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Today is August 13, 2009. We are at Institute of Historical Survey in Las Cruces, New Mexico where veteran Robert E. Ross is going to share his experiences. Mr. Ross was born in San Francisco, California, on the 5 of February in 1931. He is now 78 years old. He lives at 1730 Deer Ridge Court in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Bob Ross served in the United States Air Force where he became a Colonel. He served in the Vietnam War, served as a test and fighter pilot. Bob, would you like to begin by telling us when you got into the service?
Sure. I entered the service in October, 1952, to serve two years as a civil engineer. I went to a little six-week course to teach second lieutenants how to salute and military etiquette and unfortunately, at the end of the course, received an assignment that was totally afield from what I really wanted to do. So I went over to see the chief of the personnel office and said, "Major, the Air Force has made a mistake; I'm not supposed to go to communications school." I could see the red coming up on his face, and he said, "Lieutenant, the Air Force doesn't make mistakes, and you're going to communications school and there isn't anything you, or I, or anybody else with less than two stars is going to do about it, unless you want to sign up for pilot training." I had always wanted to be a fighter pilot, something that even as a kid I wanted to do. It's one of those moments where you know if you make one decision your career will go on as planned, but if you choose the other path, your whole life's going to be changed. I immediately took him up on the offer. I signed up for pilot training, passed the entrance test, went into flight school in November of 1953, graduated in jets in January, 1954. At that point we got our wings and we were officially Air Force pilots. We had one more step in the process; we had to go to fighter gunnery school to learn to be fighter pilots. I was high enough in my class that I got the absolute prized assignment; it was an assignment to Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada to fly the premier fighter of the day - the F-86 Sabre jet. It was the best fighter in the world and was designed to teach you to live and prosper in air-to-air combat. It was probably the most exciting, demanding flying that I'd ever done up to that point and there was nothing I ever found more realistic until I got into actual combat. But flying fighters was very dangerous. In the early 1950's the second most dangerous job in the world was driving race cars at Indianapolis and the first was flying jet fighters in the Air Force and the Navy. We lost 23 lieutenants in five months, I mean killed, in that training program. And you wonder how you can go on, with those kinds of losses. They exceeded any of the loss rates in Vietnam in either of my two combat tours. It certainly emotionally affects you when you lose close friends and acquaintances. However, I had a feeling that I was invincible, that I was above it. The odds didn't affect me. The few good friends, that I thought were good fighter pilots, all felt the same way. I guess if you didn't feel that way, you couldn't do the job. I never worried about it, about my personal safety at Nellis, never worried about it in Edwards, and those loss rates continued for those first ten or fifteen years of flying. I never worried about it Vietnam. Probably the truth of the matter is I'm living proof of the old fighter pilot motto that it's better to be born lucky than smart. That certainly applies to fighter pilots. Well, I graduated from fighter training a year after the Korean War ended and so I was not going to get a combat tour and I knew I was going to have to spend the next 13 years of my life listening to combat stories from other fighter pilots about Korea, so I made a vow at the time that if the whistle blows again I'm going to be there regardless of the job I'm in or what I have to do. I'm going to go into combat when the time comes. Well, I went from Nellis to a very fine job as an instructor in all- weather fighters and it was great living conditions, it was great for the family but I wanted to do something more; I really wanted to be in a position where I could have my own projects and run my own operation. So I applied for, and was accepted in the USAF Test Pilot School. It was a big step up the competitive ladder. It was unlike most military schools, this was equivalent to a top-notch senior level engineering program in a better college. We started the first week with a review of calculus and it was all uphill from there.
Where was this?
At Edwards Air Force Base. We did all the flying, we did all the report writing, academic work-it was a very demanding and very productive school. It certainly was one of the best that I ever attended in the military. After graduation in 1958, I had a series of really fine assignments as a test pilot. In particular, I remember my first test pilot job. I went to a little test unit that belonged to Edwards in El Centro, California. It was the best job I ever had as a junior office; it was fabulous. But anyway, I served a series of assignments as a test pilot and then in 1965 went back to Edwards as an instructor in the Air Force test pilot school. As a newly promoted major it was probably one of the best jobs in the Air Force. I had a new commander, a person you've probably heard of, a brand new full colonel by the name of Chuck Yeager. Very fine guy, I thought the world of him, I always tell people, jokingly, that my one claim to fame as a test pilot was that I worked for Chuck Yeager and we were on a first name basis. He called me "Bob" and I called him "Sir". [Laughs] Anyway, the Viet Nam war was heating up; it was the middle of 1966, and as good as the job was, I had made that vow that when the bell rings I was gonna go. So I approached my bosses about volunteering for combat and they were really unhappy with me. I didn't talk to Yeager, I wished I had, he would have understood. Despite their protests, I told them I'd vowed to do this and I'm gonna do it. So I signed up for a combat tour flying the F4 Phantom--a big, twin engine, two pilot fighter plane. Carries twice the bomb load that the B-17 did in World War II. So, the next step in the process was I to attend survival school. Anybody that went into combat in the Air Force in Vietnam had to go through Air Force survivor school. It was November of 1966; it was snowing in Washington, it was cold, and it was basically, three weeks of agony. The academic part was very interesting; we then got thrown into prison camp for five days and you knew you weren't going to get hurt but it was, it was very realistic. Later, we spent five days out in the mountains in the snow, trying to escape and evade the bad guys who were right on our trail the whole time. It was tough training but I credit it with saving my life on two occasions in Southeast Asia, if I hadn't had the training I wouldn't have survived. One graphic thing that I particularly remember, that stuck in my brain, occurred as we were watching a Hollywood film in one of the training classes. I'd never heard the word "waterboarding." In fact, I only heard that term a couple of years ago. This young lieutenant was strapped on a table with a towel over his face and he was giving all the right answers - name, rank and serial number - and suddenly they poured water over his face and he's choking to death and at the last second they would pull the towel off his face, and more questions, then more of the waterboard treatment. It chilled my very soul. I mean, I made up my mind right then that no matter what happens, they're never going to capture me no matter what I have to do to avoid it. Again, that whole process saved my life on two separate occasions. The last phase of the training was training in F-4s at McDill Air Force Base in Florida. I had a very unique experience while I was there. I'd been flying as a fighter pilot and a test pilot for 13 years and I'd had my share of emergencies but I'd never come close to jumping out of an airplane. My backseater and I were on a routine gunnery training mission dropping bombs and shooting guns. As we pulled up from our second pass on the target, I heard a thump and, as I pulled the nose of the aircraft up, I looked down and both fire warning lights were on. I'd had a lot of fire warning lights but they'd always been electrical malfunctions; this was the real thing. Other things began to fail; landing gear dropped with no command from me, the hydraulic system began to fail. About that time, one of the other aircraft on our wing pulled up and said, "You better get outta that thing; it's burning like a torch." I was talking to my backseater, and he was trying to read the checklist to me, and I said, "Doug, we gotta get out of this thing. It's gonna blow up," and suddenly silence. I didn't hear anything. I said, "Doug, eject." No answer. "Eject, eject." No answer. This thing is gonna blow up; it was just a matter of seconds. So I said, "Okay, I'm leaving." I reached down to pull the ejection handle - you and the seat are blown literally blown out of the aircraft with a cannon shell. We found out later what had happened; the fire had burned our interphone system out so we couldn't talk. Doug pulled his ejection handle just about the time I did and we came out together. There were three other aircraft on our wing observing this whole thing. We came out and, just as we cleared the aircraft, it blew up. Great preparation! [Laughs] Great preparation for war. I was fine; you really get beat up in an ejection, it does bad things to your body. I had a split lip and I was very, very sore for a couple of days, but Doug got a compression facture of the spine, which was quite common. The seat just put too severe a "G" load on your body. He recovered and eventually got to Vietnam but we never got to fly together again.
This did not discourage you?
What's that?
This did not discourage you?
No, no, not at all. Well anyway, the one lesson I'd learned in survival school was don't get captured and the second lesson I learned there was don't stay too long in a burning F-4. Surprisingly, it was in Vietnam later, on my second combat tour, I had to follow one of those lessons and totally ignore the other to save my life, but we'll talk about that later. All right, my first combat tour. This was 1967-1968. I was at a place called Cam Ranh Bay and, as far as places go in Vietnam, it was probably as good as it gets. On the ocean, beautiful beaches, life wasn't really all that bad. We weren't being attacked by the enemy then. I've got pictures but I'll show you later if you want to see. In that area of Vietnam, our mission was primarily supporting the Army ground troops. We flew three types of missions; pre-planned day strikes in support of Army operations; sometimes we'd just go blow holes in the jungle for landing pads for the helicopters. Pre-planned night missions, which included some other things, which I'll talk about later, some of those missions were very dangerous. However, our most exciting mission occurred from the alert pad. We always kept two aircraft primed, pre-flighted and ready for instant action when the Army had an emergency. Our planes were loaded with special weapons that you could drop at an extremely low altitude, which we had to do that for accuracy; we'd go in at 450 knots at a ten degree drive, drop our ordinances as low as 100 feet. Of course that would put you right in the envelope of the enemy fire but you had to do it for the accuracy; sometimes the enemy was close as 100 meters from our troops and the idea was to kill the bad guys, not our own troops. That was essentially the scene. I'm going to take you along on a mission. You're my backseater and I was pacing the alert shack, nothing had happened, it was a quiet day, and it was a 12- hour shift. I was afraid that we weren't going to get called and the klaxon horn sounded. I was drinking a cup of coffee and my coffee cup went flying. You get a shot of adrenaline like nothing you've ever experienced, like you have a 1,000- volt jolt of electricity. We raced for the aircraft and jumped in, the crew chiefs strapped us in as we started the engines. We had five minutes to get off the ground; I think we made it in slightly under four minutes. We headed for the target and made contact with the forward air controller and he commenced the mission briefing. It was a grim situation; the troops were pinned down, taking heavy fire. The bad guys were in the tree line running southwest. There were a lot of wounded and the fire was so heavy that our helicopters couldn't get in to rescue them. Because of the position of our troops, the FAC had to restrict us to a single run-in heading. We didn't like this because every time you come down the chute, the enemy's waiting for you. He also wanted us to make as many passes as we could; our troops were in a world of hurt, they really needed help but the big problem was there was only 100 meters or so separating the friendlies from the bad guys. I called the FAC and I said, "I can't do this. Our troops are too close and may be killed by our own bomb." He replied, "You gotta do it; they're in a world of hurt and their lives depend on you doing this. I'll try to keep their heads down on each pass." So, I commenced my first run; I had nine 750 pound special bombs that could be dropped at low altitude, and my wingman had eight cans of napalm. When I dropped my first bomb and the FAC was ecstatic; we put the bomb right where he wanted it. He said, "I want you to continue spreading your bombs on this southwest heading." I watched my wingman roll in for his pass and, about halfway down, the FAC called and said, "You're taking heavy ground fire." Well it didn't matter; we were going on this ride anyway. He dropped his napalm exactly where the Forward Air Controller wanted it. It seemed like we had been there all day long; we each made a single pass with each weapon, but it was actually just 25 minutes until we were ready to head for home. The FAC gave us our mission debriefing and he gave us great kudos for the effort. As we started to depart the target area, he called again, "Wait a minute, I've got one more thing for you." Of course, the Forward Air Controller was in direct contact with the troops; he's got about four radios going and he said, "I've got a message from the commander. The helicopters have landed, they're removing the wounded, and you have his everlasting gratitude." I flew every kind of mission in Vietnam but nothing ever gave me as much satisfaction as helping those troops in contact. We knew when we left the target area that we had saved our own troops. I used to run into our combat ground troops in various locations in Vietnam and they'd see us with our flight suits and they'd notice the fighter pilot patches. It was only a matter of time until one of them came over and said, "What do you guys fly?" I said, "F-4s, out of Cam Ranh Bay, mostly in support of the ground troops." I'd always get the same reaction, the combat pallor would return and they'd get that thousand-mile stare, and it would be a nearly standard litany; it would sound something like "Oh, shit, it was really that bad at Dang Ha, Khe San," or any of the other thousand places that the war was really bad, and they'd look me in the eye and say, "You guys saved our ass." I had mounds of medals from both of my tours in Vietnam but nothing ever meant as much to me as those battle-weary grunts, saying, "You guys saved our ass," that was the real reward. Have you got combat fatigue now, from your first mission? [Laughs] Okay, well one of the things I wanted to talk about was the really good guys we flew with. The title of the chapter in my book is "The Super Jew" and I'll tell you later where that came from.
Excuse me, I want for the record - when you mention a chapter you're talking about the book you wrote called The Warriors.
Yes. Okay. Ed Silver had been a Forward Air Controller for six months; he was promised a checkout in the F-4 when he completed his tour. He'd been an F-4 instructor so it was not going to be any problem getting him checked out. I was given the job of being his instructor pilot; these weren't training missions, these were combat missions, it was my job to assess and see if he was capable of doing my job. I knew the minute I met him that Ed was the real deal. With 13 years in the fighter pilot and test pilot business, I could pick out the real movers and the shakers from the B. S. artists almost instantly. I knew we really had a winner in Ed. His flying was superb, and his dive-bombing was tremendously accurate. He was not the typical fighter pilot; he was not the loud, boisterous, "I can whip the world," type of guy, very quiet. Very self-assured; I liked him immediately; I knew we really had a winner. Til take you on another mission that Ed and I flew. He was a graduate of the Air Force weapons school so, after his checkout, he took a very prestigious job as the wing 11 weapons officer who was responsible for planning the missions and deciding which ordnance the wing would use. He flew with all the squadrons but we always tried to team up when he flew with us. There was something magic about he and I flying together; the most routine, humdrum mission would turn into a real barn burner any time we got together. We were scheduled for a very routine mission that we absolutely despised called "sky spots", where we performed as SAC bombers; you fly close formation under radar control at 10 or 15,000 feet and drop your bombs on a count down from the ground radar. We hated it. That's a job for bombers, not for fighters. But, as always happened to us, we got an emergency call just as we were heading for the target area that there was a high threat target on the Laotian - North Vietnamese border. They diverted us from the sky spot mission. We got to the target area, and there were two Forward Air Controllers because it was a high-threat area, and they began mission briefing. We're with armed standard 500 pound iron bombs (slicks), and the weather was not very good; we had a low ceiling, so we were going to have to drop in a low-angle bomb run at the minimum altitude we could release the bombs. The wing policy in those high threat areas was "One pass and haul ass". But, there was no way Ed and I were going to not drop at least one bomb for windage before we dropped the rest of them. We both should have known better, but it turned into a game of chicken. We made 12 passes each in this high threat-area, dropping a single bomb at a time. The Forward Air Controllers were ecstatic, they'd say, "Okay, move your next one 50 meters to the left, your next one 50 meters east." They were absolutely delighted with the mission. They gave us our mission debriefing and, as we headed for home, we stayed on the Forward Air Controller's frequency to see what they had to say about the mission. We heard the following transmission from the lead Forward Air Controller as he said to his wingman, "I don't know who those two guys were, but they were really shit-hot." Now, that may sound like faint praise we've heard all the Hollywood superlatives: colossal and stupendous but to a Vietnam fighter pilot, when a something was good as it could possibly get, it was shit-hot. That was music to our ears. I'll tell you how Ed got the name the Super Jew - we would often meet in our party hooch after the day's combat was over and have a couple of cool beers and, when the serious talk turned into the after mission buffoonery, Ed always referred to himself as the Super Jew. Silver is a Jewish name; I don't know whether he was Jewish or not I really didn't care; he was a great fighter pilot and a great friend, it made no difference to me if he was Ethiopian, he was one good guy. Ed was on a night mission over Laos, and they were extremely dangerous; the terrain would rise from sea level to 5,000 feet in sheer limestone cliffs called Karst. The weather at this time of year was miserable visibility was at best only a couple of miles. The Forward Air Controller would drop a flare on the ground as a target marker and as we rolled in on the target, it was like being inside an ink bottle; you couldn't see the ground, you couldn't see anything. No horizon, you had to almost fly on instruments. They were very dangerous missions and we lost a lot of guys. I was waiting for Ed, I had some paperwork to do and I was in the squadron operations building waiting for Ed to get back; I wanted to talk to him about something we had planned. I heard a commotion down the hall, went to see what was going on and Ed's ashen-faced wingman was standing there. I said, "Where's Ed?" He said, "Ed didn't make it, he's not coming back." It was one of those things where the last thing you heard is, "Lead is in," and the next thing you saw was a huge explosion as the aircraft hit the ground. There's no way that anybody was ever going to get out of there alive. Well I was devastated; he was as good a friend and as good a fighter pilot as I'd ever flown with. It was a great loss for the Air Force; he had a brilliant career ahead of him. A great loss for his family. It certainly put some tarnish on my aura of invincibility. Life goes on, we had to continue, but I was very moved when I finally got to the Vietnam Memorial and saw his name. At the time he was listed as Missing in Action but of course he wasn't, he was dead. Anyway, I thought you might enjoy hearing about Ed. The tour ended; I had flown 319 combat missions on my first combat tour. It was a record for F-4 pilots. There was one young captain that tied me, but I don't think anybody ever beat our record. I left Vietnam with a new sense of confidence; it was a character building year for sure. But mainly I had proven myself as a warrior.
Where did you go when you finished that tour?
When I finished that tour, the Air Force sent me back to graduate school. I had a degree in Civil Engineering, and they sent me to the University of Illinois to get a master's degree in Aeronautical Engineering; it was a very tough - been out of school 15 years - it was a very tough 21 months. I used to come home, particularly the first few months I was there, and tell Jean, "I'm flunking out of school, there's no way I'm going to make this." When I got my first semester's report card, they were all A's. [Laughs] I had been so embarrassed about my test grades that I wouldn't discuss them with my fellow students. It turned out they graded on the curve and I was about 20 points ahead of everybody else. I never again got the sympathy I thought I deserved from Jean; the line "I'm flunking out of school" never got much attention after that. When I finished graduate school I was desperate to get back to flying. I called all the people I knew in flight test and got a really fine job back at Edwards Air Force Base as chief of VSTOL flight test divisions. It was an excellent job, excellent flying and I had a lot of good people working for me. However, I could not forget Vietnam; I had an itch. I knew that they were desperately short of senior officers. By now I was a lieutenant colonel, and unfortunately I had gotten in some serious conflicts with two full colonels above me, which is not good for an Air Force career. So Jean and I sat down one night and I said, "You know, I really would like to get back to Vietnam. My lifetime ambition is to be a fighter squadron commander in combat." We talked about it and she said, "You know, we don't have any future at Edwards Air Force Base. If you don't do this, you're going to regret it for the rest of your life." So I volunteered for a second combat tour. There were three of us that went through a quick refresher course at George Air Force Base and - sorry, there was something I was going to say and I lost my train of thought. Anyway - Oh I know what it was - we were promised as volunteers for a second combat tour that we could have our base of choice in Thailand. Everybody wanted to go to Thailand; Thailand was a lovely country. When we got our orders two of us were going to Da; Da Nang was the armpit of Vietnam, the worst possible fighter assignment. Half our class from my first combat tour had gone to Da Nang. It was nothing like Cam Ranh Bay; you got rocketed at least once a week, it had a grim, foreboding atmosphere. A good friend of mine, who had served there earlier, was on final approach on a radar approach to a runway and got shot down three miles off the end of the runway. When he and his backseater landed it was like something out of a Wild West movie. The bad guys were chasing them and they're running for their lives and this army helicopter sees them and comes in and grabs them, throws them on the helicopter and takes them to the base. That happened three miles off the end of the runway. Some pilots would take physical training seriously and jog around the perimeter of the base and they got shot at! [Laughter] The Marine division protected everybody but you never felt really safe. As far as the fighter wing was concerned, it was great, but it was not a pleasant place to be. I got a good job as the deputy commander for combat operations. Of course the main object for me was the flying. However, the war had wound down to kind of a routine, humdrum operation; missions were not as exciting as I had remembered. We bombed the trail day and night, and we escorted B-52s on their night bombing missions. We absolutely hated flying top cover for B-52s, there wasn't a MIG within 300 miles, and the missions were terribly dull and tedious. There was one mission that we really did enjoy. Do you know what a gunship is? A C-130 gunship, have you heard of them? They were equipped with all kinds of night vision equipment, highly accurate world- class sighting systems, 40mm cannons, and they devastated the North Vietnamese trucks. By contrast, dropping bombs at night from an F-4 was very ineffective. But the gunships were deadly; they'd fire three rounds from the 40mm cannon and one would hit behind the truck, one would hit ahead of the truck, and the third one would hit the truck and if it was loaded with ammunition there was a huge fireball. Of course, for safety reasons, they flew at night. It's hard to hit aircraft at night with anti- aircraft fire, even though the C-130 is a big four engine turbo prop. Nevertheless, one of them did get shot down and they decided they needed fighter escort. The missions were very interesting. We would take off at 30 minute intervals in our F-4s, the idea being that one fighter would always be over them. We would go back and forth to the tankers to refuel so that one fighter would always be over them. They had lights along the upper wing and that's how we found them and saw them. We would circle them and, if there was no ground fire, we might make four refuelings and be there essentially all night long. Those missions were tough because by the time you got home, you were like a pretzel; you couldn't get out of the cockpit, they had to help you out. We didn't wish them any bad luck but what we really wanted was the ground fire to open up because, when it did, we would roll in. We had ordinance that was particularly effective against enemy anti-aircraft guns, thousands of bomblets in a big canister; those would go off and you would see thousands of explosions covering acres of jungle. Usually about two passes was all it took, from that point on there was no more firing from anti-aircraft guns. However, we had problems with some of the C-130 pilots. They were naturally scared because they'd lost couple of airplanes and some of them wouldn't turn their upper wing lights up for us so we could see them. Now, you couldn't see their lights from the ground; there was no danger from anti-aircraft fire, but it was the only way we could find them, and some of them not only wouldn't turn the lights up bright enough but they wouldn't talk to us on our radio, and it was terribly frustrating to mill around for four or five hours at night when you couldn't find these guys. It's where I first-and I'm going to talk about another one of the really good guys-it's where I first came to know and admire Paul Craw.
How do you spell his name?
C-R-A-W, just like it sounds. He, like I, was a lieutenant colonel on his second combat tour; I'll tell you more about his first combat tour later, but the no lights treatment from the Cl30 pilots. It infuriated him. He'd tell them about three times to turn their lights up and, if they didn't do it, he would turn every light on his F-4 on including his flashing red beacon, and he would dive right through their altitude. He would roar up and down the valleys of Laos until he had every gun in the area shooting-then he would roll in on one pass and drop his bombs on the anti-aircraft guns and call the 130 and say, "Sorry about that, I'm RTB-Return to Base-I'm out of ordnance." Well, you never had to ask for wing lights after they got the Craw treatment, he really watered their eyes. Anyway, what I wanted to tell you was the rest of Paul's story. He was on his first combat tour in 1966-'67 flying the aircraft we called the Thud F-105 fighters. Unlike my first tour, his ended in disaster. He got shot down over North Vietnam. He was in a burning airplane, nearly uncontrollable but he stayed with it to get away from a village where he knew that he was either going to get killed or captured if he bailed out there. He put a little distance between himself and the village and ejected from the aircraft. He hit the ground horribly injured; the bones were sticking out of his leg; he had a compound fracture. He got his emergency radio out; we carried two radios with us to call for help, and called "Mayday" several times, but never got a response. He could hear the villagers coming after him. Paul's a good-looking guy with slate-grey eyes, and as he would tell the story, his eyes would chill to absolute zero. "I was on the ground and in a world of hurt, and I knew I wasn't going to get rescued. I took out my .38 caliber pistol, laid it out with all my ammo out in front of me for I was going to kill all those bastards I could before they got me, because there was no way in the world they were going to take me alive." Just before the final confrontation, the rescue helicopters showed up. They grabbed him and got him out. He spent months in the hospital recuperating. The book is called The Warriors and this guy was really a warrior. Just before he was released, the doctor came in with a piece of paper and said, "Paul, you will never have to go to combat again. Just sign this letter and your combat duty is over." Paul says, "Let me look at it." After one glance, he tore the letter up. Out of the hospital, he finished his recuperation, started flying Thuds again and promptly volunteered for a second combat tour. This guy is a warrior! Okay. I'm going to take you along on another mission, you won't want to go on this one, but I'll take you along anyway. I said the war had wound down but we secretly knew it was only a matter of time before the North Vietnamese attacked. They had been building secret storage areas in Laos and North Vietnam and we couldn't touch them. We knew there was another invasion coming. It broke in April of 1972. You normally never saw enemy troops or trucks in the daytime. You'd bomb targets, Forward Air Control would mark the targets with a flare, but you never saw anything moving, and suddenly they were in mass formations coming across the North Vietnamese border with tanks and infantry in the open. They had a lot of initial success; they captured Quang Tri; and Hue was under siege. We weren't in all that good a shape in Da Nang, we were worried about the Vietnamese getting to us. The war changed completely; the bean counters disappeared. The obsessive reports stopped, all of the obvious peacetime routine stopped. It was now a 24-hour a day operation. We flew everything we could get in the air. It was a battle for survival. The whole attitude in the fighter wing changed, the morale soared. Even though we were losing airplanes, we got most of the pilots back. There were always helicopters, Army helicopter pilots, around to go rescue them. The entire war changed completely. Another thing happened just about the time the invasion started. Paul Craw finished his combat tour and went home after another, this time really successful, combat tour. I got selected to be the new commander of the 4th Fighter Tactical Fighter Squadron, replacing Paul. It's something I always wanted to do; I can't tell you how pleased I was. About a week after I took over the squadron, I had a new pilot by the name of Major Phil Murphy; I knew he was really going to be good. He had done excellent work on his checkout. A big, strapping six-footer from California; he looked like a surfer rather than a fighter pilot. Good looking guy. He had gone through his training, had done superlative work in his early missions, and had reached the point where I could check him out as a combat leader. But it was a test you had to pass; not everybody could do it because, as a leader, you're in charge of everything. You decide the tactics; all of the decisions are your decisions. Anyway, I took him on this mission again, it's not a training mission, it was a combat mission - and we were going to the North Vietnamese - Laotian border; a very, very dangerous area. We were equipped with delayed action mines, to seed along a stretch of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. From the time we got to the target, we were getting bursts of .37 mm. fire. 37mms are a very large shell and you can see the tracer rounds coming towards you. The first explosion of ground fire is terrifying; you feel like every one of them is going to land right between your eyes. As long as there's relative movement on the canopy, as long as that thing's not coming straight at you, you know that there's no problem. So, we didn't take it very seriously; it was sporadic fire and we had no problems with it. I was pretending to be his wingman and he was acting as the flight leader. He completed the mission successfully. I called him and said, "You're now a flight leader; you passed your check. I want you to fly top cover for me." I had the latest model F-4, had an internal .20mm cannon; six barrels that fire 6,000 rounds a minute, it was an awesome weapon. "So I'm going to go down and look for trucks. You fly top cover for me and warn me if you see anything." So I shoved the throttle to the firewall and went down to about 2,500 feet. Of course, I kept the aircraft moving and jinking to avoid the sporadic .37mm fire but nothing that was coming close. I never saw the fatal one coming, I got hit right in the fuselage fuel tank and the airplane wasn't on fire, it was a fire. I looked in the rear view mirror and the entire tail area was one huge big fireball. I didn't think Phil Murphy could get excited but he was screaming, "Bail out! Bail out! It's going to blow up!" and you know what my experience was when I had to bail out in Florida, it blew up within a minute of the first indication of fire. My backseater, Lt. Bill Key, was saying, "Colonel, we gotta get out of this damn thing." I reached for the ejection handle but, I remembered the movie from survival training, where a captured pilot was chocking and suffocating from the water board treatment. I said to Bill "Calm down. I'm gonna fly this thing until it blows up. We're gonna get out of this area and get someplace where we can safely bail out." There was a ridge of mountains about 20 miles in front of us so I headed there with the F4 burning like a torch; one engine was out and all kinds of bad things were happening. Finally Bill Murphy called me and he said, "You know, it's looking better; the main fire has gone out; it looks like, for the time being, you're okay." We got to the ridgeline and we were going to bail out and I thought, "Hell, I'm not going to jump out of this airplane as long as it's flying," so I headed towards the coastline. About 20 miles from the coastline, the plane started to go out of control, but I regained control and we made it to the South China Sea. I said to Bill, "You know, I think I can get this thing home and land it." About that time I got a call from Phil, "You gotta get out of there. The fire is spreading again; it looks like a torch." About that time the stick froze as I lost my last hydraulic system. There was no doubt what we were going to do now. I pulled the ejection handle, and with the new rocket ejection seats, Bill went first and there was a slight, slight delay before I went. That was the longest delay I've ever had in my life. The airplane was starting to go out of control; he blasts out of the airplane and it seemed like ten minutes, it was probably a half a second, but we both ejected and we were out over the South China Sea; it was just about dark. The prospects were we were going to float around the South China Sea all night in a one-man raft, which was hell of a lot better than being captured by the North Vietnamese. This thing was almost a miracle. My chute opened and I pulled the release handle for my survival kit. All of your survival gear, including your new inflated raft, hangs down about 10 feet below you on a lanyard. I looked down to check my equipment.
I have to stop you, it's an exciting story.
Are we running out of time?
No, we have another side.
You're starting over the tape; I'm going a lot faster than I thought.
Okay, you're coming down with your chute over the South China Sea.
I looked down to check my raft to see if my equipment was okay, and I saw an absolutely stunning sight. Right between my legs was the only Navy ship within 100 miles. [Laughs] It sounds like fiction but it's a true story. This was a minesweeper that was there to clear the mines from the Haiphong harbor if the North Vietnamese signed the peace treaty. By sheer luck, better be lucky than smart, we were right over the ship. I watched the airplane and I thought, "My God, the airplane's going to hit the ship." It didn't miss them by much but it did miss them. So, we plop into the ocean and get that harness off; if you get tangled in that harness, it'll drag you down. Got the harness off and I started to crawl into my one-man raft and they had a whale boat out and they had picked me up out of the water and put me in the lifeboat before I could even get in my raft. Bill Key was not hurt either, he was in good shape. My severe injury was a split lip and a bruise on my calf. I'm almost ashamed to say it but that's enough for a Purple Heart; I got a Purple Heart for my mission along with a Distinguished Flying Cross.
You also got a great story.
[Laughs] True, it's a great story. You can hear it and believe it if you want to. Anyway, we got on the ship and got royal treatment. There's no alcohol on a Navy ship, but they do have medicinal brandy, and the Captain said, "You guys are in urgent need of some medicinal brandy." So they took our flying suits and washed them, gave us Navy bathrobes, and we steamed back towards Da Nang. As we sipped the brandy, the stories of course got better. The sailors all wanted to know what happened, so we related our adventures while continuing to sip brandy. Our adventure for the day was not yet over. The Captain called us in and said, "Look guys, I'm really sorry about this but Da Nang is not a safe harbor and our mission is so high priority that I can't take you all the way in. We're going to transfer you to a Vietnamese ship; they're going to take you back to Da Nang." So this thing pulls up and looks like something out of Terry and the Pirates, It was unbelievable. We leap from one deck to the other with all our gear and go sprawling on this deck of this little Vietnamese tugboat. Nobody on board spoke a word of English. I looked at Bill Key and he looked at me, and I said, "Bill, I hope these Gooks belong to us and are not North Vietnamese! I don't want to ride this thing all the way to Hanoi." They took us in to the wharf and as we got off the ship they immediately disappeared. Here we were, two Air Force officers, standing on this wharf, and Da Nang was not a safe place to be, people were getting shot there every day. Here we were in a world of hurt, nowhere to go and no party to go to. I saw a light down a half a mile or so down the waterfront. I said, "Bill, let's go see what's there; it's gotta be better than standing here on this wharf with our heads up and locked." So we proceeded to carry our gear and go toward the light which turned out to be a building. The door, there were no windows, the door was shut and I said, "Bill, if I have to I'm going to get my .38 out and blow this door off, but first let's knock." [Laughs] It's like an old speakeasy, a tiny door opens and somebody's peering at us - I don't know who it is - and I was hoping it was good guys and not bad guys, and suddenly the door flies open and this big, tall bearded American says, "What in the hell are you two guys doing standing out there? Get in here!" So, it was some kind of a secret operation. I have no idea what they were doing, but it was probably some kind of a secret CIA operation; obviously some kind of surveillance at the port of Da Nang. They treated us royally; we drank several beers, and they called the Army to come and pick us up. After about a half and hour this jeep arrived, two grunts, and they were scared to death. They were petrified. They were by themselves; one manned the machine gun, they other guy was driving the jeep; probably this wild ride was the most danger we were in for the entire day. These guys were terrified; they put the pedal to the metal as they drove that jeep through the streets of downtown Da Nang. By that time I was really feeling no pain, I thought, damn, this is exciting, just like a Hollywood movie. But they weren't enjoying it at all. But they finally got us back to the base and the Army had notified our fighter wing that we were on the way back and the whole squadron including our Wing Commander, Col. Rutter, were there to meet us. We partied until about two o'clock in the morning. I took the entire next day off, did some paperwork, and the next morning I went out to my airplane with a bruised calf and a split lip and flew my next combat mission. Okay. Well I said-I'm going to take a drink of water. The invasion was in full force, but the North Vietnamese were taking a terrible, terrible beating. We were losing airplanes but we were really hitting a lot of them. Just for the record, for people who weren't around then - who are invading? The North Vietnamese. The North Vietnamese. Yeah. The regular North Vietnamese Army. Something had to be done, this process was going to go on forever; they would build up their weapons in secret locations, and these kinds of things were going to go on forever. So Nixon made the decision that we were going to go after them at the core of the problem, it was called "Operation Linebacker." It was an intense bombing campaign of North Vietnam. Despite what you hear about that war, the North Vietnamese were doomed from the time the whole thing started. They were dead meat. These were huge missions; much smaller, but like World War II. This had been tried in 1966 and '67, in "Operation Rolling Thunder" but the F-105s (Thubs) were dropping iron bombs; they didn't have guided weapons at the time. The Hanoi Hilton was absolutely loaded with fighter pilots whose string of luck had run out during that operation. Now we had laser guided bombs. At the core of the operation were three flights of 12 F-4s, each carrying two, 2,000 pound laser-guided bombs. It was awesome; not only was it much safer, because they could drop their bombs at high altitude, they would roll in at about 20,000 feet. The lead aircraft would lock his laser onto a target; usually we were taking out bridges to destroy their transportation system, the four aircraft would roll in together and drop at about 15,000 feet, well above the anti-aircraft guns, much safer. I would watch eight, 2,000 pound bombs per flight, flying perfect close formation, land right in the center of the railroad bridge-and it was gone. We wasted thousands of iron bombs trying to knock out bridges during Operation Rolling Thunder in '66 and '67. But now, in Line backer we literally took out their entire transportation system. It was amazing, amazing stuff. As usual it was a dangerous operation, we had enough people jamming their radars and all kinds of support, so the anti-aircraft fire and the SAM missiles were not too much of a problem, but we were being attacked by MiG-21s. The MiG-21 is a Russian supersonic fighter. We were losing airplanes every day. Our job was to fly escort for the laser- guided bombers. We would fly behind them to try to keep the MiGs off their tails. We were not very effective, for a lot of reasons which I won't bore you with. I remember one of the early missions; I'd never seen a MiG-21 before, and we were lined up on three flights - each squadron had a flight of four F-4s that were flying with the bombers; of course our job was to keep the MiG-21s away from them. I looked to my right and I saw a MiG-21 pull in behind the number four man of our sister squadron. In an extreme emergency like that, the fighter pilot calls "Break." I called "Lambda flight, break! You've got a MiG at six o'clock." And there was so much confusion and so much chatter that they never heard me. I watched the MiG-21 fire one infrared missile right up this guy's left tail pipe and the airplane blew up. We were losing aircraft every day on these missions. However, we were extremely effective at taking the North Vietnamese transportation system apart. I guess from an overall strategic point of view our missions were extremely successful, even though we were losing a lot of airplanes and pilots. Well, you finally get to go on another mission with me here, shortly. As I said, Da Nang was nearly surrounded and we were holding the North Vietnamese back, when the decision was made to move the entire fighter wing, get it out of Da Nang and move to Takhli, Thailand. It had been an American fighter base and was still a Thai fighter base. We were going to go in and re-open it and fly our combat missions out of Takhli, Thailand. It was the greatest logistics feat that I've ever seen in my life. We were to fly a mission that day to Hanoi and recover at Takhli, and those of us going on the mission slept that night in the barracks, everything else had been moved. The entire wing worked all night long loading all our personal possessions on pallets to be moved to Takhli by C141 and C5 transport planes that had arrived the previous day. We got up at four o' clock in the morning and briefed, flew our six-hour mission to Hanoi, and recovered at Takhli, Thailand. We flew another mission to Hanoi the next day. We not only moved the entire wing in one day - it was a huge operation -but we never missed a day of combat. It was an amazing feat. Well, as I said, we were losing airplanes to MiG-21s. As we flew more missions, we began to improve our tactics. Number one, we had dedicated crews that flew these missions; we only took the very best. Phil Murphy took one flight, I took the other, and we had people that didn't fly anything else but fly these missions. So we got better as time went on. We had put our heads together and come up with some new tactics that we thought would be effective against the MiG-21s. I went to see Colonel Rutter, our wing commander, and said, "Colonel Rutter, we really need to do something," because the only place we can practice is over Hanoi with real MiG-21s and that's not the place to learn effective air combat tactics. "We've got some ideas we'd like to go try out, so the first time we have a down day, with your approval, we'd like to put an F-4 up, as a Red Baron, a simulated MiG-21. We won't know its location; it will be under radar control, and we'll practice our formation and he can make random attacks on us. We'll see how these new tactics work." The laser-guided bombers were very slow because of the drag of their bomb loads. And since we had to fly behind them, we were slow also. We were 100 knots below our ideal fighting speed. To correct this problem, we developed the combat weave; each element of two aircraft, in the flight of four, weaved back and forth over a wide area, behind the flights we were escorting, which added the needed air speed. The thing that we didn't anticipate was that the weave confused the attacker. When we first did our practice with the Red Baron, we flew our standard formation, and about half the time we'd see him coming, and about half the time he'd nail us. This was far too realistic, for we had so many guys shot down that it was devastating to have the Red Baron get us. We said okay, knock it off for a few minutes, and we practiced our tactics, the weave, and the results were phenomenal. He would and make a pass, I would see him coming and I would call, "Tiger three, break!" He would follow them in a screaming high G descending turn, but he would never see my two aircraft as we slipped into his six o'clock position. I don't know what the physiology about this is, but once he locked onto one element of two aircraft, he would never see the other one. From that point on in our practice cession, he never succeeded in getting us again; we always got him. On my next mission, we were going to try our new tactics out. I was leading the flight and one of my young captains was leading the other element of two aircraft. One other thing had changed; the North Vietnamese were monitoring our radio calls, and when we hit minimum fuel, we would call, "Bingo." It was almost uncanny; the minute you called "Bingo," a MiG-21 would attack. They were monitoring our radio calls. So I said, "In addition to the weave, we're going to do something else." We were going to call "Bingo" with 2,000 extra pounds of fuel, and when you're really hitting minimum fuel you'll call out, "Bingo, Bingo." We were on the mission doing a combat weave, and I called," Bingo" and within 20 seconds a MiG-21 was moving in behind my number three man, Captain Rich Hardy. I called, "Tiger three break, you've got a MiG at six o'clock." He broke to the left but the MiG didn't follow him; he rolled into a gentle right turn and pulled right in in front of me. I was in perfect, perfect missile range. All my life I wanted to shoot a MiG down and I had this guy wired! I fired two heat-seeking missiles and neither one of them guided. I fired two more and neither one of those guided. It wasn't unusual at that time; the missiles were extremely ineffective. I had two radar missiles, I fired them. They wandered off aimlessly. I'd waited all my life for this chance and my missiles didn't work! I had a gun, an internal .20mm cannon and I started closing up to get in gun range to shoot this guy down. My wingman was a rookie, he was on his first or second mission, good guy but he'd been so enthralled with me shooting missiles at this MiG 21 that he ignored his job to keep my six o'clock clear. Instead he's watching the missiles. Somebody warned the MiG that was in front of us, and he suddenly rolled, inverted, and dove into a cloud. About that time a MiG 21 pulled in behind us and my wingman didn't see him. The first thing I knew was he'd put a missile right up my left tail pipe. It blew the whole left horizontal stabilizer off the aircraft. It was on fire, the airplane was bucking almost out of control; I had the stick in the far left corner trying to control it. The MiGs were really after us, and my wingman, although he had screwed up badly, now hung tough and circled to protect me from the MiGs. I could only hold about 220 knots; the aircraft was severely damaged. I was down to about 10,000 feet. He stayed with me, circling, and when a MiG got too close, he fired a missile to scare it away. We made it. I flew my severely damaged aircraft all the way out of North Vietnam and Laos, never knowing if it was ever going to hold together. Things were going pretty well and as we got halfway through Laos, we had all kinds of rescue aircraft with us. They said, "Okay guys, you just crossed the friendly line, the bad guys are that way and you're with the good guys now, you can bail out anytime." I thought, "The hell with this; I'm going to see if I can get it into the nearest American base in Thailand." We crossed the Mekong River into Thailand and the airplane quit. I had a big, tall, Japanese kid from Hawaii as my backseater and I said, "Stan, I really don't want to do this again, but we're getting out of this airplane right now." I pulled the ejection handle and we both made it just fine. I landed in a small tree or big bush, I'm not sure which, and you know you're kind of in a state of semi-shock at that point. All I could think about was my God, I've gotta get away from the bad guys-I totally forgot that I was safe in Thailand. I started to get out of my harness when I felt somebody tapping me on the shoulder. I looked around and here's this little brown man and I thought, "My God, the bad guys got me." I reached for my .38 revolver but I got a big, beaming grim from this guy and I suddenly realized you dumbass, you're in Thailand! Not Vietnam. I gave the guy all my survival gear, $2,000 worth of equipment; at that point I didn't care, I was glad to be there. Stan was not hurt but I had another severe injury: a split lip and another Purple Heart. Another Purple Heart. And that was my last combat mission. Okay. My 438 combat mission. My goodness. There's a little more to the story. We went to the flight surgeon, got cleared from the doctors; they put a stitch in my lip. We then went to the officer's club to have lunch and wait for a little jet transport aircraft to take us back to the home base. When we got back to Takhli we heard that the Air Force Chief of Staff General John Ryan was going to visit our wing and my squadron the next day. I did not like SAC Generals, and this guy had been a Strategic Air Command General, so I was not looking forward to the encounter. Rich, after escaping the first MiG, had later found another MiG and shot him down. It was the first shoot-down for our wing and General Ryan wanted to hear the story. He had two sons, and they were both fighter pilots. I guess they used to have roaring arguments with the old man about fighters, and one of his sons was killed in an aircraft accident a few years prior. Ryan turned out to be a really good guy, he entered the squadron and shook our hands and sat down and put his feet on my desk and said, "Okay, let me hear about the MiG 21 shoot-down." So Rich told the story and when it was over Ryan got up and congratulated us all again. At that point Colonel Rutter made an off-hand remark that he was going to have a profound effect on my future career; I'm going to read you a little bit here, just one paragraph from my book. [Reading] "As General Ryan got up to leave, George Rutter made the single off-hand remark that was to have a profound effect on my future; "Incidentally, General Ryan, Colonel Ross has flown two combat tours and was shot down the second time yesterday." Ryan stopped cold and gave me a long, penetrating stare. He then turned to his three-star assistant, I'd never seen that many generals in my entire life, the whole room was full of them. He turned to his three star assistant and we heard him mutter the fateful words as he departed, "Take Ross out, he's had enough." That was standard practice; if you got shot down twice in one combat tour, you normally went home. There was no doubt now for the decision had been made at the highest Air Force level, I was going home whether I wanted to or not: the Chief of Staff had spoken. A few days later, I boarded a plane for another glorious reunion with Jean in Hawaii. My two years in Vietnam were the highlights of my 26-year Air Force career. I had flown 438 combat missions; now it was time to go. There would be more than enough challenges and opportunities to keep me amused in the future, for I was destined to command two of the most interesting and vital flying organizations in the Air Force, but that's another story for another time. Very good. That's all I have. No, it isn't, because I'm going to ask you one or two questions. Okay, all right. Can you just tell us what those other two jobs were you had? After your Vietnam experience. Oh sure, yeah. There was a test group, major test group, in Albuquerque, a flight test group. I literally had my own Air Force. By this time - oh, I didn't tell you the most important part of the story. Let me go backtrack. A month after the shoot down I was with Jeanne in Hawaii and a new Colonel's List came out. Now, Paul Craw and I had both been in severe trouble with senior officers at times in our career. If somebody was full of it, we would tell them so but that's not the answer Generals want to hear. So I'd had a lot of people tell me I was never going to get promoted. Well, the list came out and there were two special names on it: Bob Ross and Paul Craw were on the Colonel's List. Okay, now where were we? We were doing - oh the two jobs. I got the job as commander of the 4900th Test Group. We supported all the flight operations at the White Sands Missile Range. We also had a bunch of special modified, four- engine transports that did all the research work for the Atomic Energy Commission. If there were any atomic tests anywhere in the world, they flew and brought the data back for the AEC. I probably had 3 5 aircraft and it was a wonderful job. Just great. When it was disbanded, about two years into the job, my commander, a two star general by the name of Tom Morgan, a wonderful, wonderful guy, got his third star and was going to take over the Space and Missile System Division in Los Angeles. He had a unit out in Hawaii, a special unit of- oh incidentally, I continued flying F-4s as commander of the test group, it was most unusual to still be actively flying - but there was this unit out in Hawaii, very highly classified mission, probably the highest priority in the Department of Defense. We were the guys that caught the capsules spit out from the spy satellites. They'd reenter the atmosphere, and after their parachutes opened we'd catch them in mid-air. It was a very high priority mission. Very fine group of people; it was a great organization.
How long were you in Hawaii doing that?
I was there about four years. That was my last job; I decided to retire from the Air Force and ended up back in New Mexico.
What year did you retire? 1978. August of 78.
Now, I think you've pretty much told us your enthusiasm for what you did, but could you briefly sum up the influence of your military experiences on your life and you as a person? Well gee whiz, it was - I guess all I could say is that if I had to do it all over again, I would do it exactly the same way. It was a fantastic experience, the whole career was great. There are ups and downs, and there are times when I told senior officers where to put it, got in a lot of trouble but there isn't any better preparation for civilian life. The young guys come out of the military and I've never seen anybody that served a tour in the military that didn't look back on it and say, "You know, I really gained from that." People say, "Uh, it's two years and it's going to ruin my life," but it doesn't ruin their life; it matures them. Jean and I both taught at New Mexico State in Alamogordo at the branch college there and we'd get a lot of GIs coming in to school. They had matured; they had gotten away from the high school outlook on life and they wanted to become officers. They would enter that school and just burn the place up; straight A students, they would blow the high school students coming to college away. So there isn't any better preparation in the world for civilian life than some military time. Does that answer your question?
I think so, yes. Well, we thank you very much.
Oh yeah, my pleasure.
Before we complete this interview I want to mention once again that you have written a book called The Warriors, subtitled Reflections of a Fighter Pilot, Test Pilot and Veteran of the Air Wars over Vietnam. Thank you; this completes our interview with Bob Ross.