BOMBING IN THE TIME OF OZZIE AND
HARRIETT
The tone
came on clearly through the helmet earphones. Even with the sound of the engine
at near full throttle, and the wind rushing past the canopy the tone was strong
and clean. The horizontal needle on the LABS dropped to the bottom of the
instrument and I pulled steadily back on the control stick counting “One
potato, Two potato” to get the exact profile. The needle centered at 4 1/2 G’s
and I held it steady. The vertical needle indicated the position of the wings
so a perfect + meant I was flying the plane to the right position in space. I
continued to hold the pickle down, the button on the control stick that was
used to release bombs, and after about 3 seconds and with a pitch angle of
about 49O the bomb was ejected from the centerline station on the bottom
of the airplane. The thump was reassuring, and the slight increase in G load
didn’t matter since the bomb, I suppose it should be called a weapon, which weighed
about 1700#, was on its way to the target. The sharp smell of cordite, that’s
what other people have called it at least, filled the cockpit and then quickly
disappeared. Now, I was working for myself. I had done all that I could to put
the weapon on the target and now it was time to get out of there. The nose
continued to come up to vertical, and I looked over my shoulder to find the
ground for a reference. A few seconds more and the nose passed through the
horizontal. Inverted at about 1800’ the airspeed had bled off from 275kts to a
little over 90 kts, slightly above stall speed. The nose continued to fall
through the horizon and the airspeed began to increase slowly. I had to be easy
on the controls so that the plane wouldn’t fall out of the sky. A gentle touch
on the control stick to let the nose descend a little more and I slowly began
to gain a little more airspeed. Now the controls would be more effective, so
that I could roll the wings level and begin a gentle pull out. I had done this
hundreds of times in practice on the bombing range at Fallon, NV. The official
name for the maneuver was the Medium Angle Loft, the aerobatic maneuver was the
Half Cuban Eight, but to all of us, it was the Idiot Loop. Practice for this
delivery was not particularly safe and several pilots were lost during training,
but the accuracy was surprisingly good, well within 100’. (There is a phrase or
homily that goes “Close only counts in Horseshoes and Atom bombs.” My guess is
that the original version had hand grenades in place of atom bombs.)
No need to
be at the 50’ that I had held from the Initial Point (IP) to the pull up where
the tone had come on; retracing my previous course was not of much concern
since the people on the ground that I had awakened were going to be really busy
in a couple of minutes, they had a lot more to worry about than a single navy
airplane flying fast through their backyards. I figured I needed a couple of
hundred feet of cushion to maintain control when the light flash would blind me
and a few seconds later when the pressure wave would overtake me. Was I outside
the lethal range of the effects, the thermal and overpressure that would be
destroying everything I had just flown over? Who knew! We were told that we
could escape, but the flash would certainly penetrate the hand I held over one
eye, and we didn’t have the gold impregnated visors on our old helmets that
became opaque under illumination from a very bright light source yet. Those
came later and went to the big guys. The radiation didn’t matter since it would
be hours before I started to feel any of the consequences and I would be back
home by then– I hoped. Still. If I could see, I figured I had a pretty good
chance of getting back to the carrier – perhaps a better chance than it had of
surviving the certain attach that would ensue. But there were options, and I had
looked at some airfields on the way in and knew where there were some straight
sections of beach that I could land on gear up.
The
primitive weapons of the ‘50s took a lot of care and attention on route to the
target. After launch from the carrier there was a check list to complete that
got the bomb ready to detonate. The central fin had to be lowered, the U235 (I
recalled it as plutonium) ball had to be inserted into the high explosive
sphere using a small electric motor, and other systems had to be armed and
monitored through a control panel that had been installed in the cockpit. We
were given a small case that contained fuses, spare lamp bulbs and a piece of
metal that looked like a bottle opener to pull circuit breakers with. I had
signed for the bomb when it was loaded. If I had to divert, I knew how to take
it apart to retrieve the U235 sphere, and was expected to keep it with me until
I could find a responsible party to take possession and sign for it. Strange
set of circumstances to be considering while a nuclear exchange (or should that
be called the end of civilization? That term “nuclear exchange” may be the
biggest euphemism of all time!) was going on. Strange too that considering
these contingency plans tended to create a false sense of normalcy in what was
certainly a world gone crazy. (Another bizarre thought: Would I get radiation
burns on my leg as it swung back and forth as I carried it to the BOQ room at a
divert base?) For more information about the MK7, check the quite extensive
discussion at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_7_nuclear_bomb
The catapult
launch was always a couple of hours before sunrise, and there was the
predictable intense relaxation that came with the warmth of the sun, the
brightening of the world outside, and the easing of the tension of the launch.
I was alone and on my own, and it was the first time I had not been in a two
plane formation. Cruising a hundred or so feet off the water gave a
surprisingly safe and secure feeling. The big radial reciprocating engine
didn’t need high altitude to be efficient. I knew how to read the wind from
watching the waves and could cover long distances and arrive at a land fall
with surprising accuracy. Figuring the wind at altitude was always a guess, but
down here it was like reading a book or a gauge. However, the coast that I was
going to cross was not the California that I had become so familiar with. I
thought I would recognize the point I had selected while I was still several
miles at sea, but I wasn’t sure. I wanted to be between the search radars that
were constantly looking for intruders, and they would be especially on guard
today. Still, I thought I could cross the beach and get into the hills to hide
before they could vector the MIGs to intercept me. The 12 wing bomb racks, the
four 20mm canons and the armor plate had been removed to make the airplane as
light as possible to maximize our range, so the only defense we had was to evade the
radar and the fighters. The long practice flights were known as “Sandblowers.”
These were not without hazard, we lost a CO on one of them. He ran into a steep
canyon near Yosemite Park trying to get his two wingmen out of a box canyon they
had flown into. Both of junior pilots survived. .) I remember going through the
aviation gasoline soaked personal effects of one of our pilots who was killed.
The items in his wallet stuck together and had to be carefully separated and
checked before they were sent to his family. (A fantasy: I look out of the
cockpit just after the bomb is kicked off the center station and see an Air
Force B47 with the bomb bay doors open. . . .)
What was my
target? I’ll never tell, but if you swing an arc 500 miles inland parallel to the
coast of a potential enemy at the time, recall the war in Korea was recently
over, in the Western pacific, you have covered the five or six targets I
planned, and was on alert to attack during my years in the business. (Bizarre
recollection – Lead tape. Lead tape is like scotch tape, but it is made with
lead. It is unlikely that most people have ever heard about or thought about
lead tape. There is only one use that I know of that it has and that is to
cover the seams on nuclear weapons. The lead tape was the last thing that was
added, and it was to me the most profound item that clearly identified this as
something out of the ordinary, this silver colored smooth metal shape was not
filled with fuel, or HE, or napalm, it was filled with something that we needed
to be protected from
Is this
story true, you may be wondering. Yes, everything about the story is true –
except for the actual flight. The 1950s was a time of great competition between
the nascent Air Force, and the U. S. Navy. Nuclear weapons had caused a total
transformation in the priorities. The Air Force was in the early stages of
building the Strategic Air Command, and the Navy wanted to build a fleet of
large aircraft carriers – and the budget was really tight. Therefore, anything
that could move – surface ships, tanks, submarines, helicopters, aircraft of
all types and infantrymen were outfitted with nuclear weapons. So, we were
added to the list and actually became a somewhat significant part of the
deterrent force. Our airplane the Douglas AD (later A1) Skyraider was designed
at the end of the 2nd World war and over 3100 were produced. It served in Korea and
Vietnam and was retired from service after extensive use in Vietnam in the
early 1970’s. With two 300 gallon drop tanks we could stay airborne for over 12
hours and hit a target over 1000 nautical miles away from the ship. We were a
part of the nuclear deterrent just like the B47s, B36s and the newly developed
B52s. Twelve hours is a long time in a small cockpit, and it was difficult extricating
ourselves from the airplane at the end of the flight. We were given Dexedrine
to take just before landing to sharpen our reaction time, I took it once and
didn’t like the feeling I got. At least one of the pilots saved up his pills and
took them when we were in port to increase his stamina on liberty – he would
have been classified as a drug abuser now. I was 21 in 1957 when this story
could have taken place. Would I have gone on the flight if the “balloon had
gone up?” I can’t imagine not going, it was simply expected that we would do
what we were told, that is what we had signed up for. The menace was real, and
I was from the “Duck and Cover” generation. One of my squadron mates later
admitted that his plan was to go over the horizon, out of sight, drop the bomb
in the ocean on safe and orbit for 12 hours before returning to the ship – was
he telling the truth? I knew him pretty well and I think he was.
(A final
bizarre thought: I remember thinking that it would have been wonderfully
interesting to watch a half dozen or so atom bombs going off over actual
targets – no, I’m not sad that I didn’t get to see it happening, but I always
thought . . .)
When I
returned to an operational squadron following three years of shore duty, the
business had changed substantially. The weapons were smaller, lighter and more modern;
the air burst option was largely dismissed so the weapons were “laid down” on
the target, no more Idiot Loop, and set to detonate after a specified period
giving plenty of time to escape the lethal effects. (I suppose because concerns
about fallout had been reduced in favor of increased standoff distance for the
pilots – that seems odd.) I don’t recall as much about this time since we were
involved in actual combat and standby combat readiness didn’t seem to be as
interesting.
