Captain Richard Dixon Pt. 2
What is the story behind your Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC)?
We were told to fly a close formation and the B52 had never flown a close formation before so they gave us one practice run where you fly wing tip to wing tip nose to tail. Like that, fly around like that (motions with his hands). And so we had one practice run and then we flew over Vietnam. With about 30 minutes to go, we flew in a two mile trail, the three of us in a group, in cells of three, and then and I was number three in this cell of three, so I was four miles back from the leader. So they said ok join up so number 2 came forward and joined up on the right side his call sign was Red 2, this was Red 1 (points to leading ship with his hands) there was a general there by the way and I moved up and I was Red 3 and I came up on the left side. And then we were gonna fly this ground radar directed bomb run usually we did our own aiming and all that. This was called a radar directed bomb run, where they tell you how to steer they would say “ok, turn right 1 degree, turn left half a degree,” as if you could do that with the rudders and then they count you down and tell you when to drop. We did that once or twice then we went back the old way. So then we joined up and Red 1 had a transponder on board so the guys on the grounds directing us identified us with the transponder. You know what a transponder is? And it was inoperative so they said “Red 1′s transponder was inoperative so Red 2 you take the lead.” So Red 2 was in like this he was supposed to move up like this they were gonna drop an echelon. Instead I would be back here Red 1 would be here and Red 2 would be takin the lead. But when he was flying close formation you can’t see your wings in a B-52 because they’re too long and way back. So he tucked in too close and when number 1′s wing wash affected his wing and he kept going like this with the control column trying to stay level and then he would trim out the pressure with the elevator trim so that he felt normal about it but he wasn’t. When he went to take the lead he moved out and forward and didn’t realize that all that pressure was in there so his wing dipped and he went under like this and Red 1 didn’t know where he was so he dipped his wing like that and chop this guy’s tail off. So then Red 1’s wing dissolved in flame and Red 2’s tail came off. Then the two of em started to go down and this was about 32,000 feet in the air; In the meantime I saw this and so I backed out a lil bit to give them room, and then I saw what happened and I immediately went into a bank and I was going to do a barrel roll like this and come around and pull out but I know no B-52 had ever survived a barrel roll they were the biggest airplane so I went up to a 45-degree bank and flew that way through all the debris and all I felt was a heavy concussion and no injury to my airplane. In the other two half of the crew members were killed and half survived when they ejected and when you eject their parachutes they would fall parachutes open at 14,000 feet automatically Their Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) would turn on automatically and they would float down into the water. So that’s the story of how I was not killed and then after that I guess I won’t go into everything but they decided to award our crew a distinguished flying cross which is the number 3 from the top: the Congressional Medal of Honor, a silver cross, and a distinguished flying cross that’s one award I had. And the Distinguished flying cross, what I don’t like about that is the crew members in the other two airplanes were killed. And I survived. You know when you fly combat missions you get medals every once in a while so I got three of those.