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Part of Pilots Fear 'Vietnik' Phone Calls

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Pilots Fear 'Vietnik' Phone Calls
B y Beverly Deepe
A Special Correspondent

ABOARD THE CARRIER
KITI'Y HAWK.
A secret fear of pilots on
this aircraft carrier is the
threatening and intimidating
anonymous telephone calls being received by their families
from what the pilots call
Vietniks.
"Some of our mothers and
wives have been r-eceiving
phone calls every hour on the
hour all night for many nights
by people using foul Ian,guage," one pilot explained.
"Even the American public
doesn't know about this."
The pilot of a $3 million
A-6a Intruder-who had flo wn
in the first raids as air strikes
resumed against North Viet
Nam Monday-said : ' "The
wives of two of my friends
have been· receiving phope
calls saying in so many words,
'your husband is a, fink for
fighting in Viet Nam.'

UNLISTED

"The only reaction from the
husbands," he continued "was
t o get unlisted phone num~
bers.''
Another Intruder pilot_sa!d
h is wife had also been receiving phone calls, but he
snapped, "I don't want to ·
discuss it with anyone.'' He,
too, has told his wife to ob! tain an unlisted phone number at home.
"We know that th_e Independence ran into some of this
when it pulled into home port,"
another pilot explained. "The
wives were telephoned and told
n ot to meet the ship because
it was showing support for our
activities in Viet Nam.''
All the pilots refused to give
their names-and, more important, thefr home addresses
-to correspondents.
I
One Naval information officer said he had to request
more than 20 fighter pilots £o
-a ppear on a national American television program ibe-

1

DOMESTIC CONCERN-The jet pilots stationed aboard the USS Kitty Hawk, shown
here steaming in the Pacific, have another concern beyond their homhing missio~s
in North Viet Nam, Their families in the U.S. have heen receiving nocturnal threats.
!fore finding who would volunteer.
"Of course, we pilots hesitate in talking to the press,"
one explained, "because we
don't want to give our names
and get a big spread in the
,newspapers back home. The
Vietniks just look up the
names in the telephone book,
call up and cause turmoil in
our families.
"Also, the enemy is using
psychological warfare and
this information and creating
grief among the pilots shot
down over enemy territory.
"The Vietniks have ways of
procuring information and
feeding it to the Communists,
which we haven't encountered in past wars ."
Another pilot said his wife

in :ainghamton had not encountered any anonymous
phone calls.
"The phone calls vary with
the area of the country that
the family is living in," one
pilot explained. "It's not just
New-- York or Pennsylvania.
It's not just Kitty Hawk
-but other shilps as we~l.
It's not just officers, but also
some of the enlisted men as
well.

VARIATIONS
"The phone calls threaten
in one way in Virginia, for
example, but in another area
maybe it's just foul language
and intimidation. One phone
call from one group threatened eventual harm to the

family because the husband
was over here fighting and it
wasn't our business to be
h ere. None of the men like
to talk about it-they jusf
accept it as a . side hazard of
the job.''
Some of the pilots brushed
off the impot·,tance of the
Vietniks in America; others
were bitter.
The pilot from Binghamton
referred to the Vietniks as
"the great unwashed back
h ome.'' Another called them
"ridiculous, but not dangerous-just kinda stupid."
And another bitterly remarked, "I wish they'd put
the Vietniks out here, give
them a gun-an~ then -we'd
see if they'd thr1 v away the
gun and put urplacards."