Always Play 100%
submitted by: Alva Leon Matheson
My first tour roommate, Paul Gibson, was a very talented and detailed FAC. He did a very good job at protecting the fighters he directed. One night mission, during the monsoon season, Paul was asked to put in a strike by the Airborne Command and Control Center, ABCCC, using two F-4s carrying 500 pound bombs. He told the ABCCC that the recent heavy rains had prevented any enemy movement and that he didn’t have any viable target. They told Paul that they didn’t want the bombs taken back to base so they asked him to just pick something to bomb.
Paul dropped a night marker close to the road and gave the fighters an aim point in relation to that marker so that they could cut away part of the road. He told flight lead that it was a very low priority target and that there was always a risk of anti-aircraft fire so he should release all his bombs in one dive, and at a higher altitude than normal. Lead agreed and rolled in on his bomb run. As the bombs exploded, a large explosion covered the ground nearby. Paul commented to the fighters that they must have gotten lucky because of this large secondary explosion. After a long silence, lead’s wingman commented that that it wasn’t a secondary but rather flight lead crashing into the jungle. Neither Paul nor the wingman saw any ground fire but the continued silence from lead confirmed that it was lead’s impact that they had seen, not enemy supplies exploding. No emergency radio beepers or emergency calls followed.
What could have gone wrong? Had lead gotten complacent on a low priority target?
Always play 100%
I had a similar incident that almost ended my existence. I, too, was flying a night mission when heavy rains and heavy cloud cover limited operations. ABCCC got a call that a Laotian ground unit was under attack in an area to the west of my normal operating area and asked me to go direct an air strike to help them.
As we flew toward the west, ABCCC called again. They had a flight of two F-4s that needed to drop their bombs immediately. They didn’t have enough fuel to follow me all the way out to the endangered Laotian unit. I told ABCCC that the weather was marginal and I didn’t have any good targets. They directed me to put their bombs on some target anyway.
There were some fires still burning from a previous strike. I told the flight leader and his wingman (number two) about the troops under attack and asked them to drop all their bombs in one pass on those fires. I said I would hold to the east and that they should make their bomb run from north to south with a right break to the west.
Lead called rolling in on his bomb run and I cleared him to drop. His bombs fell beautifully through the burning area. Number two then called that he, too, was rolling in and I also cleared him. As I was looking to the left to see where two’s bombs hit, something made me turn quickly to my right. As I stared past my right seater, I saw the cockpit of an F-4 coming out of a cloud, brightly lit and rapidly climbing at me. The pilot had his head down, adjusting something to his left and the backseater was busy writing something on his kneeboard. I could clearly see their fingers, visor detail, buckles, etc. It seemed I was frozen in time. There was no time to react. I whipped my head to the left again just in time to see the two engine afterburners glowing brightly from his tail, level with me but climbing into another cloud. Two’s bombs fell well short of the target.
I didn’t feel like telling two what happened. I had lost three fellow FACs to mid air collisions. I thanked the flight, said everything was fine and wished them a good trip back. Lead sounded angry and told two that the bombs were clearly dropped from the wrong direction and that they had missed badly. I told them that those facts weren’t the worst.
They’ll never know how close two came to having me as a canopy ornament unless, by some fate, they read this story and remember the mission. When I first saw two, I’d guess he was 30 feet below me and climbing. He passed right under my feet. It’s amazing his tail didn’t touch.
By the time we had finished the air strike, the enemy had broken off their attack on the friendly Laotian unit and I never did head west. I’ll never know, but if I hadn’t been focused on going to help the endangered troops on the ground, I might have given a more detailed briefing and made number two more aware of what he was doing.
Always play 100%.