In this article:
Roger Ball!
He was the second of two children and born on 25 January 1940 in Shandon Baptist Hospital in Columbia South Carolina. He, in every way, gave the appearance of a normal, healthy, well-developed kid of average height, slender but not skinny. History would show that he was anything but normal.
His name was John Monroe Smith, and “Roger Ball!” is his story—a tale that should be told. It intertwines the true, firsthand accounts and experiences of a fighter pilot with the significant developments in the fighter community and historical events in which Captain John Monroe Smith, USN, call sign “Hawk” was a part. Finally, it speaks to the men who laid their careers and sometimes their very lives on the line for their shipmates and their country.
Hawk was a legend in the fighter community. During his thirty-year career, he forged a reputation as a skilled and lethal aviator in the air-to-air combat arena, a natural tactician, and consummate leader. To many, he was one of the most essential pathfinders in the modernization of the naval air war arts.
He was just a man, but his story, his life adventure, is a high-fidelity history of personal achievements for naval tactical aviation, devotion to a cause, and service to his nation. It was a time during and shortly after the Vietnam conflict that America became ideologically divided. The military was disillusioned with the intrusion of nonwarriors in the White House over the conduct of the war, and tactical aviation of all the services was struggling to catch up to the realities of the war’s hard lessons. It was a time when the Navy needed leaders and tenacious thinkers to set things right again. It was Hawk’s time!
Only Six Gs
Last time we left Hawk, he was taking part in a knife fight with his F-5 against Joe “Hoser” Satrapa in his F-14 Tomcat during AIMVAL/ACEVAL test (CLICK HERE to read the full story).
Hawk and Magic landed ahead of the F-14s. Hawk followed the plane captain’s signals into the line and shut down his Tiger. Hoser and Billy were just taxiing in when Hawk climbed out of the cockpit. When the two TF-30s wound down Hawk walked over to Hoser still sitting in the cockpit. “Hey Hoser, what happened to that Booker T. Washington shuffle?”
They were way beyond the charade to keep the who out of the conversation at this point. Hoser was still working on a witty comeback when Hawk continued, “And by the way, I want to know how many ‘Gs’ you pulled. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life!” Hoser shot back, “Only six. I only pulled six ‘Gs’! I got it right here on the “G” meter.”
“Ah, horseshit, Hoser! I’ve never seen a Tomcat turn white with only six ‘Gs’ in dry desert air.”
“Six and a half ‘Gs,’ that’s all I pulled. No shit!”
Hill Billy, still sitting in the rear cockpit, entered the discussion—and not on his pilot’s side. “Sure, Hoser!”
Billy was clearly suffering. He had a stiff neck and slowly and carefully extricated himself from the rear cockpit. When he finally got both feet on the ground and headed for the maintenance shack, he hobbled like an old man.
The debrief
Not surprisingly during the debrief, Hoser was having trouble reconstructing the geometry. In each of the three engagements, the fighters never saw or painted both bogies. Yet, just like clockwork, at the merge the F-5s suddenly materialized and one of them was always in an offensive position.
Hoser couldn’t figure it out and Hawk and Magic offered no clues. There were several more training sorties over the weekend and clearly the new Red Force tactics had a sobering effect on the Blue Force crews. Even Hoser was quieter.
Hawk left for Miramar Sunday afternoon but before he did, JW, “Falcon” Taylor, the officer in charge of the Navy Blue Force, gathered both teams together for a mass debrief. “I think what we learned this weekend,” JW started, “is that we have a lot more to learn.”
It was a succinct, humble, and accurate statement. Hawk’s new Red Force tactics redefined the fight by targeting the weaknesses of the F-14 systems. When the Blue Force came to grips with the fact that even the mighty Tomcat could be fooled, when the cold truth finally settled-in that they had to reduce their reliance on the technology and improve their tactics, they altered their formations, radar techniques, and section responsibilities.
Tasking from State
The ACEVAL/AIMVAL warm-up was completed several days later. When Navy Red Force pilots joined their Air Force counterparts at Nellis AFB they brought the tactics they had used in Yuma. They were complex, dynamic, and exploited the weaknesses of the new generation F-14 and F-15 fighters. These became the foundation of the Red Force tactics employed during ACEVAL/ AIMVAL and were based on the tactics Hawk had scribbled on a napkin in a small pub in Yuma, Arizona.
When the joint Blue Force began AIMVAL/ACEVAL in October 1977, they
squared off with the toughest adversaries in the world.
AIMVAL/ACEVAL was well under way when the Navy Fighter Weapons School received a directive from the State Department via Department of Defense, and the Chief of Naval Operation (CNO). It invited—read directed— a small team of TOPGUN instructors to proceed to the Netherlands to provide air combat maneuvering instruction to the Dutch Air Force.
Hawk was one of two instructors selected to go, but he was perplexed. This was a rare opportunity and there promised to be a lot of flying in a country that he had never visited nor would likely ever visit, but he had an enormous number of projects on his desk—the December change of command being one of many. The change of command was problematic in that they had only a few weeks to prepare and the Bureau still hadn’t named Cobra’s successor.
Other projects were in various degrees of completion, and all, Hawk felt, needed his personal attention. He was concerned that if he left, nothing would get done. This was unfair, he realized. He had a staff of hard charging, responsible JOs, and senior enlisted leaders. He’d turn the projects over to them and get out of their way.
Land of Tulips and Fighter Pilots
The chief of staff of Naval Air Force Pacific (AIRPAC), Rear Admiral Fenner, was equally perplexed but for a different reason. Theoretically, TOPGUN fell under their cognizance. He, or rather his boss, the three-star admiral, Vice Admiral Coogan, was the reporting senior. When the directive came through the Chief of Naval Operations directly to Naval Fighter Weapons School,
AIRPAC was informed but not consulted or even given an opportunity to task the school directly. TOPGUN was an echelon two command, and like it or not, reported directly to the CNO. For that reason, TOPGUN was often referred to, with some distaste in higher circles, as The Republic of Navy Fighter Weapons School.
It was a small point it seemed, but one which would later be the source of growing agitation and then reprisals against TOPGUN.
Hawk and “Buck” Schott lugged their flight gear, lecture material, and a few civilian clothes aboard a flight headed to Amsterdam. Shortly after they landed, they hailed a cab and were driven to Leeuwarden, north of Amsterdam. The cab pulled to a stop in front of an ancient brick barracks on an airfield built by the Germans during WWII. They were old and quaint but functional. The whole country was old and quaint but extraordinarily beautiful.
TOPGUN instructor teaching air combat maneuvering to the Dutch Air Force
“The Dutch were warm and gracious,” as Hawk remembers. “The pilots seemed just like American pilots. They were about the same size, same kind of build, and they liked to drink beer and talk tactics. Though their English was a little off, they had a great sense of humor and a zest for living. I was truly impressed with the pilots. They were good, solid sticks, thoughtful listeners, and took everything we said on-board.
“We gave lectures in the mornings: Briefing and Debriefing; Teaching and Learning; Air-to-Air Missiles; Fighter Maneuvering; Fighter Performance Comparisons; and other presentations. The weather stunk the whole time we were there. It was mid-November. Our operating area was over the North Sea, and no one wore exposure suits. I tried not to imagine what would happen if somebody went into the water at that time of year but never asked the question. I didn’t want to hear the answer.
“It was three weeks of absolute heaven. It seemed more like a vacation than work, but it was far more exciting than leave ever was. No collateral duties, no homework, and no twelve-hour plus days. On top of that, we also got to fly. The Dutch had F-5As with maneuvering flaps and F-104s with the big J-79 engines. We flew their F-5s and instructed the F-104 pilots in dissimilar air combat training and section tactics.
Teaching air combat maneuvering to the Dutch Air Force in terrible weather
“All the pilots attended a big brief on the first day of flying. They covered the course rules, emergency procedures, described the working area, and asked us to brief the dissimilar air combat training program. When the brief was over, we got aircraft assignments and headed to the ramp. “The weather was terrible that day and typical for that time of year. There was a thick overcast layer that went up to twenty thousand feet and light rain at the field, but we conducted the brief as if we were going flying. I was thinking, we’re not really going to fly air combat training in this crap are we? We certainly were.
Part II (coming) of “Hawk’s Excellent Adventure in the Netherlands” straps the reader in the cockpit of a Dutch F-104 Starfire with Hawk at the controls and one of the most senior pilots in the Dutch Air Force in the rear cockpit. Not exactly a place I’d be willingly.
This is a fast pace, white-knuckle ride in one of the fastest accelerating airplanes of it’s time and the least maneuverable.
Hawk was quite invested during this sortie. He had to contend with an airplane that simply did not want to be flown, two F-5Es both wanting a piece of Hawk, and a fearless Dutch Air Force Pilot that showed absolutely no fear of death.
Photo credit: U.S DoD and Fotoafdrukken Koninklijke Luchtmacht
