Talking Proud: Service & Sacrifice
Robert Lodge: Anybody heard of him?
“(He) is part of your Air Force heritage. Learn something about who you are.”
Mark Welsh, General, USAF
During the period 2012 through 2016, General Mark Welsh III, USAF, was Chief of Staff, US Air Force (CSAF). On November 1, 2011, he spoke to Air Force Academy cadets. At the time, he was commander, US Air Forces, Europe, and was nominated to be the next CSAF.
General Welsh said he went to visit the Academy’s Graduate Memorial Wall, where he came across a name he did not recognize. Welsh said this,
"It was Robert Lodge. Anybody heard of him? I went and looked him up. Robert Lodge is a member of the Class of '64; graduated from Cadet Squadron 02, which I got the chance to visit this morning."
“Lodge was killed in Vietnam May 10, 1972, when a MiG-19 attacked his F-4 Phantom fighter. He was a five-time Silver Star recipient and received the Academy's Jabara Award for Airmanship posthumously in 1974.
"Robert Lodge is part of your Air Force heritage. Visit the wall. Pick a name. Learn something about who you are.”
I decided to follow General Welsh’s advice. I had not heard of Robert Lodge, so I dug in and researched. As General Welsh said, “Robert Lodge is part of our Air Force heritage.” I think he is part of a much larger story about air combat in the Vietnam War.
At the time when Lodge was lost over North Vietnam (NVN), Richard Nixon was our president, having taken office in 1969. He wanted to find a way to get out of Vietnam. The Paris Peace Talks had been underway since 1968 and went nowhere, and by 1970, they were deadlocked.
Henry Kissinger was Nixon’s National Security Advisor (NSA). Melvin Laird was the secretary of defense, and William Rogers was the secretary of state.
Kissinger had been quoted as saying,
“I can’t believe a little fourth-rate power like North Vietnam doesn’t have a breaking point.”
So that was Kissinger’s attitude toward NVN. At Nixon’s direction, Kissinger began negotiating with the NVN in secret in 1969.
The US military leadership had changed. General Creighton Abrams, USA, replaced General William Westmoreland, USA, as commander of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) in 1968. Admiral Thomas Moorer, USN, replaced General Earle Wheeler, USAF, as Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) in 1970.
Even with secret negotiations with the NVN, Kissinger got nowhere. Got nowhere until 1972, that is, the year Major Lodge was lost.
Reconnaissance over NVN just north of the DMZ revealed that the NVA was stockpiling weapons along the DMZ, indicating a major NVA invasion was imminent. As a result, President Nixon ordered Operation Proud Deep Alpha, executed for five days between December 26 and 30, 1971. Some 1,025 USAF and USN sorties were flown over North Vietnam, south of the 20-degree parallel (red line on map). Most of the bombing remained south of the 18th parallel (blue line). The missions were flown more to deter the invasion across the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) (green line) than to do significant damage to key targets.
After December 30, 1971, a no-bombing policy was again in effect.
On March 30, 1972, the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) invaded the RVN initially with about 30,000 troops supported by regiments of tanks and artillery, mobile radar-controlled anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) weapons, and portable surface-to-air missiles (SAM). The enemy troop count intensified rapidly to estimated levels of some 200,000 troops. By early April 1972, the NVA had committed 12 of its 13 regular combat divisions. They chose a time when the monsoon weather would make flying hard.
The NVA surprised the US and converted their so-called insurgency into a full-blown conventional war. The US expected an invasion attempt, but not of this size. In short, the US was not prepared.
There was no way Nixon was going to accept this invasion. However, he faced reelection in November 1972. Therefore, he wanted to keep the US withdrawal from the RVN on schedule. There were, at the time of the NVA invasion, about 70,000 US troops left in the RVN from a high of 500,000. Nixon decided to counter the enemy invasion with the employment of massive air power.
As a result, the US initiated Operation Freedom Train on April 5, 1972, against NVA supply concentrations south of the 18th parallel. It was a Naval air operation over the southern portions of North Vietnam from where most of the enemy forces and their supplies were coming into the RVN.
On April 16, 1972, USAF F-4 Phantom IIs went into North Vietnam. Furthermore, B-52s with fighter escorts bombed Haiphong, followed by Naval aircraft attacking Hanoi. Interestingly, the Paris Peace talks resumed on April 27, 1972, but the US and RVN suspended the talks on May 4, 1972, indefinitely. Kissinger kept up his secret negotiations.
The first USAF F-4s to enter the NVN did so on April 16, 1972, Bascoe Flight of four, led by Fred Olmsted. Bascoe Flight was orbiting over Laos on April 16, 1972, waiting for a B-52 strike package to escort into the NVN. The B-52 had not yet launched, the Basco was running low on fuel, so it went into NVN and lured some MiGs to come out. Despite experiencing repeated air-to-air missile failures, Bascoe managed to knock down two MiG-21s, the most advanced fighter the NVN had.
Nixon then ordered a major bombing campaign of the NVN, which was called Operation Linebacker I. It ran from May 9 through October 23, 1972.
Linebacker I officially began on May 9, 1972.
Major Bob Lodge and his backseater, Captain Roger Locher, USAF, led Oyster Flight into the NVN on May 10, 1972. This was to be Lodge’s last mission before going home.
The day began at 0730 hours, May 10, 1972, when 30 USN fighters from the USS Constellation launched the first assault against North Vietnam. The intent was to cripple the communist invasion of the South that had begun on March 30, 1972.
Navy F-4 Phantoms escorted A6 Intruder and A7 Corsair bombers. Two F-4s received MiG warnings and jumped two MiGs taking off from Kep Airfield, and shot down one. The F-4s returned to the Constellation.
Lodge’s Oyster Flight was among a total of 32 F-4 Phantoms flying bombing missions, with 28 more flying in escort. There were about 60 more aircraft flying in support.
Oyster flight consisted of four Phantoms from Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base (RTAFB), from the 555th Tactical Fighter Squadron (TFS), known as the “Triple Nickel Squadron.” Oyster flew into NVN toward Hanoi at low altitude to avoid radar detection. Its job was to patrol the airspace ahead of the strike package, working to make sure no MiGs were posing a threat.
Captains John Markle and Stephen Eaves flew Oyster 2. Captains Steve Ritchie and Chuck Debellvue flew Oyster 3. Bob Lodge and Roger Locher flew Oyster 1, the flight lead.
Two other F-4s, Balter Flight, flew behind them and above them.
The idea was to allow enemy radar to spot Balter Flight with a view toward luring enemy fighters out so Oyster Flight could engage them by surprise.
Four MiGs approached from west of Hanoi at 15,000 ft. Oyster Flight moved to engage. Lodge took the first two shots with his missiles. Then Markle fired. His first was a dud, but the second one went off to the races. Ritchie locked onto a third MiG.
Lodge’s first missile ran out of fuel. The second missile destroyed the target. Markle’s missile also hit its target. Ritchie’s target saw what was happening and broke away from the fight. Ritchie’s missile burned out. So Ritchie took on the fourth MiG, approaching him head-on. The MiG flew right by him, over his canopy. Ritchie did a very rapid 180-degree turn while the MiG kept flying straight. He fired his first missile, but it failed to track. The second missile exploded under the belly of the target and destroyed it. That’s three out of four MiGs gone.
In short order, Lodge found a fifth MiG and engaged him. Lodge got too close to use his missiles. Markle flew behind Lodge to protect his rear. Suddenly, two MiG-19s popped into the fight in an ambush and flew in between Markle and Lodge. The MiG-19s had cannons and began firing at Lodge. Lodge’s right engine was hit, the Phantom caught fire, and started spinning out of control in a flat spin. The F-4 rolled on its back, the fire spread, Locher punched out, but Lodge apparently could not escape and went down with his ship.
Markle hit the deck, and the rest of Oyster Flight beat feet out of this area.
Locher’s chute opened, he landed deep in enemy territory, and he would evade the enemy for 23 days before being rescued.
As all this was going on, the strike aircraft kept heading toward their targets. Once over, the attack force returned to their home bases.
The next flurry of attacks was conducted by Navy aircraft.
By the end of the day, the Americans had destroyed 11 MiGs, the most ever shot down in a single day. The Navy scored eight of the 11. In addition, the strike packages did a massive amount of damage to their targets.
There has been speculation as to why Lodge did not punch out along with Locher. Retired Colonel Charles DeBellevue was in Oyster Flight that day, and Steve Ritchie was his pilot in Oyster 3.
Bob Lodge was unique among most F-4 pilots. He had a Special Compartmented Intelligence (SCI) security clearance. These clearances were and are held very closely, and it is extraordinary for a combat fighter pilot to have such a clearance. Marshall Michel’s book, Air Combat over North Vietnam 1965-1972, has said Lodge knew of a system called Combat Tree and had its gadget installed in his F-4.
Combat Tree was an identification friend or foe (IFF) interrogator that could interrogate enemy MiG transponders, called QRC-248 or AN/APX-80/81. This meant he could identify a fighter as an enemy long before they had visual contact. A few were installed on F-4D fighters in Lodge’s wing, generally reserved for the flight lead. Michel has said,
“He (Lodge) had been the wing weapons officer at Udorn and the most knowledgeable pilot in the wing about the Combat Tree system.”
Roger Locher, who was rescued 23 days after ejecting, has said he believed Lodge deliberately rode his aircraft to the ground rather than risk being captured and interrogated by the North Vietnamese. Colonel DeBellevue has said,
“In the backseat of an F-4, there’s a handle, if you don’t rotate the handle, the back-seater, when he ejects, goes by himself. Lodge did not want that handle turned, and that was his decision.”
DeBellevue commented that Lodge had used the system to shoot down a MiG-21 in February 1972. He said further,
“When he was not flying and fine-tuning tactics, Bob was guiding counter-air tactics at 7th AF in Saigon and tweaking the systems we used. No one knew more, and he was acutely aware of his extraordinary knowledge.To protect his technical, tactical, and intelligence knowledge, he had long ago decided that if he were shot down in a place where rescue could not be attempted, he would not eject. The risk of capture was too great, and he feared divulging under tortured interrogation secrets that would remove the F-4’s advantages.”
DeBellevue concluded his remarks, saying,
“Bob’s position as the 555th Tactical Fighter Squadron weapons Officer and later at the 432nd Tactical Reconnaissance Wing weapons officer and his MIT engineering education gave him unique knowledge of the Combat Tree system. He was the only person flying combat into North Vietnam who was briefed on, had access to, and knew the Combat Tree system down to an engineering level. Combined with the All-Source Intelligence information he had assess to, he was uniquely equipped as an informed individual whose insights, if exposed to the enemy, could have a devastating effect on the U.S. Air Force and its air war. He knew that he had to protect that knowledge. He chose to do so even at the cost of his own life.”
General Welsh asked his Air Force Academy cadets, “Robert Lodge. Anybody heard of him? I went and looked him up … Robert Lodge is part of your Air Force heritage. Visit the wall. Pick a name. Learn something about who you are.”
This is a good idea for us all. Go to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, randomly pick a few names, look them up, and “learn something about who you are.”
