Hero Found: The Greatest POW Escape of the Vietnam War (28 page)

The next day Spook was in John Tunnell’s stateroom complaining about his nonflying status when Griffith entered.

“Skipper, Spook shouldn’t be grounded,” said Tunnell, who could speak not only as Spook’s flight leader on the day in question but also as one of VA-145’s senior officers and pilots.

Griffith, who could be as cool on the ground as he was in the air during the heat of combat, said simply, “I told Spook what the verdict was.” Without another word, he turned and left the room.

Late in the afternoon of May 12,
Ranger
arrived at the main aircraft carrier pier at the U.S. Navy Base, Yokosuka, Japan. The next morning, Spook, with his heavy gear packed in a wooden box and his uniforms in his seabag, departed from the quarterdeck with a final salute, leaving behind the pilots with whom he had gone to war—some who had already been lost,
and others who would not survive the last three months of
Ranger
’s WestPac cruise.

With his official orders in hand, he took a van to the naval air facility at Atsugi and caught a navy DC-4 heading east. After a refueling at Midway and an overnight stop at Hawaii, he landed at Alameda Naval Air Station the next day. He caught a ride to the naval base at Treasury Island, an artificial island created in the San Francisco Bay for the 1936 Golden Gate International Exposition. There, Malcolm “Spook” Johns was released from active duty.

Within days, Spook was driving his yellow International Scout home to Detroit, with the canvas top rolled back and the wind blowing in his face, just the way he had flown those Spads.

On June 20,
Ranger
was back on station in the Gulf of Tonkin.

After daytime flight operations had ceased, the pilots of VA-145 were lounging half-dressed in their rooms or shooting the bull in the ready room following evening chow. The only ones not standing down were the four pilots on an unusual special alert, ready to launch in fifteen minutes. This was the third night of the alert; the first two nights had come and gone without any planes being launched. Four pilots were again designated as Alert 15. They could wait in their staterooms until being called, but they had to be dressed in their flight suits and boots, and wearing special red-tinted goggles to keep their night vision. They had to be able to leave their rooms within 30 seconds and head to the flight deck, where their waiting planes were fueled and armed.

Attack pilots usually did not stand such alerts, although for fighter pilots they were a common occurrence. Whenever the ship was not conducting flight operations and there was no combat air patrol (CAP) aloft to intercept incoming enemy contacts, two F-4 Phantoms remained on ready alert, hooked up to side-by-side catapults with their pilots and RIOs in the cockpits—often reading a book or writing a letter home—prepared to launch on command.

Although only John Tunnell, the senior officer of the four pilots on alert,
had been briefed on the details of the special mission, there was scuttlebutt as to why the four Spads were standing by. The northernmost destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin, positioned there to assist with search-and-rescue operations when pilots went down feet wet, had been reporting small, high-speed boats—believed to be North Vietnamese PT boats—in the area at night. They were operating closer to the destroyer each night, and were being carefully watched. If they were emboldened enough to attack, aircraft would be rapidly launched to get to the scene.

One of the four Spad pilots on alert that night, Bummy Bumgarner, was sure he knew why the Spads and not the A-4 Skyhawks had been given the special mission. In his humble opinion, A-4s “couldn’t hit shit.” He believed that this had been proved a month before
Ranger
left for WestPac, when an old Liberty ship from World War II was towed fifty miles outside the Golden Gate for the air wing to use as a target for aerial bombing. First the A-4 squadrons came diving down, dropping bombs that fell harmlessly in the water around the ship. Then the F-4s streaked across the sky, launching rockets. With the Liberty ship still unscathed, eight Spads of VA-145 roared overhead. The CO, Hal Griffith, made the first dive-bomb run, with his wingman, Bumgarner, right after him. Bummy managed to thread the eye of the needle, slipping a 2,000-pounder down an open hatch and blowing out the bottom of the ship’s hull. When the other Spads arrived, they found the target ship had disappeared “under a mushroom-shaped geyser,” which was soon replaced by “just bubbles” where the ship had been. The CO of a squadron following the Spads asked for a target status report, and Griffith responded, “Target is an oil slick.” So, deadeye Bumgarner would answer the call to arms if anything had to be blown out of the water this night, although the weather briefing portended a miserable night for flying, with a low overcast and fog.

Shortly after 9:00
P.M
., the four pilots received identical calls in their rooms: “Launch the Alert 15. You’re go!” Gathering on the flight deck were the flight leader, Tunnell; his wingman, Bumgarner; Skip Armstrong, VA-145’s newest lieutenant commander, who one day would captain an aircraft carrier and become a rear admiral; and his wingman, Denny Enstam, who believed the reason the Spads were getting this mission was that neither of the A-4s squadrons wanted its jets up in such abysmal weather and
everyone knew the Spads had grit. The night was drizzly and uncommonly dark. The pilots saw their planes parked in their usual spot at the rear of the flight deck. With so many planes parked on the crowded deck for the next day’s flight operations, only one of the four catapults was in use: on the bow of the ship, starboard side. Walking to their planes, the pilots found the deck wet and slippery.

Tunnell was first to taxi forward to catapult number one and have his plane attached to the bridle. Behind him came his wingman, Bummy, who was already having difficulties. First, his dragging tail wheel got hung up on the cables that stretched across the deck to catch recovering planes. Once he cleared those obstacles, he found his plane sliding ominously on the slippery deck. It was so dark he had no visibility in any direction; there might as well have been a sheet of black construction paper in front of his eyes. He could see only the yellow lights held by a plane director. The only personnel authorized to move aircraft or give hand signals to taxiing aircraft, plane directors wore bright yellow shirts, which were easy enough to spot in the daytime; at night, they held in each hand a flashlight with a foot-long yellow cone screwed on top. The plane director was off to Bummy’s left, in a position that kept him clear of the spinning propeller and also allowed the pilot to see his signals from the cockpit. When the plane director crossed his wands—the signal to stop—Bummy pressed his feet down on both rudder pedals to brake. The plane director waved his crossed wands more frantically. Bummy was standing on the pedals, applying full brake, but the plane still slid on the wet deck before finally stopping. He had no idea how close he was to going over the side into the water. His fate, at this point, was in the hands of the plane director with the yellow cones and the other young men who risked their lives working in the controlled chaos of the flight deck.
^*

When Bummy was finally in place behind Tunnell, the blast deflector wall between them was raised, blocking the powerful prop wash from Tunnell’s plane as he ran it up to full power for the catapult shot. Then, Tunnell’s Spad was off.

What happened next—before Bummy’s disbelieving eyes—seemed to unfold in slow motion. As soon as Tunnell’s plane cleared the bow, its left wing dipped. Spad pilots learned early on how to deal with that dangerous tendency of the plane, but this time there was no attempted correction. The wing just kept dropping, and the plane rolled to the left until it was upside down. Then it fell toward the water and dropped from Bummy’s sight.

Bummy sat, immobilized by shock but with his mind racing. Tunnell, whom he knew as one of the most experienced pilots in the squadron, had just gone inverted into the water seconds after launch. Bummy knew it was a non-recoverable event; there was no time or altitude for Tunnell to turn upright and get level. And Tunnell would have been killed outright or rendered unconscious by the impact with the water; there would have been no time or opportunity for him to get out. Had there been a failure of the one instrument every carrier pilot stayed glued to on a nighttime catapult shot—the attitude gyro that showed the position of the wings compared with the horizon? Had Tunnell, with no visual references on this dark, foggy night, been unaware that his wings weren’t level? Had the gyro given him an incorrect reading and told him his
other
wing was down, causing him to follow the gyro over in the wrong direction? Or, from the jolt of the catapult, had he lost one of the heavy bombs he was carrying under his left wing and had no time to correct for the weight imbalance? There were many questions to which Bummy had no answers. But of this he was certain: John Tunnell had just died in front of him.

Behind Bumgarner, Enstam had also seen what happened. From his vantage point, he saw off the port side of the ship Tunnell’s plane upside down in the water, sinking under the glare of a spotlight mounted in the catwalk just below the flight deck.

Bummy wasn’t sure how long he froze before the yellow cones of light signaled him to move forward onto the catapult. The blast wall had already been lowered, and he was next.

My, God, he was next!
Holy shit
, he thought.
Can I do this?

Tunnell—how many hours did he have?
The lieutenant commander had 2,500 hours of flight time, but that was not enough to keep him from dying this night. Bummy thought, here he was, a lowly ensign with only 385 hours of total flight time. And he was next?

Bumgarner was more afraid than he had ever been in his life. He could refuse to move forward—he could shut down the engine and climb out—he could go find the skipper and turn in his wings. Had he done so, he knew not many of the guys in VA-145 would have criticized his decision. Carrier aviation in general, and combat flying in particular, required pilots to operate precariously close to their personal and physical limits, but all individuals
did
have their limits.

The yellow cones were getting more frantic again, this time high in the air, forward and back: the signal to come forward.

Bumgarner released the brakes, and moved forward.

Once secured to the catapult, he revved the engine to full power, and signaled the catapult officer he was ready by flipping on his external lights. Then he was off—watching his gyro and making sure to carry out the instrument panel scan taught in flight training for nighttime launches, in case one instrument went bad and gave faulty information.

Bumgarner and the other two Spads rendezvoused at a designated location, then radioed
Ranger
asking if they should continue the mission with only three planes. After a delay, they were advised to go ahead, and someone came over the radio from the ship and gave them the details of their assignment, since Tunnell had been the only one to be so briefed.

Flying in “ludicrous weather” with a 500-foot ceiling and the “moon on the other side of the world,” they searched for the wakes of PT boats in the Gulf of Tonkin but found nothing. They never even spotted the U.S. destroyer in the dark. After not more than an hour in the air, they turned around and came back to the ship.

Three of the four Spads that took off that night landed safely.

So VA-145, which had started the cruise with twenty pilots, had now lost three: Dieter Dengler, Gary Hopps, and John Tunnell.

Totaling the operational and combat losses for Carrier Air Wing 14
during
Ranger
’s 1966 WestPac cruise, twelve aviators would take off from the ship and not return—for a variety of arbitrary, cataclysmic, and astounding reasons that carrier pilots go missing. Nine were killed. Three became prisoners of war; one was released in 1973, one died in captivity, and one was about to escape from Laos.

The day before the POWs planned to escape,
Dieter received a beating from the guards. His offense: he had used two sticks to drag over to the door of the hut a small corncob that had been thrown to a young pig the guards were fattening. The kernels had already been devoured, leaving only the shriveled cob—filthy with the pig’s manure. But Dieter was starving, and he intended to eat it. Before he could begin, the guard they called Moron ran over, yelling and pointing his rifle. He entered the hut, slapped the foot blocks on Dieter, and dragged him outside. A group of guards gathered in the yard. As if prosecuting a court case, Moron waved the corncob as evidence, then flipped it to the pig. For Dieter, the symbolism was clear:
Prisoners are less than pigs
. Then Moron began beating Dieter with his rifle butt. Other guards joined in. When they threw him back into the hut, where all the prisoners had been herded during the beating, the bloodied Dieter stared stony-faced into the yard, saying nothing to the others. Prasit broke the silence, telling Dieter not to forget, when he killed the guards, to kick them in the head “so they’ll rot in hell.”

For weeks they had been updating their scale model of the camp, marking where the all guards and guns were located from morning until evening. Taking turns peering out between the cracks of their huts, the
prisoners had observed every detail, no matter how small, and came to know their captors’ routines as well as they knew their own. They had even been able to determine about how long it would take for reinforcements to reach the camp from the nearest village. One morning, the guards spotted strange footprints, and one of them took off to get help; he was back with armed reinforcements a few hours later. The prisoners had considered but rejected a nighttime escape, primarily because it was impossible to venture far in the jungle in the dark and they knew the guards would be on their trail at daylight. The best opportunity for escape remained the period of time when the guards put down their weapons to go to the kitchen around 4:00
P.M
. to pick up their evening meal. The prisoners repeatedly timed the interval; the trip to and from the kitchen for those guards returning to the gun towers and adjacent huts took no more than two and a half minutes. In that time, the prisoners would have to slip from their locked huts, get outside the stockade, secure the guns, and be ready to overtake all the guards in the camp.

Everyone had assigned tasks in the escape plan. Dieter was to be the first out of the walled compound; he would then enter the nearest guard hut, where three or four rifles were usually left inside. As he did so, someone unlocked the Asian hut. Two Thai and the other two Americans were to crawl through the hole in the fence. After he had gathered the guns, Dieter was to arm Phisit and Prasit as they emerged from the compound. The three of them were the most capable with weapons. Neither Duane nor Gene was eager to participate in a shootout, and Y.C. couldn’t handle a rifle. Gene had a backup role with a weapon, however. He was to head for a guard hut at the back of the compound to retrieve a Thompson submachine gun. As Dieter swung around behind the stockade and proceeded toward the kitchen, Gene was to remain on the porch of the hut with the submachine gun and provide supporting fire if needed. The Thai were to go around the front of the compound, heading for the kitchen where they were to order, in Laotian, the unarmed guards to surrender. With Dieter guarding the back door, they hoped to round up the guards without firing the guns, since the sounds of a shoot-out would reverberate throughout the valley for miles, alerting all villagers and Pathet Lao alike to trouble at the camp. While Dieter, Thanee, and Phisit secured the guards, Gene and Prasit would set up a hand-grenade
booby trap on the trail leading up from the village, then hide nearby and ambush anyone heading for the camp. Meanwhile, Duane and Y.C. would search the huts. They would place the guards in foot blocks and handcuffs and lock them in the prison huts until it could be decided what to do with them; killing them one by one was an option. They could then hold the camp and signal aircraft nightly until they were spotted and rescued. If shots were fired in the taking of the camp, however, enemy reinforcements could be expected within hours. In that case, everyone knew that all bets were off and they would have to abandon the camp and head into the jungle.

In Dieter’s mind, there was no contingency for failure. If they tried to escape and failed, he expected either to be killed in the attempt—his preference—or executed soon thereafter. There had never been a real alternative for him. Even before the prisoners heard about the guards’ plan to kill them, he had not intended to waste away slowly in a jungle prison camp and die from disease, starvation, or beatings.

Weeks earlier, the prisoners had loosened a large support pole in the American hut by pouring water and urine at its base and working it back and forth until they could lift it out. After loosening some logs close to the floorboards, they now had a way to leave the hut quickly. Then, they put everything back and “covered up all traces” of their preparation. Dieter had also dug a hole underneath the fence next to the hut, then covered it up with leaves and bamboo. He had accomplished all this when the prisoners were still being let out of their huts for long periods in the morning, and when the guards in the gun towers were napping or otherwise inattentive, as they often were.

Some hours after the beating over the corncob, the prisoners were let out into the compound. They sat at their wooden picnic table in the center of the yard, slurping down watery rice broth, which had become their only daily meal. The camp dog—as skinny as they were and probably not long for the world, given the guards’ own extreme hunger—lingered under the table looking for scraps. There were none, of course, but the prisoners were always willing to let the dog lick any sores on their feet and legs, as they had found that its saliva aided the healing process. Gesturing to the guards that he had to take a leak, Dieter slipped behind the hut to see if the logs were still loose. They moved easily. Also, the hole under the fence looked as if it
had not been discovered. Having lazy guards who did not bother to walk the fence line was an advantage.

The prisoners had agreed that if they could not stay at the camp to make contact with planes overhead, they would split into two groups before fleeing overland. Earlier, there had been talk of staying together as one group, but Dieter was opposed to the idea. Such a large group would be easier to track. Also, if they had to hump through the jungle to freedom, Dieter wanted to be with Duane and Gene because the three Americans got along and trusted one another.

The three Thai were a natural team, and given how well Phisit, the former paratrooper, knew the jungle, Dieter figured they had an excellent chance of making it. In fact, Phisit offered tips to the Americans about finding food in the jungle, such as edible ferns that grow along the waterways and figs that could be eaten green or ripe. The three Thai told about the hospitality of their people, especially the monks, and suggested that if the Americans made it across the border into Thailand they should seek refuge at a temple until they could make contact with friendly forces. The Thai and the Americans were in agreement that, with impenetrable jungle, at least two mountain ranges, and North Vietnam to the east, westward was the way to proceed.

The oldest prisoner, Y.C., the Chinese radio operator, was the odd man out. He was set to travel with the Thai group, but he suddenly fell ill with what was believed to be elephantiasis, a tropical disease caused by parasitic worms transmitted by mosquitoes. It left his legs weak and swollen, and his scrotum badly distended. In severe pain, he could barely walk. The Thai balked at taking Y.C. with them.

The Americans talked it over. If they were able to hold the camp, make air contact, and set up a rescue operation from here, Y.C.’s condition would not be an issue. But if they had to head for Thailand and evade enemy trackers en route, there was no way he could keep up. It would be terrible to condemn a fellow prisoner to certain death, and they struggled with the dilemma. Yet everyone knew they would be at a distinct disadvantage carrying a sick man who had trouble walking.

Finally, Gene said he and Y.C. would go together. They would make it over the first ridge to the south, then “lie in wait for air contact.”

“Don’t be a fool,” Dieter said. “We want you with us.”

“And I want Y.C.,” Gene said, adding that if Dieter and Duane were rescued, “be sure someone looks for us and tell them where to look.”

Dieter respected Gene for being “our peacemaker.” Whenever there was an impasse among the prisoners, more often than not it was “kind and good” Gene who stepped in to resolve the situation. Now, even though he understood that he was lessening his own chance of a rescue, Gene would not leave behind his Air America crewman, who had become a good friend during their imprisonment. When they divvied up the sacks of dried rice, Dieter and Duane made sure Gene and Y.C. each received “twice the amount” that everyone else got, knowing they might have to hold out longer for rescue.

On escape day, the hours dragged toward the guards’ evening meal.

Already, there had been one aborted effort. The day before, after Dieter had crawled out the back of the hut and was ready to slip under the fence, Phisit had called it off from the other hut because two of the guards were unaccounted for in the kitchen. Dieter had to put everything back into place, and get back inside. When he asked later what had happened, Phisit said he didn’t think it was the right time. Recalling how opposed to the escape Phisit had long been, Dieter thought he might now be playing mind games. “Boiling mad,” Dieter said that if Phisit did this again once the escape was under way he would come back after getting a weapon and shoot him. Dieter could see that Phisit understood there was “nothing idle” about his threat.

As 4:00
P.M
. approached on June 29, 1966, Phisit again turned “worried and cautious,” sending word that maybe the escape should be put off again. Dieter’s response: “Not on your life.”

In the Asian prisoners’ hut, which was closest to the kitchen, Thanee was counting the guards as they arrived for food. He passed the information to Y.C., who was squatting in the doorway. In English, Y.C. called out in a hushed voice to Duane, stationed in the doorway of the American hut, and Duane passed the word to Dieter and Gene.

“Guards entering kitchen.”

“Guards don’t have weapons.”

They waited for the final count.

“All in the kitchen, but one’s missing,” Duane said urgently.

They speculated that the missing guard might have gone to check animal traps in the woods.

“Hell, let’s go,” Dieter said.

Duane and Gene agreed.

“It’s on,” Duane called out in a stage whisper to the other hut.

Dieter pulled out the loosened pole and logs, and climbed out the opening. Burrowing under the fence like a groundhog, Dieter squeezed through and headed for the nearest guard hut. He leaped onto the porch and crept across the bamboo flooring, which creaked with his every move. Inside, he found two Chinese-made rifles and a U.S. M-1 carbine with a full fifteen-round magazine. While he was with the air force shooting team, he had spent many hours on the range firing M-1s, and had become a skilled marksman with the weapon; he would keep this lightweight, semiautomatic weapon for himself. On the way out he picked up a full ammunition belt with extra magazines.

As he came off the porch, other prisoners were emerging from under the fence. Gene was already making his way down the fence line toward the rear of the compound. Phisit and Prasit came toward Dieter, who gave them the loaded Chinese rifles and some ammo. The two Thai headed off in the direction of the kitchen, with Duane following.

Dieter caught up with Gene. As they rounded the corner under the now empty gun tower, Gene peeled off for the hut where the guard on tower duty routinely left the Thompson submachine gun before going for food. As soon as Dieter rounded the far corner of the stockade, he could see the guards milling about inside the open-walled kitchen hut.

The next instant the guards “realized something was going on” and began yelling at each other and scrambling from the kitchen. They ran not toward the front of the stockade—the direction from which the Thai should have been coming—but toward Dieter.

“Yute! Yute!”
yelled Dieter. He pressed the butt of the M-1 tightly between his chest muscle and the front ball of his shoulder, tilting his head so that his closer eye looked straight down the top of the barrel. His index finger rested lightly on the trigger.

At that moment a shot rang out. Dieter felt the speeding bullet whiz past his head. He spotted a guard in the kitchen with a rifle pointed his way. So much for the theory that the guards had no weapons! Dieter squeezed the trigger, and dropped with one shot the guard who had fired at him.

Amid excited screams, the horde of guards closed on Dieter, who felt “all alone…out in the open.” He wondered what happened to the Thai, who were armed with the Chinese rifles, and to Gene, with the submachine gun.

Running for Dieter at full speed, with a machete held menacingly over his head, was Moron. From a few feet away, Dieter fired point-blank at the bare chest of the guard who had beaten him for taking the pig’s corncob. The force of the blast lifted Moron off the ground, threw him back several feet, and spun him around. His limp body fell to the ground “dead right on the spot” with a sizable exit hole in the center of his back.

Dieter swung around to see another guard with a machete trying to out-flank him. The M-1 fired only once each time the trigger was pulled, but by rapidly squeezing and releasing the trigger he got off a fast rate of fire. The second guard collapsed on the ground, holding his side and shrieking. With no hesitation, Dieter fired again, to “finish him off.”

The remaining guards were now trying frantically to reach the jungle.

“Where the
hell
—is
everybody
?” Dieter yelled.