed over the top. That told me that we had the right set of towers. I started my clock and figured it would take 2 minutes at 180 knots. I averaged out the swings from side to side of the whiskey compass. Just before 2 minutes were up, I saw a concrete ramp under my nose with aircraft parked on it. Hooray! I could barely see the runway off to my left. The visibility was really bad now. I raised up a little so I could drop a wing without hitting the parked aircraft and then THERE IS THE TOWER! I banked and yanked and missed it by several feet. The control tower people were somewhat disturbed. I flew across the runway far enough so that I could make a 270 degree turn back to line up with it. I hated to lose sight of it and was afraid there were hills off to the side of it but it was necessary. I lowered gear and flaps and made my turn with my left wing practically dragging in the trees. Just as I estimated that I had made about 270 degrees of turn, I saw lights. The brave tower people had picked them selves up off the floor and turned the runway lights full bright. I do not know if they gave me a green light or not because the tower was only visible from a few hundred feet. I was not worried about other traffic because I knew no sane person would be flying in this weather. We were half way down the runway before I got lined up and put it down. We waited at the end until a Follow Me found us and led us to the ramp. We were followed by several fire trucks (a waste of time; there was not enough fuel left to start a Boy Scout campfire) and were met on the ramp by the Base Commander and various and sundry Flying Safety types. Many others came out who were curious to see the idiots who flew in this kind of weather. Bill was somewhat happy.
Adventure Two
After answering a million questions, we retired to the bar to get some medicine to counteract all the adrenaline that was coursing through our blood system. A call was made to Yokota Air Base requesting parts and they sent them down by T-39 next morning after the weather improved. We got a UHF radio and a main inverter but no standby. But it was only a short trip to Gifu and we would be going VFR under the clouds. The Weather Guesser assured me that the bottoms of the clouds would be no lower than 8,000 feet. So away we go on a VFR flight plan along the Inland Sea. This time Bill had a briefcase full of topographical charts and was religiously doing dead reckoning (DR). We started out at 7,000 feet but soon had to descend to stay out of the clouds. We kept descending until we were at 1,000 feet and could see that the clouds met the water up ahead. I had a few choice words to say about the Weather Guesser. There were some high hills at the east end of the Inland Sea so we had no option but to climb up through it or turn back. I was not about to go back so I told Bill to try to contact Traffic Control and get us an Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) clearance. Naturally he was unable to because the UHF radio had gone Tango Uniform (TITS UP: A description of a dead female pig on her back). I was well committed to my climb before the new main inverter also went TU.HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN! Bill was somewhat unhappy. I managed to keep us upright through all those bumpy clouds until we broke out on top at 25,000 feet.
I told Bill to let me know when our DR position was well past the last hills and then I would let down through the clouds and hope to break out over the flat land around Gifu. He was not too happy with that idea and it turned out not to be necessary. Shortly after we passed the last hills the clouds ended. It was clear and sunny and Bill was able, with his newly acquired stack of topographical charts, to actually find Gifu using surface features. We buzzed the tower rocking our wings and got a green light and landed without incident. Altogether a rather boring day.
The aircraft we were to pick up, a B-57E, SN 55-4265, had to be test hopped and would not be ready for that until the following day. Bill was a bachelor and had something waiting for him in Tokyo so I told him to get on the bullet train and go. Just check the Visiting Officers Quarters (VOQ) at Yakota every day to see if I was there. The next day I inspected the aircraft thoroughly and flew it. It failed the test because of a badly rigged rudder. When I turned off the hydraulic rudder boost, it yawed sharply to the left. They worked on it some more and I tested it again next day. Failed again, same reason. The same on the next day. This was on Friday and I said “To hell with it, I’ll take it home and let them fix it there.” No problem as long as I had hydraulic pressure, which was always available. After all, I had a long shopping list and would need all of Saturday to complete it. So Friday afternoon I flew 265 to Yokota without incident, except that the weather was miserable there and I had to break IFR minimums to get on the ground.
Adventure Three
Bill contacted me that night in the VOQ and we spent Saturday in taxis running here and there to shop, mostly for someone else. Funny that they never reimbursed me for all the taxi fares. Our list included two Honda 90 motorcycles ($90 each delivered to the flight line by the dealer and tied onto the bomb door by the crew chiefs), several sets of Noritake China and myriad Hi-Fi components. Everything except the Hondas was loaded into the aft compartment. This was not intended to carry cargo because it is so far aft. It would increase the already aft CG normally present at takeoff. After everything was loaded on Sunday morning, we discovered we could not remove the tail stand that is placed under the tail to keep the aircraft from tipping back during refueling or in strong winds. There was too much weight on the stand. The aircraft would have tipped back if we removed it.. Not to worry. I told the crew chief to wait until I had the engines running before removing the stand. I could run up the engines and hold the brakes, relieving the weight on the stand. This was done and I taxied riding the brakes and using higher than normal thrust. This worked OK until I released brakes for takeoff. The aircraft tried to sit on its tail and I had to keep applying brakes to keep the nose down until the elevator became effective. This extended the take off roll somewhat. We made it airborne with several hundred feet of runway to spare, raised the gear and disappeared into the clouds. The weather was below ferry takeoff minimums but it was Sunday and no big wheels were around to tell us we could not go.
We had filed for a refueling stop at Kadena on Okinawa and since it was a relatively short flight we decided to go Super Cruise. This meant cruising at the limiting Mach number of .84 at the lowest altitude that would get us to the destination without running out of fuel. In our case that was 18,000 feet. This put us at about the freezing level. Since true airspeed is directly proportional to Mach number and temperature, the warmer the temperature the faster we could go. At .84 Mach and 0 degree C we would do about 540 knots True Airspeed (TAS) or 620 MPH. About a hundred miles out we broke out of the weather and it was beautiful and sunny. As we crossed Nagoya I could see the factory runway at the Mitsubishi factory about 25 miles off my right wing. 265 was a dual model and had controls in the back seat for an instructor pilot. As we were in clear air I was letting Bill drive from the back seat while I examined the inside of my eyelids. Shortly after passing Nagoya, I was rudely awakened from my lethargy by a severe yaw to the left, accompanied by much shuddering and buffeting. The aircraft showed every intention of doing a snap roll. At 540 Knots, I did not think that even a tough old bird like the B-57 could survive that in one piece. Simultaneously, I jerked power to idle, extended speed brakes, pulled 4-5 Gs to get the nose up, and stood on the right rudder. I said something like “What the hell are you doing back there?” as Bill was saying “What the hell are you doing up there?”. With the nose pointed straight up, airspeed decreased rapidly and I could control the rudder without giving myself a hernia. I then pulled the nose down to the horizon and was inverted headed back the way we had come from. I rolled upright, stuffed my heart back into my flight suit and made a quick assessment of the situation. I first noticed that there was no noise and buffeting from the speed brakes and spoilers. A quick look at the hydraulic gauge told me why. Zero pressure. Then I remembered; “no problem with the badly rigged rudder as long as I had hydraulic pressure”. Well, so much for optimism on this trip. After I had slowed considerably it was possible to use the electric trim to neutralize the rudder. After we both had gotten our breathing under control, I suggested that Bill contact Traffic Control and tell them we had an emergency situation. I had in mind a landing at the Mitsubishi factory and presenting them with this piece of junk they had pawned off on us. But, (have you guessed it yet? I’ll bet you have.) the UHF was Tango Uniform (TU). Bill was somewhat unhappy.
But not to despair. We had lots of things going for us. The weather was beautiful, the runway at Gifu was only about 100 miles away, and we had all our instruments and lots of fuel. I switched my IFF to the emergency squawk of Mode 3 Code 77 and turned toward Gifu. I buzzed the factory runway repeatedly but got no sign of life. There were no cars in the parking lots. Sunday. So, I figured we would just have to land uninvited. I pulled the emergency landing gear lowering handle and operated the hand pump to lower the landing gear. I pumped and pumped. Then I pumped some more. Then I banked so that the sun was casting a shadow of the underside of the aircraft onto a wing tip tank to see if the landing gear was coming down. It was not. All this time, I could hear Bill mumbling on the intercom comments like; “I don’t believe this. This can’t be happening again!” I really did not want to make a gear up landing on an unattended runway. After all, there could be a fire and we might need help getting out. Then I saw the commercial jets taking off from NagoyaAirport and that gave me an idea. I flew over there and positioned myself to join up on the next jet to take off. I intended to fly up alongside and use hand signals to tell him what my problem was. The next one took off and I set up an intercept. I pulled out of my dive and was perfectly positioned off his right wing. He never saw me and climbed away from me like I was sitting still. Those 727s really had lots of power. Embarrassed? Chagrined? All of that. The option of belly flopping uninvited and unannounced onto a busy commercial airport runway was barely considered.
It boiled down to the fact that we were going to have to plunge back into that terrible weather that we had just left at Yokota. We still had all our radio aids such as TACAN, ADF, and ILS. We also had, as far as I knew, an operable IFF. I knew that the controllers at Yokota would receive our emergency squawk and respond appropriately to it. So we turned toward Yokota and climbed to a high altitude to get above civilian traffic. I told Bill to tune in the OML and select it on the intercom so we could hear it in case Yokota tried to contact us on that radio. They did and asked us to respond by changing the code on the IFF. By asking us questions that could be answered Yes or No that we could respond to by changing the squawk on the IFF, they determined what our problem was, our altitude, our fuel state, and how many thousands of feet of foam we wanted on the runway. I thought the last request was a little funny because we really did not have any experience in this. At any rate, my guess of 2,000 feet turned out to be a good estimate. While things seemed to be proceeding in good order, both Bill and I kept a very suspicious eye on the main inverter failure light. It occurred to me that it would be extremely difficult to fly an instrument approach if we lost an engine because we had no rudder boost. I didn’t mention this to Bill.
After we let down through the weather and was under GCA control, with the instructions relayed to us over the low frequency OML, we were told that there would be a delay because they did not have enough foam and was having some trucked in from a nearby base. In the meantime, I was to do some practice approaches. I discovered during the practice approaches that I could not get slowed down enough on a normal glide path. The B-57 with no landing gear, no speed brakes, and no flaps will gain speed on a normal glide path of 3 degrees with the engines at idle. We were not able to transmit this to the GCA controllers because we had no radio to transmit on. Bill and I prepared for the landing by getting out of our parachutes and locking our shoulder harness. I told Bill that just before touchdown he should lean forward against the shoulder harness and put his chin on his chest so he would not get whip lash. I intended to do the same.
When all was ready, I descended from 1,000 feet to 500 feet on the downwind leg. On the base leg I lowered my altitude even more. I had to flatten out my glide path so I could get slowed down. I could not tell the GCA controller why I was doing this and he got pretty anxious. As I turned final 5 miles out I was in idle and side slipping to lose more altitude and airspeed. The final controller really got excited when he saw me descending toward the ground about 4 miles out. I felt sorry for him but had no way to communicate with him. At 3 miles I was dodging smoke stacks and the controller was getting very shrill. Bill was somewhat unhappy. At one mile I saw the runway and knew I would be long unless I did something so I shut off both engines and cross controlled to kill airspeed. Forgot to tell Bill I was shutting down the engines. He quit breathing. I had judged it just right and touched down very nose high about 100 feet past the start of the foam. Of course I had my neck stretched to the limit to see over the nose and when the tail touched the nose slammed down and snapped my head forward. Bill was in the perfect chin down position.
The grinding and shrieking seemed to go on forever but we finally stopped before we ran out of foam. I asked Bill if he was OK and got a strangled reply but he looked OK. Lots of people were running up to the aircraft and it looked funny because I was looking up at them. I was afraid someone was going to be a hero and jettison the canopy to rescue us. I knew that it would fall back onto the rear fuselage and the tail causing lots of damage. There was very little damage so far and I did not want a major accident on my record. I screamed and waved my arms until I got them to agree not to blow it. A Sergeant opened a small door and activated the hand pump to raise the canopy and I was surprised when it started up. When it was open about two feet at the front it stopped. It is hinged at the back so the opening got progressively smaller toward the rear. The Sergeant said I should crawl out through the opening. I said “No way”. I was not about to stick my tender body under that 700 pound monster and have it do to me what an alligator does to a hound dog. While they were trying to locate something to keep the canopy from falling, I noticed a guy in a flight suit jittering back and forth from foot to foot and ruining the shine on his jungle boots in the ankle deep foam. He looked really familiar, almost like….IT WAS BILL! A quick glance to the back seat confirmed it. I never did figure out how he squeezed through that narrow crack back there without getting greased up.
After I extricated myself from the wreckage there was another Base Commander waiting to greet me. If these honors kept up I might get conceited. We were whisked away to the Flight Surgeon so he could assess the damage to our bodies. At least that is what I thought. It turns out there was a more sinister motive. He used his rubber hammer on my knees, shined bright lights into my eyes, and peered into most of my orifices. I told him I thought I may have some whiplash injuries. Not interested. What he was interested in was draining an inordinate amount of liquid from my veins so he could determine the alcohol/blood ratio in my alcohol system. After that we had to suffer through an inquisition by Flying Safety types, fill out multiple forms, and sign many statements. They particularly wanted to know why I did not follow the published emergency procedures and blow the canopy and use the fire extinguishers on the engines. That would have required two engine changes and the canopy would have done lots of damage to the aircraft besides ruining the canopy. I pointed out that the first sentence in the emergency procedures said “These procedures do not preclude the use of good judgment”. Finally finished, I suggested to Bill that we go to the O’Club bar for some mood lifters. He looked at me as if I were a disgusting species of snake and said ”Ed Rider, I’ll never get into an airplane with you again”. He stalked off so I had to drink alone.
While gazing into my martini and rubbing my stiffening neck, I suddenly remembered that wonderful establishment outside the Main Gate at Yokota called Kay’s Bath House. Thence I did repair to get myself repaired. I was put into the custody of a tiny doll-woman who barely came above my belt buckle. She took me into a tiled room with a steam cabinet, a sunken tub and a massage table. After she hung up my clothes, she stuffed me into the steam cabinet and cranked up the steam. My cries of pain got no sympathy and I discovered I could not open it from inside. When the steam started coming out my eyes and ears and I was the color of a steamed lobster, she finally let me out. She made me sit on a small six inch high wooden stool; a most undignified position for a grown naked man. She then scrubbed me with a rough sponge like she was scrubbing a greased up car engine. When she had removed eight of my ten layers of skin, she threw buckets of boiling water from the sunken tub on me. The place must have been soundproof because my cries for help went unanswered. She then threw me into that tub of boiling water. When I complained that it was too hot, she just put her foot on my head and held it under until I quit yelling. After a while it really didn’t feel all that bad. When I was well done, she hauled me out and placed me on my back on the table. She kept removing my hands and finally placed a towel there. She proceeded to find every muscle in my body, and if it was taut, she would twang it like Willie Nelson plucking a guitar string until it relaxed and would not twang any more. Then, with me on my stomach, she walked around on my back and, with her toes and heels, proceeded to disjoint my backbone like you disjoint a boiled chicken. There were lots of sickening liquid snaps and crunches. I would wiggle my toes now and then to see if I was paralyzed yet. She then worked on my neck and somewhere along there I either passed out or went to sleep. I was having warm fuzzy dreams when some vigorous shaking awakened me. She was saying “You go home now, GI”. She helped me dress and pointed me at the Main Gate. I fell into bed and awoke refreshed and with nary a sign of whiplash.
We arranged for the safe storage of all the merchandise that was on the airplane until another airplane from Clark could come and pick it up. Some of it looked a little worse for the wear. I had touched down on the tail compartment and the skin had worn through and scooped up hundreds of gallons of foam into the compartment. Oh well, none of it belonged to me. But some did belong to my Wing Commander, Colonel Chuck Yeager. We were put on a Japan Air contract flight to Clark. I tried to get some sleep but Bill kept waking me up. He was asleep and jerking and thrashing around in his seat. He was muttering things like “The main inverter failed again” and “Oh no! The radio is Tango Uniform!” and “Ed Rider, I’ll never get into another airplane with you again!”.
Adventure Four
Some months later The Yellowbirds were back at Phan Rang, South Vietnam, and flying night interdiction missions in the southern part of North Vietnam and on the supply routes down through Laos. I had a patch on my party suit that said “Laotian Highway Patrol”. There were two navigators in the squadron who would willingly fly with me. The others did not like my highly unorthodox tactics. I tried to point out to them that other pilots were getting shot up (or shot down) while I never took hits and killed more trucks than most. Those idiots were coming back with their airplanes full of holes and getting medals for it. Anyway, my navigator came down with a bad case of Hos’ Revenge and the other navigator was already flying so someone had to be volunteered. The hand of fate laid its clammy finger on ….Bill! We had to drag him scratching and spitting, so to speak, to the airplane. We were taking off about midnight to hit a truck park way up in Laos. I asked the Crew Chief if his plane was ready and when he said yes I gave him four beers to put into the rear compartment and told him to button it up (close all inspection doors). I didn’t insult him by inspecting it. The crew chiefs liked for me to fly their airplane and I never had one let me down. I went around with the Armorer and checked the fuses on the bombs for proper settings and the arming wires for proper routing. Then I spread my maps on the ramp and showed the Crew Chief and Armorer where we were going and what we were supposed to hit.
We were in the Northeast Monsoon and had forty knots of wind down the runway. The standard night departure called for a right turn to South after takeoff until reaching the coast, Then a turn to East and then follow the coast to Cam Rhan Bay and turn on course. This was supposed to keep you out of the out going artillery but it wasted about 3,000 pounds of fuel. So naturally I didn’t follow it. After I raised the gear I turned off external lights (so the Tower could not see me). When I was high enough to drop a wing, I turned right 270 degrees so as to cross the west end of the runway headed northwest. I roared across the 101st Airborne encampment and shook all the grunts out of bed and headed up the valley that led to Dalat in the mountains. The hills on either side were invisible as there were no lights on the ground but if I maintained the proper heading I would not run into any rocks before I got high enough to clear them. Bill was somewhat unhappy with this exercise. In due course we climbed out of the valley and turned north to Pleiku and points north.
We checked in with Blindbat, our C-130 flare ship, and from over 50 miles out we could see his flares and the anti-aircraft fire he was attracting. The gunners must have just gotten a fresh supply of ammo because they were even shooting at his flares. We let down and coordinated altitudes so that we would not run into each other. We made eight vertical dive bomb passes dropping our “funny bombs”. This is the name that Forward Air Controllers (FACs) gave to the Mk-35 fire bomb. It was the same bomb used to start the fire storms in Tokyo in World War II. It is a large cluster bomb that opens up a few thousand feet above the ground. The falling bomblets make a fiery waterfall until they hit the ground. Then they spew out burning white and yellow phosphorus like roman candles. Really something to see at night. We stirred up a hornets’ nest and the flak was thick and when it got close you could hear it popping like popcorn. We left the flare ship to count the burning trucks and started home. Just another routine mission. But we still had our 20 mm ammo left and I hated to take it home. I called the airborne command post and asked if they had any gun targets. They told me to contact a FAC at Tchepone. He had spotted trucks on a ferry crossing the river there.
We contacted the FAC to coordinate altitudes before we got into his area. We used a secret “base” altitude which changed every 12 hours so that the enemy could not listen in and find out our altitudes and set the fuses on his shells for that altitude. That night base altitude was 8000 feet. He said he was at base plus 4 or 12000 feet. I said you must mean minus 4. He said no. I asked what the hell he was doing way up there and he said his Cessna O-2 wouldn’t climb any higher. His flares were floating so high that they did not illuminate the ground and I had to circle until I got their reflection on the river before I could see it. Bill kept saying something about Bingo fuel. (The minimum required to get back home with 2000 pounds remaining). A few guns were shooting at our sound but not coming close. I knew there were no radar controlled guns because otherwise we would have been tracked and fired on accurately while we were circling. I finally got it worked out and caught the ferry in the flare reflection on the river and rolled in. I fired about a 3 second burst in a 30 degree dive from about 1500 feet. The muzzle flashes lit us up like a Christmas tree and said “Here I am! Shoot me!” And did they ever! Now I knew why that FAC was so high. I pulled about 5 Gs to get pointed straight up. A small part of my mind registered a red light flash somewhere in the cockpit but I was too busy to look at it. When I ran out of airspeed at the top and had figured out up from down and was upright again the light was out. The FAC was encouraging; said he had seen lots of hits on the ferry with his night scope. So I got set up to go in again. Bill didn’t think it was a good idea. Indeed, there were lots of guns protecting the ferry. Most of them were twin barrel 37mm. I could tell because the strings of red hot beer cans came in strings of eight. The 37mm fired clips of four so eight meant twin barrels. I was worried about radar controlled 57mm twin barrel units mounted on tracked vehicles that often accompanied large truck convoys. But no evidence of them. The most spectacular show was provided by the many 23mm ZSU units. These were four barrels mounted on a tracked vehicle and they put out a string of tracers that waved around the sky like a kid playing with a high pressure water hose.
My normal tactic at night over a well defended target was to get directly over the target at about 8,000 feet, roll inverted and pull the nose down to the target, drop my bomb at about 5,000 feet, and pull up into a vertical climb. Just before I ran out of airspeed, I would pull the nose down to level and roll upright. This faked out the gunners because they expected me to be off to the side of the target. I was only vulnerable in the first part of my pull-up. Under very heavy fire I sometimes varied this by not pulling up immediately but by turning 90 degrees and continuing down to low altitude with low power and coasting a few miles away from the target (and the guns). When using my guns, I would dive slightly off to the side, go lower, and pull up to a 30 degree dive before firing.
Bill kept bothering me with this Bingo fuel business but I didn’t have time to discuss it with him. On my second pass, I had to use the same heading as the first pass in order to see the target. Not a very smart thing to do. When our muzzle flashes lit us up again, I had the feeling that if I pulled up as usual every gun would be aimed at our recovery path. So I didn’t pull up; I used my alternate tactic. The sky behind and above us was filled with a spectacular display of fireworks. The FAC was figuratively jumping up and down because we had torched off some of the trucks on the ferry and on the south shore of the river, where the ferry was now resting. Now we did not have to circle around to catch the reflection of the flares to locate the target. We still had about 600 rounds left; about 6 seconds of firing. We could approach from any direction since we could see the burning target. Bill was getting a little shrill now and yelling something about Bingo minus two. I told him I would wind it up with two more passes and we would go home. After each pass when I was pulling 5-6 Gs to fake out the gunners, there was this pesky red light in the cockpit. I was so busy trying not to join up with those strings of red hot beer cans that I never found out what it was. We left the FAC to add up the damage and headed home.
Relieved of all ordinance and most of its fuel, the B-57 climbs like a homesick angel. In short order we were passing 35,000 feet and I had Bill tighten his oxygen mask and check his system for pressure breathing. As we passed 45,000 feet, we had to forcefully breath out and just relax and let the pressure blow up our lungs to breath in. At 53,000 feet we were above over 95% of the atmosphere. At that altitude, the engines used very little fuel. When we arrived over Pleiku we were 150 NM from home and had 800 pounds of fuel. Normally when you land with 2000 pounds, that is considered an emergency. But I had been through this many times before and was only concerned with having enough fuel to taxi to the ramp. At that altitude, when you reduce power to idle, the power only reduces slightly because the engines cannot reduce fuel consumption very much without flaming out. So, in order to reduce power and expedite our decent, I had to shut off one engine. I shut down the right engine because we would be flying a left hand traffic pattern. Bill was somewhat unhappy.
I made a .84 Mach decent which meant that it got progressively steeper as you got into the dense air at low altitude. This let us down inside the hole of the artillery doughnut at 12,000 feet. We were approaching from the north and had to land to the east. Once inside the hole, I extended speed brakes and pushed the nose over to maintain speed. Extending speed brakes at 500 knots is like running into a brick wall and we were thrown forward hard enough to lock our automatic shoulder harness. That is when that pesky red light in the cockpit came on again. This time I determined what it was. It was the low fuel pressure light. This was confirmed by the unwinding of the left engine. I was at a critical point in my traffic pattern and had no time to deal with a double engine flameout. So I shut off the left throttle, banked 90 degrees right, and pulled the nose around to a heading 180 degrees from the landing heading. Then I rolled inverted and with about 5 Gs pulled the nose down the line of approach lights to the end of the runway and then up the center of the runway lights, varying the Gs to complete my split S at about 1500 feet and at about 400-450 knots. While I was busy doing this I asked Bill to inform the tower that we had a double engine flameout and might need a tug to tow us in. Bill had lost his voice and never did make the call. When I leveled off from my split S I hit both air start ignition switches and advanced both throttles to idle. After a 4 G break to downwind, I lowered gear and flaps and both engines were making the low moaning sound they make when running at idle. After touchdown I raised the flaps and added power so I could hold the nose up. With 40 knots of headwind it was a long taxi to the far end of the runway. I tried to get Bill interested in betting on whether I could make it all the way into the de-arming area without lowering the nose wheel to the ground. For some reason he was not interested. Anyway, I did and scared the bejesus out of the de-arming troops.
While they were de-arming my guns I figured it out. It had to be an inoperative forward boost pump in the main fuel tank. When I went to full power and pulled lots of Gs at Tchepone, one fuel pump could not handle the load and the pressure dropped. Not enough, thank God, to flame out the engines. When I extended speed brakes in my decent to Phan Rang, what little fuel we had left splashed against the forward wall of the tank, uncovering the rear fuel pump and resulting in a flameout. There is an old saying; “There are old pilots and there are bold pilots but there are no old bold pilots”. Not so. But us bold pilots need more luck than most.
We had enough fuel to make it back to the ramp. After we had parked and deplaned, I made an inspection tour with the Crew Chief, armed with powerful electric torches. Not a scratch on her! Again skill and cunning wins over ignorance and stupidity. The Crew Chief brought out the four beers from the tail compartment, ice cold from their sojourn at 50,000 feet, and I spread my maps on the ramp. I gave a blow by blow description of the mission for my Crew Chief and Armorer and had an additional audience of most of the crew chiefs and armorers on the ramp who were not otherwise busy. Bill did not want his beer so I drank it too.
Needless to say, Bill never got into an airplane with me again.”
BTW: told Ed use of ‘was’ not ‘were’ just sounded more like him and passed the edit.
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