Ralph Lalime
Phantom Tales
My tour of duty with the 555th Tactical Fighter Squadron (Triple Nickel) began in September 1968 when I arrived at Udorn RTAFB in Northern Thailand. One hundred and eighty missions later (27 over NVN, 150 over Laos, and 3 into SVN) in September of 1969 my bride, Darlene, and I flew home together out of Bangkok on a commercial contract airplane. Thank you, Sgt Brown. These are a few anecdotal events that occurred that year.
I lucked out the first day I arrived at the "Nickel" when I immediately got into a two-man houch with air conditioning and a telephone. That night at the big Squadron party I learned the party was a goodbye celebration for the guy who had gotten shot down and quickly picked up that same day. It was his room that I had moved into. A few days later Hanoi Hannah welcomed Capt Lalime to Udorn on the radio saying "When the rice is tall Udorn will fall"
My first combat mission was a two-ship night sortie to Zan San in southern North Vietnam. The intelligence briefing scared the heck out of me with all the AAA they said was in that area, but It was a standard road cut along a mountain road. I got in trouble with my lead when I made more passes than he had briefed, but I saw no AAA and had to get the bombs off. From then on, most missions were exciting, but mostly routine: brief, take off, refuel on a tanker, go to target area, return to tanker and then back to Udorn.
Don Thurman
Don Thurman arrived in the Squadron some months later. Since he was a test-pilot-school graduate, he picked up the extra duty as squadron maintenance test pilot. He checked me out as a maintenance test pilot to help with the workload. We made every test run go past Mach 2 to make sure the aircraft were war worthy for our squadron. The Triple Nickel had already shot down more MIGs than any other squadron in SEA and we boasted that we were "the largest distributor of MIG parts in SEA."
Don started flying a new mission using the F-4D as a fast FAC. Since Udorn had two fighter squadrons and two recce squadrons, the wing intelligence center had a large overlay photographic map such that you could look at everything with 3D glasses and see what was there within the past 12 hours. I was a mission lead so Don Thurman devised a scheme whereby we would identify three current targets on the photo map calling them Tgt. A, Tgt. B, and Tgt. C (clever, eh!). Don would take off while I was briefing my flight and walking them through the photo map targets. When I joined up on the tanker, I would check in with Don on a different frequency and he would tell me which of our cleverly designated targets were still there. Then he would go over to the ABCCC and tell them he had some good targets. I would separately go to ABCCC and tell them my flight's ordnance and availability. Of course we had briefed the targets given to us by the HQ, but they were usually what we called "tree parks" and ABCCC would always release us to Don. Upon leaving the tanker we would rendezvous with Don, and he would either clear us on to the target or lead us to it. Having studied the exact picture on the map that morning, we all could clearly identify and destroy the targets. Over a period of a couple of months we were getting really good bomb damage assessments (BDA). I even had one guy from the other fighter squadron come up to me one day to ask how I was getting such good BDA!
Of course it wasn't always smooth. One day my aircraft (nicknamed 'LUV") was loaded with two air-to-ground "Bullpup" missiles. I had flown film simulations, firing and hand guiding these missiles. but I had never actually fired one. Today was the day--and Don Thurman was my FAC. We flew out to a big cave which was an ammunition storage facility. I rolled in, lined up, and pickled the AGM. I expected it to ignite and come off like a rocket, but instead it came out to my left then went above my canopy and it looked like I was flying close trail formation with it coming down the chute! Finally it lit up and moved in front of me, but I was not able to control it that well and it hit on the left front of the cave. My good buddy Don called out "Ralph if you can't do any better than that take the other one home and don't hit anything on the way!" I'm telling you if I had to fly that whole airplane into that cave to get that stupid missile inside I would have! Fortunately the second missile came off like a rocket and I flew it right into the cave. Nice explosion. I still had to buy Don the beer that night.
Greg Boyington
Darlene and I had been married less than a year when I went to the war flying out of Thailand; so, Darlene came on over and lived in Bangkok. I was able to get down to visit her in Bangkok for a weekend almost every month. She came up to Udorn three or four times. Each time was interesting. One of these times, I invited some of the Academy guys from the 555th to get together for dinner with her at an Thai restaurant in downtown Udorn. Unfortunately on that very day we had lost another wonderful pilot named San Francisco. He had been shot down over southern North Vietnam, and although an F100 FAC had established voice contact with him, we were denied permission from the White House (Johnson) to go in and pick him up. That was the last we ever heard of him. Naturally, this loss created a strained mood at our dinner, but after numerous bottles of Singha beer, we mellowed out. About that time, the music that came on was "I left my heart in San Francisco". We all went silent for a while then Don Thurman said, "He was a great guy," and we drank a toast to him. Some of the guys there were Don, Greg Boyington, John Vickery, Joe Morgan, maybe Nick Kehoe and at least one other.
After dinner, Greg said we should race in samlar (a three wheeled pedicab pedaled by a Thai ... similar to a rickshaw) to the corner bar and the last person there would buy the beer. well, Boyington cheated... He put his little driver in the passenger seat and pedaled the samlar himself! After that beer, we went home glad that only one of us was going to have an early flight next morning. That one was Greg, and it was a dozy of a mission! Greg and J.R. Alley were flying a two-ship, Ho-Chi-Minh-trail interdiction mission. The weather was bad with solid clouds from about 4000 ft up to 20000 ft. Greg and J.R.--flying below the clouds--came across a fantastic target with multiple trucks and supplies. The NVN were taking full advantage of the cloud cover. The trouble was that the ordnance Greg and J.R. had on board were all Cluster Bomb Units (CBU's) with radar fusing set to about 7,000 ft. That meant they had to drop the bombs above that altitude. So JR with Greg on his wing went back out and then came back and visually approaching the target at high speed they pulled straight up and pickled as they climbed above the fusing altitude while they were in the clouds! Shortly thereafter a recce bird came through taking pictures of what turned out to be the completely destroyed target. The awards and decorations officer in the squadron put Greg and JR in for a DFC for this mission. but it didn't make it. For years after that mission, Greg claimed he didn't remember it, but he does remember winning the samlar race!
Napalm
One night, my ordnance load included two large bombs filled with napalm. The target area was southern North Vietnam near Ban Phen Op. It was a mountainous (karst) valley. When we arrived there every 37MM AAA in the valley was shooting at us. It was rather impressive, with all the orange streams of fire flowing up into the dark sky. I rolled in and dropped one can of nape on one of the gun positions. It was startling-- the napalm hit that position, but it struck high up on the karst, so the blazing napalm flowed down, down, down the hill like a giant fiery waterfall! Every gun in the valley stopped firing. When I tried to drop my second can of napalm, it hung up on one lug. I tried everything to get it off but to no avail. On the way home, I was nervous about having to land with a hung bomb and when my wingman came up to look me over with a flashlight he said it was hanging so far down that I should consider bailing out.
Now I was more than nervous as I envisioned myself flaming along the runway when I touched down. As we approached Udorn I encouraged my back seater, Dick Baldwin (a great guy to fly with), to eject. He replied, "Hell you're having a hard enough time flying this thing with me; no telling what will happen to you if I leave!" As we were coming across the threshold of the runway I slowly, slowly reduced the throttles to try to make a smooth landing. I was wondering why we hadn't touched yet when Baldy said, "I think we are on the ground." I chopped the throttles, and sure enough we were on landing roll out and still not on fire. As we turned off the runway and stopped, we could see the crash trucks, and there were six or seven firefighters and maintenance guys running towards us. When the crash truck spot lights came on and illuminated us, ALL of the guys running towards us stopped and started running away! By now, Baldy is standing on the wing next to my cockpit saying, "are you coming or not?" He always had a way with words.
Jim Carder and the mountain top
It was a clear day over Laos. I was flying Number 4 on Jim Carder's wing. Our four-ship was committed against munitions storage inside a cave at the bottom of a short mountain. The problem was there were gun (37MM) emplacements near the top of the hill. There was only one way to approach the cave and we were exposed to the AAA during the entire time. The sky was full of "cotton candy" (that's what 37mm looks like in the daylight). With the constant circular pattern we were flying to make our attacks, it was obvious to me that one of us was going to take a hit. This was also one of the few times Darlene was in Udorn visiting me, and I started thinking about how bad it would be for her if I got shot down today. Thinking this way, I actually hung up and floated turning base to final attack. The "cotton candy" woke me from my reverie, and I realized I was setting myself up--so I'd better pay attention. We weren't doing that well with the slick 500 lb bombs we had on board. With us flying a straight final, totally focused on the cave entrance, the gunner at the top of the hill had a distinct advantage. The ducks-in-a-pond metaphor comes to mind. On our next time around, Jim extended his downwind quite a ways out. Flying behind him in the pattern, I couldn't figure out what he was doing. I should point out here that Jim Carder was one of the best combat pilots in the squadron, and I flew with him every chance I could. When I saw him turn final at a much lower altitude I realized he was going to try to slide a low bomb into the cave. Lot of danger was associated with that maneuver so, I opted to provide cover for him as well as I could. I stayed above and behind him and made my pass obviously against the gun emplacement. This drew the gunner's attention away from Jim, and he accomplished the impossible by getting his bombs into the cave. I'm pretty sure I actually got the AAA gunner at the same time. A couple of seconds after we pulled out of our dives, the top of the mountain blew off like a volcano!
One night, Jim and I (plus Baldy of course) were tasked with a harassment sortie. At about 2:00 AM we would fly in 3-mile trail at 20,000 ft over a sequence of targets using our ground radar to drop bombs on the targets. This went well with Baldy doing a great job on the radar. HQ gave us the exact same mission the following night; same altitude, same targets, same sequence. We weren't comfortable with this because the NVN were not stupid, and we thought they could figure out where we were heading after the first drop; however, we gave it a try. Sure enough as we approached the third target a huge white flash lit up the sky near Jim, flying three miles ahead of me. It was 100mm AAA. Big guns with altitude capability. Jim called it out to me, but we were on the final minute of our bomb run and Baldy had a solid lock on the target; so, we pressed on. Fortunately nothing hit us. HQ fell in love with this mission, and Jim and I were committed against the same three targets the third night in a row. During our briefing, Jim and I decided to vary things a bit. After takeoff we split up and flew the target sequence in opposite directions at different altitudes. All went very well, and then we rejoined and came back to base together--not telling anyone we had split up. We finally convinced HQ not to do that same mission again for a while.
My dumbest stunt
It was a night mission over Southern NVN. Our FAC was either a C-123 or C-119 driver, and he sounded very nervous. It was probably one of his first combat missions. The target area was crowded with the FAC, my two-ship and another fighter flight all at around 20,000 ft. The other flight was just finishing, so we held at altitude. All of a sudden, the FAC called out that somebody just went by him near his altitude. We actually were a couple of thousand above him, but he sounded so nervous I said it was probably us and I would put my wing lights on so he could see us. I was getting a little too complacent at this point in my tour. Here I am, mind you, over North Vietnam on a combat mission with my lights on. Everyone in the world could see me, but I was high enough. Shortly thereafter we were cleared onto the target, marked by a burning log on the dark ground. As I started my roll in, three 37mm guns started firing at me. As I was coming down the chute (final attack run) these guns were firing from my front, my left and my right. Thinking they couldn't see me I was impressed with how accurate they were getting. By the time I released my bombs and started our pullout I realized they could see me, and Baldy called out "your lights are on! Now I'm going about 500 knots, jinking, pulling Gs and trying to reach behind me to find the light switch. The ground gunners really had me. I broke right, and a white flash went off; I broke back left, and another white flash! I forgot the switch, rolled out lit the Afterburner and looked like a space launch going straight up! After several exciting/scary/puckering seconds I was above the 37mm's max altitude. When I rolled out I was breathing very hard. Then the FAC who was watching my great show asked "Are you all right?" I was so angry that I asked Baldy to reply. Baldy, always Mr. Cool, said, "Ah, rog."