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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 to take stock. When I cleared the cockpit, the wind had apparently caught my lower legs and forced my knees straight sideways at about 90 degrees. My boots were still on but the little pencil-sized zipper pockets on my sleeves were ripped away. As I looked up at my chute I saw that at least a quarter of the panels were ripped open; I would be slamming into the ground faster than normal—with destroyed knees.

One bright spot: a mile or two to the east I could see Harry’s chute. I did not know at the time, but my wingman Bob Abbott had also been shot down by an Atoll.

The sky was full of F-105s. Colonel Jack Broughton, our wing commander and the strike force commander that day, had obviously diverted some or all of the planes to help the three of us floating down into enemy territory.

When you are doing zero airspeed dangling in a parachute, and a Thud zips by 100 feet away at 500 knots giving a thumbs up, it is a loud thrill. I pulled out my emergency radio from the pocket attached to the parachute harness. I pushed the “press to talk” button and gave them my name—then added, “Get me out of here!”

We had ejected at about 10,000 feet and so had several minutes of float time before we hit. Many thoughts I had then are still crystal clear today. I thought about my wife Gaylee and our daughter Dawn, who were at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. Gaylee and I had many fighter-pilot friends at Nellis. Some had come to Takhli before I did and some of those had been shot down and captured, or, worse yet, never heard from or about again. I felt devastated for what my wife and daughter might be forced to endure. My floatingdown thought was: “If I’m killed when I hit the ground, will they ever find out?” I felt guilty, too: reasoning that I had failed them. I was putting them in what could be years of limbo.

With the ground getting larger and larger below me, I also felt that I must have made a mistake and that what was about to happen to Harry and me was my fault. I knew the odds were high that I would be killed or captured within the hour, especially because my knees would not support an attempt at evasion. But there was another thought that alternated with the guilt that flooded me—a voice, actually, rather than a thought. It was loud and clear and kept repeating like a tape loop, “Leo, you are going to make it.... Leo, you are going to make it....” It was the first time in my life that the Lord preemptively answered my prayers. The voice and these words would stay with me for the next six years. This was God’s gift to me as I descended into a nightmare.

I was still 2,000 to 3,000 feet in the air when something in a small darker area in the jungle caught my eye. I concentrated and realized that it was muzzle flashes. They were shooting at me!

As I entered the canopy of jungle, I remembered to cross my legs. Branches banged and slapped as I readied to hit hard on bad knees. Suddenly I stopped, bounced a bit and hung still. I looked up and saw that my chute had caught on a dead branch. I was maybe 40 feet off the ground. Just to my right was a tall stand of bamboo. I swung to reach for a stalk, thinking to grab hold, undo my chute releases and shinny down to the ground. But I couldn’t get a good grip on the bamboo. We carried a one-inch-wide nylon lanyard in our g-suit for just this situation. I finally got it out, tied it above the quick releases, tried to wrap it around my waist and leg and let loose the releases. I used ten valuable minutes getting to the ground.

I was part way up the side of a mountain. My knees buckled each time I tried to stand. Thuds continued to fly over my downed position but I doubted they could see me through the trees. I tried one more call on my emergency radio—both my transmission and theirs were so garbled I could not make out words.

I heard voices below me. I crawled on all fours up the hill.

The going was slow; they were gaining on me. A Thud flew over and the bad guys took cover. I crawled faster, hoping to find a clearing before they found me. If they had an opening, the Thuds could strafe the jungle around me, hold the bad guys back and maybe, just maybe, a chopper would show up to pluck me out.

But there was no opening and no helicopter. Knowing I was theirs, the North Vietnamese hollered excitedly when they drew near. I rolled on my back to face them. There were a dozen or more: all young males, maybe 15–20 years old. Most were armed with machetes. I saw one real rifle, an old one, and a couple of wooden rifles, probably for training.

They grabbed my feet and arms, and sat me upright. One pulled out a black cloth bag—pillow-case size. The last thing I saw just before he slipped it over my head was the hate-filled eyes of a young Vietnamese pulling back a machete to strike me. Perhaps it was fatigue or excess adrenalin, but I had no fear.

The machete blow never came. Instead there were a couple of minutes of excited jabber and then the bag came off. They stood me on my feet; my knees collapsed. They stood me on my feet again; my knees collapsed again. The third time they held me upright and began cutting off my clothes: g-suit; boots, flying suit, t-shirt; everything but my bloody shorts.

They insisted that I walk, but I couldn’t. They decided to make me walk by beating me. Eventually my collapsing knees convinced them that I wasn’t pretending. With sign language, I tried to explain that I wanted a machete to split bamboo, tie a strip on the inside and outside of my legs above and below my knees. They split the bamboo. Eventually four took belts from their pants and I used them to tie the bamboo to my legs. Of course the strips cut into my knees and legs, and stayed in place just a few steps. After a couple of tries, my body and mind gave out. I collapsed into unconsciousness.

I came to in the center of a large net. They had cut two poles, crossed and tied them in the middle, attached the net corners on each pole beyond the cross. Four men hustled me down the mountain.

Well past dark, we came to a large hut, perhaps 20 by 40 feet, on stilts, surrounded by a group of women and children. They carried me inside. The floor was made of large bamboo poles. The walls appeared to be woven mats. Dried bamboo torches lighted the darkness. Men were squatting along the walls smoking opium pipes. Harry was already there, also in dirty bloody underwear, spread-eagled on his back with wrists and ankles tied. Soon I was in the same position next to him.

Harry and I spoke now and then, although when we did they hit us. Neither of us understood a word of Vietnamese. We both had heard stories that captured American flyers were summarily executed. The conversation around us finally slackened; an older man stood, looked down at us and spoke to the others. Obviously a decision had been made. Knowing the words would cause me a beating, I had to say, “Harry, I think this is a trial, and we may be executed tonight.” In that frightful setting, I will never forget, nor fail to appreciate, Harry’s comforting response. “Leo, either they will or won’t, we can’t control it. No sense worrying about it.”

It was the beginning of an ordeal that would brutalize me, and, paradoxically for anyone who didn’t share the unique experience of the POWs, also allow me to become a better and fuller person.