HUT Flight

by Neil Cosentino

North of Hai Phong – North Vietnam, December, 1972

My Linebacker II mission call sign was Hut Flight.

We were a flight of three. We had lost Hut Four due to a refueling problem. We were on a bomber escort mission that crossed the fence south of the Chinese border north of Hai Phong.

I positioned my flight of F-4E Phantoms between the missile sites around Hai Phong and the flight of three B-52s we were assigned to escort. They were above us and to our right, parallel to the north of our track. My plan was for us to act as bait to attract the missiles away from the B-52s.

The SAMs (Surface to Air Missiles) would have to come to us, or go through us, to get to the bombers. We had a much better capability to evade by out-maneuvering them, but it was a deadly game to play with the SAMs. In contrast, the bomber crews’ orders were the do-or-die variety like the change of the light brigade. They could only use jammers and chaff and a tail gunner to defend themselves while pressing on straight and level to deliver their bomb loads. Those tactics changed as their losses increased.

Those Linebacker II missions explored the gamut of emotions and senses as in any deadly reality game of hunters and hunted. As flight leader I always considered myself the hunter with two equal priorities: the mission and my wingman. I always sought to find the threat, the enemy and the target; and to protect my wingman. I would never sacrifice a wingman for the mission unless I was the first part of the sacrifice. Targets, in a sense, did not go away. They would generally be up again another day, but experienced aircrews were hard to replace.

The cacophony of radar warning sounds got louder and more mixed as we approached North Vietnam. We had no sooner crossed the fence than I caught what looked like a single MiG in afterburner at our three o’clock low position. I got off my radio to call my flight before the afterburner – the MiG passed directly under me. There was no warning from my RHAW (Radar Homing And Warning) equipment. We had no warning from airborne early warning or Red Crown, the ship-based radar picket-ship in the Gulf of Tonkin. They were all probably too busy with what was going on over Hanoi. The MiG must have come from China and been vectored to us, but had not used its radar to lock onto anyone in the flight. It was impossible for the enemy pilot, or for that matter any pilot, to get a visual on us in the pitch darkness. Still, we were lucky our first visual hadn’t been cannon muzzle flashes or missile plumes from the MiG.

I had briefed the flight that we would engage MiGs singly. If any one of us saw a MiG, we were to break off, tum off exterior lights, and attack. The same was true if we got a vector from Red Crown. I don’t know what other flight leaders briefed, but those were the night combat rules-of-engagement (ROE) for my flight.

My thinking was that at night a wingman was unlikely to be able to hang on to a maneuvering lead and there was no sense keeping your external lights on so he could. Further, once the flight is split, two fighters going after the same target in the dark is a recipe for a mid-air collision. I was the one who saw the MiG, so I broke out of the formation knowing that my element leader, Hut Three “Snake,” would then take over as briefed and continue inbound escorting our bombers while I went after the MiG single ship.

I called, “Hut flight, MiG three o’clock low,” unloaded, and went into full afterburner as I rolled down and toward the MiG. I pulled hard down, turning as fast as I could ninety degrees to the south, the heading change. I needed to match the direction of that afterburner plume. I knew that heading was taking us straight towards the heart of the five SAM sites around Hai Phong.

I rolled wings level, looking, listening, waiting, and hoped that Pojo, my guy-in-the-back (GIB), would find the MiG on our radar and lock him up so I could fire our AIM 7s. (Air Intercept Missiles) I strained to see in the afterburner of the MiG in the total blackness. It seemed to have disappeared. I listened for the growl of my AIM 9 missiles, the heat-seekers, “sniffing” for the heat of that MiGʼs tailpipe. I needed something, anything; the afterburner as a visual, a growl from my best AIM- 9, or a radar lock-on with yellow in-range light, in order to ripple-fire the radar missiles.

The MiG was out there somewhere in that black hole we shared, the hunted, we the hunter.

Then a radio call from Red Crown, but no vectors or range to the MiG, only, “This Is Red Crown on Guard; Hut flight, you are cleared to fire.” Beautiful words–if you’re locked up or have your foe in sight. But I saw and heard nothing, and my GIB could not find the MiG on our radar. I didn’t blame him. “Pojo” had just arrived in the squadron from an RTU (Return To Unit) in the states. He was a new second lieutenant on his very first combat mission. Even the most experienced back-seater would have needed a lot of luck to find a small radar target in all the ground clutter and interference from jammers and chaff that night. I tried, looked, and listened as hard as I could for the heat signal I would need to fire the AIM-9 to find the MiG’s afterburner but nothing. We were approaching Mach One in a 20-degree dive, hurtling toward where I had last seen the MiG afterburner. The only thing I had to go by was the last heading of his afterburner plume.

My guess later was that the MiG had come out of afterburner, done a “Split S” and headed back to the north into China. His mission was completed. He was a successful decoy, and we were now deep inside their five SAM rings around Hai Phong.

The hunter had become the hunted.

A few more seconds passed. I was about to call Red Crown. We were passing through 20,000 feet and Mach 1.4 when I picked up two SAMs. The red square RHAW AS light (aptly called the “aw shit” light) was lit; there was a strobe showing the right direction on the RHAW scope, and the rattlesnake sound confirmed we were now the hunted. We had become the prime target for the five SAM batteries.

I had learned from experience that those missiles without a halo were of little threat. The halo, the ring around the rocket engine plume, was the giveaway. Think of the halo you see around street lighting on a foggy night. The halos tell you at once that the SAMs are near enough to be lethal. There they were! The two were in trail, deep below us off the starboard side, both with halos and both headed directly at us.

I turned to put the missiles at 90 degrees off the right wing. I used right rudder to slice the nose of the aircraft down and used zero-G to get more acceleration. I watched the missiles. As soon as I saw them tum to follow us down, I rolled the wings level and pulled straight back on the stick and watched and waited. They tried to turn to follow us, but the missiles’ wings were too small to produce the turn needed. Both missiles passed well behind us at our six o’clock, heading toward the Gulf of Tonkin.

It is much like the way a bullfighter watches as the bull charges, concentrating on the horns. A move to avoid them too soon and the bull has time to move away and redirect his charge. Move too late and the bull wins, with a trophy on his horns. The maneuver must be just right, or the matador gets the horns.

We were in a nose high climb as the SAMs passed behind us. I rolled to the left so that I could look around. It was just in time; there were two more missiles, both in trail, both headed directly at us, and both with halos around their rocket plumes. I did not have to confirm using the RHAW, or the missile lock-on sounds, or the azimuth strobe or the red AS light to know we were their destination.

I rolled further left toward them, keeping them at ninety degrees off the left wing. I had to use more negative-Gs to get them to commit down, knowing that we were on the edge, exceeding the negative-G limits of both hydraulic generator drives. Our radarscope started to flash bright green as the generators cycled on and off. Then we waited. I watched for their course correction and the moment when they moved to follow us down. At that moment, I could pull up. Get that pull wrong and the fight would be over.

The other lights in the cockpit were going on and off like a pinball machine, as the generators tried their best to deal with the excessive negative Gs. There was no choice; I had to use all the negative Gs I could, knowing that there was a good chance of losing all electrical power in the middle of the SAM rings. But total power failure in a total blackout night was the better choice over those two missiles.

I yelled at Pojo to turn off the radar; the bright flashing green radar screen was affecting my night vision. He did and just seconds later we lost all electrical power. I held the high negative-G nose-down pitch altitude, watched, and waited. The missiles started to tum to follow us down, and at that moment, I pulled up as hard as I could, and was relieved to watch them pass behind us toward Hanoi.

We were on battery power now as we headed southwest almost out of the last SAM ring. Pojo called out that we were being trailed by AAA (Anti-Aircraft Artillery) air bursts, but the tone of his voice told me that they were not an immediate or serious threat. I did start to pitch, roll and weave, mostly to scout the skies for more missiles, while at the same time making us a more difficult target for the radar-directed heavy AAA batteries.

I found my flashlight and started to work on getting the generators back on line. I moved the right generator toggle switch to reset. The generator came on line, but when I tried the left generator switch, both would drop off line. The right generator came back on, and that was all we needed until we were out of the Red River Valley and the threat area.

We had enough fuel and things started to settle down, so I turned more to the west. I started to use the flashlight to read the standby compass for a heading but instead used the Milky Way for a rough heading once out of the SAM ring.
In a strange way, the missiles helped me know up from down and where Bulls-Eye Hanoi was. 

We eased further to the west and waited until Pojo could get the INS (Inertial Navigation System) to realign to give us more accurate headings for our flight home. We now had one generator, the INS for steering and the radar back on, so I turned to the northwest to see if we could intercept and rejoin Hut flight and the bombers during their egress from the Hanoi SAM rings. Maybe I could still contribute by drawing the enemy interest away from the egressing B-52s.

It was a good mission, especially for Pojo. It was his first combat mission and could not have been more interesting. I felt good about it too. We did not lose a B-52 under our protection that night and the enemy wasted four missiles on us– four missiles they could not fire at our B-52s in the nights that followed.

Cornelius “Neil” Cosentino became a US Air Force pilot in 1960 and went on to log over 6,000 hours in military, commercial and private flying. He flew the B-47, the KC-135, several models of the F-4, and did three tours in Vietnam. He was awarded nine Air Medals and the Distinguished Flying Cross. Neil joined OLLI-USF in 2018 and took classes in writing, music, teaching, activism and online searches.