Vietnam II: A War Novel Episode 3 (V2)

V2

EPISODE 3

By C.R. Ryder

INTO THE STORM

Senior Airman Bobby Sherman

Airborne Radio Operator

Command Solo

Voice of the Gulf

Airman Kathy Barber was going through two boxes of throat lozenges a day.  She popped them in her mouth one after another like a drug addict would pills.  We had been at it for months.  At this point we were spending more waking hours in the air than we did on the ground.  The only bright side was Barber’s Vietnamese was getting better.  At least I thought so.

Of course I could not speak the language.  She was the linguist.  I was there to work the gear.

“People of Vietnam, the deadline is approaching.  Give us our countrymen.  Do not put yourselves in danger.  There is still time to resolve this peacefully, but that time is running out.”  Barber said into her headset. 

I configured the transmitter so that her words were being broadcast on various frequencies that could be picked up on a normal AM or FM radio as well as shortwave.  We couldn’t jam any of their radio or television frequencies because that would be considered an act of war.  However, nothing said we couldn’t broadcast on some frequencies the Vietnamese were not using anyway.

When all this was said and done they could not say they didn’t know we were coming.  Command Solo did a pretty good job of getting the message out.

“Our military is preparing for battle.  Implore your leaders to negotiate.  Implore them to release the prisoners.  We do not wish to destroy you.”

Pretty strong words considering Vietnam had eighth largest army in the universe and the United States Army wasn't even in the top ten.  The Vietnamese forces were experienced combat veterans, they had been at war with either China or Cambodia every day since the day the last American left Indochina. Our military, on the other hand, had not fought a full-scale combat operation since the first Vietnam War.

I wasn’t so sure how this one was going to work out especially considering how V1 turned out.

Master Sergeant Kip Austin

Weather Reconnaissance Loadmaster

WC-130 Hurricane Hunter

On January 10, 1991 Tropical Depression O4E moved westward across the Pacific.  It gained momentum before crossing over the Philippines becoming Tropical Storm Kim moments before it made landfall.  Drifting into the Sulu Sea it moved northwest eventually slowing to a crawl as it crossed the Spratly Islands. 

I flew weather missions during the war out of Kadena Air Force Base on the WC-130 crew named Weather Wizard.

At 0400 in the morning on January 13, two days before the UN deadline, the storm increased in strength and became Typhoon Kim.  Of course we were right there in the middle of it.

Despite being four months out of season and relatively small, it was the worst storm the region had seen in winter in recorded history.

Operation Jungle Storm slowed to a halt.

One of the meteorologists that we deployed with called it global warming.  That was the first I had heard that term and the whole idea didn’t really pick up steam for another ten years.  Back in the late eighties we were concerned about pollution, fruit flies and the hole in the ozone.  We were headed for the millennium and there was a lot of end of the world talk.  I just chalked up global warming with the Y2K stuff I heard of later.  I mean people get in a tizzy every seventy five years or so when Halley’s Comet does its flyby.

All that being said it was easy to believe somethings wrong when there was a typhoon three months out of season bearing down on the entire south Pacific.  Still Typhoon Kim could just be a big fluke.

We flew into it three times and the tension was so heavy you could taste it.  The last typhoon this big brought down Swan 38 around the same part of the ocean. 

The only good thing was that the Vietnamese were getting it just as bad as us.  Whether anyone would be flying over the next week was up for speculation.  We were trying to solve that particular riddle with our probes.

“Prepare for drop!”  The weather officer called from the front of the cargo compartment over the interphone.  He served as the flight director during weather operations telling the pilots where to go.

“Ready!”  I responded.  I had been ready for a while.  I was just waiting for him and the flight crew to find the right spot.  They got a great view of the storm up front.  All I got to look at in the back was the inside of the fuselage.

“Drop in ten.” 

We were dropping a device called a dropsonde which was equipped with high frequency radios and sensing devices.

“READY…READY…DROP!”  The weather officer ordered.

The dropsonde was ejected out of the aircraft and headed toward the water through the storm. As it descended to the ocean surface on a small parachute, it measured and relayed to the aircraft a vertical atmospheric profile of the temperature, humidity and barometric pressure and wind data.

I hope the probe discovered something.  There was no denying that there was something unnatural about that storm.  I was thinking God was against the whole war and that was his way of letting us know.

Still we were up there in it.  We dropped our probes and waited for readings.  Everything we were seeing was that it was going to be an enduring storm.  The whole operation was going to have to wait a few days.

The Weather Wizard took a pounding from the storm.  I had heard we had lost an old A model Hurricane Hunter in Vietnam.  Tail number 56-519 had been captured at Tan Son Nhut Air Base when the south fell.  Rumor was it was still there.  Maybe if we invaded we could get her back, drop some new engines in her and fold her back into the fleet.  God knows we needed to replace the Weather Wizard as bent up as she was getting on this trip.  There was so much turbulence I stopped eating before we flew.

All the run up indicated we were going to hit Vietnam hard minutes after the UN resolution deadline passed.  I didn’t think anyone was going to be flying on the fifteenth of January. 

Not in that mess.

Lieutenant Colonel Carol Madison

Air Force Intelligence Officer

Pacific Command Operations Center

Operation Jungle Storm.

I had seen worse names for operations.  At least this one made some sense at least in the foliage sense of the word.

Everything came to a halt with the storm.  I looked at Typhoon Kim as God’s pause button.  The VCR was playing a movie.  Maybe it was a movie you didn’t want to watch.  So you hit the pause button and think about it for awhile.  Both sides could.  The PAV military commanders must have known how many men we had moved forward and how many planes we had ready.  The Vietnamese President must have known we weren’t bluffing.  Then our President and the Joint Chiefs had to think about what they wanted to do.

Do you play the movie or stop it and watch something else?

That was going to shake out in the next few days.  I couldn’t see us backing down at that point though.

When we were planning this thing I was looking for anything I could find on the shelf.  What surprised me most was the fact that we had not kept a lot of notes on the first Vietnam War.  I would have thought that there would be so much data that we would be tripping over it.  Instead all I found was some open source stuff on where their air bases were.  With nowhere else to turn I looked to Jane’s Defense Journal.

We were looking at everything from every angle.  The most disturbing idea was that they would take the POWs and use them as human shields on high value targets.  Knowing that we would not drop ordinance on our own people, especially the ones that we were trying to save, the Vietnamese would effectively shield their targets from bombs.  They were not known for following the Geneva Convention in the past.

As the hostilities were about to begin this is what we had place for air operations:

AOC ORDER OF BATTLE

Personnel                                           105,100

Fighter/Ftr-Bombers                             1,234

Transports                                           260

Helicopters (all types)               806

Civil Aviation Transports               280

This is what we had for the air war.  I only hoped it would be enough.

Our estimates of the PAV Air Force put us with an abundant majority.  Since defending requires less personnel and equipment than attacking in reality we were only about even. 

The Vietnamese Air Force looked something like this:

FIGHTER                                          250

SU-22 M-3/M-4/MR Fitter               40

SU-17 Fitter                                          30

SU-7B Fitter                                          30

MiG-21/PF Fishbed                            150

MARITIME PATROL              4

Be-12 Mail                                          4

SURVEY                                          2

An-30 Clank                                          2

TRANSPORT                                          82

An-26 Curl                                          40

An-24 Coke                                          9

An-2 Colt                                          12

Il-18 Coot                                          2

Tu-134 Crusty                                          8

Yak-40 Codling                            11

Helicopters

ATTACK                                          20

Mi-24 Hind                                          20

TRANSPORT/SUPPORT              30

Mi-6 Hook                                          5

Mi-8 Hip                                          25

UH-1H Iroquios                            UNKNOWN

It might not look like much, but they had inflicted so many losses on Navy aviators that the Navy developed the United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program, Top Gun, to deal with the Vietnamese Air Force alone.  Sure, much of the Vietnam War was fought in the jungle and it was easy to forget a lot of it was fought in the air.  Our records show the Vietnamese were very good in the air.

Really good.

Army Lieutenant Colonel Elway, our resident historian, dug up some numbers for us.  I can’t tell you how useful this guy was.  This was pre-internet and nobody wanted to spend all day in a library.

Except him.

Seems the Old North Vietnam Air Force did not have a complete squadron until 1964. By the next year they were inflicting losses on the old F-105s.  Then the Russians gave them the then new MiG-21 and things got a lot worse for the American pilots.

By the end of the war, we lost over 2000 aircraft.  The Vietnamese only lost 131.  Air to air the Americans produced three aces in during the entire war.  The Vietnamese had seventeen.

They ended V1 with the most successful air force in history only behind America, the Soviet Union and Israel.

Now we were about to face them again.  Of course we had new fighters like the Strike Eagle and the Fighting Falcon on our side this time.  I hoped that would make a difference.

Boatswain’s Mate Ridley Ford

USS Missouri

Gulf of Tonkin

The storm pounded the Missouri.  We were seventy five miles off of the coast in deep water when it hit.  It was too late to make a run to the Spratly Islands to hide.  We were just going to have to ride it out.

A lot of guys got sick.  I didn’t and I was proud of that, but I felt like I would at any moment.

I went to my bunk thinking that laying down might help.  I must have drifted off to sleep for an hour or so.  When I woke up old Bella was standing over me.

He was eating a big stick of pepperoni and farting in my face.

“Get up!”  He said poking me in the chest.

“I don’t feel good.”  I tried to roll over.

“We’re gonna drill.”

“There’s a fucking hurricane.”

“Typhoon.  You can’t have a hurricane in the Pacific asshole.”  Bella shook me.  “Best time to drill is when shit is going down.”

“I just want to sleep.”

“I’m serious.”  His tone changed.  “Captains orders.”

“Shit,” I half climbed, half fell out of my bunk.

“Come on Riddle.  We’ll make a sailor out of you yet.”  Bella said shaking the pepperoni in front of my face.  Now I have to tell you Bella did not smell good an average day.  If this guy ever showered I had not witnessed it.  Grease and body odor was all that held this guy together.  Now add to that a hunk of meat that smelled like it had turned.

The smell of that meat was too much. 

I vomited all over Bella and myself.

Bella lit a cigarette and laughed.