On a dark night in 1971, at 21,000 feet over Laos, a warning light came on in the cockpit of my North American RA-5C Vigilante. A needle dropping to zero on a gauge confirmed the problem. I told my navigator, "Bull, we've lost our number-one hydraulic system. We can't go back to the ship. What's our heading to Danang?" As the junior pilot in Navy squadron RVAH-6, I was teamed with an experienced navigator, Bob "Bull" Davis, who was not just senior, but smarter. "Danang has bedbugs and mortar attacks," he said. "Ubon is the same distance. We'll go there."
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