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.