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Jeff
The Russian
"Trawlers" (NATO designation: AGI for Auxiliary General Intelligence)
with what looked like one thousand "fishing" antennas plied the Gulf
of Tonkin on a daily basis...needless to say, it was a cat-and-mouse game to
see what havoc they could expend towards our two carriers operating there 24
hours a day.
Since the U.S. government had proclaimed the waters of the Gulf of
Tonkin three miles off the coast of North Vietnam and Hinan Island, People's
Republic of China, to be international waters, American ships in the Gulf were
bound to obey the international rules of the road for ocean navigation.
This meant that if the Russian ship maneuvered herself into the
path of an aircraft carrier where she had the right of way, the carrier had to
give way even if she was engaged in launching or recovering aircraft.
The navigation officer was constantly trying to maneuver the ship
so that the trawler wouldn't be able to get in position to abuse the rules of
the road and gain the right of way. Sometimes
he was successful in sucking the trawler out of position, but the room
available for the ship to maneuver was limited by our on-station requirements,
and sometimes the trawler was successful interrupting our flight operations.
The pilots of the air wing were strictly forbidden to take any
action against the Russian ship, but one day CDR John Wunche, the commanding
officer of the heavy tanker KA-3B detachment, had finally had enough of the
Russians' antics.
John Wunche was a big man with bright red hair and a flaming red
handlebar mustache. He was a frustrated fighter pilot whom fate and the Bureau
of Naval Personnel had put into the cockpit of a former heavy bomber now
employed as a carrier-based tanker.
CDR Wunche flew the tanker like a fighter and frequently delighted
the tactical pilots by rolling the "Whale," as we all called the
KA-3B tanker, on completion of a tanker mission. Consequently, John's nickname
was "the Red Baron."
On 21 July 1967 he proved just how appropriate that name was.
(Bonnie Dick was the nick-name for USS Bon
Homme Richard)
The "Bonnie Dick" had nearly completed
a recovery. The Russian trawler had been steaming at full speed to try to cut
across our bow, and the bridge watch had been keeping a wary eye on the
intruder.
For a while it looked as if the Russian would be too late and we
would finish the recovery before having to give way to the trawler. But a
couple of untimely bolters (missed wires) extended the recovery and the Bon Homme Richard had to back
down and change course to comply with the rules.
The LSO hit the wave-off lights when the "Whale" was
just a few yards from the ramp. John crammed on full power and sucked up the speed brakes for the
go-around. The "Bonnie Dick" began a sharp right turn to pass behind
the Russian, causing the ship to list steeply, and there, dead ahead of John,
was the Russian trawler.
He couldn't resist. He leveled the "Whale" about a
hundred feet off the water and roared across the mast of the Trawler with all
fuel dumps open like a crop duster spraying a field of boll weevils.
The Russian disappeared in a heavy white cloud of jet fuel spray,
then reemerged with JP-4 jet fuel glistening from her superstructure and
running lip-full in the scuppers. The Russian trawler immediately lost power as
the ship's crew frantically tried to shut down anything that might generate a
spark and ignite the fuel.
She was rolling dead in the water in the Bon Homme Richard's wake -- her
crew breaking out fire hoses to wash down the fuel--as the Bon Homme Richard steamed out of
sight completing the recovery of the Whale.
The Red Baron was an instant hero to the entire ship's company.
