Nail 48

By Phil Maywald

Lt. Colonel Phillip Maywald, USAF (Ret.), graduated from The United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) in the Class of 1963. The class of 63 was the first full size class, the first to go all four years at the permanent USAFA site in Colorado Springs, and the only class that had President Kennedy as its graduation speaker. Its future was entwined with the Viet Nam War even though that was not known until after its graduation. Eighteen of the class were killed in action, two were long term POWs and others were killed in training. The majority served in SEA. Phil Maywald considers himself an average member of the Class. He was average as a cadet and had an average career. But, many, if not all of his classmates, had opportunities to do extraordinary things and responded in ways that makes them proud to be graduates of USAFA and members of the Class of 63. Phil Maywald had that opportunity in combat as a forward air controller during the Viet Nam War and responded by winning the Air Force Cross, one of fifteen USAFA graduates from all classes to receive the highest award the Air Force can award for heroism, the only higher award being the Congressional Medal of Honor. This is the account of the combat actions and the USAFA background that shaped him and led to that award. It was written to honor the class of 63.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514430903

Phil Maywald

Lt. Colonel Phillip Maywald entered the U.S. Air Force Academy in June 1959 graduating on June 5, 1963. During his Air Force career he flew T-37s, T-38s, B-52s, O-1s, O-2s, T-39s, and C-131s. During the the Viet Nam War, he was as an O-1/O-2 forward air control pilot with the 23rd Tactical Air Support Squadron at Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai AFB, Thailand, and with the 606th Air Commando Squadron at Udorn Royal Thai AFB, Thailand, from August 1967 to August 1968. He was awarded the Air Force Cross and three Distinguished Flying Crosses for his actions in combat. His flying assignments culminated as Squadron Commander of the 90th Flying Training Squadron at Sheppard AFB, Texas flying T-38s. He was a flight test engineer for the operational testing of the F-15 and A-10. His final Air Force assignment was Director of Propulsion Testing at the Arnold Engineering and Development Center at Arnold AFB, Tennessee, from July 1981 until his retirement from the Air Force in 1984. After retirement from the Air Force, he was employed by Sverdrup Technology at Arnold AFB as the Manager for Advanced Technology Projects from 1984 until 1997. Currently he is an FAA flight instructor with over 9000 flight hours. He and his wife Bobbie had four daughters, Karen, Kimberly, Kristen, and Kelly. Kelly succumbed to cancer in 2013. They have twelve grandchildren, nine boys and three girls, and one great grandson.

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Copyright © 2016 by Phil Maywald. 724914

ISBN:   Softcover            978-1-5144-3089-7

             Hardcover           978-1-5144-3091-0

             EBook                  978-1-5144-3090-3

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Rev. date: 12/29/2015

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Preface

The United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) Class of 1963’s future was entwined with the Viet Nam War even though we did not know that until after our graduation. It ended the lives of eighteen of us in combat and two classmates were long term POWs; others were killed training to go to SEA. The majority of us served in SEA. The purpose of this book is to tell the reader how we came to be entwined with that war and our service to our country during that period. It is written as a first person account of memories. I consider myself an average member of the Class. I was average as a cadet and had an average career. But, there were times in my career that I had an opportunity to do extraordinary things. Many, if not all of my classmates, had like opportunities and responded in ways that make all of us proud to be graduates of USAFA and members of the Class of 63. I think by telling the story of an average member of the class the reader will come to appreciate how we came to do what we did and why we did it in our service during the war. It is not a novel; it is not a researched scholarly work. It is a personal recollection and facts dim after fifty years. If there are discrepancies discovered in the facts; which I am certain there will be, it is due to my recollection not any deliberate misrepresentation. When I considered stories that might have different recollections, I chose to research some for facts and others I did not because my recollections were what I thought would evoke the emotions of those occurrences. I mention a lot of names along the way. I assure the reader that any name, I mention is the name of a person I respect and am proud to know or have known or even in some third person accounts wish I had known. If the story about a person has a negative context, I do not name them. There is one politically prominent name that is an exception. There are those who are presented in a positive context that I do not recall their names. I do not distinguish between these cases. I will allow the reader to decide. I have not received releases from all of the people I mention and consider that impossible. So, if your name is here, your father’s or your grandfather’s I respect yours or theirs service to our nation.

Acknowledgment

A special thanks to Jimmie Butler Col. USAF Ret., USAFA Class of 1963, for his photos, maps, editing, and friendship. He is the author of several books including A Certain Brotherhood which is a fictionalization of the Nail Forward Air Controllers.

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgment

Chapter One

Love Field, Dallas, Texas, July 26, 1967

Chapter Two

Selection for the Air Force Academy

Chapter Three

Cadet Basic Training Summer

Chapter Four

Four Years in Fighting Fourth

Chapter Five

Pilot Training Miracle

Chapter Six

Pilot Training Ups and Downs

Chapter Seven

A Thousand Hours in B-52s

Chapter Eight

Survival Training

Chapter Nine

Volunteering for Viet Nam

Chapter Ten

FAC Training

Chapter Eleven

The Road to NKP

Chapter Twelve

Binh Thuy and Bangkok

The First Time

Chapter Thirteen

Checkout at NKP

Chapter Fourteen

East of the River

Chapter Fifteen

Life in Laos

Chapter Sixteen

Memorable Raven Missions

Chapter Seventeen

Return to NKP

Chapter Eighteen

Binh Thuy

The Second Time

Chapter Nineteen

Back At NKP

Chapter Twenty

Christmas 1967

Chapter Twenty One

Nails and Navy P2Vs

Chapter Twenty Two

Hawaii

The First Time

Chapter Twenty Three

Khe Sahn

Chapter Twenty Four

Terror from Above and Below and Sideways

Chapter Twenty Five

Odd Balls

Chapter Twenty Six

Fires

Chapter Twenty Seven

Hawaii

The Second Time

Chapter Twenty Eight

Ubon

Chapter Twenty Nine

Jerry’s Rescue

Chapter Thirty

Grounded from Combat

Chapter Thirty One

POWs

Chapter Thirty Two

Return to Combat

Chapter Thirty Three

Award Ceremony

Chapter One

Love Field, Dallas, Texas, July 26, 1967

I was tired. I was tired, and my wife and three daughters, four years, two years, and four months old were waiting behind the line at the ticket counter. Bobbie was holding Kristen with Karen and Kimberly staying close, their exuberant personalities abnormally subdued. They knew this was not a normal day. I was dressed in a pair of khaki trousers and a pull over shirt. My luggage consisted of matching olive drab canvas bags, one an A-2 duffel bag and the other a B-4 flight gear bag. I was tired because I had been spending every day for two weeks getting my family settled in a rental house in Mineola, Texas that required a lot of my work to make livable. The only acceptable rental in the small East Texas town of 5,000 where Bobbie had lived with her family for her twelve years of grade school, junior high, and high school. Two weeks of adding two twenty wiring under the supervision of Bobbie’s father, an electrician who had been crippled in a fall twelve years before, for the dryer and air conditioners, buying and installing a refrigerator, air conditioners, a used gas range, washer and dryer, all appliances that we had been furnished previously in our Air Force base housing, putting up a fence for the dog, and a swing set for the girls. Two weeks of playing with the girls every minute I could, taking them swimming and to the playground. Two weeks of loving my wife every night until we had to sleep; trying to make the two weeks into a lifetime. I kissed my wife and daughters and boarded the plane to San Francisco. I knew that Bobbie would not show the girls her worries and sorrows for fear that they would be alarmed.

Love Field was a rich man’s airport; elegant as no airports are today. Neiman Marcus was located in the airport selling furs, jewelry, perfume, and night gowns. The restaurants served excellent food in a leisurely manner. The wealthy Dallas oil men and Fort Worth cattlemen went in and out, flying Braniff and American on their way to New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Europe and South America in a refined, unhurried manner. I had flown to and from Love Field many times, always to meet or leave Bobbie. I had purchased night gowns and perfume at Neiman to greet her with presents. While I was at the Air Force Academy, I had spent every leave period, Christmas, summer, and weekends, I had traveling to and from Texas to see Bobbie. Sometimes via a military hop into Carswell AFB at Fort Worth, sometimes driving with other cadets, and sometimes driving by myself but quite often flying in and out of Love Field. As a first classman, senior year, I was entitled to a weekend leave every month. With first class status we had been allowed to have cars and I had bought a Chevy II convertible before summer leave. The normal routine that year was to fly one way and drive one way each weekend leave, driving to Texas one month, leaving the car with Bobbie, flying back and then the next month flying down and driving back.

I am sure that I looked out of place at Love Field that day. I was tired, but I was not dead, and only a dead man would not have noticed the girl several places ahead of me in line. She looked like she belonged at Dallas Love Field. She looked like a rich man’s daughter. She appeared to be between twenty one and twenty five, a few years younger than I was. She was dressed in a simple dark suit, white blouse, pearl necklace and earrings with a long scarf tied around her neck. She was tall and shapely with blond hair piled high. She had a three bag set of matched leather luggage and a confident, assured manner that, for a person so young, could only have come from living the good life, every day of her life. She knew that the eyes of every man and most women would be attracted to her and she was confident and comfortable with that attention.

On the flight, I did not even wake for the meal. When I did rouse once or twice, I noticed the girl from the ticket line seated several aisles ahead of me talking animatedly with the older man seated next to her. At San Francisco, I retrieved my bags and carried them to the bus stop seeing her get in a taxi loaded by a skycap. I rode the bus downtown to the main bus station where I had to change to another bus to take me to Travis Air Force Base. I humped my bags from one bus to another, checking my watch to see that I had three hours, an hour to spare to get to Travis without being late. I looked out the window of the bus and saw a sight that made me remember that girl for more than forty years. She was walking down the sidewalk by the bus. Her hair was down and hanging on her shoulders. Her jacket was gone, the white blouse unbuttoned and out at the waist. The scarf was now tied around her waist. The seam of the skirt had been split front and back. The pearls were gone. The luggage was gone, replaced by a cloth tote bag. She was trying to light a funny looking cigarette. She had changed so much that I could not believe it was the same girl. What convinced me were her feet. She passed by the window and as she walked away, I watched the white soles of her bare feet turning blacker and blacker with each step on the dirty sidewalk, a sure indication that she had just taken off her shoes. She was on her way to Haight-Ashbury where she would risk her health to drugs. I was on my way to Viet Nam where I would risk my life and the welfare of my family in combat.

Then and today, I do not understand that girl, a person to whom I never even spoke, but who made a lifetime impression on me. I certainly have no reason to think that I made any impression on her lasting or temporary, but if I had, she would not have understood me any better than I understood her. I was not just being assigned to Viet Nam. I had volunteered for Viet Nam and worked every angle to be assigned there. We were each a part of that time.

Hayden Lockhart was on my mind that day. I graduated from the Air Force Academy in the class of 1963, entered pilot training, and finished in 1964. In March of 1965, I was in B-52 training at Castle AFB, Merced, California, when the Air Force went to Hanoi on the first raids north. Hayden Lockhart was in those first raids flying an F-100. The USAF quickly learned that the F-100, the first USAF supersonic fighter, was no match for the SAM and AAA sites in North Viet Nam. But, not before Hayden had been shot down, taken prisoner, and marched though the streets of Hanoi in chains for the television crews to film and send to the US networks for me and all the USA to see on the evening news. He was the first USAF pilot captured. Hayden had been two years ahead of me at the Academy, an upper classman in my cadet squadron, Fighting Fourth. One semester of his first class, senior, year, he lived on the fifth story of the east end of the cadet dormitory in the room next to the one occupied by Andy Nassir and myself. Later that year, Bob Hayes was my roommate in the same area. These rooms overlooked the parade ground and we could watch the sun rise, seemingly in Kansas, 150 miles to the east and 7250 feet lower than our elevation. A couple of months before my class graduated, Hayden had flown an F-100 back to Colorado Springs and several of my classmates and I had dinner with him and listened to him describe the trials and rewards of pilot training. At that time, pilot training was a seemingly unattainable dream for me. I had given up hope and applied to go directly to graduate school in astronautical engineering.

Chapter Two

Selection for the Air Force Academy

My route to the Academy was circuitous and uncertain. Flying had always been my dream initiated and fueled by my grandfather. My father enlisted in the Air Corps a few months after I was born in March of 1941 and was gone for the entire World War Two, WWII. My parent’s marriage did not survive the war. During the war, my mother and I lived with her parents in Texarkana, Texas. Their life long home was in Gilmer, Texas, but Texarkana offered a chance for good jobs and contributions to the war effort. My mother and grandfather worked at a defense plant, Red River Arsenal, while my grandmother worked at the post office. They all worked shifts. Whoever was not working took care of me. (Photo: Phil WWII Pilot) My grandfather would take me to the airport and the train station to watch the activity when it was his turn. My Borden grandparents had two daughters and, since I was the oldest grandchild and the only one who ever lived with him, it was natural that Grandfather Borden had dreams for me. Then and later, he encouraged me and convinced me that I was capable of achieving any ambitions.

My grandfather Borden had been a medic in World War I. After the war, he and my grandmother married and he worked at whatever he could do to make a living, finally becoming an automobile salesman. There were no autos to sell during WWII so he used his military experience to get a job as a guard at Red River. My grandparents saved their earnings during WWII and were, by country standards, reasonably well off after the War when my grandfather returned to selling cars. Grandfather Borden had purchased a farm in some type of Texas Veterans program soon after WWI. I was aware of where his boyhood home had been between Gilmer and Quitman and that his relatives had fought in the Civil War, one was buried at Vicksburg, Mississippi, but I knew nothing else about his family history. After WWII, my grandparents purchased a house in town in Gilmer where my grandmother lived until her death in 1998 at the age of 96. But, they kept their farm and their roots in the country.

My grandmother Borden had been a Thompson. Her grandmother had been from Jasper, Alabama. Her grandfather fought in and survived the Civil War. In the violent days after the war, he came upon some white men beating a black man who later died. He went to the sheriff and was going to testify at the trial. One night there was a knock on his door; he answered and was shot dead in his doorway. He had several children, girls and boys. The family knew who the murderers were, but there was no justice in Alabama for such a crime in those days. When the boys got old enough to start planning how they were going to kill the men who had killed their father, my great-great grandmother loaded the family in a wagon and went to Texas to break the cycle of violence. She would appear to have been a very strong willed woman. One of her sons was my grandmother’s father. I do not remember him at all but I vaguely remember my grandmother’s mother. I think my grandfather’s actions are a good indication of her character.

My grandfather ran the Latch Baptist Church, Latch was the name of the community where his farm was located. I do not mean that he was a deacon, which he was, or that he was the preacher, which he was not. I mean that he hired the preachers, decided who else would be deacons, built the new church building, decided that a parsonage was needed and built it, and took care of all other church business matters. The church was too small to have a choir, if there had been a choir, there would not have been enough people left for the congregation, but there was a pew beside the pulpit which was known as the choir pew. My grandfather sat there alone during the services. My grandmother would sit with her sisters. I would usually sit with my Maywald grandparents when I was there. Those were the days when preachers preached against things, against drinking, smoking, cursing, dancing, lipstick, and even dipping snuff. When the preacher mentioned the evils of dipping snuff, a wide spread practice of older ladies back then, my grandfather would get up and walk out of the service. That must have been a pretty strong message to the preachers he hired. His mother-in-law, my great-grandmother Thompson dipped snuff and he thought so much of her that if she dipped snuff, then there was nothing wrong with dipping snuff.

I remember her funeral, not just because it was the first funeral I ever attended, but because of my grandfather’s actions. When I knew my great-grandmother, she lived alone in a large house located several miles from the center of the Latch community, well away from any neighbors, with the exception of a black family, the Cy Boyd family, who lived on a hill behind her house. They took care of her. At her funeral, the church was full when the black family arrived; such a thing was not done in those days. The church went totally silent and every eye was on them as they waited in the door. My grandfather left his seat, went to them, shook their hands, and escorted them to sit with him on the choir pew. That settled the matter of their welcome. I was proud of him then and I am proud of him now.

My grandparents Maywald were from south Texas, Plantersville, about fifty miles north of Houston. My grandfather’s grandfather had emigrated from Germany arriving with his family, my great-grandfather a baby, at Galveston on the ship Neptune out of Bremen, in 1848. The family story concerning their arrival says that the Maywald family arrived without any money. The father secured a room in an attic for the family to spend the first night promising to pay in the morning. He played the fiddle and fiddled all night in a bar where enough money was tossed into his hat to pay for the room and food for the next day. At that time, there was free land in Texas for settlers which drew many European emigrants. Great-great-grandfather continued his fiddling every night until he could secure transportation to the free land and farm tools to work it, eventually settling in Fredericksburg, Texas. My great-grandfather fought for the South in the Civil War losing an arm. After the Civil War, he settled in Plantersville, Texas and became well to do, earning his money in timber and cattle. When I was in high school, trees were pointed out to me as some of the only virgin timber left in Texas because my great-grandfather had owned them and refused to let them be cut. My grandfather Maywald was born in 1882 and lived to be 96. My grandmother Maywald was ten years younger than my grandfather and lived to be 99. She was an Ely and her family had been in Texas before the Alamo and the Texas War of Independence. My great-grandfather’s land was divided between his children, and my grandfather lost his to mortgages and crop failures in the early 1920s.

Grandfather Maywald had worked on the first Texas oil well, Spindletop. When he lost his land, he took his family to Burkburnett where the North Texas oil boom started. He worked on the drilling rigs and when the East Texas oil boom started in the 1930s went to Gladewater, Texas, thirteen miles from Gilmer. He got a permanent job with Standard Oil as a pumper, the person who lived on the oil field and took care of a number of oil wells, pumping them in proper sequence to holding tanks, tank batteries, and then on to the pipe line. He had three sons and two daughters. Each of the sons became pumpers and one of the daughters married a pumper. When one of my uncles retired from Standard Oil in the 1970s, my grandfather went to his retirement and was recognized as the oldest living Standard Oil retiree. My grandmother continued to receive a Standard Oil retirement until she died. Right after WWII, my Maywald grandparents bought the farm next to my Borden grandparents’ farm. My parents were divorced, but each set of grandparents thought that the others were the best folks there could be. And, I never heard either of my parents say anything bad about the other.

My mother remarried in 1946 when I was five. I was six the first time I remember seeing my father. I lived with my mother and stepfather in Texarkana, but spent all holidays and the summer with both sets of grandparents in Gilmer, and with my father in various locations. The Maywalds taught me to hunt and fish, to ride and rope, to work on the farm, and to enjoy country life. My father encouraged me in sports, although I was never the athlete he had been in high school. But, it was only my grandfather Borden who encouraged me to achieve more than my parents and grandparents. My mother had done extremely well in high school, but met my father and married after one semester of college. She was the only family member who had ever entered college. Through my grandfather, I knew that I could make good grades in school, that I was expected to make good grades, and that I would go to college because of the good grades. My grandfather was diagnosed with cancer in the spring of 1955 and died