Thanks, Wilton. A fascinating window into a day in the life. I worked
with
a Colonel Mike LaBeau at the F-16 Program Office in 1989-1990 at
Wright-Patt. He was the Director of Manufacturing and I worked in
Engineering. This Mike had been a POW so it must have been the same Mike
LaBeau. Back in those days we delivered over 20 jets a month, not much by
WWII standards but way more than anything built today.
Sctt
-----Original Message-----
From: WILTON
Sent: Saturday, October 25, 2014 10:38 AM
MORRIS' CREW
By Wilton Strickland
Many BUFF crews at U-Tapao had been going to Hanoi almost every night
since the beginning of the Linebacker II campaign the night of Dec. 18,
'72,
but because of the long distance involved, crews on Guam had been going
only about every other night. On 24 or 25 December, several crews were
transferred from Guam to U-Tapao, to increase sortie rate at U-Tapao and
to
relieve some U-Tapao crews. A crew from my home base, Kincheloe AFB, MI,
led by Capt. Bob Morris, had been in theater only a few days and was one
of
the crews to transfer. I knew all of the members of this crew well -
they
were
my friends.
Late the morning of 26 Dec, I went to the officers club for
breakfast/brunch. Morris and the other four officers on his crew (1Lt
Bob
Hudson, co-pilot, Capt. Mike LaBeau, radar-navigator/bombardier (RN), 1Lt
Duane Vavroch, Nav, and Capt. Nutter Wimbrow, electronic warfare officer
(EW), were there. We had a great time reminiscing, I, catching up on
news
from home and they, picking us "old-timers" for tips on flying over
Hanoi,
dodging missiles, etc. While at the club, we got news from scheduling
that
Morris' crew would be flying that night, but I would not. Also while at
the
club, we read a Bangkok, Thailand, English language newspaper. In the
paper were pictures of BUFF crewmen who had been shot down a couple of
days before and were POW's in Hanoi.
As we were leaving the club, both Morris and Wimbrow said that they
were going to stop by the barbershop and get haircuts so they would "look
good on Hanoi TV and in the papers tomorrow." I bade them "so-long" and
"good luck"
and stopped by another table on the way out of the club to chat with
another friend for a few minutes.
This was a friend I had met on my second trip through B-52 Combat Crew
Training at Castle AFB, CA, the summer after I returned to active duty
(immediately after graduation at North Carolina State University in May
'71).
This man, LtCol Don Joyner, had also been out of B-52's for several years
and
was returning to the school for re-qualification training, as was I. Col
Joyner
and I talked at length about our families - how we loved them dearly and
about how we were supposed to have gone home several days before, but
had been delayed by the Linebacker II campaign. We both wished each
other well and wished for each other to be at home with our families
soon.
Late that afternoon, as the crew buses were loading and leaving the
crew
quarters area, the co-pilot on Morris' crew, Lt Hudson, ran up to me and
asked to borrow my recorder cord (a cord that a radio technician had made
for me to facilitate connecting my personal recorder into the aircraft
radio
system). I gave the cord to him and off they went to their pre-mission
briefings and to Hanoi.
Before dawn the next morning, there came a knock on my door. It was
the
EW on my Kincheloe crew, coming to tell me that Morris' crew had been
lost
over Hanoi and that Col Joyner's bomber had crashed in the jungle just
off
the base. Both bombers had been hit by SAMs, Morris' going down
immediately and Col Joyner's making it back to base with 4 engines out on
one side, making it very hard to fly, especially at low speed.
According to the officer in charge of U-Tapao air traffic control
that
night,
LtCol Prentis Ollis, who witnessed the landing attempt by Col Joyner's
aircraft, they were having problems controlling the aircraft on descent.
As
they tried to land, the aircraft continued to "float wobbly" about 200
feet
above the runway and crashed just beyond the departure end of the runway.
Only two of the crew survived. The co-pilot, 1Lt Bob Hymel, was
pulled out
by another pilot, Capt. Brent Diefenbach, who had landed a short time
before, was on a crew bus nearby, saw the crash, commandeered a Thai
vehicle and drove to the crash. The gunner, wounded in flight, was also
able
to scramble free of the wreckage. (LtCol (Ret) Bob Hymel was killed at
his
desk in the Pentagon during the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001.
He
was buried at Arlington as a B-52 passed overhead in tribute.)
About midmorning the next day, several of us were sitting outside at
picnic
tables in the crew quarters area, discussing the tragedies of the night
before,
when suddenly we were very glad to see the young gunner from Morris' crew
get off a bus nearby. For a few minutes we hoped that the bad news of
the
previous night was untrue. Our hopes for the rest of his crew were
quickly
dashed, however, when he told us that he had not gone on the mission; he
had gotten sick after engine start, and another gunner had taken his
place.
In March '73, the POW's who had survived the B-52 losses were
released,
and I talked at length to the three surviving members of Morris' crew,
Hudson, LaBeau and Vavroch, back home in Michigan. The first thing Lt
Hudson did when he saw me was to apologize profusely for losing my
recorder cord. (I tried to assure him that the cord had been the least
of
my
worries, of course.) He said that a SAM had scored a direct hit on them,
killing Capt. Morris, instantly and sending the aircraft out of control.
He gave
the order to bailout and never knew what happened to Wimbrow.
The substitute gunner, T/Sgt James Cook from Seymour Johnson AFB, NC,
who had never met the rest of the crew, had also survived with both legs
broken, and was also repatriated in March '73. Years later, about 1980,
at a
reception in his honor at our B-52 flight operations building at Seymour
Johnson., I met the sergeant and talked to him briefly about his
experience
on that fateful mission. I think that for a while he held some animosity
against the young gunner who got sick just before takeoff, but I believe
that
has been resolved, and he realizes it was just fate.
I talked to the young gunner from Morris' crew occasionally back at
our
home base in Michigan until I left there in '75. I have also talked to
him
briefly several times here in Goldsboro, NC, the last time about 10 years
ago.
He seemed to have feelings of guilt for quite some time after the fateful
night, but I believe he too has realized that he had little control over
the
events raging around all of us. He retired from the air force several
years ago
and still lives near here.
I have with much pain and sadness several times viewed the names of
my
friends, Donald Joyner, Robert Morris and Nutter Wimbrow, etched into the
black granite of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, along
with those of too many others I knew well.
