The Mission That Never Was: Then, Now, or Ever

By Matthew T. Baker

"The Mission" is a fictional/fantasy about a young man who realizes his lifelong dream of becoming a Naval Aviator in a most unusual manner. Set in the late Vietnam era, readers will follow Mark Hixon on his journey to the wildest of missions, and they will be left with the question, is this just a story, or did the mission really happen? Only Mark Hixon knows the answer to that question.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483672380

Matthew T. Baker

Matthew T. Baker is a seasoned professional in the Marine Sales Industry and Education. He serves as the Sales/Finance Manager of a large marina in Northeast PA, and he is an Adjunct Science Professor at colleges in and around Scranton, PA. Mr. Baker holds a BS and an MEd from Kutztown University, and Administrative letters from Lehigh University. He resides on a large lake with his wife, three dogs and three cats.

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Chapter 1

Career Decisions

As a young man beginning high school in the fall of 1967, in America it was a confusing, difficult, and trying time. The conflict in Southeast Asia had been raging since the early ’60’s with no end in sight, radical youth were beginning to amass to protest the war and the casualties which came as a result, and in general, Americans were beginning to wonder why we were still fighting a war which made no sense to any of us. At this point in my life, I had a deep seeded love for America, had grown up in a very patriotic home, my father was a Recon Marine in WWII, and even though many of my friends were against the war, I wanted to participate and serve my country. My father would always say to me, son, the Marines always take the shit, the Army always gets the credit for it, but the Navy always gets paid for it, and besides, in the Navy you always get to ride and usually have a dry place to sleep and pretty good chow. My dad said If you are going to go into the service, you make sure that it is the Navy, not the Marines.

Thinking about what my dad had said, along with the fact that I had always been in love with the water and had a boat since I was 6, the thought of a naval career really appealed to me when I was 13 or 14 years old. The more I thought about the Navy, and considered the things that a young man could do in that branch of the services, the thoughts of flying off into the wild blue yonder got my full attention. Thus, in the summer before my sophomore year, I had made my decision, I would pursue a career as a Naval Aviator, flying all of those wonderful aircraft off of the deck of some mighty carrier, anywhere in the world. Nothing in life could be more exciting and fulfilling, and that was that!

In the first week of school at Dundaff H.S, as an incoming sophomore, you were introduced to you Guidance Counselor, the person whose responsibility it was to guide you toward graduation and a viable job after that. My guy was Mr. McMichael, and my appointment was set for the first Tuesday afternoon at 1:00 in Mr. M’s office after lunch.

Mr. McMichael was a big, burly guy, in his late 30’s, and one of the asst. football coaches at Dundaff. When I came into his office, he invited me to sit down and then Mr. M. said well Mark, what are you plans for the rest of you life? As it was, I was fully prepared to give him a direct answer. I said Mr. M., my dad was a Mud Marine, my grandfather is a local businessman with some good political connections, and I plan to go the Naval Academy in Annapolis, my grandfather was sure he could get me an appointment, I will study hard, get my commission, and then I want to FLY JETS. At that point, Mr. M. leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his neck and said Mark, do you see the glasses on your face, in order to fly a jet, the Navy requires that you have 20/20 vision in order to be a pilot. I believe that we need to explore a different path for you. I was pretty devastated at this point, my goal had been crushed in one fell swoop, but I thought, this man must know his business and he must be correct.

Mr. M. then said to me, Mark, if you don’t have a future as a pilot, what would be your next choice? I thought about it for a while and then I said, I guess maybe I should look into a career as a teacher, what subjects would you teach Mr. M. said. Since my best subject in Jr. high school was social studies, I said well, history and social studies would work the best for me, since I always got A’s in both. Mr. M. then said to me, if you plan to find a job after college, you need to consider another field of study, social studies teachers are a dime a dozen, you need to make a better choice. Then I said, well, my next best courses were the sciences, Biology in particular, I guess we better get me on a track to become a Science Teacher. Mr. M. prepared my course schedule, and I was on my way.

DUNDAFF HIGH SCHOOL, SEPTEMBER

1967-JUNE 1970

Mr. McMichael did a great job of putting together the core courses I would need to a great, well rounded HS education, along with preparing me for my upcoming 4 years on the college level. There were of course the normal English, History, Psychology, and Social Science courses. In Math, he made sure that I had Algebra I+II, and most important, as it came to pass, Trigonometry. In the Sciences, we selected a wide variety of Biology classes, Chemistry and Physics of course, and even an elective in Astronomy. We had an Astronomy Lab at the school, a gift from President John F. Kennedy in 1962. The strangest course that Mr. M. recommended to me was Geography, this turned out to be a gift from the heavens as it was to apply to my future.

My instructor for the Geography class was a Mr. Mack, a shorter fellow in his late 30’s who had been teaching for the past 5 years, after he had done a 4 year hitch in the Navy, as the pilot of the Navy’s HH-1 Jolly Green Giant Search and Rescue helicopter. As time went on, I found Geography to be fascinating, especially the part of the course which dealt with the Earth’s lines of longitude and latitude. My favorite part of the course had to do with Navigation, and as it turned out, I had quite an ability in the art of navigating. This would come to be very important for me in the not too distant future.

The Geography course was normally my last class for the day before dismissal, and one day, after a test dealing with navigation and placements of areas on the Earth, Mr. Mack asked me to stay after the class for a time, he had something to discuss with me. At this time I was a first semester Senior. Mr. Mack said, what do you plan to do when you graduate from high school? I told him about my meeting with Mr. M. when I was a sophomore and the fact that I had wanted to be a pilot, but had to settle for being just a Science Teacher. Mr. Mack said do you still want to fly?, You can fly in an aircraft and still wear glasses, you just can’t be the pilot. He went on to say, I have seen that you seem to have a gift for navigation, both the Air Force, and the Navy have a great need for gifted navigators. I said, my real desire was to fly off of the deck of a very large carrier from anyplace in the world. It was at this point Mr. Mack told me about a Naval 2-man Jet Bomber called the A-6 Intruder, built by Grumman, and in-service on many of the Navy’s carriers. The aircraft carried the pilot in the left seat, and sitting next to the pilot, on the right was the BN, bombardier-navigator, responsible for everything going on in the aircraft other than flying it. Mr. Mack said, maybe you might want to research this a bit more, if you come up with other questions, you can always ask me, in my time, I have pulled a couple of Intruder crews out of the drink. At that, I picked up my books and headed home.

The balance of my senior year at Dundaff was in a word, uneventful. I had made an application to the Naval Academy, but even with the sponsorship of my grandfather’s friend, the congressman, my grades and my SAT scores were not high enough to qualify for Annapolis. In late April of 1970, I got a letter of acceptance from Kale State College, located in a small college town about 100 miles from home. Being this far away, I would need to live on campus since it was much too far to commute. Needless to say, my grandfather was very disappointed at the news that I was not going to go to Annapolis. My father, although disappointed as well said, listen, you don’t have to be book smart to be street smart. Study hard at Kale, learn all that you can, work on your navigation skills and sharpen them to a tee, and when you graduate, enlist in a four year program with the Navy, go to OCS, get your commission, and pursue your dream in the Intruder program. On 15 June 1970, I graduated from old Dundaff High, number 156 of 302 seniors with a 2.75 QPA, not enough for Annapolis, but as time would show, exactly 3 years from this day, enough for me to fulfill my dream.

Chapter 2

Turmoil in Southeast Asia

THE WAR in VIETNAM: SUMMER 1955 thru DECEMBER 1972

Back in the mid-1950’s, Vietnam was referred to as French Indochina, basically a colony of the French Nation. Eventually, two new nations were formed after the French relinquished their colonial rights. North Vietnam, a communist regime nation supported by the Soviet Union and Red China, and South Vietnam, a fledgling, shaky, and mostly corrupt democracy supported by the US and her anti-communist allies. The 1st Indochina War occurred in the late 1950’s, and the US, under the direction of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, sent military advisors to South Vietnam to assist the ARVN, Army of Vietnam. Much military aid and hardware came along with the advisors.

Thru 1960, and into 1962, the number of military advisors, aid, and military hardware escalated dramatically. It is thought by some, that one evening in the White House, after The Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962, Robert F. Kennedy (RFK), advised his brother John F. Kennedy (JFK), then President of the US, that it would be in the best interest of the country for the US to sever ties with South Vietnam, and bring ALL of our military forces back to the states. JFK considered this recommendation with great interest, and there are those close to the President who fully believed that this was what he planned to do before his re-election campaign in 1964. JFK was never able to implement his ideas since on 22 November 1963 he was assassinated on the streets of Dallas, TX. Some people believe that the motive behind the assassination was JFK’s decision to leave Vietnam.

In the afternoon of 22 November, on Air Force One, traveling back to Washington, Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) was sworn in as the next President of the USA. LBJ went on to be re-elected to the office in November 1964. Early on in 1965, US forces from the Army, Navy, and the Air Force were deployed to South Vietnam, and the war in Southeast Asia went into full swing.

North Vietnam was allied to the Soviets and the Red Chinese. On 24 July 1965, it was discovered that the Russians and the Chinese had provided Surface-to-Air Missile Defense (SAM) systems to the North, since an American aircraft had been shot down by one of the missiles. The SA-2, Guideline, missile system is a land-based air defense system. The missile itself is 35 feet in length, weighs 4875 pounds with it’s attached booster, carries a 288 pound conventional warhead, and can fly out on a 25 mile range at Mach 3.5, up to a ceiling of 60,000 feet. SA-2’s had taken out high flying U-2 American Spy planes over the Soviet Union and Cuba in 1962. As it came to pass in Vietnam, tens of thousands of SAM’s would bring down a great many American warplanes with their