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""Bomb Run, 1973

When asked if I killed anyone during the Vietnam War, I have to answer that I don’t know. I may have, and probably did, since my B-52 bomber crew dropped many thousand pounds of bombs on the Cambodian jungle, but I will never actually know.

I only flew two live bombing runs in August 1973, before President Nixon’s final bombing halt prior to the negotiations that ended our involvement in the war a few months later. But the first mission captured all the terror, anticipation, wonder, and angst of flying into a war.

The mission began after dark at Andersen AFB, Guam, in the western Pacific Ocean. The crew bus dropped us at the hot loading zone on a far corner of a field, a remote location that would provide some protection for the base if something went wrong while loading over fifty thousand pounds of bombs in the bomb bay and on wing pylons of our B-52D.

A full moon painted the bristling black war bird in a ghostly light, a formidable metal dragon that would righteously drop explosive mayhem onto America’s enemies, or so I thought at the time. I paused and slowly put down my flight bag to stare in awe. Was I really a part of this? What was I about to do?

Six hours after takeoff, we approached the target area over the Parrot’s Beak region of Cambodia as one of a half-dozen three-ship bomber formations. Each cell was named for a tree. We were Oak Flight; others were Pine, Maple, and Birch.

As the lead aircraft copilot for my cell (for some unknown reason, I got to be lead on my first mission), I had to announce the impending bomb drop on “Guard,” the international radio frequency all-aircraft monitor. This would allow aircraft in the vicinity to vacate the area and avoid the “rain” of our falling bombs. (As an aside, this is the same rain referenced in the Creedence Clearwater Revival song “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?”)

I had been warned to switch my radio toggle from the interplane frequency to the Guard channel before transmitting the warning. Being a raw rookie, however, I gave the entire two-minute spiel on interplane, to the great amusement of the other copilots. “Hey, lead, want to try that on Guard?” they snickered on the interplane frequency.

Then the bomb run began in the early morning darkness over an Asian jungle. Our three-abreast, triangular-shaped formation banked steeply, ominously, onto the bomb run heading. The radar navigator, who would throw the switch to drop the bombs, informed the crew we were approaching the IP, or Initial Point, to begin the run.

Just as we passed the IP, a male Asian voice began transmitting in Cambodian on our radios. He sounded as if he were babbling in an opium den, and his voice disturbed and frightened me. I feared he might be an apparition warning us off our task, a voice of doom giving a last opportunity to save ourselves, or a soon-to-be victim in the target zone making his last hopeless statement to his slayers. He continued talking, as if relating a story to a fellow opium smoker, while our formation approached the target. No matter what I did to my radio controls, I couldn’t make the voice stop.

In the near distance 33,000 feet below us, the ground glowed red, eerily, from explosions from preceding bomber formations. A mist hung over the terrain that gave the area the look of a graveyard in a horror movie.

The radar navigator began the countdown, “Ten . . . nine . . . eight,”—the apparitional voice continued his drunken soliloquy on the radio—“Three . . . two . . . one . . . bombs away!”

The aircraft shuddered lightly as the bombs unhooked from the wings and dropped from the bomb bays of our three aircraft in a ten-second release sequence that would obliterate an area equal to three football fields and unleash a shock wave that would kill any unshielded creature within half a mile. North Vietnamese soldier and author Bao Ninh later wrote that the immediate aftermath of such a strike resulted in “a rain of arms and legs dropping before him on the grass.” (11)

We waited as the radar navigator counted down to detonation, about fifty seconds for the bombs to fall 33,000 feet, “Three . . . two . . . one . . . impact!” The thin clouds around our aircraft reflected hundreds of small bursts of light from below. It was done.

The radar navigator announced the closing of the bomb bay doors.

We flew on in the darkness in silence as I pondered what we had done. I ponder it still."

(Excerpt from "Flying the Line, an Air Force Pilot's Journey," book one. Book series web site: http://www.saigon-tea.com).

Oh yeah, buy his book:

That's an interesting exerpt, but high-flying bomber pilots rarely ever really get to see or experience much of war, unless they are shot at/shot down. I'd rather read some experiences of the US soldiers who invaded Cambodia, or better yet, the memoirs of the KR/NVA troops they encountered.

Very interesting stuff. The B-52 strikes are well-known at this stage but it's very rare to hear any personal account from the pilots.

Years ago I made the acquaintance of a former Viet Cong soldier who told me they only feared two things: 1) a B52 strike and being captured by the South Korean soldiers.

I worked with an old engineer from Kien Svay district. He was a buffalo boy who was used at night to unload barges of arms and ammo that had come up the Bassac from Vietnam. He said the B52s only bombed at night which was news to me. He said that when they hit ammo dumps the flames could be hundreds of feet high.If you look at the old map of the bombing Kandal Province was as heavily bombed as the parrots Beak and other border areas.
North and South of Phnom Penh were hammered, the south in the swampy area between the Mekong and Bassac was called the rocket belt in the Civil War.They lobbed the 122mm rockets into the suburbs of Phnom Penh from there.

I don't think i will be buying his book. Whilst he was simply following orders he no doubt killed many poor and innocent people, and to pretend he had any doubts at all when carrying out these missions is about as believable as a Drone pilot saying they have only ever killed known terrorists. I am not a pacafist i just feel that people should take responsibility for their own actions.
I personally feel that he shouldn't be further financially rewarded for this, unless the proceeds of the book are to be donated to help rhe poor of Cambodia.
Whilst the wtiting of these war journals may be cathartic for the author the publishing of them is simply vanity.




Here endeth the sermon.

Jim Gil wrote: ↑Thu Nov 30, 2017 11:50 pm I don't think i will be buying his book. Whilst he was simply following orders he no doubt killed many poor and innocent people, and to pretend he had any doubts at all when carrying out these missions is about as believable as a Drone pilot saying they have only ever killed known terrorists. I am not a pacafist i just feel that people should take responsibility for their own actions.
I personally feel that he shouldn't be further financially rewarded for this, unless the proceeds of the book are to be donated to help rhe poor of Cambodia.
Whilst the wtiting of these war journals may be cathartic for the author the publishing of them is simply vanity.




Here endeth the sermon.

I also will NOT be buying this book. I also feel he should not be further financially rewarded for his involvement in killing innocent Cambodians who were not involved in the Vietnam War,

I thought you would have to be intelligent to be a B52 pilot. However, to write the following paragraph makes him sound very naive:

"When asked if I killed anyone during the Vietnam War, I have to answer that I don’t know. I may have, and probably did, since my B-52 bomber crew dropped many thousand pounds of bombs on the Cambodian jungle, but I will never actually know."

It is obvious that if you drop thousands of tons of bombs on jungle and villages for months at a time, then you will kill a few of 'enemy' soldiers and a lot of civilians.

so many friends & people I meet seem to be interested in military things be it planes, vehicles, weapons or stories.
I guess I should have played with my action man more as a kid because I don't really like war/military stories very much.
tropic thunder was a good documentary though

chorlton wrote:so many friends & people I meet seem to be interested in military things be it planes, vehicles, weapons or stories.
I guess I should have played with my action man more as a kid because I don't really like war/military stories very much.
tropic thunder was a good documentary though

......Something about Barbie.....

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Barang chgout wrote: ↑Fri Dec 01, 2017 7:41 am

chorlton wrote:so many friends & people I meet seem to be interested in military things be it planes, vehicles, weapons or stories.
I guess I should have played with my action man more as a kid because I don't really like war/military stories very much.
tropic thunder was a good documentary though

......Something about Barbie.....

Sent from my SM-G570Y using Tapatalk

..................................something about something ..........................