There are some crude and cruder metaphors for someone who is extremely busy. A commonly heard comparison is “a one-armed paper-hanger.” In my world, the slightly rougher version was “a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.” An email exchange about ten days ago with Billy Beck in reply to a question regarding MS Flight Sim and his experience with an F-105 over North Vietnam triggered the flashback. He had a single F-105D over the computer’s view of the area just north of Hanoi. In the background was a representation of what was purported to be Phuc Yen airfield, a primary MiG-21 base during the war. The graphics were totally bogus and not a bit like the real thing.
The subsequent correspondence regarding my comments about the “tone-down” of the airfield and the lack of realistic positioning of things like Thud Ridge, the Red River or any villages on the ground was subordinated to his comments regarding the whole bag of things we had going on at the time. I begin to think about what was going on in the cockpit, besides the praying, sweating and whimpering at the time.
The weather was never as good as the simulator graphics. I might have seen that sort of no-haze, no clouds, severe clear day once or twice in my two tours. But it was decidedly rare. Then there was the issue of multi-sensory inputs. Visual, auditory, proprioceptive; all in overload at the same time.
The heartbeat went up at the first sighting of the Red River inbound. Then it was 20-30 minutes of non-stop multi-tasking. Fly formation, keep track of three other airplanes, scan the area for threat. Check your radar, look at the gauges, monitor your airplane and think about the target tactics. Listen to the radio and try to sort out who is who among all the chatter. Let the voices draw a three-dimensional picture for you of who is where and doing what. Hear and filter the threat calls. Get the time flow. Predict the next thirty seconds, minute, two minutes. Check your RHAW (Radar Warning Receiver) or identify the various audio tones to get a threat picture. Watch your fuel gauge, set your weapon switches, wait for the tank jettison call. Navigate. Maybe sneak a glance at your map or a target photo. Fly formation. All the while you are moving at 600 knots at 3000 feet above the ground, jinking back and forth always at a minimum of 3 or 4 Gs. Hear the SAM calls, find the missile in flight, analyze the threat. Save your ass, if necessary. Get back into formation.
In the target area. Follow the briefing. Fly the delivery, see the target, meet your dive bomb parameters. Watch the guns. Recover from the dive, find your leader, jink to screw the gunners. It goes on for the whole inbound and outbound period until you are back out across the Red and climbing to relative safety. Only MiGs will threaten for the next 200 miles.
We didn’t think much of it. We did it because we could. We knew that few people knew what we did and they couldn’t do it even if they wanted to. It wasn’t remarkable to us. It was what we did.
Then Beck pointed out that it was “pretty heavy stuff.” And, when I thought about it, I tend to find myself agreeing. Which brought me full circle to today’s combat ops and the moving scenario painted in the inimitable style of Snooze and Trip of Dos Gringos:
I had a chance to meet Snooze at the last River Rats doings. We shot our watches, talked about folks we both knew and then the following night, which was the formal dinner, we met again. I was wearing my miniatures, as is appropriate with formal wear for military officers, and his first comment when I approached was, “got enough medals?”
The issue wasn’t really that I possessed an inordinate amount, but rather that from the perspective of the current world, that sort of thing can no longer happen. The nature of the war, with high tech weapons and our ability to target, deliver and survive with minimal exposure means that opportunity for remarkable personal feats is gone. What was once remarkable is now done effortlessly.
Which isn’t a bad thing in my view.
No comments:
Post a Comment