Hampton - The hunter killers : the extraordinary story of the first Wild Weasels, the band of maverick aviators who flew the most dangerous missions of the Vietnam War

F OR THOSE WHO WORE THE SILVER WINGS
AND NEVER CAME BACK FROM S OUTHEAST A SIA
AND FOR ALL W ILD W EASELS WHO HAVE FLOWN
INTO THE GUNS TO BRING OTHERS HOME ALIVE .

F IRST I N , L AST O UT ...

CONTENTS

LONG BEFORE THE Hunter Killer appellation was borrowed by others, there was an elite group of aviators called the Wild Weasels who truly earned the title. These men werent watching on a screen thousands of miles from danger. They were right there, firing their cannons and dropping bombs; hunting and killing the most lethal anti-aircraft systems created by man. They knew that real combat is not pushing a button from the safety of an air-conditioned bunker or a trailer.

It takes a unique, intelligent, and very dangerous man to duel with missiles and to knife-fight with anti-aircraft guns. With unproven tactics, experimental equipment, and sheer guts these first Hunter Killers never hesitated. They attacked threats hundreds of miles behind enemy lines and too often they never came back. Sometimes they simply disappeared, leaving friends and family waiting for answers that never came.

This story begins in 1965, in the Southeast Asia theater of operations, an area rapidly escalating into war. During the previous decade the Korean War had been largely fought with technology and pilots brought back into service, often reluctantly, from World War II because there was no other choice. Even when new methods and technology became available the tactical mentality hadnt changed much since the Second World War, nor were there many reasons to do so.

But by the early 1960s jet aircraft had proliferated, and so had countertactics against these complex, fast-moving threats. Radar systems had vastly improved from the primitive Freya and Chain Home stations of the 1940s, and they were now being used to precisely aim weapons. As the threat posed by high-altitude, nuclear-armed bombers grew in the minds of world leaders, so did the necessity to bring them down.

Enter the surface-to-air missile.

Through the eyes of those who fought, I present certain seminal events to illustrate the technology, threats, abilities, and challenges of the Hunter Killers. The cockpit viewpoints were written after extensive interviews with the surviving men who flew the missions, and this book was reviewed and rewritten until they approved. In the cases of those missing or killed, narratives were reconstructed utilizing eyewitnesses, squadron mates, government records, and POW network archives.

As in my previous works, real men and actual combat situations are utilized to reveal the historical and political context that put them there. This is done for those of us who came laterthose of us who were neither taught the reasons for the conflict nor encouraged to discover them for ourselves.

The war in Southeast Asia was a Gordian knot of issues, and most will never be unraveled or satisfactorily explained. This is not an intentionally political work, yet in one sense it is impossible to accurately describe any postWorld War II struggle without accounting for politics. For Americans there hasnt been a black-and-white, unambiguous war since 1945 and Vietnam, in the minds of many, is a perfect train wreck of idealism, shortsighted diplomacy, and failed opportunities. Politics, like geography, history, and technology, are discussed within these pages, as they are the very sinews of any war.

One challenge with this type of approach is to objectively expose error without casting the slightest shadow on those who took the oath and honorably fought for their country. Two words, fought and honorably, are key. Many protested the warnot the soldiers, but the warout of genuine conviction, and they had every right to do so. The belief in such liberties was one reason the men in this book were fighting, and our fellow citizens who exercise such hard-won privileges would do well to remember that. Those who physically fought, bravely and honorably, deserve the respect, obligation, and admiration of us all.

Finally, this book is a tribute. To those maintainers, crew chiefs, flight docs, and everyone else who made certain that even if the Weasels went to combat with one hand tied behind their backs, then the hand they had was the best it could be. Most of all this is for the pilots and electronic warfare officers who fought, and often died. It is for those who languished in the hell of captivity, tortured and lonely, and to everyone who found their way home and went on with life.

The men I was fortunate enough to interview and meet became living heroes to me personally, and as I researched those who had died fighting in Southeast Asia they became very real to me, much more than nearly forgotten names on a page. Each had once been a small boy growing up somewhere in America, had gone to school, played sports, graduated from college, and found himself in a Wild Weasel cockpit. They all had a story; theyd all been men with families, hopes, and dreams. Each said goodbye to someone and, with the unique confidence of warriors, each planned someday to return.

As a former Wild Weasel myself, I fervently wish every tale could be told; as an author I know they cannot. But my sincere hope is that wherever warriors spend eternity they will feel that this story is enough of a tributefor now, anyway. In the end, this is not my story... it is theirs.

Dan Hampton

South East Asia Theater of Operations, 19651972. (courtesy of Guy Aceto)

Route Pack Structure of North Vietnam. (courtesy of the U.S. Military Academy)

Thud Ridge and the Hanoi Area. (courtesy of Colonel Jack Broughton)

The Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Vietnam. (courtesy of Colonel Jack Broughton)

J ULY 24, 1965

W EST OF H ANOI ON THE R ED R IVER

A VIOLENT, THUNDERCLAP explosion shattered the quiet, heavy air over the river. Anyone within five miles would have heard it. Those closer would see an intense, forty-foot flame stabbing upward from a rolling brown cloud of dirty smoke. In a second the surface-to-air missile (SAM) was several hundred feet in the air, glowing bright gold, and streaking up toward the low gray clouds. Moments later the rocket booster burned out and dropped away as the sustainer motor kicked in. Trailing thick white exhaust, the SAM began receiving guidance signals from the ground, and it jerked sideways when its control fins unlocked. Twice the speed of sound now and accelerating, the Fakel 11D missile, called an SA-2 Guideline by NATO, shallowed its trajectory then headed southwest and disappeared into the overcast sky towards its target.

EIGHT MINUTES EARLIER several specially trained men crouched in an olive drab trailer, straining to see in the dim light and to hear over the humming equipment. This trailer was mounted on one of two big, six-wheeled Soviet ZIL trucks parked side by side and connected with stout black cables. Other cables ran from the back of each trailer to four generator carts, also green, about thirty feet away. A pair of the generators were running, vibrating, and filling the air with blue-tinted diesel fumes. Atop one of the trucks was a fifty-foot radar antenna array that looked like a huge drying rack. A single pole ran horizontally across the truck top, intersected every eight feet by a vertical post. On both ends of each of the six vertical posts was a four-foot-long horizontal rack called a Yagi directional antenna. Designated the P-12 Yenisei surveillance radar by its Soviet creators, it was known to the West as a Spoon Rest due to its appearance. All it did was search for aircraft. The Spoon Rest could acquire and track targets out to 100 miles or so, based on their altitude and maneuvering. Not terribly accurate, it worked well enough against targets above 20,000 feet that didnt maneuver muchjust like this one.