Excerpt #4 from the MISTY FAC Book

    What kind of a man joins Misty? - a superman??? a hero??? Who were those masked men?

   I cannot speak for others, but my introduction to Misty was quite simple - like joining the French Foreign Legion - TO ESCAPE MY PAST!  Not the results of unrequited love, running from the law or financial embarrassment, but to evade the wrath of my Squadron Commander - HE WAS GOING TO KILL ME!!!

   I knew he would not make it quick, merciful, or an easy departure from life, but rather, a slow, excruciating "bamboo slivers under the fingernails" type of tortuous death.  I was a cooked goose, dead meat, toast, unless I could find an escape.  By shear luck, Misty was my fast train out of Dodge City.  Here is how it happened:

   I was a new Captain with two months "in-country," flying an early evening mission as the wingman with Major Warren Stannard off the alert pad at Tuy Hoa.

   The sun had already set, when we arrived in the II Corps target area and rendezvoused with our FAC.  As the light faded, the FAC described the target and then marked it with a Willie Pete.  "Hit my smoke", he said.  I had no idea where the FAC was and wasn't going to let Warren's plane out of my sight to look for him.  In my wingman's thinking, if Warren saw him then I was going to fly right behind Warren and thus avoid complicating my problem of acquiring the target, maneuvering the Hun to line up, dropping my four MK-82 high drags, and avoiding the FAC.  Wingmen like to keep life simple.

   Warren dropped his high drags, and as the FAC said, "Two, hit lead's bombs", my thumb was on the pickle button.  Bombs gone, who knows where, I continued my concentration on Warren's plane and began the slow, tortuous rejoin in what was now an almost totally dark night sky.

   Safely nestled-in on Warren's wing, I began to relax.  As we completed our post delivery checks, my fuel was about 500 pounds lower than my lead - typical for a wingman who had to jockey his power to stay with his flight leader.

   On the RTB as we passed over my future home at Phu Cat, it became apparent that my fuel level was dropping at an alarming rate.

   To describe the next twenty minutes of my life would be like watching a class B horror movie.  As the gas gauge continued its steady slip towards zero, my heart beat and my adrenaline level rose at an alarming rate.  We declared, "Minimum Fuel!"-- that was enough to get priority in the normal night radar-controlled landing pattern with no delays.  Starting our descent into Tuy Hoa, I called, "Emergency Fuel!!!" and was given an even more expedited approach.  But, that was not going to get me on the ground before the fuel was gone, so I did a visual approach and landed with the fuel gauge reading zero on the rollout.  Whew!

   Of course, all the fire trucks and Wing Heavies were there to meet me in the de-arming area.  After a quick search, one of the de-armers pulled something out of the top of my right wing.  He came over and passed it to me.  It was obviously the fragment of a bomb casting, not the round of an enemy anti-aircraft gun.  And, it had penetrated the "top" of the wing and fuel tank on its "way down," after the blast - not on its way up.  Uh oh!

   The next morning I learned I had been flying the Squadron commander's airplane - his beloved mount.  The "lady" who had carried him from Homestead AFB to Hawaii and across the Pacific.  He was pissed that some new guy injured his pristine thing.

   In the days that followed, I kept a low profile at the squadron, avoiding the Squadron Commander at all costs, even volunteering for Mobile Control to stay out of his way.

   Three weeks after the, "Jonesy Picks up a Frag From His Leader's Bomb" headline, I received some really bad news!  Our maintenance lieutenant informed me that, while being repaired in the fuel barn, my Squadron Commander's cherished airplane caught fire and was heavily damaged.

   Knowing my doom was emminent, I immediately went to Personnel Assignments and volunteered for the next available assigment...ANYWHERE!...  It didn't even need to be a flying job!  A ground FAC position in the Ah Shau Valley or the DMZ looked good at that point.

   The Assignments airman said, "Sir, we just got in an immediate request for an F-100 pilot for something called Commander Sabre at Phu Cat.  You interested?"

   "I'LL TAKE IT!  When can I leave?"

   The next day I was on a Gooney Bird heading for the adventure of a lifetime.

   Moral of the story - don't assume all Mistys are supermen or heroes.

             Eben Jones, Misty 25