Chapter VII
“WE”VE GOT A MIG OFF OUR LEFT WING!” The port observer screamed into the intercom.
Everyone onboard the EC-97 momentarily froze they were waiting for sound of cannon shells penetrating the aircraft’s skin. But there was no such sound.
“Where’s he at exactly?” Asked the pilot.
The port observer responded excitedly. “Just aft and slightly above us, off the port stab.”
The Mig had taken up a casual position, for he thought it was a lost cargo plane reported missing from the formation which he had just flown a practice intercept on. One of the “buses” as he liked to refer to them as was thought to have missed a turn and got separated from the rest. The Mig pilot broke radio silence to chastise the “bus” pilot.
Inside the EC-97 the every crewman’s senses were cranked up full as the adrenaline rushed through their veins. When the Mig pilot started talking on the radio, one of the radio operators instantly locked onto the frequency and listened. He piped it into the intercom for everyone to hear.
He translated what he heard into English. “He’s laughing at us. Seems we ride around in a big ugly bus. Even with two pilots we can’t seem to find our way in the dark. You’ll never make it as a fighter pilot, you too fat and blind just like a bus driver. You missed your turn in the dark BUS DRIVER. Now lost and separated and a fighter pilot has to come save your life. I know you can hear me. Turn right twenty degrees and you’ll find your way to where you are going…maybe. Acknowledge.”
There was a sudden silence inside the Night Lark. The sound of the droning engines, the air slipping past the fuselage and the noise generated by the equipment was mentally blocked out. Finally after a brief pause the Navigator spoke up.
“Flash the Nav lights, but make sure the rheostat is set at full dim. Flash them twice! He commanded.
The copilot first made sure the dimmer switch was turned full counter clockwise, another special feature the Night Lark possessed, variable lighting controls. Then he flipped the aircrafts navigation lights on and off twice quickly. The wing tip and tail lights blinked dimly.
The Mig pilot saw the red wing tip light in front of him blink twice as well as the white tail light on the big cargo plane. “So you are listening to me. At least you are disciplined enough not to break radio silence comrade. Think you can find your way from here?” The Mig pilot queried.
The Night Lark’s pilot switched the nav lights back on and rocked his wings twice to acknowledge the question, then fainted a shallow right turn and turned them back off. The Mig too responded with a rocking of its wings, the port observer could see its nav lights motion. Suddenly the Mig’s afterburner began to emit a flame, then it became brighter and clearer to see as the Mig pilot turned left and dove away to the left.
A sigh of relief came as the port observer reported to everyone that it appears that the Mig had left them. Fortunately for them all the Mig left when it did. For just a few moments later as the Night Lark passed over the rim of a mountain side they spotted what a was obviously the wreckage of the aircraft the Mig pilot was sent to find. It must have been too low and clipped the ridge, plummeted into the valley where it crashed and was now burning.
Both observers could look downward from their observation blisters and see wreckage clearly illuminated by the flames of the burning fuel and vegetation. Even from their altitude it was apparent that the cargo hold had been full of troops. Had the Mig realized the aircraft he was following was not a Chinese Air Force troop plane, the crew of the Night Lark would have been in a similar situation having been shot down by the Mig.
The Navigator made a notation on his chart as to where the wreckage lie, it would be included in their mission debrief. The crew all took a moment, some prayed for dead.
Now things were looking more positive that the Night Lark could in fact make it all the way to its destination without further incident. If they could beat the sunrise, they stood a very good chance of success.
Steady again on a course for Hechi, then to Bose where they would turn south towards North Vietnam crossing the border near Cao Bang. With all luck they would assume a flight profile flown by aircraft arriving from China and be able to fly right past Hanoi and out over the South China Sea to safety and protection by US Navy fighters.
The Navigator called out over the intercom that they were now passing over Hechi. The crew knew that the next few hours were going to be their most vulnerable ones. Even if the Mig had realized they weren’t who they pretended to be, the Night Lark had the advantage of being able to fly nap of the earth and fly without the aid of a ground radar controller. Chances were exactly great but there was some chance they could a have dodged the Mig long enough to get away and evade to get back into International airspace.
The on board Sony reel to reel tape recorders were given fresh full reels of recording tape. This was done so they could collect as much electronic data as possible, without the risk of a recorder running out of tape at the most inopportune time. Each unit had a backup and those units too were fully loaded and readied. The removed reels were placed into a special container that would allow them to be destroyed if the aircraft were compromised and the crew forced to destroy all of the classified materials and equipment.
“Sunrise is in ninety two minutes Hanoi time, we’re ten minutes from Cao Bang.” The Navigator reported to the crew. He was tired, but he kept diligent alert as to their exact position every minute. “We need to drop our altitude to seven thousand feet before we cross.” He reminded the pilots.
“Suggest an airspeed?” The pilot asked.
“Better keep it under two hundred knots until we’re well inside North Vietnamese airspace.” He replied.
The pilot pulled back slightly on the throttles to get the big Boeing to slow down. “How we doing for fuel?” Ask the pilot of the copilot.
“Good, but I’d like a whole lot more. Too bad we could have carried externals and been able to jettison them before we hit China. Those extra few hundred gallons would be handy right about now. We have…” his comment cut off by the missile tracking radar warning indicators sounding.
In back the ECM technician at his station was monitoring the threat warning panel. A SAM site had started to track them as soon as they came into its range. As suddenly as the threat panel lit up, it went dark. The SAM site had switched its radar to either off or into a standby mode.
Meanwhile the radio techs were monitoring conversations between the SAM site controllers and their air defense command center.
On the flight deck the Navigator pulled out another chart, this one a detailed sectional of the corridor they were using to make their approach into Hanoi. The courses had been compiled using radar telemetry as well as other signal and agent acquired intelligence as to the specific route arriving special guests of the People of North Vietnam were to fly so as not to be mistaken as an enemy aircraft. So far it was working and everyone onboard had their fingers crossed their luck would hold.
The sun was going to be breaking over the horizon soon. The only recourse the Night Lark had was to get as close to the ground as they could to hide in the long shadows cast by the terrain. As they continued their descent into Hanoi’s Gia Lam International Airport the observers caught a glimpse of a couple flights of Mig fighters. One appeared to be just leaving Noi Bai the other landing.
Things were getting hairy. The radio techs were now eavesdropping on conversations between the air defense controllers all which were referring to a special flight now arriving from the east, which must be the aircraft they were to have shadowed. Again luck was on the Night Lark’s side, that neither the Mig pilots nor their controllers had yet realized that two totally different aircraft were converging on Gia Lam from two different directions.
Whether they believed one was a special envoy flight from China and the other the flight arriving from Tokyo was anybody’s guess. That was about to suddenly change as the Night Lark and her crew were to be the center of attention of every defense asset assigned to protect North Vietnam, especially Hanoi.
