20 JANUARY 1972

A RECONNAISSANCE PHANTOM WAS SHOT DOWN 15 MILES
SOUTH OF THE BAN BAN VALLEY IN NORTHERN LAOS DURING A BARREL ROLL MISSION.

A day in the life of Major Robert K. Mock,
World's Greatest Fighter Pilot, and occasional hero.

In June of 1971, I arrived at Udorn, Thailand, my
third combat tour of duty. I was assigned to the
432 nd Tactical Reconnaissance Wing, 14 th Tac
Recon Squadron, World's Greatest Fighter Pilot in
my mind. At that time I wasn't a hero yet.
However, I was A Master of Air Defense in the
F-102 Delta Dagger, and a damn good "Recce"
Phantom RF-4C pilot. Other pilots called us Recce
Pukes, but they were just jealous. I believed it
was an affectionate term, kind of like calling a
marine a "Jarhead." The Recce motto was: Alone,
Unarmed, and Unafraid. At times you could
substitute Unafraid with "Scared witless!"

The weather wasn't very good, the monsoon season
had just started, and it really was our best
friend because it slowed down the traffic on the
Ho Chi Minh trail, a 2000 mile network of dirt
roads. Each one of the passes, Mu Gia, Ban Ravin,
and Ban Karai, sat along a route coming out of
North Vietnam and it lashed up into the jungle of
Laos where it became a part of the Barrel Roll.
It was similar to the arteries coming out of your
heart, hidden trails running up into North
Vietnam and Laos. These trails are not super
highways by any stretch of the imagination. Steel
Tiger, another designated battle area, sat to the
south. The rains were terrible and the roads so
muddy the supplies heading south were being
choked up in North Vietnam. It was a field day
for the Recce guys. We would roll in and perform
"Protective Reaction Strikes." Legally, in order
to have a protective reaction the reconnaissance
airplanes would probe (trolling might be more
descriptive) in a suspicious area, supposedly get
shot at, and the reaction would be that the
fighters could go in and drop bombs, but only at
that particular target as dictated by 7 th Air
Force. That's in accordance with the Rules of
Engagement. General Lavelle said, "We have a
saying we used in Vietnam, that we finally found
out why there are two crew members in the F-4.
One is to fly the airplane, and one is to carry
the briefcase full of the rules of engagement."
Damn silly, but that's the way it was.

It was absolutely stinko weather and there was
nothing more exciting than "scud running" at
about 600 knots at fifty feet and the only thing
going for you is your terrain avoidance/terrain
following radar and the experience from other
people. We carried no protective armament,
missiles, or bombs. Speed, surprise, and evasive
maneuvers keep us alive. We were doing visual
reconnaissance with the RF4Cs called the Sports
Model, because it was a sleeker, faster Phantom
than the F-4 Fighter. We also had side looking
radar, which wasn't very effective, but
acceptable for intel. That would help us, except
sometimes the foliage was so thick the radar
wouldn't penetrate through the trees.

It's the fall and I've had all my practice
missions. I'm now a visual reconnaissance pilot
operating in Northern Laos, an area designated
"Barrel Roll." I had my own secret call sign,
Bullwhip 26. John Stiles, a brand new first
lieutenant just out of navigator school, was my
Weapons Systems Officer or WSO. I was also
running the Command Post and since I seldom went
back to my quarters I would often sleep there.
The visual reconnaissance mission was to generate
targets primarily for a cover story in Laos. We
ran across the DMZ all the way up north past the
Mekong River, which separated Laos and Thailand,
an area where we sometimes trained. It differed
from the fighting elsewhere in the theater in
almost every respect and to such an extent that
it effectively amounted to a separate war.

A real hot spot in Laos was the Plains of Jars.
Our mission would make your hair stand straight
up! General Vang Pao, a Laotian mercenary, was
always fighting the other two factions in Laos.
The CIA built Lima Sites for their Air America
operations. This included the Raven Forward Air
Controllers, primarily USAF pilots, who flew
without any identification. I knew Vang Pao and
most of the Ravens because they would come down
to UDorn occasionally to party. In July, Vang Pao
forced the North Vietnamese Regulars, who were on
the north edge of the Plains of Jars, back into
North Vietnam. This back and forth went on
regularly. The monsoon season arrived with a fury
so the weather was horrible. This allowed General
Vang Pao to start his attack which forced the
North Vietnam Regulars back to the Fishes Mouth
near Vien Ban, a city just slightly east. The
Chinese and Russians were providing the NVR with
tanks, rockets and trucks to hold off, kill, and
squelch the Laotian mercenaries.

The Ravens would FAC in a small single-engine
prop airplane called an O-1 Bird Dog, similar to
a Cessna 172, which carried smoke rockets to mark
targets for the faster fighter bombers. When
things got really tight the FACs would fly in bad
weather while we stayed down. We cooperated with
them by helping with intelligence, giving it to
them over the radios in code. Strike missions
were flown using mercenaries, Thais and Laotians,
flying T-28s out of Udorn. Their armament was two
bombs and a 50 caliber gun. They might hit the ground if they were lucky.

Air America's command post was next door to mine,
so quite often we would eat and drink together.
It was very low-key since their operation was top
secret while ours was just secret. When we talked
on the radios we knew everyone's voices so we
never used names and we spoke in codes. The
Ravens were outstanding pilots and I really
admired their operation because they overcame insurmountable odds.

In September, even though the weather was
marginal, the 7th Air Force ordered a Protective
Reaction Strike. In one of the passes we were
fired upon by a large number of 37 MM Triple A
sites. Each gun emplacement took two hand
operated gunners, one handling the horizontal,
and one the vertical, and a third person would
put a clip of six rounds into the weapon. A 37 MM
is about the size of an oversized golf ball. If
one hits you, it's curtains! Most are seven to
nine level gunners with experience going back to
1964, so they're very good. It's awfully hard
when you're in a duel and they are on the ground.
In the airplane you're on a curved linear path,
so it's like shooting ducks. All they have to do
is lead you and you solve the problem for them.
The rate of fire is tremendous. The fighter
bombers had a very successful PR strike which was
primarily for POL, a fuel dump at Ma Gia. It burned for days.

In December of '71 Vang Pao lost his advantage,
the weather went from bad to worse. The enemy was
dismantling tanks and trucks and hand carrying
them down the trail because it was too muddy to
drive. They reassembled them on the Plains of
Jars and out-flanked Vang Pao's troops. He was
wounded, evacuated to Udorn, and later flown out
on an American C-130 Hercules. Eventually he
ended up in the United States, living first in
Montana, and then in California. Most of his
soldiers were taken care of by the CIA.

A typical visual reconnaissance mission would
require flying low at high speed over mountainous
terrain, slipping through a mountain pass, and
then dropping down into the jungle, a rain
forest, where the normal trees are triple canopy.
Every 100 feet is a canopy, 200 feet another
canopy, and at 300 feet the top canopy. It would
take four or five guys to wrap their arms around
the trunk of these ancient trees.

The weather improved, so we programmed a PR
strike on Christmas day, which made our spirits
soar. Many of the clouds during the months
monsoon season reached over 60,000 feet and the
Phantom could handle that. The problem was
letting down. We had to letdown with our own
TA/TFR radar which required slowing down because
it was very difficult to know your position. It
was very tricky. Once you got underneath the
clouds you had to go visual because you can't fly
instruments when you're below 500 feet at 600
knots. You must be a looking outside to know where you are going.

We had six Recce pilots in Operation Barrel Roll
and eight in the Steel Tiger area. The Barrel
Roll is the geographical area starting at the DMZ
and proceeding west and north into the edge of
Laos. Steel Tiger was everything south of the DMZ
in Laos. Then again, it was the trails that fed
back into South Vietnam. It was a better series
of networks and the North Vietnamese were taking
all the lumps. It wasn't the VC nor the Royalists
Pathet Lao that finished off Vang Pao; it was the
North Vietnamese Regulars. The Pathet Lao didn't
take prisoners. As you flew by the soldiers would
look up and you could see their rank. They were
definitely North Vietnamese Regulars. The Pathet
Lao sent us someone's finger with a class ring on
it and another time we got a lampshade made of
human skin. It gets your attention because we
were hanging it out every day. A recce pilot could forget about becoming a POW.

We would do a route trace of where we were going
and we had frag orders telling us what to do.
Generally, after departing Udorn we would proceed
directly to the tankers, KC 135s, orbiting in the
Orange Anchor area, the border between Thailand
and Laos. With my Sports Model RF4C, we only
needed 4000 pounds of fuel. That would allow us
twenty-five to thirty minutes of high-speed
patrol. We had very low drag without external
stores on the RF-4. Not so with the F-4, which
was similar to flying with the gear down. Trying
to escort a Recce guy with the F4 was a joke.

The three passes; Mu Gia, Ban Karai, and Ban
Ravin were being used by Strategic Air Command
for IDP's, interdiction points, which we called
sandboxes. SAC would launch a solitary B-52 and
drop a full load of bombs from 35,000 feet,
saturating the whole area. Hopefully they would
hit something. And if not, we would keep the VC
and North Vietnamese busy with filling up holes
because the B-52s cratered everything with their 750 pound bombs.

In January, we had another protective reaction
strike that wasn't too shabby. The SAMs fired at
us while we had aircraft airborne on combat air
patrol. I was working my day job as Chief of the
Command Post. I went down to the 14th Squadron
Operations room to brief with my Wizzo, Lt. John
Stiles. The younger jocks affectionately called
me "Uncle Bobby," because I was a thirty-eight year old Major. I was old!

John asked, "Did you get the latest Intel frag?"

I said, "Yes, I had been briefed on it."

A B-52 cell operating in the Fishes Mouth area
had a missile launched against them. The Fishes
Mouth was a section of the border between Laos
and North Vietnam on a navigation chart, when
highlighted, looked like the mouth of a fish. SAC
immediately ceased all operations, announcing
their bombers wouldn't fly until someone neutralized the SAM site.

"Peppermint Patty" and John Stiles exchanged glances.

John said, "We know that missile site is not in Laos."

Lieutenant Peppermint Patty, our Intel Officer,
chimed in. "I agree with John. That's a low
threat area. There's nothing there."

I remember thinking at that moment, How many
times have I been shot at when I thought, there's
nothing there. Maybe there was nothing in Laos
but I was curious about across the border.

At that point, without any permission we could go
seven kilometers into North Vietnam. At 600
knots, you can cover seven clicks pretty fast.
You load up the Sports Model to about four Gs and
you rudder roll her down to about 100 feet. If
you're level with or below the first tree canopy
you're okay, but if you're higher the second and
third canopy can block you out. The guns and
missiles are all under the trees. It's not like
going down a freeway, highway, or a secondary road.

I had preplanned targets. One was Ban Ban in the
Plains of Jars, where we had lost airplanes and
Ravens. I did some visual reconnaissance in the
Plains of Jars. Not just running the roads, but
looking at gun emplacements and supply caches. We knew where they were.

Yours truly had not taken a bullet hole since my
arrival in June. Most of the backseaters wanted
to fly with me because not only was I the world's
greatest fighter pilot but I wasn't a missile or
small arms magnet . We had a couple of guys that
no one wanted to fly with because they always
came back with bullet holes in their airplane.

I took a deep breath. "John, let's make a run up
the Fishes Mouth via Route 7, and then we'll hit
the tanker. After that we'll do some photo targets of opportunity, all visual."

"Okay, Uncle Bobby."

We were running an infrared route trace. Normally
we didn't use the cameras unless we spotted a
really lush target. With photo recon we used
super lenses while flying higher and slower. This
made it easier for photo interpretation back at
Udorn. Weather was about 5000 broken, 10,000
overcast in the Fishes Mouth. We had left the PDJ
and were all cranked up. John always used a
monocular, like binoculars, but with only one
lens like the old spyglass. How he used it I did
not know because four Gs was minimum.

John and I enjoyed our beautiful Sports Model,
number 573, and life was great. We let down right
on the deck and started rolling into North Vietnam.

I called out, "Brace yourself, John!"

We're weaving at four Gs, which caused the
experienced enemy gunners to lead us for six Gs, which was hard to do.

We went about three clicks, no more than that,
and I saw a white object, a transporter erector
for a surface-to-air missile. No doubt it was an
SA-2. John saw it about the same time and turned his side looking camera on.

"Yep, there it is," John said.

There's always more than one and they don't just
leave things out naked as an ape. They have heavy
concentrations of antiaircraft guns to protect them.

I turned my head, looking back. "John, we've surprised them."

There wasn't a round fired so we proceeded on
about seven clicks to make them think that we had departed.

"Brace yourself, John," I called out and entered
a wifferdill maneuver. Recce guys can do it and
some of the bomber guys can do it but with a load
of bombs it's difficult to do. I lit the burners
even though we were doing 600 knots. If I didn't,
by the time I loaded up the airplane to four Gs
my airspeed would decay. I thought about
jettisoning the external fuel tanks but I didn't.
It may have made a difference. Hindsight is
20/20. I pulled up like I was going to do a loop,
did a half roll, pulled some Gs, and ruddered it
right back down. As soon as my nose went through
the horizon we started accelerating like a
freight train going straight down. We were in
afterburner, and I watched the airspeed increase
rapidly, 650, 680, 690, clicking off the knots.
The last time I glanced at the airspeed indicator
it read 720 knots. That's as fast as an RF-4C can
go on the deck at that density altitude. We're
streaking along trying to get a bearing on the
SAM site which is now on the opposite side of the
aircraft. I wasn't rolling as hard as I should,
perhaps, because I'm looking outside and we're
flying lower and lower. We're about 100 feet
above ground and you don't look inside when
you're that low. We were even with the first
canopy, so we could see under the trees. Now I
could see the site and I tried to get a fix but
we were running away. The infrared trace is
printing out latitude, longitude, airspeed, and
altitude. Recce crews can't lie. I guess the head
shed didn't trust us. The photo interpreter might
be a two striper, not even a sergeant, but he can
pin point your exact route of flight using your infrared trace.

Suddenly, everything in front of me flashed
white. At least twenty guns opened up on us! I
didn't see any white SAMs, because they were on
the other side of us. The Triple A gunners were
protecting it. When we came in from the west, we
surprised them. When we came back from the east,
they surprised us! After the second or third
vibration the aircraft began to shutter like a
dog passing peach seeds. For a few microseconds I
glanced in my rearview mirror, and there ain't no
tail anymore! Damn! Why didn't I go to Canada!
The rounds are coming up, and they're hitting the
fuel tanks between the cockpit and the tail. The
fire was coming out the piccolo tubes,
air-conditioning vents on the side of the
cockpit. There were little holes in the pipes and
fire was coming out. This meant the engines were
sucking in flames and the fuel tanks were on
fire. When a fighter starts to go, it doesn't
take very long. The whole airplane will explode very violently.

John screamed, "Uncle Bobby, we're on fire!"

I yelled, "Prepare to eject!"

Bad things were happening very fast. I grabbed
the ejection lever and I yelled, "Eject, eject, eject!"

I pulled the handle. We didn't have much altitude
because the aircraft tends to sink. The ejection
sequence is; back canopy, front canopy, back
seat, front seat, so the backseater doesn't get
scorched. We went out in that order. John's gone,
I'm gone. The last thing I remember is that there
wasn't much airplane left. I closed my eyes
because I figured we were goners. There's no way
we're going to live through this. If the
exploding rounds didn't get us the crash surely
would. I closed my eyes and said the magic words,
"Oh, crap!" two words every pilot says just
before they die. I said it--John didn't--he's a
different story. I could hear, but I had my eyes
closed and my jaws were torqued. My visor was
down and my oxygen mask was on. I heard the
cracking sound of tree limbs breaking--crack,
crack, crack--which I'm going through. I must
admit it jarred me a little bit. And then all of
a sudden it's just like-SWOOSH! I'm no longer in
the air. I opened my eyes and I've come down
around a piece of karst, limestone out-cropping.
How I came around it, I don't know. It bent
around a highly sloping slash and burn area. It
looked like we had come down in a grove of
aspens, except the trees were stripped and they
looked like an antenna farm, straight buggy
whips, forty or fifty feet high. That's what we
had gone into, supersonic, which gradually slowed us down.

As you come out of the aircraft the seat rotates
because of the rocket motors. We have garters and
leg restraints to keep you from flailing around
as you eject. My forward velocity was 700 knots
and the rocket propelled me just far enough to
clear the tail, which in this case didn't matter
because the tail was gone. I didn't hear the
aircraft explode or crash. I sat stunned for a
couple of seconds and finally got my wits about
me. I looked around, and son-of-a-gun, I'm
sitting there in my seat with the lower ejection
handle in my hand! The rocket motors had gone
off, otherwise I would not have cleared the airplane.

The parachute is encased in a kidney shaped
affair above your shoulders, a plastic mounted
arrangement attached to you and to the seat. The
first thing that should happen is a little drogue
chute about twelve to eighteen inches wide
blossoms out to stabilize the seat and after X
number of seconds an initiator fires and a bigger
chute comes out to extract the twenty-eight foot
canopy, a sequence of three. These shotgun like
initiators are built into the side of the seat,
which you check on every pre-fight to make sure you have them.

Suddenly I hear banging! "Damn, the ground troops are shooting at me!"

It was the initiator for my lap belt letting go
so I could separate from the seat, which had
never happened! Now the next initiator can fire
releasing the 28 foot parachute. Two of these
shotguns sounded and I'm struggling to find my 9
MM Combat Masterpiece so I can get even. I'm in
shock, but I'm happy to be alive. My coccyx
really, really hurts, because I smacked the
ground very hard. My first thought was to check
my limbs. They are okay. My forehead is bleeding
from the shrapnel. I figure that's no big deal.
It's not a gusher. My carotid arteries and the
groin arteries were okay. I looked for my
survival radio and my 9 mm weapon. Just for a
moment I thought about the survival instructor's
warning at Clark Field. Major Mock, this is your
third combat tour, you're never going to make it
through without being shot down. He knew what he
was talking about. Two tours later, I am over 250
miles from Udorn in enemy territory, sitting in
an ejection seat in the middle of a jungle. I
thought, Let's see, if I can make seven to ten
miles a day escaping and evading, that would take
about twenty to thirty days to get home, almost a
month. I can't wait to talk to Peppermint Patty about this. So be it.

I called John. "Bullwhip 26 Bravo, this is Alpha, how do you read?"

He immediately responded, "Five by, Uncle Bobby!"

"I don't know where you are because of the
velocity during our crash," I said. "I'm okay, are you okay?"

"Well, yeah, but I'm in a tree."

I learned later that John ejected almost
horizontally. He had a streamer. It helped him to
slow down even though it never fully blossomed.
He bored through the trees like an arrow, until
his parachute caught a limb and stopped him,
where he dangled 100 feet above the ground. He
was a very lucky guy. Imagine hitting a tree at
about hundred miles per hour, feet first, legs
spread apart. Forget sex! He was in the air just
a little longer than I, a matter of seconds.

I cautioned him. "Use your tree lowering device,
which is good for about fifty feet. That's it for
now. I'll get back to you in about thirty minutes."

I looked down at my watch. It was broken. I
couldn't stay in my present position because
there wasn't much cover within the Antenna Farm.
The slope was pretty steep. I crawled on my hands
and knees dragging my survival Kit. Suddenly it
became increasingly hard to move. I looked back
and saw that my parachute had unraveled. Just
what I didn't need, a drag chute! I used my
survival knife to cut the parachute loose and
left it. The one thing I remember besides the
buggy whips were the vines that had thorns like
hypodermic needles. They broke off from the limbs
and stuck into my entire body which hurt like
hell and soon began to burn. Now I thought about
the ants and the snakes. What else could go wrong today?

I crawled until I was out of breath. I had two
water bottles in my G-suit, frozen water bottles
that were like canteens, not baby bottles. I knew
that I should drink water to stay hydrated.

Thirty minutes had passed, so I checked in with John. "What's going on?"

"Well," he said calmly, "I'm not up in the tree
anymore. The lowering rope got me down fifty
feet, and I dropped another fifty feet to the ground. I'm okay."

He was from Hawaii, a surfer, a Hang Ten
competitor, so he's unfazed by all this. Uncle
Bobby is going to get them out of this pickle.

"I don't know, John, what's going on here." I
scanned the area. "I don't hear much activity, but keep your ears tuned."

We discussed our locations and the directions we should take.

"John, you maintain your route. We don't want to
get together until nightfall." It was now about
2:30 in the afternoon. "Tonight, we'll join up and hit the trail together."

"Well, okay, Uncle Bobby."

We kept evading and I made a broadcast in the
blind, "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. This is Bullwhip
Two Six Alpha. Bravo is okay." I gave the UT
coordinates in the clear. "Anyone hearing this message, acknowledge."

We had codes for the day, and I hoped they would
come back with something. We were in North
Vietnam and Rules of Engagement were such that no
one was going to come out from Naked Fanny
(Nakhon Phanom) in Thailand with their Sandies
(Skyraiders) and Jollies (Helicopters). They
might be able to sneak up in the Barrel in Laos
but never, never into North Vietnam.

A couple of hours had elapsed, and every thirty
minutes I transmitted. John's doing okay. I'm
getting awfully tired and the thorns are really a
drag. They've torn my G-suit and vest. We must
guard against an infection so we don't want to
pull the darn things out--let them stay where they are.

I called John again. "So far, no radio contact, how about you?"

"Not a thing, Uncle Bobby."

John would listen for about fifteen minutes and
shut his radio off. That's what we had briefed to conserve battery power.

Back at the Command Post, one of the backseaters
from the Triple Nickel Squadron was Roger Locher,
a Weapon Systems Officer for Major Bob Lodge. Bob
and I "broke out" the Frag, worked out the
configurations for the airplanes, what kind of
ordnance caused most drag, etc. At that point he
had a Mig or two. He was a brilliant man.

Roger cranked up the phone in the Command Post
and checked the status of Bullwhip 26. "The Whip"
should have connected with the tanker and the
Command Post should have received a call from SAC saying Bullwhip had his gas.

"Oh yes," they said, "he took on 4000 pounds and
departed." Another hour passed and Bullwhip 26
should have returned to Udorn. However, no one
had heard from Bullwhip. Roger started checking
the radar sites, EC 121s, and the airborne Navy
Command Posts with no luck. The "Whip" had not checked in.

At Ma Gia Pass an OV-10 from Naked Fanny was
operating at 10,000 feet. On board was a
navigator who had flown with me many times and
heard a familiar voice call out Mayday.

"My God, that's Uncle Bobby!" He used his HF
radio to call Naked Fanny and said, "The Whip is
down. If the coordinates are right he's in the Fishes Mouth."

The command Post at NKP used a secure phone to
call Lt. Roger Locher at Udorn and said, "We think we know where The Whip is."

"Ugotta be kidding me!" Roger said. "Where is he?"

"He's in the Fishes Mouth."

"Of course!" Roger Locher snapped his thumb.
"That's where his last route took him. He was looking for the SAM sites."

Roger reported to Colonel Gabriel and shared his find.

"Damn!" Colonel Gabriel snarled. "We can't launch
a rescue mission from NKP, because he's in North Vietnam."

Roger answered, "I know that, but I also know
where there are choppers that can handle the job."

"Where is that?" Colonel Gabriel asked.

"I've been checking CIA Lima Sites with the
command post next door and I discovered that
there are two Slick Hueys near Diem Bien Phu
heading south. With your permission, sir, I can ask for their help."

"By all means, Lt. Locher. Good job."

Roger called the Air America Command Post and
said the magic word. The CIA replied, "Yep, we'll
take the mission. Our Hueys are about one hour away from the downed airmen."

Roger was elated because the CIA did not have to
accept the mission. He gave the coordinates, the
call sign, and the survival codes along with a
description of Major Mock and Lt. Styles. "Major
mock, nicknamed Uncle Bobby, is about 5'10" tall,
and resembles a Mexican bandit sporting a
terrible Fu Man Chu mustache. John Stiles is six
foot tall, dark-hair, seldom combed, making him look like a wild man."

At about 1600 hours the NVR are spraying the
jungle with their AK-47s, a sound I was very
familiar with because I had fired them. Between
bursts of fire I could hear their voices.

I gripped my 9 MM weapon and recalled how lucky I
was to have it. I was in Da Nang in 1964 and on
my days off and I would fly with the Army in
Caribou's re-supplying the special forces A & B
teams stuck out in the jungle. I became friends
with a certain army officer at Kham Duc, a
terrible place, where seven or eight army troops
managed to survive surrounded by VC just looking for a way to kill them.

I said, "What can I bring you when I return?"

The lieutenant looked at me and said, "God, I
would love a bottle of Jack Daniels!"

I went back to the Doom Club, Da Nang's Officer's
Open Mess and for $.75 I brought a bottle and
gave it to him. In return, he gave me a 9 mm
Browning Combat Masterpiece, which held 14
rounds. In addition, he gave me two clips that held 18 rounds.

He patted the gun. "You might need this someday."

I wondered if I would live to tell that survival
instructor and army lieutenant how right they
were, and how wrong Peppermint Patty was.

I said, "Okay, you retards, John has a .38
caliber hand gun, and I'm going to be the biggest
surprise you have ever seen in North Vietnam,
because I am a master of the 9 mm with fourteen
rounds and I'm going to take down fourteen
Gomers." Then I started thinking, holy crap, they
have five times the firing range with automatic
weapons, and besides, if there's more than one of
them and I'm surrounded how can I shoot anybody. This isn't good.

I made another radio call in the blind. "There
are enemy soldiers in contact." I gave out my
coordinates in the clear. I had hoped there was
someone from the 13th Fighter Squadron or anyone
from Udorn flying in the Barrel.

I called John again whose voice had changed just
a bit. I told him, "We need to evade up a little
bit higher. We'll go north, using our survival
compasses. They'll be expecting us to go low,
down towards the highway." Then I said something
to bolster John's spirit, "I'm sure help is on the way."

John responded, "Right!" which made me laugh.

The OV-10 had flown north about 100 miles, and
when I came up on the radio I heard my
ex-backseater say, "Uncle Bobby, help is on the
way. I have their call sign. Are you ready to copy, over?"

And that was it. I immediately called John. "Did you hear it?"

Yes he had. I knew it was going to take a while
so I said, "Radio silence for thirty minutes."

The soldiers were getting closer. I didn't know
it at the time, but there was a barracks of NVRs
nearby, which housed thousands of SAM operators
and the infantry to support them. We had crashed
in the middle of a hornets nest! Not a good deal.
And, of course, they're just taking their time,
very leisurely, spraying the area as they
approached our position. They could have been a
couple miles away, but in the jungle it's hard to
tell. The guns kept going off and the sounds were
getting closer. There were hundreds of rounds and
they were hoping to accidentally hit us with
their random shooting. It was obvious they didn't
want to take prisoners. We knew from intelligence
reports that most Recces don't last until
sundown, because of our spying mission. They
torture you by hitting you with a two by four.
Very few Recce crewmen end up in Hanoi.

I called John. "Let's conserve our bodies and our radios."

I didn't know what kind of choppers were coming.
"Let me do the talking. You just monitor, because
your receiver doesn't use as much power as a
transmitter does. If my radio quits, you take over."

John, a man of few words, simply said, "Yes sir!"

The rescue choppers checked in. "We are twenty
clicks away. What's your disposition?"

I was breathing a little better, and my hopes soared.

"My backseater is in the deep jungle below a 300
foot canopy. He's on a 360° heading, climbing up
a karst. I guess we're about 1 1/2 clicks from
the road. Pick up John first." That was the
toughest decision I had made in my whole life.
"He's more exposed than I am, and besides that he's a young man."

"Roger that, but it's not necessary. We're in two
Hueys, so we'll make individual pickups."

A Huey (HU-1) was a Bell UH-1H Iroquois Utility Helicopter.

Now the rounds are getting rather close. Minutes
passed before I heard one of the choppers say, "We've got bravo in sight."

God only knows how, but John was directly below
the down wash. They dropped the rope right above
his head. John put his gun and radio away, grabbed the rope and off he went.

"We got Bravo!" Reported the Huey.

The second Huey barked, "We don't have Alpha yet!"

"Okay," I answered, as I searched for a flare. "I'm firing a flare right now."

The flare went off, traveled twenty feet, hit the
canopy trees, and fell back down, setting the area on fire.

"Oh, crap!" I stomped around trying to put out
the fire. They quickly did a 90° turn, and
another 90° turn.. I could hear them and I felt a down wash!

I looked up and yelled, "You're right over me!"

Suddenly a rope fell down through the trees. I
was looking for a tree penetrator, a rescue
hoist, or maybe a hook, something like the exotic
stuff they told us about in survival school. It's
just a plain rope! I scrambled to stow my radio
and gun and I could hear the engine starting to
race which meant it was moving out!

"Damn!" I lunged for the rope and captured it
with both hands as the helicopter began to pick
up speed and off we go. We weren't more than
twenty feet above the ground as the bullets
zinged by. The 37 MM are firing and the only way
a helicopter can survive is to stay right on the
treetops. Robert K. Mock is doing a catenary at
110 knots. Coming out felt just like my arrival
coming in - pow, snap, crack, pop. I hit the tops
of the antenna farm, spinning left, then right,
hanging on for dear life. I don't know how I hung
on but I did. John could do that with one hand.

As I'm being pulled up into the helicopter the
crew member takes one look at me and I thought he
was going to throw me back. He was big and strong
like a gorilla. He scooped me up and sat me down
inside the chopper and offered me a cigarette. I
didn't smoke at the time, but I didn't want to
appear to be unappreciative, and I was happy as
hell to be rescued. I lit up, took a good deep
drag and started coughing and wheezing.

He laughed and said, "We can't go very far. We have to let down to get fuel."

They had secret Lima Sites, which even we Recce
guys didn't know about. The CIA's proprietary
airline, Air America, established a network of
about 200 "Lima Sites," staging bases and rough
airstrips in the mountains where light aircraft
could land with supplies and equipment for the guerilla units.

We're flying formation and I looked out the
window for John. He gives me the signal that he
is okay. I signal back with a thumbs up.

The choppers are now safely in the air and
heading west into Laos, and it's getting dark. I
can see the sun setting, so I know where we are.
With time to think I considered how lucky we
were. Why we didn't get bagged by the small arms
fire I'll never know. They had to be within 100 yards.

Now we're out in the middle of nowhere and we set
down at a Lima Site. The Huey crew found a
fifty-five gallon drum with a vane pump and
slowly pumped JP-4 into the Hueys. I noticed that
they could change the nationality of the Hueys at any time.

We took off and my new found friend stared at me.
"Are you okay? You look like a porcupine."

I nodded, "yeah, I'm fine." I was one tired puppy.

We made two more stops for gas and finally came
to a bend in the river, which had to be the
Mekong. We spotted an Air Force C-123J, a STOL
aircraft, made for short take-offs and landings,
configured with two props and two jet engines. It
waited anxiously on a short dirt strip along the
river bank with the engines running. We landed
next to it and John and I sprinted from the
Hueys, stopped momentarily to salute our Air
America rescuers, and ran up the ramp of the
waiting provider. Before the ramp was closed the
C-123s engines were at full power, and we were quickly airborne.

As I sat there in the C-123 I began to think
about how I was going to debrief this mission. I
had to talk to John because we were farther into
Vietnam then we should have been. And of course
there's the mysterious CIA and Air America
operations that can't be revealed. The Rules of
Engagement are pretty exotic, and I can't blow their cover.

The mission started about 12:40 p.m. that
afternoon, and now it was eight o'clock at night
and we're back in Udorn--we're home. When our
C-123 taxied into the parking area John and I
bolted out of the plane's rear end, down the ramp
into Colonel Gabriel's arms and bottles of
champagne. The men of the 13th were right next
door and they came down to greet us. We drank up
a storm, shook hands, and laughed until my
squadron commander, Lieutenant Colonel Harry
Brown said, "Well, Bob, I guess we better take you two guys to the hospital."

Wing Commander, Colonel Gabriel agreed. "Good
idea. You guys need to get those quills pulled
and they are going to take a blood sample."

I laughed. "Okay, but it's going to be pure champagne!"

Unfortunately this event made the Air Force
Times. I was still operational and the article
had my name with the wrong base in the wrong
place. I knew they had quite a dossier on me. The
pathos of these events are just happy as hell for
a number of reasons. Riding an ejection seat into
the ground while going supersonic and surviving
to tell about it is somewhat miraculous. As for
John's streamer, snagging a tree while traveling
horizontal to the ground at an unbelievable speed
is mind boggling. How about that, Evil Knievel?
If you read the war's history this was the first
crew ever to come out of North Vietnam alive
since 1964. They always killed one or the other, or both!

The very next day I'm back at my desk, happier
than a bird in a warm cow pie, thinking, Can you
imagine two young majors running the war? I'm
running the command Post and I own the airplanes
and the mission, while Major Bob Lodge decided the ordinance and the tactics.

Two days later I'm back flying again. How lucky can one pilot be?

The Seventh Air Force put out a Protective
Reaction Strike, and never found the airplane, no
scorch marks, no nothing. This indicated that the
airplane probably disintegrated. At the time, the
shuddering made me think the airplane was coming
apart. We were fortunate that the airplane didn't
blow up. It just sort of came unglued. I never
came out of afterburner, so I'm sure we were going close to 720 knots.

I found out later through the rumor mill that Air
America crews supposedly got paid in accordance
with your body weight, their incentive to rescue
people. Perhaps that's why the big fella who
pulled me into the door of the Huey seemed
disappointed when he saw my lean body. The Huey
crew members; Lee Andrews, Nicki Fillipi, Ron
Anderson, John Fosberg, William Phillips, and Bob
Noble were recognized for their exceptional
aerial skill and courage in saving our lives.

Someday, John and I will look back on this, laugh
nervously and change the subject.

It was quite a day.

Colonel Robert K. Mock, USAF(RET), resides in
Highlands Ranch, Colorado and currently serves as
Professor, Aviation and Aerospace Science
Department, Metropolitan State College of Denver.