White Lights

by Neil Cosentino

Near Bullʼs-eye, North Vietnam, 1972 

On a late December night we were headed north at 27,000 feet and, as the Christmas Carol goes, “the stars were shining brightly.” We were all headed for the Red River Valley and downtown Hanoi. Our formal mission was to escort the B-52s, but our real mission was to be surface-to-air missile (SAM) magnets: missile bait.

The B-52 Linebacker II campaign had started a few days back and they kept coming, night after night, flight after flight – flights of B-52’s pounding the North Vietnamese. Many seem to forget we paid a big price to pound the NV into ropes. They surrendered because they could no longer defend themselves; which should have and to me meant that we won that round of the Cold War against Communism.

The Downtown and Route Pac missions up North all began at the fence check. After it was completed there were a few minutes to relax and get ready. We all took a deep breath anticipating what was out in front of us in the total darkness.

All the cockpit lights were dimmed by then. All the lights but one – the red AS light – we called it the “Aaah Shit!” light. When lit, you were in for visitors from below; usually two or more in-trail surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) were on the way – your way. The panel lights were also turned down, the press-to-test lights were dimmed, and others were covered with gray see-through scotch tape to cut the glare on the canopy. The external fuel tank switches were rechecked to the fullest tanks, all four of the heat-seeking missiles and the four radar missiles were tuned with the best ones selected to be fired first. The weapons-select toggle switch on the inboard throttle was in the 20mm nose gun position. Now all was ready, the helmet strap tight, clear visor down, oxygen system checked, oxygen mask tight, all loose items, checklist, and flashlight secured or stowed, all navigation lights off except the dim green strip lights for close in-formation flying. Finally, I rechecked to make sure that the ejection seat pins were all out and gave a last tug on the parachute harness, seat belt and survival kit straps until they were as tight as I could get them, even if it hurt. You soon forget the hurt when the action begins. They need to be tight for a safe, very high-speed ejection. The hurt returns only after itʼs finally over and you are out of harmʼs way headed south or eastbound, “feet wet” over the Gulf of Tonkin, out of the fireworks.

Everything was set; now to just take a few minutes to relax a little and enjoy the beauty of a full cockpit view – the IMAX planetarium view. It was spectacular on that crystal clear December night, especially the Milky Way off the left wing.
We were nearing show time, 100 B-52 bombers and over 300 Air Force and Navy fighters were converging on the Red River Valley. That short, relaxed mood changed the second I heard the first sounds of the early warning radar. The game was on. Each slow swipe of RF energy from the rotating Russian long-range search radar antennas gave off a sound like an angry bullfrog on a small pond. These are the sound effects of modern warfare.

The radio chatter increased as we got closer to the Red River Valley and the “Bullʼs-eye”. The sounds of the SAM search radars, on top of the early warning radar, reached a crescendo. The entire night sky quickly filled with a rain of 10,000 bombs falling on North Vietnam, with missile after missile crisscrossing the night sky. I could not see those 10,000 bombs falling, but I could see the clusters of explosions all over the Red River Valley, the explosions on the ground. In the air, the real-time, deadly, unbelievable sound and light show began with the sounds provided by aircrews, emergency beepers, missile radars and the lights provided by bombs, missiles and aircraft exploding. At times, there were as many as six SAMs airborne all arching up in different directions from different locations out of the total darkness below. First there was one, then two, then another, two more over there and another one there. I watched the fireworks as some of them burst in a flash at a very high altitude, some lower, some just arcing up, burning out and falling back to earth. The closer to Bullʼs-eye, the brighter and the louder things got.

We were now close enough to see the AAA bursts. I did not see that missile trail; it was a just a bright pure white light that flooded my cockpit. The light was a strange pure white, like someone turned on a floodlight directly over my cockpit. It was not a flash, like a camera flash bulb, but had a plasma quality to it that seemed to grow in thickness and intensity. It was very bright but came just slow enough not to cause flash blindness. I looked around the cockpit amazed at the intensity of the strange light – brighter white than any sunlight. I could see what caused the light when my full night vision returned, the huge fireball at eleven o’clock high, like a dying star. It must have been the clearness of the air at 27,000 feet that allowed the light to have such power so far away from the blast. It was an amazing moment.

That night was the first time I saw a SAM making a direct hit on a B-52. I saw the explosion of a hundred, five-hundred-pound bombs and over 100,000 pounds of jet fuel above and well in front of me.

My immediate reaction was my voice, I even surprised myself – I said only two words into my oxygen mask, a gut response to what I saw, “The bastards!” words that then and even now seem awkward and not my own.

There was a long pause after the fireball died. Then another flash – only this time closer, but on the ground. The second explosion was the remaining large pieces of the bomber as they hit the ground. That explosion floodlit the initial blast cloud and the ghostly vertical column of gray smoke trails intertwined downward; it looked like the tightly twisted trunks of a small gray Ficus tree; the kind you see in a well-groomed show garden or hotel lobby. The burning pieces of that bomber fell to earth from 35,000 feet – a downward spiral of ghostly smoke trails. It was an unforgettable picture of a mushroom cloud, like that of the A Bomb dropped on Japan to end the killing in World War II.

Death is quick and merciful for most pilots and aircrews; there is no pain, just instantaneous death. It is not like the painful and the bleeding death in the mud of the jungle floor waiting for a Dustoff, the medevac helicopter. For aircrews, in contrast, it’s all over in a flash like the one I just saw. The fireball is the end, the finale, for all the crewmembers onboard. They all disappeared in that flash of pure, white light.

At that moment, the burst of white light was a dangerous distraction. Watching all those missiles slowly rise into the night was mesmerizing. I asked myself, “Would that be the one?” I forced myself to look around, not at them. Itʼs the one you don’t see that kills you. I saw a few more mushroom clouds in the nights that followed, when the sky was filled with missiles. Some of them aimed at me.

Even now, after all these years and especially during the 4th of July, my thoughts flash back to all those crews who just vanished in one moment in the skies over North Vietnam. I think about all of them, my 4ths of July have never been the same since.

The number and intensity of the missiles diminished in the days ahead until, on the last few nights, I could have orbited over Hanoi with no sense of danger. We paid a big price. The North Vietnamese were defenseless, on the ropes, and they had thrown in the towel. In my view, we won and then Nixon and Kissinger gave it all away – gave it back to them at the peace table.

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, KC-135, F-4CDE, including three tours in Vietnam. He was awarded nine Air Medals and the Distinguished Flying Cross. Neil joined OLLI-USF in 2018. He took classes in music, teaching, activism and online searches. Neil was inherently curious, was a moderator of the OLLI Think Tank SIG and was always interested in new projects and causes.