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  The weather was worse than the day before, with low clouds and more haze, providing perhaps a maximum of five miles visibility. Visibility was so bad that the attack force was forced to run into the target from the east, away from the potential sanctuary of the sea, although few Air Force pilots thought of the ocean in those terms.

  Rather than participating in the strike, Risner remained overhead as strike coordinator, “directing traffic” and evaluating the effectiveness of each flight’s bomb run. He also noted disposition of flak sites from their muzzle flashes, though it was unlikely any had been moved during the night.

  Because surface winds were unknown, the wingmen in each four-plane flight watched their leader’s bomb hits, then compensated accordingly. The technique was called “chasing the wind” or “going to school on Lead.” Unfortunately one had to wait until the Lead’s bombs struck the ground to see where they hit, so the deliveries were inevitably delayed. Every second of delay increased the attack force’s time over the target and gave the antiaircraft gunners more time to shoot at and connect with each individual airplane.

  First to roll in was the leader of Steel Flight, Captain Carlyle “Smitty” Harris, a Marylander one week short of his thirty-fifth birthday. He had flown the previous day’s mission in the last bombing flight and knew the problems erratic winds posed. In a steep, fast dive he placed the bridge in his bombsight, let the pipper track, and pressed the bomb release button on the stick. But he had waited too long.

  His eight 750-pound bombs came off the plane at only four thousand feet, and the Thud lifted perceptibly, three tons lighter.

  Harris bottomed out a thousand feet above the ground, pulling hard to avoid Mother Earth. As the G’s pressed him into the seat, he felt the impact of an AAA shell.

  It was probably a 37-millimeter round, but it could have been anything because the low pullout put the Thud within the range of everything the defenders had except pistol bullets. Whatever it was, the shell struck the fuselage well aft. The aircraft yawed violently, the left drop tank was wrenched off, and the single jet engine quit.

  With fire and system warning lights vying for his attention, Harris was riveted on job one—flying the airplane. He was only ten miles inland, but it might as well have been fifty. His jet, now a crippled glider, was shuddering and decelerating.

  Harris’ wingmen had a good view of their Lead’s stricken Thud. The plane was streaming flames and shedding parts, threatening to disintegrate. Harris descended into the low cloud deck and didn’t hear his friends screaming on the radio, “Get out!” because his radio was dead.

  Smitty Harris braced himself in the ejection seat, blew the canopy, and pulled the handle. He was rocketed from the dying Thud and tumbled through the air only a few hundred feet above the ground. The small drogue chute on his seat stabilized his descent, the parachute opened, and he was dragged out of the ejection seat.

  Captain Harris splashed down in a rice paddy within earshot of the bridge—he could hear bombs exploding nearby. Then he became the focus of fifty or more Vietnamese running toward him, thrilled at the opportunity to capture a Yankee air pirate and take private revenge. Harris was fortunate he didn’t die at their hands.

  Last in the Thud daisy chain was a flight of four from the 355th Wing out of Takhli, Zinc Flight. The four pilots were reasonably experienced, with as many as three thousand total hours of flight time and from four hundred to six hundred in F-105s. However, they were new to the war, and none had flown more than five combat missions; not only that, Air Force combat training was often skipped or shortened. Zinc Four, Captain Richard D. Pearson, possessed limited gunnery training and had only fired two Sidewinder missiles while in training. One survivor of a later MiG engagement that year confided he had not flown an air-to-air training mission since 1954.

  The problem was not the fault of the pilots. After all, Air Force pilot applicants signed up to fly—the more, the better. The problem was institutional. In the late 1950s and early 1960s the US Air Force was focused on fighting a nuclear Armageddon in which aircraft like the F-105 were expected to strike Communist targets around the world. Old-fashioned dogfighting had gone out with MiG Alley in 1953. Everybody knew that.

  Everybody except MiG pilots.

  The Vietnamese fliers were aware of their shortcomings and very conscious of their adversaries’ capabilities, but some of them exuded confidence nonetheless. One recalled, “We were quietly confident at the time and did not have any fear of the Americans, although we respected their experience and more modern equipment.”1

  Zinc Lead was Major Frank E. Bennett, a Rhode Island athlete from a family of athletes. Frank was a standout baseball and football player, and his older brother Robert had medaled as a hammer thrower in the 1948 London Olympics. At the age of thirty-two, Bennett had logged 470 hours in Thuds since 1962.2

  Bennett’s wingman was another major, James A. Magnuson Jr. He had also been flying F-105s since 1962 and accumulated nearly 475 hours in type. These totals are deceiving, as these pilots were averaging merely fifteen hours or so a month, barely enough to maintain proficiency.

  Zinc Flight was late, delayed by refueling problems en route. Thus, Bennett was about fifteen minutes behind schedule when he checked in with Risner, the on-scene commander. Risner directed Bennett and company to orbit about ten miles south of the bridge at fifteen thousand feet.

  Completing a left-hand orbit, Zinc Three, Major Vernon M. Kulla, and Zinc Four, Captain Pearson, flew about eight hundred feet above and on the outside of the turn. Kulla glimpsed the flight ahead of them about two thousand feet lower through some haze, which was thick. Zinc Lead was maintaining 325 knots airspeed, or about 375 miles per hour, lugging eight 750-pound bombs on the wing-racks.

  The pilots knew that MiGs had been airborne the day before but posed no threat to the Dragon’s Jaw attackers. The Viets had flown about thirty miles south of Thanh Hoa, reversed course, and disappeared northward. Today at the brief, intelligence had advised that MiGs would probably be airborne again, stalking them.

  In his turn Vern Kulla, leading the second section, glanced northward and spotted two bogies—unidentified aircraft—approaching from astern. Kulla noted that the intruders were approaching in a 20-degree dive from nearly a mile back. A few heartbeats later he identified them as MiGs. They were tracking the lead section.

  Vern Kulla keyed his radio mike: “Zinc Lead, break! You have MiGs behind you! Lead, break! Zinc Lead, we’re being attacked.”

  Neither Bennett nor Magnusson responded, although other pilots in the area heard the transmission. Richard Pearson, Zinc Four, repeated the warning.

  The MiG-17 interceptors belonged to the 921st “Red Star” Fighter Regiment, North Vietnam’s first fighter unit. The regiment’s executive officer, Nguyen Van Tien, led eight MiGs from the Noi Bai airfield northeast of Hanoi. Their radar controller on the ground, Dao Ngo Ngu, had had a decent picture of the developing situation since the Americans began concentrating around Thanh Hoa. Dao deployed one flight as a decoy to draw off the American CAP and another to attack the bombers.

  The first two MiGs were well positioned—their controller had done his job. They dived in from the lead Thuds’ five and six o’clock position while a second section of MiG-17s closed on Zinc Three and Four.

  Zinc Three, Vern Kulla, called for a section break, taking his wingman Richard Pearson to the left. The two Thuds hit the emergency jettison button, shedding their six-thousand pounds of ordnance, and put their noses down to unload the aircraft and accelerate to fighting speed, then they rolled into near-vertical banks and began pulling big Gs. Their opponents sped past them, above and behind, continuing southward and making an estimated Mach .85, roughly 640 miles per hour at that altitude. The Americans got a good look at them—light gray overall with Communist star and bar markings. Three and Four crammed their throttles forward and lit their burners, but acceleration from 325 knots was far too slow to gain an offensive position.

  Leading the
four attacking Viet fighter pilots was the commander of the regiment’s first company, or squadron, Tran Huy Han, a thirty-two-year-old former political commissar. Descending through the clouds in a high-speed dive, Tran sighted Zinc Flight. His momentum took him past the F-100 MiG CAP, and, covered by his wingman Senior Lieutenant Pham Giay, Tran selected the lead American.

  Now aware of their peril, Bennett and Magnusson jettisoned their bombs—far too late.

  As Tran closed to four hundred meters range, Bennett tried breaking into an evasive turn, but the heavy Thud with supersonic wings could not hope to turn with a MiG. In fighter pilot jargon, Frank Bennett was meat on the table.

  Tran flipped up the cover atop his control stick and placed his thumb on the firing button for the 37-millimeter cannon and his finger on the trigger for the two 23-millimeter cannon. He opened fire, and heavy shells raked the Thunderchief’s airframe.

  Through his G-blurred vision, Vern Kulla saw pieces hacked off Zinc Lead’s airframe. Bennett’s wingman, Magnusson, called, “Lead, you have a MiG behind you.”

  Tran saw flames gush from the enemy aircraft. Pulling out of his attack, he thought he glimpsed Bennett’s plane dive into the water. What he may have seen was the splash of a bomb rack with weapons attached as it hit a rice paddy.3

  Then Tran’s second element, flying almost wingtip to wingtip, attacked Zinc Two. Lieutenant Le Minh Huan began shooting at Frank Magnusson. Le saw hits flashing across the American jet. Fuel-fed fire spewed from Zinc Two’s tail, and Magnusson radioed, “I’ve been hit.”

  Between seven hundred and eight hundred feet ahead of Magnusson the two Vietnamese pilots rolled into level flight and sped ahead, exiting the fight. Not that it had really been a fight. It had been an ambush in the finest tradition of aerial warfare—sneak up on an unaware opponent, shoot him in the back, and escape before the victim’s friends could retaliate. These two Communist fighters were last seen in a gentle right bank when they disappeared into the haze.

  By the time Pearson could look “out the window” again the MiGs were gone. Taking no chances, Pearson wracked his bird into a descending spiral and checked his tail. He was clear, but Kulla was gone. Nonetheless, Richard Pearson busted past Mach 1, climbing to join the lead section. He wanted to join Jim Magnusson’s crippled jet and left Vern Kulla to escort Frank Bennett.

  Yet Magnusson wasn’t up high. Pearson backed off the throttle, decelerating rapidly. Magnusson was limping along at merely two hundred knots about five hundred feet above the ground. Still descending and decelerating, Pearson quickly overshot Magnusson and lost him in the haze. As he reversed course, hoping to join up, he heard Magnusson call that he was ejecting.

  Magnusson had headed for the ocean. Steel Flight told him to shift to the emergency channel for easier monitoring, and Magnusson had complied. He nursed his dying jet about twenty-six miles southeast of the Dragon’s Jaw and seven miles offshore before his final call: his controls were dead and he was ejecting.

  Meanwhile Kulla had his hands full. Expecting to escort Bennett from the area, Zinc Three glimpsed gun flashes behind him. Though making Mach .84 at ten thousand feet, he pulled harder, loading more G on the plane, then he slightly bunted the nose and rolled inverted through the turn, reversed his heading, and started climbing.

  In his climb Kulla kept turning to keep his assailants in sight. He saw the two MiGs closing again, so he rolled left as if to begin a split-S. The Viets followed.

  The squadron had just been briefed on the best way for a 105 to “hit the brakes” and force an enemy to overshoot. The officer from Nellis Air Force Base, Captain John Boyd, had irritated some of the Thud drivers with his self-confident attitude, but he knew his business. His passion was energy management in three dimensions. An abrupt pitch-up into a snap roll induced considerable drag on the Thud’s large airframe, and although Kulla had not practiced the maneuver in his four hundred hours in Thuds, he had been flying fighters for eight years. Now on the naked edge, he was desperate enough to give anything a try.

  The maneuver worked. With his nose perhaps 30 degrees above the horizon, the snap roll killed about two hundred knots of airspeed. The MiG section skidded outside the turn, winding up ahead of the lone Thud. Kulla gawked as one MiG dove past him in a near-vertical dive, the other at a shallower angle. He wondered whether MiG One could pull out in time and hoped he couldn’t.

  Then Kulla wondered about himself. He crammed on full throttle, lowered his nose, and saw a windscreen full of North Vietnam. He pulled the nose up and leveled off less than a thousand feet above the dirt. The MiGs disappeared into the haze.

  Once free of the stalkers, Kulla could again think about his friends. He asked Bennett to transmit a homing signal on the radio and advised him to gain as much altitude as possible. Miraculously, he found Bennett in the haze and joined up. Heading south, the pair topped at about twenty-one thousand feet, and Kulla made a visual inspection of Zinc One. There was a large hole beneath the fuselage near the speed brake, some damage to the afterburner pedals, and a one-foot hole in the left flap. The speed brakes were partly open, evidence of a damaged hydraulic system. Kulla also noticed hydraulic fluid leaking around the tailpipe.

  Back near Thanh Hoa, Richard Pearson, Zinc Four, searched frantically for Jim Magnusson in his parachute. Clouds obscured swatches of ocean. Pearson thought he glimpsed the impact site of Magnusson’s Thud just offshore, but he might have just seen drop tanks jettisoned by F-100s impacting the water.

  An Air Force HU-16 amphibian arrived to search the area until darkness, but the Albatross came up empty.

  Lacking options, Pearson decided to join Kulla and Bennett as they tried to gain the safety of South Vietnam. He rendezvoused with his two friends headed for DaNang.

  About twelve miles from the field at fifteen thousand feet still over the ocean, Frank Bennett began his descent and was cleared for an emergency landing. Then his engine lost all oil pressure and quit. In the big silence that followed, Bennett leveled off, slowing from about three hundred knots, and radioed his friends that he was going to eject.

  Kulla and Pearson were close enough to see Bennett lose his helmet during the ejection. They watched for the blossom of the parachute but did not see it. Still in his ejection seat, Frank Bennett fell through the clouds and was lost to sight.

  Pearson, critically low on fuel, remained high to conserve JP-4 while Kulla dumped a wing and spiraled down through the clouds toward the water pulling Gs, seeking a glimpse of a chute in five-mile visibility. Kulla saw nothing. He stayed as long as he possibly could, only leaving when an Air Force helicopter from DaNang came in sight.

  Inbound, Pearson overflew the cruiser USS Canberra, wagging his wings to attract attention. The ship got the message and turned toward the HH-43 chopper from DaNang. Meanwhile, though at an emergency low-fuel state, Kulla confirmed the likely “splash” location with the helo before heading for DaNang. He and Pearson landed with fumes remaining.

  The Canberra’s crew found Frank Bennett’s body. His parachute had deployed but apparently not in time to slow his fall into the Tonkin Gulf.

  The Air Force looked for two days yet found no trace of Jim Magnusson. He was first listed as missing in action and eventually changed to KIA.4

  After Jack Graber’s flight passed Zinc Flight following the MiG attack, they rolled in to attack the bridge. Graber recalled,

  I had just released my bombs, retracted the speed brakes, gone full throttle, selected afterburner, pulled hard (I think we all pulled more than four Gs on average, more like five or six). Then as the nose came up through the horizon, unload, stomp on the rudder, and roll into a serious jinking maneuver and score your bombs at the same time. If Lead went left, then we went right, reversed, and finished with a quick join-up.

  Well, that was the plan. But as I was jinking and pulling all those Gs, I accidentally pulled the throttle out of burner. I had never done that before. I think it was my guardian angel that did it. While I was trying to get a r
elight, the airspeed was bleeding off something serious. I was down to 350 knots and had to force myself to push the stick forward and ease off the G-load, waiting for a burner relight.

  Meanwhile, at my twelve o’clock was more flak and tracers than I had ever seen. It reminded me of those military weddings where everyone holds a sword up to form a tunnel for the bridal party to walk through. I had a tunnel of tracers coming up in front of me, which I was flying through. I think the gunners had decided to concentrate their fire on the next guy down, which was me. But they had never seen an F-105 fly that slow. All the fire went out front, and I never got a scratch.

  My guardian angel must have been busy with me because I never received any battle damage in any of my 116 missions.5

  Although three Thuds were fatally damaged, one unknown to the Vietnamese, the air action continued over the Dragon’s Jaw.

  Escorting the strike were F-100 Super Sabres of the 416th Tactical Fighter Squadron from DaNang. The unit had flown the first Rolling Thunder mission on March 2, and on April 4 the nearest MiG CAP flight was led by the CO, Lieutenant Colonel Emmett L. Hayes, with two wingmen, one having aborted.

  The F-100 and MiG-17 were contemporaries, both going operational in the early 1950s. The lighter MiG enjoyed better performance, both in turning and climbing, but the American pilots were more experienced and better trained.

  When the MiGs jumped the Thuds, the Super Sabres responded yet were unable to intervene immediately. Engaging offshore, beyond the range of their 20-millimeter cannon, Hayes selected a Sidewinder heat-seeking missile. The geometry was wrong. With the MiGs between the Thunderchiefs and the Huns, it was impossible to know precisely which heat source a missile was tracking. Hayes waited until he got a clear view of a MiG and heard the AIM-9Bs “growl” in his earphones. He pressed the trigger, and the Sidewinder streaked forward off the rail, homing on its target. Hayes saw the missile pass close over the MiG without detonating—likely a fuse failure.