Dale Sissell - World War 2 Veteran

my name is Martin madam the war foundation because March 23 2015 we are in Hiawassee Georgia I'm sitting with mr. Dale's cell s I served in the United States Air Force how you doing today fine my first question is where are you from originally well I'm originally from McAllen Texas which is 230 miles south of San Antonio down on the Mexican border in that area down there is called the Rio Grande Valley tell me about your life growing up well my father owned a grocery store but we lived kind of in the country so I was interested in animals and I started out raising chickens graduated to pigs eventually I raised calves for this structure and that was very enjoyable learned a lot and I graduated from McAllen High School 1951 and really wasn't interested in going to college but I had a friend that was one year ahead of me he went to Texas A&M and he talked me into going and so I I went to any at that time everyone was in the Corps except for the veterans so and it was not co-ed so it was it was an experience especially the first couple of years first year and freshmen eight square meals and were hazed somewhat and I was that year when I enrolled I was placed in the army and at that time the Army ROTC had all of the branches of the army so I was in the armor and stayed in that mode until my third year and I always wanted to fly during the second war I was I was not even a teenager I'm just young kid but I had every fighter in the Army Air Force inventory hanging from my ceiling these kits came in balsa wood you glued them together and did what you wanted to with them so in my junior year I reminded myself I really didn't have to do that that I wanted to fly always did so I went to my professor in armor who was an Army Major and he was in armor and I spoke with him a couple hours and told him that I always wanted to fly and that was really my goal for the next six or eight or ten years or whatever so I convinced him and he said I'll do anything I can to get you transferred over to the Air Force what I didn't tell him was that I had already taken the mental test which was a an eight-hour test four hours one day and four hours the neck and I knew that I was in good physical condition so I transferred without any problem at all upon graduation in 1955 there was a backlog of people waiting to get into pilot training so I went out into the oil fields of South Texas and got a job roughnecking and eventually well this went on for about eight months eventually they called me on active duty and went to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio to what they called pre-flight training school was there about a month or six weeks and then went off to pilot training flew props during the first six months and then the second part I was transferred to a base in Del Rio and started flying jets the t-33 and I found real quickly that jets were easier to fly for me anyway then props you didn't have a lot of torque and it was just easier to fly for me so I graduated and class 57 him at Laughlin Air Force Base in Del Rio I was high enough in my class that I was able to select fighters and so from there I went to Luke Air Force Base in Phoenix and flew the F 84 which was a Mach 1 aircraft if if you could nerve fit up to about 43,000 Corning straight down but in level flight it would not accomplish Mach 1 and then from there when I graduated from there went to loft went to Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas and graduated into the f100 I was still a lieutenant at this time and that was that was a good assignment to to that school we flew air-to-ground air-to-air and I finished pretty will to the top of my class in the air to ground and we were shooting of course live ammunition and then from there I went to my first assignment which is that at Cannon Air Force Base in Clovis New Mexico just nine nine miles inside the border from Texas and I was there about a year or so and then I I understand out why there was such a backlog to getting into pilot training because they they called about 30 of us into the conference room one day and they said all of you are going to test jumps and I ended up at Lackland Air Force Base again and I had a flight of a really a squadron of Cadets that were going through the aviation cadet program and that was a learning process - and I spent about a year there and I went into Air Force recruiting and I I went around to four-year colleges and recruited people that did not go through all TC and could go to Officer Training School and get a commission in about three months I guess that goes back to the old 90-day wonders they were graduated as a second lieutenant many of them went into navigation training and many of them went into pilot ream and so from officers from the Air Force recruiting and went to Laredo Texas the Raider air force base and I was a flight instructor and eventually I was a flight commander and I had thirteen loot out by this time I was a captain of course I had 13 lieutenants working for me and about 45 students and that was really a learning situation because we took these officers they were all officers out to the airplane and started very basically this is the nose this is the tail and then we went from there well from that was a three-year assignment and towards the end of the three years I got orders to go to Vietnam and I had a very good friend that arrived it will rate over the same time I did so therefore we we both got orders to go to Vietnam at the same time and excuse me we were sent to Luke Air Force Base and of course I had already been there and our most of our class had never been inside of an f100 but this friend of mine who is his name was Roger Williamson everyone called him Willie of course and the two of us had already been flying the f100 so we were kind of considered old hats and it was kind of a reviewing process for us but it was the same thing that kind of the same thing that we went through at nellis we had air-to-ground air-to-air we had I guess what you'd call dogfights where our instructor would go up with three chicks on his wing and means another instructor with he had had three chicks on his wing and we'd usually meet about 35,000 feet and have at it so Willie and I oh I should go back a minute we were both really and I were were scheduled for a bunch of schools counterterrorism counterinsurgency I should say and survival school I had never been to survival school and it was on in Spokane Washington and the final part of it was they took us up on the pretty close to the Canadian border gave us a map told us you've got to go from here was his point A to point B and we were paired up I had a young lieutenant paired up with me and he was raised in Oregon so he was really help half mountain goat and he he kind of led me around and that took that took about three or four days I suppose to get from point A to point B and we didn't have any food they gave us a fishing line in our pack as I recall we never caught any fish never really got hungry we had a we had a couple of pieces of jerky when we really felt like we needed it and then when when the survival school was over we went to we went back to Nellis again to about a two-week ground school to go over all the weapons that were being used in Vietnam the bombs and what they call them in and so on and going to this school we kind of got a hint of maybe everything's not going right so we went we reported to Air Fairchild Air Force Base in California and we got a change to our orders and this is when we really found the truth we were not going to Vietnam to fly the f100 we were going to go to Vietnam to fly a big great desk and we were not of course not not pleased with that so when we got when we got to Vietnam we went into a tonsure nude Air Force Base in Saigon and we were housed in a an old French hotel in downtown Saigon because they didn't have enough housing on face and so the next we arrived about 10 o'clock one night and they bust us into Saigon and the next morning we went back to constitute had some breakfast in the officer's club and that was quite a sight because 7th Air Force was located at Saigon or at Thomson nude airbase and it was a 24 24 hour operation of course they had crews nearly all pilots that manned these desk jobs and 7/7 Air Force and when we went into the club the night crew was in in the officer's club and they were all at the bar to get a drink of course since this was nine o'clock in the morning so Willy and I were weren't into having a drink we wanted some breakfast and so we had some breakfast and after that we went over to 7th Air Force Headquarters to personnel and so we were led to a second lieutenant there in personnel so Willie and I just told him flat out that this is not where we came over here for to Vietnam and that we were not going to report to our jobs because if we did then we were stuck so we told him he had better get us to flying so much in the same squadron and don't take a lot of time doing it so for the next week Willie and I would go to the club every morning have breakfast go over and check on our second lieutenant I think really he was afraid of us and every morning he'd say I'm working on it I'm working on so for that week we hang around the club they had a veranda on the core of the top of the club that was covered and all the sides were open so if there was a breeze to be had you could get it up there and they served sandwiches and drinks well up there it was just a good place to hang out and Willie and I both ran into people that we had been stationed with before and flew probably the 100 or some other aircraft similar and one day I met a pilot that I had known before and he said you know this outfit that you're supposed to be in has been expecting you any day because they know when you arrived in country and I said well don't even admit to them that you even know me and we'll see how things turn out well this he told me what this outfit was it sound very interesting it was called Chico chec oh and I don't remember what that stands for but there their job was to document the history of the Vietnam War and all the people in that outfit had blanket orders and they could go anywhere in the theater that they felt like they needed to go so I thought well if we don't get a flying job that that sounds pretty good to me because I had already done a lot of writing and so eventually we went went to the club one Saturday morning then we wanted or went over to check on our second lieutenant when we walked in he was beaming like a like the Sun that just came up he was smiling he says I have your assignment in the f-100 where's that well he said it's at Benoit airbase which is only about 18 or 20 miles from here so the next morning which was a Sunday morning we we went to base ops with our personal gear and we actually had our parachute with us I don't know why because they never used it but we call it we call it a chopper ride over to Benoit and the ops officer was there to meet us and he took us down to the squadron building and met our squadron commander and he he was a Texas Aggie in the class of 50 so when he saw my ring he of course want to know all about how I am was doing and everything and as it turned out there were five five pilots in the squadron that were from Texas not all from A&M we had one lieutenant in the squadron and he graduated from TCU Texas Christian and everyone in the squadron gave him a hard time because he was a lieutenant everyone else in the squadron were mostly captains and majors a couple of lieutenant Colonel's which was my commander and our lieutenant was there when I got there so he left before I did and when I heard by the grapevine that he he got out of the Air Force went back to school and got it went went to law school and very shortly after he graduated in several years he was the president of the Texas Bar Association he was he was a shark kid and then within a couple of days Willie and I were on the schedule to get our first first flight well we had we had two f100 FS which meant they had two seats so my first flight was in the back seat of the one hundred and my first flight was with captain Bobby Mahoney who was from San Antonio and it was there was a just a typical flight I would say which I didn't know at the time and then on the next flight we were in a 100 that only had a single seat and that's that's why we had throughout the squadron single-seat single-engine and that was that was a learning thing too because I'd flown the f100 but never in combat and of course I was teamed up with a flight flight commander of that flight was actually my flight commander and his name was Captain Jack Dell and quite a guy he he presently lives in South Georgia and I talked to him on the phone I would say every other month and he earned them he earned the title of the golden g-suit because of the hairy experiences he got into and he knew how to get out as I remember he he had a an offer to go to the University of Georgia to play football but he he turned that down he said he didn't wasn't interested in football he won't go through ROTC and fly and that was that was kind of story with all of us we had this burning desire to fly and so most of our missions were with where we were armed with the mark 82 500-pound bomb and 20 millimeter which we call 20 Mike Mike and we'd typically drop our bombs first all four aircraft maybe the two aircraft as it turned out to be a lot of times we drop our bombs and then we would strafe and we were always under the control of a forward air controller a fact and he was flying a light aircraft the old one which had a top speed of probably a hundred knots but he would he would direct us into the target and typically would put down a phosphorus rocket and then he'd say either hit the hit the smoke or hit the smoke twenty or thirty meters to the right or to the left or whatever and so I I did real well on I'm dropping the bombs he's strafing in what have you and there was a pilot that came in shortly after I did maybe a month and he was not very well adapted to to the situations that we were in and unfortunately I heard him being chewed out by his flight commander and he said now John you're gonna have to put put the bombs on the target they can't they can't you know go out a half a mile from here you got to put the bombs on the target he said we have a reputation to uphold in the squadron the 90th Tactical Fighter Squadron and which was commonly known as dice the name was paradise squadron and he was shortened to dice and that was our calls on on every mission dice zero one dice zero five or whatever as a sidelight we got we got dice that they used on the crap tables and either Las Vegas or Reno I don't remember and we drill a hole through each duh and then put a little short chain as chain through the die and put it on our zipper of the flying suit the zipper of course went from our Nick to the crotch and after after we blew our first combat flight we were awarded the dice which was a big deal to us to everybody and the facts throughout Vietnam or I should say South Vietnam pretty well knew who dice was and they they said we were lucky when we get a dice play because they do put the bombs on the target and they would say you know the F force don't normally do that nothing against the f-4s because they were there were good guys too but maybe maybe they weren't it is experienced as we were not sure and so the mission that my tour went pretty well pretty well uneventful sometimes I'd come back from a flight and there would be a few bullet holes in the aircraft and everybody experienced that and I was on a on a night mission one time it was the mission started in the day late very late in the day and it got dark while we were airborne as a matter of fact while we were on the target and I remember pulling off the target one time and I was in a left turn and pulling Gees of course and I looked back I don't know why look back but I did I look back over my shoulder and here came these what I would call grapefruit towards me those were the bad guys shooting at me and I don't know what to say about the rest of my tour I remember I had I had a very enjoyable time on the ops officer chose me to go with him to Taiwan to pick up a cup of aircraft that were being modified somehow I don't remember what the modification was but we got on a contract air flight and and went to Japan then we caught a flight back down to Okinawa and then we caught another flight to Taiwan and in Taipei and then in Taipei we got on a Chinese airway an old c-47 that took us down towards the the middle of the country where these modifications were being made and there there were a group of pilots there that flew the aircraft just to make sure it was stable after they did the work they were kind of like test pilots I suppose and so of course when we got there they said the birds were not ready so we went back to time Taipei did a little shopping there and and then went back to Tainan and of course all the food we had was was Chinese except in the club at this facility where we were picking up the birds and so they finally got one ready and my ops officer said they'll let's do this he said you take the one that's ready and going down to Clark Air Base in the Philippines and I'll meet you there so that was that was fine with me so I took off and it was IFR completely overcast him probably had thunderstorms up to 30,000 feet so I was in it and after about 10 minutes I discovered that my my radio was out and I thought well I'll just maintain this last course that air traffic control gave me and maybe the radio will come back on who knows maybe it had a little water you need to dry out and whatever so I thought well sometimes to get out of a situation like this you can turn the TACAN up the volume up most of the time they're giving weather and that sort of thing but when I turned it up this time it was the guys at Clarke air traffic control and they were calling calling me dice zero two and so they gave me a different some different headings to fly so that they made sure that they had to raid our contract contact so when they had they finally got radar contact they proceeded to direct me to Clarke the flight from where we were and in Taiwan to Clarke it's only about an hour so as I got closer to the base they started letting me down flying different headings and got me on final approach I was flying a ground control approach and they were giving me heading changes of maybe two degrees so I knew that I was on the final approach and then I broke out it must have been about 900 feet overcast when I broke out I landed and rolled up the aircraft is having a radio failure and then they put her housing the BOQ was was the bachelor officer quarters were full so they put me in a trailer small trailer that was used one time for flakes that flew at night and and all all the windows were painted black and if they were scrambled then they would already have their their night vision and during the four or five days I was there it was great because I went to the club every morning had a great breakfast as a matter of fact I had a lot of great meals in the club there American food was not powdered milk or anything like that they had the real stuff and then in the basement of the club they had what had The Rathskeller that was opened 24 hours a day you could get drinks or Santa which isn't in The Rathskeller and I remember going into the club off to the left before you really got into the main part of the club off to the left there was a little room over there and I wandered in there one time and they it was a poker game went on 24 hours a day not the same people but the game went on and I remember one of the one of the men and in this poker game was a civilian and I met him later some years later when I was later stationed at Clarke and everyone called him digger O'Dell because he was the well he was in charge of the mortar so digger was he he played a lot of Poker in that room but every every day I would go down to base ops and my pluck my hops officer's name was Ron bird or I would go to base ops and find out if he maybe had come in and I didn't know it or maybe he was coming in no wrong so I think it was after about five days I got real impatient and I thought well I need to get back to bed wall so I met a flight of f4 pilots and base ops that were they were leaving the next day and they were going to another base there was Luke Oh Cam Ranh Bay is where they were going which was located right on them on the coast of South South China Sea and I started talking to the flight commander he and I asked him if there was any chance I could tack onto his flight to go to bed and walk he said of course he said about a hundred miles out he said you can break off and go to bed wall and then we'll turn a little bit to the right and go and go to camera on babe I said hey that sounds great so the next morning we blast it off good weather and after I landed it been a wall that the squadron commander was there to meet me and he said they'll wear on the hell have you been I said well I've been at Clarke about the last four days but four or five days and I told him that the ops officer had told me to go ahead and then he would be along as soon as they got his hair crap already well I think he probably you got the Clark the day after I left there and go go home not home but Ben Wallace and he probably experienced the same thing I did all the good food by the way they had a they had an orchestra in the club a 21 piece Orchestra orchestra that was made up of Filipinos played the best music in the world all of it American music but anyway he said where's wrong I said I have no idea I said and I gave him the details he said well I guess he'll be along and eventually and eventually he did four or five days later so I suppose he and the squadron commander had a very heart-to-heart talk about him dragging his feet to get him get him back to Benoit I don't know and then somewhere during the tour general mohmar who was the the commander of 7th Air Force and by the way he was my commander at Cannon Air Force Base - he had one star then and I think there are probably two wings they're quite a quite a gaggle of aircraft but anyway he by this time he had four stars and he made a made a trip around to all all the fighter bases and he made the comment that to his people to his staff that it looked to him like the pilots were flying their one mission a day and then hanging around the swimming pool the rest of the day well he must have been talking about Thailand because they had pools in Vietnam we didn't have pools but we we were thrown in as being like them so he said ok here's what I want pilots continue to fly their one mission a day and then the rest of the day they're going to have an additional duty like the assistant maintenance officer assistant supply officer and so on well I was I was designated to be the aide to the wing commander for a half day so that I could fly the other half date and then there was another captain who was designated the same way he was an aide to the Wing Commander for half the day well one day the commander said they'll go out and get the car and I'll meet you out in front of the headquarters so I got got the staff car he jumped in and he said I have a friend that's going to be arriving soon and we're gonna meet him at the club for lunch well he didn't say who the who the friend was but he he did say he was he was the Wing Commander over there at Clarke and at that time they were flying the f-102 so and the flight from Clarke to Benoit was about two hours maybe an hour 50 depending on the winds so we went into the club of course there wasn't anyone there no one ate in the club at noon and we went to the commander's table was always reserved we ordered a glass of iced tea and and sit there well eventually this man came in the front door of the club and we both stood up and I started looking for his nametag well before he got to our table of course I could read it and it said Yeager Chuck Yeager who made history before he attained the rank of colonel as a matter of fact he was probably a captain when he broke all these records such as the speed of sound and what have you and the Wing Commander introduced me and he Chuck Yeager said I'm very very glad to meet you captain so we sat down and we ordered a sandwich of course during the meal I didn't say one word I just sit there and listen to them and I kept saying to myself you know Dale you're living a little bit of history right here having lunch with Chuck Yeager and so we we finished the meal and Krone Yeager went went off in his direction me they had a staff car for him and parked him in front of base ops of course and when we were going back to the headquarters I asked my commander said have you know chrome digger very long he said oh yeah he said we went through pilot training together and then and then we were transferred to Europe and we were in the same outfit over there so he said I've known him for a number of years I think chrome digger was shot down over there in Europe and made his way back to I think it was France and he he was escorted by some people that were underground and they went through part of Spain to get there but anyway that's enough Akali chrony ager our squadron the 90th Tactical Fighter Squadron we were one of originally I think four squadrons one of the squadrons left while we were there the five 31st who were called the buzzards they left and were transferred to another another base and so five tenth which was called the ramrods they were right next to us and we we traded pilots back and forth sometimes to make up a flight of four one time I was told to go over and join join with a flight over there I went over and their mascot of course our mascot was the dice their mascot the ramrod was a snake pet snake it was a boa constrictor and while we were briefing that snake came in wrapped around the legs of the table settled on the top of the table and went to sleep that was kind of unnerving but anyway we went on the flight and as we say sometimes when we get back from a flight well we killed a lot of trees because to us that's all we saw most of the areas in that in South Vietnam had a double camel canopy of trees and there wasn't any way you could see the ground but we came back from that mission and I was told about a month later or everyone in the flight was told that we killed a Russian general because that the ground forces went in after we bombed and found him well that's that's pretty unusual and the ninetieth was unusual in a very special way in that during my year there we did not have any fatalities from combat we did have two fatalities from accidents it's very unfortunate accidents one was the lieutenant that came into this quadrant and on his I guess he had already been checked out but on the seventh day that he was there he which was a Sunday morning he was in a flight of two he was teamed up with one of the more experienced pilots in the squadron and we didn't take off together in formation we usually had about I think it was seven second spacing so the lead took off right after he took off and got his gear oh he had a fire light so he pulled up into a closed downwind to get it on the ground as soon as possible and he could see to number two breaking ground so he said dice 0-2 how about checking me over for for a fire well the lead aircraft jettisoned his bombs before he pulled up because you didn't want to do that sort of a manoeuvre with that that much weight well when number two pulled up he had forgotten to jettison his bombs and about halfway through the pull up he had already come out of afterburner and during that pull up with all that weight he stalled went in and we had barely gotten to know him I think his name was Paul straw he was a first lieutenant and the other accident we had was with a very experienced pilot and he went up on a mission the day before he was supposed to get on the freedom bird as we call it and so when he led the flight back he told the rest of the flight to go ahead and land but they did and he was orbiting at about ten thousand feet and he got permission from the tower to make a high-speed flight or pass over the squadron building which was right located right on a taxiway well he put it into a dive with afterburner and got the earth speed you can get out of it and right over our squadron building he made a sharp pull up and one of the wings came off so he went into a flat spin and was not able to get off get out of the aircraft that wing that came off went over into a maintenance area of another squadron and there was an airman standing out on the ramp and that wing cut that airman in half so he died the same day that Clyde Carter died that was his name he was a captain - and I was on my way from the the wing headquarters every pilot on the base had a Honda 90 because it was a big base so I was on the way down to the flight line on my Honda and that was when Clyde came over and made the sharp pull up and I saw the canopy go about the same time that the wing came off of course he didn't survive because with those lateral G's there was no way that he could pull the handles get out so there were two tragedies that day the the maintenance airman who was in our squadron and and Clyde Carter well when they when the canopy came off the guys that were closer than I was said they could see his helmet flying through the air and when they found his helmet his head was in it so he he really didn't have much idea of what went on well we progressed on to the 10th of 68 which in the south all hell broke loose and I was scheduled with one other aircraft I was the I was the lead I was scheduled with one other aircraft to go down in the Delta what the army called for Corps they divided the country up into course I Corps being up near the DMZ and the for Corps was down in the Delta and I'm sorry we were not scheduled either both of us well the two of us were sitting on alert and the people that scramble the people on alert you what which bombs and we were carrying and so on and the red telephone rang and the guy that answered it said scrambled ice so off we went out help the door and our our aircraft were sitting right there ready to go so we jumped in our aircraft and typically you would start the aircraft and be taxing out doing all of your checks sometimes even fastening seatbelt and we got off the ground we were given a heading to fly eventually we were given a frequency to change to and the facts said good morning dice I'm your FAC today and we had troops in contact as it turned out they weren't our troops they were South Vietnam Vietnamese troops but our mission was to support all the ground troops South Vietnam regardless of which country they came from so we went in and dropped a couple of bombs each and then we dropped what they designate is CBU to clustered bomb units and they're several different types but these were CB u twos and their pods that hangul underneath the wing and they're these pods were loaded with bombs small bombs I shouldn't call them bombs they were about like hand grenades so they were anti-personnel so the fact would direct us in over the bad guys and we would punch a button those those CPUs would start dispensing and fortunately we didn't have to make more than two passes because when you're over that over the bad guys you don't know what's coming back at you and so then we started strafing and oh and one of the strafing passes I pulled off into a steep climb and fire light came on and my wingman said nicely you're you're on fire I said yes I know I've got a flower a fire line well we were we were north of the Mekong River maybe five or ten miles and south of the Mekong River there was a US base that the fax flew out of and but it didn't have any fighters so I headed towards that base and my my plan was to eject over the runways even though I was on fire well my first plan was in my mind was hey maybe I can land this aircraft but then I changed my mind because the stick started getting mushy and I couldn't I knew then that the flight controls were beginning to burn through so then I told I told my friend man I was gonna have to reject well but at this time I was over the over the runway about ready to eject my wingman said don't go now he said turn about thirty degrees because there's a little village ahead and you don't want the aircraft to hit there you see that but that's that's what that was the thinking so I turned about third degrees and ejected and I've landed in a banana plantation I ended up you know banana tree and I got out of my chute kept my helmet on got my pistol out we all had 38 caliber pistols and while I was coming down I could see the nearest the nearest exit out of that banana plantation and I could I also saw a woman walking the trail next to the edge of this plantation she had one of those little pointy hats on but she never even looked up at me I suppose she didn't want didn't want to acknowledge that I was even there and when I ran out to the nearest place there was a chopper now maybe 75 or 80 meters and the crew was motioning for me to come on out and get on board and I did so we were only maybe a mile maybe two miles from the air base and the commander of the pilot of this chopper so you h1 army helicopter he said well we've got to sit her awhile and get permission from the tower to come on in so I was sitting on the floor of the helicopter and we were kind of shooting the ball and I asked him I said by the way which what Jermaine he kind of came to a brace even though he was sitting down and he said sir my name is Warren officer Richard Nixon I said you are kidding me no I'm not kidding and and the rest of the aircrew backed him up that's right his name is Richard Nixon so we got finally got cleared into the base a jeep picked me up there and took me to the flight surgeon and he checked over my bottle signs i sat down at his desk and he he said how about telling me the whole story how this happened and so while we were sitting there he reached into the bottom drawer of his desk and he said how about a little shot of Mekong Delta which is what good I said sure so he poured me a little glass of bourbon and we sat there and he we toasted and he said well here's to the rest of your tour I said I appreciate that so my my squadron commander said you know since you're boned up a little bit I had scratches and all kinds of things and he said why are you resting up why don't you go to Bangkok he said we have a a c-47 that goes over there a couple of times a week he's saying go to Bangkok and do a little risky rest and relaxation I wasn't in favor of it at first but I kind of decided that might be a good deal so I think there were about a half dozen of us got on that c-47 the chaplain and I were the only commissioned officers the rest were were Airmen sergeants so the five or six days I was there once again ate some very good food they had a swimming pool with them at the hotel and they were a bunch of f4 pilots there so we kind of treated war stories and I finally thought well I'm a flight commander and I know that we're a little bit short of pilots I think I better get on back to bed wall so I called another c-47 got back to Benoit and I flew one scheduled flight which was uneventful and then the next day I was scheduled for just to sit on alert once again it was a on alert you normally have a leader and a wingman and so we were sitting there and the phone rang the red phone and Seventh Air Force had scrambled us once again and this time it was deep in the in the dildo as a matter of fact probably from 20,000 feet you could see the end of Vietnam and what they call the the Gulf of Siam and we had a had a FAQ that directed us into the mission once again we had a couple of bombs hanging and CB use and there were troops in contact in other words they were head-to-head just about and we we dropped our bombs and then I was in them in the process of dropping my pods and this was standard procedure we tried to drop our pods in some water so that Charlie the VC could not get these pods and pull some of those grenades out of there and they would typically make them make booby traps out of those so I spotted a canal and it was wide and it was long I spotted this canal and I was going down the canal punched off my pods and started to pull up and about maybe 200 feet the aircraft started rolling and I I couldn't counteract the rolling with the with ailerons or a rudder and when it reached about sixty degrees a bank I said it's time to go so I pull the handles my wingman said that I got one call off to him his name was Phil Carson and everyone called him kit Kit Carson and he was a former navigator who went to pilot training and this was one of his first assignments was to Vietnam and he he said that I got a call off to him before I ejected and I said what was the call he said Phil I'm going I don't remember seeing them anyway I did not eject in favorable conditions because the surface wind was about 25 knots when I hit the ground I heard a crack and it was my need that was that that broke and the wind was dragging me along through this rice paddy the rice paddy was like concrete because this was during the dry season so I finally finally got the chute under control and laid on it and my wingman was still up there sickling me the fact was still on the scene and the fact was given him directions the world of strafe these these VC maybe North Vietnamese probably this was during the Tet 68 and so this went on for probably 45 minutes and my wingman said lead I've got to go I'm low on fuel so I said go well to back up a little bit the reason I was able to talk to him on the radio because every survival vest had a radio in UHF and so I was able to talk with my my wingman and and the fact so I told Phil go we don't want to two pilots down here so he he really didn't make it home he had to land short and refuel and then proceeded on and my effect was giving me a running commentation on what was going on he said charlie is in a in a bamboo hut about 150 meters from your position so I had my pistol out and unfortunately when my wingman left I could hear the roar of his jet disappearing I can almost read Charlie's mine oh now we've got him his wingman is gone so they proceeded to come to come towards my position they knew exactly where I was and my wingman couldn't do much he said he said I've got an m16 I could probably keep a few of them off I said well do the best you can and the VC got within about 50 meters of me and I knew I was I was going to die because they were they were mad because of what we just done - usually they try to capture a pilot but not always and the gory gory part of when they catch a pilot capture one they told me this in the first week I was there that a couple of pilots that had been shot down when they found them their gonads had been cut off and sewn up in their mouth probably while they were still alive the way of telling so I didn't think there was any danger of that I thought they were they would probably kill me but I had my pistol out and I thought well I can take a couple of them down anyway before they get me and about this time I heard a chopper coming from my rear one popo sweetest sound I've ever heard it was an army chopper and a uh-1 once again and they landed probably 50 25 or 30 meters from our position from my position but away from Charlie and they were waiting for me to get onboard and I stood up and my legs wouldn't hold me I just I collapsed and so I waved to them to come get me a couple of them jumped out of the chopper got on each side of me and got me on board the chopper and they took me into a Vietnamese airfield the chopper said I've got to refuel so he went into base ops take care of that while I was lying there on the floor of the chopper a Vietnamese general came out and to talk to me he said we would really appreciate what you did today but unfortunately I see that you've got a broken leg I said yes I do and there was a medic on board that gave me some painkiller and the pilot eventually came out of base ops and he said okay we're gonna we're gonna take you over here to the coast to a u.s. airfield I don't recall the name they didn't have any fighters there but they had facts and a lot of ground troops stationed there so it was it was about an hour flight and when we got over there there was an Air Force chopper there waiting on me that had a longer range than this army chopper did so they carried me on a letter over to the Air Force chopper and one of the crew peel back a cigar stuck it in my mouth of course I couldn't light it but I chewed on anyway and then they they were taking me back towards Saigon and the pilot told me that they were not allowed to fly at night and it was getting real late in the day by then so they landed at a field hospital which is very similar to what you saw on mash they were not in tents they were in kind of a bubble structure and so they brought me in there on the litter there wasn't much they could do for me but after a while one of the medics came around he said we've got some Intel information that the VC are going to be rocketing near here he tonight so they said we're gonna put you in a bunker highly fortified bunker sandbags and a little bit of Steel and I wasn't the only one in there there were a bunch of soldiers in there I like thanks so much for taking time to share your story with me but most important that like to thank you very much for your service you're welcome

Channel: Towns County Time Capsules

Views: 102

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: wwii, ww2, veteran, interview, towns county

Id: KsQnWCkFsvQ

Length: 78min 11sec (4691 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 28 2019