Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is
retired US Air Force Brigadier General Richard Bond. He is a veteran of both
World War Two and the Vietnam War in general. Thank you very much for
your time today, Sir, You're welcome. Where were you born and raised?
I was born in Kasaboks, Iowa, September twenty sixth, nineteen twenty
three. Was there a history of military service in your family? No?
How did you hear the news of the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor on December seventh,
nineteen forty one? What do you remember about that day? I had
gone to a movie with two friends on the Sunday, December seventh. In
we came out of the movie, the newspaper boys back then were yelling X
about the news of the bombing. Now you had recently turned eighteen years old.
How quickly did you realize you could be part of a war? I
didn't really think too much about that at that time. You pursued becoming an
officer in the US Army Air Forces through the Aviation Cadet training program. Why
did you choose that path and why did you choose the Air Corps? Well,
I had a desire to fly since by those early as I can remember,
as a young boy, had spent a lot of time on my grandfather's
farm, and back then the old airways used to go right over his farm,
and I was I knew there's schedule. There weren't many airplanes back then.
They all flew low and slow, and I would get up on the
highest sale and watched them fly by. Now, the aviation cadet training program
lasted about fifteen months. Tell me a little bit about that. What different
elements did the program involve? Well, first of all, of course,
they gave us a tough physical and a pretty good metal examination. There was
a lot of hazing back in those days. They were trying to eliminate the
people that didn't have a lot of desire to fly, and that continued on
until we're over halfway through our flying training program. Where did you end up
doing your flight training? Well, I started in Chickashe, Oklahoma in the
primary, and then Garden City, Kansas in our basic flight school, and
then advance was in Victoria, Texas with some P forty training, and then
it took advance training after we graduated in the way across Georgia. Did flying
come naturally for you? Pretty much? So I was first in my class
the solo which sort of surprised me, and I enjoyed it very much.
Or got to work solo wings, and I think I was more mind for
about a week. By instructor accidentally sold me with less fewer hours than they
were supposed to, and he didn't find out about it until it was too
late. So anyway, I spent about a week, I guess, with
solo wings before any of my classmates sold. What is the key to being
a good pilot, particularly a good fighter pilot, Well, you have to
have a stroll desire, a great desire to do it, because it's not
the easiest thing in the world to do a proper job. And flying fighters
were there moves that all fighter pilots were taught in terms of evading and pursuing.
Or did you develop your own combat tactics? Well, we started flying,
we immediately tried to when we had the opportunity to stick out one another
and try to get on one another's tail, and it just came naturally.
And then of course we progressed even more as we went through flight school and
then P forty training. It became a routine thing. You mentioned the P
forty, but you flew a different plane at first, correct, Well,
I flew a PT nineteen and primary of BT thirteen in basic and an eighty
six in advanced training. We're still at advanced flight school after we graduated.
We've got a short course in P fortys. And how big of a difference
was the P forty one. Hell of a difference, like being in a
different world. Tell me about it. Well, it's much more powerful,
much faster, a little more difficult to land than the T six. Just
a heavy, powerful fighter, a lot more speed. Oh yeah, speed
was at least twice the speed of the T six, probably a little over
twice the power the T six had. When did you change to the P
fifty one. Not until I got overseas and we had a short course,
and I think we got about four or five rides in the P fifty one,
and then we were assigned to a fighter group and sort of flying combat.
When did you get to England and when did you start flying missions.
I've got there in the first part of Septembers, I recall and started flying
a probably about two or three weeks later, and what you were You assigned
to the three sixty fourth Fighter Group in the three eighty third Fighter Squadron,
So what kind of missions were you assigned? Was it mainly bomber escorts?
Primarily bomber escorts, and then we do some straping, and then later on
we escorted the bombers in and back to a safe territory, and then we're
directed to go back in and straight airfields and other are targets of opportunity.
How long were those bombing missions and what was your range on the P fifty
one. Oh, we T fifty one could fly quite aways, and for
quite a long time we carried external fuel tanks. I think the longest mission
I ever had and P fifty one was about somewhere between eight and nine hours.
That's a long time. The bomber crews always talk about how cold it
was on their planes. Was it just as cold for you and fighters?
We flew higher than the bombers to begin with, and it was a little
bit colder up there, but the bombers had some open windows. Of the
crews that were exposed to those open windows really had it rough. But we'd
be flying in forty five to fifty bows or the weather around thirty four thirty
thousand feet, and we had we really dressed warm. We had heavy layers
of clothing and fur lined boots and that sort of thing. It wasn't at
least a bit comfortable. And then you worked all that warm, but not
as bad as he opened some of the open spaces of the bombers. Now,
you mentioned just a moment ago about your attacks strafing German airfields. Tell
me about those attacks and how you executed those. I might mentionine that when
we started doing that are law losses quadruples. There's a book by doctor Richard
Davis who brings that out, has extensive reports of aircraft losses, and you
can see where the fighter losses almost quadruple when we started strafing, because the
PFD one had a liquid cooled engine and one little twenty two caliber slug through
coolant line could knock your engine out. And then the flat was extremely heavy,
and if you made more than one pass, they just put up a
layer of lead and you had to fly right through it. We had occasions
where a flight of four would make a shaping pass across the field and anywhere
from two to three of them would be shot down. That's the reason that
the losses were so high. How low were you getting on these strafing passes?
Just as low as we could get. I would cut grass if I
could with my problem. So were there any particular tactics you could use on
that on that first pass to help you avoid the ground fire? Or was
it just the element of surprise? If we were lucky, we had the
element of surprise and we could get across in good shape. It's when you
started circling the wagons that you had your losses. The more passes you made,
the better chance you were going to get a shot. Pat. How
about when you were at higher elevations escorting the bombers, how intense was the
flack at that altitude? Well, at that altitude we normally going back and
forth across the bombers, and the flack really wasn't much of a problem up
there. That's when you got down the little on the fire concentration of automatic
weapons and twenty two millimeter in thirty seven millimeter cannons, I just had so
much firepower that it's like trying to fly through a brainstorm. You just couldn't
miss much of it now, I know the bombers were instructed to stay in
a very tight formation no matter what they were facing. What about as a
fighter, were you pretty restricted in your movement or did you have a little
more freedom on where you could? God, we had much more freedom.
Like you say. Our primary mission was to ask for bombers and we normally
would criss cross above them, and we had someone high and some low,
some medium fighters and we were tried to be up from the bombers so we
didn't have to look into the sun too much for enemy fighters. Gave us
a little bitter chance to pick them up. Now, did you face much
Luftwaffe resistance up there? Not a great deal. But by the time I
was flying, the German Air Force lost quite a few of their leaders in
their training program because of Hitler refused to give the Loofwaff what they really needed
in the number of pilots that were asking to train, and so they were
outnumbered and outclassed because some of the pilots towards the end entered combat with forty
or fifty hours flying, which was as a drop in the bucket. You
really didn't know what you were doing, so they were pretty easy meat to
shoot down when you did in Cornada. Are there any engagements that are particularly
memorable to you. I think the one I remember the most on during the
Battle of the Bulls, just before Christmas. I was flying my squad and
commander's wing and he had the best set of eyes one I've ever phone with,
and he spotted a gaggle of about thirty or forty Emmy one O nine
and we engaged them, and he shot down four and got lowe on ammunition,
so he let me have a shot and I got one. That was
the largest engagement in the longest I was ever involved with now and then then
we encountered jets Is shortly after that, or a month or two after that,
and we chased him all the way back to Prague, Czechoslovakia, and
finally called him in the landing pattern and shot some down and strace up.
That's retired to US Air Force Brigadier General Richard Bond. He's a veteran of
World War Two and the Vietnam War, serving as a fighter pilot in both
conflicts and holding significant leadership roles in Vietnam. When we come back. Will
return to World War Two as General Bond tells us about the overlooked role that
air power played at the Battle of the Bulge and how the end of the
war in Europe immediately had him preparing for more combat. I'm Greg Corumbus and
this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our
guest in this edition is one hundred year old retired US Air Force Brigadier General
Richard Bond, who served in both World War Two and Vietnam. Still to
come the top secret work he did in Europe during the Korean War and his
many different roles in Vietnam and the frustrations that came with them, but General
Bond now continues his story by discussing the frequently overlooked role that air power played
during the Battle of the Bulge. My group and one or two groups that
were designed to land in France try to recover in France to provide wars support
for the army. And of course the weather was bad and we couldn't land
there, but we flew with carried a couple of GI blanks and some cave
ration stuffed in our canopies behind the cockpit so we could have in case we
land we have something to eat and something keep us warmth, and we flew
just a lot every day. We finally got into Belgium, but by then
we didn't engage very much from there. How many missions overall did you fly
in World War two fifty one? We flew? According to combat time?
I think we had to fly three hundred dollars combat time. By then I'd
find three hundred dollars. How did you hear about the end of the war
in Europe? Well, we all listened to it on the Armed Forces network
and then we read about it the next day in the stars of strips.
Now after the war, you volunteered to fight in the Pacific theater? What
were you doing in preparation for that? A number of US had volunteers,
not a large number. About what's botting worth? And we started training in
doing dive bombing, which we hadn't done much of in rocket firing, and
we were going to fly up P fifty one from Angling over to the Far
East. Before we got that kip going, they dropped the atomic bombs in
Japan and then ended that. Where were you when the Japanese surrendered? We
were in still in England. Now sixty years later, actually even a little
more than sixty years later. You decided to write a fact based novel about
the life of a P fifty one pilot in World War Two because you hadn't
read one that told what you saw as the real story. So what did
you have and want to see in a book that other books didn't have.
Well, I wanted to really tell what it felt like and what the combat
was like, and I tried to do that. They spent a lot of
time on it, and I did extensive research. You learned it about the
war because I hadn't learned too much about the overall war other than what I
thought from my cockbit. I knew our losses were high, but I never
realized they were as big as they were in the Army Air Forces in Europe.
And it was quite an eye opener for me, and I enjoyed it,
and I really worked wei on the book, and people who've read it
have told me almost all of them said they felt like they were in the
cockpit with me, which I felt good about. That's what I was trying
to do. Yeah. It's called The Hell Vortex Between Breakfast and Dinner by
General Richard Bond and Sir You then left active service after World War Two to
return to college, but you also joined the Air National Guard. Well,
you were in Iowa, So what did that service involve. We normally flew
not every weekend, but by every other weekend I flew while I was in
college. I normally going to college about forty miles away, so I would
go down my weekend and try to do supplying every weekend P fifty ones.
And then in the summertime we get it. I think there's two weeks active
duty time, extensive air to air and air ground gunner and bombing and that
sort of thing. Pretty good training, and then the rest of the time
it was just a lot of instrument training, night flying a little there,
they are simulated, there, they are combat. While you were in the
National Guard, fighter jets became a reality. So how big of a change
was that. Well, one of the early units to get jets, and
we got the first F eighty four, first model of the F eighty four
that were built, and they were extremely underpowered and full of bugs, and
canopies would blow out, and we had hydraulic leaks and when the summertime,
jets don't perform too well as well as they do in cold weather, and
so I would apply to various spaces in Denver, especially at Lower Field.
I'd have to take off early in the morning or there wasn't enough one way
to get the thing off the ground. And we used to say that the
old, the original F eighty four has had eyes in the nose wheel them.
When they saw the end of the runway, they would send the signal
to lets apply and we'd blow dust off to the end of the run we
found your off the ground. It was good training. In the they weren't
fully equipped. We couldn't fly instruments, send them and that sort of thing.
But as far as just basic flying, jets are much easier to fly
because they don't have torque from the propeller and so you don't have to be
a good coordination as much coordination as you do in a propeller driven airplane where
you have to use it the rudder a lot as well as the step that's
retired US Air Force Brigadier General Richard Bond still to come his role in the
rapidly advancing development of American fighter jets and his critical roles in Vietnam, But
up next. General Bond describes the secret nuclear deterrent he was part of in
Europe while the Korean War raged on the other side of the world. That's
next. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles.
I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is retired US Air Force
Brigadier General Richard Bond. In just a few minutes we will learn all about
the general's extensive service in Vietnam. But right now, Bond talks about his
top secret nuclear work in Europe while most of the world was focused on the
war in Korea. Well, I was in my guard unit up in Van
Germain, and because of what we'd pulln S eighty four, they were starting
a very highly classified program to equipped fighters with atomic bombs to send to Europe.
We were struggling just to get enough troops into Korea to fight that war,
and the Russian for acting up in Europe at the same time, and
we needed the tearrent force, and SACK had their hands full already the bombers,
so they the most highly classified operation I've ever been in. In fact,
even to this day, there are very few people in or out of
the Air Force that are really aware of this secret, top extremely top secret
fire force. It was formed and we were all volunteers. The wing commander
went around the various spaces seeking volunteers and they only need to tell you was
that it was a very dangerous mission and that was it. And if you
didn't want to go one of those circumstantus, they didn't go. Well,
the guard unit I was in was highly politicized. The wing commander was a
former glider pilot. He didn't know anything about fighters, and it just wasn't
a very happy place to be for fighter pilots. Still, all the most
of my guard squadron of the Fulmer eighty fours, we all volunteered to go
on this mission and we did what exactly did they ask you to do on
the mission? Well, back then they didn't ask if to do anything right
away and then we started flying long range practice, all range missions with cruise
control techniques that would extend the range of the fighters, and we flew to
the maximum. Other units didn't even come close. We would really extended the
range of the fighter. And then we we learned that we had to drop
a bomb, which or deliverer bomb. We had no bombing computers or anything.
So we had to figure out a way to drop this bomb and not
get cremated in the process. And so we ended up using a high altitude
diet bombing technique and with the fairly highest circular air probability of about two thousand
feet. But that was enough with the clear the size of the bomb that
knock out the part that should be going after. And we have got the
shapes of the bombs eventually and were used in the for our cruise control to
these weapons with us, and I had to pick up one of the first
ones and it was so classified that when I was bringing it coming back with
the bomb, I had a special call sign. And when I landed at
these pre planned bases and the waiting let you come into the main part of
the base, they parked me way out. I had with greens put up
to the one could see what was on the aircraft and bought food out to
me and UH and my flight plan and the water and everything for my next
leg of my journey. And and there was I was really impressed. I've
never had been in some uh you know, some fairly secret organizations, but
that was that was by far the most guarded program I've ever been associated with.
And because we had volunteers, we had a lot of experience, much
more experience than the average fider unit. And when we went to Europe,
we flew in the weather conditions that the rest of the units would be grounded
on, but we would still be up flying. How big were the bombs,
Well, they were larger than the ones they dropped on Japan. They
were so low we carried them out of the wing. And then of course
they have sins on the bomb to stabilize the bomb, and that it was
so large, we had to retract the lower films because it would drag on
the ground. We didn't. Then as soon as you got that airborne,
we extended that film that sin from the cocktail. Now, later on in
the nineteen fifties, there you became a flight squadron operations officer, once at
the Air Force Academy and then again in California. Tell me a little bit
about what that job requires and how well it prepared you for laterlyleadership in Vietnam.
Well, I was in Europe. I eventually was reassigned a headquarters Europe
and re spawned and they started something they called the standardization program that so that
light units were using the same procedures and we developed the best procedures, but
through an interchange between units and the job I had. I flew with every
fighter wearing over there and also reported any I was called on to investigate every
accident as soon as it happened, and I had to personally break the four
star general within twenty four hours after the accident. And so I had a
jet assigned to me twenty four hours, seven days a week, and if
they had an accidently took off and before the actually occurred and did a quick
analysis and investigation of it, and then came back briefed the commanding in General.
And then during this period I met all the various wing and group commanders
in Europe fighter lights, and one of them a full crone by the name
of Ben Cassidy, a Watchpoint graduate and a good friend of Robin Holds.
I got acquainted with Ben and he was the assistant commandat of cadets at the
Air Force Academy. So when I vote to you, he requested I come
back there and form a simulated eighty six squadron for the Air training officers who
were acting as young lieutenants who were acting as upper classmen for the cadets because
they they had no upper class and it was just starting. And that's how
I got the title operations there. And then I did that for about a
year, and I really wanted to get back into a regular fighter unit,
and so I finally got reassigned a fighting unit in California and took over the
operations job, assigning and supervising all the pilots and the flight program, and
then I eventually moved up the squading commander. From that job, generally you
were right there with the evolution of the fighter jet from the F eighty four
to the F one hundred, the F one o four and then the one
five, which we spent a lot of time on. What was it like
to be part of that rapid advancement over just a few years. Oh,
it was amazing, It was really amazing. I was in the first trooper
wider squad in at George in California, and that's the one I was the
operations also love and then eventually became the commander. And then while we were
still flying the F one hundreds, the brand new F one hundreds, I
was selected to go to Edwards and participate in the tactical portion of the F
one four test program. And my first side in the F one four was
in January, very cold. You had to retract the gear before you'd see
it three hundred and fifty knots or you damage the gear. And I took
off and I kept pulling the nose up while I was waiting for the gear
handled to keep from exceeding the gear speed limits. And two minutes later,
I was at forty thousand feet and I looked down at the tail of the
runway. It was right below me, and I told myself, and this
is the airplane for me. And that's still one of my one of my
three favorite fighters that I flew. One are the other two. The first
one was at P fifty one and the second one was the F eighty six.
You were also the project officer for the F one O five. What
type of work were you doing with that? Well, we were supervising the
production of it into the Air Force. We had what we call phasey group
meetings that would get together and kind of results and on the problems they were
experiencing in the program. And it was a completely different aircraft. It was
heavy, it was designed for straight level speed, high level speed to deliver
had a bomb bay to deliver a nuclear weapon. It's probably was the fastest
aircraft at low speed at in the world back then, but it didn't like
to change direction very much. It wouldn't turn because of the wing design and
so forth. But high speed it would be without run just about anything.
And there was a great airplane, and it was about the same top speed
as the F one o four, But the F one four should get out
twice the speed of sound and be back before the F one o five ever
got out there. Acceleration was great, but once you got to one o
five, up to mark to it go. Now, after the F one
o five assignment, you were sent to Okinawa, and this is the early
nineteen sixties. Was there already an anticipation at that time that you would be
fighting in Vietnam or did you have a different focus at that time. Well,
before I went, while I was the one O five project, we
were involved in Vietnam, and we'd had vignamese let's come back through the States.
I met several of those and so I knew we were involved in it.
We were forming units to go over there. Con insurgency units. At
first we had converted trainers T twenty eight to give the Veganese Air Force and
for the m the years, and then eventually we gave May once and then
A twenty six and then hugeets. I knew that we were involved there,
and when I was in Okinawa, I eventually took over one oh five squadron
and we would go down temporarily for three to four weeks in fly combat.
But we flew over North Vietnam. We never flew over South Vietnam, and
we did fly missions in Cambodia, but never to my knowledge, never in
s out Naw. Describe some of those missions over North Vietnam on that first
tour to Vietnam. What were those like and what were your goals? We
were moving too slowly, our hands were tied. We had priority targets.
It should have been hit, and we were going after smaller targets. I
had. One time I went up to Illinois, which was highly descended and
more triple A than I even so in Europe concentrations of it. And then
the missiles were added into that, and the missiles drove us down because we
had no warning that we had to fly low and that's where the small arms
and automatic weapons fire can really shoot you down in a hurry. And anyway,
we were this one mission and particular, but there were others dislike it.
We're going after it. Suspected fifty gallon pol site and about sixty to
seventy miles from Camp Airfield, which was loaded with big fighters, and we
should have been attacking that airfield instead of looking for camouflage. Fifty gallon drums
are located in some forest area. Now, I've read comments from you that
the flak and the surface to air missiles and everything else you faced, the
small arms fire. You said it was every bit as intense as flying over
Germany and World War two flying over North Vietnam. Tell me a little bit
about that. Well, with the missile factor, they were even more intense
because the missile was so deadly. If you saw it, you could evade
it. But if you're in time you didn't see it, you probably getting
nailed. So I would say that due to the missile factor, the defenses
were even more intense than they were in Germany. That's retired US Air Force
Brigadier General Richard Bond still ahead. General Bond tells US much more about his
service during the Vietnam War, including his work in Saigon just before it fell
and working at the Air Force version of Top Gun. But up next another
command in Vietnam and even greater frustrations with the very top of the chain of
command. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this
edition is retired US Air Force Brigadier General Richard Bond. General Bond now continues
his story with another new command and the political frustrations that came with it.
Well, that's when we started going to up around Honnoi, the High Frid
area. It's really the further north he went, the more the the more
of the missiles. Back then that when I when we first started there in
sixty six, we were just beginning to get some radar homing and warning devices.
They would tell you when they were had they're tracking you on radar,
and what type of radar was tracking, whether it was surveillance or guns or
missiles, and then you could take some evasic action or act accordingly. We
were just not starting to get that. So until we were equipped with that,
we were losing aircraft like crazy, and I lost a lot of my
guys early on through that fact. Then eventually we got They brought in something
they called the wild Weasels, which were equipped with electronic equipment to detect,
and they had armament two missiles that would knock out the sites, and my
one commander signed all in addition to my fighter squadron. They signed all the
wild Weasels to me, So I threw about half my missions with the wild
Weasels and half with a fighter squadron. Let's talk a little bit more about
the frustration of the rules of engagement. You've talked before about seeing the construction
of surface to air missile sites but you weren't allowed to hit them. Then
you were asked to deal with them, but you weren't given the radar jamming
equipment. What was the reaction from commanders above you when you expressed how dangerous
this was for your men. All the military people knew it, but they
weren't calling shots. A shots would be calling by the President and the Secretary.
For example, we'd assigned a target, and if we didn't strike it
on the day that it was approved or that even sometimes at the time,
we couldn't strike it until we've got further approval. It was so restrictive that
it's so unbelievable. There was a period of time over there when you couldn't
attack a target unless they've fired a Q first. It's like giving a government
a first shot at you before you've pulled your weapono back at you. So,
in addition to having the appropriate equipment to keep your pilot safe, how
would you have changed the rules of engagement? Obviously firing first in certain situations.
What other freedoms would you have had the pilots have if you could have,
Well, they should have let the military people have attacked the targets they
had selected as high priority, like we did in I wraped Iraqi War and
knock out their heavy defenses and warning and capability and that sort of thing,
so we could operate a little more freely. And we were never permitted to
do anything like that. Every target backed in was selected by the White House
and the stuck Trade Defense. And that's when Prosidan Johnson bragged about those boys
can't hear the little shithouse over there unless I approved it. What did that
do for morale? I see a quote from you here saying we didn't have
bombs that would do the job. We were still send into high threat areas
to strike useless targets picked by Johnson and McNamara with weapons that in some cases
would do little more than chip paint. So given the fact that you weren't
able to do much damage if you did strike the targets and you were left
vulnerable to the enemy's attacks, what was morale like in your squadron? Well,
it was amazing these young kids. They were first of all, they
were back then. They were hand picked for the one O five program because
it was the most expensive airplane fighter we'd ever procured. I think at the
time. They had to have a great deal of experience to get in there,
and they had to be highly qualified, and it was amazing how well
their morale held up even under these circumstances. We had very few people that
I my squadron only had one case where we had a problem and he really
didn't want to give up, but he just he would get sick to a
stomach when he started on the mission because due to the fear factor. But
they never refused to go. They always went. It's hard to say,
of course, since it didn't happen, But what do you think the war
would have looked like if the US had been able to unleash full air power
just like he did. Nixon unleashed it within thirty six hours in North Vietnamese
came to the peace table talking about Operation Linebacker. That's right. How frustrating
is that sixty years later, fifty years later, Well, it's a frustration
will never leave me. I'll take it to my dying day. Well,
after that tour in Vietnam, you were assigned to Nellis Air Force Base and
the Tactical Fighter Weapons School, which is the air force version of top Gun,
of course, and I think you guys actually had one first I should
point out. But tell me about your assignment there. Oh, I had
a great job there. We were I had trouble responsibilities. One of them
was monitoring the war in Vietnam and reporting the tactics and introducing any new weapons
that E CUISUS and that sort of thing. End of the Vietnam War,
and these pilots would rotate back and fortunate and come back, and we'd brief
the Pentagon so that they could take action on problems much sooner. And then
during the development of the F fifteen and F sixteen, which were great fighters.
I provided young pilots to attend the meetings and give suggestions on bucket configuration
and other things. And we also provided maintenance people to the engineers so that
they could design that the airplane, or when they were designing the airplane,
they would try to make it a little bit easier to maintain, and they're
much easier to fly and control all the various functions without looking around the cocktail.
Now, given all the jet testing that you did, including the F
fifteen and sixteen, like you just said, what are you looking for in
terms of determining, yes, this system is exactly how it should be,
this one needs tweaking, and this one needs a lot of work. How
do you evaluate what the plane needs to improve? The first thing you want
to do is locate the switches so you don't have two or three different places
in the cockpit walk and reach for while you're getting ready to fire your guns,
missiles or whatever. Develop the heads up display so you could get all
this display without looking into the cockpit, or you could do it automatically and
never have to take your eyes off the target or whatever you were shooting at.
And in terms of developing tactics that our fighter pilots could take back to
Vietnam. How did that process work? How did you learn about what the
enemy was doing and then figure out ways to counter them. We reported on
how the were reacting, that our guys were reacting to their change in tactics.
Bill it could train included in their training programs back in the States for
the replacement pilots we were sending overseas. Also, while I was there,
I started producing a tactical Analysis bulletin. Well, we included all these problems
we were finding and the changes in tactics that we were observing in Vietnam and
that sort of thing, and made wide distribution on that, and it was
well received at the Pentagon. They really liked that, And I think I
got my boss at a promotion to major general because of that. He knew
that and he appreciated it very much. Now, your final deployment to Vietnam
was in nineteen seventy four as the deputy Defense at in Saigon, And so
that's a year after the Paris Peace Deal and a year before the fall of
Saigon. What was happening in Saigon at the time you arrived there. All
the military moved out a year earlier. They really evacuated. Back then,
they left all kinds of equipment. I'm not sure we knew exactly what they
had and where it was, and I know in the Air Force we didn't.
I requested when I got there someone to come around and evaluate. The
experts come in and evaluate. And we had given the veg and Age well
over two thousand aircraft, various types. We had no idea how many they
had left or what had happened to him. When we started looking into it,
they'd lost a lot of aircraft and never reported that. The maintenance on
it was. They were never able to maintain their own aircraft. We had
to provide contractors for expensive characters. The Armied had to do the same thing
on theirs. It was just a mess. That's the reason we ended up
there with five hundred thousand Americans because of viet Andes. Tough Vittanese were not
doing the job. They were never capable of it. They didn't have the
desire that the North vit and He's had. We weren't all that well received,
whether they really looked on us as another colonial power. The French had
pretty well go on obviously, and they liked our money. A lot of
them got rich off of the black market. It was just a big mess,
you know. Ho Chi Minh that wanted to align himself with the Americans,
but we and then he did help us, and we did cooperate with
him. But in the final run, we lined up with the French,
and that's how we ended up in Vietnam trying to do something for them that
they couldn't or wouldn't do for themselves. How long did you stay in Saigon?
Were you still there when it fell? No, I got fired.
One of my responsibilities was the evacuation in case that came to play. Of
course, I read that plan and the thing that really caught my eye right
off was that in case we have an evacuation, the Vietnamese military would provide
security for the evacuation. And I couldn't imagine why we would evacuated the South.
Vietnamese still had control of the country, and there were many other flaws
in the program, but the ambassador wouldn't let anyone changed the program. Well,
anyway, I when the thing started falling apart and was obvious what was
going to happen. We had ten thousand in America weekends over there, but
we didn't know where the hell they were. It was scattered all over the
country, and there was no way to develop an evacuation plan. If you
didn't know where you're you're going to have to evacuate the people from. So
I tried to do something about that, and then the ambassador would let us
look into that. So things started going down the tubes. Some of us
started moving people out had helped us, and we're in sensitive jobs and would
obviously be maltreated by the North as probably killed some ammanded up in the Philippines,
and the Philippines got the word of the ambassador over there, complained and
it got back eventually, and that created and then a problem. Then when
later on it was obvious that we needed to uh, everyone was pushing to
to do something about the evacuation, even back in the Pentagon and the State
Department. The ambassador was still in denial. So during this period, the
Marine sent a Colonel Gray down who to look at the situation, and he
and I worked together on it, and he agreed that everything we were trying
to do should be done. And of course he had other ideas additional way
to do this and what it would take. Being an expert in that trio
and for evacuation, We've worked up a message and send out. The Ambassador
had people assigned from the State Department that would monitor every major agency over there,
including our military and our aid people in the CIA and everyone else.
And I asked Colonel Gray to make sure that this person worked in the in
the defense area of their coordinate on this message, because he would decide which
messages the ambassador would have to see and would you have to prove. Evidently
he chose not to send this to the ambassador because they felt the same way
as we did, I guess. But when the Ambassador learned about the message
went out, the thing that we should have a security for the Marine Security
Force come in right away. He asked me to call the Secretary of Defense
and told him he wanted to give it to me until I was ordered to
leave. I think that was around the twelfth of the thirteenth of April,
which was a couple of three weeks before they went down. Now, at
the end of April, of course, is the official withdrawal. What are
you most proud of from your many years of service to our country? Oh,
I don't know. I keep thinking about some of the things I could
have done or could have done. I love my country and I love the
Air Force, but I don't like what I'm hearing about the military now.
I just saw this morning that we're now has a strength comparative strength that we
had right after the arm of Face in World War Two when we were just
let everyone go and we had nothing. I'm really concerned about our military general,
and that'll have to be the last word. Thank you, sir very
much for your time today, and thank you so much for your service to
our country. We truly appreciate it. Well. Thank you, retired to
US Air Force Brigadier General Richard Bond as a veteran of both World War Two
and Vietnam. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. Hi. This
is Greg Corumbus, and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles, a presentation of
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