Earthquake's War

Fellow airmen called him "Earthquake McGoon"--the burly, black-browed man with the big laugh and the outspoken contempt for the quiet life. Earthquake was born to trouble and hairbreadth escapes.

Twice a day for the past six weeks, weather permitting, Earthquake had eased his massive body (6 ft., 250 lbs.) into the pilot seat of a C-119 Flying Boxcar, trucked its seven-ton load of ammunition and food the 90 flying minutes from Haiphong to beleaguered Dienbienphu.

As the Viet Minh's ack-ack spat up at him, Earthquake made the wide circling letdown to 1,500 ft., lumbered across the deep valley until the "kickers" shoved the load out through the big rear door over the ever-shrinking drop zone. Four times Earthquake's plane was hit. Once a slug cut his elevator controls, and he had to fly home on the trim tabs. Reported Earthquake cheerfully: "We could make it go up or down, but never stay level. We went home like a kangaroo."

The Behemoth Creature. Earthquake was Captain James B. McGovern, 32, of Elizabeth, NJ. He flew P-40s and Mustangs over China with Major General Claire Chennault's Fourteenth Air Force, knocked down four Jap planes. When Chennault formed his Civilian Air Transport (CAT) to help the Nationalists against the Red Chinese in China, Earthquake signed up. Once the transport he was flying was attacked by Chinese Communist fighters over the Shantung peninsula, but "they missed," Earthquake explained laconically. Later, flying gasoline to the hard-pressed Nationalists in Kunming, he made a forced landing on a river sandbar in Communist territory. Six months later, Earthquake emerged from Communist China with a huge beard (they had taken his razor from him) and a cheerful account of life in a Communist jail. "The Communists went out of their way to treat me good," he said. His friends quipped that the Reds let him go because they couldn't feed him, and composed affectionate doggerel about the mock-heroic legend:

"Of the behemoth creature who flies in the sky

Who knows neither reason nor rhyme

His 300 pounds shake the earth when he walks

Yet he soars with the grace of a loon."

Two months ago, the French asked Chennault for 24 American pilots for the perilous job of flying supplies into Dienbienphu. Earthquake went among the first. The C-119s they flew were on loan from the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. markings barely covered over with one coat of grey paint. The pay was good (about $3,000 a month, including hardship pay and overtime), but if pressed, Earthquake admitted to another reason. "Way I figure it, we either got to fight the bastards at home or fight them over here." When his CAT buddies howled with derisive laughter at the idea that their interests might be anything "other than mercenary or adventuresome, Earthquake looked sheepish.

But these casual young men in slacks and sport shirts became Dienbienphu's lifeline, averaging 30 missions a day, dropping more than 8,500 tons of supplies, dodging the flak with equanimity ("When you are incited to a war, you expect to get shot at").

"Turn Right." Last week Earthquake McGoon and his fellow pilots gulped their usual cups of bitter coffee, desultorily played darts in the airfield canteen while waiting to take off. In the afternoon flight, Earthquake flew "Bird Two" in a flight of six, with Wallace Buford, 28, as copilot.

Over Dienbienphu, Earthquake had just dropped down to 3,000 ft. for his run when his voice cracked over the radio: "I've got a direct hit." Steve Kusak swung his plane in behind Earthquake's. One of Bird Two's engines was spurting oil, and Earthquake feathered it. Just then, a second shell tore a hole in one of the tail booms. The stricken plane lurched. Earthquake caught sight of a riverbed ahead, flanked by 4,000 ft. mountains. "Steve, tell me which way the mountains are lowest," Earthquake said to the plane above him. Steve took a hasty look, called, "Turn right."

Earthquake headed his sinking plane into the steep valley. But the controls were crippled. The plane slipped wide, skidded sickeningly toward the spiky hills. As Steve watched helplessly, Earthquake's voice came coolly over the radio. "Looks like this is it, son," he said. The left wing tipped the rocky hillside. The huge plane did a slow, ponderous cartwheel and burst into an orange-black blossom of flame and smoke. It was Earthquake's 45th mission.

Next day, Dienbienphu fell.

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