What is "the
spirit of attack?” The words “the
spirit of attack” comes from Adolf Galland’s memoir The First and the Last. He
was a Luftwaffe ace during World War II who flew 750 combat missions and was
credited with 104 air-to-air kills. He
later commanded all Luftwaffe fighters. There
is a quote from him that states “only the spirit of attack borne in a brave
heart will bring success to any fighter aircraft no matter how highly developed
the aircraft may be.” To me that says
aircraft limitations aren’t a barrier to those with the killer instinct. I could be wrong since I’m not a flier. Bruce Gordon’s squadron at Elmendorf AFB,
Alaska had this quote on a sign above the entrance.
Why did he want to
fly? Everybody has their reasons for
wanting to fly. Adolf Galland’s interest
in flying began when a group of air enthusiasts brought a glider club to the
region where he lived. Neil Armstrong’s
desire to fly kindled when his father used to take him to the Cleveland Air
Races. Bruce Gordon’s reason: he was interested in global airpower when he
was in school. He doesn’t say in as many
words, but I’m guessing he thought the best way to study the applications of
airpower was to join the best air force in the world and see for himself
first-hand.
What did Bruce
Gordon fly? T-28, T-33, T-34, T-37
[the fearless Tweet], F-100, F-102, F-106.
He says he flew the O-1, the F-4, and even got some time in a B-25. It would have been nice to read about his time in the B-25, but alas there was nothing to be found here. The big takeaway I got from this was that he loved his F-106 for its high maneuverability.
Where did he
fly? Washington, Alaska [where he
chased Russian Bears], Michigan, Korea, and Vietnam. With the exception of his
combat tour in Vietnam, Bruce Gordon’s role was as an air-to-air
interceptor. He flew Close Air Support
missions in Vietnam. When his
tip-of-the-spear flying days came to a close, he became an aircraft maintenance
office at Wright Patterson AFB, OH. It
was there I met the Gordon family in 1973.
My favorite Bruce
Gordon story – Of all the stories in the book [and there are a lot of
them], my favorite Bruce story occurred in Korea. He was part of a four-ship that was flying
CAPs over the Sea of Japan [“East Sea” if you’re Korean]. They were flying top cover for an RC-121
ELINT collector [forerunner of the RC-135 Rivet Joint] flying in international
waters. He was in the middle of a
six-month deployment to my old stomping grounds, Osan AB. In the not-too-distant past prior to his
deployment, the DANKs [“Dumb Ass North Koreans” if you’re wondering] captured
the USS Pueblo. Just before his
deployment, the DANKs shot down an RC-121 in international waters, killing all
aboard. The only thing you need to know
about recce birds, it’s that they are “alone, unarmed and unafraid” [or as we
used to say in SAC “alone, unarmed and scared shitless”]. Soon after this incident the Air Force
decided these unarmed recce birds needed some protection in this rough
neighborhood. One time while they were
on
patrol, some 20 MiGs from Wonsan reacted to an RC-121
while he and his flight were tanking up.
Once they were refueled Bruce and Company returned to where they could
protect the RC-121. In the process,
these four US fighters scared off 20 North Korean MiGs without firing a
shot. That’ll show the DANKs…
Combat – Bruce
saw combat in Vietnam. He flew 132
combat missions. Did he get any
air-to-air kills? No, but air-to-air
wasn’t his job. He flew F-100s in an
air-to-mud role – breaking things and killing people, the Air Force’s two core
competencies. He did this while the bad
guys were shooting at him. Oftentimes he
would fly interdiction mission along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos and
Cambodia. Other times saw him supporting
Troops in Contact, which he considered their most dangerous mission. Here you are flying under the envelope of
most SAMs [except perhaps MANPADs], but you are within range of small arms
fire. Killing bad guys is easy – killing
them and NOT killing your own guys who are close by is a lot harder. Close Air Support is a tough business. They would carry Cluster Bomb Units [CBUs]
and napalm, and once they dropped their ordnance they strafed the enemy with
their 20mm cannons, all at about 50 feet off the deck. When I was stationed in Cyprus, I often got
to watch RAF Tornados practice their low-level passes at that height. It’s closer to the ground than you would think. For one engagement to support Troops in
Contact, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. For the uninitiated, that’s a pretty big
deal.
Are there any
tidbits in the book that don’t involve personal “there I was” stories? Yes, there are. There are thumbnail sketches of a few basic
air combat maneuvers. They go by the
names “high-speed yo-yo,” “low-speed yo-yo,” “scissors,” and the “barrel roll
attack.” While professing not to be a
book about air tactics, these thumbnail sketches of some basic air tactics
serve to illustrate that knowledge of how to use an aircraft’s energy can
influence a successful outcome in air-to-air combat. As a non-flier, I found this bit
fascinating. As he was writing this book
he might have dumbed it down for readers like me, but one doesn’t get the
impression. I understood what he had to
say without my intelligence being insulted.
Eddie Rickenbacker
- he met Eddie Rickenbacker! How cool is
that? Eddie Rickenbacker a genuine hero
[American World War I “ace of aces” (26 kills) and Congressional Medal of Honor
recipient], but he is also world-renowned.
The two pilots have a shared heritage.
Both flew for the 94th Fighter Squadron, the famed “Hat in
the Ring” squadron.
There are quite a few “there I was” kind of non-combat
related stories peppered throughout the book.
One story that sticks out is one when his aircraft lost power, and it
illustrates how not to panic when all
seems lost. There were some stories that
interested me personally. One such story
involves a picture of Bruce being carried away from his jet on the shoulders of
his crew chiefs. I had seen the picture
a long time ago. It was taken on the
occasion of him shooting down a BOMARC surface-to-air missile over the Gulf of
Mexico. He had been the first pilot to
do so. There are other personal stories –
some that I had heard before, others that I hadn’t. Those that I hadn’t heard before helped me
fill in some blanks in the Gordon family story.
To flesh out the rest of the book, there are stories from
some of Bruce's fighter pilot comrades, many of which take place in
Alaska. One of his comrades has quite a
few Korean War stories to tell, all of which are a good read. The most interesting of all of these stories
are at the back of the book. Told from
the point of view of both American and Romanian pilots, they tell of what
happened over the skies of Ploesti, Romania in 1943.
Recommendation: If I didn’t already own a copy, I would buy
it. I would do so not because his son is
my best friend, but because I like the stories of those who have had enemies
shoot at them and live to tell the tale.
