Hero Found: The Greatest POW Escape of the Vietnam War (40 page)

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On July 19, 1967, I lost my Blue Angels pilot. Commander Herbert P. Hunter, second in command of fighter squadron FV-162 deployed aboard the aircraft carrier
Oriskany
(CVA-34) in the Gulf of Tonkin off North Vietnam—a man who “made piloting a jet plane look effortless”—crash-landed his battle-damaged F-8 Crusader, which plunged off the flight deck into the water. Hunter's lifeless body, attached to his partially deployed parachute, was recovered by a rescue helicopter.

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For continuity and clarity, speeds are given in miles per hour. The U.S. Navy uses knots: nautical miles per hour. One knot is equal to 1.15 miles per hour.

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The navy concluded that inadequate training in air combat maneuvering (ACM) was responsible for too many aircraft losses in the air war over North Vietnam. As a result, the U.S. Navy Fighter Weapons School, known as TOPGUN, was established in California in early 1969, with aviators from frontline combat units selected to attend the elite course, which emphasized aerial dogfighting at close quarters. Upon graduation, these pilots returned to their fleet units to teach fellow squadron mates the ACM tactics they had learned. Beginning in 1970, the navy’s kill-to-loss ratio against North Vietnamese MiGs quadrupled, with naval pilots shooting down 13 enemy planes for one of their own losses. (Incidentally, scenes for the popular 1986 movie
Top Gun
were filmed aboard the aircraft carrier
Ranger
.)

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Women were excluded from serving aboard U.S. navy combat ships until 1994, when the navy assigned the first large group of female crew members (sixty-three) to the aircraft carrier
Eisenhower
(CVN-69).

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After Deiter went down, all the junior officers in the squadron had to take turns flying as Hassett’s wingman, a universally unpopular assignment that was known as being “in the basket.”

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Two enlisted men were killed in the course of their duties on
Ranger
’s flight deck during the 1966 WestPac cruise: Aviation Boatswain’s Mate Third Class Clark David Franklin, twenty-three, of Alamogordo, New Mexico; and Airman Douglas Thomas, Jr., twenty, of Columbia, South Carolina. On April 24 and August 4, respectively, Franklin and Thomas were run over by aircraft. Franklin died instantly; Thomas died a short time later in sickbay. Their deaths were classified as nonhostile sea casualties.

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Ironically, a few months earlier, Hill had been the navy press liaison for the premiere aboard an aircraft carrier of the movie
Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N.
, about a navy pilot (portrayed by Dick Van Dyke) forced to bail out of his plane and survive on a deserted island in the Pacific.