by CDR Jack D. Woodul, USNR(Ret), artwork by Carl Snow
Time was, way back in yonder years, that the Manly Men of the Snake Squadron were equipped with brand-new A-7As, the very first to go to a fleet squadron on the Least Coast. The cockpits had a new-car smell and were stuffed with all sorts of magic gizmos that could not be crammed into the tiny cockpits of the previously assigned A-4Es. The Corsair IIs would fly forever on a pound of gas, and they carried lots of things that could go boom under many wing pylons. The new airplane, looking like a tubby, truncated F-8 Crusader, also inherited the F-8’s tendency to whimsically pee hydraulic fluid at inopportune moments. This bothered the Sidewinders not, for they were ready for battle when they launched aboard USS America (CVA-66) for the Gulf of Tonkin.
The Snakes were a mixed bag of former Scooter drivers and new guys straight from the A-7 RAG. Youthly Puresome and his pal Weed, both instructors in the A-4 RAG across the hangar, had a vested interest in the rich Bolshevik tradition of JOs in their former squadron, and they checked out the new crop of lower rocket numbers. One of the new chaps, the latest in a series of those given the callsign Spider, stood out because he was already adept in the art of sniveling flight time and traps.
Besides this admirable trait, he was unique among products of Annapolis in that he quickly acquired the proper attack-puke patina and lost sufficient gloss that Puresome thought he didn’t act Canoe-ish at all. Very like his Boat School predecessor, Pee Gnutt, Spider was already an honorary member of the Snake’s active RJOA (Reserve Junior Officer’s Association). The rear of the ready room seemed in good hands.
Another aspect of the RJOA legacy lived on in the reconstituted squadron through the nickname for a particular senior citizen person, “Rocket Blockhead.” Puresome and Weed had delighted in inventing the name for reasons of their own, but the fact that it lived on proved that it was apt. By the time the Snakes showed up on Yankee Station to do battle with the Wily Gomer, Rocket Blockhead’s impressive administrative skills had catapulted him up to All Highest, Front Aisle Chair War Chief of All Sidewinders. “White Whizzer” memos thumped down his desk at high subsonic speeds.
Of course, there were other battles to be fought. Across the warm waters of the Golfo in feet-dry Vietnam, Uncle Ho’s boys were still sneaking rice balls, black pajamas and a whole bunch of bang-bang-shoot-shoot devices down the Ho Chi Minh Trail so as to make trouble for the running-dog imperialist lackeys in South Vietnam. It was the avowed position of the Best and the Brightest back in Washington that this just wouldn’t do.
So “Brave Amurican aviators” hawked the Trail both day and night, looking for hostile bicycles and trucks and trying to terminate the operation with extreme prejudice. Many monkeys were slain and many trees were rendered into toothpicks, and some obvious choke points were cratered like the bad complexion of the moon. But there were the occasional rewards of vehicles in the open or intuitive bomb hits on truck parks hidden under the jungle canopy that would produce warmly satisfying secondary explosions. Naturally, Gomer was annoyed by all this, and often shot at the Great Screaming Warbirds overhead. He had enough practice that he was pretty good at it.
So it went that Spider found himself on the flight schedule with Rocket Blockhead. Even though Spider was not Romeo Bravo’s regular wingperson, it was his night in the barrel, and those were the breaks of Naval Air. They were to launch in extreme darkness and hit a “truck park” in western North Vietnam. They would be under control of an Air Force FAC (Forward Air Controller) who would be snooping about in his tiny aircraft with its brand-new FLIR (Forward-Looking Infrared) to pinpoint the steaming engines of the Gomer trucks. Instead of dropping flares to illuminate the bad guys, the FAC would drop a “log” pyrotechnic device nearby that would discretely glow like a chunk of firewood. The pilotos lurking nearby would be directed to drop their ordnance a given direction and distance onto the unsuspecting enemy lads. It seemed like a good idea.
Gathered in the ready room before the launch, those in the section finished their briefing and lashed themselves into their flight gear. They then rested in the worn leather chairs under the dim red night lighting, watching the replays of the last recovery on the PLAT while waiting for word to launch. When it came, they put on their helmets and headed out.
The skipper was wearing an AOH clamshell helmet rather than the usual one that required an oxygen mask. It had a clear visor that sealed the face for oxygen flow and a dark visor for sunny times, and it looked very much like a moon hat. Going up the escalator to the flight deck, he recalled visions of Big John Glenn headed for his rocket.
All the magic in the A-7 clicked, whirred and blinked, and they launched on schedule. Before long they found their FAC, Jughead 17, who started a running commentary about the target. Jughead would lay a “log” close aboard for a mark, since the flight obviously couldn’t see anything on the dark ground. Spider, flying in a more-or-less cruise formation with the lead, was able to watch the ground, too.
“Log’s away!” called out Jughead. “Ah, Snakes, your target is three hundred meters north of the log. I’ll adjust aim points from your hits.”
Seconds later the skipper responded. “Roger that, Jughead … ah … no joy on the log. Two, you got a tally?”
“Affirmative, lead, I have a tally.” Spider, the seeing-eye junior wingman, was on the job.
“Two, go ahead and roll in, and I’ll bomb on your hits,” the skipper directed.
“Two, roger!” Spider separated from his leader and, never taking his eyes off the simulated glowing chunk of firewood on the ground, groped his master armament switch on before rolling in.
Pickle, pickle, pull! Spider dropped his bombs and was about 45 degrees nose up when he heard a frantic “I’m hit!” from the skipper.
“Skipper, do you have control of the aircraft?” Spider inquired.
“Ah … roger!”
“Head zero niner zero and give me a flash of your lights when you pass eight thousand feet so I can join up and check your damage,” came the call from Spider.
“I think I’ve had an electrical failure or an electrical malfunction,” responded the skipper. “I can’t see my instruments!”
But Spider saw the skipper’s lights flash on, so he knew the problem was not a generator failure. When he joined up, he extended his refueling probe and used its illuminating light to check over the wounded bird.
“Skipper, I don’t see any damage, but keep heading for the ship, just in case,” counseled Spider on the skipper’s wing.
An uneventful recovery followed after the electrical malfunction went away when Romeo Bravo raised his dark visor. It seems that Romeo Bravo had flown through Spider’s jet wash during the run on the target, and the thump! thump! together with subsequent g’s caused the dark-colored visor to slam down. Flying in the darkness had claimed another victim, but happily, like night noises, took no real damage.
But in the great Snake tradition, frabbups were never allowed to sneak off into the sunset, unreminded and unremembered even for the All Highest. In the after years, when older and grayer Snakes gathered for their reunions, the Hosing of Rocket Blockhead was again recalled and celebrated along with other famous frabbups.
It is a rite as old as Naval Aviation. Touching, caring, sharing, feeling sand crabs and feather merchants may question if the frabbee deserves it.
“You betchum, Red Rider!” says Spider.