Listening to every transmission from 35,000 feet

Episode 13.

The NVAF are forced to turn on their radar sparingly and only at great risk to themselves.

2:35am.  SAM launch!  The first one in the Son Tay area tonight.

All operators on the Combat Apple mission are pumped up, coordinating with each other, critically aware of the situation and reporting the real time intelligence intended to save American lives and eliminate the enemy threat. 

I cannot believe my ears.  I tune in to SAM site after SAM site and hear frenzied Vietnamese commands to track an aircraft here or lock on to a threatening fighter there.  I’m passing details of SAM site coordinates, operators’ conversations, and potential launch preparations.

Allow me to patch in some additional details (pieced together from my conversations with friends of mine in our Son Tay Raid Association who lived it) that I was not aware of in the heat of the battle. 

[NOTE: I’m inserting these verbally-told details by indenting and showing them in italics.  I’ve used the best time estimates I have.  Any errors/inaccuracies in this are purely mine (CW)-with my apologies!]

At this exact moment, Firebird 5, an F-105 at 20,000 feet, is on orbit about 20 miles from Hanoi.  He is the backup aircraft in a flight of five.  Each time he turns Southeast on the inbound leg of his orbit, he can see, more than 50 miles away, the flashes of the Navy’s diversionary activity dropping flares/incendiaries on the far side of Hanoi. 

Up to now, the only SAM activity has been the launches against the Navy A-6s and A-7s for the past 50 minutes.  (Imagine the view looking over the city lights of Manhattan from the far north end of the island, while 4th of July fireworks are celebrating at the Statue of Liberty at the far south end.) 

But now, the SAM battle is also right beneath you in the Son Tay area.

Firebird 1, 2, 3, and 4, using roughly perpendicular inbound tracks, take turns launching on the radar signals of live SAM sites.  Multiple SAMs are launching at them.  In the night, a flying SA-2 looks like a telephone pole balanced on a reddish orange fireball oscillating as its gimbals respond to the radio telemetry signals.

A little perspective:  Out of the hundreds of combat missions flown by the crewmembers in tonight’s mission, for almost all of them, this was the first time ever to have a SAM actually launch on them.

See more photos and stories on this website and in Who Will Go, which is just as much to honor the wives and family as the men themselves.

Click Here:  The audiobook is now available.