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Editor’s Note: This series is brought to you by the Nebraska Press Association in celebration of the United States’ 250th birthday.
This series is brought to you by the Nebraska Press Association in celebration of the United States’ 250th birthday, enjoy!
Roger Locher was a farm boy from Sabetha Kansas. He joined the Air Force in 1969 and became a decorated navigator/weapons specialist officer. Roger was a “backseater” in the most sophisticated fighter of the day, the F4-D. Having achieved acclaim in the ranks after re-upping for his third tour in Vietnam, ending that tour with 407 career missions. Locher became one of the most prolific MIG killers of the war.
Captain Patty Schnieder was an Intelligence Officer working alongside Locher at Udorn Air Force Base in Thailand. Schnieder and Locher had an on again/off again relationship but, “there was something there,” Kevin Drewelow, the Director of the Combat Air Museum in Topeka says with a wry grin.
That connection would have to wait, however, because duty called.
On May 10, 1972, Locher and his pilot Major Roger Lodge, part of the 555th “Triple Nickel” squadron, took off with three other F4’s as part of Operation Linebacker. US political and military leadership had decided to carpet bomb targets around North Vietnam, including Hanoi and Haiphong, to halt the Vietcong’s supply lines and force them back to the stalled peace talks in Paris.
Operation Linebacker would end up being the last and largest bombing campaign of the war. B-52’s unloaded an unprecedented 20,000 tons of ordnance during the action, killing at least 1,500 civilians.
Those B-52 bombers needed support. F4’s and other fighters would accompany them on every sortie, and the skies were incredibly dangerous; MIGs seemed to be everywhere, and 134 allied aircraft were lost during the six-month operation.
On May 10th, Lodge and Locher were in a dogfight. They had already downed one MIG-19 that day when disaster struck! “It felt like you were sitting at a stop sign and someone rear ended you,” Locher would later say. They had been hit by a missile and chunks of the plane were blown away. As they quickly lost control, fire engulfed parts of the cockpit. Now inverted and falling, Lodge immediately ordered Locher to eject. Roger got out just as the fire consumed the backseater’s cabin. Lodge, however, didn’t get out, going down with his plane in a fireball.
In the chaos of air combat, other US pilots didn’t see Locher eject. But the enemy did. MIG pilots set up to strafe Locher as he parachuted to earth. Then for some reason, they backed off, maybe seeing him as a valuable prize to capture and interrogate once on the ground.
When Locher landed, he knew he was entirely on his own, 65 miles from Hanoi and deep in enemy territory. He could not use his radio because the transmission would no doubt be intercepted by the Vietcong. The enemy had become deadly adept at luring U.S. rescue helicopters into kill zones by tricking pilots into thinking they were saving a downed airman, so Locher would have to rely solely on his survival training.
Standard protocol dictated that airmen were given two code words at the start of each mission: one to signal they were fine and the another to signal they had been compromised...captured with a gun to your head.
But moving only at night and constantly evading farmers, children and soldiers in the impossible jungle terrain, meant days turned into weeks. His code words had expired. With nothing edible to forage so early in the growing season, Locher’s health and stamina began to fade as he managed to travel just a mile a day.
Locher had to take a massive risk and knew he had to attempt radio contact with the next plane he heard. It was an F4 overhead and upon contact, the pilot on the other end was naturally skeptical — was this a trap for the rescuers, or was it truly their MIA comrade, known by all?
As fate would have it, several pilots and crewmen had served at Fort Riley, close to Manhattan, Kansas, just as both the F4 pilot and Locher did. The pilot had a thought and blurted out, “What’s Kites?”.
Locher paused, then it clicked. “It’s a bar in Aggieville, where I drink beer!”
The pilot’s response? “That’s it … he’s our boy … let’s go get him!”.
Back at Udorn, word spread quickly. A massive extraction mission featuring a Jolly Green “heavy lift” helicopter was needed. Four-Star Air Force General John Vogt practically “put the Vietnam War on hold for a day,” Kevin proudly proclaimed. Using an astounding 119 different aircraft, the operation became the deepest rescue ever made in North Vietnam.
