Bear Taylor 
CELEBRATE INDEPENDENCE DAY… “as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty…”
ROLLING THUNDER REMEMBERS and Humble Host are greatly honored to present and make a permanent entry in our archives a reminisce of one of the great aviation writers and fighter pilots of our time, CAPTAIN RICHARD W. SCHAFFERT, USN, Retired, AKA BROWN BEAR… At my request, Brown Bear has recalled a “most memorable 4th of July.”… His prose comes alive from 58 years ago, 4 July 1966, Southeast Asia… I quote…
Sir:
My Fourth of July 1946 was celebrated with our farm community of eight families. We gathered for a picnic at a green meadow alongside Pumpkin Creek, 12 miles north of our Nebraska one-room country school-house. Since the War was over, this one would be special. Firecrackers were to be provided for the first time in years. Featured would be the fly-by of neighbor Ivan Walker’s Piper Cub, piloted by his 17-year-old son Benton. We were finishing the hotdogs and getting ready for ice cream, when we heard Ben approaching from the south. As he passed low overhead, he tossed out some firecrackers. We were all shouting and applauding as he pulled up into a wingover turn. Then we were screaming as that yellow aircraft apparently stalled and fell inverted into the ground. Ben died instantly.
Fast forward 20 years, I’m riding the escalator from Oriskany’s Ready Room Three to the flight deck with other VF-111 Crusader pilots. Like most peace-time pilots, we were very short on live ordnance delivery experience. With over 2,500 hours in tactical aircraft, the firing of two 5″ HVAR’s off an F5F Panther in the training command in 1957, and blowing up some South Padre Island sand, was the only live ordnance I’d ever flung at Mother Earth. Now at 0730 hours on 30 June 1966, I was pre-flighting two NAPALM tanks dwarfing my F-8E Crusader on the flight deck of the Oriskany. I had no idea what I was looking for, and the First Class Odrnance guy cautioned me: “Please don’t try to land back aboard ship with these, Sir.” As I looked up from one of those huge tanks, my eyes met Wingy Nugget Bill McWilliams’, who was preflighting the Crusader next to mine. His eyes were as big as saucers. His comment: “You’ve gotta’ be —-ing me!” I had over 700 hours in the Crusader, he had 150.
Bill was on my wing as I rendezvoused our flight of four NAPALM-laden Crusaders and went feet dry to look for our Forward Air Controller, 50 kilometers south of Saigon in the midst of the Mekong Delta. “Bird Dog?” Was that his call sign… too far back to remember … but I do remember he was flying very low in a slow-moving aircraft and darn hard to see in the morning mist that frequented the Mekong. I fell like King Richard during the Crusades, arriving with all the firepower under my control.
“Tally-Ho, Bird Dog, this is Old Nick 206, directly overhead at Angels 5. I’ve got four fast movers with two napes and 400 rounds of 20 mike mike each. Where can we put it?”
Bird Dog had a prime target and was happy to see us. He had over a hundred heavily armed Viet Cong camped under the jungle canopy covering a 500-meter-wide and 1,000-meter-long peninsula that jutted out into the Mekong. It was easy to find. Smoke was still rising from the farming village a kilometer to the north, which the VC had “raped and pillaged” the night before.
“Brown Bears, check switches hot!” Under my breath I muttered a little El Cid: “For God, Country, and those poor damned farmers!” We were setting up for our run-in, when I suddenly began sweating profusely. I was about to kill every living thing in a large patch of Vietnam jungle! I nervously requested Bird Dog to mark the target for us. I felt like an absolute idiot when he replied something to the effect that this was not his day to die. If the bad guys, with their finger on so many triggers, watching him orbit in his little kite, thought he was about to bring the wrath of the U.S. Navy down upon them, he was “Dead Meat!”
Our run-in formation was line-abreast, with 1,000 feet of separation between aircraft, designed to disintegrate the entire peninsula with NAPALM, but directly into the morning sun. Not the best of all possible worlds, but we did it perfectly. The VC were indeed heavily armed, and four Crusaders made a hell of a noise in that quiet jungle. As we crossed the Mekong river bank, streams of tracers blazed up through the green canopy. In a 20 degree glide, 300 feet of altitude and 350 knots, we were sitting ducks! “Brown bears, drop on my mark! One, two, three, drop!” and to myself: “Please Dear God, forgive me. Thy will be done.” Billowing, hideous, flaming swaths of liquid fire destroyed everything unfortunate enough to have been down there on that quiet morning in South Vietnam.
We didn’t have time to think about it! As we pulled up from treetop level, we were suddenly in the midst of what seemed like a hundred helicopters. I remembered screaming into my oxygen mask, and Bird Dog was swearing in a language that would indeed make a Sailor blush. It turned out to be an attack force inbound to do business near where we’d just dropped our ordnance.
Above 5,000 feet, clear of all the choppers, we rejoined and Bird Dog began to assign us another target. I interrupted that we were NAPALM zero, but we did have 400 rounds of 20mm each and we could lend to the fray. He didn’t take our offer. Most likely the Skipper of all those helos had ordered him to get us the hell out of there. On our way out Bird Dog explained the helos had arrived 15 minutes too early. Fog of war?
I was back in the “NAPALM BARREL” again the next day. An OV-10 Bird Dog found us a target for one nape each, and we again did it right. I hope! It was a small peninsula jutting into the Mekong, and it was ablaze when we pulled off. However, Bird Dog then said: “Let’s try it again, on that one about 200 meters to the west.” That cost me several sleepless nights.
On the Fourth of July 1966, I flew my 4th, and thankfully last, NAPALM mission. “Nape” was not a Yankee Station weapon and Oriskany had used up its Dixie Station allowance. In fact, I launched with the last two. Wingy McWilliams was carrying Zuni pods
Bird Dog again had a special place for my napes, but directed us to wait while he worked some Air Force guys. Bill and I were orbiting near where we had hit the VC on our first mission. I recognized the peninsula and instructed Bill to remain high while I went down to check our handiwork. Famous, almost fatal, last words! I became far too intense staring at the devastating aftermath of our napes, and was suddenly enveloped in streams of tracers. I was, stupidly, down to about 300 kts and 500 feet. Already at high G, I reacted to Bill’s scream to “Break left” with too much adrenalin, and felt my Crusader begin to shudder with the initial warning of the “departure” for which it was infamous. Off the G, hit the afterburner, nose up through the tracers, and take a deep breath going through 5,000 feet, with a “Thank you, Gabriel!!”
Bill rejoined, and Bird Dog was giving us our target instructions, when the image of Young Ben Walter’s Piper Cub crashing 20 years to the day earlier, Fourth of July 1946, flashed through my mind.
A few months later, life in the supersonic lane came to an end for my Wingy, that courageous, all-guts, rookie Irish fighter pilot Bill McWiliams. At 0725 hours, 26 October 1966, he and Cody Ballisteri (another junior Sundowner pilot who’d previously been shot down and rescued) and our flight Surgeon, the youthful Lloyd Hyde, were trapped in their stateroom when Oriskany’s flare locker exploded, just one deck above and 30 feet forward of their location. They were not injured in the explosion, but the area where they were trapped was flooded during attempts to keep the fire from spreading throughout the interior of ill-fated Oriskany. The entrance to their room was sealed with a water-tight hatch, which also prevented the air from reaching them. The water stalled the compressor that normally vented the compartment, and they were doomed. Sundowner Squadron Duty Officer LT John Sande spoke with them on their room telephone as time ran out. It seemed God needed three brave young Sundowners for some mission in Heaven that morning.
When Oriskany limped into Subic a few days later, their bodies were off-loaded with 42 other valiant pilots and Sailors who’s died fighting to save the ship. Their bodybags were covered with American flags and reverently placed in the C-130 that would transverse the wide Pacific to return them to the nation that was their home, and to which they had all taken an oath to defend with their very lives.
The rest of us Sundowners walked off the ship and went to the Cubi Point Club. We arrived there in the early evening. We grouped around the piano -playing ex-Blue Angel, Executive Officer Bob Rasmussen, who began leading us in song. We didn’t stop singing until sunrise the next morning. The only song we couldn’t really get all the way through was: “When Irish Eyes are Smiling.” I’m quite certain St. Peter has since heard it more than a few times from the tough little guy who once flew my wing through hell and back! Wonder how he and Ben Walker will celebrate this Fourth of July? They will be in my thoughts…
With Prayerful Respect, Dick Schaffert…
Doctor Brown Bear… Bravo Zulu, as always… When I made my request for one of the tales from your journey, “From Farm Boy To Fighter Pilot” and beyond, I knew you’d make Charlie on-time with an OK-3 Underlined… Youdaman… Thanks, Bear…
I will save my tale of USS Kalamazoo Fourth of July celebrations from 1979 in a KAZOO Utility boat in the Hudson River with 50 sailors-on-beer; and then in 1980 at anchor in Rapallo, Italy, when KAZOO sailors ran into a waterfront hotel in flames as a result of a fireworks miss fire to save many lives….
RTR Quote for 4 JULY: JOHN ADAMS to ABIGAIL ADAMS, Letter 3 July 1776… OF INDEPENDENCE DAY…”I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Sports,Guns, Bells, Bonfires nd Illuminations from one End of This Continent to the other from this Time forever more.”….. Amen.
Lest we forget… Bear
