Hero Found: The Greatest POW Escape of the Vietnam War (18 page)

In truth, Dieter’s feelings for Hassett were only part of his frustration. Dropping back to fly Hassett’s wing made Dieter number four on the upcoming bombing run, a position known as Tail End Charlie. After several planes had rolled in to drop bombs, the gunners on the ground usually had
a pretty good idea where the last guy in the formation was coming from. By then, there was ample time for all the guns to be lined up accurately. Even this early in their wartime deployment, there was growing concern in the squadron about this method of dive-bombing. The prevailing theory among the higher-ups was that orderly, single-file bombing was necessary to avoid midair collisions. The senior officers had used it in Korea and were fine with it—of course, given their seniority they were now usually leading a flight over a target and the first to roll in. The junior officers “knew something was wrong” with this unimaginative approach; since they were most often the Tail End Charlies, they were especially apprehensive about being shot down as a result of such predictable tactics.

The radio snapped to life with a report of a
Kitty Hawk
pilot going down in southern Laos. Now in the lead, Spook decided, “The heck with the bombing mission”—helping rescue a downed pilot was more important. His told the others his plan: since they were only a few minutes away from their target, they would get rid of their bombs in a single run, then head south as a group to join the RESCAP.

Minutes later came another radio call from Spook: “
Five Zero Seven
, rolling in.” Now that Spook had found the target, he would be the first to commence a glide-bombing attack in a west-northwest direction to drop all his 500-pounders at once: nearly two tons of explosives. Each of the other pilots was to follow four or five seconds after the guy ahead of him had rolled in.

Dieter flipped on the master arming switch, and checked his altitude: 9,000 feet. When it was his turn, the target had disappeared under his plane. In training, the pilots had practiced having the two 20 mm cannon barrels on the left wing directly on the target. He banked and yawed the plane until he had a better angle of attack. Having fallen behind the others now, he would be that much later over the target. He rolled left and kept going until he was nearly inverted. The Skyraider screamed earthward at about a fifty-degree angle, accelerating to 400 miles per hour. Throwing his head back, Dieter was peering up at the approaching ground when his plane lurched and began to shake violently.

Dieter let go of the throttle and put both hands on the stick. He tried to call out to his squadron mates, but the radio was dead—“no side tone, no
click, nothing.” He let the nose fall through the dive until it was pointing down at the ground. He pressed the bomb release button on the control stick, sending all his bombs away. He pulled the stick to his belly, and with the extra weight gone the aircraft leaped. As the plane swooped like a hawk on a sudden updraft, Dieter was pressed into the seat by g forces that made him five or six times heavier than his normal weight. Keeping back pressure on the stick, he let the nose come level with the horizon. Suddenly, a bright explosion “like a lightning strike” off the right wing sent the plane “tumbling through the air.” Pieces of metal flew past the canopy, and the engine stopped. Fighting to regain control, Dieter instinctively carried out the emergency procedures he had learned. His hands darted over the instruments, trying to restart the engine, which coughed once. Then, nothing.

With the engine gone, Dieter knew there was no hope of his making it back to the coast. He hit the switch to blow the canopy. The boom of the air-pressure bottle going off above his left shoulder was followed by the sound of air rushing overhead with the canopy gone. He unbuckled his shoulder harness and seat belt. He wore a seat-pack parachute, and the metal release handle was secured across his chest. He pushed aside the doughnut cushion wedged between him and the rock-hard chute pack, and climbed up onto the seat. He had practiced the procedure in training and knew about staying below the powerful airstream until he was ready to jump, and then how to roll out so as not to be blown back into the plane’s big tail. As the unguided Spad went through “wild gyrations,” he kept being knocked back into the seat. Another nearby explosion made the plane “shiver from nose to tail.” The Spad had lost altitude, and at that point Dieter decided to ride the plane down. Also, he didn’t want to be swinging in a parachute over people who were shooting up at him. It was known that a Skyraider could hold up in a crash landing better than a jet, being sturdier and able to land at slower speeds and in shorter spaces. Before buckling himself back in, Dieter undid the parachute straps so as not to become entangled after the crash landing.

Dieter spotted a ridge to his right. Although he could not tell if there was any open ground suitable for a landing on the other side, he headed that way to crash-land as far away as possible from the area he had
bombed—a tenet taught at SERE to give downed aviators the best chance of evading immediate capture.

As his powerless plane “wobbled” closer to the ridge, Dieter saw that he did not have enough altitude to clear it. With the windmilling propeller producing a small amount of forward energy, he tried lowering the flaps, movable devices on the rear of the wings that provide extra lift. Luckily, they still worked. With a last reach skyward, the wounded Spad flared up over the 1,500-foot ridge, clearing the densely wooded top by no more than twenty feet. Meanwhile, he tossed out his flight charts, authenticator codes, and other classified materials so they wouldn’t be found inside the plane. With the Spad’s glide ratio of ten feet forward for every one foot down, he knew he would have to crash-land within a few miles.

Off in the distance—about three or four miles away—Dieter saw what looked like a small clearing. It seemed an unbelievable stroke of luck. As he came closer, he began to think he might overshoot the field. Amazed that he could still steer the plane, Dieter began to swing it from side to side in order to drop lower. Passing over several huts on his left, he saw on the far side of the clearing a solid wall of trees. He would try to set down in the field short of the wooded area. His airspeed indicator showed 180 miles per hour, about sixty miles per hour faster than a normal landing, but there was little he could do to slow down. Only now did he realize that the clearing wasn’t open ground after all but a field of trees that had been cut off at the height of three or four feet. The entire field—about 300 yards in length—was pockmarked with thick stumps and large felled trees. Dieter knew he had picked the wrong place to land, but his eight-ton plane had become the world’s heaviest glider and there could be no change of plans now. Like it or not, he was coming down here.

Looming ahead in the center of the clearing was a single tree about 100 feet tall with only a few limbs and not a single leaf. He didn’t want to hit the tree head-on, because the impact might crush the cockpit with him inside. In one of those quick decisions that pilots must make in such situations, he decided to let one of the wings take the impact. It was then he realized he hadn’t dropped the external fuel tanks as he should have done when the engine died. The last thing he needed was to have the surplus fuel catch on fire. He pulled the emergency release handle, and both tanks fell away. As they still
carried more than 100 gallons of fuel, the plane reacted to the lighter weight by ballooning upward—exactly what Dieter did not want now because he was already over the clearing and had to get the plane down. He pushed the stick forward with both hands and “boresighted” the nose on the lower part of the dead tree. When he was about to hit the tree, he kicked hard on the left rudder pedal. In what was to be its last controlled response, the damaged Spad obediently yawed left. The tree struck where Dieter planned: near where the wing attached to the fuselage. The tree trunk broke off, and what remained of the plane’s right wing was ripped from the fuselage.

On impact, the left wing swung forward and down, and as it did the wingtip struck the ground. The entire wing snapped off the fuselage. The plane’s nose dug into the earth, the windmilling prop chopping up dirt and wood chips. Dieter held the stick in a death grip as the Spad bounced into the air, careened over to the right, and then began tumbling end over end.

A tree stump ripped through the side of the cockpit, narrowly missing Dieter’s right leg. As the fuselage cartwheeled five or six times on the ground, he was pushed and pulled by the force of deceleration. His helmet was wrenched off his head and flew out the open cockpit. He watched a corner of the glass windscreen start to break in slow motion. When a big piece finally broke away, it struck him on one side of his head. Then, in a surreal scene, he watched the entire tail section tumble by. Smelling oil and gas and terrified of being burned, Dieter closed his eyes and covered his face with his arms.

When the world stopped spinning and the “continuous grinding and jerking” ended, he opened his eyes. He was hanging sideways in a darkened abyss. The cockpit was filled with green foliage and a thick dust that started him coughing. The fuselage was on one side, and the metal rail for the canopy was bent inward, jamming into his side. He managed to unbuckle his shoulder harness and seat belt but found that he was still caught and couldn’t get out. Then, he passed out.

When he came to, he was on his back 100 feet away.

Dazed, he looked at the wreckage. He was surprised that there was no fire. A load of aviation gas remained in the internal fuel tank, as the drop tanks were routinely used up first. He remembered turning off the gas, battery, and ignition in the last moments before the plane hit the ground. He
had no recollection, however, of getting out of the plane. He was still wearing his survival vest and waist pack, and next to him were a few things he had obviously taken from the cockpit. He tested his limbs to see if they all worked; his left knee hurt, but nothing seemed to be broken.

He knew the locals would come looking for him. The sound of the crash had been thunderous, and those huts he had seen were only a short distance away. He rose to his feet, and “stumbling and falling like a drunkard” he moved as quickly as he could through the clearing toward the jungle.

When he reached the end of the clearing, he stopped. Steadying himself on weak legs, he took a last look back. A cloud of dust from the crash still swirled above the wrecked Spad that had brought him safely down to the ground.

Then, Dieter stepped into the jungle.

The three Spads circled nearby, waiting for Dieter.

When he didn’t appear, Spook radioed: “
Zero Four
, check in.”

Shortly after his own bombing run, Spook glimpsed Dieter starting to pull out of his run. As Spook turned in a “rendezvous circle” to meet up with the others, he lost sight of Dieter. Enstam found Spook first, and then Hassett joined up. None of them had observed any ground fire. In fact, for the first three pilots who rolled in over the target, the mission had so far been uneventful.

Spook tried again. “
Electron Five Zero Four
. Hey, check in.”

Spook asked his wingman, Enstam, to climb higher, where radio reception was often clearer, and try to contact Dieter. As Spook and Hassett circled, they heard that the
Kitty Hawk
pilot had been rescued. That was doubly good news. As they were no longer needed for the RESCAP in southern Laos, they could head back to the ship as soon as Dieter showed up.

When Enstam reported from 6,000 feet that he couldn’t raise Dieter, Spook decided to retrace the run over the target, looking for any sign of a plane down. He saw only smoke and dust billowing from their bombs, and what appeared to be unbroken foliage in every direction. Even with the hazy conditions, visibility was four to five miles. Still, Spook knew that the
dense canopy of jungle and woods below—as high as 200 feet in places—could swallow up a plane.

“Time to get back to the ship,” Hassett radioed.

“We’ve got a guy missing,” Spook shot back.

Hassett said Dieter had probably gone back on his own.

Spook knew that could not be true. Dieter was a nugget on his first mission over Laos. It was a long way back to
Ranger
, and he would have to cross over North Vietnam. He wouldn’t have tried it alone. He was either airborne in some kind of trouble—perhaps with an inoperable radio—or down. If he was down in the jungle, he might be coming up on his short-range emergency radio trying to reach them. How could they leave?

“Got our charlie time to make,” said Hassett, whose troublesome radio seemed to be working just fine now.

Spook fumed. This “by-the-book jerk” was more concerned with getting back to the ship on time for their scheduled recovery than staying out here looking for one of their planes. There was no good reason to leave—finding a missing pilot always had the highest priority. They had enough fuel for at least a couple of hours. And if necessary they could refuel at Da Nang and keep looking, as there was a lot of daylight left.

Spook argued some more, and then Hassett ended it.

“I’ve got the lead,” said Hassett. “We’re going back.”

Short of being guilty of insubordination, all Spook could do was follow Hassett back to the ship. Spook did not know of the recent quarrel between Hassett and Dieter, and would not learn of it for some time. However, Hassett’s unwillingness to look for Dieter struck Spook not only as infuriating but also as very odd. As an experienced pilot and a senior officer, Hassett knew the primary importance placed on search and rescue. After all, they had just been ready to ignore their schedule to go to the aid of the
Kitty Hawk
pilot. And a day earlier Hassett had chased away the fishing boat when the
Ranger
A-4 pilot was rescued off North Vietnam. Spook now wondered:
Why wouldn’t Hassett spend more time and effort looking for his own wingman, for God’s sake
?

The three Spads made their charlie time, landing on
Ranger
4.5 hours after takeoff. Confirming that Dieter had not returned on his own, Spook was even more disturbed by Hassett’s decision.