Every veteran has a good story to tell, you do too.
Capture of the USS Pueblo - Episode 7
In the long history of the United States Navy, only three Navy ships have been captured by the enemy. The frigate USS Philadelphia was captured during the First Barbary War, in the Battle of Tripoli Harbor when the ship ran aground in October, 1803. The ship was subsequently burned by American sailors in Tripoli Harbor. On December 8, 1941, the river gunboat USS Wake (PR-3) was captured by Japanese forces while moored in Shanghai.
The third Naval vessel to be captured was the USS Pueblo (AGER-2) by the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (North Korea) on January 23, 1968. When it happened, those of us on the Coral Sea called it the Pueblo Crisis, but others know it as the Pueblo Incident. AGER-2, stands for Auxiliary General Environmental Research vessel number two. According to Wikipedia, the ship was originally a light cargo vessel, but later converted to an intelligence gathering ship, or spy ship, a joint project of the Navy and National Security Agency.
International Maritime Rules provide that territorial waters extend out to twelve nautical miles from the coast, or about 22 kilometers. North Korea, never known to abide by any international treaty, claims territorial waters out to 50 nautical miles, about 90 kilometers. Although we may never know the exact location where Pueblo was attacked, the United States government claims she was in international waters, and the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea claims the ship was in its territorial waters when the incident occurred.
Although the exact location may be in question, what is not in question was what occurred in the Sea of Japan that day. A submarine chaser from the DPRK approached the Pueblo and challenged her nationality. The American flag was raised, but the sub chaser order her to stop or be fired upon. The Pueblo started to leave, but the sub chaser was much faster and soon joined by several other DPRK torpedo boats and, eventually, over flown by two MiG-21 fighters. You can learn much more about the Pueblo from the crew’s point by going to their site at www.usspueblo.org .
Suffice it to say that the spy ship was alone without much recourse. It is an established Naval tradition that the Captain of the ship would go down with his vessel rather than surrender to the enemy. This tradition might have even more meaning when the ship has extremely sensitive material aboard that could be used by the enemy in the future. In this case, it has been learned that the USS Pueblo was captured at the instigation of the Soviet Union. It seems the USSR wanted a cryptographic machine located aboard Pueblo because an American spy, John Anthony Walker, had given the Soviets the key to the machine.
The Navy bears a heavy burden here for not protecting the ship, but what went on in the mind of the Commanding Officer of the Pueblo, Commander Lloyd M. Bucher, is a matter of speculation. There were shots being fired by some of the DPRK vessels. One sailor was killed, Fireman Apprentice Duane Hodges. Eventually, the Captain allowed his ship to be boarded by the North Koreans, and he surrendered.
I am a traditionalist, steeped in Naval history, one of those who believe the Captain should have ordered the ship scuttled. Although I have no proof, I believe that as a matter of practice, some ships have explosive charges below decks, attached to the hull, for just such purposes. That did not happen here, and the Captain and crew of 82 became prisoners of war. The ship was brought in to a North Korean port, and all of the sensitive equipment seized. U. S. Naval officials in high places made bad decisions before the capture of the ship, but the Captain made the ultimate decision to allow his ship to be boarded.
*****************************************
I did not know the plight of the USS Pueblo for several days after the capture. The day after the capture, on January 24, 1968, is when I encountered the MiG-21s at Cap Chow, North Vietnam. I was looking forward to the end of the cruise of the Coral Sea. We were scheduled to leave Yankee Station in two weeks, and I was going home to get married! The wedding was all set for March 2, 1968. The announcements were in the mail. The church and Officer’s Club had been reserved. Even my fellow squadron mates were all excited about my marriage, and seeing their wives, girlfriends, children and parents.
All went well in the closing days of the line period. We did not lose any pilots, and we left Yankee Station on time. My last flight was a close-air support mission for the besieged Marines in Khe Sanh, South Vietnam, on February 17, 1968. The ship then headed toward Japan. We would disembark in Atsugi, Japan, and take a chartered Continental Air Lines flight back to San Francisco, or so we thought.
Once the ship was headed north, we learned that our cruise was being extended to go to the Sea of Japan to patrol off the coast of Korea. That is when I realized the impact of the capture of the spy ship, and it was not just that my wedding would have to be postponed. After a short stop in Atsugi, the Coral Sea left for patrol in the Sea of Japan. What happened next is something I will never forget.
On March 9, 1968, as we left the port of Atsugi, I was up on the deck early to watch the ship pull up her anchor, and watch the tugboats get the big ship pointed out to sea. It was a very cold day. The skies were gray with heavy clouds in a low layer above the sea. The winds in February and March were always blowing and always cold. There were white caps in the bay and on the ocean. As a pilot, we were taught to look for the direction of the wind by watching the waves and the white caps. We learned that white caps start to form at 12-15 mph of wind. If you had to ditch at sea, you wanted to be heading into the wind.
Normally, when the ship is conducting air operations, the Captain of the ship orders the ship turned into the wind. Depending on the weight of the aircraft launching and the outside air temperature, the ship has to use the amount of wind plus the speed of the ship to maintain about 30 knots of wind over the deck to launch aircraft. If there were ten knots of wind blowing, then the ship would have to make twenty knots of speed to make thirty knots over the deck. If there were twenty knots of wind, the ship would only have to go 10 knots for air operations. While we were anchored in the harbor of Atsugi, we were able to take off with the ship standing still, there was so much steady wind!
Another abnormal thing about air operations in the winter in that area is the water temperature. The water temperature is between 34 and 37 degrees Fahrenheit. Of course, that means it is frigid water. But for a pilot it has added importance if you eject into that water. Water that cold takes the heat out of a person’s body in just minutes; it is called hypothermia. You will quickly pass out and die if not rescued right away.
The pilot can increase the length of time before hypothermia sets in by wearing an anti-exposure suit, instead of a flight suit. We called them “poopy suits”. I don’t know where that term came from, but my guess is that once you got into one of these things, it was very difficult to get out of to go poopy. Truthfully, it was both extremely difficult to get into and out of a poopy suit. It was, also, very difficult to get in and out of the small cockpit of an A-4 Skyhawk with the poopy suit on. It was made of a very thick rubber, with a zipper that ran from neck to ankle. If it fit you properly, it was very tight. It was designed to keep the frigid water away from the body. It was heavy, it was bulky, and it was no fun to fly in. The choices were to risk dieing in minutes of exposure, or get about 30 minutes to live and get rescued. For air operations in the Sea of Japan, we were ordered to wear poopy suits.
Once out to sea, the ship turned North-Northeast to follow the east coast of the Korean peninsular and establish a position approximately one hundred miles away from the coast. The ship arrived in position for air operations on 11 March, 1968, about seven weeks after the capture of the Pueblo. We should have known what to expect, because of our activities while anchored off of Atsugi, but we thought they were part of the normal planning and procedures related to our on-going SIOP mission.
SIOP stands for Single Integrated Operational Plan. Our Doomsday Defense. SIOP is the nation’s plan for defending itself after an enemy launch of a nuclear ballistic missile. Single Integration meant it was coordinated between all branches of the military service, the Air Force, the Army and the Navy, even including Great Britain. The coordinated defense used if we were to be attacked included using the nuclear capabilities of strategic bombers, long-range intercontinental missiles, and submarine launched ballistic missiles. Our military would respond in a united, integrated and overwhelming offense almost destroying the earth as we know it. To most of us pilots, it was like an imaginary war game. We would plan a mission in case of nuclear war. Every pilot would be assigned a specific target in the land of the enemy. Each pilot and his airplane would be launched to drop his weapon on the enemy at an assigned, coordinated time.
While in port, all our pilots were told to refresh their SIOP target folder which was kept in a locked safe. We thought this was just normal, just something to keep us busy, and that it was totally routine. When we got into the Sea of Japan, we learned that it was not a busy work assignment…… it was the real deal. We were told that our planes would be loaded in a SIOP configuration!
Among all military aircraft, only one airplane was designed from the drawing board up, to have a single mission, to be a nuclear delivery weapon. The A-4 Skyhawk was drawn and designed by Ed Heinemann in the famous Douglas Aircraft “Skunk works.” The skunk works was famous for designing top secret aircraft like the SR-71. The Skyhawk was designed for the U. S. Navy to be a light weight, small, inexpensive carrier based airplane to meet the Cold War threat of the Soviet Union. It was specifically designed to carry a single nuclear weapon on the centerline of the aircraft, along with two large external fuel tanks, which could be dropped, jettisoned, after the fuel was used to decrease external drag on the aircraft. The idea was to make many of these low cost nuclear delivery systems. It was designed with a unique reflective hood, or cover, that the pilot would pull over the inside of the cockpit, darkening it after a nuclear delivery so the pilot would not be blinded by the nuclear explosion.
There was even a specially conceived weapons delivery maneuver called an “Over the Shoulder Delivery, to launch the nuclear weapon in such a way that the airplane itself would have the best chance of surviving the explosion. The maneuver was also known as toss bombing and had a special computer to calculate the exact time to release the weapon while in a vertical six “G” pull up. The whole plane was designed for a one-time delivery. There was, generally, not enough fuel for the aircraft to make it back to the ship. It was a one way trip. Hopefully, the pilot would make it to some friendly area, and either land or eject in that area. The first A-4 was flown on June 22, 1954. The unit cost for each of the first 500 airplanes built was $860,000, a rather modest figure for a nuclear weapons delivery system. A total of 2,960 Skyhawks were built. The bomb cost more than the airplane.
The next day, after leaving Atsugi, our squadron Commanding Officer called an All Officer’s Meeting (AOM) in the squadron ready room. AOMs were a common way of communication with the squadron Officers, usually used for training all officers at once, or simply to disseminate information. For some reason the squadron ready room on this morning was unusually sullen. A sense of foreboding filled the smoky room. Coffee and cigarettes, the fighter pilot’s breakfast, accompanied the angst. None of the usual laughing and joking, nor was the conversation as loud as usual. Murmuring was more like it. The pilots came to attention when the skipper entered the room.
His terse, “Good morning, gentlemen,” signaled the seriousness of the day. He began by telling us what we were about to do was something that we had been training for from the beginning of our careers. This was our primary mission. Everything else we had done, the missions in Vietnam, were all secondary to what we may be called on to do. He told us that the SIOP preparation we had done was not a drill. It was not practice. Today, while at sea, he said, we would again take out our SIOP mission folders and memorize what we knew we had to know. Today would be all business. No one, other than the pilots and the Air Intelligence Officer would be allowed in the Ready Room. We were not to take any of our SIOP information out of the Ready Room. Today, he said, we are preparing for tomorrow, and by tomorrow he did not mean some time in the future, he meant when we woke up in the morning.
I am sure that, even today, forty years after the fact, it would not be wise for me to discuss targets. Suffice it to say, each pilot was assigned a discreet target and a time to arrive. The planning then was actually backward. Rather than planning from the time you launch from the ship, instead, you plan from the moment you release your payload and plan backward to the ship. That is when the ship must launch your jet. You tell the ship when you are going, not the other way around.
All pilots from all squadrons went in to the Meteorology Department to get a weather briefing on expected sky cover and winds, especially the winds, that was the most critical variable. The more accurately they could guess what the winds were going to be, the more accurately you could plan your mission. All of the flights were predicated on a specific airspeed in order to maintain six miles per minute over the ground. That way you could plan your route of flight using markers of six miles to signify one minute on your chart. The pilot also had to know the ship’s most exact position at time of launch to figure miles to target. These were the days before the computer as we know it now. Then, flight planning involved a lot of guesstimates.
All of the flights were to be flown at low level to avoid being picked up by enemy radar. The lower, the better. Our flights were all to be flown at fifty feet above ground. That meant you had to navigate by looking outside the plane for landmarks that might assist you enroute to the target. In your planning you looked for railroads, rivers, church steeples, towers, main roads, bridges, small towns, or anything else to help verify where you were on your chart. Actually, you really had to pay attention or else you might get lost! That was always the source of sick jokes. If lost, where should I dispose of the payload?
Back in our home base in California, we practiced low level flying all of the time, mostly flying out over uninhabited lands in Nevada, Utah and Arizona. We learned that the trick to use if you got lost was simply to climb up to a higher altitude so you could see more. From the higher altitude you could quickly reorient yourself and then descend, just spending seconds at the higher altitude even though risking radar detection. The first few times you tried flying these low level flights in training, you almost always got lost. Not just a little lost, really lost. It was a humbling experience. Eventually, all pilots learned the tricks of low altitude flying at over 400 mph. The most reliable technique was staying on the planned course and the planned airspeed. Getting a little off course at 400 mph quickly gets you way off course. Watch your heading!!
During the weeks preceding our arrival in the Sea of Japan, high level talks among international diplomats were rampant. Initially, of course, everyone in the United States was outraged. Some people naively believed that we didn’t have spy ships. Other countries, our enemies, had spy ships, but our ship was certainly just a research ship. The nation’s war hawks wanted to use the Nuclear Option. Level heads prevailed and talks through third parties were initiated. The Navy, however, was sent to the region as a display of force, warship diplomacy. I think that the Coral Sea, in company with several destroyers, was simply a part of the diplomatic dance. But the powers above my pay grade said, “Get ready.” And so we did.
*************************************************
It is an understatement to say that the first time you see an atomic bomb, you are, so to speak, Blown away. Mind boggling. Incredulous. Fascinating. And an adrenalin rush. It is not correctly called an Atomic Bomb, but that reminds me of the U-2 Album, How to build an Atomic Bomb! It is correctly called a nuclear weapon. In this case, specifically, it is a B-43 Mod 2 nuclear bomb.
You cannot but be impressed when you see the ceremony on the ship corresponding to the attachment of such a weapon on to your airplane. The weapons are kept deep in the bowels of the ship. When transferring them from the Marine guarded storage area, each weapon is brought up to the flight deck on a special elevator. Each weapon is surrounded by six armed Marine sentries. The weapon is brought over to the airplane on a special vehicle towed by two sailors from the Weapons Department along with the six sentries.
Once attached to the plane the sentries follow along side of the airplane as it makes its way to the catapult. There is no chance anyone not supposed to be there will get near the 2000 pound weapon. The ceremony and splendor is something not to be forgotten. Once I am catapulted off of the ship it is mine to protect, or if need be, to deliver. How did I get to this place in time?
The flight schedule had been prepared the night before. Each of us knew what launch we would be on in the morning. The mission was called Surveillance Operation, whatever that was, I didn’t know. An All Officer Meeting was scheduled before air operations at 7:00 AM. We were told then that we would be flying in a racetrack pattern with 50 mile legs at 28,000 feet, off the coast of North Korea. Personally, I guessed this was to be a provocation, or simply a display of force. We were told this was a drill and a practice in using nuclear weapons. We were told to take our SIOP mission planning folder with us. We were told where to do our in-flight refueling if needed. I think that meant, if we were to go to our SIOP target.
There was really only one thing that concerned me. We were carrying live nuclear weapons. By Treaty, no nuclear weapons were allowed in South Korea. No nuclear weapons were allowed in Japan. In case of an emergency, like not being able to land on the carrier, for example….. there were no Bingo Fields! There was no field to land on. There was no other carriers nearby. It was get back to the ship or ditch at sea in your poopy suit. On the 5th of December, 1965, a Skyhawk flying off of the USS Ticonderoga disappeared off the coast of Japan. Gone missing was the plane, the pilot, and the bomb. That was disturbing to me. That thought crossed my mind as I taxied onto the catapult.
Another concern of mine was that each of us taking off with one of these things could start World War III simply by lofting his weapon into North Korea. Once airborne, there was nothing to prevent a shell shocked Vietnam veteran from deciding on his own to bring justice to the North Koreans. We had a couple of crazy dudes on the ship, in my squadron and others, that I, personally, would not trust with an Atomic Bomb. But the Powers that be did not show any concern, nor were they selective about who carried these things. As it turned out, no one attacked North Korea!
The water in the Sea of Japan reflected the gray of the low clouds. Gray clouds and gray seas. It was a surreal feeling being shot off the bow of the boat with such a powerful payload. I felt unworthy. I felt a little confused. What was in store for me that day? I climbed through about 12,000 feet of clouds before I broke out into the sunshine and blue sky. Almost immediately I felt better. I was now almost cheerful. Now I felt powerful. One megaton, one thousand tons, of TNT at my command, fuse set for a 600 foot air burst.
In the movie Doctor Strangelove about a B-52 bomber carrying a nuclear weapon with a crazy mixed up crew on board, there is talk about the chain of command required to arm and drop the bomb. It claimed that the President of the United States had to push a button at the same time as the Commander of the Strategic Air Command, issue radio commands with secret passwords and special number for the crew to program into the bomb. Well, I don’t know if that is still the required protocol for the Strategic Air Command, but once we leave the ship, there is only one person who has to push a button, and it is not the President of the United States.
This flight was strange for another reason, I was flying alone, not with another plane. Each of us were to fly our own racetrack pattern in the skies off North Korea. Each pilot had his own airspace, separated by altitude and different miles from the ship. My pattern was to fly 60 miles north of the ship and then fly an additional 50 before starting a 180 degree turn back to the south. Then turn 180 degrees and fly 50 miles north again, over and over in this racetrack pattern. Each airplane flew its unique racetrack. Some, like me, were north of the ship, some were south of the ship, all of us at different altitudes.
The North Korean radar operators were not used to seeing such a sight on their radar screens. They expected to see one large formation of planes, instead they saw many individual blips on their screens. Some going north, and some going south, stretching out over 200 miles. They had no idea which blip was a fighter and which was a bomber. There was no way to figure out where to send their Soviet built MiGs. They had no idea how to determine where a strike might come from, nor where it was going if it came.
The North Koreans obviously thought that they were the targets, but, alas, they were not. Our targets were hundreds of miles north. But the North Koreans had no way of knowing that. They thought that at any minute all of these blips would, as if one, turn and head for the North Korean heartland. I am sure that the radar presentation made them very nervous.
What I did not know, at the time, was that this circus of blips had been on the DPRK radar screens for the last six weeks since the spy ship capture. Other aircraft carriers were flying the same bizarre patterns every day for the last 46 days. Our carrier just relieved another carrier doing the same thing. The North Korean army radar specialists were watching this spectacle of random flights every day, and every day they became more nervous.
Meanwhile the negotiations continued between the United States envoys talking to third party countries, who in turn, would talk to high party officials of the DPRK. North Korea had the prize and the United States had the warships and air power. At the moment, things were at a tense standstill. The air was thick with speculation, and the view from opposing sides of the prism was colored in different hues of distrust. American opinion polls supported military action. The militaries of North Korea, South Korea and China were all in a state of escalated alert. Legally speaking, the war between North Korea and South Korea had never ended. A truce had been called, but in terms of war, it was only a truce. The North Korean capture was little more than a provocation, a provocation that was escalating. The whole area was now a tinder box.
Sitting in the cockpit with the autopilot on, level at 28,000 feet, I turned my radar on. I, too, saw what the North Koreans saw, blips all over the screen, moving in different directions, north and south, parallel to the coast of Korea. The radar screen looked chaotic, out of control, totally disorganized.
My thoughts turned to what was happening around me, of what was becoming of me. I thought of myself now as a member of a very exclusive club, a single man, in a single airplane, carrying a nuclear weapon, on a potentially real flight toward a hostile enemy country, prepared to deliver part of the doomsday arsenal during the end of the planet scenario. This was not fictional or imaginary. When they load a nuclear weapon on your airplane, along with plans to deliver it to a real target in a real country, this is not war games. This is not pretend. You know that if the powers that be give the signal to “Play Ball”, you are like the male Black Widow Spider….you were going to mate, and then die. We, however were not getting the joy of mating, simply the knowledge that we would probably die.
After about an hour and a half of racetracks, the Coral Sea launched the next shift of airplanes and we returned to the ship. That was to be the game. Keep airplanes in the sky. Keep the DPRK nervous. Keep up the pressure. Later that day, I learned that occasionally a pair of F-4 fighters in each launch would turn from the racetrack and head toward the territorial airspace of North Korea, get close and then turn outward, an aerial ballet scripted to create nervousness.
By the time I received the signal from the ship to return, my adrenalin rush was gone, and I felt an overwhelming sense of relief. I had enjoyed the feeling of power and control, but by now the effects of being in the poopie suit out weighed the power rush. What I looked forward to now was getting out of this big, rubber, prophylactic.
All of our airplanes on the first launch assembled 30 miles behind the ship and individually began descending to final approach and landing. As I picked up the optical meatball and green datum lights I called to the Landing Signal Officer (LSO), “This is Silver Fox five oh nine, fuel one point eight, I have the ball.” “Roger ball” was all he said to me. But it was music to my ears, and I thought that tomorrow the arriving pilots would here my voice when they return. I had LSO duty the next day. I would not be flying. I would not have to get into the poopie suit.
When I landed and taxied clear of the landing area, I notice the plane surrounded by the six Marine sentries as they accompanied me forward to park. The plane Captain began chaining the aircraft to the deck after putting the chocks around the wheels. Before I could climb out of the aircraft the weapons people had taken off the B-43 and the Marines were marching smartly across the deck to the weapons elevator. Curiously, I felt a special attachment to that bomb. It was like I was no longer uninitiated. I was now a member of that very elite club. In all of the history of mankind, not many people have control of that much destructive power.
Knowing now what our operational intentions really were, a show of power, and that it was unlikely that we would do our SIOP mission, tensions became visibly more relaxed. Getting to fly the genuine article was beyond our wildest expectation. It was surreal, unreal, unbelievable and exhilarating. The whole sequence of events has become etched in my mind. The President of the United States may make the doomsday decision, but it is going to be some solitary young man who will be called upon to fly the mission and press the button. That, I have learned, is a heavy weight.
The next day, I did have Landing Signal Officer duty, standing on the aft end of the ship, on a small platform abeam the arresting cables, watching the arriving aircraft come in, and grading their landing performance. After each recovery was completed, I marched down below to each ready room and told the arriving pilots how well they did. After this long cruise we had been on, every pilot had become very proficient, and I seldom had to deliver bad news to them. On the next day, March 13, I flew a night flight doing the same racetrack pattern. The ceremony of the Marine guards doesn’t let you forget the seriousness of your task. March14, another day on the LSO platform. March15, my third mission with a B-43 mode 2.
On the 14th of March, 1968, the ship received orders to return to Atsugi, Japan. The negotiators had apparently reached some kind of agreement that included a reduction in the show of force. Our duty on the USS Coral Sea had ended. My third mission with B-43 had concluded my tour of duty, my last landing on CVA-43. After 172 missions in Vietnam, and three in Korea, I was going home with a Distinguished Flying Cross, 17 Air medals, two Navy Unit Citations, and Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, but the Navy had no award for carrying nuclear weapons in combat!
Post Script
On March 29, 1968, the pilots of Carrier Air Wing 15 arrived back in San Francisco. The Attack pilots continued back to Naval Air Station, Lemoore, California. On March 30, 1968, all of the pilots of Attack Squadron 155 met at the base chapel to witness the marriage of Carolyn Mary Davenport to Lieutenant Michael J. Foley. We now have been married for forty years with two delightful children and four delightful grand children.
Nine months after it’s capture, the crew of Pueblo was released.
The third Naval vessel to be captured was the USS Pueblo (AGER-2) by the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (North Korea) on January 23, 1968. When it happened, those of us on the Coral Sea called it the Pueblo Crisis, but others know it as the Pueblo Incident. AGER-2, stands for Auxiliary General Environmental Research vessel number two. According to Wikipedia, the ship was originally a light cargo vessel, but later converted to an intelligence gathering ship, or spy ship, a joint project of the Navy and National Security Agency.
International Maritime Rules provide that territorial waters extend out to twelve nautical miles from the coast, or about 22 kilometers. North Korea, never known to abide by any international treaty, claims territorial waters out to 50 nautical miles, about 90 kilometers. Although we may never know the exact location where Pueblo was attacked, the United States government claims she was in international waters, and the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea claims the ship was in its territorial waters when the incident occurred.
Although the exact location may be in question, what is not in question was what occurred in the Sea of Japan that day. A submarine chaser from the DPRK approached the Pueblo and challenged her nationality. The American flag was raised, but the sub chaser order her to stop or be fired upon. The Pueblo started to leave, but the sub chaser was much faster and soon joined by several other DPRK torpedo boats and, eventually, over flown by two MiG-21 fighters. You can learn much more about the Pueblo from the crew’s point by going to their site at www.usspueblo.org .
Suffice it to say that the spy ship was alone without much recourse. It is an established Naval tradition that the Captain of the ship would go down with his vessel rather than surrender to the enemy. This tradition might have even more meaning when the ship has extremely sensitive material aboard that could be used by the enemy in the future. In this case, it has been learned that the USS Pueblo was captured at the instigation of the Soviet Union. It seems the USSR wanted a cryptographic machine located aboard Pueblo because an American spy, John Anthony Walker, had given the Soviets the key to the machine.
The Navy bears a heavy burden here for not protecting the ship, but what went on in the mind of the Commanding Officer of the Pueblo, Commander Lloyd M. Bucher, is a matter of speculation. There were shots being fired by some of the DPRK vessels. One sailor was killed, Fireman Apprentice Duane Hodges. Eventually, the Captain allowed his ship to be boarded by the North Koreans, and he surrendered.
I am a traditionalist, steeped in Naval history, one of those who believe the Captain should have ordered the ship scuttled. Although I have no proof, I believe that as a matter of practice, some ships have explosive charges below decks, attached to the hull, for just such purposes. That did not happen here, and the Captain and crew of 82 became prisoners of war. The ship was brought in to a North Korean port, and all of the sensitive equipment seized. U. S. Naval officials in high places made bad decisions before the capture of the ship, but the Captain made the ultimate decision to allow his ship to be boarded.
*****************************************
I did not know the plight of the USS Pueblo for several days after the capture. The day after the capture, on January 24, 1968, is when I encountered the MiG-21s at Cap Chow, North Vietnam. I was looking forward to the end of the cruise of the Coral Sea. We were scheduled to leave Yankee Station in two weeks, and I was going home to get married! The wedding was all set for March 2, 1968. The announcements were in the mail. The church and Officer’s Club had been reserved. Even my fellow squadron mates were all excited about my marriage, and seeing their wives, girlfriends, children and parents.
All went well in the closing days of the line period. We did not lose any pilots, and we left Yankee Station on time. My last flight was a close-air support mission for the besieged Marines in Khe Sanh, South Vietnam, on February 17, 1968. The ship then headed toward Japan. We would disembark in Atsugi, Japan, and take a chartered Continental Air Lines flight back to San Francisco, or so we thought.
Once the ship was headed north, we learned that our cruise was being extended to go to the Sea of Japan to patrol off the coast of Korea. That is when I realized the impact of the capture of the spy ship, and it was not just that my wedding would have to be postponed. After a short stop in Atsugi, the Coral Sea left for patrol in the Sea of Japan. What happened next is something I will never forget.
On March 9, 1968, as we left the port of Atsugi, I was up on the deck early to watch the ship pull up her anchor, and watch the tugboats get the big ship pointed out to sea. It was a very cold day. The skies were gray with heavy clouds in a low layer above the sea. The winds in February and March were always blowing and always cold. There were white caps in the bay and on the ocean. As a pilot, we were taught to look for the direction of the wind by watching the waves and the white caps. We learned that white caps start to form at 12-15 mph of wind. If you had to ditch at sea, you wanted to be heading into the wind.
Normally, when the ship is conducting air operations, the Captain of the ship orders the ship turned into the wind. Depending on the weight of the aircraft launching and the outside air temperature, the ship has to use the amount of wind plus the speed of the ship to maintain about 30 knots of wind over the deck to launch aircraft. If there were ten knots of wind blowing, then the ship would have to make twenty knots of speed to make thirty knots over the deck. If there were twenty knots of wind, the ship would only have to go 10 knots for air operations. While we were anchored in the harbor of Atsugi, we were able to take off with the ship standing still, there was so much steady wind!
Another abnormal thing about air operations in the winter in that area is the water temperature. The water temperature is between 34 and 37 degrees Fahrenheit. Of course, that means it is frigid water. But for a pilot it has added importance if you eject into that water. Water that cold takes the heat out of a person’s body in just minutes; it is called hypothermia. You will quickly pass out and die if not rescued right away.
The pilot can increase the length of time before hypothermia sets in by wearing an anti-exposure suit, instead of a flight suit. We called them “poopy suits”. I don’t know where that term came from, but my guess is that once you got into one of these things, it was very difficult to get out of to go poopy. Truthfully, it was both extremely difficult to get into and out of a poopy suit. It was, also, very difficult to get in and out of the small cockpit of an A-4 Skyhawk with the poopy suit on. It was made of a very thick rubber, with a zipper that ran from neck to ankle. If it fit you properly, it was very tight. It was designed to keep the frigid water away from the body. It was heavy, it was bulky, and it was no fun to fly in. The choices were to risk dieing in minutes of exposure, or get about 30 minutes to live and get rescued. For air operations in the Sea of Japan, we were ordered to wear poopy suits.
Once out to sea, the ship turned North-Northeast to follow the east coast of the Korean peninsular and establish a position approximately one hundred miles away from the coast. The ship arrived in position for air operations on 11 March, 1968, about seven weeks after the capture of the Pueblo. We should have known what to expect, because of our activities while anchored off of Atsugi, but we thought they were part of the normal planning and procedures related to our on-going SIOP mission.
SIOP stands for Single Integrated Operational Plan. Our Doomsday Defense. SIOP is the nation’s plan for defending itself after an enemy launch of a nuclear ballistic missile. Single Integration meant it was coordinated between all branches of the military service, the Air Force, the Army and the Navy, even including Great Britain. The coordinated defense used if we were to be attacked included using the nuclear capabilities of strategic bombers, long-range intercontinental missiles, and submarine launched ballistic missiles. Our military would respond in a united, integrated and overwhelming offense almost destroying the earth as we know it. To most of us pilots, it was like an imaginary war game. We would plan a mission in case of nuclear war. Every pilot would be assigned a specific target in the land of the enemy. Each pilot and his airplane would be launched to drop his weapon on the enemy at an assigned, coordinated time.
While in port, all our pilots were told to refresh their SIOP target folder which was kept in a locked safe. We thought this was just normal, just something to keep us busy, and that it was totally routine. When we got into the Sea of Japan, we learned that it was not a busy work assignment…… it was the real deal. We were told that our planes would be loaded in a SIOP configuration!
Among all military aircraft, only one airplane was designed from the drawing board up, to have a single mission, to be a nuclear delivery weapon. The A-4 Skyhawk was drawn and designed by Ed Heinemann in the famous Douglas Aircraft “Skunk works.” The skunk works was famous for designing top secret aircraft like the SR-71. The Skyhawk was designed for the U. S. Navy to be a light weight, small, inexpensive carrier based airplane to meet the Cold War threat of the Soviet Union. It was specifically designed to carry a single nuclear weapon on the centerline of the aircraft, along with two large external fuel tanks, which could be dropped, jettisoned, after the fuel was used to decrease external drag on the aircraft. The idea was to make many of these low cost nuclear delivery systems. It was designed with a unique reflective hood, or cover, that the pilot would pull over the inside of the cockpit, darkening it after a nuclear delivery so the pilot would not be blinded by the nuclear explosion.
There was even a specially conceived weapons delivery maneuver called an “Over the Shoulder Delivery, to launch the nuclear weapon in such a way that the airplane itself would have the best chance of surviving the explosion. The maneuver was also known as toss bombing and had a special computer to calculate the exact time to release the weapon while in a vertical six “G” pull up. The whole plane was designed for a one-time delivery. There was, generally, not enough fuel for the aircraft to make it back to the ship. It was a one way trip. Hopefully, the pilot would make it to some friendly area, and either land or eject in that area. The first A-4 was flown on June 22, 1954. The unit cost for each of the first 500 airplanes built was $860,000, a rather modest figure for a nuclear weapons delivery system. A total of 2,960 Skyhawks were built. The bomb cost more than the airplane.
The next day, after leaving Atsugi, our squadron Commanding Officer called an All Officer’s Meeting (AOM) in the squadron ready room. AOMs were a common way of communication with the squadron Officers, usually used for training all officers at once, or simply to disseminate information. For some reason the squadron ready room on this morning was unusually sullen. A sense of foreboding filled the smoky room. Coffee and cigarettes, the fighter pilot’s breakfast, accompanied the angst. None of the usual laughing and joking, nor was the conversation as loud as usual. Murmuring was more like it. The pilots came to attention when the skipper entered the room.
His terse, “Good morning, gentlemen,” signaled the seriousness of the day. He began by telling us what we were about to do was something that we had been training for from the beginning of our careers. This was our primary mission. Everything else we had done, the missions in Vietnam, were all secondary to what we may be called on to do. He told us that the SIOP preparation we had done was not a drill. It was not practice. Today, while at sea, he said, we would again take out our SIOP mission folders and memorize what we knew we had to know. Today would be all business. No one, other than the pilots and the Air Intelligence Officer would be allowed in the Ready Room. We were not to take any of our SIOP information out of the Ready Room. Today, he said, we are preparing for tomorrow, and by tomorrow he did not mean some time in the future, he meant when we woke up in the morning.
I am sure that, even today, forty years after the fact, it would not be wise for me to discuss targets. Suffice it to say, each pilot was assigned a discreet target and a time to arrive. The planning then was actually backward. Rather than planning from the time you launch from the ship, instead, you plan from the moment you release your payload and plan backward to the ship. That is when the ship must launch your jet. You tell the ship when you are going, not the other way around.
All pilots from all squadrons went in to the Meteorology Department to get a weather briefing on expected sky cover and winds, especially the winds, that was the most critical variable. The more accurately they could guess what the winds were going to be, the more accurately you could plan your mission. All of the flights were predicated on a specific airspeed in order to maintain six miles per minute over the ground. That way you could plan your route of flight using markers of six miles to signify one minute on your chart. The pilot also had to know the ship’s most exact position at time of launch to figure miles to target. These were the days before the computer as we know it now. Then, flight planning involved a lot of guesstimates.
All of the flights were to be flown at low level to avoid being picked up by enemy radar. The lower, the better. Our flights were all to be flown at fifty feet above ground. That meant you had to navigate by looking outside the plane for landmarks that might assist you enroute to the target. In your planning you looked for railroads, rivers, church steeples, towers, main roads, bridges, small towns, or anything else to help verify where you were on your chart. Actually, you really had to pay attention or else you might get lost! That was always the source of sick jokes. If lost, where should I dispose of the payload?
Back in our home base in California, we practiced low level flying all of the time, mostly flying out over uninhabited lands in Nevada, Utah and Arizona. We learned that the trick to use if you got lost was simply to climb up to a higher altitude so you could see more. From the higher altitude you could quickly reorient yourself and then descend, just spending seconds at the higher altitude even though risking radar detection. The first few times you tried flying these low level flights in training, you almost always got lost. Not just a little lost, really lost. It was a humbling experience. Eventually, all pilots learned the tricks of low altitude flying at over 400 mph. The most reliable technique was staying on the planned course and the planned airspeed. Getting a little off course at 400 mph quickly gets you way off course. Watch your heading!!
During the weeks preceding our arrival in the Sea of Japan, high level talks among international diplomats were rampant. Initially, of course, everyone in the United States was outraged. Some people naively believed that we didn’t have spy ships. Other countries, our enemies, had spy ships, but our ship was certainly just a research ship. The nation’s war hawks wanted to use the Nuclear Option. Level heads prevailed and talks through third parties were initiated. The Navy, however, was sent to the region as a display of force, warship diplomacy. I think that the Coral Sea, in company with several destroyers, was simply a part of the diplomatic dance. But the powers above my pay grade said, “Get ready.” And so we did.
*************************************************
It is an understatement to say that the first time you see an atomic bomb, you are, so to speak, Blown away. Mind boggling. Incredulous. Fascinating. And an adrenalin rush. It is not correctly called an Atomic Bomb, but that reminds me of the U-2 Album, How to build an Atomic Bomb! It is correctly called a nuclear weapon. In this case, specifically, it is a B-43 Mod 2 nuclear bomb.
You cannot but be impressed when you see the ceremony on the ship corresponding to the attachment of such a weapon on to your airplane. The weapons are kept deep in the bowels of the ship. When transferring them from the Marine guarded storage area, each weapon is brought up to the flight deck on a special elevator. Each weapon is surrounded by six armed Marine sentries. The weapon is brought over to the airplane on a special vehicle towed by two sailors from the Weapons Department along with the six sentries.
Once attached to the plane the sentries follow along side of the airplane as it makes its way to the catapult. There is no chance anyone not supposed to be there will get near the 2000 pound weapon. The ceremony and splendor is something not to be forgotten. Once I am catapulted off of the ship it is mine to protect, or if need be, to deliver. How did I get to this place in time?
The flight schedule had been prepared the night before. Each of us knew what launch we would be on in the morning. The mission was called Surveillance Operation, whatever that was, I didn’t know. An All Officer Meeting was scheduled before air operations at 7:00 AM. We were told then that we would be flying in a racetrack pattern with 50 mile legs at 28,000 feet, off the coast of North Korea. Personally, I guessed this was to be a provocation, or simply a display of force. We were told this was a drill and a practice in using nuclear weapons. We were told to take our SIOP mission planning folder with us. We were told where to do our in-flight refueling if needed. I think that meant, if we were to go to our SIOP target.
There was really only one thing that concerned me. We were carrying live nuclear weapons. By Treaty, no nuclear weapons were allowed in South Korea. No nuclear weapons were allowed in Japan. In case of an emergency, like not being able to land on the carrier, for example….. there were no Bingo Fields! There was no field to land on. There was no other carriers nearby. It was get back to the ship or ditch at sea in your poopy suit. On the 5th of December, 1965, a Skyhawk flying off of the USS Ticonderoga disappeared off the coast of Japan. Gone missing was the plane, the pilot, and the bomb. That was disturbing to me. That thought crossed my mind as I taxied onto the catapult.
Another concern of mine was that each of us taking off with one of these things could start World War III simply by lofting his weapon into North Korea. Once airborne, there was nothing to prevent a shell shocked Vietnam veteran from deciding on his own to bring justice to the North Koreans. We had a couple of crazy dudes on the ship, in my squadron and others, that I, personally, would not trust with an Atomic Bomb. But the Powers that be did not show any concern, nor were they selective about who carried these things. As it turned out, no one attacked North Korea!
The water in the Sea of Japan reflected the gray of the low clouds. Gray clouds and gray seas. It was a surreal feeling being shot off the bow of the boat with such a powerful payload. I felt unworthy. I felt a little confused. What was in store for me that day? I climbed through about 12,000 feet of clouds before I broke out into the sunshine and blue sky. Almost immediately I felt better. I was now almost cheerful. Now I felt powerful. One megaton, one thousand tons, of TNT at my command, fuse set for a 600 foot air burst.
In the movie Doctor Strangelove about a B-52 bomber carrying a nuclear weapon with a crazy mixed up crew on board, there is talk about the chain of command required to arm and drop the bomb. It claimed that the President of the United States had to push a button at the same time as the Commander of the Strategic Air Command, issue radio commands with secret passwords and special number for the crew to program into the bomb. Well, I don’t know if that is still the required protocol for the Strategic Air Command, but once we leave the ship, there is only one person who has to push a button, and it is not the President of the United States.
This flight was strange for another reason, I was flying alone, not with another plane. Each of us were to fly our own racetrack pattern in the skies off North Korea. Each pilot had his own airspace, separated by altitude and different miles from the ship. My pattern was to fly 60 miles north of the ship and then fly an additional 50 before starting a 180 degree turn back to the south. Then turn 180 degrees and fly 50 miles north again, over and over in this racetrack pattern. Each airplane flew its unique racetrack. Some, like me, were north of the ship, some were south of the ship, all of us at different altitudes.
The North Korean radar operators were not used to seeing such a sight on their radar screens. They expected to see one large formation of planes, instead they saw many individual blips on their screens. Some going north, and some going south, stretching out over 200 miles. They had no idea which blip was a fighter and which was a bomber. There was no way to figure out where to send their Soviet built MiGs. They had no idea how to determine where a strike might come from, nor where it was going if it came.
The North Koreans obviously thought that they were the targets, but, alas, they were not. Our targets were hundreds of miles north. But the North Koreans had no way of knowing that. They thought that at any minute all of these blips would, as if one, turn and head for the North Korean heartland. I am sure that the radar presentation made them very nervous.
What I did not know, at the time, was that this circus of blips had been on the DPRK radar screens for the last six weeks since the spy ship capture. Other aircraft carriers were flying the same bizarre patterns every day for the last 46 days. Our carrier just relieved another carrier doing the same thing. The North Korean army radar specialists were watching this spectacle of random flights every day, and every day they became more nervous.
Meanwhile the negotiations continued between the United States envoys talking to third party countries, who in turn, would talk to high party officials of the DPRK. North Korea had the prize and the United States had the warships and air power. At the moment, things were at a tense standstill. The air was thick with speculation, and the view from opposing sides of the prism was colored in different hues of distrust. American opinion polls supported military action. The militaries of North Korea, South Korea and China were all in a state of escalated alert. Legally speaking, the war between North Korea and South Korea had never ended. A truce had been called, but in terms of war, it was only a truce. The North Korean capture was little more than a provocation, a provocation that was escalating. The whole area was now a tinder box.
Sitting in the cockpit with the autopilot on, level at 28,000 feet, I turned my radar on. I, too, saw what the North Koreans saw, blips all over the screen, moving in different directions, north and south, parallel to the coast of Korea. The radar screen looked chaotic, out of control, totally disorganized.
My thoughts turned to what was happening around me, of what was becoming of me. I thought of myself now as a member of a very exclusive club, a single man, in a single airplane, carrying a nuclear weapon, on a potentially real flight toward a hostile enemy country, prepared to deliver part of the doomsday arsenal during the end of the planet scenario. This was not fictional or imaginary. When they load a nuclear weapon on your airplane, along with plans to deliver it to a real target in a real country, this is not war games. This is not pretend. You know that if the powers that be give the signal to “Play Ball”, you are like the male Black Widow Spider….you were going to mate, and then die. We, however were not getting the joy of mating, simply the knowledge that we would probably die.
After about an hour and a half of racetracks, the Coral Sea launched the next shift of airplanes and we returned to the ship. That was to be the game. Keep airplanes in the sky. Keep the DPRK nervous. Keep up the pressure. Later that day, I learned that occasionally a pair of F-4 fighters in each launch would turn from the racetrack and head toward the territorial airspace of North Korea, get close and then turn outward, an aerial ballet scripted to create nervousness.
By the time I received the signal from the ship to return, my adrenalin rush was gone, and I felt an overwhelming sense of relief. I had enjoyed the feeling of power and control, but by now the effects of being in the poopie suit out weighed the power rush. What I looked forward to now was getting out of this big, rubber, prophylactic.
All of our airplanes on the first launch assembled 30 miles behind the ship and individually began descending to final approach and landing. As I picked up the optical meatball and green datum lights I called to the Landing Signal Officer (LSO), “This is Silver Fox five oh nine, fuel one point eight, I have the ball.” “Roger ball” was all he said to me. But it was music to my ears, and I thought that tomorrow the arriving pilots would here my voice when they return. I had LSO duty the next day. I would not be flying. I would not have to get into the poopie suit.
When I landed and taxied clear of the landing area, I notice the plane surrounded by the six Marine sentries as they accompanied me forward to park. The plane Captain began chaining the aircraft to the deck after putting the chocks around the wheels. Before I could climb out of the aircraft the weapons people had taken off the B-43 and the Marines were marching smartly across the deck to the weapons elevator. Curiously, I felt a special attachment to that bomb. It was like I was no longer uninitiated. I was now a member of that very elite club. In all of the history of mankind, not many people have control of that much destructive power.
Knowing now what our operational intentions really were, a show of power, and that it was unlikely that we would do our SIOP mission, tensions became visibly more relaxed. Getting to fly the genuine article was beyond our wildest expectation. It was surreal, unreal, unbelievable and exhilarating. The whole sequence of events has become etched in my mind. The President of the United States may make the doomsday decision, but it is going to be some solitary young man who will be called upon to fly the mission and press the button. That, I have learned, is a heavy weight.
The next day, I did have Landing Signal Officer duty, standing on the aft end of the ship, on a small platform abeam the arresting cables, watching the arriving aircraft come in, and grading their landing performance. After each recovery was completed, I marched down below to each ready room and told the arriving pilots how well they did. After this long cruise we had been on, every pilot had become very proficient, and I seldom had to deliver bad news to them. On the next day, March 13, I flew a night flight doing the same racetrack pattern. The ceremony of the Marine guards doesn’t let you forget the seriousness of your task. March14, another day on the LSO platform. March15, my third mission with a B-43 mode 2.
On the 14th of March, 1968, the ship received orders to return to Atsugi, Japan. The negotiators had apparently reached some kind of agreement that included a reduction in the show of force. Our duty on the USS Coral Sea had ended. My third mission with B-43 had concluded my tour of duty, my last landing on CVA-43. After 172 missions in Vietnam, and three in Korea, I was going home with a Distinguished Flying Cross, 17 Air medals, two Navy Unit Citations, and Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, but the Navy had no award for carrying nuclear weapons in combat!
Post Script
On March 29, 1968, the pilots of Carrier Air Wing 15 arrived back in San Francisco. The Attack pilots continued back to Naval Air Station, Lemoore, California. On March 30, 1968, all of the pilots of Attack Squadron 155 met at the base chapel to witness the marriage of Carolyn Mary Davenport to Lieutenant Michael J. Foley. We now have been married for forty years with two delightful children and four delightful grand children.
Nine months after it’s capture, the crew of Pueblo was released.
Add a Comment
About
Badge
© 2009 Created by Michael Foley on Ning. Create Your Own Social Network
You need to be a member of Your War Story to add comments!
Join this social network