THERE IS A WAY

[Music] come and sit by my then we'll head for the red river valley and today i'll be flying deeply to the valley he said he was flying with the thought of the fame to the earth [Music] got three lieutenants coming in behind this yeah and they're they just finished their 100th mission actually they got cycled through to go back up to rest cap one of our other pilots that was shot down earlier so they they've just got 101 missions and we're real proud of them because first of all not many lieutenants fly the 105 and secondly to get 100 missions and it is outstanding we think so we're going to meet him here at the end of the runway and take him on up to the parking space give him a bottle of champagne and i imagine they're three happy boys [Applause] when all is said and done you really cannot adequately relate a war war is too potent too personal war is living and laughing and crying and dying it has always been the man who fights who can best report a war if he will true his story may be confused sometimes harsh sometimes boisterously non-committal but it is real this is one segment one small insight into our present war this is the 105 story the story of fighter bomber pilots flying daily over the armed camp of north vietnam during the month of november 1966 [Music] these are the men of the 388 tactical fighter wing and in particular the men of the 421st the fighting cavalier squadron what are they doing well how do i tell if they're friendly he says well if they come up with their hands over their heads they'll be friendly he says no one of these guys got a gun that guy says well how far are you from him he said well they're standing right here by me and he said well it must be friendly how's i thought i was going to kill myself on initial you won't know the truth jeez f-o-d [Music] [Music] this [Music] [Applause] [Music] i guess package [Applause] [Music] two they didn't know where he was for a while and then they saw a long deal there and he said all right that's two and he's just lost the radio i'm going to be an instructor pilot where t-38 is williams air force base arizona i figure i'll arrive there and i'll i'll be real quiet calm and all that and i'll go in and all the students will nudge each other and when they meet me and i'll be their instructor and they'll fly with me and they'll nudge each other and say what did lieutenant rasmus do before he came here and i'll you know it'll be all quiet and no one'll know until finally there'll be graduation it will show up in there in mess dress and then i'll be with my air metals and my dfcs and my silver star and my commendation metal and my vietnam service metal and all this stuff all the way across and i'll walk in with a slight wimp and they'll they'll say tell me about it it was nothing it was nothing you know but then for a week after every time i crawl in the airplane as i get in i'll pull my leg in and i'll wince a little and i'll say what is it i'll say oh it's just an old war injury 45 44 right 45 44 14. how'd the mission go pretty good yeah how many is that well it's 42-43 now [Music] major heights one mission one counter one for the month finally made the board 99 hard ones to go i'll be 43 this afternoon i've got to put a mark on my hand for number 90. you already got it so you're gonna get two today huh one more and i'll be able to make a big been here about six months it averages about six months for their tour they're able to get their hundred in about that much time believe he took his r even i'll get some christmas shopping done before he goes back no you really can't blame them also i can't play many of them we have four people looks like we should finish up by the end of this month they should be home with their families for christmas well you think you're gonna make home for christmas [Music] this wing even though we're roughly 100 miles from any sort of civilization morale is high here i've noticed that the men know what they're doing and why they're here well if there we still have to be over here i'll come right back and the way you nearest me you come right back and do another hitch you better well i feel we have a reason to be here as you read commons aggression in asia i feel that we didn't take some measures stop it here we may be fighting in our backyard enjoy some of the things i've been over here for such as just the american way of life i served in world war ii in the southwest pacific i started doing korea but when i leave here i still have some titles i'm making a career here we sit out here in the middle of a strange country and away from uh everything that's familiar to us and i'm not speaking of pilots now i'm talking the maintenance people but uh there is no morale problem of course the pilots couldn't have a morale problem there's always something going there's always something going there's never a dull moment if if there is a factor involved with a morale problem is fatigue yes uh i personally try to discourage it i ain't just put in a hundred missions over north vietnam should go home get a rest and then come back however i have uh one pilot here that just insisted on uh taking another hundred and he's here his name is uh lieutenant richter yeah i want to come back down how come you get to stay here yeah right you worked harder you could have stayed here with me yeah mommy wouldn't have any part to do with that yeah okay there's there's a deal you know you're very uh him let's face it you know if you like if you like somebody well enough to be married with them god you don't want to be away from them for a year eight months or anything like that how are you gonna explain to a wife that you put in for a concurrent tour you know that you're gonna take flying over her that wouldn't happen like wait i can't do with you no that's why i'm sticking around you know a bachelor i got nothing going for me back in the states and the flying's good you don't have all the little pecking rules and regulations that you have to put up within the space we did two months ago it's still a lot better than his back turnout but i just you know i enjoy it and any it's the kind of deal like everybody says yeah i'm waving a flag but i'm not but at the same time you know where are you gonna uh where are you gonna stop it at you know where's where's coming is are you gonna wiggle her in the philippines or in australia or san francisco or des moines iowa you know you just stop it here or wait till somewhere later on i don't think most of people think about that they like me you know what what happens you know if uh if i get shot down that too mean that never get me anyway hey at least you were pretty mean until you shave your mouth i couldn't stand that anymore our bombing objectives i believe can be very distinctly divided into two phases our interdiction program conducted in the southern portion of north vietnam in an attempt to deny movement of the enemy into south vietnam and our strategic if you will objectives in the northern portion of north vietnam in terms of attacking principle lines of communications the northeast and the northwest railroads which comprise the two most major railroads in north vietnam also pol installations and other military supply and storage areas located in the delta regions of north vietnam i just spared this flight here that's uh getting ready the big gaggle to take off it's uh we've got over 50 airplanes involved in this strike force and it was uh going to be a big rain up near the hanoi area but the weather's bad now they're going to various other areas a spares job for every four airplanes we launch we launch one spare out to the other runway in case while the airplanes that we're having trouble with they can fill in uh in any four position any one of the four position he can be usually a leader so in case the leader aborts he can uh still in that spot do you see this flight taking off now and that the airplane standing by is despair he'll be uh coming back up like me probably pretty soon bear's not a bad job because uh you do we like to fly and fight the floor that's why we have a spare out there because if we didn't we'd never get another airplane up in time is [Music] number one [Music] [Music] two hours and 55 minutes i went 55 yeah i thought it was about 250 or so god my fanny's tired oh i found you square i didn't see him clock on that turn when i rolled in i thought i saw something funny down there i didn't see it i was carrying about two percent back yeah when that guy kept calling mix and we hadn't caught up with that flight in front of us yet then and i'm still going full blow right about 620 degrees yeah uh this is not the answer don't worry i was watching you at six o'clock thanks a lot i call you favorite game i was watching it too well that's what when i was on my run that's where i saw all the sparking coming from all those bright flashes were coming from right around where you dropped your bumps guys so we we came right in through this area right here [Applause] we're that wasn't a flight that was calling me that was some guy hey guys that's the 121 that sits out over there there was somebody up there saying drop you know along that road do this that or the other some guy was saying there's a single over there and there goes there goes this and the other part yeah but they were all identified as uh i saw one yeah there was a gag of airplanes up in there i'll tell you cripes sounded to me like before we got there that some guys actually saw the things they were calling them out we have four spotters in it they are located up here in the i call a quadrangle the 469th here on your right fighting both to the left here 421st 34th and a 13th spot 26 aircraft 148 marks beginning of the 421st tactical fighter squadron area which uh i spend most of my time we have 20 aircraft assigned to the outfit as you can see they're all painted up and in different ways the primary identification feature is the red gca deflector on the nose gear strut it's a matter of uh the 105 of my particular acquaintance with the doggone thing um first associations i guess from a number of years back i care less about the airplane i didn't think it was ever made to fly and certainly from a maintenance standpoint it wasn't very reliable southeast asia has changed my mind on the left here is our age that's ground support equipment we have about 300 pieces of it here and it's worth 6 million dollars the 105 is a very complicated weapon system it's got radar gun sights electronics all sorts of uh complicated electronic equipment in it this equipment here supports the uh operation of the 105. this is uh speaking back at the uh complication of this weapon system you like to know that it takes 40 million hours of maintenance people to uh support one hour of this airplane in the air that's how complicated it is average the best uh the best airplane in the air force over here today to do the job [Music] this flight line at night is a pretty active place there's more work done at night actually than there is the daytime because uh the daytime is is uh completely taken off with the launching recovering airplanes i don't have much time for anything else of course there's a turnaround there's a lot of bomb loading uh for the second goal and around noon but nothing like uh at night you know put it all on airplane it doesn't come to me take it off and put on another one pretty frustrating they get it done somehow i don't know how but they do they we have a remarkable uh delivery rate here i can't remember the last time i got a maintenance on delivery we always get an our they do a real bang-up job [Applause] i know care my love waits there in san francisco beyond the blue when i come home to you san francisco your golden sun will shine [Music] me [Music] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] one thing that happens at the tanker that everybody remembers most that's where the adrenaline starts to pump the airplane's working all right you got the tanker and uh it accepted the gas that means you're going that's that's your last chance the first flight goes through the tank room and you stay with the tank and there'll be four flights on a tanker and everybody will go through the tankers and fill up and take six to eight thousand pounds and you stay there and you stay in a safer area after everybody gets pulled you extend you head up to your drop off point and in route from the anchor to the drop-off point you go through and top off and it takes 1500 2000 2500 pounds the point is that you can get four airplanes through a top-off just and nothing but it takes a couple of minutes per airplane whereas for the original big refueling why it takes quite some time so consequently if you put four flights on the tanker and extend immediately you get to the drop-off point where the tiger has to turn back before you get your strike flight full plus the other added advantage is that everybody leaves full or close to full a lot of our mission is to uh observe what's going on in the ground what they're moving where they're moving into and how their bridge is what kind of condition they're in this sort of thing so we do need a lot of area that the cloud cover isn't over the target area and up north where the sam environment is heavy you can't operate in a say around cumulus buildups where you're going around the clouds because the sam will come right straight through them and hit you incidentally the airplanes we have lost to sands have been on these conditions so we have to avoid them maybe 150. 150. i still had light speed though that's surprising i want to cross it i got water right away at all yeah i got light speed remember what the weather was when we went into the tops of it let's say yeah we went through a layer of 10 000 and then uh it was about from 10 to 9 and then from nine the ground in areas it was clear but there was a scattered layer in there about uh five or six this is hemi this is 24. that's right we lost two today okay this one two three four one is 25. okay now this is a cbu flight this is uh what's the second flight with the small spot steel tiger and then drive up there slow so you hit the red i'm here so you're gonna hit the trt now we'll hit the red and yeah everything so we're gonna hit right on down at our t.o.t everything worked out perfect except the weather the weather tomorrow indicates a small high pressure area centered just about over hanoi which should make for fairly good weather except for restricted visibilities and haze the crutch of this one is going to be there the weather on flood radius tomorrow is the last five minutes into the target just that uh the weather just to the northwest and west is going to be the real critical area well we'll do it the same way yeah if everything works the same way tomorrow we'll get it if the weather breaks you know we'll wait like this uh sir tomorrow's target is the yen ben railroad it's the largest railroad in all of north vietnam its function is to control all the traffic coming in from the north east railroad in the northwest railroad into hanoi it then controls all traffic going south it's located 5 nautical mile north of hanoi its defenses include a heavy concentration of aaa and there are 26 known sam sites in the area roscoe is brought here by a pilot from kadena who is temporarily assigned to the wing when the pilot was shot down up north rosco sort of became everybody's dog the only dog allowed on base now roscoe's a free agent and goes everywhere sort of a a [ __ ] with a big heart but lots of guys for instance don't feel right unless he's sitting there in a commander's chair during the mission briefing they say if he sleeps it's going to be an easy mission if his ears perk up watch out the winds there from the surface to 5 000 feet along the coast are going to run about 25 knots out of the northeast did have an aircraft report right over the mountain there he said this morning just about a megia pass at 5 000 feet he had a wind of zero three zero at 40 knots nobody dare say anything against 105 and then you hear you hear stories and wild tales and so forth and uh well i've learned i love this old bird it uh it really does the job now there's not another airplane that we've got they can do but this one well they're just used as much as they can be used and very successfully very successful the airplane they the speed and the power it'll get there and get you out we hear an awful lot about surface-to-air missiles they're called sams or referred to as sa2s this is a picture of an sa-2 site situated in the immediate hanoi area a close-up of this particular target would look something like this very clearly you can observe the presence of sa2 missiles and in this area we find the radar van which controls the firing of the missiles and also tracks the aircraft along with providing guidance to the sa-2 missiles our pilots are constantly faced in flying into north vietnam with missile firings along with extremely heavy anti-aircraft i kind of call it the dry throat mission myself usually i come outbound from the target i'm just kind of sucking that water bottle dry dry throat but the only thing i can really say about the hanoi area is about the time start coming off the tanker on the way up there you begin getting butterflies and in your stomach naturally and then you begin settling down to the task at hand of navigating and finding your way up there and then once you arrive in the area you're generally pretty busy and although at times uh you're you're pretty scared when you have to roll in on something up there especially when you look down you see nothing but a black cloud or a white cloud down below yeah it's uh it's about as scary a mission as i've ever been on uh i think it tries you to just about the maximum on the missions if you can get between uh a ridge between you and that radar site they can't guide a missile at you it's just when you get down in the delta in the flatlands that 30 mile ring around the city of hanoi is is a bear because it's flat you have no protection and uh i don't know how true it is but i say it's the most heavily defended place in the history of area warfare i've been there and i believe it wear your black belt today guys [Applause] well that wards it off everybody where your flag magnets are how come no matter how much in a rush i'm always the last guy you don't want to go show some kind of a reflection there ain't no way all right no way you got those flags you're going to tie between the wings there's one on either now first of all we have our vest is the radio which is the most important item we have our second item i would say is the flares the third is your weapon the other compass and the mirror for singling and find direction the most important one upon bailout is the beeper [Applause] i hear yours too [Applause] yeah who did that how many bombs we got oh yeah we must have 20 mark for 30 bombs