Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways is not brought to you by the UFO
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Speaker 1: looking art. Hello, comrades, and welcome again to another episode
Speaker 1: of Thinking Sideways. I am Steve, as always, joined by
Speaker 1: and Joe, and once again we've got a mystery for you.
Speaker 1: Yeah this week, comrade, Well, this week we're going to
Speaker 1: do another Vietnam War mystery and I think that unlike
Speaker 1: the last one, most people are gonna like it. The
Speaker 1: basic overview our our mystery is that during the Vietnam War.
Speaker 1: A Vietnam People's Air Force pilot identified by U S
Speaker 1: Intelligence as Win Tomb or maybe the name is actually Tuned,
Speaker 1: but either way, Win was considered to be one of
Speaker 1: the most proficient and deadliest pilots between the years of
Speaker 1: nineteen and seventy two. He was the actually the Tom
Speaker 1: Cruise of North Vietnam, Yes he was, and during that
Speaker 1: time he took down thirteen US aircraft. Of course, after
Speaker 1: the conflict ended, it was discovered that officially there was
Speaker 1: no record of Tomb in the North Vietnamese UH system.
Speaker 1: You know, they have no record of this guy, which
Speaker 1: begged the question of well, why and who who was he?
Speaker 1: So shall we get into the mystery? That was some
Speaker 1: sort of spirit perhaps Now Tom, when okay, I love
Speaker 1: it when we start off like this. To start at
Speaker 1: the beginning. During the Vietnam War, the Vietnam People's Air
Speaker 1: Force got help, of course from the Soviets, and that
Speaker 1: help came in the form of aircraft and training on
Speaker 1: how to fly and operate that aircraft. And initially the
Speaker 1: Vietnamese were the North Vietnamese were given MiG seventeens and
Speaker 1: then later they were given MiG twenty ones, which we're
Speaker 1: not the latest and greatest in fighter plane technology, but
Speaker 1: they were. I mean, the seventeens were kind of classic
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties cold war technology. You know, It's like the
Speaker 1: Saber jet that we had. They looked like flying pipes.
Speaker 1: Ye yeah, yeah, well if you think about it, So
Speaker 1: the MiG seventeen, it's got it's got this weird open
Speaker 1: nose cone thing going on, so instead of coming to
Speaker 1: a nice point, it stops and it's open, and then
Speaker 1: its wings or what you would consider a traditional airplane
Speaker 1: wing to be, but they're slooped back and they have
Speaker 1: a rounded edge to them. But then the Big twenty
Speaker 1: one has actual pointy nose and more of the triangular
Speaker 1: shaped wings. So it was more modern in that sense.
Speaker 1: But of course both planes are. They're very effective if
Speaker 1: put into the right hands, and the Vietnamese had to
Speaker 1: use them because they were the planes that they had,
Speaker 1: so they became very proficient with them, which was the
Speaker 1: idea of the training. Now, there there were downfalls to
Speaker 1: both planes. The Mix seventeen specifically, as Joe said, was
Speaker 1: an older plane. It couldn't quite get up to Mock
Speaker 1: one from what I understand, and also it had old
Speaker 1: school hydraulic control or I take that back. It didn't
Speaker 1: have hydraulic controls, which meant that when you were going
Speaker 1: really fast, it was sluggish to respond because of course,
Speaker 1: as we've talked about fly by wire, I got I
Speaker 1: do this every time, I got it mixed up. But
Speaker 1: you have to as hard as you can pull is
Speaker 1: as much force as you're going to exert on the
Speaker 1: mechanical linka exactly exactly, so that that slows them down
Speaker 1: from high speed maneuvers, where the twenty ones are more
Speaker 1: akin to the F four phantoms that the US were
Speaker 1: flying at that time, which were considered you know, kind
Speaker 1: of top of the line aircraft, at least fighter jets.
Speaker 1: During the Vietnam Conflict, the U A signals Intelligence, which
Speaker 1: is uses the acronym sick int, which just pronounces so well,
Speaker 1: they tracked all of the pilots that they could, and
Speaker 1: they did that by their call signs, because of course
Speaker 1: they're eavesdropping on all of the radio communications. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's what signals intelligence does. The other side is doing
Speaker 1: a similar thing. It's just why you know, we actually
Speaker 1: have you know, we actually have more discipline when it
Speaker 1: comes to things like call signs. Apparently our pilots changed
Speaker 1: their call sign every with every mission. Yeah, so you
Speaker 1: might have you might have a nickname like Tom Cruise
Speaker 1: and top Gun, but your actual call sign is not
Speaker 1: going to be that nickname, and probably every time, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna actually be they're not gonna be actually calling. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly do they get to come up with them or
Speaker 1: they I think they're assigned. Yeah, yeah, that's probably makes
Speaker 1: more sense. It would be hard. It does make sense
Speaker 1: because otherwise they know who's in the air and who's not.
Speaker 1: You know, don't you don't want them knowing anything if
Speaker 1: you can possibly help it. Well, but if you get
Speaker 1: to pick your own, like every mission, it's like, all right, guys,
Speaker 1: we're going out for a mission tomorrow. Everybody picked a
Speaker 1: call sign and you can't be Archer again. Okay, yeah
Speaker 1: that yeah, no, Well, but you know what's funny about
Speaker 1: that is that we've apparently we've gotten much better about it.
Speaker 1: But for a long time, during the Vietnam War, there
Speaker 1: was a run that the US used to do every day,
Speaker 1: the exact same course, at the exact same time, with
Speaker 1: the exact same I mean to the minute, to the
Speaker 1: point that the North Vietnamese knew exactly when they were
Speaker 1: coming through and leverage that against them quite effectively and
Speaker 1: took out a whole bunch of planes. And I can't
Speaker 1: remember what operation that was in, but I mean, now
Speaker 1: you it makes sense why we we switch it up
Speaker 1: all the time. But then it apparently wasn't as big
Speaker 1: of a deal. People didn't realize and how important that was.
Speaker 1: We probably didn't think they had the capability, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden it turns out they acquired it on
Speaker 1: the sly. Yeah. What happens here is, as we've said,
Speaker 1: they're listening to the radio adder they're building histories and
Speaker 1: identifying the different pilots, the U s intelligences of the
Speaker 1: Vietnamese pilots, kind of building histories or dossiers of you know,
Speaker 1: where they've been and what they've done right and what
Speaker 1: they've done wrong, their their strengths awaknesses, and that allows
Speaker 1: them to eventually become start tracking this one pilot in particular,
Speaker 1: who we're talking about, which is Colonel tomb He had
Speaker 1: taken out several US aircraft in the mid to late
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties and had become a bit of a boogeyman
Speaker 1: for US pilots, and as the war would go on,
Speaker 1: he would rack up more and more kills of US
Speaker 1: aircraft and was considered a flying ace, which if you
Speaker 1: don't know what a flying aces. To be considered an ace,
Speaker 1: you have to generally speaking in this dirt. Depending on
Speaker 1: the conflict, this can vary, but you have to have
Speaker 1: taken out at least five enemy aircraft. If you take
Speaker 1: out four, you're a good pilot, but you're not an ace.
Speaker 1: These numbers, um seemed like a little low just to
Speaker 1: the layman, right, So do we have an average of
Speaker 1: you know, how many flight how many aircraft and normal
Speaker 1: pilot would take out in a conflict like this, Well,
Speaker 1: there there's a lot of difficulty in that. It depends
Speaker 1: on how target richer environment is. So in the Vietnam War,
Speaker 1: in the beginning, the Vietnamese had about seven aircraft total
Speaker 1: available to them, whereas the US had hundreds in the air.
Speaker 1: So it's a target poor environment for the US and
Speaker 1: a target rich environment for the Vietnamese. Now, as the
Speaker 1: war would go on, the Vietnamese would get more more planes.
Speaker 1: But again it's how many targets are available at any
Speaker 1: one time for you to take down. So that's it's
Speaker 1: it's a weird ballet. It's uh, you know, for them
Speaker 1: typically are flying in formation and one big can come
Speaker 1: over and just shoot an air to air missile. We're
Speaker 1: gonna hit somebody. So it's kind of a shotgun kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Really, I mean, I guess you're an ace,
Speaker 1: but what do you do? You ran over, you know,
Speaker 1: fire a missile with this group of as and hit
Speaker 1: one of them. It's not the most you know, fantastic,
Speaker 1: it's glorious according to Hollywood. But when it comes to
Speaker 1: taking out your enemy, you did your job. Oh you
Speaker 1: totally did. But uh And as far as like you know,
Speaker 1: what's going on for air to eric kills these days,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that there's nearly any of that going
Speaker 1: on anymore. I mean, it doesn't seem like our planes
Speaker 1: that they're talking these incredibly fast aircraft. It's kind of
Speaker 1: hard to dog fight each other. And all I can
Speaker 1: do is, like, you know, fire a missile at the guy,
Speaker 1: and he's probably you can't even actually visually see him.
Speaker 1: You can see on your radar or wherever. Okay, if
Speaker 1: somebody over there click, you know, and so it's not
Speaker 1: the dog fighting like you know they used to have
Speaker 1: back in the good old days, shooting at each other
Speaker 1: with you know, with machine guns and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: I guess back in the World War two days they
Speaker 1: would actually they would actually throw a hand gernades at
Speaker 1: each other. They'd like try to fly over the they're
Speaker 1: following fie paint white planes and stuff, and they like
Speaker 1: actually just try to drop hand grenades. I say, one there, two,
Speaker 1: I said to Okay, one, Okay, I was I was
Speaker 1: asking this. I was like, I don't remember a whole
Speaker 1: lot of biplane tomorrow. There probably was one or two,
Speaker 1: but they didn't last didn't. So to answer my question, no,
Speaker 1: we don't know what whatever is. Yeah, And because it
Speaker 1: depends on the conflict, and I think it's I think
Speaker 1: it's just been going down over time. Really, let's see
Speaker 1: where was I? Um? Okay? Both? Well, So we're talking
Speaker 1: about aces. So, like I said, you had to be
Speaker 1: yet to take at least five enemy craft out to
Speaker 1: be considered an ACE. And at the end of the war,
Speaker 1: Tomb was recorded as having taken out thirteen US aircraft.
Speaker 1: Now not all of those were airplanes with people in them.
Speaker 1: There's something that is it's a oh god, it's a yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a drone. There were two of them, and I
Speaker 1: want to say they were called fireflies or fire plug
Speaker 1: I can't remember which. And I read about them and
Speaker 1: it didn't completely understand them. But I just want to
Speaker 1: let you know that that's in there, so if anybody
Speaker 1: goes out and starts reading about it, that is technically
Speaker 1: an enemy or crafts. So we counted for the record.
Speaker 1: Apparently the balloons count. I don't. I don't know, probably not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's probably easy target, probably training targets for them. So
Speaker 1: the there's interesting things here about Colonel tomb though, one
Speaker 1: of which is that there were two images of his
Speaker 1: aircraft that were circulated among US forces. The images, Just
Speaker 1: to be clear, they were taken by other pilots, right.
Speaker 1: I believe one of them was actually on the ground,
Speaker 1: like somebody like somebody snapped a picture while it was
Speaker 1: sitting on the ground. But I'm not I'm not a
Speaker 1: positive because I couldn't find these images. I could find
Speaker 1: images that were similar, but I couldn't find the same
Speaker 1: ones with the same at least I don't think I
Speaker 1: saw them with the same plane numbers, because the planes
Speaker 1: had identifier numbers on him, as all aircraft do. And
Speaker 1: the MiG seventeen had the number three zero two zero
Speaker 1: on the nose, uh, and it had six stars on
Speaker 1: the nose. And for people who aren't familiar with this,
Speaker 1: the number of stars on the nose means the number
Speaker 1: of kills. And then there was another image that was
Speaker 1: a big twenty one that had the number four three
Speaker 1: to six on the nose along with thirteen stars. So
Speaker 1: that's a lot of kills. But they're very two different aircraft.
Speaker 1: And that's part of the confusion in this story because
Speaker 1: that's not typically the way a pilot would operate. They
Speaker 1: would fly a plane. They wouldn't fly multiple kinds of planes. No,
Speaker 1: not usually, not not unless you know all the big
Speaker 1: seventeens went away and then that it's time to move
Speaker 1: Colonel tomb up to it's kind of desperate scenario, and
Speaker 1: it and it represents the number of the aircraft took
Speaker 1: down on the pilot right the stars. Typically that's not
Speaker 1: the case. It's how many the pilot took down. Typically
Speaker 1: it's the number that's pilot takes. So I mean, really,
Speaker 1: what we're saying here is later this awesome pilot may
Speaker 1: have been flying a better plane, right, it's possible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wonder how that works. I assume that, like, say,
Speaker 1: if you if you did fly, I got six kills
Speaker 1: with you mixed you make seventeen and they were like,
Speaker 1: and then you graduate to one? Do they transfer the
Speaker 1: the sex skills over? Yeah? I have a feeling that
Speaker 1: I know the answer, but I'm gonna save that till later.
Speaker 1: It seems just don't dry out the suspense. Seems like
Speaker 1: it's only fair to transform over. You know, it seems
Speaker 1: like that to me too. But but and then if not,
Speaker 1: like maybe he did have the you know, twenty kills
Speaker 1: to nineteen kills, yeah, six and yeah, let's jump back
Speaker 1: to the official narrative here. By the way, what I've
Speaker 1: been trying to run through is is kind of the
Speaker 1: generally agreed upon official narrative of these things that are
Speaker 1: in the story, and then when we get into theories
Speaker 1: will parse into bits and pieces of it more deeply,
Speaker 1: as year tend to do. But officially, Tom's career would
Speaker 1: come to an end, and that date would officially be
Speaker 1: May tenth, ninety two. On that day, Randy Duke Cunningham
Speaker 1: and his co pilot Willie Irish Driscoll, who were both U. S.
Speaker 1: Navy pilots, and they had recently just graduated from the
Speaker 1: then newly formed top gun program. Again Tom Cruise to
Speaker 1: the Dangers own. Well, yeah, so these guys had graduated
Speaker 1: with the program. They're now in the air. It's made
Speaker 1: ten oh. And people may recognize the name Randy Cunningham
Speaker 1: because he was a U. S. Congressman. Uh and in
Speaker 1: two thousand and five he was not so happily for him,
Speaker 1: convicted of taking millions in ribes and sentenced to eight
Speaker 1: years in prison. So if he was your congressman, I'm sorry, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's too bad for him, right, So I guess he
Speaker 1: would have gotten out by now. I have not heard
Speaker 1: anything about Randy Cunningham, to keep it that way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not surprising that we haven't heard anything from him. Well,
Speaker 1: I hope it was smart enough to squirrel away some
Speaker 1: of those millions of bribes. I have a feeling anyway,
Speaker 1: pre bribe. Cunningham and Irish Driskell, we're both in a
Speaker 1: F four Phantom on that day and they were in
Speaker 1: a mission which was near Hannoi when they encountered several
Speaker 1: Vietnamese People's Air Force aircraft, and it was a group
Speaker 1: of it makes seventeens. As you can guess, a dog
Speaker 1: fights ensued. All but one of the MiGs were taken out,
Speaker 1: and then this fight takes out that takes place between
Speaker 1: the remaining MiG and Cunningham and drisk All. Now Cunningham's
Speaker 1: F four Phantom. It had aired air missiles by the
Speaker 1: other thing. But of course it's faster, but it can't
Speaker 1: do well at slow speeds. Makes seventeens are better at
Speaker 1: slow speeds, but it has no missiles. All it's got
Speaker 1: is thirty seven caliber and another I can't remember. The
Speaker 1: other lighter caliber gun is something like that. It's got candy,
Speaker 1: so it's it's shooting guns, and I don't remember. I
Speaker 1: don't think the f R Fantom had a cannon, didn't.
Speaker 1: I don't believe it had any guns. I don't remember
Speaker 1: that when I was reading. I think that it relied
Speaker 1: a lot on its missiles, because a lot is made
Speaker 1: out about the fact that in the early years of
Speaker 1: the conflict, the Phantom was plagued with tons and tons
Speaker 1: of issues of faulty air to air missiles, either not
Speaker 1: launching or just launching and not tracking their targets there was.
Speaker 1: It was a giant fiasco for the Defense Department. So
Speaker 1: I feel like it had the missiles, but I don't
Speaker 1: remember off the top of my head, so I don't
Speaker 1: want to commit to that because they're probably wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it had like it was a fighter bomber.
Speaker 1: I think essentially drop bombs and fire missiles, but I
Speaker 1: don't think the head of cannon. But if we're wrong,
Speaker 1: somebody will let us here. Yeah, if one of those
Speaker 1: guys that flew one of those things will send us
Speaker 1: and up yep. So what happens here though, is, of course,
Speaker 1: the fight goes back and forth. The MiGs tries to
Speaker 1: slow the fight down so we can do better. Cunningham
Speaker 1: has to hit the afterburner or not the after We
Speaker 1: had to hit the gas, so we go fast. So
Speaker 1: this goes back and forth, back and forth, back and forth,
Speaker 1: until he's eventually able to lock on with a sidewinder
Speaker 1: missile and take out this final MiG seventeen, which he
Speaker 1: says he watched burst apart in flames and fall to
Speaker 1: the ground. The ground, I'll just say the canopy, and
Speaker 1: that wasn't right now, but it fell to earth below him.
Speaker 1: He and his co pilot, though, wouldn't escape unscathed. Very
Speaker 1: shortly after that, in that same flight, actually they would
Speaker 1: be hit by a surface to air missile. They would
Speaker 1: fly out over the South China Sea, where they would
Speaker 1: bail out and then eventually be rescued. Of course, because
Speaker 1: that's what happens to the hero who is taking out
Speaker 1: the scourge of the North Vietnamese skies. Colonel too, if
Speaker 1: you're lucky, that's what happens. Yeah, usually not actually yeah, no,
Speaker 1: there's sharks and stuff. Well, Cunningham t tells US intelligence
Speaker 1: that he saw the number three zero two zero painted
Speaker 1: on that big seventeen and so military and US military
Speaker 1: intelligence says, yes, you took out Colonel tomb Good job, buddy.
Speaker 1: Not only did you just get upgraded to a status
Speaker 1: because that was your your kill, but you took out
Speaker 1: this bad guy. Yea, and Jo disappears from the war. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there you go. So yeah, my sort of doubt
Speaker 1: his story about seeing that number on the nose of
Speaker 1: the plane. But then if Tom did suddenly you know,
Speaker 1: not show up anymore, I guess you got him, took
Speaker 1: his toys and left. Basically years later, there is a
Speaker 1: Hungarian man named I'm gonna I hate, I hate pronouncing
Speaker 1: this guy's name, Dr ist von topp er Sev, and
Speaker 1: he would be he would go to Vietnam to research
Speaker 1: the pilots of the Vietnamese People's Air Force, supposedly, And
Speaker 1: we'll get into the supposedly later. And I assume about
Speaker 1: years later. You mean what Hungary it was still under
Speaker 1: basically Soviet domination. It was still a communist state, I
Speaker 1: believe while they were still a communist state. This appears
Speaker 1: to from the reading that I've done, been before people
Speaker 1: from the West were let into Vietnam, because people from
Speaker 1: the West were held out of the country for many,
Speaker 1: many decades. But eventually they are historians would be allowed
Speaker 1: in and they would come in and ask the same
Speaker 1: question as the Hungarian doctor, which is, hey, um, so,
Speaker 1: who was Colonel tomb to which they would all get
Speaker 1: the same answer of yeah, who are you talking about?
Speaker 1: There's no record of this guy. You don't know what
Speaker 1: you're what you're saying. And for a guy who is
Speaker 1: supposedly as good of a pilot and as good at
Speaker 1: taking down enemy, it seems really weird that he dropped
Speaker 1: out of the records completely and entirely. You know, maybe
Speaker 1: they said him on a super secret mission and they
Speaker 1: had to erase his name from the whole record. Maybe
Speaker 1: save that for theories, Okay, Okay, So yeah, so this
Speaker 1: flying ace, this war hero, and and believe me, the
Speaker 1: Vietnamese loved to celebrate their war heroes. He disappears. So
Speaker 1: it brings up what is our mystery, which is a
Speaker 1: why is he not in the record? And be if
Speaker 1: he was a real person, who was he? So was
Speaker 1: he so super secret? Because yeah, if war hero, you
Speaker 1: think they'd be celebrating them and have statues of them
Speaker 1: in all kinds of stuff. All right, So that's our mystery.
Speaker 1: So let's get into the theories. Okay, but first let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break. Support for today's show comes from
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Speaker 1: regret it and we're back. Yeah. So theory number one, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's there's a theory. There's well, actually believe it or not.
Speaker 1: I've got what four or five in here. Never mind
Speaker 1: your ghost theory, secret agent theory, don't forget that secret
Speaker 1: agent theory. Yeah. Actually, this, this one is actually all
Speaker 1: over the internet, especially on like aviation sites and Vietnam
Speaker 1: Veteran system particular theory. No, this particular mystery. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: got a lot of good information. There's a ton of
Speaker 1: ton of information out there, although a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of the same information, but had a lot of
Speaker 1: arguing because that's what forums are all about. Okay, So
Speaker 1: theory number one is that Colonel tomb was in fact
Speaker 1: a myth created accidentally by the US Signals Intelligence Group.
Speaker 1: They got their signals crossed. Not good, not good for
Speaker 1: SI to get their six crossed. So basically what it
Speaker 1: is is that the theories that he never never actually existed,
Speaker 1: and they made him up by accident. And there's a
Speaker 1: couple of different ways that this could happen. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: as we talked about earlier, to be a flaw, and
Speaker 1: this is all backstory. I think we've covered some of this,
Speaker 1: but sometimes people miss these bits. So I just want
Speaker 1: to recover a little bit of territory, which is you
Speaker 1: have to take down at least five enemy aircraft to
Speaker 1: become a ACE, and the Vietnamese had dozen, over a
Speaker 1: dozen aces, like we talked about, whereas the Americans only
Speaker 1: had one ACE that was Randy cunning Am, an Irish driscal.
Speaker 1: I really feel bad what Willie? That was his name?
Speaker 1: Willie keep calling him Irish? I feel racist? Um, but
Speaker 1: it's fun his name, not racism, but no, no. But
Speaker 1: so the thing is is that it was the reason
Speaker 1: that there were so many aces is for a US pilot,
Speaker 1: you did a year of duty. That was your tour.
Speaker 1: Was you spent a year in country and then you
Speaker 1: would rotate back home and you would do training and
Speaker 1: you'd be stationed somewhere by the way in that year.
Speaker 1: You would not do three missions. No, no, nowhere, No,
Speaker 1: not at all. But the thing was is that you
Speaker 1: guys could ask to come to be stationed back in Vietnam,
Speaker 1: and occasionally that happened, but the vast majority of them
Speaker 1: did not. So it seems like it was pretty miserable
Speaker 1: over there. For the most it was not. Well, nobody
Speaker 1: really enjoys war. A few weirdos do, but you know
Speaker 1: they're they're thankfully the minority. But the thing is is
Speaker 1: that these guys is so they get about a year
Speaker 1: to to try and rack up, you know, five kills.
Speaker 1: Of course, for the North Vietnamese pilots their homes, they're
Speaker 1: there for the whole war, so they have a lot
Speaker 1: of flights and a lot of time to rack up
Speaker 1: all these kills. So that's the reason that there's kind
Speaker 1: of that imbalance in terms of the number of aces
Speaker 1: from one side to the other. Another reason that there
Speaker 1: would and this is a factor as to why there's
Speaker 1: so many North Vietnamese aces, is ground based radar. Remember
Speaker 1: that planes at that time. Today we're all used to
Speaker 1: the fancy modern fighter craft we see in the movies,
Speaker 1: and they've got radar built and they've got every kind
Speaker 1: of device built in that they can to see around
Speaker 1: them much farther than the pilot can just see with
Speaker 1: the naked eye. Well, plus we've also got airborne radars
Speaker 1: beyond there's kinds of things, but that is not so
Speaker 1: much the case in the late sixties, in early seventies
Speaker 1: and MiG seventeens didn't have anything built in, so they
Speaker 1: were reliant upon what the naked eye could see as
Speaker 1: well as ground based radar. And the US we knew
Speaker 1: about the ground based radar. But the U. S forces
Speaker 1: never actually went after those ground based radar installations as
Speaker 1: in to take them out and handicap those MiG seventeens
Speaker 1: because there were other nations helping. We talked about the
Speaker 1: Soviets were there because they were helping with training and equipment,
Speaker 1: and they were coming and they were going to those
Speaker 1: radar installations and helping out. The Chinese were doing the
Speaker 1: same thing because again Soviets and the Chinese are both
Speaker 1: under communist governance, and the North Vietnamese they wanted to
Speaker 1: unify their country and communism was the system they agreed
Speaker 1: upon was the right one. So there together for human
Speaker 1: it is. But this means that you help your buddy out. Well,
Speaker 1: of course, but and that's why that one and that's
Speaker 1: what they're trying to do all kinds of countries all
Speaker 1: around the world, you know, helped them to become comedies.
Speaker 1: And but yeah, and of course they didn't want to
Speaker 1: bomb the radar stations because they might kill they might
Speaker 1: kill Ivan, or they might kill the adviser, and that
Speaker 1: just opens up all another can of worms of conflict. Well,
Speaker 1: this has been this has been like you know, a
Speaker 1: big bone of contention about Vietnam forever. Is that is
Speaker 1: that our side was way too reticent about stuff like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, we should have bombed those stations, taken out
Speaker 1: those radars, you know. Yeah, I understand what you're saying
Speaker 1: from the standpoint of to quote unquote when the war.
Speaker 1: I understand that. Yeah, I mean, yeah, we should have
Speaker 1: done that, you know. And as if their Soviet squawky
Speaker 1: just say, I'm sorry, you guys were in a war zone.
Speaker 1: What did you expect? You know? Yeah? But of course,
Speaker 1: I mean, and this is just you know, the old
Speaker 1: saying goes, generals always fight the last war. And then
Speaker 1: the previous war corps had been Korea. Remember what happened there?
Speaker 1: You know, I was acting initially getting knocked on our heels.
Speaker 1: We came back big time, invaded, and we're all really
Speaker 1: on the verge of triumph in North Korea. And then
Speaker 1: the Chinese invaded, and suddenly we're talking about the war
Speaker 1: got a lot bigger, and so, like I said, that,
Speaker 1: that colored all the thinking about Vietnam, and it's it's
Speaker 1: really a shame too, because you know, we could have
Speaker 1: probably had a better outcome in Vietnam if we hadn't
Speaker 1: had that sort of that tip for tat mentality and
Speaker 1: that reticence about about attacking the North that they, by
Speaker 1: the way, didn't feel towards us, They just didn't like us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so so okay, so so this is this is going on,
Speaker 1: and this is one of the factors why the MiG
Speaker 1: seven the MiGs were the effective, because they had that
Speaker 1: other form of detection out there. Uh, there's some things
Speaker 1: that also lean into the theory of this guy didn't exist.
Speaker 1: The next on is that the name tune or tune
Speaker 1: and by the way, the spelling on these is t
Speaker 1: o mb toumb like a cryptotune or tuned to again
Speaker 1: as in cartoon. Neither of those names are Vietnamese names.
Speaker 1: They're not in the lexicon at all. There were there
Speaker 1: were at least one or two pilots named Plon. But
Speaker 1: let's tu a n transliteration plan which which maybe over
Speaker 1: the rate it could come out sending kind of like tune,
Speaker 1: you know. And so, but I don't think any of
Speaker 1: those guys scored anywhere near thirteen kills, not that I'm
Speaker 1: aware of. There's a there's a big list. You can
Speaker 1: actually go on the internet and find this giant list.
Speaker 1: I mean I remember Devin and I were talking about
Speaker 1: the different the names and how similar they were as
Speaker 1: you dropped down the list, but none of them really
Speaker 1: seem to fit the moniker of this guy. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: there are people that believe that this is what happened,
Speaker 1: is that U S. Signals Intelligence is listening and they
Speaker 1: hear chatter of North Vietnamese pilots, and they hear a
Speaker 1: name that they don't know, and they're not sure how
Speaker 1: to interpret or write it down. How has it spelled
Speaker 1: something like that, And so what they do is they
Speaker 1: do their best and they write down the equivalent of
Speaker 1: what they think it is, which is wrong. And this
Speaker 1: happens several times, and suddenly this pilot named Tomb or
Speaker 1: Tune is born out of a badly transcribed set of
Speaker 1: conversations by ground control or by listening intelligence, the radio
Speaker 1: intelligence guys. So it's it's a complete screw up that
Speaker 1: just happened to line up. The other way is that
Speaker 1: it could have happened, and we'll explain some I'll give
Speaker 1: me a second here. And there's some examples of this.
Speaker 1: Is there are times where they are trying to figure
Speaker 1: out who's in the air and whoever it is just
Speaker 1: isn't giving a name that they can use to assign
Speaker 1: to them. And so what signals intelligence has been known
Speaker 1: to do is to assign them a name, just make
Speaker 1: one up out a whole cloth right there and say
Speaker 1: that's Timmy. And then that operator that signed a name
Speaker 1: like like you know, ends this tour goes back overseas.
Speaker 1: Somebody looks at his log books later and doesn't realize
Speaker 1: this right right, yeah, and doesn't realize that he just
Speaker 1: assigned the name to him. Correct. He doesn't realize that
Speaker 1: Timmy isn't a real pilot. Timmy is a moniker for
Speaker 1: a made up name of somebody who doesn't They just
Speaker 1: don't know who it is. And there are historical accountings
Speaker 1: of this having happened in the past. If we look
Speaker 1: back at World War two U S forces in Guadalcanal,
Speaker 1: they started, um, they started calling, oh God, what is it?
Speaker 1: What is it? What is what it? It was Japanese
Speaker 1: pilots who would start running night night missions, and they
Speaker 1: of course didn't know who they were, and they started
Speaker 1: nickname aiming those pilots washer Machine Charlie. And that was
Speaker 1: because they were flying two engine planes and those engines
Speaker 1: were slightly out of sync. So if you think about
Speaker 1: if you've ever been on a two prop plane, exactly
Speaker 1: a two prop plane, it's just it's very consistent. But
Speaker 1: when they're not, they do make kind of that bum
Speaker 1: bum bum bum bum boo boom back and forth, rocking
Speaker 1: washer machine noise, so that they nicknamed him washing machine Charlie.
Speaker 1: In the European theater, there was bed check Charlie, who
Speaker 1: was German pilots who were known to go out just before,
Speaker 1: just before or just after dusk and run night runs
Speaker 1: as well, and the name was was given because it
Speaker 1: was just after lights out these guys would show up,
Speaker 1: and these guys were they the U S Forces hated
Speaker 1: them because if you knew that bed Check Charlie or
Speaker 1: washer Machine Charlie were coming, you just had to lay
Speaker 1: there all night long. You didn't know if the bombs
Speaker 1: were going to get you or if they were just
Speaker 1: going to explode around or near or because they their
Speaker 1: accuracy was crap, but it was it really struck a
Speaker 1: note of fear in those men's on the ground. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that does seem like a better way to name
Speaker 1: people that you don't know, instead of making up a
Speaker 1: you know, colonel name like, yeah, I mean it sounds
Speaker 1: a little made up, right, um, and if it's Colonel
Speaker 1: Tune then it makes even more more Even somebody was
Speaker 1: being funny, yeah that it was like a play on
Speaker 1: cartoon or whatever. But you know, assigning some name that
Speaker 1: nobody could ever think, oh yeah, that's the real name
Speaker 1: of that pilot, like washing machine Charlie, Like nobody's ever
Speaker 1: gonna look at a record and be like, wow, yeah
Speaker 1: it was a weird made washing machine Charlie's did the
Speaker 1: did the Japanese have I didn't know washing machines were
Speaker 1: in use? Yeah, so that just I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: for me, that doesn't really follow. But yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like and I don't think that if his name actually,
Speaker 1: if they have signed a name tomb t O m B,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't see them. I couldn't see them quite as
Speaker 1: signing that to another pilot because you're kind of you're
Speaker 1: kind of giving him, you know, you're signing this name
Speaker 1: that sounds pretty badass, yeah, you know, yeah, and we're
Speaker 1: not going to us Yeah, pretty bad ass. So you know,
Speaker 1: just like you know, you're not going to name some
Speaker 1: other you know, Colonel Deaths or arg Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: or anything like that. You're you're not gonna be like, oh,
Speaker 1: his this unknown guy the punisher, Yeah, exactly, you're not
Speaker 1: gonna do that. You're gonna call him something, you know,
Speaker 1: you're gonna do ride him. You're gotta something exactly, Colonel
Speaker 1: Choopy or Colonel Sideways or something like that or not
Speaker 1: that one that's pretty badass when actually it's pretty hokey. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I've met that colonel. I see what I'm saying it.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, of course it's over the radio.
Speaker 1: He's speaking foreign language, and you know, so Tomb could
Speaker 1: have sounded like Tomb maybe I don't know. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot of ways that you can
Speaker 1: you can try and enunciate that to make it make sense,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't make sense. That's so it's too close
Speaker 1: to the real thing for us West, you know, English
Speaker 1: speakers to just ascribe that to a name from another
Speaker 1: language that we don't quite understand. The other problem with
Speaker 1: this theory is the fact that, and we talked about
Speaker 1: this a little bit earlier, pilots didn't train and fly
Speaker 1: a lot in different aircraft. If you were a big
Speaker 1: seventeen pilot, the program, was you flew the MiG seventeen
Speaker 1: to be the most proficient MiG seventeen pilot you could be,
Speaker 1: not you flew a MiG seventeen, and oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: we're also going to train you on a MiG twenty
Speaker 1: one and maybe something else, and you'll just be kind
Speaker 1: of an okay pilot overall, but not really good in
Speaker 1: all any one of them. That that wasn't the way
Speaker 1: it works. That's really true. It's like, because yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it takes a long time to get really good at
Speaker 1: an aircraft, and it's like, if you switch to the
Speaker 1: twenty one, you're throwing away a lot of good experience.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're taking some of with you obviously, but
Speaker 1: you're throwing a lot away too, So you know, I mean, no,
Speaker 1: I mean, I totally agree with that. I think in
Speaker 1: kind of theory, for the sake of argument, you could say,
Speaker 1: you know, this guy's wracked up six seven kills in
Speaker 1: this kind of crappy graduate and maybe and you know,
Speaker 1: who knows, maybe he one day was like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: let me take that other one out for a spin,
Speaker 1: and was equally good, and they were like, you can
Speaker 1: have this awesome one if you think you can kill more.
Speaker 1: It could have been I guess suppose in that case,
Speaker 1: let me take it up to see if I can
Speaker 1: kill a few American pilots. That he did, so okay,
Speaker 1: I guess you get it, get on. But typically that
Speaker 1: was not in the Soviets. I think we're running their
Speaker 1: air force and Soviet doctrine at all. And if you
Speaker 1: if you remember keep in mind though, it's it's the controls.
Speaker 1: You're not going to be the same from one model
Speaker 1: to the next. It's like getting into I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: pick on Chevy. You get into the little itty bitty
Speaker 1: Chevy card a little two seater that is a pregnant
Speaker 1: roller skate, and then you jump up into their giant
Speaker 1: s u V. The general basics are the same, but
Speaker 1: things you're not exactly the same, and they're in different places,
Speaker 1: and it's all gonna be a little different, and you're
Speaker 1: gonna be really not that good in the big one
Speaker 1: when you just got out of the pregnant roller skate
Speaker 1: one at yeah. Well, and and that's why I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, for the sake of Argiament, it's I
Speaker 1: guess it's technically feasible, but highly unlikely. Ye though, I
Speaker 1: guess I could see the kind of accidental They just
Speaker 1: assigned that call name to any pilot they don't know
Speaker 1: that kills somebody, you know, And then that would make
Speaker 1: sense that it was kind of it was either plane
Speaker 1: they didn't they oftentimes didn't know the call sign of
Speaker 1: the pilots that were actually, you know, striking their aircraft
Speaker 1: and they're just That would also explain why it was
Speaker 1: tomb right, because they were like, oh craft, this unnamed
Speaker 1: to you know, the tomb guy came again and took
Speaker 1: down one of our air craft. Well but you know,
Speaker 1: but you you you understand what I'm saying. I get it,
Speaker 1: I get it. So that could be an alternate on
Speaker 1: this that it was an accidental creation. It's a moniker
Speaker 1: given to a pilot who scores a kill, but we
Speaker 1: don't know who that pilot is, and it gets repeated
Speaker 1: over and over, and as the beginning of the theory said,
Speaker 1: then becomes when somebody else finds the log book a
Speaker 1: year later, holy cow, this guy is a badass. Or
Speaker 1: you know, actually, this is another theory that's out there
Speaker 1: in the same hole. It was a myth thing and
Speaker 1: I found this theory on twenty one century Socialism dot Com.
Speaker 1: Yeah I did, for real. Yeah, I don't make this stuff.
Speaker 1: That theory is that the Colonel Tuone was actually was
Speaker 1: actually a creation of the U. S. Navy whose fancies
Speaker 1: were and they created Colonel Tomb and created this big
Speaker 1: legend and then had him killed as a big morale booster.
Speaker 1: It's like that this legendary pilot and we killed him off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I can see that. I can understand it. It
Speaker 1: seems pretty weak, and it seems kind of hard to mean,
Speaker 1: that's that would take a long time to build up,
Speaker 1: especially when you consider how often guys are cycling in
Speaker 1: and out of their tours of duty. I mean, you
Speaker 1: would have to you'd have to let that run for
Speaker 1: at least a year, if not too before you pull
Speaker 1: the final lever and kill him off. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1: That's that's that's kind of the whole thing about about it.
Speaker 1: I think I think twenty one century Socialism dot Com
Speaker 1: would be point was that you know, here it is here,
Speaker 1: here's the perfidious you know us once again, you know,
Speaker 1: coming up with this big lie you know about Yeah,
Speaker 1: I kinda I kind of suspect they probably made it
Speaker 1: up or some commy made it up. I don't know
Speaker 1: who knows. Yeah, that was a perfect lead into the
Speaker 1: next theory, because the next theory is that actually Colonel
Speaker 1: tomb was a piece of propaganda, but he was a
Speaker 1: piece of propaganda created by the vietname the North Vietnamese. Yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of like carrots. Yeah, carrots, carrots. Well, I don't
Speaker 1: remember during which war it was, but it was right
Speaker 1: when the US had come up with night vision technology,
Speaker 1: radar technology. But they when people they just started doing
Speaker 1: this propaganda thing in America where they were like, carrots
Speaker 1: will give you great vision, and that's not like really
Speaker 1: actually true, but they they were trying to cover up
Speaker 1: the fact that they had this advanced technology and that's
Speaker 1: why they were being successful overseas during the war. So
Speaker 1: they just kind of went with it. And now it's
Speaker 1: like part of the guys have great vision because they
Speaker 1: all eat carrots. Yeah, I remember talking about I remember
Speaker 1: that when I was a kid. That was that was
Speaker 1: kind of like, you know, the accepted wisdom is that
Speaker 1: carrots were good for your eyes. Yeah they're not. They're
Speaker 1: not bad for your eyes. Carrots are not going to
Speaker 1: hurt you, actually give you like supervision, and you won't
Speaker 1: go blind if you don't eat them, so you might
Speaker 1: depends on how else are eating. Okay, don't don't listen
Speaker 1: to that, poison girls. The theory is. The theory is
Speaker 1: that indeed the North Vietnamese made this particular pilot up,
Speaker 1: as Joe would say, out of whole cloth. And they
Speaker 1: did so because, as we've already established, we were listening
Speaker 1: to them, and they knew we were listening to them,
Speaker 1: so they said, hey, why don't we go ahead and
Speaker 1: make some crap up because nothing screws up the enemy
Speaker 1: then a giant stinking pile of bold that we make
Speaker 1: up out of nowhere. Well, and it's not wouldn't be
Speaker 1: that hard. So on all these different runs, you know
Speaker 1: you send us, one of the pilots is just named
Speaker 1: Colonel Tomb, you know, just that simple. Yeah, it looks
Speaker 1: like Colonel Tomb is just everywhere. Well, and the other
Speaker 1: thing that that they can do is they can and
Speaker 1: what would be easy to help leverage this is that
Speaker 1: there was always a commander of the squadron, and that
Speaker 1: commander didn't always go up. But let's say that they
Speaker 1: made the gag that if the commander is not actually
Speaker 1: in the air physically. You say he's in the air,
Speaker 1: and you call him something that then is badly interpreted.
Speaker 1: And that's again we're going back to this, you know,
Speaker 1: this interpretation of a name that is given. And maybe
Speaker 1: they had a half dozen different names that they use
Speaker 1: and Tomb just happened to be the one that stuck
Speaker 1: for the US. Because it turns out Colonel Pinky wasn't
Speaker 1: all that scary of a name. You know, it could
Speaker 1: have been an inadvertent thing on the part of the
Speaker 1: North Vietnamese. It might turn out the Colonel Tomb is
Speaker 1: kind of you know, Vietnamese military slang for venereal disease
Speaker 1: set for example. So the pilots are out in their
Speaker 1: bombing around or whatever, and you know, they're killing a
Speaker 1: little time in their way there, and one him says, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like I'm getting another visit from got another visit
Speaker 1: from Colonel Tomb, So you know, and so maybe that's it.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's all it was. And that is the dirtiest
Speaker 1: answer I have founded this story yet, and I like
Speaker 1: it a lot. I was gonna say, maybe it was
Speaker 1: something they were competing for, Like whoever on that rum
Speaker 1: gets most kills gets to be called Colonel tomb for
Speaker 1: the next run. That's true, and then that helps also
Speaker 1: explain how they racked up so many kills under that moniker.
Speaker 1: It's possible. I do have to say, though, there is
Speaker 1: a gigantic problem with this theory, and that is that
Speaker 1: the North Vietnamese government, or the Vietnamese government in general,
Speaker 1: because they're a unified country now, does not let any
Speaker 1: opportunity to promote the deeds of its patriots to pass
Speaker 1: them by. And if this guy were as proficient and
Speaker 1: good as the records in the stories say, then he
Speaker 1: should have had as Joe said, earlier statues erected. And
Speaker 1: I and we've talked about this on another episode, and
Speaker 1: you two know, is that I just got back from Vietnam.
Speaker 1: I was in the North, I was in the South,
Speaker 1: and I saw plaqueards and billboards accounting to the deeds
Speaker 1: of everyday people during this conflict. And granted it was
Speaker 1: the fifty year memorials or anniversary, so they were putting
Speaker 1: out more of this, but very I mean, what we've
Speaker 1: been considered little acts of heroism were made giant scale.
Speaker 1: So this guy that is now on a giant scale
Speaker 1: of heroism of beating back the Americans. There should have
Speaker 1: been a lot of stuff. They wouldn't just pass the
Speaker 1: opportunity by to to tout, to to trot him out
Speaker 1: and say, look at our great pilot. Um. I don't
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I don't understand how that follows this theory,
Speaker 1: because isn't this theory that he was total boogeyman made
Speaker 1: up by the Vietnamese. It is, But if if he
Speaker 1: was made, it doesn't make sense that they would have
Speaker 1: made him because they want They would gravitate, and they
Speaker 1: would grab, and they would they would elevate anybody who
Speaker 1: was doing good on their side. So it seems weird
Speaker 1: that the architect of the scheme would at least get
Speaker 1: a note something to that effect. Ye, the other body
Speaker 1: would have got recognition. The other problem I have with
Speaker 1: this series too, is that you make that this this
Speaker 1: big scary boogeyman to scare the pants off the American
Speaker 1: pilots and stuff. You don't kill him off, right, and
Speaker 1: they killed them off? Why would they do that? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, they may not have killed them off. It
Speaker 1: may have actually just gotten to a point where they
Speaker 1: found out through their moles in the U. S. Intelligence
Speaker 1: that the US thought they had actually gotten Colonel too,
Speaker 1: because they had because he shot down the right number,
Speaker 1: because that was one of the planes that was identified
Speaker 1: as him. And they thought, all right, let's just let
Speaker 1: us let them. This is too much, this has gotten
Speaker 1: out of hand. Let's just let them. Maybe well, and
Speaker 1: there's some pilots that are that were believed to be too,
Speaker 1: and this is we're kind of going off script here,
Speaker 1: and that's fine because we do this all the time.
Speaker 1: There was so at least one, if not two other
Speaker 1: pilots that for a long time were believed to have
Speaker 1: been tomb and those guys were actually retired from the
Speaker 1: pilot seat. They were taken out of the air by
Speaker 1: the Vietnamese arm or military and said, listen, you were
Speaker 1: too valuable to us. You have to train the next
Speaker 1: generation of pilots. And so then they became a trainer.
Speaker 1: And these guys there's I mean, if you look through
Speaker 1: the records, you can find you know, this guy retired
Speaker 1: after the war to hear and did this, and this
Speaker 1: one did that. But again he we know where those
Speaker 1: guys were, and they're talked about. They didn't just disappear,
Speaker 1: so it just it seems weird that they would just
Speaker 1: invent him and then let him go. And I guess
Speaker 1: my problem with it is that if they did invent
Speaker 1: him and then they let him die, what a better
Speaker 1: way to stick a finger in the bad guy's eye
Speaker 1: to then to say later on, oh, hey, by the way,
Speaker 1: you know, Colonel Tomb, he was total crap. We made
Speaker 1: him up, and we're gonna now celebrate the fact that
Speaker 1: we fooled you with this giant campaign of crap Sam
Speaker 1: Uncle Sam. Yeah, yeah, but well Uncle Sam must be
Speaker 1: used to it by now. Um. Yeah. So I'm not
Speaker 1: buying this, Sari. And for the reason that they wouldn't
Speaker 1: kill him off, Yeah, I just don't buy it, all right,
Speaker 1: So it's it's a it's a bad TV plot line. Yeah,
Speaker 1: anything else on this particular one devon cool? Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: let's go on to theory number three, which is that
Speaker 1: Colonel Tomb was in fact real, but he was not
Speaker 1: a Vietnamese pilot. In matter of fact, he was one
Speaker 1: of their allies pilots. As we talked about earlier, both
Speaker 1: the Chinese and the Soviets were in country and helping
Speaker 1: the North Vietnamese. And I mean, as with equipment and advisors.
Speaker 1: And we do know that in at least one other war,
Speaker 1: which was the Korean War, there were Soviet pilots fighting
Speaker 1: in that in the air. And we do know also
Speaker 1: that in the Vietnam conflict there were Soviet um Soviet
Speaker 1: guys running different battle stations and battalions on the ground.
Speaker 1: So it's it's probable that this guy would have been
Speaker 1: and you know, from another country who was a neighbor
Speaker 1: country that was an ally country. Of course, nobody's ever
Speaker 1: come forward. Now, the Soviets, they're pretty big on coming
Speaker 1: forward and taken um credit for what they've done, so
Speaker 1: it seems funny that they didn't do it. The Chinese
Speaker 1: are a little less so, at least in the past.
Speaker 1: I assume that they were communicating air to air in
Speaker 1: Vietnamese correct. Yeah, as far as I'm aware it was,
Speaker 1: there was no there was no Slavic language in there,
Speaker 1: or no traditional Chinese or Mandarin in there, So as
Speaker 1: far as I'm aware, it was all in Vietnamese. So
Speaker 1: I and so I don't know. I mean, I'm assuming
Speaker 1: that Chinese, a Chinese person would have an easier time
Speaker 1: learning Vietnamese in a Russian, But I don't know, or
Speaker 1: at least speaking it without a heavy accent. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that it is a similar foundation. Um. Actually,
Speaker 1: I know they're a similar foundation because vietname, the Vietnamese language,
Speaker 1: and the Chinese language do a threadback like five hundred
Speaker 1: plus years ago before they split apart, and then Vietnamese
Speaker 1: do have Chinese characters as kind of decorative symbols to
Speaker 1: represent things, although from what I understand, they can't read
Speaker 1: them because they read their language, not the Chinese language.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it is possible. It's possibly, what you're saying,
Speaker 1: more likely Chinese than Soviet. Yeah. But but just because
Speaker 1: somebody's Soviet doesn't mean they can't learn to fluently eco
Speaker 1: language other than their own. I'm just talking about I'm
Speaker 1: just talking about speaking it so well with so little
Speaker 1: accents that the guy, the guy listening to the other hand,
Speaker 1: can't tell that you're a foreigner. You know. I would
Speaker 1: just think the Chinese would have a better chance of
Speaker 1: getting away with that than I don't know. But but
Speaker 1: the thing is is, again, nobody has ever come forward
Speaker 1: and made a claim you would I mean, unless they
Speaker 1: did indeed die in the conflict, But even then, you
Speaker 1: would think their government would say, oh, hey, uncle Sam,
Speaker 1: we pumped you. I mean, unless it was you know,
Speaker 1: Russia and they were, you know, coming out of this thing,
Speaker 1: they were like, oh, well, maybe it doesn't really behoove
Speaker 1: us for relations to admit that this guy who killed
Speaker 1: a bunch of their people was actually our guy. Maybe
Speaker 1: it actually politically makes more sense for us to just
Speaker 1: keep that under wraps and not really you know, talk
Speaker 1: about it, and that that would explain why both countries
Speaker 1: would then kind of sweeping under Vietnamese don't want to say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: their best guy, he wasn't our guy, and like you're saying,
Speaker 1: the Soviets really don't want to bring light to China.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, the politics are a thing that
Speaker 1: we have, but I mean, you know, that's just the
Speaker 1: diplomacy is a thing that we have to take into
Speaker 1: consideration here as well, because you know, it's it's certainly
Speaker 1: possible that at that time in the history that they
Speaker 1: just thought no. I think that especially from the Soviet
Speaker 1: point of view there, their long term plan has always
Speaker 1: been about you know, bringing American basically bringing American opinions
Speaker 1: of themselves as low as possible, and it's been a
Speaker 1: long term project, and so a reality TV they're doing
Speaker 1: their job. Oh they're there. And look at our universities
Speaker 1: there is working well and so the U. And so
Speaker 1: the thing about it is is, from that point of view,
Speaker 1: what is it better to have the American public believe
Speaker 1: they got their butts kicked by a combination of the Soviets,
Speaker 1: Chinese and Vietnamese or they got their butts kicked by
Speaker 1: just the Vietnamese. What what serves your purposes better? Yeah, definitely,
Speaker 1: just depends a long term plan. You're absolutely right. Yeah, okay, Oak,
Speaker 1: Let's go on to what is actually our last theory
Speaker 1: and the Yeah, we raced through the beginning and then
Speaker 1: we drug out through this. So the last theory is
Speaker 1: that Colonel Tomb was not a pilot, not a single
Speaker 1: pilot anyway, but instead multiple pilots, several different pilots. Yeah,
Speaker 1: wrong script. So there there are quite a few, as
Speaker 1: we talked about before, viet North Vietnamese pilots who had
Speaker 1: been considered aces or scored records to be aces, and
Speaker 1: I have three of them listed here because these are
Speaker 1: kind of the top three contenders who may have been
Speaker 1: mishmashed together to create Colonel Tomb. So there's Wind van
Speaker 1: Cock who has nine kills, there's Wind van Bay with
Speaker 1: seven kills, and Wind Doc Sat with six kills. So
Speaker 1: these three guys right here, or that is uh sixteen
Speaker 1: twenty two kills between three pilots right there, and they
Speaker 1: flew different planes, but it's possible that they may have
Speaker 1: been melded and mashed together. And the reason that some
Speaker 1: of that is is if you remember those photos of
Speaker 1: the airplanes that I told you before had been circulated.
Speaker 1: So there's the the MiG seventeen number three zero two
Speaker 1: zero with the six stars, and then make the MiG
Speaker 1: twenty one with number four three two six that had
Speaker 1: thirteen stars on its nose. Well, I held this little
Speaker 1: fact back when we talked about it in the beginning.
Speaker 1: But in a traditional sense, at least the way I
Speaker 1: think about it, I think most Westerners do, and especially
Speaker 1: because we watch movies and TV. The number of stars
Speaker 1: on the nose of a plane denotes the number of kills,
Speaker 1: and those number of kills are to the soul pilot
Speaker 1: or like copilot team that fly that particular bird. Because yeah,
Speaker 1: in our military, the pilot or the or the team
Speaker 1: get the same plane always, that's their plane. Well that
Speaker 1: that's not the way that it worked in the Vietnam conflict,
Speaker 1: because the Vietnamese People's air force a lot of planes
Speaker 1: and a glut of pilots. So and this is kind
Speaker 1: of makes sense from a communist state of you of
Speaker 1: you know, because we share everything, so it's everybody's and
Speaker 1: that means that everybody gets the victory. And so instead
Speaker 1: of a single plane having a single pilot with X
Speaker 1: number of kills, you had a single plane with X
Speaker 1: number of kills, so three or four different pilots, three
Speaker 1: or four or five, six different pilots, so each guy
Speaker 1: could have taken down one enemy aircraft and that plane
Speaker 1: looks like it's flown by one seriously skilled pilot, and
Speaker 1: that's the their system worked. So suddenly you can see
Speaker 1: where the confusion of looking at the numbers on the
Speaker 1: actual nose cone and how that could be recorded to
Speaker 1: the Western I this happens. So, yeah, we're hearing a
Speaker 1: lot about this Colonel tomb but we don't actually know
Speaker 1: how many kills he's got. And then somebody up but
Speaker 1: he seems to be the most deadliest of them of
Speaker 1: the ball, and then somebody spots us thing somewhere in
Speaker 1: a photograph or wherever their teen stars, and thinks that
Speaker 1: must be the famous Colonel Tune. Yeah, me, whichever one
Speaker 1: it is, You're you're not wrong in saying Tune or
Speaker 1: two must be the infamous tomb because oh my god,
Speaker 1: look at all those stars. Yeah. Is there a possibility
Speaker 1: that their code name, their call signs were actually assigned
Speaker 1: to their planes, not the pilots themselves. I do not
Speaker 1: know the answer to that, to be quite honest, I
Speaker 1: had not thought of that particular angle. I had had
Speaker 1: the idea that it was possible, and this may not
Speaker 1: be right, but I'd had the idea that maybe when
Speaker 1: a plane went down, they reassigned the number to another plane,
Speaker 1: and then that plane continued on with you know, new
Speaker 1: with a new set of stars. But of course, if
Speaker 1: you see this makes seventeen thirty with six stars, and
Speaker 1: then you see it with four stars, and then you
Speaker 1: see it again with five, three stars, whatever, you could
Speaker 1: start to think that the numbers are stacking up and
Speaker 1: something's confusing. But I don't know. This is it's, by
Speaker 1: the way, total speculation. Well I guess guess, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I guess it just a little bit would The
Speaker 1: reason that I would suggest that is, you know, they
Speaker 1: only had so many planes, but they also had like
Speaker 1: a bunch of teams that went out in different planes.
Speaker 1: And I almost wonder if they just always wrote, okay there,
Speaker 1: all right. You know these two pilots, this pilot and
Speaker 1: co pilot team are assigned to this call sign airplane,
Speaker 1: which makes it harder to track the actual pilots because
Speaker 1: they knew that other people were listening. So it's they're
Speaker 1: just tracking the planes at that point. And then you
Speaker 1: just are never saying who everybody who's on that mission,
Speaker 1: and everybody who's on the ground, you know, knows who's
Speaker 1: in what plane. I don't know anything. This is total speculation.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, I like the idea, except that
Speaker 1: I have read accounting that talk about the fact that
Speaker 1: sometimes pilots would melt down in the seat when another
Speaker 1: pilot would go down, and they would they would break
Speaker 1: their their communications cycle and suddenly start using the proper
Speaker 1: names and so but but that's still but but what
Speaker 1: I what I'm getting at, though, is that I think
Speaker 1: that they started out using whatever they're assigned call sign was,
Speaker 1: and then using you know, your actual names. So but
Speaker 1: not man, but that would still follow if Iceman was
Speaker 1: the plane and people are freaking out because ice Man's
Speaker 1: going down, and then suddenly they're talking about, oh my god,
Speaker 1: John's dead. Still follows right, because they're still freaking out out,
Speaker 1: they break character or break whatever protocol, and they're just
Speaker 1: talking about the person that was in that thing. That
Speaker 1: actually the call sign was assigned to thee not necessarily
Speaker 1: that pilot. I don't know, don't I don't know I
Speaker 1: would do it. If I had an air force, I
Speaker 1: would definitely just assigned call signs airplanes. I'm sure we'll
Speaker 1: get a lot of really angry emails about why that
Speaker 1: doesn't work. And Kim, Yeah, that's Kilmer. It's just that
Speaker 1: just is how I would do it if it were me.
Speaker 1: Because no track the planes, not the pilot. You know,
Speaker 1: it makes it harder for them to keep these sort
Speaker 1: of logs of Okay, well you know Iceman is really
Speaker 1: crappy at this thing. Well actually, matter of fact, it
Speaker 1: turns out Iceman is just the plane. So yeah, and
Speaker 1: and and it's possible, Like I said, though, is that
Speaker 1: it maybe that it's it's that it's just these couple
Speaker 1: of guys that their numbers or their kills recorded by
Speaker 1: the North Vietnamese. You know, it's nine, seven and six.
Speaker 1: He's particular gentleman that I just listed out. But of
Speaker 1: course on the U S side, those were all erroneously
Speaker 1: assigned over the Colonel Tomb, and so in the US
Speaker 1: books these guys are not as good. But then Tomb
Speaker 1: is taken, and I don't know, I really don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is really hard to say. I do have to say, though,
Speaker 1: there is one hitch that I came across in this
Speaker 1: entire story. By the way, this is kind of stepping
Speaker 1: outside of the theory section and onto Steve soapbox section,
Speaker 1: which I try not to do, but this one really
Speaker 1: made me mad, is I? In the In the telling
Speaker 1: of the story, we talked about the Hungarian doctor ist
Speaker 1: von top Sev. God, I'm butchering his name every time,
Speaker 1: and I apologize it, like, okay, anyway, the doctor is
Speaker 1: Stavan Well in everything that I had been reading for
Speaker 1: a long time, it talked about how the Hungarian doctor
Speaker 1: had gone and done the initial research and then followed
Speaker 1: by other people. But as we want to do, I said, well,
Speaker 1: I want to I want to learn some more about
Speaker 1: this guy. And I want to maybe read some of
Speaker 1: his stuff and check him out. And I started following
Speaker 1: the path of him, and at first I started coming
Speaker 1: across these sites that were reviews of his books, and
Speaker 1: I got the feeling that maybe he curated them, because normally,
Speaker 1: when you get into a review site and you see
Speaker 1: other authors on there, they say, oh, doctor, the Hungarian
Speaker 1: Doctor is a great guy, blah blah blah, or the
Speaker 1: Hungarian Doctor is full of crap and here is why,
Speaker 1: and I've proved it. But instead these reviews said something like, uh,
Speaker 1: the Hungarian Doctor has got everything right in his book,
Speaker 1: and I got it all wrong in my book, and
Speaker 1: I am a horrible author and researcher and a giant
Speaker 1: pile of pooh as an author. Doctor, Well that's why
Speaker 1: I thought, that's really funny. I think he's kind of
Speaker 1: curating this stuff. And he's also hugely prolific. I found
Speaker 1: at least a dozen books. It looks like he's putting
Speaker 1: out a book a year on a different kind of aircraft.
Speaker 1: Is apparently a pleasurist, right, Well, it appears that way
Speaker 1: because as I got onto stuff, I started reading, and
Speaker 1: there's one review that I found, uh, and it's on Amazon,
Speaker 1: which is great, and it's his book about the Vietnam conflict.
Speaker 1: And in there's the ones that we sided as talking
Speaker 1: about Colonel tomb And basically what it said is that
Speaker 1: he had taken and copied almost word for word, including
Speaker 1: the front and rear covers of a book which in
Speaker 1: English is History of the People's Air Force of Vietnam.
Speaker 1: I can't pronounce it in the local dialect as I tried,
Speaker 1: and I just cut it out because it was really
Speaker 1: bad on my part. But basically he just straight up
Speaker 1: copied it and put it in English, and somehow that
Speaker 1: inserted him into the story. Sadly, it appears more and
Speaker 1: more these days. This is a common thing, the plagiarism. Um,
Speaker 1: have you what is the book? There's that book of
Speaker 1: out there called The Art of Not Giving An F.
Speaker 1: Have you guys seen this book? Okay, well, this book
Speaker 1: is out there. Well, I was at home talking to
Speaker 1: my wife, is like, oh my god, I can't believe
Speaker 1: I found this blatant thing of plagiarism. She's like, oh, dude,
Speaker 1: go on, look for that book, The Art of Not
Speaker 1: Giving an F and look for it on Amazon, and
Speaker 1: you'll find another version that hells almost an identical copy,
Speaker 1: almost an identical cover, and it's five bucks cheaper. So
Speaker 1: it appears that this is happening more and more and more,
Speaker 1: and somehow this guy ten twenty years ago did it
Speaker 1: and has become just he's just been swept up in
Speaker 1: the copy paste phenomena that is the Internet talking about
Speaker 1: stories like this. So I say that because pois and girls,
Speaker 1: you need to check your sources, because I almost was
Speaker 1: like and doctor the Hungarian doctors said, and then I
Speaker 1: found out my source was complete crap and it was
Speaker 1: not a good thing. Yeah, the Hungarian doctor might not
Speaker 1: have been wrong about any of this stuff. It's just
Speaker 1: that he just he never did the research copied at all,
Speaker 1: so you can't really take credit. But ala Atlica is
Speaker 1: hopefully not leading astray. Yeah. Well, appears that others have
Speaker 1: gone and asked the same questions, so that it is
Speaker 1: still a valid mystery. The original author, yes, as well
Speaker 1: as Western historians have since followed and asked the question
Speaker 1: and tried to figure it out, So it is still
Speaker 1: truly we don't know. It is a puzzle, and yeah,
Speaker 1: people still are speculating about it. It's uh, I guess
Speaker 1: said Donna web pages that most people tended to look at. Yea.
Speaker 1: So at this point I want to know what the
Speaker 1: favorite theory for each of you. Well, Devin, you want
Speaker 1: to go first. Yeah, it was the airplanes favorite theory.
Speaker 1: The second to that would be that it's a it's
Speaker 1: a number of different pilots that just got lumped in together.
Speaker 1: I don't think there was the airplane because I don't
Speaker 1: think you'd want to name your plane Tomb. I don't
Speaker 1: think that's that's not conducive to good morale. But so
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go with it was just a myth, the
Speaker 1: product of confusion among the second guys, and would maybe
Speaker 1: ate it along with it by the North Vietnamese A
Speaker 1: little bit too, could have been that it could have
Speaker 1: been one of those things where there was a little
Speaker 1: confusion and they're scratching their heads early on and going, wow,
Speaker 1: this is this Colonel Tomb. And of course there are sources,
Speaker 1: you know, because I'm sure there were agents, uh you know,
Speaker 1: I mean most of the guys doing the translating will
Speaker 1: probably Vietnamese, probably at least a few of them been
Speaker 1: formed to the North and they said, hey, there's just
Speaker 1: there's this scary guy named Colonel Tomb and then North
Speaker 1: is like, oh really, then he doesn't exist, but what
Speaker 1: the hell, We'll have a little fun with this. And
Speaker 1: it could have been a combination of those things. And
Speaker 1: I I really feel I kind of agree with you.
Speaker 1: I think that it is some combination of a myth,
Speaker 1: both on the part of the US and apart on
Speaker 1: the North Vietnamese. They don't know where it where it
Speaker 1: ends in that mix, but that's that's kind of where
Speaker 1: I think it's at. All. Right, Well, we're we're done
Speaker 1: with a fly over there, so we should probably get
Speaker 1: into the important details that I know everybody listens to
Speaker 1: the last couple of minutes to try and get a
Speaker 1: hold of, because this is what you love to hear
Speaker 1: from us, which is all of the how to find
Speaker 1: us stuff. Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely, So how does somebody
Speaker 1: send us an email? Steve? Well, I'll tell you about that,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna save that to the end, Joe, because
Speaker 1: that's the order is written on a piece of paper
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Speaker 1: not in order, I can't do it. So we of
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Speaker 1: with all of that done, I think that we're done. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's the last of it. You want to make seventeen
Speaker 1: and you want to make twenty one? Which do you want?
Speaker 1: You guys, neither neither. Ya'll take a okay good because
Speaker 1: I'm afraid to fly. So I'm just gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go to John Madden Way and I'm going to get
Speaker 1: on an amtrack. So we are all going to get
Speaker 1: out of here in our various forms of transport, and
Speaker 1: we will talk to you all next week to