(Ed. Note: The following is Part 2 of a two-part article about the military career of Damariscotta resident Victor Macomber. Part 1 appeared in the previous edition. Part 2 begins with Macomber describing his time as commander of Misty, a fighter squadron specializing in reconnaissance over the Ho Chi Minh trail. Reconnaissance aircraft were known as forward air controllers or FACs.)
Misty’s pilots, all of whom volunteered for the task, flew two-seat F-100 jets, operating at low altitude and constantly maneuvering to avoid anti-aircraft fire.
The pilot “had to be continually flying the airplane in order to avoid the ground defenses, and always jinking and navigating in the territory, so he needed another pair of eyes to look at the ground and look for targets,” Macomber said.
The jets would “mark” targets with “mighty mouse” rockets. The white phosphorus warheads, upon striking a target, would create a puff of white smoke.
“The FAC would tell the flight leader to ‘Hit my smoke’ or ‘Put your bomb 50 meters north of my smoke,'” Macomber said.
The fighters would bomb the target and the FACs “would make a low pass over the target” to determine whether the bomb hit its target and the extent of the damage.
Two Misty planes would monitor the Ho Chi Minh Trail every day, from daybreak until after sunset.
“Anything that moved, the sky fell in on them,” Macomber said.
He recalls taking anti-aircraft fire during his missions. “It’s pretty interesting to see a flaming baseball coming up at you, but you could dodge them, too,” he said.
The enemy gunners used tracers to correct their aim, “so we could use them as a method of dodging them,” he said. “We could see it coming and we could turn to avoid it.”
Macomber made it his first priority, as commander, to keep his crews alive. Despite his and Misty’s best efforts, however, casualties were inevitable in such a dangerous mission.
“We lost one airplane and both pilots – never saw them, never found the remains. They just disappeared,” he said. “That was difficult.”
Overall, “It was a relatively quiet time during my tour, which was around May until September of ’69,” he said. The heavy rains of the southwest monsoon muddied the trail, leading to a decrease in traffic.
Misty used the downtime to film the entire Ho Chi Minh Trail with an eight-millimeter camera. Macomber and another officer traveled to Saigon and Thailand to show the footage to high-ranking military officials.
The intelligence Macomber and Misty gathered, particularly with regard to the resilience of the North Vietnamese in keeping the trail open, surprised the officials.
“They thought they had scheduled so many missions the whole thing should have been cratered, but it wasn’t, at all,” Macomber said. The information did not appear to change their strategy, he said.
Away from the cockpit, Macomber, while stationed at Tuy Hoa Air Base, a remote outpost on the South China Sea, went jogging in the deep sand and swimming at the nearby beach. He lifted weights and spent time at the officers’ club.
He also stayed in touch with his family.
“I discovered that Mary Ellen is a very good letter writer; much better than me,” he said. From time to time, including at Christmas, they were able to talk via ham radio.
They set up a rendezvous when he had a week of leave, with Macomber flying east and Mary Ellen flying west to Hawaii for a vacation on the beach.
Macomber returned to flying what he called “ordinary” combat missions in South Vietnam for his last weeks in the country.
In October 1969, just a month after leaving Misty, he returned to the states to sobering news – the man who replaced him as Misty’s commander had been killed in action.
Macomber described the end of the war as an unhappy one, although it was a relief to free the U.S. prisoners of war, including the first commander of Misty, Col. George “Bud” Day, who spent more than five years as a prisoner of war.
Macomber wrapped up a 21-year military career with stints as a flight instructor at Luke, the base where he learned to fly the F-100, and as an adviser to an Air National Guard unit in Terre Haute, Ind.
Lt. Col. Victor Macomber retired from the Air Force in 1973 and set out to learn a new occupation.
He and his family moved to Phoenix, where he worked as a trainee and loan officer at a bank while attending night school for accounting.
Mary Ellen wanted the children to experience New England, as she had, so, three years into his new career, they moved to Keene, N.H.
“I told her to pick out the place where she’d like to live, because the Air Force had told us where to live for 20 years, so this time it was her turn,” Macomber said.
Macomber dabbled in solar energy and sold domestic hot water heating systems, working as a flight instructor on the side. A flight student who was a manager of the Keene branch of the investment bank Burgess & Leith Inc. offered him a job and a chance to learn the trade.
Macomber became a successful stockbroker. He and a friend opened a competing office. He takes pride in the fact that the Burgess & Leith branch, despite the backing of a multibillion dollar corporation, closed its doors while Macomber’s new firm flourished.
He retired for the second time in 2002, after more than 20 years as a stockbroker.
The Macombers often traveled to Maine, Mary Ellen’s home state, for vacations or weekend getaways. They discovered Schooner Cove, the independent retirement community in Damariscotta, by accident during a rainy day drive with their daughter. In 2008, they sold their house in Keene and moved in.
Today, at 82, Macomber epitomizes the active retiree. He still holds his pilot’s license, although he does not fly anymore.
“I’m going to be 82 this summer and I think I’m not as capable as I was,” he explained. “My hearing is no good and I’ve had a lifetime of accident-free aviation, so I think I’ll probably call it quits before I break that record.”
He maintains a connection to the air, volunteering every Tuesday and Thursday as an entry-level airplane mechanic at the Owls Head Transportation Museum. “I’m getting my hands dirty,” he said.
He also enjoys non-aviation recreation. He sings bass with the Nor’easters Barbershop Chorus, but his “number one priority is physical conditioning,” he said.
He plays tennis every week, jogs, lifts weights and participates in aerobic weights workout classes at the YMCA. He golfs in the summer and goes downhill skiing in the winter.
He and Mary Ellen, married now for 56 years, have a daughter who lives in Old Town, a son in Beverly, Mass. and four grandchildren.
Macomber clearly takes great pride in his military service. Photographs from his career hang on the walls of his home, and his bookshelves hold reference books about the Air Force, fighter jets and, of course, Misty.
He has attended Misty reunions at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., where he enjoyed sharing his experiences with the cadets; and Florida.
For his service with Misty, and, specifically, for his role in destroying enemy equipment in adverse weather conditions, he received the Distinguished Flying Cross, which recognizes “heroism or extraordinary achievement” in flight.
“I didn’t think I really deserved one, but they gave me one anyway,” he said.
(Correction: The headline and text of part one incorrectly states the number of combat missions flown by Macomber. He flew 219, not 119.)
