Jacksel Broughton: Thud Ridge

On his first few missions he is almost sure to use more fuel than any of the other flight members. He knows that he must maintain flight integrity and that he must go where his leader goes. Except for a few seconds on the dive-bomb run itself, he must maintain tallyho, or visual contact with all his flight-mates. This is not always easy to do with a big bombload, and until he learns the tricks, he will make up time and space by lots of burner. The afterburner, which gives additional power but on the Thud engine consumes fuel as fast as you could pass it through the necks of six milk bottles at once, is activated by simply pushing the hand-held throttle sideways. The flight leader is responsible for steering properly, or maintaining the correct heading, and he is responsible for putting all of the flight in the right place at the proper airspeed. If the wingman fails to respond to his leader’s actions properly, he can plug in, or stroke the burner, to cover up, but his fuel supply will tell the story. Each mission has an established minimum-fuel radio call to enable the leader to make fuel plans based on the man with the least fuel. It will be the new man who reaches this state first and calls bingo.

There is a good chance that during these early missions he will learn that what we call switch actions are not always as simple as they seem. There are nine separate switches that must be activated to insure that the bombs will leave the aircraft properly during the dive-bomb run, and the pilot sets them up when he crosses into enemy territory and the flight leader calls, “Clean ’em up, green “em up, and start your music.” If he forgets one—and when things get rough this is possible—it may cost his life. He had better learn to jink properly during these missions. That is the art of weaving, bobbing, twisting, and turning to avoid enemy gunfire as you come off the dive-bomb run. They used to call me the Super linker, but I never got hit coming off a target.

As he approaches the end of the first ten missions he will find his flight leader priming him more and more on things like the performance envelope of the Mig. He will learn where the Mig is at its best and where it is weakest. He will find what his particular leader expects when he calls “break” and throws his flight into a hard turn or into violent evasive action to avoid being shot down by an enemy aircraft. There will be no doubt in his mind that he will jettison, or toggle, his bombload short of the target only as a last-ditch life-or-death alternative.

If a Mig or anything else makes him toggle short of his target, he has been defeated. Moreover, in this war that pits high-speed fighters against small, hard-to-see targets in the middle of politically sensitive areas, he doesn’t want to give the enemy a chance to repeat his old song about bombing civilians. He must disregard the fact that “civilians” working in and around the big rail yards and those manning the supply dumps and the vehicle repair shops are the backbone of what he is fighting against. They don’t wear uniforms—they just haul ammunition. The first time he goes to Viet Tri he will be shot at from the “hospital,” but this is of no import. He must be accurate. Even if he gets in the life-or-death spot, the Thud driver will avoid the population. I cannot guarantee the precise detonation point of every bomb that has left every one of our aircraft over the North, but I can guarantee that I have never seen a Thud driver guilty of wanton bombing. We had several who should have toggled their loads but did not because the bombs would not have gone on their target. They got killed for their trouble.

By the time he -learns enough Thai to know that nit noy means “a little thing” and C H I Dooey means “sorry about that,” he will be through the first ten and ready to go against the North. The first time he pulls into the arming area as a member of a big strike force and watches the modified two-place Thuds take off with their wild weasels intent on killing the SAMs, who will be trying to kill him, his mouth will be unbelievably dry. Perhaps SAM will seek him out, or perhaps a Mig will put on a little air show for him and send a heat-seeking Atol missile his way. Perhaps a comrade will fall, and if the comrade is fortunate enough to get his parachute open, the automatically activated electronic emergency beeper will etch its screech on his memory forever. For sure the guns will fire on him, and for sure he will be impressed as he moves along Thud Ridge and uses North Vietnam’s own terrain to mask or block the view of the radar operators on the other side.

He will feel like a big man when he gets back from that first one up North, and that he is.

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Copyright © 1969 by Jacksel M. Broughton

Introduction copyright © 1969 by Hanson W. Baldwin

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 69-16959

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