By Don Drinnon
I flew what turned out to be my best mission while we were at Ubon in February 1969. The mission was a two-ship mission with Ted Dowd/Buddy Barnes leading and myself and Art Jones on Ted’s wing. We did not have a target but the routine then was to takeoff, air-refuel and proceed to the target area while contacting an airborne command post (CP). The CP would then direct us to a FAC that had a target. We called our assigned FAC and were told that he had discovered a new 23 mm AAA array in a location about 25 miles east of NKP RTAFB, Thailand, that was a great threat to all aircraft flying in the area. The weather was not good, with a broken (meaning 50% or more coverage) cloud layer at about 2,500 feet above the ground. Normally, we were supposed to stay above 4,000 feet to avoid small arms fire. The FAC gave us the standard target area briefing including that the guns were very active and he had to stay back as they were shooting at him. As we descended into the target area, I saw the FAC first and radioed Ted that I saw the FAC. He immediately said, you have the lead meaning that I became #1 and he #2. This was standard procedure but he then radioed back that he saw the FAC and resumed the lead. The gun area was easy to see once we got below the clouds as the guns were placed like the five spots on a die. Ted radioed the FAC that we had the target in sight and were attacking. We each had ten 500-pound bombs, six CBUs (cluster bomb units) and a full load of ammunition for the gun. A CBU is a large canister containing a large number of small baseball size submunitions that were mainly used as an anti-personnel weapon. We each made several passes attacking the target and I could see Ted getting shot at many times. Ted circled the target counterclockwise while I circled clockwise to make shooting at us more difficult. I tried to closely follow Ted on the bombing passes so that the smoke and debris from his bombs made it more difficult for the bad guys to shoot at me. We fired the gun over the target area as we rolled in, again to make the bad guys dive for cover and not fire their guns. It worked. We were given credit for destroying four of the five guns and several KIA.
Upon landing at Ubon, Ted and I ran to each other and hugged. We knew we had “done good”. As part of the mission debrief to the intelligence personnel, we reported all we had done. Before long, Ted was in trouble. Unknown to us, our Wing Commander had led a flight just before us that had been assigned the target and he had refused to attack believing the target to be too dangerous. Another F-105 flight had not even been able to find the target. Our finding and destroying the target made the Wing Commander look bad. We probably should not have done it either but that was what we had been trained to do. And Ted was not known as “Crazy Ted” for no reason. The Wing received a commendation letter concerning our performance written by the FAC. All four of us were recommended for Silver Stars but, due to the political issues, the awards were downgraded to Distinguished Flying Crosses (DFC) for Ted and Buddy, while Art and I received Air Medals.