From Dogs To Phantoms
Terry Richardson USMC, H-34D, F-4B, 1965, 1969
{ Date Of Hire By Western Airlines: 3/5/1973 }
I met Terry Richardson while we were both pilot representatives on the Western ALPA Master Executive Council. TJ was a rep at the Salt Lake pilot base while I was a rep from the San Francisco base. Our closeness in seniority kept us from ever flying together but I knew he was a Marine and when I was putting Volume 1 together I asked him if he would be willing to write a story. His response was that he needed to think about it but he told me I should talk to Denny Dolan. He told me that Denny had been flying an F-4 that was hit by a SAM over Hanoi but was able to make it back to his carrier, USS America. (That story is Chapter 32 in Volume 1.)
TJ slipped through the cracks and it was over 15 years later that we got together again, after meeting at the annual Reno Wally Bird golf tournament in 2016. His story is truly incredible and he is sure that he is the only Marine aviator to have two tours in Vietnam, one flying helicopters (the H-34) and one flying jets (the F-4). He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross twice, once while flying the H-34 and once in the F-4. This is a wonderful story and I am eternally grateful for groups like the Wally Birds and the Silver Chiefs that have kept us all in contact for so many years.
Meet a Marine warrior, TJ Richardson.
I was born in Vernal, Utah, on 10 Sep 1941. I was born at home, delivered by my maternal grandmother and Aunt Ruby, my mother’s older sister, as home delivery was not uncommon in rural America in 1941. Today we would be called a blue collar family. My paternal grandfather was a farmer, my dad worked on drilling rigs in the oil fields, my maternal grandfather worked in the local power plant, and my mother was a housewife, as were both of my grandmothers.
I grew up on the family farm with all of the responsibilities and chores that went with it. When I graduated from high school at age 17 I followed my dad and went to work in the oil fields, but there were bigger things on my horizon. My mother had a cousin who was a US Navy Captain. He was a Naval Academy graduate and had been a WW-II fighter pilot who shot down four Japanese airplanes. He encouraged me to apply to the Naval Academy, so I did all the research, passed all of the tests, and got a Utah Senator to nominate me. The Senator had two vacancies to fill that year and I became his first alternate.
I received a telegram telling me to be ready to go on 24 hour notice if one of the primary candidates failed his incoming physical. About two weeks later I received a letter basically telling me, “Nice try. Go to school for a year and try again next year. You will be a shoo-in.” Since the Naval Academy was only a means to an end for me, I decided that I would explore other options. I just wanted to be a military pilot.
I began my research by contacting all the recruiters for the military services. I found that the Air Force had a cadet program, so I applied for it, took all of the tests, and waited for the results while the tests were sent to Oklahoma to be graded. A couple of weeks later I got a call from an Air Force captain who told me that I had passed the tests and needed to go to Hill Air Force Base and take a physical—then I would be off to flight training. Unfortunately I had to tell him that I had been in a fight, had broken my hand, and that it would be in a cast for six months. The captain said that it wouldn’t be a problem. He told me to give him a call when the cast came off and he would reschedule the physical.
When I got the cast off and got strength back in my arm, I called him. He told me that he had good news and bad news, with the bad news being that the Air Force had just canceled their pilot cadet program. The good news was that they still had their navigator cadet program and he told me that it was just as good. I told him that I wanted to fly airplanes, not navigate them, but thanked him very much.
Armed with the fact that I had passed all of the Naval Academy tests and the Air Force pilot tests, I went to the joint Navy/Marine Corps recruiting office in Salt Lake City and asked if they had a similar program. The Navy recruiter told me about the NAVCAD program, where you had to have two years or more of college or pass a college equivalency test. I told him that my only concern was that my father had been a WW-II destroyer sailor and from his stories I didn’t think that I would like living on a ship. The Marine recruiter, sitting about six feet away said, “We have that same program son,” so I went over to his desk and talked to him. He asked if I thought that I could pass a two year equivalency test. I said, “Maybe,” so he said, how about a one year? I said, “No problem.” He explained that enlisted personnel had to pass only a one year college equivalency test to qualify for the MARCAD program and proposed that I enlist in the reserves. If I passed that test after I enlisted I would get orders to flight training before I had to go to boot camp. So, I signed up.
Everything happened pretty fast. I got orders to boot camp in San Diego for Jan 1962 but passed the equivalency test and got orders to flight training in Pensacola for Nov 1961. I received my wings of gold in June 1963 and had orders to MAG-26 at MCAS New River, North Carolina, to fly the UH-34D with HMM-264. I spent 2½ years of my 11 years of active duty aboard various ships for various periods of time. (I still can’t believe that the Marine recruiter didn’t tell me that they put Marines aboard ships!)
About three months after arriving at New River a call went out to all squadrons for volunteers to go to GITMO (Guantanamo Bay, Cuba) for three months. They promised at least 60 hours/month of flight time while we were only getting about 20-25 hours at New River. To make HAC (Helicopter Aircraft Commander) the flight time requirement was 350 hours in type and 500 hours total time. At that time I had about 200 hours in type and 350 total hours so it didn’t take a math major to figure out that if I volunteered I would come back with qualification to take my HAC check months before my peers back at New River. I raised my hand and volunteered, violating the cardinal rule that you never volunteer for anything in the Marine Corps. However, it turned out to be good duty and among other missions we flew hurricane relief flights into Haiti while flying off USS Hornet. As soon as I returned to New River I took and passed my HAC check and became an aircraft commander at the age of 22 while still a 2/Lt.
After two 3 month Caribbean cruises, my squadron, HMM-264, went aboard USS Boxer, LPH-4, a WW-II aircraft carrier converted to an LPH (Landing Platform Helicopter), and sailed to the Mediterranean to take part in a huge NATO exercise, Operation Steel Pike. During the Operation I picked up an external load of 105mm howitzer ammo from the deck of USS Guam, another LPH in our task force. About a half mile in front of the ship my engine started running really rough, so I made a hard turn back toward the ship. I hit the pickle button to release the external load and called the Guam, telling them that I had a rough runner and was coming back. The air boss said that they were shoving everything on the deck aft and that I was cleared to land anywhere forward.
The H-34 had a nine cylinder radial engine, the R-1820, (the same engine as the DC-3 and multiple other aircraft), and we were taught from day one not to change the power setting if we had a rough runner. I was at about 500 feet when it started running rough and the engine was at climb power, so I held the power and was able to gain another 300 feet by the time I got back abeam the ship. When Ireduced power to start my approach, the engine seized. I made a successful autorotation to center line forward of the ship. The post mortem examination of the engine discovered a red shop rag in the oil pan, wrapped around the oil pump, which had starved the engine of oil. When the crew chief and first mechanic did their normal post flight check of the sumps and strainers after the previous flight, they had left a basic red shop rag in the oil pan.
OPERATION POWER PACK
In April of 1965 I was on another three month Caribbean cruise, still with HMM-264. We were in Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico, refueling and giving the birds a fresh-water wash-down when there was an emergency recall. All aircraft ashore flew back aboard, we weighed anchor and sailed at flank speed to a point just over the horizon from the Dominican Republic, where the ship drove around in circles for several days while a civil war was fomenting ashore. In the middle of a pitch black moonless night, in rain squalls, we were ordered to begin evacuation of civilians. We offloaded the 6th Marine Expeditionary Battalion ashore and began to evacuate some 700 civilians—this operation was called Operation Power Pack. The next day we established a landing zone in a polo field and I was the Landing Zone Control Officer for a couple of days. We spent about a month there supporting the 6th MEB. One Marine was killed by a sniper the first night and I got my first bullet hole in a helicopter I was flying. All air crew members in the squadron received our first Air Medal for that operation.
EMERGENCY AMMO RESUPPLY – MY FIRST DFC
I arrived in Vietnam in October 1965. After I arrived at Da Nang I was sent to Ky Ha, located about 60 miles south of Da Nang, to join Marine Aircraft Group-36 (MAG-36) where I was further assigned to Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron–364 (HMM-364), the Purple Foxes. As luck would have it, HMM-364 turned out to be the best Marine helicopter squadron in Vietnam.
We had more of our aircraft in an up (maintenance worthy) status, flew more hours and more missions than any other Marine squadron in Vietnam at that time, and were recognized by the Marine Corps Aviation Association as the Helicopter Squadron of the Year for 1966. We were also awarded a Navy Unit Citation for the year of 1966. We flew Sikorsky UH-34Ds, affectionately known as “Dogs”. At some point we heard that the troops out in the bush felt like orphans and that “nobody gave a shit” about them, so the squadron logo on the nose of our aircraft, which was a caricature of a purple fox with HMM-364 scrolled above it, was modified by adding a scroll at the bottom that said, “Give a Shit”. (At the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, Virginia, they have an aft fuselage of a CH-46 with the HMM-364 logo on it that includes the motto, “Give a Shit”.)
On the morning of 05 March 1966 we had a max effort for MAG-36 with all four squadrons participating, to insert a full battalion (about 400 Marines) into an area about 40 miles south of Ky Ha where intelligence indicated a large number of North Vietnamese regular army troops had infiltrated the area. The operation was ironically named Operation Utah, and I say ironically because I was born and raised in Utah. During the insert MAG-36 had four helicopters shot down. For the rest of the day, after the insert, we flew routine resupply of C-rations and water, beans and bullets, and sadly, we also flew medevacs.
About sundown I was flying as wingman (dash two) and we were sitting in the staging area loading up with C-rats and water when the ground crew started throwing my load back out and began loading 60 pound boxes of ammo. A lieutenant climbed up the side of my aircraft and handed me a new mission order with the coordinates, the call sign of the new unit, which was Bravo Company, First Battalion, Seventh Marine Regiment (B/1/7), and the radio frequency on which to contact them. At the top of the order, in big bold letters, were the words, “EMERGENCY AMMO RESUPPLY”. We normally carried about 1600 pounds of cargo, but I had a really good bird so I told him to load me up with 2000 pounds.
Since my flight leader, Capt. James Turner, was carrying a load for a unit in the same area, we took off as a two plane section and proceeded to our coordinates. In 1966 we didn’t have GPS or any other modern navigation aids and in Vietnam there were very few navigational radio facilities. What we had for navigation was large scale paper maps with the latitude and longitude grids lines on them, so before takeoff we would look at our maps, estimate a heading and distance to our objective, and go. If we were assigned a mission while airborne we would perform the same drill. So after arriving in the area, I detached from Capt. Turner and contacted B/1/7.
I ended up talking to a very young, very scared voice on the radio. I informed him that I was overhead and would flash my navigation lights so he could see me and give me vectors to pinpoint their location. He did that but the landing zone was only identified by one small strobe light. There had been fire fights and battles in that area all day with many flickering fires still burning, but I finally located the strobe.
As I flew overhead and identified their location, I asked which sector I could expect to receive the most ground fire from—of course I would want to avoid flying over that sector. He said, “360 degrees sir,” in an even higher pitched voice. I replied, “Okay, I’m going to spiral down right over the top of you, land, kick the ammo out and get out of there. He said, “Roger, sir.”
I commenced my approach into the zone. Passing through about 100 feet I started receiving intense fire from 360 degrees. I was prepared to take fire but I was not prepared for that intensity, so I waved off. We fired red tracers, the enemy tracers were green, and in my five months in Vietnam (in-country as we called it), I had not seen that many green tracers in the air at one time, and they were all aimed at us. We found out later that B/1/7 was surrounded by a full regiment of 700-800 North Vietnamese regular army soldiers. During the day’s operation, four MAG-36 helicopters had been shot down and B/1/7 was assigned to guard one of them until it could be recovered the next day. A downed helicopter was a magnet for the bad guys.
After I waved off I called back and asked, “How bad do you guys really need this shit, anyway?” In reply I had an older, calmer voice on the radio and he said, to paraphrase, “Sir, this is the Top (the Top is the senior NCO, in this case a Gunnery Sgt.) and we are out of ammo, we have eight to ten rounds per man left, we’ve fixed bayonets and are getting ready for a knife fight. We are surrounded by a lot more folks than we have on the ground here. ” I thought to myself, “Shit, that’s not what I wanted to hear, I’ve gotta go back.”
The zone had trees to the east, south and north, and rice paddies to the west, so I told him, “Okay Gunny, here’s the plan. I’m going to come in from the west on the deck, get this machine going as fast as I can, come in over the top of you guys at ground level, do a quick stop (which involves reducing power to idle and stomping on the left rudder to turn the helicopter sidewise to stop it in about 100 feet from 130 knots, and then coming in with max power and stomping on the right rudder to keep from crashing), kick the ammo out and get out of here.” Gunny’s reply was, “Roger that sir.”
I briefed my crew on the plan and told the crew chief, Sgt. James Vance and gunner, Cpl. Sexton, to stack everything in the cargo door so that they could sit on the floor and start kicking the ammo boxes out when I started my flare, and to call me when everything was out. I told the Gunny on the radio that this was not going to be a precision maneuver so I needed at least a 150 meter perimeter to keep from dropping a box on one of his troopers. He said, “Sir, we don’t own 150 meters.” I said, “How about 100 meters?” He said, “Will you take 75?” It was definitely going to be a semi-precision maneuver.
I had the idea in the back of my mind that by coming in on the deck at 125-130 knots I might be able to sneak in, but I had forgotten that at max power at night a blue flame shoots out of the exhaust stack on the left side of the engine. As aircraft commander I sat on the right side and couldn’t see it. The troops on the ground told me later that they could see that flame from over a mile away and also hear the roar of my 1450 horsepower engine.
As I approached the zone, probably a quarter mile or so out, the intense hostile fire started again and increased in intensity until I had completed the drop and was out of range. My crew disobeyed my direct order to call me when everything was out, but I forgave them. My first clue that everything was out was when both M-60 machine guns opened up below me as they began shooting back.
After completing the drop I lowered the nose and accelerated on the deck to 100 knots, then started my climb. As I started to climb the moon was coming up and I was silhouetted against it, but I had to continue the climb straight ahead as I had identified two 12.7mm heavy machine guns shooting at me and they had me bracketed, one on each side. If I turned I would be flying right over one of them.
The AK-47s that the North Vietnamese were shooting had green tracers but their heavy machine guns fired white tracers that looked like beer-can size fireballs coming in my direction. I was jinking hard, trying to dodge the tracers, but they nailed me several times. One of the rounds hit just below and behind my co-pilot, 1/Lt Carl Cederblom. It hit right where the fuselage and cockpit are joined together by two pieces of quarter inch angle iron. I couldn’t believe that a round about as big as my finger could shake my 14,500 pound helicopter like a terrier shaking a rat, but it did.
During the climb out, when we were taking the most intense fire, Lt Cederblom, who was new in-country and had only flown a few missions, was whooping and hollering, yelling, “Shit hot, shit hot, John Wayne shit, John Wayne, shit hot.” I told him that this was serious shit and to get on the controls with me in case I got hit, which he did, but he still kept saying, “John Wayne man, John Wayne.” After climbing to a safe altitude, I called the crew to check in and tell me how they were doing, and amazingly not one of them had a single scratch. I was later told by the ground troops that there were three heavy machine guns shooting at us.
I then joined up with my flight leader, escorted him on his routine beans and bullets resupply mission, and finally returned to Ky Ha to refuel and fly the next mission. While sitting in the fuel pits taking on fuel, (we did this with the engine running and the rotor blades turning), my transmission chip detector light came on so we taxied to our line and shut down. The H-34 has three gear boxes. The main transmission turns the main rotor-blades and a drive shaft runs down the spine of the fuselage to a 45 degree gearbox which directs another drive shaft up to the tail rotor gearbox. There is only one chip detector light for all three gear boxes. The chip detector is a magnetic plug in each gear box and if one of the gearboxes runs out of fluid or otherwise starts coming apart, it will shed pieces of the gears. When one of these chips contacts the magnetic plug, it will close a circuit and illuminate a light in the cockpit that is placarded “transmission”.
After shutting down, all four of us took our flashlights out and started assessing the battle damage. It turned out that one of the 12.7mm rounds had hit the 45 degree gearbox and cracked it, so for the next hour or so that we had been flying it was going drip, drip, drip and just happened to run out of fluid while we were in the fuel pits. It was about to seize. Had it seized while in flight I would have lost control of the aircraft and crashed if I hadn’t been able to land immediately. The landing would only have been in “Indian Country”.
The H-34 has a magnesium skin that does not pucker like aluminum or sheet metal when it is punctured. It flakes so it is hard to tell if the holes are entry or exit holes, but we counted over 40 holes. At least 18-20 were entry holes with at least three coming from the 12.7mm heavy machine guns. After counting the holes and securing the aircraft we all went to our respective clubs and had a few beers.
A week or so after this mission I was sitting in a two-holer reading room, reading the Stars and Stripes, when my Ops clerk came down and asked, “Lt Richardson, are you in there?” I replied that I was and he said, “There is a Capt. Pruitt in ops who wants to talk to you.” I told him that I didn’t know any Capt. Pruitt and when I finished what I was doing I went up to Ops. When I walked into Ops there was a recruiting poster Marine Captain in starched utilities and shined boots with a grizzled old Gunnery Sgt. Capt. Pruitt introduced himself and said that he was the Commanding Officer of 1st Battalion 7th Marines and that he wanted to shake my hand. He did and with that the Gunny, who was three or four inches shorter than me said in a thick Kentucky drawl, “And Lt Richardson I wanna give you a hug,” with which he wrapped me in a bear hug and nearly broke some ribs. They had driven about 15 miles through Indian Country to personally thank me. That meant a lot.
We had a saying in helicopters that the best medal was a live man’s smile and they assured me that there were 160 Marines smiling the next morning when the sun came up and the NVA had melted away. Capt. Pruitt said that he was convinced that without the ammo I delivered they would have been annihilated. With the fresh ammunition supply and pre-registered artillery support, they withstood an all-night assault by two battalions of NVA with only six KIA. (In the last 15 years or so they have invited me to several of their reunions and Capt. Pruitt and several of his troops have become good friends. Sadly LtCol. Robert Pruitt, USMC (Ret), passed away about a year ago from Agent Orange related cancer).
I was later awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) for this mission.
TRANSFER TO HMM-363
In April of 1966 there was a mass transfer of personnel between HMM-364 and HMM-363. 364 was going aboard ship for three months and 363 was scheduled for the next float, so they took everyone in 364 who had enough time left in country to wait for the next float and transferred them to 363 and transferred the short timers in 363 to 364. I was one of those who went to 363, another great squadron.
Over the next three months we flew mostly routine missions mixed in with some very interesting medevac and emergency recon extract missions. I also flew two very interesting night missions into an undisclosed country to drop off indigenous personnel, with Special Forces advisors, to set up ambushes. The indigenous personnel were Chinese mercenaries called Nungs, an ethnic minority group in Vietnam of Chinese descent who were fierce fighters. American Special Forces hired them as mercenaries, both to guard various facilities and to go on cross border missions with American advisors. We flew 60 miles or so west from a Special Forces “A” Camp located on the Laotian border to drop off these troops. A week later we went back and brought them out.
When we went aboard ship, USS Princeton LPH-5, we immediately went up to the DMZ where things were heating up. We were heavily involved in several intense operations for the entire three months on the float except for the mid-point of our cruise when Princeton was due to rotate home. We went to Subic Bay in the Philippines and crossed decked to USS Iwo Jima LPH-2, and after two weeks of liberty in Olongapo went immediately back to operations around the DMZ.
FROM DOGS TO PHANTOMS
When I rotated from Vietnam I was going to resign and go with the airlines. Upon arriving at MCAS El Toro I was interviewed by a Major who had been one of my Training Command instructors. He asked what it would take to keep me in the Marine Corps. I told him that I had been requesting jets since I started flight training and orders to jets would keep me in. So he said that he could arrange a transition to jets and a slot as an instructor in the Naval Air Training Command. He asked me where I wanted to go and I told him Pensacola, as my wife had family there.
When I checked into the Marine Aviation Detachment (MAD) at NAS Pensacola they knew nothing about the promise to be assigned to a jet training squadron and told me that I would be going to Helicopter Training Squadron Eight (HT-8) as a helicopter instructor. I told them that I was not going to fly helicopters. Not knowing quite what to do with this young Captain who refused to fly helicopters, they made me a ground school instructor where I flew T-28s again. After eight or 10 months of badgering MAD about sending me to a jet training squadron, with no results, I took matters into my own hands. I had a couple of buddies assigned to VT-4, flying the twin engine T-2B, where they taught air-to-air gunnery and carrier qualification. They also taught a short transition syllabus for students coming to VT-4 who had been flying the single engine T-2A. I started flying on weekends with one of my buddies and in a short time I had completed the transition syllabus. One day I put on my newest uniform with brand new shiny ribbons, spit shined my shoes, polished my brass, and proceeded to knock on the squadron CO’s door and requested a few minutes of his time.
At that time the CO of MAD was LtCol. Don Conroy, the infamous “Great Santini”. After hearing my tale of broken promises and the fact that I was already checked out in his squadron’s aircraft, my squadron CO picked up his phone and called Col. Conroy. The conversation went something like this: “Hey Don, Paul Merchant up at VT-4. I have one of your young Captains sitting here in my office who wants to be in my squadron. I want him in my squadron, so how about sending him to me…..oh bullshit Conroy, you can do anything that you want to with your Marines, I want him in my squadron………Okay Don thanks, the first round at happy hour tonight is on me.” He then turned to me and said “Go down to MAD and pick up your orders, welcome to VT-4.” So I spent the rest of my two year tour in Pensacola instructing air-to-air gunnery in the T-2B.
As I approached the end of my Pensacola tour I called my monitor, Mike Lucci, at Headquarters Marine Corps. He was a former squadron mate and I told him that I was probably going to get out at the end of my tour because my wife was not happy with being a Marine wife, constantly pulling up roots and moving. He said that he had planned on sending me to A-4s, so I told him that I would talk to my wife and call him the next day. After I talked to my wife that evening I called him the next day and told him that I was probably going to submit my letter of resignation, so he said, “How about F-4s?” I said, “Twist my arm, you silver-tongued devil, I would stay in for F-4s.” But he quickly said that he didn’t have the authority to send me to F-4s because the Marine Corps doesn’t send helicopter pilots to F-4s.
He then said, “You and General Connelly are good friends, right?” I said “Yeah sure, Captains and Generals are good friends. I worked for him and flew with him when I was a 2/Lt and he was a LtCol. He liked me and I liked him and we had some beers together at happy hour, but that was about it.” So he said that BGen. Connelly was the Assistant Wing Commander at MCAS Cherry Point, North Carolina, and he could give Mike approval to issue orders to me for F-4 transition. Mike said to give him a call. “What do you have to lose?” So I did.
I had stayed in touch with General Connelly, so when I called the next day the conversation went something like this. “Sorry Terry, we don’t send helicopter pilots to F-4s.” I said, “Why not sir?” He said, “We just don’t.” I replied, “With all due respect sir, that’s the same logic that I use on my one year old son, because I said so. I’ve been flying twin engine jets for the last 800 hours, they don’t go as fast and aren’t as ugly as the Phantom but they are twin engine jets. I’ve had two of my former students on cross-country flights park their F-4s on our flight line recently, so what you’re telling me is that I’m good enough to train pilots to eventually fly them but I’m not good enough to fly them myself?” The General said, “God Damn it Richardson, that’s not what I’m saying.” I replied, “With respect sir that is what you’re saying.” After several moments of silence, “Okay, call Lucci and tell him that I said to give you orders to F-4s here at Cherry Point.”
Several months later, during the first week of January 1969, I checked into Cherry Point and upon presenting my orders at Admin a Staff Sergeant said, “Capt Richardson, we’ve been expecting you. Gen. Connelly would like to see you at your earliest convenience.” I told him to hang on to my orders and said that I would be back. I went to wing headquarters and introduced myself to the General’s adjutant who ushered me into his office. I came to attention in front of his desk and said, “Captain Richardson reporting as ordered sir”. His reply, “Don’t screw it up Richardson.” I said that I was not going to screw it up, that the F-4 was just another airplane that I would learn to fly in short order and not to worry. He said that if I did well some of my helo buddies might get the chance as well but if I screwed up I would be the last helo pilot to fly F-4s. I assured him again that I was not going to screw it up. He dismissed me with, “The first round is on me at happy hour.”
I went through the two week F-4 ground school and then was sent to MCAS Beaufort, South Carolina, to a tactical squadron, VMFA-251, to go through the transition syllabus for non-helicopter pilots. There were six of us transitioning with VMFA-251—there were two A-4 pilots, two A-6 pilots, one C-130 pilot, and me. After a month or so, with the squadron pilots telling me I had to come up with a call sign, I was bestowed the call sign “Pacer” at a Friday night happy hour, as they said that I was setting the pace for the transition pilots. I obviously knew how to pace myself as I was one of the first to arrive at happy hour and one of the last to leave still standing unsupported. Fortunately for me the wing ran out of TAD money in mid-May and I remained in 251 until the new fiscal year started in July, giving me another two months of experience in the F-4 before going back to Vietnam.
EMERGENCY RECON EXTRACT
I reported in to VMFA-314, the Black Knights, at Chu Lai, RVN in early July 1969. Again I lucked out and was assigned to the best F-4 squadron in Vietnam at that time. We consistently had more up aircraft, flew more hours and more missions than any other Marine F-4 squadron, thanks primarily to our outstanding maintenance people. We were recognized by the Marine Corps Aviation Association as the best fighter squadron in the Marine Corps for 1969 and also a received a Presidential Unit Citation and a Naval Unit Citation for 1969-70.
20 Jan 1970 I launched off the hot pad with a load of 12 500 pound snake eye high drag bombs for a “troops in contact” mission as wingman for a Major who shall remain nameless. We proceeded to the rendezvous point with the FAC, a Marine OV-10 call sign Hostage Duke. He briefed us that there was an 8 man LRP (long range reconnaissance patrol) that had managed to get the attention of a full company of NVA who were chasing them. They were about seventy miles up a river west of Tam Ky in the mountains near Laos. Helicopters had tried to extract them but the ground fire was too intense for them to get to the team.
Out over the coastal plains near Tam Ky we were in the clear but clouds obscured the mountains. Hostage Duke told the flight lead to give him a head start and proceed up the river. Lead tried three or four times and ended up punching up through the clouds and coming back to the starting point. After his last attempt he told the FAC that there was not enough maneuvering room for an F-4 to get back as far as he had to go so he was aborting the mission.
I had worked with Hostage Duke on multiple occasions so I called him and said, “Duke, this is dash two, call sign Pacer, I want to give it a go.” He said, to paraphrase, “Alright Pacer, let’s go get those guys out of there, give me a 15 minute head start then proceed up the river telling me what you are seeing and I’ll tell you what to expect next. The weather up there is 300 to 500 feet overcast in rain squalls.” I did as briefed and 15 or so minutes up the river at 350 kts. he said, “Around the next bend in the river you’ll see two H-46s holding on the left side of the river and two Cobras on the right side, don’t hit them.” I called when I had the helos in sight and he said that the recon team was around the next turn and he was going to mark the target. As I came around the bend he said, “Give me one run with a 100 meter ripple. Friendlies are 50 meters at three o’clock, hit my smoke.” I could drop one bomb at a time, two at a time, all of them on one pass as a cluster, or I could set a 100, 200 or a 300 meter ripple. I was entirely too slow and entirely too close to hit his smoke so I lit the burners, accelerated to 500 kts and reversed for another pass. I was working with a 300-500 foot ceiling in fairly heavy rain and I was in and out of burner, pulling four to five Gs to stay away from the mountains.
With the recon team so close and with limited maneuvering room, I had to get lined up to make a precision drop. On my fourth or fifth pass things finally looked good so I rippled off the bombs at 300 feet, 500 kts in a shallow dive and pulled six Gs straight up in max burner to avoid the mountain in front of me. I broke out of the clouds at about 3,000’. Duke was going crazy on the radio yelling, “Shit hot, shit hot, shit hot.” The helicopters got in unopposed and got the team, which included several severely wounded Marines, out safely. Duke gave me 150 KBA (killed by air). I was later awarded my second DFC for that mission.
The Major who was leading the flight later wrote a book entitled something like “Phantoms Over Vietnam” in which he had a very close account of that mission. My only criticism of his account is that in his book he was the one flying the mission.
ONE MORE STORY
On 1 Feb 1970 I launched at 0100 to rendezvous with a Marine A-6 out of Da Nang as a flak suppression escort for a mission over Laos. I had Capt. Al Massey in my back seat. The early A-6s had to fly relatively low and slow for their electronic equipment to identify trucks on the Ho Chi Minh trail, so they were always escorted by an F-4 or A-4 for AAA suppression. I was the schedules officer, and going after gun sites was one of my favorite missions, so I scheduled myself for those often.
About three miles from the rendezvous point my right generator dropped off the line. I recycled it and it worked for about two minutes but then dropped off the line again and wouldn’t come back. At that point I aborted the mission and requested vectors from Copperhead at NKP to a safe area to jettison my ordnance. I was given clearance to descend to 15,000 feet and vectors to a Tacan radial and distance from NKP where I was to drop my bombs on a “suspected truck park”. As I descended about 10 miles from my drop point my left generator failed. I deployed the RAT (Ram Air Turbine) which provided me with electricity and hydraulic power, declared an emergency and requested vectors to home plate. I was told that home plate was approximately 280 miles at 130 degrees.
I began a climb and turned to a heading that would avoid overflying North Vietnam, when both of my engine fire warning lights suddenly illuminated. Al called from the backseat and asked me why the front cockpit was suddenly bathed in red light, so I told him that both fire warning lights had just came on but that I didn’t believe them. There was no way that they would both come on at the same time. I told him that he was sitting over the engines so if he saw the skin start to glow or the paint start to peel we would worry about it. At that point my RAT died. So, here we were over northern Laos, on a moonless night above a low overcast, with a black cockpit and no published procedures to deal with a total electrical failure.
I took out my flashlight and checked to see what instruments I had to work with. I knew where I was, I had a wet compass, and the tach generators were giving me the engine RPM. That was it. I had memorized the RPM for all power settings so I set climb power, started a climb to 20,000 feet, and headed for Chu Lai. The altimeter and airspeed indicators were working but unreliable because we had lost our CADC (Central Air Data Computer). I had also lost my stability augmentation system. The aircraft was acting like it was balanced on the point of a needle and I was moving the stick from stop to stop just trying to keep it straight and level. The intercom didn’t work and Al was yelling questions to me from the back seat. I could hear him but I was yelling my answers at my windscreen and he couldn’t understand me. I’ve never had a problem with vertigo but I didn’t want to take the chance of turning around to yell at the back seat. At some point he yelled “Did you say eject?” I started to yell back “No” but I thought he might hear “Go” so I just shouted “Negative, negative, negative”. After that, no matter what he shouted I just replied “Negative, negative, negative”.
As we neared the coast I could see a glow through the clouds that I knew must be Hue, so I headed for it and followed the glows from cities down the coast. I did not divert to Da Nang because it is surrounded by mountains except to the east, while Chu Lai is on the coastal plain, seven or eight miles from the nearest mountains. During the 45 minutes or so that it took to get home, my fire warning lights would start to glow periodically and I would hear a buzz in my headset. The RAT was starting to spin up but about the time I started getting power it would die again.
As we approached the glow in the clouds that I thought was Chu Lai, I started a descent and headed out to sea to let down feet wet. I thought that if the RAT started spinning again I might be able to jettison my bomb racks and wing tanks, so I held the emergency jettison button down as we were descending through the low clouds. Just after going feet wet there was a loud bang, the aircraft jumped about a hundred feet, and I could smell cordite. I had forgotten that I was holding the emergency jettison button down and I thought that Al just figured out where we were and decided to eject and swim home. Forgetting about inducing vertigo I whirled around and looked in the back seat to see a big smiling face and a thumbs-up. Al shouted “Good idea”! I had not tried the emergency jettison button earlier because it would have cleaned off the bottom of the aircraft, including the ordnance and the external fuel tanks. I knew that I had fuel in them when I lost all power and I wanted to use all of that fuel before I jettisoned them.
We broke out of the clouds at about 2000 feet. The glow in the clouds that I thought was Chu Lai was actually a fire fight going on about 10 miles south of Chu Lai with mortar flares in the clouds. I did a one eighty and headed back to Chu Lai. I was thinking that we were totally blacked out and they had no idea that we were there so I did a low pass by the tower about 100 feet abeam and went to full power, I didn’t have afterburner because the igniters didn’t work, but it got their attention because by the time I turned downwind I saw the lights from the crash trucks heading for the runway. As I pulled up and slowed I put the gear handle down but nothing happened. Great, I had obviously had an unrelated utility hydraulic failure. I blew the gear and the flaps down. In the F-4 when you blow the flaps down they only go to half-flaps, so I turned downwind and figured that 180 kts. would be a safe pattern speed for half-flaps. As I turned crosswind at what I thought was 1000’ the aircraft stalled, rolled left and nose down. I jammed the throttles all the way forward into the burner detent. The burner didn’t work but I was able to recover basically at tree top level. After I recovered I flew to about 10 miles south with unreliable instruments and started a long straight in approach.
I flew the approach starting with an indicted airspeed of 230 kts, gradually reducing the power until I felt the first nibble of a stall. Then I increased the thrust a little. Chu Lai had two sets of arresting gear at both ends of the runway, just short of the high speed taxiways, and a Fresnel lens like those used to come aboard aircraft carriers. I had heard and felt the gear come out of the wells when I blew them down, but with no electricity I didn’t have gear lights and didn’t know if they were down and locked. I decided to put the hook down and make a fly-in arrestment like coming aboard ship, so as not to have a gear collapse and go careening off into the fuel pits. Just to make my night complete the lens was down so there was no glide slope information. I was pretty sure that I knew where the arresting wires were, so I set up for the first wire knowing that I would surely get the second if I missed the first. I landed and caught the first wire and came to a stop in a hundred feet or so. The F-4 has auxiliary air doors under the intakes to provide cooling air to the engines at slow speeds or on the ground. However, they are powered by the auxiliary hydraulic system which was inoperative, so without enough cooling air the engines started to auto accelerate to provide more air flow. I shut them down. Now we were sitting on the runway, in the dark with no comm, and the crash trucks were sitting at the second high speed taxiway with their lights flashing. They had no idea we were there on the active runway. It was really dark and it was also hot and humid, so I raised my canopy. Al had unstrapped and he grabbed my shoulder, startling the hell out of me. He had realized that we were sitting on an active runway and no one knew we were there. The next airplane to land would land on top of us, so he took his flashlight and went running down the runway toward the crash trucks waving the flashlight until he got their attention. While he was running down the runway I was trying to get my legs to stop shaking so I could get out of the cockpit.
Al and I went to our hooch and had a few beers to unwind, then to breakfast. Then we woke up the safety officer to brief him. He called the maintenance officer who called the tech rep and we related our story over a few more beers. The tech rep told us that the Navy and Air Force had both had a half dozen or so cases of a total electrical failure but they all jumped out of the aircraft so they didn’t have a clue why this had happened.
The post mortem of my aircraft revealed that my right generator had totally failed and the left generator had a CSD (constant speed drive) failure. The RAT had a roller bearing on the drive shaft that was sealed with its lubricant at the factory. It turned out that mine was improperly lubricated before it was sealed. I was a post maintenance test pilot and we always checked the RAT but we would extend it, disconnect our generators to make sure that it worked, reconnect the generators and stow the RAT. After this we would deploy the RAT on test flights and leave it out for the entire test hop to make sure that it would keep working. A good number of the RATs would fail after operating for about 15 minutes.
ALMOST STARTED WORLD WAR III
(At a reunion for VMFA-314 about 10 years ago I was looking for an old friend from 314 at Chu Lai, Col. Manfred Rietsch USMC (Ret), call sign Fokker. Fokker is an East German refugee whose father was killed by the Nazis during World War II in a concentration camp. After the Communists built the wall his mother took him and his two sisters through a canal and over barbed wire to escape to West Berlin when he was eight years old. His family ended up in Minnesota 3 years later. My wife Connie and I were in the hospitality room with 50 or so people when Manfred and his wife walked in. It was very loud, as you can imagine, and when he saw me he said, “Terry Richardson, we could have started World War Three,” in his loud German accented English. It reminded me of the old TV commercial: “When EF Hutton speaks, everyone listens.” The room went totally silent.)
In early 1970 I scheduled myself to fly Fokker’s wing on a hop that launched sometime after dark on a night MiGCAP, flying fighter escort for a flight of three B-52s. They were on a bombing mission over Laos near the Mu Gia pass. We were loaded with our typical fighter load of four AIM-7 Sparrow missiles, four AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles, and two 360 gallon drop tanks. We had joined up with the bombers and were proceeding north when we received a call from Copper Head (a GCI site) at NKP telling us that there was an unknown aircraft coming out of North Vietnam heading for the B-52s. Copper Head gave us a vector towards the aircraft and we picked it up at about 40 miles. We called “Judy”, which meant that we now had control of the intercept, and they replied, “Roger Judy, you are cleared to fire.”
As we got closer we realized that the contact was low and slow, so we descended and rolled in behind the aircraft and advised Copper Head that the contact was not a threat to the bombers. They asked us to get a VID (visual identification) of the aircraft, so we closed on it and both confirmed that we had a good growl (tracking tone in our headsets) on our Sidewinders. When we got close we told Copper Head that it was a medium size twin engine transport, running lights out, so they asked us to get closer and see if we could see any identifying markings. Fokker asked me if I still had a good growl on the Winders and I told him that I did. He told me to back off outside of minimum range for the Sidewinders and said that he was going to join up with the bogey.
Fokker said, “If they make a hostile move blow them out of the f…ing sky.” I told him that if I did it would probably blow him out of the sky as well. His response, “I say again, if they make a hostile move blow them out of the f…ing sky.” He joined up on the bogey and reported that it was a twin engine turboprop with Cyrillic letters on the fuselage. As he was reporting that, all of a sudden the running lights and cabin lights came on—the pilots must have realized that a fighter had just joined up on them. With that information, Copper Head told us to resume the CAP for the B-52s.
After the B-52s dropped their bombs we escorted them out of the area and returned to Chu Lai. When we climbed out of our cockpits we were met by the MAG-12 duty officer who informed us that “Blue Chip Actual” (the four-star Air Force Commanding General of the Seventh Air Force) was on the phone, waiting to talk to the flight leader of our flight. The General told Fokker that his private Lear Jet was about to land at Chu Lai and that he wanted Manfred to come to Saigon and personally debrief him. Manfred told him that he was still in his flight gear and smelled like a goat but the General told him to get on that airplane and come to Saigon.
When Manfred got back to Chu Lai several hours later he woke me and told me that we could have started WWIII! It turns out that Soviet Premier Alexi Kosygin was on that airplane. He had been at a meeting in Hanoi with Uncle Ho and was told that the next day was King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia’s birthday so he decided to pay an impromptu birthday visit to him. They were actually on an established ICAO flight route but had not filed a flight plan. So if they had made a hard turn into Fokker I could have started WWIII and probably blown my good friend out of the sky as well.
AFTER VIETNAM
After that tour in Vietnam I went to MCAS Kaneohe Bay for 2½ years and then requested release from active duty. I separated on 31 October 1972 and was hired by Western Airlines and began training on 5 March 1973. (It is interesting that 5 March was the day in 1966 that I flew the emergency ammo resupply mission). I retired from Delta in April 2001 flying international as Captain on the B-767ER at the New York pilot base.
TJ didn’t do any official research but to his knowledge he is the only Marine who flew both helicopters and the F-4 in combat or who received a DFC in both helicopters and fixed wing. Both of his DFCs were written up as Silver Stars and down-graded to DFCs at a higher command. He flew over 600 missions in the H-34 and his last log book entry from VMFA-314 states: “305 combat missions. No further flights this command.” TJ’s final word follows:
The best medal is a live man smiling. I consider myself very fortunate to have been put into positions in Vietnam where a lot of men were alive and smiling the next day after their life threatening combat experiences.