Surviving Hell. Leo Thorsness
and concentrate on killing us.
It worked. They all tried to get a bead on us, and the Sandy was able to scoot out through a valley at treetop level. Soon he was out of sight and safe.
By this time, Harry and I were once again in burner, twisting and turning through the mountains skimming the trees.
By now, fuel was critical. We kept calling the tanker for a rendezvous and resumed calling on Guard channel hoping, one last time, to raise one of the two Toms on their emergency radio. No response. The second Sandy had turned around and the helicopter had been canceled; the rescue attempt had failed. I had lost my wingmen. I wondered what I would write to their wives.
We switched to “tanker frequency” for a rendezvous over Laos. We were talking to the tanker when we suddenly heard: “Leo, Panda 4 here, I got 600 pounds, am lost, can you help!” It was a shock: In combat, you never use personal names. We didn’t know that Brigham Control had finally found an F-105:D strike flight to help in the rescue effort—Panda flight had engaged the MiGs and shot down two of them. During the dogfight, one plane, Panda 4, became separated and then lost.
“Tanker 1, you have six minutes to rendezvous with Panda 4, or he ejects,” I radioed on the Guard channel. “You gotta come farther north.”
Tanker 1 responded, “Roger, Kingfish, we’ll do our best.” The tanker added, “and Panda 4, we are transmitting—home in on us.”
During these brief calls with Panda 4 and the tanker, Harry and I discussed our fuel state. Our plane and Panda 4 were far apart: the tanker could only get to one of us. Even if we didn’t get fuel, Harry and I agreed that we had a chance at making it to the Mekong River—the divide between Laos and Thailand—before flaming out. If we got past the Mekong, we could eject over friendly territory. But if Panda 4 didn’t refuel, he would have to eject over enemy territory. It was an easy choice: the tanker belonged to Panda.
Heading south, we climbed to 35,000 feet to suck the most miles from our nearly empty tanks. Harry dialed in Udorn Air Base, 30 miles south of the Mekong in Thailand. We were 130 miles from the runway. The F-105 can glide two miles for each 1,000 feet lost. If we kept the engine running until we hit 100 miles, we could glide to friendly territory even if we had to eject before reaching the Udorn runway.
I called Udorn tower and explained that if we made it there, we would need a straight-in approach. Then Harry and I silently stared at our fuel gauge as it dropped toward zero. At 70 miles to the Mekong I pulled the throttle to idle and slowed to the plane’s best glide speed: 270 knots (310 mph). In 15 minutes, we would travel 70 miles and glide across the river into Thailand.
Luck was on our side. With fuel indicating empty, the engine ran until we made it to Udorn, turned straight in on the southeastheaded runway and landed. Just after we touched down the engine shut off.
Harry matter-of-factly said, “That was a full day’s work.”
It was true. We had delivered our payload, shot down two enemy fighters in a plane not designed for aerial combat, kept our wingmen from getting murdered in their parachutes, and saved another U.S. aircraft. But as I retracted the canopy and stepped out of the plane, I felt like a failure, dejected at having left two good men behind in the jungles of North Vietnam where they had probably been captured—or even worse—by now. If someone had told me then that I would receive the Medal of Honor for this mission, I would not have believed him. If he had told me that I’d learn about receiving the Medal of Honor while I was in a Hanoi prison, I still would not have believed him.
CHAPTER 2
SHOT DOWN
On the morning of April 30, a little less than two weeks after this mission, I was awakened by the alarm at 4:30 a.m. My routine each morning I flew a mission was the same: up too early, shower, don boots and flying suit, breakfast at the O club, and bike it to the field. When I got there, the weather and intelligence guys were scurrying around preparing for the briefing. Pilots were getting coffee as they checked today’s primary and backup targets. Some mornings were happy: an easy mission in western or southern North Vietnam. Some mornings were somber: another effort to try and knock down the Doumer Bridge on Hanoi’s north side. Every time that bridge was targeted we lost at least one plane.
This morning’s mission was successful. The strike force destroyed most of the supply depot that was its chief target. Our Weasels killed the threatening SAM site, and all 24 of our airplanes made it home. Harry and I smiled at each other as we got out of the cockpit, knowing that we had ticked off another mission, and now had only eight left before we reached the magic number and headed home.
A rule in the 355 Tactical Fighter Wing was that if you flew the morning mission, you didn’t fly the afternoon mission. It’s a full day’s job being strapped in the cockpit under high pressure for four or five hours. And the Weasel missions were always the longest—first in and last out—which meant that we were regularly in the extreme threat area for 12 to 15 minutes.
Each strike force usually had at least two spares. If a pilot had to abort because of maintenance problems, one of the spares, waiting in an aircraft, immediately started his engine, and filled in. On this afternoon, we were the only Weasel crew available as a spare. The odds are that spares don’t go, but as we waited in the plane, one of the Weasels scheduled to go had a maintenance abort, so off we went on our second mission of the day. It was not a particularly hard one; the target was 50 miles west of Hanoi, and when we completed it we would only have seven missions to go.
As soon as we were airborne, little things started going wrong. Someone’s emergency parachute beeper triggered on. We couldn’t figure out whose it was so it beeped on and on. The refueling track was changed after takeoff, which added some temporary confusion. Just small things, but taken together they had the feel of premonition.
And there was another disconcerting thing that afternoon. It was not mechanical or electrical; it was the pilot. I had a knottier feel than usual in my stomach, a vague sense of not-rightness. It felt less like foreboding than forewarning. But I couldn’t pin it down and said nothing to Harry.
We were scheduled to launch against a known hot SAM site. Our turn point was a large mountain peak a bit south of the Red River, about 70 miles west of Hanoi. As we came over the mountain peak, we accelerated to 600 knots. A minute before launch, we picked up a loud air-to-air warning signal. Some seven to eight miles behind the Weasel flight was the F-4 Phantom flight providing defense against MiGs. When we got the air-to-air signal, I called the leader, “Cadillac here, we’ve got air-to-air on us.” He responded, “Roger, I have you on our radar.” He left the impression that their radar was triggering our air-to-air signal.
In fact, two MiGs were orbiting in the valley just behind our mountain peak checkpoint. We had gone directly over them. At 600 knots the MiGs could not keep up with us, but they didn’t have to. As we passed over them heading east, they happened to be turning east in their orbit. All they had to do was pull up and hit us with their Atoll air-to-air missiles. We took one right up the tailpipe.
The Weasel shook violently; it felt like we’d been smacked by a massive sledgehammer. The stick and rudder pedals immediately went limp; the cockpit filled with heavy black smoke.
Harry and I knew that the maximum ejection speed for an F-105 was 525 knots. But we also knew of pilots whose Thuds had exploded while taking the time to slow down. We had decided that if we were ever hit hard we would eject immediately.
I shouted “GO!” Harry knew that if he hesitated to blow his canopy and I ejected before he did, my rocket would throw fire directly into the rear cockpit. He said, “Shit!” and, as I heard his canopy blow and seat eject, I pulled my handle.
Vivid in my mind to this day is the feeling of catapulting into the slipstream doing nearly 600 knots (690 mph). My helmet ripped off, my body felt as though it had been flung against a wall, and my legs flailed outward. Two seconds later, the chute opened, violently yanking me upward. My body rotated a couple of times, then settled into a float.
Falling downward, I tried