Published: November 11, 2009 11:06 pm         

Retired Air Force pilot recounts stirring mission over Vietnam to students at Veterans Day observance

DRUMMOND — Students from Drum-mond, Waukomis, Cimarron and Ringwood gathered Wednesday to hear from some special guests in honor of Veterans Day.

In addition to the students, many area veterans gathered in the Drummond gymnasium for the event, escorted to their seats in groups as the songs of each branch of the military played over the sound system.

“Today is your day,” said Drum-mond Student Coun-cil President Mit-chell Earl to the visiting veterans. “We owe you our freedom ... today we honor you.”

Bailey Miller, Drummond student and student council treasurer, introduced the first guest of the event, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Alan Milacek, of Waukomis.

Milacek has more than 6,000 flying hours, 600 of which were in combat.

As a boy, Milacek said he had a strange reoccurring dream in which he was flying an airplane and could not make it fly straight.

“I’d never been in an airplane,” he said.

The dream kept occurring into his adulthood, and he always woke up before the dream was done, never knowing the outcome.

Milacek grew up and joined the Air Force. He and his crew of nine were trained in Ohio before flying to Vietnam in late 1969.

“The crew that I had was hand-picked by God,” he said.

On Jan. 1, 1970, Milacek and his crew had their first mission, and on May 8, 1970, they flew their 100th mission.

“It seems like something always happens on the 100th mission,” he said.

It was approximately 12:30 a.m. when Milacek and his crew flew their AC-119 gunship over a convoy of trucks and opened fire.

The trucks, armed with 37 mm guns, fired back, which was to be expected. However, unlike previous missions, Milacek’s plane did not escape the gunfire this time.

“Those six guns were shooting back at us,” Milacek said. “We got hit in the right wing somewhere.”

A shot from a 37 mm gun is not slight.

“It’s about like two hand grenades going off where it hits you,” he said. “It explodes.”

Milacek didn’t know how bad the damage was, but he did know he was engaged in a spinning nosedive heading for the ground.

“It’s one of those things where you say, ‘Well, this is it,’” he said.

Milacek credits his reoccurring nightmare with allowing him to calmly find a way to keep the plane from crashing.

“Here I was, years later,” Milacek said. “I was in an airplane, and I couldn’t make it go straight. I felt like I had been there so many times.”

Milacek was able to keep the plane in the air, but the next challenge was turning around and flying toward home base. The plane could only turn one way, and Milacek and his crew were forced to fly back over the enemy convoy. Getting the plane going the right direction was a difficult task.

“Just imagine getting in your car and turning the steering wheel all the way to the left and it will go straight,” Milacek said.

The crew managed to turn around and also managed not to get hit again as they flew over the convoy.

“I don’t know how we got through those six guns,” Milacek said.

However, that was only the first of many obstacles the crew faced. The next was getting the plane high enough in the air to clear a 9,300-foot mountain that stood between them and their home base.

The crew threw everything they could think of out of the plane to help make it lighter.

“They threw out their wristwatches, they took a door off the back and threw it out,” Milacek said.

Even so, they braced themselves for a crash into the side of the mountain. But the crash never happened, and the plane cleared the mountain and continued on.

The plane also didn’t have enough fuel to make it home and was overheating.

“Imagine in your car putting your water temperature all the way to the right, hot, and having to drive for an hour and 29 minutes,” Milacek said. “What kept that engine going for and hour and 20 minutes, I couldn’t tell you.”

Certain they wouldn’t make it back to their home base, Milacek and his crew decided to bail out.

In an effort to find a way to keep the plane in the air long enough for Milacek to get to the back of the plane to bail out, the crew tied together their T-shirts and flight suits and tried to find a way to tie the throttle up so Milacek could get to the back and bail out. But their efforts were unsuccessful.

Milacek told the crew if the engine quit, they were to bail out and he would crash land the plane. What Milacek didn’t know is the crew took a vote and decided that even if the engine quit, they wouldn’t bail.

After overcoming several other obstacles, Milacek and his crew were able to make a landing at their home base.

“Once on the ground, the aircraft seemed perfectly normal,” Milacek said. “There must have been 500 people from the base that were there to greet us.”

After they landed, the crew was able to get out and see what kind of damage the plane had sustained. It was missing 17 feet of its right wing.

Milacek was then told by his commander the general wanted to speak to him.

“There’s not much you say to a four-star general other than, ‘Yes sir,’” Milacek said.

According to Milacek, the general said to him, “You should have bailed out, but you did a damn good job.”

Milacek said all he could say was, “Yes sir,” and he couldn’t tell him that he hadn’t been able to bail out.

Through surviving that incident, Milacek believes he has a purpose.

“I think God has a plan for each and every one of us and that he used me to tell you about the awesome power he has,” Milacek said. “I’ll let you decide who brought that plane home.”

Also attending the program was Albert Gray Eagle, an Army veteran from Oklahoma City. He performed a selection of songs for those in attendance with his handcrafted wooden flutes, but first he read a work he had written.

“God guarantees us four things,” Gray Eagle said. “We’re born, we learn, we teach and then our spirits are guaranteed to move on. The things we have done for our country, for our freedom, will live on forever.”

Gray Eagle opened with a MIA/POW memorial song. He then played several other songs, including one dedicated to mothers of military members.

“The mothers will never be remembered, but they’re the ones who sacrificed the most for our freedom,” said Gray Eagle.

He closed his performance with “Taps.”