Forever An Airman: At 77, the only Vietnam POW Four-Star Still Has the Spirit He Had in His Combat Missions

STORY BY // RANDY ROUGHTON PHOTOS BY // STAFF SGT. DAVID SALANITRI VIDEO BY // ANDREW ARTHUR BREESE

25 January 2016

An interview with General Charles G. Boyd. At 77, the only Vietnam POW four-star still has the spirit he had in his combat missions.
U.S. Air Force video // Andrew Arthur Breese

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Retired Gen. Charles G. Boyd reached into his left pocket and pulled out two silver dollars, which were tied to a superstition he habitually practiced as a fighter pilot in Vietnam.
“There they are,” he said. “I can’t tell you why I did that, but I never went anywhere, particularly on a mission, without those two silver dollars.”
Boyd lost them when he was shot down on his 105^th F-105 Thunderchief mission.  He was subsequently captured by the North Vietnamese and remained a prisoner of war for 2,488 days, but he replaced the silver dollars soon after he was finally released in 1973.
Although his days of flying combat missions are long gone, Boyd, the owner of three Bronze Stars and three Purple Hearts, still has the fighter pilot’s heart for adventure, just like the silver dollars in his pocket. At the age of 77, he loves to ride one of his BMW motorcycles or fly his T-34 Mentor — the same plane he flew in pilot training — from the small airport near his home in Virginia. The pride of being an Airman never left Boyd, the only POW in Vietnam who became a four-star general.
“It’s part of my soul. It’s who I am,” Boyd said. “I could always imagine the freedom, the release of gravity to fly like a bird, even though I hadn’t actually flown an airplane myself until I got into Air Force pilot training. But somehow that picture emerged and developed in my mind before I actually flew an airplane.
“When I did fly, it pretty much reinforced what I had imagined, except it had a greater reality to it. There was a sense of power, freedom, maneuvering and liberty. To this day, I have found nothing else in life that scratches that particular itch.”
Six months into his combat tour, Boyd was shot down on April 22, 1966, over Laos. He spent seven years as a POW at the Hoa Lo Prison, also known as the Hanoi Hilton. After his release during Operation Homecoming in 1973, Boyd declined to discuss his experiences for years because he was interested in looking forward, not back to the small cell in Hanoi.
“I made a significant effort in my life, and I think fairly successfully, to put that all behind me,” Boyd said. “I said, and I meant, when I was released and came home in 1973, that I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life as a returned POW and nothing more. I’d lost about a fifth of my life at that point, and I didn’t want to waste anymore feeling sorry for myself or fussing over what otherwise might have been.”
Instead, he focused his energy on a new direction for his life. During his captivity, he’d learned much of the Spanish language through the tap code that was the communication lifeline for POWs in Vietnam. So he decided to build on what he learned and earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Kansas, both in Latin American studies. He also progressed in his Air Force career, with assignments as 8^th Air Force commander at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana; Air University commander at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama; and deputy commander in chief of the U.S. European Command in Stuttgart-Vaihingen, Germany. Boyd was promoted to four-star general on Dec. 1, 1992, and retired after 36 years in 1995.
Three years later, Boyd served as executive director of the U.S. Commission on National Security/21^st Century. Today, he’s chairman of the Center for the National Interest, a public policy think tank in Washington, D.C.
Boyd credits his competitive spirit for his survival of seven years in captivity. Just as he still carries those two silver dollars, that spirit has never left him.
“Fighter pilots are competitive guys, and they don’t like to be defeated, and that goes beyond just flying airplanes,” Boyd said when his alma mater, the University of Kansas College of Liberal Arts and Sciences gave him the 2013-14 Distinguished Alumni Award. “To let the enemy get the best of you was not in our psychological makeup, I think, and fighter pilots do business alone. So I think you can handle solitary confinement, for example, better than some.”

- See more at: http://airman.dodlive.mil/2016/01/forever-an-airman/#sthash.eNXNpR3c.dpuf

'The Code:' Topic of F-105 Pilot's Talk With Survival School Instructor Became Lifeline for POWs in Vietnam

STORY BY // RANDY ROUGHTON | PHOTOS BY // STAFF SGT. ANDREW LEE VIDEO BY // JIMMY D. SHEA

27 January 2016

Profile of retired Col. Carlyle Harris, a former POW in Vietnam who is credited with introducing the tap code, which the prisoners used to communicate. (U.S. Air Force Video // Jimmy D. Shea)

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Questions consumed Capt. Carlyle S. “Smitty” Harris’ mind in the early days of his eight years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam.
Harris’ thoughts focused mostly on his pregnant wife and two children back home near Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa, Japan. Harris also wondered how the POWs could maintain any semblance of leadership and morale without a way to communicate with each other.
For eight long years of captivity, the questions lingered and gnawed at his mind.
Within five months after he’d joined the 67^th Tactical Fighter Squadron in Thailand, Harris launched his second F-105 Thunderchief mission on Thanh Hoa Bridge April 4, 1965. After Harris hit his target, his F-105 was hit by anti-aircraft fire, and he was forced to eject. About 20 people from a nearby village immediately captured the pilot, and he was quickly surrounded by almost 50 villagers armed with hoes, shovels and rifles. Just as he was about to be shot, an elderly man stepped in because of the government’s orders to capture American pilots alive. Harris remained in captivity for 2,871 days, much of it at the Hoa Lo Prison, which POWs nicknamed the Hanoi Hilton.
After Louise Harris learned her husband was missing, she remained at their home in Okinawa with their two young daughters, Robin and Carolyn, until after their son Lyle was born. Six weeks after Lyle’s birth, she took her family to Tupelo, Mississippi, where her sister lived. Even before she received her first letter from her husband from Vietnam, Louise believed he was alive and made certain the children kept the faith, too. As Lyle grew older, he’d tell his mother, “There goes Daddy,” when an airplane flew overhead.
Shortly after his capture, Harris was placed in a cell in the Hoa Lo Prison, also known as the “Hanoi Hilton,”with four other POWs, and, at that time, he remembered a conversation with an instructor at his survival school training. The instructor had told him about a tap code Royal Air Force POWs used during World War II, and Harris taught the other four POWs the code. Their captors put them back in solitary confinement a few days later, but that only helped them spread the code throughout the seven-cell area, and ultimately, to POWs throughout North Vietnam.
“As we were moved to other camps away from Hanoi, someone always took the tap code with them and was able to pass it on,” said Harris, who retired from the Air Force as a colonel in 1979 and spent the next 18 years working in business, law and marketing in Mississippi. “So no matter where you went in the POW system in North Vietnam, if you heard a tap, the guy on the other side of the wall would respond with two knocks in return, and you’ve started the communication process.”
At the Hanoi Hilton and other POW camps in Vietnam, the tap code was not only a means to communicate with each other, but it also became a lifeline. In the code, the alphabet was arranged on a grid of five rows and five columns without the letter K, which was substituted with C. The first set of taps indicated which row the letter was on, and the second represented the column. So one tap followed by another tap meant the letter A, and a tap followed by two taps indicated B.
As soon as a POW returned from interrogation, he would begin tapping the wall to communicate what happened. When a prisoner returned from a particularly brutal interrogation, as soon as the guard turned the key and left the block, he’d hear a series of taps that communicated three letters: G, B and U for “God bless you.”
When Harris was being interrogated, for strength to resist demands for information, he thought back to his squadron commander in the 67^th TS, Lt. Col. James R. Risner.
“While I was being interrogated the first couple of weeks, when it was pretty darned intense, I thought so much about Robbie Risner,” Harris said. “Mentally, I put Robbie Risner on a stool right beside me. It was my greatest effort to not do or say anything that he would not approve of. That really helped me.”
Risner was later captured, and confirmed the birth of Harris’ son after another POW first relayed the news through the tap code.
As the U.S. began its withdrawal from Vietnam, almost 600 POWs returned home in 1973, and Harris was finally released on Feb. 12. As he looked forward to his reunion with his family at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, one question remained in his mind: the reception with his children after eight years of captivity, especially the 8-year-old son he’d never met.
When Harris stepped into the quarters where his family was waiting, Robin and Carolyn squealed and ran to his arms. “Oh, thank you, Lord,” he said, “they haven’t forgotten.” But when he saw Lyle for the first time, his son didn’t hug him back. However, about a half-hour later, as his father opened his arms, Lyle ran across the room and fell into his embrace.
After eight years, Harris had the answers to all of his questions.

- See more at: http://airman.dodlive.mil/2016/01/the-code/#sthash.ddVWwosg.dpuf

Rolling Thunder: 100th Mission was the Goal for F-105 Pilots in Bombing Campaign 50 Years Ago

ROLLING THUNDER

100th mission was the goal for F-105 pilots in bombing campaign 50 years ago

STORY BY RANDY ROUGHTON

9 March 2015

“Instinctively, my eyes found the patch we coveted the most … the bold, embroidered words read: ‘North Vietnam – 100 missions F-105.’ It was beautiful and signaled the finale I had dreamed about.” Capt. (later Brig. Gen.) Kenneth Bell on receiving the ceremonial 100-mission flight suit after completing his 100^th mission over North Vietnam

The 100 Missions North Vietnam patch. (U.S. Air Force photo)

Operation Rolling Thunder pilots had mixed emotions when President Lyndon B. Johnson called a halt to the bombing of North Vietnam in time for Christmas Eve in 1965. F-105 Thunderchief pilots at Korat and Takhli Royal Thai Air Bases in Thailand knew it would take longer for them to reach the milestone 100^th mission the Air Force had determined would earn them a trip home from Southeast Asia. Still, the pilots of the 469^th Tactical Fighter Squadron, deployed to Korat from McConnell Air Force Base, Kan., celebrated the no-flying Christmas Day with a party in Lt. Col. Bill Cooper’s trailer. Retired Col. Bob Krone assumed command of the 469^th TFS on April 24, 1966 after Cooper was killed when his F-105 was shot down by a missile over the Phu Lang Thuong Bridge. Another pilot, 1^st Lt. Jerry D. Driscoll, was captured and held as a prisoner of war in Hanoi for more than six years.
Two days after they arrived at Korat, the squadron lost its first pilot when Capt. Donald G. Green was killed on Nov. 15, 1965. In the early years of the war, F-105s had such a high loss rate that the squadron had a saying, the supreme optimist was “the F-105 pilot who stops smoking to prevent cancer,” Krone said. So reaching the 100^th mission was on every pilot’s mind.

Col. Krone wearing the hat on display. Attached to the hat is a Royal Thai Air Force pilot’s badge. (U.S. Air Force photo)

“Pure joy is a rare wartime emotion,” Krone said. “But joy comes to an aviator after the solo flight, when doing a roll after penetrating an overcast into a sun-filled sky, and especially when landing with honor after the last combat mission.
“Those of us who reached the 100 counters were the lucky ones. Thirty-five percent of all the F-105D/F pilots and electronic warfare officers who flew in the Vietnam War between 1965 and 1968 did not reach the 100^th mission.”
Rolling Thunder was a systematic, but frequently interrupted, bombing campaign designed to discourage Viet Cong aggression, to interdict the flow of supplies going south and provide a morale boost to South Vietnamese forces. The Air Force flew from bases in South Vietnam and Thailand and hit targets north of the demilitarized zone across North Vietnam. Although Rolling Thunder officially began 50 years ago on March 2, 1965, bombing missions in the North actually began in 1964. The F-105D and the Wild Weasel F-105F flew 85 percent of Air Force combat missions to North Vietnam. Eight of 16 Airmen on the Wild Weasel crews that flew out of Takhli Royal Thai Air Base were killed, wounded or taken as POWs.

Rolling Thunder Missions over the North. (U.S. Air Force Photo)

“The (Wild Weasels) were the guys who had the highest risk of anybody because they would go in and search for missile sites and try to wipe them out,” Krone said. “They would be there before we got there, we would leave, and they would still be there trying to clean up things. They had terrible losses. I have a lot of good friends who were Weasels. They were a huge part of the Vietnam effort.”
The Air Force was the only service that adopted the 100 mission policy. In November 1965, the service established the length of a tour as either one year or 100 missions in Laos and North Vietnam, or a combination of the two, although by February 1966, only missions over North Vietnam counted toward completing a tour. However, to reach 100 missions, pilots faced MiG fighters, surface-to-air missiles and a combination of anti-aircraft artillery and automatic weapons.
“As far as I know, there was never a policy like that before Vietnam, and I don’t think there has been one since,” Krone said. “The policy was we’re sending you there for a combat tour, but you will not have to go back involuntarily until everybody else with the same qualifications as a pilot has gone. That was a historic policy for the military.

Rescued pilot (right) with fellow USAF pilots who helped bring him out of North Vietnam. (U.S. Air Force photo)

“It was continually on people’s minds of getting to that 100. It didn’t deter anybody from flying a mission, but it was a cloud that hung over everybody all the time. It was a cloud that let you know when the sun would come out, and you would be going home.”
Under Krone’s command, the 469^th TFS designed a 100 Mission Patch in 1966 and also initiated the “100 Mission Reception” for pilots returning from their 100^th mission. They were greeted by fire engines and trucks loaded with crew chiefs firing flares to lead the aircraft as it taxied to the parking ramp, where they were met by commanders, pilots and maintenance specialists with congratulations and champagne on a red carpet. They then rode to operations to log their final mission on the mission board, followed by the “Ringing of the Bell” in the bar.
Krone also helped to produce an Air Force Aerospace Audio Visual Service film called “There is a Way” to remind pilots that it was possible for them to reach the 100-mission mark, and established a policy that every attempt would be made to make a pilot’s final three missions routine with low risk, or “a milk run.” His own 100^th mission, when he became the first squadron commander to reach the plateau, was a milk run. His 99^th was not, he said.
No other pilot was available on a huge joint mission to Nghe An Province, North Vietnamese President Ho Chi Minh’s hometown, a large military depot on the Red River Delta.
The 100-mission policy ended as Rolling Thunder began winding down in March 1968 without achieving any of the operation’s strategic objectives. After President Johnson ended all bombing north of the 20^th Parallel, aircrews arriving after June served one-year tours, regardless of the number of combat missions.

Specialized RB-66s helped F-105s bomb in North Vietnam’s frequently poor weather conditions. (U.S. Air Force photo)

After his tour ended in June 1966, Krone was sent to personnel headquarters at Randolph Air Force Base, Texas, to set up a crew control shop that would manage the Air Force’s pilot and navigator resources stateside for Southeast Asia needs. He also spent 10 years advising the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, on the planning for the “100 Mission Exhibit” that was opened in 2009.
During Operation Rolling Thunder, U.S. aircraft dropped 643,000 bombs and inflicted about $300 million of damage on North Vietnam; however, the military also lost 900 aircraft, and estimates put the cost of the bombing campaign at about $900 million.
During his career, which ended in 1975, Krone flew a total of 125 combat missions in Southeast Asia, received the Silver Star, Bronze Star, four Distinguished Flying Crosses and 11 Air Medals. He earned a doctorate degree as a colonel at UCLA in 1972 and has been an author, educator and consultant in advanced management theory and practice. He was involved in NASA research in 1980 while on the University of Southern California faculty, which eventually led him to become the president of the Kepler Space Institute in 2013.
Despite the controversy of the war back home, Krone believes the pilots who flew in Rolling Thunder, as well as the thousands of service members who served in Vietnam, made an important lasting contribution that historians are just beginning to fully realize.

The elements of a hunter-killer team: F-105F Wild Weasel with Shrikes and F-105D with bombs. (U.S. Air Force photo)

“My conclusion for the meaning of the Vietnam War was the United States spent 11 years fighting communism in Vietnam and helped the demise of communism, because it tended to make them concentrate on what we were doing, rather than going elsewhere in Southeast Asia, which they were dedicated in doing,” Krone said in a presentation he gave on the meaning of Rolling Thunder and the war to the National Museum of the United States Air Force.
“They didn’t go to Singapore, Indonesia or Thailand, and that was all in their design. I firmly believe that one of the main reasons the Cold War ended on our behalf was the fact that we spent that time and resources in Vietnam.”

Maj. William Robinson, pilot (l), and Maj. Peter Tsouprake, EWO (r), celebrate their 100th mission. Earlier, on July 5, 1966, they flew lead on a large strike mission north of Hanoi. Disregarding their own safety, they braved intense ground fire and several SAMs to attack four SA-2 sites. Three were knocked out and the fourth was heavily damaged. For their valor, they were both awarded the Air Force Cross. (U.S. Air Force photo)

At the 50^th anniversary of the beginning of Rolling Thunder, Krone and other pilots who survived their combat missions on North Vietnam will honor their comrades who didn’t make it home.

- See more at: http://airman.dodlive.mil/2015/03/rolling-thunder-2/#sthash.TKDE3NAe.dpuf