Submitted by: John Heslin
This is the memory of: John Heslin
Relationship to submitter: Self
I was 21 and in my 4th year of service (1972-1973) in the US Navy and serving onboard a destroyer named the, "USS William C. Lawe DD763". We had just secured from general quarters on a gunnery mission off the coast of Vietnam. I was on the air search radar watching for air contacts which I would report to the ship's bridge for action. As we were relaxing the watch condition, one of the lookouts spotted a low flying aircraft coming out from the beach head coming in our direction. It was probably around 2000 hours ( 8:00PM) local time, so making a visual recognition was a challenge.
The Officer of the watch called out for a positive recognition of the inbound aircraft as to an identification of friend or foe (IFF recognition equipment). This was my first tactical engagement operation where I was one of the prime operators to determine the next step.
Several officers came over to my station where I was seated at a radar scope which was tube operated and probably was first built around the mid 1950's, (Modifications were always being made on the equipment). The target would look like banana peels from the radar and a series of pulse tracks which were refered as to a "Train of Pulses" would paint across the screen.
Sometimes it was very hard to read the display but with skill in equipment operation an operator would get the "Signature" of the target. Well here I am sweating bullets and hearing the OOD, that's the Officer of the Deck calling out for friend or foe to decide whether to take our ship back to full general quarters or not and will we engage this aircraft (Possible MIG?!) coming out from the shoreline. We were approximately 2 miles off the coast since the gunline ran along the perimeter of North and South Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin.
After several long seconds of attempting read the code from the aircraft which would indicate a friendly aircraft and not a hostile contact (about 3 to 4 long radar trace sweeps) I decided the only way I would get that pulse train indication was to turn off the radar signature and only receive total IFF response indication. I immediately went for the switch which would make this happen on the IFF control squawk box. On the next sweep up came what I had hoped to see, it was the day's pulse train code.
As I went ahead to report over my sound powered phones the positive indicator I got the lookout reported that a low flying F4 phantom was flying past us and probably was low of fuel heading out to it's mother carrier after a mission. There was quite a sign of relief in CIC and the ship's bridge after that, especially for me when so much rode on my actions.
Seeing the trailer for this program, "Carriers" brought back a lot of memories of my time in the Navy.