Hung, meanwhile, became the head manager at the Naval Academy Dining Room until the local mob ran him out of town because he tried to make them stop exploiting the Vietnamese who had replaced the Filipinos in the dining room. After Chan left us, she held good jobs and raised her family. Her oldest boy graduated from the Naval Academy with a degree in nuclear engineering. All the others excelled in school and are working citizens; Ain, the youngest, graduated from college and never received a grade below A in her life.

In November 1990, Chan’s husband Coung was released from Vietnam. I was in Riyadh when I got the news and was overjoyed. Over the years after the evacuation of Saigon, he had been in reeducation centers and had endured a great deal. Ba also died about that time; but her wish to be buried in the soil of Vietnam was never realized. Hung was married in Salem, Oregon, in 1979 to a wonderful and beautiful woman named Quin (who doesn’t take any sass from him). His sons are named Viet and Nam, so he will never forget the country he once served so proudly.

Chapter 3 - The Vision of Bill Creech

3

The Vision of Bill Creech

FOLLOWING Vietnam, the Air Force was in bad shape, but it was by no means only Vietnam that had caused it. The problems were systemic in nature; they were the consequences of the way the Air Force had been run for many years.

Ever since the heating up of the Cold War, it had been the nuclear mission, and those who were in charge of it, the SAC commanders, who had been running the Air Force. In doing so, the SAC commanders gave every other Air Force mission at best only partial attention. How could dropping a bomb on a bridge compare with destroying the Soviet Union? The SIOP became supreme, and, as Chuck Horner had discovered, other methods of training were either downplayed or forbidden.

Bomber generals like predictability, order, and control, and in World War II, the best guarantee of bombing success had involved sending one’s bombers over the target in a specific line at a specific altitude. When the bomber generals became the SAC generals in the decades that followed, they ran the Air Force the way they already knew and already thought best—with order, centralized control, and intense micromanagement from above.

The authority of the SAC was further enhanced when Robert McNamara became the Secretary of Defense, and instituted the Planning, Programming, Budgeting System (PPBS) used by the Pentagon to build the annual budget submission for Defense. PPBS made the USAF Nuclear Forces—SAC and Air Defense Command—into what were called the Major Force Program 1, MFP-1. Since MFP-1 programs supported the most important part of America’s military strategy, they were to receive more DOD attention, and money, than other programs. Meanwhile, TAC and Conventional Forces were MFP- 2—second class.