Prisoner of War

Published 2:29 pm Thursday, October 2, 2008

More than five hours after Joe Crecca’s F-4C Phantom II erupted in brilliant orange flames outside

Hanoi, North Vietnam, and following the second recitation of his name, rank,

serial number and date of birth, a Viet Cong soldier looked the young

Air Force pilot in the eye and said flatly, “Crecca, you’re going to die in here.”

Crecca, bloodied, bruised and dressed only in a T-shirt and

shorts, didn’t doubt the soldier.

“He convinced me that that’s what was going to happen,” he said.

Only he didn’t die. He lived. And after a few months, the

interrogations and torture grew less frequent.

But that was only months into his stay at the “Hanoi Hilton,” the

name given to the network of prisoner-of-war camps dotting the North

Vietnamese landscape. The North Bend resident still had six more years to go

before he’d step off a plane in the United States, uncertain as to what his

future held.

The mission

On Nov. 21, 1966, Lt. Joe Crecca and Lt. Gordon Scott “Scotty”

Wilson were among eight pilots selected to carry out two bombing raids on

Hanoi. The two were paired together in an F-4, with Wilson assuming “guy

in front,” or GIF, duties, while Crecca was the “guy in back,” or GIB,

handling all the flight plans, route maps and calculations.

“We were supposed to hit a JCS, that’s Joint Chiefs of Staff,

selected target,” Crecca said. “We were

briefed … that there were two JCS targets

that had come down from headquarters that we were supposed to hit. And

I was one of eight guys, or four crews, who was selected to go hit these

targets because the flight leader wanted to go in and not have to go back.

They were very hot targets.”

Crecca was one of the most experienced backseaters in the 480th

Tactical Fighter Squadron, part of the 366th Tactical Fighter Wing. In

little more than three months _ he had arrived in South Vietnam Aug. 14,

1966 _ Crecca flew 75 missions into North Vietnam and had a total of 87

missions. For every 20 missions into North Vietnam, pilots had their

stay cut short by a month. Crecca originally signed up for a yearlong tour of

duty, but he figures at the pace he was flying missions, he would have

been home much sooner.

“If I hadn’t gotten shot down, I would have been home in five

months tops,” he said.

According to the flight leader, the F-4 crews would fly over Hanoi on

the first day and knock out a large complex housing petroleum,

lubricants, barracks, staging areas and ammunition dumps. The next day, they

would return to drop bombs on a power plant.

They would arrive over their first target in “Bullseye,” the nickname

for Hanoi, at 11:53 a.m. Nov. 21, drop their bombs and retreat as fast as

they could from the hail of surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft fire.

Crecca and Wilson never made it to the target.

Life’s ambition

Crecca wanted to be a pilot as far back as he can remember. Growing

up in Bloomfield, N.J., he’d pretend he was flying high up in the air.

“I’d drive my parents nuts with airplane noises going around

the house,” he said.

At the age of 25, he graduated from what is now the New Jersey

Institute of Technology with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering.

He joined the Air Force in 1964.

“In fact, I joined the Air Force without ever having flown an

airplane,” he said. “I passed all the

tests. Went through pilot training and graduated and had no previous

experience flying an airplane, so it was pretty challenging.”

The lack of hands-on experience never deterred him, and he’s still

in the air to this day as a captain with Federal Express, flying large

transport planes.

“There wasn’t anything else I wanted to do. There wasn’t any

other occupation or career goal,” he said.

`Dead duck’

The F-4C Phantom II is a twin-engine jet capable of speeds of

more than 1,400 miles per hour and able to carry more bombs than a B-17.

They were fast, agile and during the Vietnam War, they were state of the art.

The planes were so good that the 480th Tactical Squadron, which

was made up of F-4s, garnered widespread acclaim in its ability to shoot down

the Russian-made MiG-21s flown by the North Vietnamese. At one point

during the war, only eight MiG-21s had ever been shot down, five of them

by the 480th.

It was in this same plane that Crecca and Wilson flew from Da

Nang Air Base, where they were stationed, into North Vietnam. They were

20 miles from Hanoi and their first-day target when a surface-to-air missile,

or SAM, slammed into the rear of the airplane.

It was 11:50 a.m. _ only three minutes left to the target.

“We referred to the missiles as `flying telephone poles’ because they

were so damn big,” Crecca said of the SAMs. And they were fast.

Loaded down with bombs, an F-4 could manage about 700 miles per hour, while

a SAM traveled at speeds in excess of 2,000 mph.

They were also smart. A SAM incorporated radar technology to

track its prey and zero in on it.

Crecca had witnessed SAMs in action before, and pilots had

developed tactics to elude them.

“You could avoid it if you knew they were there, if you knew

where they were coming from. But you had to be able to see them,” Crecca said.

“I’d seen SAMs on previous missions and avoided them. They’re

not that difficult to avoid. But if you can’t see them, you’re a dead duck.”

The trick was to dive and gain a lot of speed, then pull up and

climb into the sky. With a steep enough angle, the SAM wouldn’t be able

to follow the plane. However, pilots had to be careful not to dive below

10,000 feet and into the range of ground fire.

After watching American pilots elude their SAMs, the North

Vietnamese altered their strategy. Instead of launching a single SAM, they’d

launch a second missile as the plane made its dive. With the pilot frantically

trying to evade the first SAM, they often didn’t see the second missile until

it was too late.

Crecca and his frontseater, Wilson, a 1964 Air Force Academy

graduate, never saw the first missile, which hit the plane in its blind side.

“We didn’t know it was coming because it came from, as we called

it, `dead six,’ straight behind us,” he said. “And we didn’t have any

electronic warning gear to tell us about the approaching SAM.”

In the cockpit of the F-4, Wilson told Crecca to “get out” and ejected.

“That convinced me to do the same thing,” Crecca said. Behind him,

the plane had erupted, leaving a trail of flames 200 to 300 feet long and

heavy, black smoke.

His parachute opened up just under 10,000 feet, and he struggled

to find his bearings. Spying the wreckage of the plane beneath him, he

used it to orient himself. As he was descending, he saw Wilson hanging

motionless in his parachute.

Since the first SAM had hit the plane, the second missile

wasn’t needed. In those cases, the North Vietnamese detonated the second

SAM while in midair. Crecca said shrapnel from the second missile killed

Wilson after his parachute had opened.

Exactly two decades later, on Nov. 21, 1986, Wilson’s remains

were brought back to the United States and interred at the Air Force Academy

in Colorado Springs, Colo. Crecca attended the ceremony.

“His remains came back 20 years after we were shot down,” he said,

then repeated, “Twenty years to the day that we were shot down.”

Living with fear

The possibility of being shot down by the North Vietnamese was

something pilots confronted each and every mission.

“When you join the military, you have to

just becomes normal.”

Joe Crecca

former prisoner of war

“You just accept it. You realize that one of those rockets