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November 6, 2009
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A Veteran's Story, part 2: Career Air Force officer tells his story In this second in a three-part series, Canyon Lake resident Dudley Thompson, a veteran of the Viet Nam War, describes his life as a U.S. Air Force pilot. This part of his story takes place after his B-52 bomber squadron was moved to Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas, in February 1960 as part of a major dispersal of all bomber units in the Strategic Air Command (SAC).
“Almost immediately after our arrival at Sheppard AFB, we received a new requirement to launch the B-52 ground alert force within 15 minutes of receipt of a launch message. This was dictated because of improved Russian nuclear missile capability,” Dudley writes in memoirs. “Also, the requirement to have seven bombers on ground alert at all times meant that each B-52 crew had to pull approximately 15 days alert duty each month. Alert duty, combined with normal training missions, took up about 21 days each month and the crew still had other requirements to complete such as physical fitness training, recurring alert line study, B-52 simulator flights, emergency procedures training and a host of other things.”
In addition to all this, Dudley says he elected to attend Midwestern University at night to take a class in Differential Calculus, since he had made a decision to make Air Force service a career. Initially, he had received a commission in the Air Force Reserve, which meant he could serve as long as the Air Force wanted him, but he could be released at its pleasure. The only way to gain tenure was to apply to become an officer in the Regular Air Force and, to do that, he needed a degree.
The Air Force provided two programs to get a degree without separating from the service. The program Dudley chose was through the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT), in which he was required to complete at least two years of college and finish college level mathematics through Differential Calculus. He would then complete an engineering degree in two years at a civilian university.
Both programs required a commitment of two years additional service for each year of school. Since Dudley wanted to stay in the Air Force, this was of no concern. After finishing the first part of the program, he departed Sheppard AFB in December 1964 and started taking classes for a Mechanical/Aeronautical Engineering degree at the University of Wyoming in January 1965. The university had made a commitment to the Air Force to offer the courses he needed to graduate in June 1967.
For the first semester, he carried four engineering courses and Differential Calculus for a total of 18 hours of classes. “A normal engineering student had to petition to carry more than 16, but the university and the Air Force had agreed I could handle the work, and each successive semester was just as challenging,” he says.
Dudley devoted 14 hours a day to studying Monday through Friday. Friday night was rest and relaxation; then studying part time on Saturday and Sunday unless he had a big test coming up or he had to fly.
When he left Sheppard, he was a Standardization/Evaluation pilot in his squadron, so when he arrived in Wyoming, he was assigned to F.E. Warren AFB to meet his flying requirements. The aircraft that was used for proficiency flying was a U-3A (Cessna 310 light twin), used to haul missile crews to the remote silos in Nebraska and Wyoming. Warren was a SAC base and when the Flight Section learned he had been a SAC Stan/Eval pilot, supervisors required him to become the Stan/Eval pilot for the AFIT students at the university.
“There were about 20 pilots and I had to administer one instrument flight and one proficiency flight check each year for each of these people,” Dudley explains. “By regulation they had to be about six months apart and the instrument flight check had to be near their birth date but not past it. Just what I needed, more work.”
Keep in mind during this time Dudley had a wife and children. Since there was little in the way of suitable rental housing in Laramie in January, he bought a house from a graduating AFIT student and later sold it to an incoming AFIT student when he left. However, it took about a month before his family could move in.
“We lived in a small apartment in the only hotel in Laramie during this period – at that time, no motel offered apartments with cooking facilities,” says Dudley. “I thought I would go crazy but my wife and kids loved what they termed ‘camping out.’ My kids adapted to the community and their schooling was superior. Nearly all of the teachers in Laramie had spouses that taught at the university so they were afforded the opportunity to take classes at greatly reduced price. Consequently, most had advanced degrees, which made keen competition for teaching positions.”
Life settled into a routine and Dudley graduated in June 1967. Normally he would have been assigned to duty as an aeronautical engineer; however, during the early ’60s the Viet Nam War had been escalating and fighter pilots were in short supply. So he was sent to an F-4 Replacement Training Unit (RTU) at George AFB in Victorville, California. The class start date was late August, but “to get the rust off” pilots like Dudley who hadn’t flown fighters recently, they were sent through a one-month gunnery refresher course in the T-33.
“It was totally fun,” says Dudley. “I had accumulated about 500 hours in the T-33, which made flying very enjoyable. The F-4 RTU was very much like the fighter gunnery school was in 1956. The F-4 was a dream to fly once you managed to think ahead of it. Tactics and weapon delivery had not changed much during the years. The only thing different was night ground attack and this was completely new.”
Night ground attack called for instrument flying proficiency because of the operation under flares. “Transition from the attack to pulling up to repositioning the aircraft in the pattern left you staring at black sky with no reference to the horizon,” Dudley says, explaining the weapons delivery tactics that made night ground attack difficult.
“The standard parameters of a dive bomb attack were 45-degree dive angle, 450 knots indicated air speed and release at 4,000 ft. above ground level. Immediately after release, the aircraft was placed in a 4-g climbing turn (emphasis on climbing),” he says. “This was done for two reasons. First and most obvious was to avoid running into the ground. Second was to stay out of the fragmentation pattern of your own bomb. During training, we used inert weapons so the latter wasn’t a problem, but the ground sure was. The tight, nose high turn required was very disorienting with no horizon.”
Dudley’s RTU class finished training in January 1968. He then attended sea survival in Florida and jungle survival at Clark Air Base in the Philippines. He reported to his duty assignment in the 390th Tactical Fighter Squadron in Da Nang, Republic of Vietnam, in March of 1968.
The first few combat missions for a new guy were flown over North Viet Nam in what was judged to be a low-threat environment. He also had a squadron instructor pilot in the back seat to evaluate his flying ability and to keep him out of trouble.
“My first combat mission was a four-ship flight assigned to drop 500-lb. high-drag bombs with mine fuses in the Dat Giang River at the Thuong ferry point,” Dudley explains. “Each aircraft carried 11 bombs and a timer released the bombs in one-second intervals when the release button was activated. Since I was the new guy in the flight, I was in position four and would be the last to drop. The attack was to be conducted at 500 knots, in trail formation, each aircraft 1,000 ft. behind the next, straight down the river and at 100 ft. altitude. The purpose of the high drag device was to allow for safe separation at low altitude.”
“The number one aircraft was to drop slightly past the ferry point and make a hard turn; two would time his release so his bombs would fall just short of the first and make a hard turn so as not to over-fly the previous drop. Three and four would do the same,” Dudley continues. “This was designed to place a long string of mines in the water. Although the mine fusing on the bombs was not supposed to arm for several minutes, no one really trusted them.”
“The mission went as briefed except the Anti-Aircraft Artillery (AAA) fire was intense. Well, not for number one – he only woke up the gunners. Two had it worse; three and four were extremely lucky to get through without a scratch. So much for a low-threat environment,” Dudley sums up his first mission.
After that, the airmen rejoined over the sea, returned to Da Nang and debriefed. Dudley asked whether all missions were like that and was told it was the worst AAA they had ever seen in that target area. The fire from the 37mm guns looked to him like a bunch of angry bees swarming past his jet.
Three days later the pilots flew the same mission against the same target and there was no AAA. “This theme – AAA one day, nothing the next – would repeat often during my whole year in Viet Nam,” says Dudley. “During my tour, I flew 217 combat missions. One hundred were over North Viet Nam and the rest were over Laos and South Viet Nam. The missions over Laos were every bit as dangerous and unpredictable as North Viet Nam.”
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