Story by ex-POW Dick Stratton (he certainly retained his sense of humor through the whole affair).....


THE MAD BOMBER OF HANOI

This is a tale based on shipboard perceptions during a wartime
deployment to Southeast Asia. The account claims no historical accuracy
but reflects the mood and understanding of' a ready room on a 27-Charlie
carrier in late 1966 and early 1967. Perceptions become reality to those
who hold them. Remember that the raconteur is an ex-convict who
distinguished himself by shooting himself down in combat. Caveat emptor
("let the buyer beware").

In the late fall of 1966, when the USS Ticonderoga (not the one sailing
around now,. but the one you are shaving with--CVA-14) hit Yankee
Station, the philosophy of escalated response dominated all military
strategy and tactics. Robert S. MacNamara and Lyndon B. Johnson were
running the war from the basement of the White House. Rules of
engagement were more protective of the enemy than of the American
fighting man. Significant strategic areas such as major ports, the
Chinese border, and the district of Hanoi were protected
American-imposed restricted areas. These areas could only be targeted
with permission from the White House.

The micro-managed, cost-effective. zero-defect war effort had resulted
in a shortage of all kinds of equipment from flight suits to rockets and
borings. Success was measured by sorties flown and tonnage dropped, the
air war equivalent of body count on the ground in the South-measures of
questionable utility and morality. Most of our time on station was spent
chasing water buffaloes and bicycles up and down trails and planning for
the three strategic targets allotted per month by the White House.

Rumors of an early end to the war abounded. The British Prime Minister
was scheduled to make a swing through Southeast Asia, exploring the
possibilities of peace. The word was going around that secret talks were
about to be held between the United States and North Vietnam in our
embassy in Warsaw. The bottom line was that the entire world diplomatic
community was hyperactive in exploring peace initiatives. Meanwhile, a
realistic assessment by military people on the ground in Vietnam gave a
prediction of a twenty-year involvement at the current rate of
commitment to attain an objective enabling the Republic of Vietnam to
stand alone against the Northern invader.

All of this made little difference to deployed air %%ings who had
learned to live from line period to line period, sortie to sortie, day
to day. We were spending about forty days on the line, t1vin- about 2.5
sorties per pilot, per day, and alternating between day and night
sorties with our sister carrier. The thrills were the occasional Alpha
Strikes against targets of strategic importance.

Two years into the war, Mr. MacNamara finally figured out that the
uniservice, unisex pumpkin-orange flight suit was not contributin,, to
the longevity of airmen on the ground, evading in the jungle, and
finally authorized new flight gear, which, of course, was not in the
supply system by the time the Tico deployed. Pilots were permitted to
buy their own gear, and I selected Marine fatigues as being my best shot
at survival-I was to pay a price for this.

We were short of Zuni five-inch rockets and made up for the lack with
Aero 7D rocket packs, many of which lacked effective speed brake, an
advanta-e that a fully loaded A-4E does not really require.
Additionally, the 2.75-inch FFAR was not noted in the fleet for its
accuracy or reliability--I was to pay a price for this as well.

In December of 1966, we were assigned a target within the Hanoi
restricted area, the Van Dien Truck Repair Facility, which was in the
district of Hanoi but not the city of Hanoi. The Alpha Strike went off
tolerably well. I missed the show because of a nose gear malfunction and
had to go back to the ship. Diplomatically, the strike was a bomb. Ho
Chi Minh, the President of NVN, accused us of bombing the sacred city of
Hanoi and hitting civilian targets. Harrison H. Salisbury of the New
York Times rushed to Hanoi at the invitation of NVN and dutifully
reported damage to non-military targets (shades of Peter Arnett in
Baghdad).  LBJ countered by denying the accusation and stating that
those defective Russian SAMs had obviously fallen back upon the city.
Uncle Ho called LBJ a liar, not a very original accusation, and called
off any and all peace initiatives, vowing to defend the motherland for
ten, twenty, or forty years against the American imperialist aggressors.
MacNamara's response was to call another of the ubiquitous "bombing
halts" for Ho to contemplate his navel or his sins. I never figured out
which, and neither did Ho.

Tico finished up its line period and returned to Subic Bay for a
stand-down. The Communists, of course, used the couple of weeks to
resupply and rebuild their bridges. Our leaders flew up to Atsugi Base,
conveniently near Tokyo, for a "planning conference," while we conducted
FCLPs at Cubi Point for the replacement pilots. After the planning
conference, XO couldn't get his bird started. So with true
entrepreneurial spirit, he scouted the flight line and stole the
best-looking A-413 from the Nippi Rework Facility flight line, a Marine
Corps plane sans log books, and returned to the ship, now steaming back
to Yankee Station. Our maintenance crew painted up the stolen steed just
like a circus wagon with all the air wing colors, christened it "Double
Nuts" (Modex 400) for the use of our CAG, and sent it into combat.

About the second day out, I got a call from my best friend Mike Estocin
(later awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously) asking me to take his
first hop of the morning since he had an Ops Officer meeting to attend
with CAG. Not yet awake, I violated a cardinal rule of survival--don't
volunteer for nothin'-and took his hop. It should have been a piece of
cake as it was the weather hop. The only "weather" in the "weather hop"
was that it didn't make any difference whether the weather was good or
bad; we were going to fly anyway. The supposed minimums were
five-thousand-and-five; the weather was below minimums that day, and
they flew all day. The benefit to you, as the recruiters say, was that
after checking the weather out at dawn, you could recce the coastline
for any cargo-carrying junks that had not made it into a river mouth for
daylight hours. MacNamara had a rule of engagement that said you could
only attack a junk traveling from North to South and then only after you
had flown by to verify with your own eyeballs that it had deck cargo,
obviously enhancing your element of surprise. Well, my wingman and I
found some targets. I made a run on a junk, using my five-inch Zunis,
and then a short distance away I found a bridge section tied up along
the shoreline and unloaded my Aero 7D packs on that hummer. (No, it was
not a second run on the same target; my learning curve is not that
flat.) True to form, the rockets fired; the stabilizing fins did not
extend, causing instability in the rockets; and the rockets collided.

The warheads did work (good); however, the debris from the explosions
went into the intakes (bad). The J-52 engine does quite well on air but
has a problem with scrap metal. I developed an instantaneous love affair
with the surface navy and turned seaward. The engine gave up the ghost,
taking off the tail in the process. The A-4E is a wonderful,
ever-loving, and forgiving flying machine, and a stable weapons
platform, but without a tail, it has all the aerodynamic characteristics
of a free falling safe.

I was at a decision point. I had just broadcast my farewell address to
the entire Seventh Fleet--"Oh S~ --and was debating my next move. Why
the debate? The A-4's ejection seat is powered by a rocket in front of a
fuselage tank with 1,200 pounds of JP-5 in it, and I had just had an
unfortunate experience with a rocket from the lowest bidder. I was moved
to action by the echo of my wife's last words to me: "Don't you dare die
and leave me with these three little bastards!" That's a commitment. I
ejected. Did you ever have a bad day? I landed in the only tree behind
the only house in five square miles and was a prisoner before I had my
helmet off.

I was stripped to my skivvies and shown off at every crossroads,
village, and hamlet within a four-hour walking distance. I was
blindfolded, "executed" with a single rifle shot, and rolled into my
grave for the afternoon. At dusk, I was on the road again by foot until
about midnight and then transported on the back of a 2x8 to Hanoi,
arriving at the Hoa Lo Prison (Hanoi Hilton) at daybreak. I foresaw no
big problem, having been through SERE training twice in the Cleveland
National Forest (sic!), assured that there was no such thing as torture,
and convinced that I just had to tough it out for 48 hours to earn my
way into the "bad guy's" camp. I would spend the rest of the war playing
Hogan's Heroes until my great escape. Ha!!

Interrogation started off as a piece of cake. I was frightened, but
playing the game of name, rank, serial number, and date of birth. As I
was to find out later, the interrogation followed a set pattern of five
stages: the history lesson of the enemy's cause in converting you
(boring); the exploitation of your perceived weaknesses (race, religion,
rank, homesickness, family, etc); the appeal to your military discipline
(you obey orders in your army, and you are now in our an-ny; therefore,
you will obey our orders); the application of physical force (no big
deal for street fighters or contact sports survivors); and the
application of torture (controlled infliction of pain with the objective
of gaining compliance with something you find to be morally reprehensible).

Picture yourself being tortured to admit, as a squid, that you are a
Marine. Remember the Marine fatigues and the stolen A-4? (The parachute
seat pan had a sergeant's signature on the packing slip.) I have nothing
against the Corps. I admired my PreFlight DIs (Sergeants Jones,
Livermore, and Raphel-start NAVCAD Class 19-55, finish NAVCAD Class
36-55, learning curve on the obstacle course relatively flat). Two of my
three sons and my daughter-in-law are Marines. But that was a bit much.

What were they after? A little bit of military information. What was the
next target? I didn't know; that's why Mike had to go to CAG's meeting.
What new weapons did the Tico have? The Aero 7D Rocket pack with 19
independently targeted warheads, the destination of which even I did not
know. From what altitude did I drop my bombs? Beats the hell out of me.
That's why I spent all that time on targets at NAS Fallon, developing my
seaman's eye. Pick a number, any number, but whatever it is, stick to it.

It took me six months to figure out what it was they were
after-propaganda. As the first bomber pilot to be shot down after the
Christmas bombing halt and raid on the sacred city of Hanoi, I had been
designated to be the "Mad Bomber of Hanoi." Of the guys captured in
North Vietnam, 95% were tortured; 95% were not given the option of
death; and 95% gave more than name, serial number, and date of birth-not
bragging, not complaining, just a factoid that underlines the skill of
the torturers. As they had me talking, hopefully a bunch of nonsense,
they had a political cadre reviewing my production, adopting my "style"
and, unbeknownst to me, writing my "confession." We named this guy the
"Rabbit," in recognition of his distinctive ears and overbite. After two
weeks of torture, beatings, and isolation, I was transferred to another
prison--"the Zoo"--where I thought the worst was over.

About a month later, during one of the routine interrogations, the
Rabbit showed me a confession and asked for my opinion; it was difficult
to keep from laughing. It had an A-4 leading a strike on downtown Hanoi,
targeting pregnant women, children, dikes, dams, and pagodas. A single
A-4 was loaded out with every weapon on the pilot's weapons weight card,
which they had retrieved: napalm, mines, rockets, CBUs, and HE down to
the Mk 76 practice bomb. It related incipient mutinies on board ship,
anti-war pilots defecting, and pilots loading up on whiskey for liquid
courage. My laughter stopped when he informed me that it was my
confession to be given in the Hanoi soccer stadium. His response to the
observation that such an attack never took place and that I had never
even pulled liberty in the town made a certain measure of sense. "No
matter; somebody did it. It might as well be you."

I was having the last laugh; I was going to the land of the big PX, and
he had to stay.

What are the lessons I learned? Don't volunteer for nothin'. Long
deployments enhance marriages (thirty-two years) since they cut down the
amount of time your wife has to smell your cigars. Never land in the
same place you just got through bombing and straffing. If you cannot
take a joke, you should not be wearing a set of wings. Jettison Aero 7D
rocket pods without nose cones as soon as you get out of sight of the
ship. Americans seeking publicity who appear in enemy capitals during a
shooting war are giving aid and comfort to the enemy (treason), no
matter what the press tells us. Unattended Navy brats tend to go Marine
Corps. The A-4 ejection system works at 2,000 feet, 220 knots, nose
down, without a tail, and in a spin. Practice your final words, so that
you do not embarrass yourself and your family in front of your shipmates
when you buy the farm; you can do better than "Oh S-!" You can tell
folks you learned this from The Mad Bomber of Hanoi.

Dick Stratton

Good Information