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REMEMBERING ROBIN
Barrett Tillman
"There are pilots and there are pilots; with the
good ones, it is inborn. You can't teach it. If
you are a fighter pilot, you have to be willing to take risks."
Brig. Gen. Robin Olds.
Fighter pilots used to say that there was a glass
case in the A Ring of the Pentagon. It was built
to the precise dimensions of then-Colonel Robin
Olds, who would be frozen and displayed wearing
his rankless flight suit, crushed fore and aft
cap, gloves, and torso harness with .38 and
survival knife. Beside the case was a fire ax
beneath a sign reading: "In case of war, break glass."
It was something of an exaggeration, but it
contained an element of truth. Robin Olds was built for war.
And he was born to fly. It was imprinted in his
genes. Born in July 1922, Robin was the son of
the influential airman Robert Olds. As a
disciple of Billy Mitchell, the elder Olds became
a prominent advocate of strategic bombing and did
more than anyone to make the B-17 an operational
reality before World War II. Olds' influence was
acknowledged by no less an authority than Curtis LeMay.
A big, strapping kid, Robin had drawn attention
when his high school football team won the
Virginia state championship in 1937. He turned
down athletic scholarships in favor of West Point
and entered the corps of cadets in 1940, destined for the Class of '44.
Among his classmates was later Colonel William J.
Hovde of World War II and Korean fame. Billy
Hovde used to insist, "I was Robin's ballroom
partner because I was the only one in the class who could dance
backwards."
At West Point Robin made All-American as a tackle
and was named lineman of the year in 1942. Such
was his success that he was inducted into the
college football hall of fame in 1985.
But more than anything, Robin wanted to fly-and
he wanted fighters. He got his wish. He became
one of only a dozen West Pointers to make ace (in
comparison to 30 Annapolis alumni.)
Robin was commissioned and rated a pilot on June
1, 1943. a 20-year-old second lieutenant. He
joined the 479th Fighter Group in February '44,
and upon arrival in England that May he had 640
hours total time. Twelve months later he was a major leading a squadron.
Robin was a team player as long as the team
wanted to play. When the leaders were only
interested in suiting up, he exercised some
initiative. In other words, he went
freelancing. In his first two dogfights he was
alone with his wingman, having left formation to
hunt on his own. As he wryly noted long
afterward, "When I shot down my first two
airplanes I was relieved to see that they had black crosses on their
wings."
Robin used to say that the two best things about
World War II were London and Colonel Zemke. When
the 479th's first commander was shot down in
August 1944, Hub Zemke moved over from the fabled
56th Fighter Group and rejuvenated the Mighty
Eighth's last fighter outfit. Not that Robin
needed any rejuvenating, but the group had
plodded along in pedestrian fashion.
In a few weeks Zemke turned things around, and
added to Robin's already formidable determination
to succeed as a shooter and a leader. The group
converted to P-51s in September but Zemke's
Mustang broke up in a storm over Germany the next
month and he became a POW. However, the lesson had been learned and
absorbed.
Robin became commanding officer of the 434th
Fighter Squadron at age 22, and he never forgot
it. Decades later he said, "As a major I was
responsible for feeding and housing my men,
training my men, and rewarding or punishing
them. As a colonel I had to check with some
general for permission to visit the latrine."
Unlike many pilots who regarded airplanes as
tools, Robin could be sentimental about his
machines. Near the end of the war he was one of
six P-51 pilots who attacked a German airdrome
and found himself the lone survivor. He nursed
his crippled Mustang back to base but found that
it stalled at 175 mph, rolling violently. But as
he said, "Scat VI had taken me through a lot and
I was [consarn] if I was going to give up on
her." Somehow he got the bird on the runway and kept it in one piece.
When the European war ended, Robin had made ace
in both the P-38 and P-51, probably the only pilot ever to do so.
Postwar
After VE-Day Robin returned to the States and
reverted to his permanent rank: a 23-year-old
captain. He married Ella Raines, one of the most
glamorous actresses of the era, and got on with his career.
He briefly returned to West Point as assistant
football coach but chafed at the thought of
missing the new jets entering
service. Therefore, he arranged a transfer to
March Field, flying P-80 Shooting Stars. He
thrived there, becoming a member of the first jet
flight demonstration team and that same year,
1946, was second in the jet phase of the Thompson Trophy Race.
Robin went to England as an exchange pilot in
1948, flying No. 1 Squadron's Gloster
Meteors. The American major commanded the
prestigious British squadron in 1949, enjoying
the high jinks typical of an RAF mess: a mixture
of drinking and physicality that appealed to him.
Upon return to the States, Robin commanded the
71st Fighter Squadron at Pittsburgh. He was
thoroughly unhappy in Air Defense Command,
protecting Steel Town from Soviet bombers when
friends were bagging MiGs in Korea. Almost
beside himself, he wrangled a temporary
assignment to the Far East, and the world looked
good again. As he explained, "I had to go behind
my boss's back, but I thought it was worth
it. My wife even had induced labor so I could
see my daughter before I left, and I was on the
way out the door when the phone rang. It was my
CO. He said, 'Gotcha. If I don't go, you don't go.'"
The CO was another ETO triple ace, Colonel Jack
Bradley, who was equally eager to hassle with
MiGs. Robin missed Korea, and he never got over
it. He made full colonel April 1953, which made
him eligible to command a group, but the war was winding down.
Robin served penance in the Pentagon 1958-1962,
waging a notably unsuccessful campaign to keep
guns in new fighter aircraft. "Missiles were
immature technology for years and years after
that," he insisted, not without reason. His pet
project was an F-102 with bubble canopy and a gun, which came to naught.
Robin also had other ideas. While visiting an
aircraft storage facility he noticed some Navy
piston airplanes "with all these lovely
hardpoints under their wings." He figured that
if the "squids" weren't using all their Douglas
Skyraiders, the Air Force should take up the
slack. Eventually the Air Commandos were flying
A-1s as the fabulous Sandys, providing close air support in Southeast
Asia.
From1963 to '65 Robin assumed command of the 81st
Tactical Fighter Wing at RAF Bentwaters. There
he formed an F-101 aerobatic team, demonstrating
the Voodoo's low-level performance across
Europe-without official approval. Accounts vary,
but if Robin truly broke regulations as a way of
getting kicked out of Europe, it worked. Third
Air Force wanted to court martial him but General
Gabe Disosway of USAFE took pity and dispatched
him to ponder his evil ways at Shaw AFB, South Carolina.
Robin later said that a rotund star wearer had
intoned, "Olds, you're the kind of Air Force
officer who should be sent to Southeast Asia." As if that were a bad
thing.
The Wolfpack
Robin got exactly what he wanted: command of an
air-to-air fighter wing, hunting MiGs. The
disappointment of Korea drifted a dozen years astern.
Robin's arrival at Ubon, Thailand, was
uncharacteristically low key. He knew from his
own sources that all was not well in the 8th TFW
and resolved to see it from the perspective of
the FNG-the "freaking" new guy. He went through
the normal in-processing routine like any other
newbie, paid close attention and spoke
little. By the time he reached the front office,
he reckoned that he knew all he needed to.
He began cleaning house.
First he cut loose the deadwood, the ticket
punchers and careerists who had "sniveled some
counters"-missions that counted toward completion
of a tour when in fact they had not gone
north. Then he began learning the way the
Wolfpack did business so he could improve upon
it. He stood before the Phantom crews and said,
"I'm going to start here by flying Green Sixteen
(tail-end Charlie) and you guys are going to
teach me how. But teach me fast and teach me
good, because I'm a quick learner."
Sitting in the audience was Captain Ralph
Wetterhahn, a future MiG killer. Like so many
other pilots and WSOs, he was energized by the
new CO's press-on attitude. Years later,
Wetterhahn compared Olds' arrival with that of
Brigadier General Frank Savage (Gregory Peck) in
Twelve O'Clock High. The old ways were not only
out, they were deceased. A new regime had
arisen, and the Wolfpack began showing results.
Under Olds' predecessor, who seldom flew combat,
the 8th had eked out a meager kill-loss
ratio. Like the rest of the Air Force, it had
barely broken even with Hanoi's MiGs, peaking at
a 2-1 exchange rate. Under Robin, the Wolfpack
shot to the top of the Southeast Asia league,
bagging 18 MiGs, and when he left, the wing's kill ratio stood at 4-1.
Robin entered his second war with over 4,000
hours, mostly in fighters. At 44 he was flying
against Vietnamese pilots probably half his
age. But he came into his own at Ubon. He ruled
over a fiefdom like a feudal baron, enjoying the
excitement of the hunt by day and discussing the
great game with his men at arms by night. He
would have been completely at home in Arthurian
England; better yet in Arthurian legend.
The free-wheeling environment at Ubon fueled
morale, and the Wolfpack's was
stratospheric. Dedicated consumers of booze and
red meat, they reveled in the warrior ethic. In
contrast, today's sedate, sober young
professionals are superbly educated, highly
competent, and terrified that they might say
something that somebody would find
objectionable. Robin did not want to live in that world, and he didn't.
Unsatisfied with the restrictive rules of
engagement, Robin began seeking a way around
them. He found it in the realm of deception and
began planning Operation Bolo. On January 2,
1967, he led the Wolfpack into an aerial ambush
of MiG-21s expecting to jump a formation of
F-105s. Instead of laden "Thuds" the Vietnamese
found a passel of hungry Phantoms.
Bolo's seven credited kills exceeded the 8th's
tally during all the previous CO's tenure. Robin
got one himself, becoming the only pilot to score
in WW II and Vietnam. Over the next year he added three more.
Upon return to the U.S., Robin was acclaimed as
America's top gun of the war to date, a record he
retained for the next five years. But he was
contemptuous of the Air Force's attitude toward
air combat, exclaiming, "The best flying job in
the world is a MiG-21 pilot at Phuc Yen. Hell,
if I was one of them I'd have got 50 of us.!"
Despite his MiG-killing fame, Robin was perhaps
proudest of the strike against North Vietnam's
best-defended target: Thai Nguyen steel mill. In
an ultra low-level attack, leaving rooster tails
on the paddies behind them, Olds and two wingmen
put their bombs on target. He considered it a
dangerously wasteful effort, as the mill had been
hit repeatedly, but the smoke stacks remained
standing. What he valued most was the courage and skill of his aircrews.
After Vietnam
Having promoted Robin to general, the Air Force
sought a safe place to stash him. For reasons
both ironic and obscure, he was assigned as
commandant of cadets at the Air Force Academy,
where his brand of irreverent individualism could
infect hundreds of future officers.
Robin's influence on the cadets was
profound. One who became a FAC and author was
Darrel Whitcomb, who recalls, "In the fall of
1968, I was a first class cadet at the Academy
when he was our commandant. Every Friday evening
he would have the first classmen from a different
squadron to his house for dinner. I was in
Seventh Squadron. The evening of our visit, I was
late to arrive because.I had my very first solo.
I walked in as he was telling a war story. Seeing
me in my flight suit, he asked if I had just had
a flight. Needless to say, I had to share my big
event. He listened and then said, 'This deserves
something special.' He left the room and came
back about five minutes later with one of his
flying scarves. It reeked of whiskey and cigars.
He put it around my neck and said, 'Well, now we have another new Wolf
cub.'
"I was absolutely blown away by his act and felt
at that moment, that if he had asked, I would
have flown that T-41 to Hanoi for him."
After Colorado Springs, Robin was packed off as
Director of Aerospace Safety to finish his career
but got an unexpected reprieve. When the Vietnam
war heated up again in 1972, his four MiGs
remained the U.S. record. Offering to take a
reduction to colonel for a chance at the fifth
MiG, Robin instead was dispatched to learn why
the Navy was running up a 12-1 kill ratio while
the Air Force struggled to maintain parity.
He found what he feared: most Air Force fighter
crews "couldn't fight their way out of a wet
paper bag." Commander John Nichols, a Navy MiG
killer brought to Udorn, Thailand to teach
dogfighting to the blue suits, saw Robin taxi his
F-4 into the chocks after a practice
mission. "The canopy came open, followed by
General Olds' helmet in a high, lofting arc. He was not happy."
Robin retired in June 1973. With 17 career
victories (13 in WW II plus four in Vietnam) when
he died this year he was America's third-ranking
living ace. The top three now are Walker "Bud"
Mahurin (24.25), Alexander Vraciu (19) and Clarence "Bud" Anderson
(16.25.)
In Retrospect
I'll never forget the first time I met Robin in
the late '70s. He wore a Nehru jacket with what
resembled a peace symbol pendant. Looking
closer, I saw that it was a stylized rendition of
"the track of the Great American Chicken" that actually said "War."
Robin cultivated image of the warmongering
fighter jock, but just beneath the barbarian
fade lurked a powerful intellect. In unguarded
moments he allowed the esthete to pop up for a
quick look-see before pulling the manhole cover
back over his head. On one occasion we were
discussing history and Robin smiled. "In 416 BC.
Hannibal conducted the first recorded battle of
encirclement." He looked at me from slitted
eyes. "You know, someday I'd love to tell old
Hannibal how Cannae became the basis for Operation Bolo."
That was what detectives call A Clue. Robin
Olds, who some regarded as an alcohol-fueled
throttle jockey, had the gray matter to reach
back 2,383 years and apply the lesson of antiquity to the jet age.
But there was more. Far too many military
personnel, policemen, and politicians mouth their
oath of office as a rote exercise. Not Robin
Olds. He thought about the words, absorbed,
them, and passed them along. In addressing newly
commissioned officers he said, "The airman swears
that he will obey the orders of the officers
appointed over him. Do you realize what
responsibilities that puts on your
shoulders? Your orders have to be legal and
proper. Think about it before you give one.
"But I think about how to protect and defend the
Constitution. Because do you know what that
is? That is by, for, and of The People. It is
not the President; it is not the Speaker of the
House; nor the Leader of the Senate. It is the
People of the United States; who, hopefully, in
their wisdom will guide their forces properly."
Robin had been writing a memoir for several
years, and those who saw portions were
disappointed. Says F-4 pilot and novelist Mark
Berent, "It was well written, as you'd expect
from Robin, but it wasn't really about him. It
was more about people he knew."
Another Air Force officer who read part of the
text said that it began as an ethereal discussion
with the ghost of Robin's father. Robert Olds
had asked his son the status of the U.S. Air
Force and got a detailed debriefing on what's
wrong with the service. It was a long list.
When he died on June 14, not quite 85, Robin left
the work incomplete. The fact that his book
remains unfinished represents a major loss to aviation literature.
However, I bet that by now Robin has cornered
Hannibal in some corner of Valhalla and thanked him for the example of
Cannae.
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