SAMPLE STORY
MARCH-APRIL
Filename: 8-70 Eby-2
Author’s
name and call sign: Tim Eby, Covey 540
Author’s
unit: 20th TASS, 1970-71
Author’s
mailing address: XXXXXXX, Hico, TX 76457
Author’s
phone number: XXXXXX
Author’s
e-mail address: XXXXXXXX
Submittal date:
2/27/01
Author’s
title of submittal:
FACS AND FIGHTER PILOTS
During my tour as a Covey FAC, the Navy and the Air Force had an informal exchange program. It allowed the Navy fighter pilots to fly in a FAC’s backseat for three days, and in return the FAC would go out to the aircraft carrier to fly in the backseat of the Navy F-4s for three days. Supposedly, we were each to benefit from the experience of seeing the mission from the other guy’s perspective.
The bureaucracies thwarted my attempts to go to the carrier, and I never saw a Navy fighter pilot at Pleiku. Likewise, no Air Force fighter pilots voluntarily submitted themselves to the indignity of our propeller-driven flight, save two, and they both “volunteered” under severe duress.
Pilots of high
performance fighters operated from the assumption that “speed is
life.” In Vietnam they considered anyone who would fly in
harm’s way for several hours a day in a low and slow airplane without
afterburners, let alone equipped with propellers, to be quite suicidal.
High speeds have
at least two consequences germane to this
story. The first consists of
the much greater altitude required to pull out of a dive, such as a bombing
or strafing run. The second
consequence is that high speeds tend to produce straight lines and predictable
turn radii, in obedience to the laws of
physics. Gunners liked the laws
of physics.
We slow flyers
possessed a measure of unpredictability and maneuverability that the fast
fighters could not achieve.
Nevertheless, we FACs rarely met fighter pilots clamoring to go with
us on our missions.
During my tour,
a wing of F-100s returned to the states.
The Air Force required their pilots with less than six months in country
to stay behind in various non-flying
jobs. Two of these hapless souls
turned up at Pleiku as liaison officers, assigned to II DASC, (pronounce
“two-dask”, the II Corps Direct Air Support Center), living with,
and working for the Army.
For these supersonic fighter jocks, flying an Army desk was a fate
worse than death! They gravitated
over to our FAC hooches, where they could at least talk airplanes, and elicit
sympathy from us fellow pilots.
I never heard such
whining and moaning about their terrible non-flying fate--- before or
since! They complained so loudly
and continuously that my sympathy soon turned to something much less
benevolent. In a friendly attempt
to quell the noise, I said, “Simple solution – my backseat is empty
tomorrow, who wants to go first?”
“Er…uh.” My
offer was met with much clearing of throats and hastily contrived
excuses. Day after day, though,
the moaning continued unabated.
After three or
four such exchanges, I got in their
faces. “Okay, you whiners,
either you fly with me, or you shut up about your desk jobs, got
it?”
A dominant
trait of fighter pilots is a preference for dying, rather than being
embarrassed. True to their character, they agreed that if one would,
they both would. They flipped
a coin to see who would go first.
Before dawn the
next day the loser showed up to meet his
fate. As I fitted him with survival
gear, I noticed in my friend a slight trembling of hand and voice, and an
unusual contrite spirit.
I briefed him on
bailout procedures, and reminded him that our area of operations contained
no safe areas.
“Load your
pistol with six rounds rather than the regulation
five. Here are some small grenades
that the Special Forces guys gave me. Don’t let the safety officer see
them. Our area is crawling with bad guys.”
As I familiarized
him with the very subsonic backseat of the OV-10, I saw that his eyes were
as big as saucers, and that I had a truly fearful fighter pilot on my
hands.
We launched.
Fortunately, that
mission was quiet and uneventful. A beautiful morning bathed the war zone
over the Ho Chi Minh trail of Laos in pastel
hues. I don’t even
remember drawing the usual fireworks.
By the time we returned to Pleiku, my passenger was quite elated at
the prospect of surviving.
A very relieved
and relaxed fighter pilot crawled down from the cockpit to the welcoming
queries of his compadre. I overheard
bits of their conversation, which included phrases such as, “piece of
cake”, “no sweat”, and “we had it all wrong about these
FACs”.
Fast-forward to
my next dawn patrol and the next fighter pilot, who was the cockier of the
two. This one was full of confidence
and courage. No trembles here,
or signs of fear. As we stepped
to the OV-10, he said, “All right!
Let’s aviate!”
We launched off
into a beautiful sunrise over the mountains, reveling in the still, smooth
morning air. My thoughts celebrated
the wonder. “What a great
day for flying!”
My fighter pilot
pal was finally out from behind his desk, back in his
element!
All the dancing
on laughter - silvered wings was immediately forgotten, however, as soon
as we approached the Trail.
A chilling, desperate
call on the FM radio brought me abruptly back to the war.
“Covey, Covey,
Covey, do you read?” The
voice belonged to the team leader of one of our Special Forces (SOG)
teams.
“Covey,
we’re in deep trouble!”
He was winded from running.
“This is Covey
540, what’s going on down there?”
“We’ve
been running for most of the night, we’re nearly surrounded, and we’re
completely lost.” He paused
to catch his breath.
“We’re in continues contact, we’ve got
casualties, and the bad guys are
everywhere!” He was
shouting. “They’ve
got us completely surrounded now, GET US OUT OF
HERE!”
The teams normally
whispered on the radio, since their survival depended on
stealth. If they were shouting, it was a sure sign that they were
compromised, and in serious trouble.
This guy was yelling, and the desperation was evident in his voice.
Only another FAC
can fully appreciate how busy I became at that
moment. I had to find the team
and get lots of help immediately. While searching diligently from low altitude I was
transmitting and receiving on four radios.
On VHF:
“Hillsboro, Covey 540, Prairie Fire Emergency, send fighters right now,
anything you’ve got.
Rendezvous is the Dog’s Head, hurry!”
An instantaneous
flip of the transmitter selector to FM:
“Covey Alpha, alert the Prairie Fire bird, we have an
emergency!” while Hillsboro responded with fighter information.
As Covey Alpha
was responding, another flick of the selector to UHF to launch the Army
helicopter assets from Dak To, twenty miles east, while copying the incoming
fighter lineup from Hillsboro on the canopy in grease
pencil.
Meanwhile, the
team leader was giving me urgent instructions from the sound of my
engines. “Turn right Covey, turn
right! You just went past us
to the east!”
Only during such
moments is the human brain capable of assimilating so much
input. I was talking on one
radio while simultaneously absorbing critical information on three others;
flying on the treetops, map reading, and coordinating
strategy.
“NOW, NOW,
NOW, Covey, you just passed right over us!”
Then the most desperate
call of all came through my earphones: “Covey, here they come, they’re
coming in for the kill, I’m popping smoke – strafe me –strafe
my position!” The sound of automatic weapons on rapid fire provided
a chilling background to his transmission.
Additional adrenaline
pumped through my body. My hair
stood up. The enemy could also
hear the sound of my engines, and knew that big bombs would be coming
soon. They needed to overrun
the team quickly, and depart.
I tried to pop
up as high as possible for a vertical strafe
pass. The OV-10 was armed with
four M-60 machine guns-- hardly enough wallop to do much damage shooting
at an angle through thick triple canopy
jungle. When things became serious,
I preferred to shoot straight down.
This was
serious.
My little airplane
clawed for altitude.
I called, “Tally
your smoke. Confirm that you
want Covey to strafe your position?”
The answer was
immediate “There are more of them than us, so
shoot!
Shoot! Shoot now!”
My little steed
rotated just short of a stall at 3500 ft above the ground; just at the minimum
altitude an F-100 would need for recovery in order to miss the
ground. I pulled the power to
idle so that the props would act like speed
brakes. I hung in the air going
straight down, firing all my guns at
once.
My machine guns
clattered like erratic snare drums.
The trees grew
bigger in the windscreen.
As I kicked the rudders back and forth to spread the joy around on
the ground, my over-saturated brain began to register some very strange sounds
in my earphones. Amongst the
urgent radio calls, the guns clattering, and the pleading from the team,
my intense mental concentration almost, but not quite blocked out a strange,
unexplained sound. What IS
that? It’s like the wail
of a stricken animal! Or from
deep down in the gut of a very scared…Holy
Cow! I had completely forgotten
about my cocky fighter pilot passenger!
The trees seemed
to be practically inside the windscreen.
I snatched the
stick back and crammed the power in, slapping on five or six instantaneous
gs.
The little
OV-10’s nose snapped up and we cleared the treetops, hopefully with
no green stains on the belly tank.
Quite a few more
minutes passed before the situation on the ground stabilized and we had a
chance to talk.
Finally, in a weak
and shaky voice he said, ”I was completely sure that you were going
to kill me. I grabbed for the
ejection handle but missed, because at that instant you snatched the stick
and produced that heavy, instant g load.
My hand hit my crotch instead.”
At that, my blood ran cold, my knees got weak, and I had the most
frightening moment of the whole
engagement. You
idiot! You came within a split
second of causing your worst nightmare—an unauthorized passenger
punching out of your airplane over a desperate firefight in
Laos. (Where there wasn’t
even any ground war, right?) He
would have hung in his parachute in the trees, a helpless target, as well
as a major impediment to the air strikes necessary for saving the
team.
My hands trembled.
Would the force of his ejection
have been enough to push me into the trees in my last-second
pullout?
I don’t remember
much about the rest of that mission.
I do remember that
neither of our fighter pilot friends ever went flying with a FAC again—or
uttered another word of complaint about their non-flying desk job.
What became of
the SOG team? Eventually another
Covey FAC and the Army helicopter assets successfully extracted them with
their dead and wounded. My strafing
had broken the enemy’s immediate attack, and heavy air strikes kept
them at bay until the extraction.
Did my strafing
cause any of the friendly casualties?
I don’t
know. I didn’t
ask.
