Sky Hawk

By Gerit L. Fenega

This book is a firsthand account of the Vietnam conflict as it unfolded before a midlevel-career military officer. In a first-person account, it does not portend to be a microcosm of that war but, rather, what it was like for one year, at one place to participate and ultimately lead an attack squadron in combat. This an upbeat, anecdote-filled, historically accurate but nonscholarly tale of events seen or taken part in by the author. The book aims for a wide audience that likes aviation, adventure, and insight into leadership. It forcefully brings home the lessons we as a country should learn from such turmoil. This is no memoir to justify the action or inaction of a midlevel manager, but a month-by-month account of controlled mayhem and high humor among professionals in the maelstrom of battle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Mar 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781490728278

Gerit L. Fenega

The author was a career Marine Corps veteran of twenty-eight years of active duty. In late ’66 (when this account begins), he was half-way through his service career. An infantry officer during the Korean War but desiring clean sheets and at least one hot meal a day, he went into aviation during the time of switchover from props to jets. He has a degree in political science from the University of Rhode Island and has received twenty-two personal decorations.

Book preview

Copyright 2014 Gerit L. Fenenga.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4907-2826-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-2823-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-2827-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014903278

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Trafford rev. 06/12/2015

33164.png www.trafford.com

North America & international

toll-free: 1 888 232 4444 (USA & Canada)

fax: [phone]

CONTENTS

Preface

Foreword

Chapter 1 Going Overseas

Chapter 2 Going All The Way

Chapter 3 Chu Lai

Chapter 4 Squadron Routine

Chapter 5 Breaks In The Routine

Chapter 6 Decorations And Awards

Chapter 7 A Perfect Mission

Chapter 8 Rotation To Japan

Chapter 9 Lessons Learned

Epilog

PREFACE

The author was a career U.S. Marine Corps regular officer at the midpoint of his career when first called upon to serve in Vietnam. While a great number of eyewitness accounts of the conflict have been written, the author has found little of the literature of that war by middle-level managers that give an accurate depiction of the day-by-day actions of combat/combat support units.

Accounts by battalion and squadron commanders are almost nonexistent in the ever-expanding description of Vietnam. Those closest to the gunfire, yet remote enough to give some perspective to unit actions have neither told their story nor had it adequately been told for them. Memoirs and grand strategy on one end of the military spectrum and squad and platoon recounting of being lost in a quagmire are legion. It is to the middle of the muddle that this book attempts to address itself.

The author apologizes for the use of the first person in the telling of this tale. Embarrassed by the number of times the I word appears, he could not relate this story in any other cogent way.

This is the way it was in Vietnam in a marine corps attack squadron during one year, in one region, at one base.

—G.L. Fenenga

SNAKE LEAD

PENGUIN SIX

ANCIENT ONE

OXWOOD TWO DASH ONE

RED

image1.jpg

FOREWORD

The chronicles of war are largely authored by observers, not participants. Vietnam, our first televised war, made almost everyone an observer, who drew their conclusions from what was shown on the screen. What was seen was not what went on most of the time, or even a significant part of the time. Probably only one or two percent of all footage ever shot made it to the nightly news or extended specials that devoted more time but shone no more light on day-to-day activities than the edited news clips. Putting all bias aside, everything that was shown required photographing, a crew to enhance them, another crew to edit them to fit the voice over of another crew who wrote them, and so the viewer could not possibly miss the point, an anchor to introduce, highlight, read his own words (written by yet another crew) and by intonation and body language convey the real meaning to the viewer.

In this setting it should be unnecessary to point out that only shots deemed graphic, with lots of action, was even photographed. As years went on, cameramen and reporters knew the kind of event most likely to make it through the filtration system to get on the air. Like everyone wanting to be published (and stay on the payroll), they shot and reported those things likeliest to survive. A self-fulfilling prophesy develops, and in this milieu, it should not come as any surprise that the minute ten Vietnam segment on the nightly news was balanced with fifty seconds of canned antiwar protest.

Writing about war suffers some of the same fate as viewing them from afar. Many authors concern themselves with the grand sweep of events, reducing entire episodes to a microcosm fitting or reinforcing the authors point. On the other hand, squad and platoon writings depict so fine a detail that the reader is often also barred from seeing the forest amid so many trees. This book falls into neither of those categories.

The authors love of both flying and of his fellow marine come through intact and unadulterated. The many vignettes capture both the highlights of a very finite time and specific place and yet display universal experience from every conflict.

The confined cockpit of modern fighter or attack aircraft rarely held a cameraman or outside observer of any kind. Only participants occupied those seats and shared that view. Those of us who have had the high honor of doing so will relish the author’s rush as he moves around the skies during combat. In the words of one aircraft group commander… was so realistic that I damned near suited up for one more Tally Ho. Those who wonder what it was really like will find this tale illuminating and told with the straightforward manner always associated with marines. The unbrindled privilege of command, coupled with the absolute acceptance of responsibilities that accompany it shines like the glint of gold in a pan of gravel.

Finally, the lessons learned, that is the management of force in a democratic society, are ones crucial to our survival as a free and independent peoples. The author encapsulates all the major steps any administration, then, now, or future should follow to best pursue and achieve the nation’s interests.

Andrew W. O’Donnell

Lieutenant General

U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.)

Kailua, Hawaii

September 1989

Democracy is the best system of government yet devised, but it suffers from one grave defect . . . it does not encourage the military virtues upon us, in an envious world, it must frequently depend for survival.

—Guy Du Maurier

image2.jpg

Chapter I GOING OVERSEAS

The steady murmur of the turbojet engines and the slight pulsations of high altitude flight were reassuring signs that progress was being made toward our destination. This aircraft was just another in a near endless chain of chartered Continental Airlines Boeing 707s, transporting an ever increasing number of individual replacements to Vietnam. What a way to go to war! Endless orders with endless endorsements of which one needed endless copies to substantiate nonreimbursable travel claims. From Travis Air Force Base, near San Francisco, to Kadena Air Force Base, Okinawa, all ranks, services, and sexes thrown together on this journey with but one common denominator—the happenstance of scheduling that put us on this airplane, this date, for a common destination.

The contrast with the way I had previously gone to war was immense. Little more than a dozen years prior, I, along with my entire regiment had embarked on a general class troopship, with all our equipment, to land with unit integrity upon the shores of Asia.

Perhaps it was the almost imperceptible unsteadiness of the 707s motion which suggested that we were riding an ocean of air as well as crossing an ocean, once again heading for the Orient. Vastly unlike travel aboard ship where one had a month to settle down, get to know and trust your charges and companions, cover last minute training or administrative deficiencies, spend hour upon hour of watching the endless sea while steeling oneself for the coming storm, and establishing and exercising the chain of command. Movement by air was over in a day or less. No time for mental preparation, the psyche to adjust, conjecture about the future or reinforcement from your peers and superiors—just Muzak, movies, and meals. The fleeting thought that as unsatisfactory a method of transportation to battle as this was, it was one hell of a lot easier than our adversaries departure down the Ho Chi Min trail—on foot—with all his belongings on his back as well as someone else’s ammunition, and with little hope of either a safe- or scheduled-return.

As for myself, I had completed almost fifteen years in the U.S. Marine Corps, had a wife, two kids, a dog, and a mortgage, and was starting my third unaccompanied overseas tour. My feelings were extremely ambivalent in that I detested leaving my family, even overnight, yet looked avidly forward to flying in combat. If I let myself dwell on the enforced separation from family, I could easily succumb to the thousand yard stare in the ten-foot room, or what we termed going Asiatic. Once west of Hawaii, one had to alter their outlook. Lock all the pleasant memories of home, heart, and family in a subconscious portion of the brain and store twelve months for recall. Think of it as a one year Certificate of Deposit and don’t dwell on it while it earns and matures.

During the Korean War, I had been a rifle platoon leader in the First Marine Division. I enjoyed the independence and decision making but not the living conditions. I vowed that if I had to go to another battlefield, it would not be as a grunt. I applied for flight school, got my wings, and could at long last employ my years of training as an attack pilot. That is, I could if I could dodge the many rear echelon jobs that had to be filled. It is almost axiomatic that headquarters and staff billets must be fully manned before any thought could be given to filling tactical units.

My current rank as a major didn’t enhance those odds as you were subject to assignment to any job that called for a captain to a colonel. Another hazard was having some kind of specialty tagged on to your records. Hmmm… I see you have a Q clearance… speak Swahili… have a degree in Chemistry… attended postgrad school: each can be the kiss of death toward assignment to a tactical unit. In turn, the specialty can relegate your entire tour to the third floor of some obscure building, where no one else is quite sure how to utilize the specialty that brought you there. The final hurdle is that of having a friend in personnel. By and large, escape from the drudgery of his job is dependent upon convincing whoever has by Direction authority that his ideal replacement has just walked in the door. Fat, dumb, and happy, you wander in and are delivered a fait accompli!

Approaching Okinawa, I have prepared myself to meet most of the aforementioned hazards. I have timed my arrival to very early in the month (3 November) knowing that most replacements come later in the month and earlier in the year. Most come during the summer, mistakenly thinking their priorities are to get the family settled and the kids in school by September. By autumn’s end, the critical jobs should all be filled, and it’s too early to begin replacements.

As to being a specialist, I have carefully excised any such information from my Officers Qualification Jacket during prior tours as either an administrative or commanding officer of former units. Thus, the official records which I must present, and are scrutinized by each headquarters through which I must pass, look as bland and unremarkable as the expurgated SS files of Kurt Waldheim. As a last resort, I am ready to feign amnesia, throw a fit, wait until everyone goes to lunch, or outright bribe an otherwise gung ho and straight forward clerk.

One nonadministrative hazard that one needs to trickle down to a gun squadron is to be current and qualified: in type (light attack), model (A-4), and series (E), of the tactical aircraft assigned to the unit. For the previous year, I had been the CO of a Marine Air Base Squadron, a nonflying unit that holds the deployable air field assets of an aircraft group. Not the ideal place to get current, much less transition to a different model aircraft, which I had to do. Ground school, emergency procedures trainer, ejection seat checkout, fitting out for equipment unique to the new aircraft, water survival, and a run through the high altitude pressure chamber all had to be accomplished before one could even interest the group operations officer into assigning you to one of the tactical squadrons to begin their checkout and familiarization flights.

The Douglas A-4 Skyhawk had been around for almost ten years and was up to their E series when I started this transition. Progressing through the familiarization, formation, instruments, and tactics syllabus, I even got to tag along with a gun squadron on its deployment to the complex of air-to-ground targets and ranges near Yuma, Arizona. I got about thirty hours and maybe that many hops in the various ordnance delivery patterns before I got called back to my home base in Beaufort, South Carolina, to put a steadying hand on my own squadron.

There were other requirements to meet or schools to attend, all of which simply got written up in my records… sans attendance. Mostly there wasn’t the time to crowd them in, the remainder were just plain odious. In either case, I could show that I had attended Survival School, Aircrew Escape and Evasion Course, Vietnamese Indoctrination, and Sensitivity to Minorities (ours, not theirs) Class. I’ve skipped others, but by now you get the drift.

I have struggled to get sixty hours of flight time in the aircraft that I will fly in combat for the next year, and have a thousand hours of classroom trivia, only some of which will be marginally useful, and all of which was directed from on high. To balance some of the shortfall of experience in this aircraft, I had accumulated some 2500 hours of flight time, most of which was in single-seat fighter and attack aircraft. My confidence level is very high that I will meet or exceed norms as soon as I gain a little more familiarity in the cockpit of a Skyhawk.

Sixty miles out of Okinawa, the Fasten Seat Belt sign blinks on. You notice the reduction of power, not from the sound of the engines, but by the slight change in cabin pressure as we start a long, gradual descent. Below ten thousand feet and closer to the island the first faint odor of the Orient began to be pumped through the air exchange system and into the cabin. It is difficult to explain, but as one approaches the Far East, one can smell it. A mixture of the earthy and the exotic, Asia can be recognized from miles off her coast. Like the first time a Midwesterner smells the salt air of an ocean, the olfactory glands are alerted of a new environment. Sniffing the air, not in any pejorative sense, I now have my bearings. It is as if one approaches a Greek restaurant, or passes a Danish bakery, each with their own distinctive aromas, that evoke those forgotten associations.

Memories of Asia start flooding back in such a number and disordered chronology that my now active grey matter goes to overload and I cannot sort out time, place, or happenstance. Had there been more time on the approach before the No Smoking warning came on, perhaps I could have sorted out my thoughts into a logical sequence of things past. Thump, thump went the landing gear as they locked into place and bump as we touch down. I subconsciously give the civilian pilot a five point seven out of six for the landing. With a fixed smile and a hope-you-had-a-nice-flight from one of the stews, it’s welcome to Kadena Air Force Base, Okinawa.

It was late afternoon local time and not quite drizzling. One is instantly aware of the high humidity. Should have my raincoat at hand, passes through my mind. The departure briefing at Travis should have covered expected arrival weather rather than avoidance of a new and rather pernicious form of venereal disease.

For all our egalitarian assemblage and treatment aboard the 707, moments after departing the aircraft, an abrupt change occurs as soldiers, sailors, marines, and air force personnel drift apart for individual service processing. Within services, officers and enlisted are placed on separate transportation and female service members are weeded out for processing and billeting. I’d been on Okinawa many times before, and each return found more headquarters, more housing, more permanence, more westernization, higher costs and less desirability than the time before. I do not yet know how long the processing is supposed to take, but I’m not looking forward to even one night. I begin to plot my most expeditious departure from this half-Ryukuan, half-American archipelago by chicanery and subterfuge if official procedure is overlong.

Since last here, a huge administrative complex to manage all marine corps facilities on Okinawa had been established. I had not yet seen Camp Butler, as this facility was called, but intuitively knew I did not want to get ensnared in its tentacles. As a field grade officer, a staff car was here to whisk me away to Butler. It threw the driver a little when I told him to take me to Futenma first. Futema was the Marine Corps Air Station in Okinawa, and I knew I could find a friendly face to put me up at the Bachelor Officer Quarters without check-in or other mickey mouse for as long as I would remain on the island. As it was Happy Hour time when we arrived, I had him pull up to the Officer’s Club while I ran in… found someone I knew… borrowed his key… drove to the BOQ and deposited my gear on the empty bed in his room… and rejoined the driver with only my orders in my hand. Thence on to the proper destination for whatever my fate was to be.

Driving to Camp Butler was even worse than I had envisioned. Six o’clock on a drizzly evening and we sat in traffic eight thousand miles from Los Angeles in a near grid lock! Jesus Christ! Just a dozen years ago, at this very same spot, you could have fired a cannon down the road and not endangered a soul! Multilaned divided highways, overhead signals, curbs, and sidewalks too, and we were nowhere near downtown. Where the hell had all the bars and jo-sans gone? I guessed they had retired, bought the adjacent property with their savings, decried the number of honky-tonks in the area, had them all removed and demanded all the trappings of western suburbia. I knew it was senseless to question the young driver. He probably thought this was the way it had always been. Thomas Wolfe’s observation that one can never go home needs expansion to include the admonition that one can never return anywhere… and have conditions remain as they were.

At the Butler gate, my worst fears were confirmed. Landscaped approaches, permanent buildings, sodium vapor lights, and not a hand lettered sign to be seen. I wondered, almost aloud, what was going to keep the troops busy for their tour—there weren’t even any rocks to paint.

Arriving at this time of day was no fluke either. As part of my hazard avoidance planning, I assumed there would be no decision makers aboard at this time of day so I could feel out the lay of the land with one or two sharp clerks who I figured would be the only ones on duty. Find out from them who the aviation assignment officer was, what current policy was, and if perchance, there were any tentative assignment lists around. My driver pulled up to one of the few manufactured or temporary buildings in the camp. It was marked: Westpac Transient Personnel Processing. Well lighted from the exterior, I anticipated a single unshaded bulb dangling from the ceiling, as I