F-4 Phantom 333
333 THE AIRPLANE THAT REFUSED TO DIE
The story that I am about to relate was been buried deep in my mind and not shared with others for over thirty years. It is about an F-4 phantom that I flew many years ago when I was stationed at Da Nang, Vietnam in 1971. Life events now compel me to put down on paper my experience in that wonderful airplane. My pilot training class, 67F from Vance Air Force Base, had a reunion in Norway last summer that I attended. I visited F-4 phantom 333 where it sits in a museum at Bodo, Norway. I had longed to touch it one more time so I can feel the cold hard aluminum fuselage that took such a beating for me years ago. It was riddled with bullet holes from anti-aircraft guns, had one engine out, and was streaming fuel from holes in the fuel tanks when it refused to die. Even though this wonderful airplane had been shot to pieces it took me to death's door and brought me back alive. I feel obligated to relate this story so it can be donated to the museum at Bodo. The public that will view 333 has the right to know what a tough, battle tested aircraft it is...
As I think about 333, my mind drifts back to another place and time, a time where there were explosions from 500lb bombs throwing dirt and debris hundreds of feet into the air, tracers arcing their way from anti-aircraft guns toward attacking aircraft that jinked constantly in an attempt to avoid getting hit, and surface-to-air missiles leaving a trail of fire and smoke behind them as they guided their way toward vulnerable fighter aircraft. The Viet Nam war was taking a terrible toll on participants from each side. Those events are as sharp in my mind today (2008) as they were in 1971 when I was an F-4 aircraft commander flying with the 390th Tactical Fighter Squadron out of Da Nang Viet Nam.
Early in the morning on the first of March 1971, I woke up, swung my legs over the side of the bed, and sat there contemplating what the new day might have in store for me. For weeks we had been supporting operation Lam Son 719, a major Vietnamese ground operation. We had a lot of Air Force aircraft shot down in support of that operation and I wondered what my fate would be that day. Lam Son 719 was designed to move friendly ground troops from the northwestern border of South Vietnam west down route 9 into Laos to the town of Tchepone. There were huge storage areas near that city where the Vietnamese would store large amounts of ammunition and war supplies in order to support their soldiers in South Vietnam.
I took a shower (recommended in the morning before flying to minimize the problem of infection in case of a crash involving fire and burns) got dressed, and headed out to check the schedule and see what our target and bomb load would be.
I was scheduled to lead a two ship of F-4's, take off out of Da Nang and head toward the Lam Son 719 operation in Laos. I would be flying an F-4E with a nose gun (20MM cannon) fully loaded with 639 rounds with every 3rd round being armor piercing and the other two out of three being high explosive incendiary. My bomb load was 12 MK-82s (500 lb bombs) in the high drag configuration. My wingman would be flying an F-4D which had no nose gun and 12 MK-82s in the high drag configuration. We were to contact the Airborne Command and Control Center, (ABCCC, a C-130) for assignment to a target when we arrived in the area.
Our flight briefing was done in the squadron and we covered such items as engine start time, taxi and takeoff time, delivery parameters, aircraft emergencies, rejoin airspeeds, tactics to use against the enemy during weapons deliveries, and search and rescue procedures in case we had to eject. We emptied our pockets of any personal items (billfold, wedding ring). I took off my nice Seiko watch and put on my cheap issue watch so that the nice one wouldn't be worn by some Vietnamese soldier if I was shot down and captured. We were ready to go to life support when we had only a small plastic bag containing our military identification card, immunization record, Geneva Convention Card and our issue .38 caliber Smith and Wesson six shot revolver.
We walked to life support to pick up our helmets and oxygen masks and put on our G suits, survival vests and tree lowering devices (most of the areas where we worked had jungle canopys over a hundred feet high and parachutes would likely hang up in the trees; the lowering device would allow us to get to the ground if we chose to). From life support we walked to our airplanes.
The preflights of the airplanes (done by the pilots) and weapons (done by the weapons systems officers, the back seaters) were accomplished with no problems. Engine start and taxi were normal, take offs were done using 10 second spacing between aircraft. The rejoin out of traffic was normal and we checked each other over to make sure that there were no fuel leaks and the spinners on the nose of each bomb were not turning. The spinners would start to turn as soon as the bombs were released and the turning spinner would arm the fuse so that the bomb would go off when it hit the ground. You did not want to have a bomb armed while on your airplane because if it went off, the airplane would be destroyed and the crew killed.
As we approached the target area the Airborne Command and Control Center assigned us a Forward Air Controller (FAC) to work with. We were given his callsign and frequency. The FAC was an Air Force pilot (normally a fighter pilot) that was flying a light airplane (Cessna O-2 Skymaster or an OV-10 Bronco). The FAC would talk to the ground commander to get information on the disposition of friendly and enemy forces and pass that information on to the fighter aircraft. That would allow the fighters to employ their ordinance where it was most helpful to the ground forces.
We changed channels on the radio to the assigned frequency and made contact with the FAC. He told us that our target for the morning was an enemy tank (Russian built T-54) that had been dug in and camouflaged during the night near the friendly position. The friendly forces were Vietnamese soldiers. No Americans were allowed to participate in this operation other than helicopter and air support. The friendly forces were out of anti tank ordinance, and they were not able to be resupplied because of the large number of anti-aircraft guns that totally denied the area to helicopters. There was no way to get any resupply by land because the friendly force was surrounded and heavily outnumbered. I don't know how many friendly forces were in the camp; my estimate is at least 200 to 300. The FAC said that there were so many anti-aircraft guns in the area that he would hold north of the target 10 miles and describe it to us rather than getting close enough to shoot a white phosphorus rocket to mark the position of the tank. I never did see the FAC aircraft because he was too far from the target for us to acquire him.
He described the target as a tank dug in exactly in the middle of a round field. A large hole big enough to park the tank in had been dug during the night. The tank was driven into the hole and then was camouflaged in an effort to hide it from aircraft. The round field was very obvious to me. Thank heavens that the tank was in the middle of the field because at 3000 ft I could see no evidence of anything in the field. I told my number two man to hold high and to pinpoint where the anti aircraft guns were and to start bombing them if they shot at me. The guns were always so well camouflaged that the only way to find them was to see the muzzle flash as they fired, then attack the area where the flash was seen. I pushed the throttles up and accelerated to around 650 knots and dropped down to about 100 feet for a better look. As I approached the middle of the field I rolled inverted and looked up to try to locate the exact position of the tank. At this time about six or seven anti aircraft guns opened up on us, firing tracers past the canopy, some of them just a few feet away. I saw a camouflage net with what looked like bamboo strips woven through it. The FAC confirmed that we had flown directly over the tank and that I had seen the camo net.
I set up on downwind constantly changing my airspeed, altitude and heading to make the anti aircraft gunners job more difficult. I had set my bomb switches up so that each depression of the "pickle" button would drop 3 MK 82 high drag bombs with a spacing of about 35 feet between each bomb. I had planned to release the bombs in a 10 degree dive at 1000 ft above the ground. The maximum airspeed for high drag bombs was 500 knots indicated airspeed. 500 knots was too slow for that environment, but we had no choice because if the bombs were dropped faster than 500 knots there was a possibility that one of the four fins at the back of the bomb would fail. That would cause the bomb to corkscrew through the air which would risk hitting the aircraft and knocking it out of the air.
I flew a curvilinear approach constantly changing airspeed, altitude and dive angle pulling 5 G's and using full afterburner to keep the G's from bleeding down the airspeed until I was lined up on final. The bombs were on multiple ejector racks on each outboard station, with each rack holding 6 bombs. I had selected "bombs triple", "left outboard and right outboard so each push of the bomb button would drop three bombs. The 366th Fighter Wing had a policy that under normal conditions half of each kind of ordinance would be dropped on each pass. The Aircraft Commander could override that policy if he thought conditions warranted it.
As I rolled out of my descending turn and lined up on the camouflage net for my 1st pass I noticed that there were a lot more guns shooting at me than on the 1st, or target identification, pass. There were 15 to 25 anti aircraft guns firing at us from all directions and we were in the "heart of their kill zone". I made a radio call to my number two man saying, ìTwo, start working those guns". His answer stunned me, "I am Winchester" ( fighter pilot talk meaning he is out of bombs )"and RTB" (meaning returning to base". He had a problem in his cockpit and felt that he needed to return to DaNang. We were now working the tank without any help from a wingman, so we had no one to bomb the guns while we tried to stop the tank from getting into the friendly camp. The soldiers in the camp had nothing to stop the tank with, and the anti aircraft guns made it impossible to resupply them with the ordinance that they needed.
Our bomb pass looked good so we flew into the tracers of the anti aircraft guns and released the bombs just as we got to 1000 ft. above ground level at 500 knots, 10 degrees of dive, and when the pipper, an aiming dot projected on a combining glass in front of the aircraft commander in the front seat, arrived at the camouflage net. We pulled off the target surrounded by red tracers. As we looked back we could see the dirt and debris from our six bombs surrounding the area where the tank was parked. My backseater, a 1st Lt. with the nickname of "Hawk," and I both screamed out loud and in unison "We got him!" We were stunned seconds later when the largest and longest gun that I have ever seen appeared out of the cloud of dirt. The gun was attached to the huge T-54 tank and he was heading straight for the helpless friendly camp about half a mile away.
As soon as the bombs were separated from the aircraft I had selected full afterburner on both engines to get the 40% thrust augmentation and get my airspeed back into the 600 to 650 knot range. I pulled 8 1/2 Gs on my turn to downwind for my next attack. There was no time to wait for another flight of F-4s to work the target, the tank would be through the concertina wire and into the friendly camp by the time another flight arrived. The enemy infantry soldiers would be right behind the tank and would overrun the camp. At that time they were torturing then killing all of the soldiers, one by one, in the camps that they had overrun. We had to stop the tank before it got to the friendly camp. At this point the mission became more important than our lives or the aircraft.
In an effort to stop the tank I accelerated to 625 knots indicated while still in afterburner and dove at the tank. As the F-4 reached 625 knots I came out of afterburner and went to Mil power (full power without afterburner) The gunner in the turret of the tank was shooting at me as I aimed at the engine compartment and unleashed 200 rounds of 20MM. All of the other anti aircraft guns were shooting at us at the same time. It seemed like a wall of tracers were between us and the tank. I can remember that one of the louvers covering the engine compartment was broken and was loose on middle area where it should have been attached. I placed the pipper over the louvers covering the engine and pulled the trigger for two seconds. This fired 200 rounds of 20 MM into the engine and should have stopped the tank. I pulled off the target and selected full afterburner again. I passed above the tank, missing it by about 50 feet. The tank commander who had been shooting at us as we approached, ducked down and shut the hatch as I fired to keep from being hit by our cannon shells. I pulled the stick back very quickly to get the 8 G turn going. I snapped the airplane into a 90 degree left hand bank and noticed that all of the tracers were to our left and were stationary on the canopy which meant that they would impact us in about one or two seconds. I used a trick that I had perfected months before to avoid anti aircraft shells that were about to impact. I pushed the stick forward and pulled 3 negative Gs. All of the tracers went harmlessly to our left as I prepared for the next attack. The book answer for stopping the tank did not work, so I decided to make my next attack from the side of the tank and to put 200 rounds of 20 MM into the track, hoping to knock the track off of the drive sprockets or damaging the track in an attempt to stop the tank and prevent it from getting into the friendly camp. I flew downwind jinking left, right, up and down to make my flight path unpredictable. My airspeed never was below 650 knots. When the spacing was right I rolled into a 5 G left hand curvilinear approach to the target with a bank of about 80 degrees. There were several hundred tracers in the air at one time with most of them passing between 1 or 2 meters to 100 meters from our airplane. I rolled out of the hard turn and lined up for the pass on the track of the tank. I was in full afterburner until the airspeed hit 625 knots then I pulled the throttles back to full power without afterburner and placed the pipper short of the track and waited until it reached the track. I then used slight forward pressure on the stick to hold it on the track while I pulled the trigger and put another 200 rounds into the tank. While making this pass the antiaircraft guns were having a heyday shooting at us without having to worry about my wingman dropping bombs on them. Their aim was much better that it would have been if my wingman was there to bomb some of them. The tank commander was also shooting at us as we rolled in on this pass, and his aim was getting better with each successive pass. He ducked down and shut the hatch about 1 second before I squeezed the trigger. Again I pulled off at about 50 feet above the target at a speed around 700 knots, the whole airplane surrounded by hundreds of tracers. We observed the tank still heading for the friendlies. Our attack on the side of the tank had not worked. I had six 500-pound bombs left and decided to make two more passes in an attempt to stop the tank. By this time the anti-aircraft gunners had stopped trying to track us and shoot us down, they were not having any luck. All of the gunners started to shoot directly over the tank as we rolled in. This act would force us to fly through an area where it would be impossible to escape being hit. I set the switches to bombs triple and rolled in for my next pass. The fire from the antiaircraft guns was so heavy I changed my delivery parameters to release the bombs from 2,000 ft above the target instead of 1,000 ft. I had to slow down about 150 knots to get the 500 knots release airspeed required. The gunners saw that I was going to release the bombs at a higher altitude than I had previously so they all increased the elevation of their guns at the same time they were shooting. We had lots of tracers come close but the last minute change for the guns spread the tracers over a larger area and made our pass a little safer. I had a good bombing solution on this pass, I dropped the bombs at just the right time for them to hit the tank and pulled off target at 8 Gs and with full afterburners selected on the throttles. The time required for the bombs to hit the target was now double what it was with the 1,000 ft release altitude which allowed the tank commander lots of time to tell the driver which way to turn to avoid having a bomb hit the tank. The tank driver turned and headed in a different direction after the bombs separated from the airplane. The bombs missed the tank and it continued toward the friendly camp.
We now had only three 500lb bombs left on the airplane and 200 rounds of 20MM cannon shells to prevent the tank from overrunning the friendly camp. It was obvious that releasing the bombs from a higher altitude was not going to work; the tank driver would just turn and accelerate away from the impact point of the bombs. Our next pass would be made releasing the bombs from 1000 ft above the target. Ground fire would be terrible, but that was the only way to have a chance of destroying the tank. I could only imagine how the soldiers in the camp felt. They were totally helpless, and the only thing between them and the tank and a slow death by torture one at a time, was our airplane. As I flew on downwind, at about 3,500 ft. getting ready for my next bomb run, I constantly changed my airspeed, altitude and heading and kept the airspeed above 650 knots to force the gunners to guess where the airplane would be when the anti-aircraft shells they were firing at us arrived in our vicinity. Again the tracers from the shells surrounded our aircraft many of them within a foot of us but, incredibly, none struck the F-4. The tracers that were close to the canopy were the most distracting. It was easy to visualize the tearing of flesh and the large amount of blood that would be splattered around the inside of the cockpit if even one of those shells were to hit in one of the cockpit areas.
We rolled in to make our next pass and had to pull the throttles out of afterburner. I actually had to pull them back below 100% in order to slow down below that ridiculous 500 knot limit on the high drag bombs. I rolled wings level and started to line up on the tank, and the tank commander started to shoot at us with the anti-aircraft gun mounted next to him. His initial burst resulted in tracers going 30 feet to the right of the cockpit. He corrected his aim while still shooting, and after his correction the tracers were going straight at my right shoulder! I pulled my shoulder to the left as far as I could, hoping that the bullets wouldn't hit me. The tracers zipped by just inches from me and immediately I heard and felt an explosion from the right engine. A large column of fire about 30 feet long shot forward out of the right intake, and I could feel the loss of thrust and sensed the airspeed dropping. The bomb pass was a good one so I continued my attack. Some of the guns were shooting at us and others were shooting just above the tank, forcing us to fly through them on our pull off. Right after the explosion from the right engine I could feel and hear other antiaircraft shells hitting our airplane. The sounds when we were hit were similar to the sound that you hear when you are in a car accident, making a dull thud when they hit. This was followed by an explosion and a shaking of the airframe. The pipper would jump around on the ground indicating that the airplane was being moved around in the air by the impacts. I was aware of many impacts as we were lining up for the attack. I refused to leave hundreds of friendly soldiers, helpless and unable to defend themselves from the tank. I elected to continue the attack in spite of the damage to our airplane. Our next attack pass was perfect, the pipper placement was exactly where it should have been, and the airspeed was coming down nicely due to the loss of thrust from the right engine. I was aware of hundreds of tracers zipping by the airplane and the canopy but we were only 2 seconds from bomb release. The pipper arrived at the tank just as the airspeed hit 500 knots and the altimeter showed 1000 feet above the ground. I pushed my thumb down on the pickle button and felt the bombs separate from the bomb rack; it was a perfect pass. The tank commander had stopped shooting as the bombs separated from the airplane, and again he ducked down and closed the hatch behind him. There were still 15 to 25 anti-aircraft guns shooting at us. I felt and heard many anti-aircraft shells impact the airplane at this time. I moved the throttles to 100% but did not select the afterburner because I thought we might have taken hits in areas of the airplane that contained fuel tanks. I remember thinking this thought about this wonderful airplane, "don't blow up or go out of control now. Give me 20 seconds. I need 20 seconds". That amount of time would get us out of the immediate target area before we ejected. At this time the forward air controller transmitted a radio call to us, "Don't light your afterburners; you are hit and streaming fuel". I pulled the nose of the airplane to a 20 degree nose high attitude and thought "We might make it to a good place to eject". At this point we were about 700 feet above the tank trying to get out of the area as soon as possible. I had decided not to eject in the target area because some of our aircrew members had been stripped naked, tied to a tree, and either skinned alive with a pair of pliers or disemboweled and left to die. I would rather die in a plane crash than to face that kind death at the hands of the enemy. With the nose of the airplane 20 degrees high I thought we might escape the target area when a 37MM antiaircraft gun hit us in the tail and the result was the nose of the aircraft was driven down about 30 degrees. The ground rushed up at us while I pulled back on the stick hoping that the flight controls would still work. We were in luck, and the airplane responded immediately and I got the nose back up to 20 degrees high. For the second time we were hit in the tail and again the nose of the airplane was forced about 20 degrees low. I could see where the field had been plowed; the furrows were very plain. I pulled back on the stick again and the nose immediately moved 20 degrees high. We were very low to the ground at this time, the second pull out was accomplished at less than 50 ft from the ground. I remember thinking "If they hit us again we will crash into the ground and be destroyed". This occurred at airspeeds above 500 knots so we were rapidly escaping the target area. A few seconds later I noticed that we were no longer surrounded by the tracers from the antiaircraft guns. We were now out of range of the guns and we needed just a few seconds to pass over a cliff and a river on the other side of the cliff. I had intentionally planned all of the pull-offs in the same general direction so that if we got hit on our pull off we would be over a safe area to eject in without any turns. If we ejected on the other side of the river we would be very hard to capture because there were no roads there and to get search parties in the area they would have to use ropes to get down the cliff and then get across the fairly large river.
We passed over the river with the throttle of the right engine in idle and the left engine running at 100%. The forward air controller called and said "Da Nang is (I don't remember the heading) and 200 miles, Jolly Green (the rescue helicopter) is on cockpit alert, engines running". At this time I looked back and saw that we were streaming fuel from many different holes in the airplane. To minimize the possibility of an electrical spark that could result in an exploding airplane I shut off the generator switches. This cut power to most of the instruments and navigation capabilities of the airplane and also the radios. I initially thought that we would eject as soon as we crossed the river in the target area but the airplane had not come apart yet. We decided to stay with it until it went out of control or blew up. We went through the engine shutdown checklist and the pre ejection checklist. We climbed out at 300 knots, the single engine climb airspeed. The only instrument that we had that still worked was the wet compass. I used it to turn to a heading of East thinking that heading would get us to the ocean. When we got there we would turn south and follow the coast to Da Nang. We climbed to 18,000 feet and proceeded on course. We never thought we would make Da Nang. At the rate we were losing fuel I thought we would flame out due to fuel exhaustion. We had no idea how much fuel we had because all power was off of the fuel guages. We were literally flying on a wing and a prayer, hoping that we could at least get to the ocean to eject. If you ejected over the ground you never knew who would find you and what side of the war they were on. We didn't want to go through all of this just to be captured or killed because we ejected over the land. After what seemed like an eternity I spotted the ocean straight ahead. When we got to the shoreline we turned South and stayed about 5 miles off of the coast over the water. I was amazed that the airplane was still flying, I had thought that we would have ejected before we got to the water, as the fuel was still spewing out of the fuselage. I was just amazed that it was still running and hadn't blown up. What a tough airplane I thought; we just might make it home. We flew down the coast until I saw Da Nang and made a visual approach to one of the runways. We did not have a radio so we looked for a green light from the control tower (indicating that we were cleared to land). The tower saw us and gave us a green light. We lowered our gear, flaps and dropped the tailhook so that we could take the barrier cable that was stretched across the runway. The tailhook was always used when returning with battle damage in case the nose gear steering or brakes did not work. I noticed that the emergency fire trucks and ambulances were waiting for us when we were on final. We touched down at the right spot just short of the cable and engaged it at a 90 degree angle. It was comforting to feel our bodies slam forward against our shoulder harness and seat belts, we knew that we had a successful engagement and would soon be clear of the aircraft. This type of landing was like the one the Navy uses on aircraft carriers, which stops you very quickly. The landing and barrier engagement were perfect, and it only took a few seconds to unstrap from the airplane, climb down the ladder and run for a hundred yards or so to be well clear of it in case it blew up. I remember looking back and seeing fuel and hydraulic fluid running out of the airplane in many areas, puddling underneath the airplane on the runway. I felt very sad because I knew someday, if the airplane survived the war, it would eventually be replaced with a newer type fighter aircraft, and then it would be destroyed. "333" had performed magnificently. Even though it was full of holes and damaged very badly it had refused to die, and it brought us home on one engine when it should have blown up in the target area. We should have been killed on this mission but "333", the airplane that refused to die, had taken us to deaths door and returned us safely home to Da Nang.
The wing commander, Col Burt Spalding, was there to meet me. He shook my hand and told me that I had done a great job and that the tank had been destroyed. He said "you are going to strike a surface-to air-missile site in North Vietnam. Your backseater is in the new airplane and will brief you on the new mission, and your old backseater will debrief this mission". I got into his car and he drove me to my new airplane where the new backseater was already strapped in and waiting for me. We had only a few minutes for him to tell me where the new target was and what tactics we would use. We started engines and I was off again on another mission. We struck the SAM site and returned to Da Nang two hours later.
After debriefing the mission with aircraft maintenance and then intelligence I returned to the squadron about three hours after I had landed from my first mission. The first words out of my mouth were "Where is my wingman from my first mission"? I was surprised at the answer. He is no longer at Da Nang. His reason for leaving you, as you worked the tank, was felt to be a poor one, and he is no longer on flying status and will complete the rest of his one year tour at a desk job in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City). I never crossed paths with him again.
I found out several days later that the tank crew had been chained into the tank so that they were unable to escape the tank as we attacked them.
My adventure in "333" is one that I will never forget. That airplane took so much damage and just refused to die. As badly as it was damaged it just kept on going. When it should have blown up or gone out of control it continued to perform its job magnificently. I LOVE THAT AIRPLANE!
I flew about 243 combat missions in F-4s in my one year tour at Da Nang. I was shot up and returned three times with battle damage. None of the other battle damage compared at all to the terrible punishment "333" took and just kept on going. I will remember that airplane until my death as "333" "the airplane that refused to die"
I refused to submit myself for any awards or decorations for any missions I flew during that year because I was just doing the job that I was trained to do. I am very sorry that I did not recommend an award for my weapon system officer (WSO) on this mission. He performed his job in an absolutely exemplary and fearless manner. He had to live or die by my decision to continue the attack on the tank without the support of a wingman. His heroism on this mission enabled me to press the attack on the enemy to the very best of my ability. Completing the mission and getting home in one piece was due in large part to my brave WSO "Hawk"
Referanser
Kan ikke gjengis uten Luftforsvarsmuseets tillatelse
