Surviving Hell

A POW'S Journey

Leo Thorsness

• Editorial: Encounter Books
• Año: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781594035470
• Categoría: Historia
• Categoría: Biografías militares

On April 19, 1967, Air Force Colonel Leo Thorsness was on a mission over North Vietnam when his wingman was shot down by an enemy MiG, which then lined up for a gunnery pass on the two American pilots who had bailed out. Although his F 105 was not designed for aerial combat, Thorsness engaged the MiG and destroyed it. Spotting four more MiGs, he fought his way through a barrage of North Vietnamese SAMs to engage them too, shooting down one and driving off the others. For this action, Thorsness was awarded the Medal of Honor. But he didn't learn about it until years later—by a "tap code" coming through prison walls—because on April 30, Thorsness was shot down, captured, and transported to the Hanoi Hilton. Surviving Hell recounts a six-year captivity marked by hours of brutal torture and days of agonizing boredom. With a novelist's eye for character and detail, Thorsness describes how he and other American POWs strove to keep their humanity. Thrown into solitary confinement for refusing to bow down to his captors, for instance, he disciplined his mind by memorizing long passages of poetry that other prisoners sent him by tap code. Filled with hope and humor, Surviving Hell is an eloquent story of resistance and survival. No other book about American POWs has described so well the strategies these remarkable men used in their daily effort to maintain their dignity. With resilience and resourcefulness, they waged war by other means in the darkest days of a long captivity.

CHAPTER 1

MEDAL OF HONOR MISSION

On April 19, 1967, my backseater, Harry Johnson, and I took off from the Takhli Air Base in Thailand and headed for North Vietnam. We were counting down the few missions we had to go before reaching the magic number of 100, which provided a ticket home from Vietnam. We had about a dozen to go. By this time, we were the lead F-105F “Wild Weasel” crew.

The two-man Weasels were designed to deal with the Soviet surface-to-air missile (SAM) installations. Originally, the plane was called the Mad Mongoose, but the Air Force discovered that this name was already taken and so it became the Wild Weasel. We affectionately referred to the F-105 as the “Thud” because it was unwieldy and lumbering, but reliable with a strong heart. The guys in the bombers were particular fans because we took out the SAM sites so they made it out alive after dropping their loads.

Just a few weeks earlier, a Weasel flight usually involved a two-man crew, like Harry—the Electronic Warfare Officer (EWO)—and me, in an F-105F, and three wingmen in the single-seater F-105D. But more F-105Fs were arriving and, on the way back home after a successful mission, Harry and I came up with the idea of having two Weasels in our flight and splitting the four planes into two elements just before entering the target area. If we put one two-man Weasel along with a single seat F-105D on each side of the target, we could attack two SAM sites simultaneously instead of just one. By this point in the war, the entire North Vietnamese defense system—flak gunners, MiG pilots, SAM site operators—had set reactions when an attack—24 American planes—headed their way. Under the new scenario Harry and I worked out, by the time the Weasel flight split, they would have their game plan set and would not be able to make last-minute adjustments.

Of course, there was a down side to the plan. Splitting the flight meant that each half would have only one leader and one wingman to watch for surprise SAM launches and sneaky MiGs. And we would have less firepower. We would have just two planes with bombs to wipe out the SAMs, destroy their radar and control van, and kill the launch crew.

On April 19, our target was the Xuan Mai army barracks and a storage supply in the flat delta area 30 miles southwest of Hanoi. As we refueled over Laos, we had a flight of four F-4 Phantoms to defend us against MiGs and four flights of four F-105D strike aircraft—Thuds heavily loaded with bombs to hit the SAM installations.

The second Weasel crew in my flight was Jerry Hoblit and his EWO, Tom Wilson: both experts at their job. Jerry and I had known one another for years and had the “split-the-Weasel-flight” system down pretty good.

We were still about 80 miles from the target area when Harry radioed me, “It’s going to be a busy day, we’ve already got two SAMs looking at us with acquisition radar, and there are bound to be more.”

The closer we got, the more SAM sites were tracking us. A SAM’s practical range was about 17 miles. We carried an AGM-45 SHRIKE missile that homed in on the SAM’s radar, but its range was about seven miles. They got to shoot first. That was their advantage. Ours was that if they missed, we had a window of opportunity to kill them. The camouflage on their sites was useless once they launched, as the SAM kicked up debris and often left a smoke or vapor trail that we could home right onto.

As we approached our preplanned split, about 25 miles southwest of the target, our SAM scope was overflowing; no less than four sites were tracking us, plus several 85mm flak radars. To keep from alerting the enemy on the radio, we used visual signals. I gave a large fast rock of our wings, and Jerry and Tom split off. In our pre-flight briefing, we had decided that Jerry and his wingman would take the north side of the target area, Harry and I the south.

Airborne electronic intelligence aircraft, B-66s mostly, circled at a relatively safe distance and alerted us when MiGs were airborne. They transmitted on Guard frequency—the emergency channel. When our channel and Guard transmitted at the same time, both became garbled and hard to understand. That garble added to the age-old axiom: “more combat, more confusion.”

The high-pitched radio chatter was non-stop: multiple calls from the strike pilots calling out flak, MiG alerts coming over Guard channel, me listening to Harry, and Harry listening to me.

Suddenly Jerry and his wingman—Kingfish 3 and 4—were attacked by MiGs. The F-105 Weasel was never intended to be a dogfighter; it was designed to deliver nuclear weapons in a highspeed, low-altitude maneuver. Thud drivers called it a “great big airplane with itty-bitty wings.” The aerodynamically superior MiG —an aircraft built for air-to-air combat—could out-turn us, but we were faster and could outrun them.

When Kingfish 3 and 4 were attacked, Jerry in Kingfish 3 called out: “Kingfish 4, burner.” Jerry knew they could outrun and then outmaneuver the MiGs in afterburner. But Kingfish 4’s afterburner failed. His Thud couldn’t outrun the MiGs without his burner—his speed advantage was gone. Jerry, however, using all his skilland-cunning, was able to evade the MiGs and got himself and the crippled Kingfish 4 out of the area.

By now, Harry and I and Kingfish 2 were just rolling in to bomb our second hot SAM site. “Kingfish lead,” came the call from my wingman, “Kingfish 2 is hit!” As we pulled up out of our bomb run, I radioed him, “Kingfish 2, head southeast toward the hills, plug in burner, keep transmitting, and I’ll home in on you.” Pilot Tom Madison and EWO Tom Sterling kept transmitting. Madison soon said, “I’ve got more warning cockpit lights.” His voice echoed the tension; things were going from bad to worse fast.

As my automatic direction finder homed in on Tom’s transmission, it put them at my eleven o’clock position. As we reached the foothills I heard him again: “It is getting worse!” Within a few seconds, I heard the sickening sound of the beeper. Each parachute is equipped with a small radio transmitter attached to the lanyard of the chute. When a pilot ejects and his chute opens, the radio is activated. Each time I heard a beeper in North Vietnam, it knotted my stomach: Another American aviator had been shot down. The only good thing about hearing a beeper was that the aviator’s chute opened successfully. He had a chance. Within a few seconds we heard a second beeper—both flyers were out of the aircraft and had good chutes.

I saw them floating down about two miles ahead of us, their white chutes standing out clearly against the green foothills below. Off to my left, at about 10:30, I saw movement. It was a MiG-17. There was no doubt that he was beginning a strafing run on one of the parachutes. “Harry, keep your eyes peeled, I’m setting up on the MiG!” I cranked to the left, pulled up and rolled back right, ending up a bit higher than the MiG and in a nose-down, rightbank pursuit curve. The enemy pilot was concentrating on killing our pilots in their chutes and did not see us.

At 500 mph, I quickly overtook the MiG. I squeezed the trigger of the Gatling gun, but the one-second “buzz saw” burst missed. My nose-down path took me just below the MiG and slightly to his left, about 700 feet behind him. I pulled the trigger again. This time I saw his wing come apart.

As the MiG spiraled downward and crashed, Harry called, “Leo, we got MiGs on our ass!” I snapped my head left and saw the belly of a MiG about 1,000 feet back—a bad sight. If he was a good pilot, we were dead. I snapped to the right, dumped the nose and plugged in the afterburner. For a few seconds we were in the MiG’s range, but its bullets missed. In a few more seconds we were supersonic, and the MiGs quickly gave up the chase.

Our SHRIKE missile and bombs were used, and our 20mm ammo and fuel were both low. We were over the mountains west of Hanoi, out of SAM range and where MiGs were not a threat. We climbed southwest toward northern Laos and a refueling tanker.

“Brigham Control, this is Kingfish lead,” I radioed to the airborne command post orbiting over southern Laos out of harm’s way. “Kingfish 2, an F-105F with two crew, is down at 20’52” north latitude and 105’24” east longitude.”

“Roger Kingfish lead, copy: Kingfish 2 is down. Did you see parachutes?”

“Affirmative, and two good beepers.” I responded. “Advise any rescue aircraft there are a bunch of MiGs around, and the location is in SAM range.”

Brigham called up the rescue aircraft—World War II-era A-1E Skyraiders, nicknamed Sandys—and a rescue helicopter. The Sandy was a great rescue plane because it could absorb heavy ground fire and fly a long way at low altitude. The Sandys’ job was to make contact with the downed aviators, keep the enemy troops at bay, and direct the helicopter in if the aviators were alive and evading.

We were going out for fuel at the tanker as the Sandys were coming in. I gave them a call: “Sandy, be on your toes as you near the bailout area, there are MiGs in the area, and it is in SAM range.” This rescue effort was closer to Hanoi than any other they had yet attempted; they had never even encountered MiGs or seen a SAM. Over the radio I gave the Sandys a fast “SAM evasion” briefing.

As the tanker pumped us full, we talked to Brigham, stressing again that we had to have a flight go back in with us. But the 16 Thuds, the four flights of four that had bombed Xuan Mai complex, were finished refueling and heading home to Takhli.

As we broke off from the tanker, Harry and I had a very serious, very short conversation over the intercom. “Harry, if we go back, we go it alone,” I said. He was thinking the same thing that I was: Bad odds. But our two buddies were on the ground. The longer we waited before giving them cover, the greater the odds they would be captured or killed. Harry didn’t object when I turned back toward North Vietnam.

As we headed in, the knot in my stomach tightened. I had promised myself never to lose a wingman in combat. I had failed. Had I made a mistake? Should I have attacked the second SAM site differently? A dozen questions posed themselves: none of them with answers.

As we approached the bailout site, Harry’s voice came over the intercom: “SAM acquisition radar has us, Leo—still safe range.” On Guard channel, I was periodically calling, “Kingfish 2, lead here, do you read?” Again, “Kingfish 2, lead here, please come up.” After the third call, we picked up a weak transmission. There was a voice but so garbled with static that I couldn’t tell if it was speaking English or Vietnamese. I knew to be careful: the Vietnamese had learned how to use our survival kit emergency radios and occasionally they tried to talk us into an area where MiGs were waiting for us.

We came over the site heading northeast just above a wafer thin cloud layer at about 18,000 feet. Looking straight down I could see the green mountains. “Leo, MiG eight o’clock!” Harry shouted. I saw another MiG at eleven o’clock. We had flown right into a “wagon wheel”—four or five MiGs in a large circle orbiting the downed pilots. Following the circle of MiGs clockwise, I picked one up and squeezed off the last burst of my Gatling gun. Pieces of the plane came off. My gun film was used up but later we were credited with a probable kill.

For the second time we had to plug in the burner, roll inverted, point 45 degrees down, and outrun the MiGs. Once we were clear, we turned north, flying just above the mountains, and headed back west toward our two downed pilots. I passed on information about the one garbled Guard transmission to the Sandys and warned them again about MiGs.

Near the shoot-down site, I started calling for Kingfish 2 again. There was no response, but then a frightened high-pitched call broke the radio silence. “Sandy 1 is going in, Sandy 1 is going in—MiGs got ’em.”

“Get on the treetops,” I radioed Sandy 2, “get as low, slow as you can, turn as hard as you can, and the MiGs can’t get you.” The Sandy was a propeller fighter with a top speed of maybe 350 knots; it can fly slower, lower, and turn tighter—that was its only advantage over the MiG. The Sandy’s pilot responded, “Copy, I’ll try.”

Trying to sound confident, I added, “and keep talking, keep your mike button down, and we’ll home in on you.” He said, “Okay, but hurry, there’s at least four of ’em.” I dropped our nose toward the trees, grabbed about 600 mph, and wondered what I’d do when we got there.

We quickly picked up three of the MiGs. I turned hard into one of them at one o’clock. I was out of ammo—but he didn’t know it. A couple of thousand feet out, I suddenly cranked hard back to the left toward a second MiG. When I was sure he saw us, I hauled back on the stick and pulled the nose up sharply and rolled inverted. My hope was that they’d think I was armed but confused and didn’t know which of them to engage. If they believed that, maybe they’d let go of the Sandy, at least temporarily, and concentrate on killing us.

It worked. They all tried to get a bead on us, and the Sandy was able to scoot out through a valley at treetop level. Soon he was out of sight and safe.

By this time, Harry and I were once again in burner, twisting and turning through the mountains skimming the trees.

By now, fuel was critical. We kept calling the tanker for a rendezvous and resumed calling on Guard channel hoping, one last time, to raise one of the two Toms on their emergency radio. No response. The second Sandy had turned around and the helicopter had been canceled; the rescue attempt had failed. I had lost my wingmen. I wondered what I would write to their wives.

We switched to “tanker frequency” for a rendezvous over Laos. We were talking to the tanker when we suddenly heard: “Leo, Panda 4 here, I got 600 pounds, am lost, can you help!” It was a shock: In combat, you never use personal names. We didn’t know that Brigham Control had finally found an F-105:D strike flight to help in the rescue effort—Panda flight had engaged the MiGs and shot down two of them. During the dogfight, one plane, Panda 4, became separated and then lost.

“Tanker 1, you have six minutes to rendezvous with Panda 4, or he ejects,” I radioed on the Guard channel. “You gotta come farther north.”

Tanker 1 responded, “Roger, Kingfish, we’ll do our best.” The tanker added, “and Panda 4, we are transmitting—home in on us.”

dp n="30" folio="8" ?

During these brief calls with Panda 4 and the tanker, Harry and I discussed our fuel state. Our plane and Panda 4 were far apart: the tanker could only get to one of us. Even if we didn’t get fuel, Harry and I agreed that we had a chance at making it to the Mekong River—the divide between Laos and Thailand—before flaming out. If we got past the Mekong, we could eject over friendly territory. But if Panda 4 didn’t refuel, he would have to eject over enemy territory. It was an easy choice: the tanker belonged to Panda.

Heading south, we climbed to 35,000 feet to suck the most miles from our nearly empty tanks. Harry dialed in Udorn Air Base, 30 miles south of the Mekong in Thailand. We were 130 miles from the runway. The F-105 can glide two miles for each 1,000 feet lost. If we kept the engine running until we hit 100 miles, we could glide to friendly territory even if we had to eject before reaching the Udorn runway.

I called Udorn tower and explained that if we made it there, we would need a straight-in approach. Then Harry and I silently stared at our fuel gauge as it dropped toward zero. At 70 miles to the Mekong I pulled the throttle to idle and slowed to the plane’s best glide speed: 270 knots (310 mph). In 15 minutes, we would travel 70 miles and glide across the river into Thailand.

Luck was on our side. With fuel indicating empty, the engine ran until we made it to Udorn, turned straight in on the southeastheaded runway and landed. Just after we touched down the engine shut off.

Harry matter-of-factly said, “That was a full day’s work.”

It was true. We had delivered our payload, shot down two enemy fighters in a plane not designed for aerial combat, kept our wingmen from getting murdered in their parachutes, and saved another U.S. aircraft. But as I retracted the canopy and stepped out of the plane, I felt like a failure, dejected at having left two good men behind in the jungles of North Vietnam where they had probably been captured—or even worse—by now. If someone had told me then that I would receive the Medal of Honor for this mission, I would not have believed him. If he had told me that I’d learn about receiving the Medal of Honor while I was in a Hanoi prison, I still would not have believed him.

dp n="31" folio="9" ?

CHAPTER 2

SHOT DOWN

On the morning of April 30, a little less than two weeks after this mission, I was awakened by the alarm at 4:30 a.m. My routine each morning I flew a mission was the same: up too early, shower, don boots and flying suit, breakfast at the O club, and bike it to the field. When I got there, the weather and intelligence guys were scurrying around preparing for the briefing. Pilots were getting coffee as they checked today’s primary and backup targets. Some mornings were happy: an easy mission in western or southern North Vietnam. Some mornings were somber: another effort to try and knock down the Doumer Bridge on Hanoi’s north side. Every time that bridge was targeted we lost at least one plane.

This morning’s mission was successful. The strike force destroyed most of the supply depot that was its chief target. Our Weasels killed the threatening SAM site, and all 24 of our airplanes made it home. Harry and I smiled at each other as we got out of the cockpit, knowing that we had ticked off another mission, and now had only eight left before we reached the magic number and headed home.

A rule in the 355 Tactical Fighter Wing was that if you flew the morning mission, you didn’t fly the afternoon mission. It’s a full day’s job being strapped in the cockpit under high pressure for four or five hours. And the Weasel missions were always the longest—first in and last out—which meant that we were regularly in the extreme threat area for 12 to 15 minutes.

Each strike force usually had at least two spares. If a pilot had to abort because of maintenance problems, one of the spares, waiting in an aircraft, immediately started his engine, and filled in. On this afternoon, we were the only Weasel crew available as a spare. The odds ...