Captain Ken Fisher and I rolled into a dive-bomb pass in our F-4C Phantom jet. As we swooped downward, our bird with turned-up wingtips, elevated tail, and deafening roar must have resembled a high-tech version of a prehistoric pterodactyl.
Tracers from the North Vietnamese antiaircraft artillery flashed by our canopy like giant Roman candles, their explosions encircling us with ominous puffs of gray and black smoke, each representing hundreds of shards of shrapnel designed to mortally wound our beautiful beast. It was combat as it has been for thousands of years, just updated with the latest technology.
Our mission was to destroy the guns that protected the Quang Khe ferry near Route 1A, the main thoroughfare for transporting war materials to the Ho Chi Minh Trail. As our jet plunged toward the artillery positions at five hundred miles an hour, the earth enlarged in our windscreen as if we were adjusting the zoom of a telephoto lens. It was an eyeball-to-eyeball stare-down with the enemy, with each side expecting the other to die. When you face enemy fire, you are at the point of the sword. Ken and I had been around long enough to know that the sword of combat cuts both ways; we had lost three close friends in similar situations in the prior two months.
We released our heavy payload of bombs, and our lightened plane lurched upward. Suddenly, an explosion rocked our aircraft. A terrifying sound, like marbles in a blender, alerted me that the metal of our expensive flying machine was ripping apart. The cockpit was still intact, but it was rapidly filling with smoke. The control stick was frozen full aft right, and we were tumbling end over end through the sky.
Just before bomb release we had been at six thousand feet, descending rapidly in a steep dive. Now, on fire and out of control, there was only one option: eject. But that was impossible! I was upside down floating out of my seat with my head pushed against the top of the canopy. If I ejected while we were in negative Gs, I could suffer severe injury, even death. But time was running out; at our rate of descent, we would soon be out of the envelope for safe ejection.
Suddenly the cockpit flipped again, and I felt pressure in my seat: positive Gs! It was now or never. I sat upright and pulled the ejection handle. An explosive charge fired, blowing away the canopy. Still strapped in my seat, I was blasted free of the aircraft—like a carnival stunt artist shot from a cannon—at an acceleration force eighteen times the force of gravity.
Now, if this expensive, one-time-use Martin-Baker ejection system was going to save my life, it would have to flawlessly execute a remarkably complex series of events. A half-second later, the man-seat separator worked as advertised, firing a blast of compressed air to open the lap-belt connecting pin, freeing me from the heavy seat and triggering the appropriately named “butt snapper”—a folded nylon belt under my seat that mechanically snapped tight, thrusting me into space. As the ejection seat moved away, the attached lanyard pulled out the D-Ring, deploying my parachute. The F-4 Phantom’s marvelously engineered James Bond-like escape system had snatched me from the jaws of death in less than two seconds.
But much like Bond’s adventures, escape from one danger only brought another. I had ejected from the womb of the F-4 into a very unfriendly world. Hanging in the parachute without my shell of protection, I felt exposed and vulnerable. Gunfire cracked below and bullets whizzed by me. Instinctively, I followed the procedures ingrained by regular refresher training since entering flight school: Check for a fully open chute. Activate the emergency beeper. Decide on deploying the life raft. Pick a spot to land and steer your parachute. Prepare for the parachute-landing fall (PLF).
To the west, the landscape was dotted with foliage-covered karsts, which rose like giant green cones several hundred feet into the air. Snaking among these majestic limestone formations, like a silver ribbon, flowed the Song Gianh River. To the east, the river broadened as it encountered the flat terrain of the delta, until it emptied into the azure waters of the Gulf of Tonkin, now shimmering in the late afternoon sun. This pastoral scene and the gentle sounds of the wind rustling through the canopy of my parachute for an instant made me forget my danger, but I was soon jarred back to reality by the crack of gunfire and the jabber of alien voices below.
Situational awareness dictated that my best opportunity to escape was to steer the chute to reach the river. We were only a couple of miles from the gulf. If I could make it to the river, there might be a chance of evading capture long enough to be picked up by a rescue boat or helicopter. I pulled on the risers and steered, but there was insufficient altitude to glide the distance. Fortunately, I was not far from the coast, so the terrain beneath my feet was relatively flat. Picking a spot about two hundred yards north of the river, I executed the PLF: boots hit the ground first; then roll to spread the energy of deceleration sequentially over legs, thighs, hips, shoulders, and upper back. No sprains, nothing broken—the sergeants had trained us well.
I scampered into a waist-deep bomb crater about ten feet from where I had landed, pulled the quick-release clamps to disconnect myself from the deflating parachute, and grabbed my radio: “This is Buckshot 2 Bravo. I’m on the ground, but they’re closing in. Start strafing three hundred meters north of the river. I’m heading south.” But help didn’t come. With enemy soldiers almost upon me, the Misty FAC (forward air controller) coordinating rescue efforts from overhead, wisely decided that it was too dangerous to strafe.
In a life-and-death crisis, some people talk about seeing their entire life flash before them, but that was not my case. The scene that kept breaking into my consciousness during the parachute descent, and then when I was on the ground, was from the Korean War movie The Bridges at Toko Ri. In the movie, William Holden and Mickey Rooney play two Naval Aviators who get shot down behind enemy lines and take up a defensive position in a ditch. Surrounded by North Korean communists, they are eventually killed in a shoot-out. Now I was in a similar situation, hunkering down in a bomb crater as enemy soldiers closed in. Would I suffer a similar fate? How weird it was that in the midst of the chaos of a real war, scenes from a war movie kept flitting in and out of my mind. I was determined to write a different script for my story.
In less than sixty seconds, the militia troops formed a semi-circle about thirty yards away and began moving toward me. Survival instructors had taught us that the best chance to escape is immediately after capture, because frontline soldiers are typically the least trained in handling prisoners. Deciding to try a bluff, I drew my .38-caliber, six-shot revolver (Smith and Wesson Combat Masterpiece), which was loaded with two rounds of tracer and three of regular ball ammo. Could these “rookies” be scared off? I would challenge them and find out. The first three stepped out from the chest-high bushes and pointed their rifles at me. I raised my revolver, motioned for them to get back, and then fired a tracer round over their heads. Without flinching, they shouldered their rifles and pointed them at me. Why they didn’t cut me down right then, I’ll never know. I can only assume God had other plans for my life.
One of the militiamen pulled out a pamphlet. I recognized it as a “pointee talkee,” a tool the Vietnamese military had devised that showed drawings of American pilots being captured, along with Vietnamese phonetics for English commands. Referring to his booklet, he began to shout, “Handsjup! Handsjup! Shurrenda no die! Shurrenda no die!”
Aviators have a number of expressions for being in deep trouble. One of the nicer ones is “out of airspeed and ideas.” That precisely described my situation. To avoid the fate of the pilots in the movie at Toko Ri, my only option was to surrender. I tossed aside my pistol and raised my hands, not knowing what to expect. Immediately my captors grabbed me and began tugging at my survival vest, anti-G-suit, and flight suit—my last vestiges of protection.
Removing this specialized equipment was a learned skill, and these young militiamen, who were not familiar with zippers, resembled a pack of dogs attempting to skin a raccoon. This scene surely would have been a winner on America’s Funniest Videos, but at the time there was nothing funny about it. I was experiencing a pilot’s worst nightmare: shot down and captured in the territory of the enemy you’ve been bombing.
The zipper struggle was short-lived; they gave up and cut the outer layers away. Then one of them figured out how to work the main zipper, and they removed the flight suit without more damage. They next took my boots, leaving me stripped of everything except my olive drab jockey shorts. Now I really felt naked and exposed—physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Up until the time of surrender, I had operated like a computer: calculating and processing at nanosecond speed. My training “programs” had translated into almost flawless execution, a credit to the “military way” and those who did the training. Now, out of control and with no power, this cool, somewhat cocky fighter pilot felt all alone and very scared.
Captured and in enemy hands—what lay in store?
Would I be tortured? Killed? The shock of my predicament made the whole affair seem like a dream. I knew this was happening to me, but I also felt like an observer, as if participating in an out-of-body experience. Unfortunately, this nightmare was real, and I would need to adopt a new mindset—a new game face—to fight a different kind of battle, a battle of minds and wills.
Near-death experiences are no fun, but they do at least cause you to stop and examine your life’s priorities. Not immediately, of course; in the midst of the crisis, your only priority is survival. But later, after things calm down and the adrenaline rush subsides, you think about your family and how grateful you are to be alive. Regrets also pop into your mind—perhaps even a bit of guilt or shame—about things in your past you wish you had or hadn’t done. And a lot of stuff that a few hours ago seemed so important gets pushed to the background.
In the day-to-day busyness of life, we tend to forget that we’re merely passing through this world, temporary passengers on a planet we call Earth as it hurtles through this vast space we call the Universe. We expend a lot of effort trying to take control of our daily lives, and we should. An out-of-control life is of no value to anyone. But when control is suddenly lost, our minds are freed to focus on the bigger picture, and our priorities tend to get reshuffled.
Leading with Honor - Leadership Lessons from the Hanoï Hilton
Lee Ellis
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