Hero Found: The Greatest POW Escape of the Vietnam War (15 page)

Schoonover reacted by adding power and intercepting the glide path. He then reported, “
Nine Zero One
, ball.”

Observing on the LSO platform that night was Walt “Bummy” Bumgarner, in training as an LSO for VA-145—a position of trust and responsibility usually reserved for the best pilots in each squadron. (A measure of Schoonover’s expertise was that he was his squadron’s LSO, qualified to wave in Vigilantes.) The Spad pilot had never even seen a Vigilante trap on deck—although this was not unusual, given that there were only six on
Ranger
.

The distinct, high-pitched whine of the twin jet engines grew louder as the Vigilante closed on the ship’s stern in the dark. It was an ominous sound that veterans of carrier operations associated with something difficult and potentially disastrous. For a Vigilante to land on a flight deck, especially at night or in inclement weather, always seemed an impractical feat.

The outline of the Vigilante with its fifty-three-foot wingspan—lit by the plane’s “bright and steady” lights—hung briefly in the air like a great albatross. In the last few seconds the big jet drifted about ten feet above the glide path, and when it came over the ramp above the ship’s fantail it was “high and fast.”

“Bolter!” the LSO told Schoonover.

Schoonover did not respond.

Waiting nearby under the wing of a parked plane was Aviation Jet Mechanic Third Class Lawrence Petersen, twenty-one, of Mastic, New
York. Petersen was the plane captain for the Vigilante; this meant he was responsible for inspecting the plane, checking fluid levels (such as oil and hydraulic), ensuring that needed repairs had been made, and signing off on the plane’s airworthiness before the pilot got into the cockpit. Keeping a Vigilante airworthy was not an easy feat. Although its engines were reliable, many of its electronics and other flight systems were state-of-the-air, and a “nightmare” to keep going. A Vigilante on average required 300 maintenance hours for every hour of flying, by far the highest maintenance ratio of any airplane in the navy. Draped over Petersen’s shoulders were the heavy chains that he would use to tie down the Vigilante once it taxied to its parking space on deck.

Petersen already had a bad feeling because the night was as dark as he had ever seen, with “no moon at all and just pitch black.” And with the carrier rolling in swells, the flight deck was always in motion; up, down, and sideways. It just seemed like a bad night to be flying, and he would be glad when the Vigilante was back on deck. Schoonover and Hollingsworth were returning from a photo-reconnaissance mission over South Vietnam, which with the Vigilante’s sophisticated cameras and radar could be done by day or night.

With an eye trained from watching hundreds of carrier recoveries, Petersen saw that the Vigilante was high and long, and would miss all four cables stretched across the deck. It seemed that Schoonover came to the same realization at that moment, and dived for the deck. The sound of the Vigilante “just dropping out of the air” to the deck—a thunderous clang of “steel hitting steel”—would be something Petersen would never forget.

The instant the Vigilante’s wheels hit the deck, Schoonover pushed the throttle forward to full power—standard procedure for jets, as it was the only way they would have the speed to regain flight in case of a bolter, when the tailhook does not snag an arresting wire and the plane has to take off again.

It all happened right in front of Petersen—the Vigilante slamming into the deck, the right landing-gear tire blowing, the landing gear itself collapsing, the strut of the landing gear pushing up into the inlet of the right engine, the “sucking of metal parts” directly into the engine as full power was applied, and then, almost instantly, the engine exploding with the force of a bomb.

As the Vigilante streaked down the deck at full power, Bumgarner on the LSO platform observed its right engine consumed in a ball of fire.

At the end of the angled deck, the Vigilante went airborne.

Everyone on the flight deck could see that only the left engine was working and the right one was ablaze. At that point, the pilot could have lit off the good engine’s afterburner, which would have injected additional fuel into the turbine and provided added thrust for climbing. When an afterburner is lit, a fiery cone is emitted from the jet’s exhaust, with a thunderous concussive boom known to break nearby windows. The afterburner on the crippled Vigilante’s left engine was never lit. The plane “failed to climb” and settled into a slow descent that took it below the level of the flight deck, seventy feet off the surface of the water.

The LSO now gave one order and one order only: “Eject, eject!” There was ample time for Schoonover and Hollingsworth to punch out. The explosive-packed ejection seats on the Vigilante were known as zero-zero seats, meaning that they could be used on the deck (zero altitude) while the plane was standing still (zero speed), since the seats would throw a pilot far enough into the sky for his parachute to deploy. But the men in the Vigilante did not eject.

Across the flight deck boomed the dreaded announcement, amplified over outside speakers: “Airplane in the water! Airplane in the water!”

Floating light-and-smoke signals were thrown overboard to mark the location for
Ranger
’s rescue helicopter—always circling in the air nearby during flight operations—and the destroyer following a mile behind the carrier in what was called the plane-guard position, ready to respond in the event of a plane down or man blown overboard during flight operations.

The LSO platform had a mounted spotlight, which was turned on.

Everyone looked for some sign of the Vigilante.

Petersen dropped the tie-down chains meant for
Nine Zero One
and ran to the port side of the flight deck. He jumped down into the catwalk, a narrow walkway that ran along the outer edge of the flight deck. He knew Schoonover to be a senior pilot and a “nice guy,” but it was Hollingsworth—the officer in charge of the enlisted plane captains—whom he knew best. Three weeks earlier, when
Ranger
had stopped at Pearl Harbor en route to
WestPac, Petersen ran into Hollingsworth on Christmas Day at Waikiki Beach. “Let’s have a beer,” the affable young officer said, “and talk about our families.” That’s what they had done.

Bumgarner and the others on the LSO platform soon spotted the Vigilante in the water off the port side of the ship. The plane was settling in the water, nose high. Both canopies were closed. One of the men on the LSO platform thought he glimpsed a flight helmet inside the front cockpit.

Petersen thought that if he jumped from the catwalk he could have landed on top of the plane. “Blow the seats!” he screamed, knowing the ejection seats worked underwater. “Blow ’em!”

Bumgarner and the others could see the destroyer and helicopter circling in the area of the floating signal lights—a mile away! The LSO tried to phone the air boss, then the bridge, then Air Ops, to report the plane in the water close abeam so rescuers could be dispatched. All the circuits were busy, and he could not get through. The men on the platform yelled and waved, hoping to get the attention of the air boss sitting in Primary Flight at the rear of the island superstructure overlooking and supervising all flight deck activities, or the personnel on the bridge at the front of the island, but there was so much commotion that no one noticed them.

For perhaps a minute, though the time seemed excruciatingly longer, the spotlight held the image of the Vigilante sinking until the men on the flight deck lost sight of it in the dark sea as the carrier hurried away from the downed plane.

In a daze, Petersen crossed the flight deck, picked up the chains he had dropped, and went below to his squadron’s berthing compartment. He did not speak to anyone about the incident, and no one spoke to him. For years he would relive that night countless times, until three decades later he was hospitalized with post-traumatic stress disorder. As part of his recovery, he began talking about the accident, although to this day it still troubles him.

Schoonover and Hollingsworth, an investigation found, had probably been rendered unconscious when the right engine exploded after the collapsed landing-gear strut pierced the engine inlet. The two naval aviators surely went to the bottom of the sea strapped in their seats in the cockpit.

Ranger
, operating off Vietnam for only two days, had already lost two aviators. Schoonover and Hollingsworth would not be the last.

VA-145 divided its 18 pilots into two-man sections—each with a flight leader and a wingman, the latter being responsible for staying close to the leader. In most cases a newer pilot was wingman to a more senior flight leader.

Dieter found himself wingman to Lieutenant Commander J. K. “Ken” Hassett, thirty-four, of Dennis, Massachusetts, who as operations officer was the third-highest officer in VA-145 and responsible for the squadron’s flight schedule and other administrative duties. Hassett had graduated from a maritime academy and had applied for flight training after several years at sea as a merchant marine and naval officer; he was “all military in appearance and attitude.” A career officer who was “methodical and a paperwork guy,” Hassett made it clear that he did not approve of the “loose cannons” in the squadron. The ringleader of the over-the-top contingent was Spook; and as for Dieter, he seemed to always be in trouble with Hassett, at first for infractions like letting his hair grow too long (Dieter abhorred haircuts), or failing to fill out or file routine paperwork in a timely manner. Before long, tension escalated in the air, too, between flight leader and wingman.

Dieter came to feel that things “went to hell” nearly every time he flew with Hassett. On one of their missions over South Vietnam, Dieter and Hassett were working with a U.S. Army forward air controller (FAC) on the ground who was directing by radio their attack on enemy positions. At one point, the FAC ordered Hassett to abort his attack. Hassett either did not hear the order to abort or ignored it. He continued his run from a high altitude that was safer in terms of not being struck by ground fire but less accurate when it came to hitting the target—a penchant of Hassett’s that Spook soon dubbed “chicken shitting bombs.” Hassett then dropped a 500-pounder that nearly landed on top of the FAC. On another flight, Dieter watched in horror as Hassett mistakenly “fired a pod of rockets” through their own formation; luckily, he missed.

Dieter also had misses. For example, on his first mission he was di
rected by the FAC to drop napalm—basically a “container full of gasoline mixed with gelatin.” Napalm, which burned in the immediate area that it hit, was to be released as close to the target as possible in order to be effective, but Dieter—“frightened of being shot down” if he flew so low—released the cans from 1,000 feet and watched them “tumble and tumble” and miss by a country mile. Unfortunately, Spook, who regularly delivered ordnance near to the ground and could be counted on to “find some action” whenever he flew, saw Dieter’s display of timidity. Back on the ship, Spook made fun of Dieter for missing everything except whatever poor sap had the bad luck to be walking underneath some small section of jungle canopy at that moment.

Although Dieter did not admit it to anyone, he was having troubling thoughts about the role he found himself in. As a boy, he had seen the terrible suffering and devastation caused by war in general, and by aerial bombardment specifically. His time in the military—first the air force and now the navy—had been about one thing: wanting to fly. The navy had given him his wings, and for that he was extremely grateful. In return, the navy had brought him here, expecting him to use his new skills to fight. That made the situation no longer just a matter of flying or even practicing to attack the enemy, which could seem so detached as to be unreal.
This was a shooting war
.

The exhilaration he so often felt when flying morphed at times into something else, particularly during night operations: Flying through a pounding monsoon at 200 miles per hour in the middle of the night, trying to find the carrier in total darkness, his only lifeline the voice of an air-traffic controller or LSO over his headset, then suddenly seeing the row of optical landing system lights that appeared out of nowhere in the blackness with no ship seemingly attached to them. Lights, just lights, to which he trusted his life. Then the “enormous bang” when his landing gear hit the flight deck, and being directed by aircraft handlers twirling lighted cones to hurriedly pull off to one side so the plane behind him wouldn’t crash into him. He did so not knowing how close he might be to rolling off the deck into the sea. As he turned off his engine, and the propeller spun down,
wa-wa-wa
, and then stopped, that’s when it started. His legs began to tremble mightily and “shake and shake.” He pressed his hands against his
trembling legs but “couldn’t hold them still.” Sometimes he would have to sit in the darkened cockpit for five minutes before he could crawl out.

On January 17, an FAC directed Lizard Lessard and two other VA-145 Spads to an area “to work over.” Lizard’s first bomb detonated in the middle of the biggest of numerous structures, and the Spads finished off with napalm strikes that set the remaining structures on fire. Seven buildings were destroyed, five damaged. The next morning, they were back at it, destroying three structures, damaging four others, and strafing a river sampan. The following afternoon they hit an area west of Saigon that was “infected with VC,” destroying a large bunker and uncovering 300 yards of trenches.

After recovering all aircraft on January 19,
Ranger
turned northward and steamed hard through the night. Although their stay at Dixie Station had been planned to last a month, new orders directed the ship to proceed to Yankee Station—a designated point at the entrance to the Gulf of Tonkin—where the carrier would be in position for its aircraft to strike North Vietnam.