August 13, 2007

Captain Steve Millikin, USN (Ret)

Editor, The Hook Magazine

9696 Businesspark Avenue

San Diego, CA 92131-1643

Dear Captain Millikin,

An old friend recently brought to my attention the article "A History of VAW-13/VAQ-130, Part I: Dragon in the Sky" in the spring 2002 edition of The Hook magazine.  The article relates part of the story about me having ditched an EA-1F in the Gulf of Tonkin.  I say part of the story because there is more!  Nothing in the printed article is in error but, I thought you might be interested in some of the facts which were omitted.  As Paul Harvey would say, here is the rest of the story!

We were at an altitude of around 10,000 feet MSL over North Vietnam when the electrical failure occurred.  We DR' d our way back to approximately the ship's launch position that was included in the pre-launch briefing.  Not wanting to jump into the middle of a night IFR CCA pattern full of jets, I flew outbound from the general area of the ship's expected position and descended beneath the clouds.  The weather was about 1,000 feet overcast with multiple rain showers in the area.  Once stabilized beneath the overcast, we spotted some ship's lights which immediately gave me confidence that we were in the vicinity of USS Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Again, not wanting to be a NORDO Spad in a night IFR jet recovery, I stayed well clear of the lights.

At dawn, after having flown four and one-half hours partial panel (needle ball, altimeter, VSI, and airspeed), we approached the ships whose lights we had observed.  The lights belonged to two ammunition ships (AE) steaming in a loose formation.  In an attempt to get some attention, I flew close aboard both ships several times while tapping out "FDR" in Morse code on the aircraft's white signaling light located under the fuselage.  Strangely, no one on either ship came out on the bridge wing to even wave!  Sensing that no help was forthcoming there, I turned west toward the coast to visually fix our position.  (At one point, we considered trying to get to Danang AB; but, without a radio and TACAN to fly the radials which would keep us safe from the Hawk missile batteries, I felt that a very dangerous thing to attempt in IFR conditions).

We found Cap Mui Ran, a peninsula north of Danang that I had seen on numerous previous missions, so we knew at that point exactly where we were.  Now that we knew where we were, it was simply a matter of flying to the ship by DR Navigation, right?  Bob Carlton, my NAO had the plotting board and provided me with a course and distance to the ship's pre-launch latitude and longitude.  So, off we went confident that we would drive right out to the FDR.  When we got to the end of our computed DR time, the ship was not to be seen.  Never fear (said I) we will begin an expanding square search and, sooner or later, we would find the ship - piece of cake!  We repeated this drill several times, flying from Cap Mui Ran to the spot in the ocean where the FDR was supposed to be.  Finally, I made the decision that we should ditch the Fat Spad before we ran out of fuel.  I head for the middle of the Tonkin Gulf approximately equidistant from North Vietnam and Hainan Island and prepared to ditch.  We jettisoned all external stores, blew the rear canopies, blew open the sliding front canopies, lowered full flaps, and dropped the tailhook.  This configuration gave us an airspeed of about 100 knots and a rate of descent of about 150 feet per minute.  I flew the aircraft until I felt the hook drag in the water and then shutdown the engine with the mixture control.

Impact with the water, in calm sea conditions, was about the same force as a normal arrested landing.  However, because we were unable to jettison the AN/APS-31 radar pod under the starboard wing (it was permanently attached) the pod skied on the surface causing the left wingtip to catch in the water, yawing the aircraft to the left.  The propeller stopped turning abruptly as the large four bladed prop dug in and we came to a stop.  I distinctly remember water starting to come in one of the "eyeball" vents on the instrument panel as I unstrapped and jumped out onto the port wing into water that was about up to the top of my boots.  I reached back into the cockpit and pulled out the life raft which I placed in the water beside me and then retrieved my helmet bag containing a canteen, my kneeboard, and nav charts.  I then sat down in the raft, put my feet up against the side of the aircraft and pushed away.  As I recall, the plane stayed afloat only about one minute.

Shortly after the aircraft disappeared below the waves, we hooked our four rafts together so as to not to become separated.  The crew of three and I were located by A-1's from USS Coral Sea homing in on my survival radio "beeper" and they vectored the USAF HU-16 Albatross to our position for pickup.  (Strangely, my survival radio (which had not functioned while airborne) worked just fine as I sat in my life raft.  On previous flights, when experiencing a UHF radio failure, I had been able to use the survival radio and transmit and receive on the UHF Guard Channel.)

The HU-16 landed and taxied near our position and one at a time we entered the waiting seaplane.  The Albatross then took off for an uneventful flight to Danang AB and we were treated to lunch at the DOOM Club (Danang Officers Open Mess) where we waited for the FDR's COD to arrive to return us to the ship.  During the flight to Danang, I started consolidating my written notes and recollections in a chronology of events in preparation for writing the official statement which I knew would be required.

Upon arrival back onboard Roosevelt, other information became available to me which I had not known.  For example, I learned that the ship's launch position (given in the prelaunch briefing) had been about fifty miles in error.  Also, even though the E-1B crew from VAW-11 had heard my initial UHF transmission when we lost all electrical power (except for a very weak battery) and had inquired on several occasions if the ship had us in radar contact (primary skin paint only since we had no transponder), they had finally been told not to ask anymore because the ship had the situation under control.  However, when the next VAW-13 pilot scheduled to fly the aircraft inquired in Air Ops as to the whereabouts of his aircraft, he was surprised to learn that Air Ops/CATTC were unaware that the recovery had been one aircraft short.

In short, because a number of potentially embarrassing errors had been made, the loss of my EA-1F was declared by the ship to be a "combat loss" and, under the rules at the time, no Accident/Incident Investigation or Mishap Report was ever completed.

Scratch one "Queer" Spad.

Very respectfully,

CDR Landon G. Cox, Jr., USN (Ret)