Flying up North in the Gulf of Tonkin 190918

      Military radio traffic uses call signs for identification. Our normal squadron mission was tracking storms in the Pacific so our planes went by "Rainproof" followed by the plane number. But when we provided radar coverage for the 7th fleet, the network just used a phonetic letter. In our case it was "V" as in "Victor". The ship in control of the radar radio network was "Alpha Whiskey". The picture below is the USS Gridley DLG-21 a guided missile radar picket ship in the Vietnam era. I have no idea which ship was in control of the radar communication network the night in question, but it could have been the Gridley.

      
      In the early part of the Vietnam War elements of the Seventh Fleet were operating way up North in the Gulf of Tonkin. They were still bombing North Vietnam and the closer they could get the better it was for pilots with their passion for having enough fuel to return to the aircraft carriers they were launched from. We were flying even further north of the fleet one night to provide our normal search radar coverage and to give updates on a storm traveling in the vicinity of the island of Hainan, China. We were just a hundred miles from Hainan when the CIC (Combat Information Center) officer repeatedly told me to keep an eye on Hainan, we didn’t want to get close enough to scramble fighters from the Chinese air base there. We were also keeping a fix on the storm in the area, so I suppose he felt he needed to keep explaining the entire mission to me.

      That night, in the middle of the impending storm and trying to dodge Hainan Island, I picked up an incoming target on the radar. I watched the blip through several sweeps of the radar, trying to get a quick snapshot of its course and speed. I reported my findings to the CIC (combat information center) officer and the fact that the target was coming from a direction we wouldn’t normally consider a threat, but the target didn’t have an IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) transponder responding to our challenge. The CIC officer looked at the target for a minute and pondered the situation. He agreed that the course was not consistent with our threat area out of North Vietnam, but there was no way to rule out the possibility that he could have come out of the underbelly of China somewhere along its coast, so he ordered me to report the contact to the fleet CIC control ship and at the same time warn all of the picket ships of an incoming unknown. I was pretty excited, after endless training I was finally going to report a threat over the radio to the entire seventh fleet task force in the gulf and I was the first operator to spot it! The report went like this.

      “Alpha Whiskey, Alpha Whiskey, this is Victor, over.”

      “Victor this is Alpha Whiskey over.”

      “Alpha Whiskey this is Victor, bogey, 040, 170 miles, course 220, speed 450.”

      “Victor this is Alpha Whiskey, roger, out.”

      We watched our intruder approach and waited for word from the fleet. A minute went by, another six sweeps of the radar; a moving blip on the screen progressed closer to the fleet we were there to watch over. We had forgotten about the storm, we were shifted into glory mode. This was what shipboard and airborne radar people lived for. We wondered if there would soon be two new radar returns launched from the “Ready CAP” (combat air patrol) to intercept the trespasser. The seconds ticked by as we watched the target continuing its course toward the fleet. The radio broke the silence.

      “Victor this is Alpha Whiskey, over.”

      “Alpha Whiskey this is Victor, over.”

      “Victor that bogey is Tiger Airlines flight 203 from Hong Kong, over.”

      “Roger Alpha Whiskey, this is Victor, out.”

      So ended our moments of glory as we turned our attention back to the approaching storm and our efforts back to avoiding becoming prey ourselves to a pair of Chinese interceptor aircraft from Hainan.

      Epilogue:

      The danger from Hainan was real as the Navy airmen of an EP3E patrol plane found out when two Chinese J-8 interceptors rolled out to play with the Navy Spy plane, 70 miles off of Hainan. The P3 was over international waters, but one of the Chinese J-8’s still dogged it and ended up colliding with it over the South China Sea. The Navy P3 declared an emergency after falling 8000 feet in a dive before the pilot could regain control of the plane and declare an emergency. He flew into Hainan and landed at the same Chinese air base that launched the J-8 planes to harass his Navy patrol plane. The Chinese surrounded the plane with their AK47’s pointed at the pilot, demanding both he and the crew deplane and explain where they left Wang Wei the pilot of the ill-fated J-8 that crashed into the ocean after the P3’s propeller cut it into two pieces.

      That would have been a death sentence for us since we were flying at just 1500 feet that night.
      
Copyright Bill Weber 2006-2019 and beyond.