Low Level Bombing - Episode 4

[Michael Foley]

In 1933 John O’Hara wrote his most famous novel, Appointment in Samarra.
In the prologue to the book there is an introduction by the Englishman W Somerset Maugham. It is entitled…
Death Speaks:

There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the market-place I was jostled by a women in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the market-place and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him here in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

You may know the story. Ironically, I read this book shortly before being sent to Vietnam. The story gave me comfort. The passage caused me to believe that I might have an Appointment in Samarra and there was no point in running away. It only strengthened the resolve of a young, bullet proof, immortal Naval Aviator to go to war.

********************************************
In World War II attacking airplanes were called dive bombers. Pilots practiced bombing in thirty degree nose down dives and in forty-five degree dives. Today we call our dive bombers Attack aircraft, but we still practice 30 degree nose down and 45 degree nose down dive bombing. There are two inherent risks when performing these maneuvers, first, there is the possibility of flying into the ground by getting too focused on the target and not pulling out in time. And, secondly, the pilot could blow himself out of the sky by dropping bombs too close to the subsequent bomb blast.

On my second cruise to Vietnam aboard the Coral Sea one of our most experienced pilots was on a routine road reconnaissance mission, during broad daylight. He and his wingman discovered some trucks hiding under some trees. The Lieutenant Commander dove in on a 45 degree bombing attack dropping two 500 pound bombs on the trucks.
He tried to get close for an accurate delivery and failed to pull out at 3500 feet, which was the absolute minimum altitude. The bombs went off and the explosion caused debris to enter his engine intake. The engine seized and flamed out, the pilot had no choice but to eject. He landed in a rice paddy.

His wingman circled the area. The pilot on the ground removed his parachute and waved to the circling wingman. The wingman saw farmers coming out to the rice paddy. He decided to try to keep them away by making a machine gun pass. He did that and it seemed to work, so he circled around for another pass. This time what he saw made him sick. The pilot on the ground was laying supine on the wet rice, but his head and helmet were about ten feet away.

Fifteen years later the U S Navy named a ship after him. It was a destroyer.

The high altitude dive bombing is the most common type of weapon delivery. Normally, the aircraft would role in on the target at 10,000 feet, pickle the bombs off the airplane at maybe 7000 feet and try to pull out of the dive by 5000 feet. It was standard fleet wide policy not to make a second pass at the target.

Low Level Mining

Occasionally, the mission might call for very precise weapon delivery. One such mission was the mining of a river, and we delivered the weapons from fifty feet, low level. We were able to do this for two reasons. First of all, we had bombs with special fins on the tail of the bomb. The fins were made of metal and, when dropped, the fins would deploy, pop open, and act like a parachute. The bombs would go straight down. The parachute action would let the aircraft get some distance away before the bomb went off.

The second reason we could do this is that, in addition to the fins, the bombs had special fuses. These fuses would prevent the bomb from going off when dropped into the water.
The fuses were equipped with special pressure sensing arming devices such that when a boat was passing by the fuse could sense the pressure of the oncoming boat, and as soon as it detected the strongest signal as the boat started moving away, the bomb would go off sinking the vessel.

I went on several of these missions, but one stands out as worthy of your anticipation. The mission, which I learned about when I was given the schedule of operations the night before, was extraordinary. It called upon our squadron to fly six airplanes, and drop eight 500 pound bombs with snake eye fins and the pressure sensitive fuses. The six planes were to drop the bombs, or drop the mines, at the ferry crossing on the Red River in downtown Hanoi, low level! This was an “in your face” attack.

Because of the danger, much greater than high altitude bombing, I had to confer with the skipper and the Operations Officer to see who might be assigned this mission. The squadron was divided up into divisions of four pilots each. The skipper was in charge of one division, the Executive Officer was leader of another division of four pilots, the Operations Officer had a division, as did the Maintenance Officer and the Administrative Officer. Twenty pilots, in four plane divisions equal five divisions of pilots. The Operations Officer volunteered his division to go because he was the only married pilot in the division and he had no children. I was in his division. We needed two more pilots and we asked for volunteers. I knew who would volunteer, two bachelors, who had no wife nor children, volunteered immediately. We had a six plane group of five bachelors and one married guy. So, I wrote the flight schedule for 26 October 1967.

During the briefing the next day we discussed how we would accomplish our mission with the least risk possible. We decided that we would go in low to avoid anti-aircraft fire and surface to air missiles, but that would seriously expose us to small arms fire. Anyone with a pistol or rifle, if they were quick enough, could hit us at 50 feet above the ground. Because the river was narrow, we decided to go in single file. Because I was qualified to fly the plane with motion picture (MoPix) camera in the nose of the plane, I was assigned to be the number six airplane, the last in single file, so I could take pictures of where the mines landed.

We decided to cross the beach at 15,000 feet and speed up to 360 knots. A knot is a nautical mile, 6000 feet, or about 15 % more than a statute mile, 360 knots is 414 miles per hour. We would follow the Red River from a point about 30 miles from our drop zone. We would descend to fifty feet and go into single file about twelve miles from Hanoi. Each pilot only had to keep track of the plane directly in front of him and follow a course generally above the river. We decided to stay about 300 feet behind each other. I decided to turn the motion picture camera on at fifty feet.

As was customary, we decided to jink left and right along the river until we got to the target. Our tactics were designed to let them track us on radar at 15,000 feet, and then lose us when we descended to fifty feet. Following the river made navigating easy. It is truly astonishing how being at such a low altitude changes ones perspective, going at over 400 miles per hour everything is coming at you quickly. Naturally, we had to look out ahead for any obstacles that may have been over 50 feet high like towers. But we could see people clearly, some with guns shooting at us. I know we scared the daylights out of some water buffalo along the river.

About ten miles from the target I turned the motion picture camera on. There were a lot of things going on along the river, women washing clothes, kids playing and a lot of boats. Looking ahead I saw the leader level his wings and drop his bombs. We were at the ferry crossing in the center of Hanoi. There were a lot of people shooting at us now, but in seconds I had pickled my mines off. As per our plan we turned right, climbed a little higher to 200 feet and fled as fast as we could, jinking left and right.

Once we were safely offshore we slowed down and rendezvoused. I inspected my wingman and found several small caliber bullet holes on the tail of his airplane. One airplane got hit in the canopy, the Plexiglas shattered splinters all over the cockpit causing some minor scratches on his shoulder. Every airplane had some small caliber holes, except me.

When we got back to the ship in the debriefing room my fellow pilots accused me of not going on the mission. Since I was the sixth plane in single file, the North Vietnamese soldiers had plenty of time to anticipate my arrival and shoot me down. I was the most vulnerable of all the planes and should have taken the most hits. Yet I had none. An Appointment in Samarra? My only hope for redemption from the wardroom banter was the MoPix. Sometimes the camera works as intended and sometimes it doesn’t. Thankfully, it worked and captured everyone’s bomb drop. I said, “Boys, I’ve got motion pictures to prove I was there.” End of discussion.


*************************************

Helping Out USS Canberra

My primary job in the squadron was as the Landing Signal Officer (LSO). A portion of each day I would be back on the stern of the ship on the LSO platform directing the arriving aircraft, grading each pilot as he landed. After all the planes landed, I would go to each squadron’s ready room to tell the pilots what grade they got for their landing. Each squadron kept a bullet board in the ready room with all of the pilot’s names and beside their names was the grade they got for each landing. That way the skipper would know who was good around the ship, and who might need additional training. It was very competitive and Junior Officers loved to get better grades than their department head, or better yet, the skipper.

My secondary job was to prepare the schedule of flight operations for the next day. The job had privileges, too! I was able to choose what target or which mission I would go on, and what time I would fly. On the night of January 23, 1968, when the list of missions and targets came up to my office I picked an unusual mission to fly the next morning with my wingman.

The Guided Missile Heavy Cruiser USS Canberra (CAG2) was coming up from South Vietnam and wanted to take some target practice along the shoreline of North Vietnam. The flight schedule called for our squadron to provide two aircraft to work with the Canberra and act as spotters to tell them where their shells landed. That sounded like a good change of pace and harmless fun to me.

The Canberra was armed with six large 8 inch bore guns. In 1970 a cruiser using long range bombardment ammunition in an 8” Naval gun was able to shoot a 335 pound round of ammunition thirty-five miles into South Vietnam. The ship also had 10 5” guns, 12 3” guns and Terrier Surface to Air Missiles to shoot at incoming planes.

The next morning my wingman, Lieutenant Dave Read, and I were looking forward to this flight. We were excited at the prospect of watching this heavy cruiser fire it’s big guns and watch them hit and explode, and we got to pick out the targets. We launched at about 10:30 in the morning and proceeded southwest. We called the ship on the discreet frequency we were told to use. The ship’s radar picked us up and the radarman gave us a heading to the ship. The ship’s Weapons Officer called us and explained that they wanted us to go over the beach and find a target of opportunity for them to shoot at.

It is standard procedure to monitor the Guard Frequency, UHF 121.5. It is the emergency channel that all military pilots monitor on their UHF radios. There is a little switch on our aircraft radio that is a three position switch, Off, Transmit and Receive, and Transmit and Receive/ Guard. Pilots all should be monitoring guard frequency to listen for emergencies, but the Air Force pilots use guard channel as a tactical channel so it is always noisy. Dave and I agreed to not monitor guard so we would not be interrupted while conversing with the ship.
Dave and I flew across the beach into an area believed to be undefended by anti-aircraft weapons. We spotted a masonry bridge along the main road we call Route One. We tried to describe where the bridge was to the Weapons Officer. The Canberra fired one of their 8 inch rounds and it landed about 300 yards from the bridge. I had heard that gunners use the term “click” as an increment of measurement. Neither Dave nor I knew what a click was, but I called the ship and told them to fire two clicks to the northeast of the last shot. That shot landed about 300 yards past the bridge, so now we knew how far a click was. Soon we were able to get the ship to destroy the bridge. Everyone was pleased with the accomplishment.

The ship’s call sign was “Aussie” because the ship was named after an Australian cruiser Canberra sunk by torpedoes in World War Two, that ship was named after the Australian city of the same name. Our call sign was “Silver Fox”. I was Silver Fox 501 and Dave was Silver Fox 504, the numbers on our planes.

What a grand day. Lots of fun. We found another bridge up the coast a few miles. The ship was about 3 miles off shore and we were about six miles inland from the shore, so they were throwing these 335 pound high explosive shells about 9 miles. It was easier now to tell them where the next shell should go after learning about clicks. The ship soon knocked out the second bridge.

We started looking around for another target when Aussie called us. “Silver Fox, are you monitoring the Guard frequency?” “No, we are not.”, I said. “Well, Red Crown is calling you about some bandits coming. They are coming from Hanoi, and coming fast,” the Weapons Officer said. Red Crown is a ship on Yankee Station, that has a big fancy radar, and it monitors all aircraft in the area, friend and foe. It had called us on Guard frequency to tell us about a pair of Russian Migs that were headed toward us. Thankfully, the Aussies were monitoring Guard and heard them calling Silver Foxes.

We called Red Crown and learned that the Migs were less than two minutes away and closing rapidly. The A-4 is an attack aircraft, not a fighter aircraft. Attack aircraft have thicker wings to bear the weight of the bombs they carry. Fighters have thin wings and an afterburner to accelerate quickly, along with air to air missiles, both heat seeking and radar tracking missiles. On the mission that day, Dave and I were each carrying 16 air to ground missiles, not designed for air to air combat. Our missiles were designed to seek stationary targets on the ground, not high-speed maneuvering aircraft. The Migs had missiles designed to seek and destroy other jet aircraft.

In the event we could not avoid a confrontation with the Migs, we were told to get as low to the ground as possible and tactically withdraw (flee). Getting close to the ground made it difficult for the Mig pilot to fire his heat seeking Atoll missile into our tailpipe. Heat seeking missiles have sensitive infrared guidance systems. The missile guidance system tracks the heat generated by the jet engine of the opposing aircraft. That heat is called the heat signature. Each type of aircraft has a different heat signature depending on the engine type. Fighter aircraft have larger engines and afterburners that cause a very large heat signature. The A-4 that we were flying has a well shrouded engine with a very small heat signature. The more heat, the easier it is for the Atoll missile to find the target

.Dave and I found ourselves in a quandary. If we dove for the ground heading away from the Migs, it would expose our tailpipes to the Migs’ heat seeking missiles. We were at 11,000 feet, a long way from the ground when seconds count. We were flying at about 250 knots to conserve fuel. The Migs were higher than us, and a lot faster, probably traveling in excess of 450 knots. I told Dave to arm all his Zuni Missiles and put them on “salvo”, to fire one after another, all 16 missiles. The Zuni, as I said, was designed to hit a ground target, not an airplane. But it was a large imposing looking thing, twelve feet long and 10 inches in diameter with a 100 pound warhead.

While we were contemplating our situation, the Migs located us and attacked. There were two Mig 21s; two of the Soviet Union’s fastest planes. They had greater altitude and were diving down on us when they let fly two Atoll missiles apiece. Four heat-seeking missiles aimed at us! I can not describe the terror of the moment when I realized that the most sophisticated missiles known to Soviet aviation were unleashed toward me two miles above the surface of the earth.

For reasons completely unknown to me, fortune was again with me. The heat seeking missiles did not lock onto us. They flew by us at a terrifying speed and then the Migs themselves were diving so fast that they flew right past us as well. Redemption! Dave and I seized the opportunity to maneuver behind them and let loose the pride of the Navy’s air to ground missile arsenal, 32 Zuni rockets discharged in the general direction of the North Vietnamese Migs. Seeing our massive display of American firepower, I am sure, frightened the Mig jockeys since they turned away and fled in the general direction of Hanoi. We were now, at once, relieved and triumphant.

That was it. It all happened so fast we really didn’t have time to think. We should have been listening to the Guard frequency and this never would have happened. But then, nothing did happen. We just got into our first dogfight and it ended in a draw. We called the Canberra and told them what had happened. They had watched it on the radar.
Dave and I flew back to the ship. We had been in a dogfight and now we were combat certified Fighter Pilots! We lived to fight another day. How many times can you beat the odds?


Post Script
The latest generation of military airplanes incorporate aspects of fighters and attack aircraft all in one new design. The Blue Angels fly the Navy’s newest aircraft called the F/A-18, Hornet, the F/A stands for Fighter/Attack, which is capable of either mission.