Thinking Sideways: Who was Colonel Tomb?

In this case, it's four people who were killed in a small town of Mississippi and one black man on death row who has been tried six times for their murder. You can find In the Dark now on Apple, Podcast, Stitcher, or wherever else you might listen. Think You're so d looking art. Hello, comrades, and welcome again to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I am Steve, as always, joined by and Joe, and once again we've got a mystery for you.

Yeah this week, comrade, Well, this week we're going to do another Vietnam War mystery and I think that unlike the last one, most people are gonna like it. The basic overview our our mystery is that during the Vietnam War. A Vietnam People's Air Force pilot identified by U S Intelligence as Win Tomb or maybe the name is actually Tuned, but either way, Win was considered to be one of the most proficient and deadliest pilots between the years of

nineteen and seventy two. He was the actually the Tom Cruise of North Vietnam, Yes he was, and during that time he took down thirteen US aircraft. Of course, after the conflict ended, it was discovered that officially there was no record of Tomb in the North Vietnamese UH system. You know, they have no record of this guy, which begged the question of well, why and who who was he? So shall we get into the mystery? That was some sort of spirit perhaps Now Tom, when okay, I love

it when we start off like this. To start at the beginning. During the Vietnam War, the Vietnam People's Air Force got help, of course from the Soviets, and that help came in the form of aircraft and training on how to fly and operate that aircraft. And initially the Vietnamese were the North Vietnamese were given MiG seventeens and then later they were given MiG twenty ones, which we're not the latest and greatest in fighter plane technology, but

they were. I mean, the seventeens were kind of classic nineteen fifties cold war technology. You know, It's like the Saber jet that we had. They looked like flying pipes. Ye yeah, yeah, well if you think about it, So the MiG seventeen, it's got it's got this weird open nose cone thing going on, so instead of coming to a nice point, it stops and it's open, and then its wings or what you would consider a traditional airplane wing to be, but they're slooped back and they have

a rounded edge to them. But then the Big twenty one has actual pointy nose and more of the triangular shaped wings. So it was more modern in that sense. But of course both planes are. They're very effective if put into the right hands, and the Vietnamese had to use them because they were the planes that they had, so they became very proficient with them, which was the idea of the training. Now, there there were downfalls to both planes. The Mix seventeen specifically, as Joe said, was

an older plane. It couldn't quite get up to Mock one from what I understand, and also it had old school hydraulic control or I take that back. It didn't have hydraulic controls, which meant that when you were going really fast, it was sluggish to respond because of course, as we've talked about fly by wire, I got I

do this every time, I got it mixed up. But you have to as hard as you can pull is as much force as you're going to exert on the mechanical linka exactly exactly, so that that slows them down from high speed maneuvers, where the twenty ones are more akin to the F four phantoms that the US were flying at that time, which were considered you know, kind of top of the line aircraft, at least fighter jets.

During the Vietnam Conflict, the U A signals Intelligence, which is uses the acronym sick int, which just pronounces so well, they tracked all of the pilots that they could, and they did that by their call signs, because of course they're eavesdropping on all of the radio communications. I mean, that's what signals intelligence does. The other side is doing a similar thing. It's just why you know, we actually have you know, we actually have more discipline when it

comes to things like call signs. Apparently our pilots changed their call sign every with every mission. Yeah, so you might have you might have a nickname like Tom Cruise and top Gun, but your actual call sign is not going to be that nickname, and probably every time, yeah, you're not gonna actually be they're not gonna be actually calling. Yeah, yeah, exactly do they get to come up with them or they I think they're assigned. Yeah, yeah, that's probably makes

more sense. It would be hard. It does make sense because otherwise they know who's in the air and who's not. You know, don't you don't want them knowing anything if you can possibly help it. Well, but if you get to pick your own, like every mission, it's like, all right, guys, we're going out for a mission tomorrow. Everybody picked a

call sign and you can't be Archer again. Okay, yeah that yeah, no, Well, but you know what's funny about that is that we've apparently we've gotten much better about it. But for a long time, during the Vietnam War, there was a run that the US used to do every day, the exact same course, at the exact same time, with the exact same I mean to the minute, to the point that the North Vietnamese knew exactly when they were coming through and leverage that against them quite effectively and

took out a whole bunch of planes. And I can't remember what operation that was in, but I mean, now you it makes sense why we we switch it up all the time. But then it apparently wasn't as big of a deal. People didn't realize and how important that was. We probably didn't think they had the capability, and all of a sudden it turns out they acquired it on

the sly. Yeah. What happens here is, as we've said, they're listening to the radio adder they're building histories and identifying the different pilots, the U s intelligences of the Vietnamese pilots, kind of building histories or dossiers of you know, where they've been and what they've done right and what they've done wrong, their their strengths awaknesses, and that allows them to eventually become start tracking this one pilot in particular,

who we're talking about, which is Colonel tomb He had taken out several US aircraft in the mid to late nineteen sixties and had become a bit of a boogeyman for US pilots, and as the war would go on, he would rack up more and more kills of US aircraft and was considered a flying ace, which if you don't know what a flying aces. To be considered an ace, you have to generally speaking in this dirt. Depending on the conflict, this can vary, but you have to have

taken out at least five enemy aircraft. If you take out four, you're a good pilot, but you're not an ace. These numbers, um seemed like a little low just to the layman, right, So do we have an average of you know, how many flight how many aircraft and normal pilot would take out in a conflict like this, Well, there there's a lot of difficulty in that. It depends

on how target richer environment is. So in the Vietnam War, in the beginning, the Vietnamese had about seven aircraft total available to them, whereas the US had hundreds in the air. So it's a target poor environment for the US and a target rich environment for the Vietnamese. Now, as the war would go on, the Vietnamese would get more more planes. But again it's how many targets are available at any one time for you to take down. So that's it's

it's a weird ballet. It's uh, you know, for them typically are flying in formation and one big can come over and just shoot an air to air missile. We're gonna hit somebody. So it's kind of a shotgun kind of thing. Really, I mean, I guess you're an ace, but what do you do? You ran over, you know, fire a missile with this group of as and hit one of them. It's not the most you know, fantastic, it's glorious according to Hollywood. But when it comes to taking out your enemy, you did your job. Oh you

totally did. But uh And as far as like you know, what's going on for air to eric kills these days, I'm not sure that there's nearly any of that going on anymore. I mean, it doesn't seem like our planes that they're talking these incredibly fast aircraft. It's kind of hard to dog fight each other. And all I can do is, like, you know, fire a missile at the guy, and he's probably you can't even actually visually see him.

You can see on your radar or wherever. Okay, if somebody over there click, you know, and so it's not the dog fighting like you know they used to have back in the good old days, shooting at each other with you know, with machine guns and stuff like that. I guess back in the World War two days they would actually they would actually throw a hand gernades at each other. They'd like try to fly over the they're following fie paint white planes and stuff, and they like

actually just try to drop hand grenades. I say, one there, two, I said to Okay, one, Okay, I was I was asking this. I was like, I don't remember a whole lot of biplane tomorrow. There probably was one or two, but they didn't last didn't. So to answer my question, no, we don't know what whatever is. Yeah, And because it depends on the conflict, and I think it's I think it's just been going down over time. Really, let's see where was I? Um? Okay? Both? Well, So we're talking

about aces. So, like I said, you had to be yet to take at least five enemy craft out to be considered an ACE. And at the end of the war, Tomb was recorded as having taken out thirteen US aircraft. Now not all of those were airplanes with people in them. There's something that is it's a oh god, it's a yeah, it's a drone. There were two of them, and I want to say they were called fireflies or fire plug I can't remember which. And I read about them and

it didn't completely understand them. But I just want to let you know that that's in there, so if anybody goes out and starts reading about it, that is technically an enemy or crafts. So we counted for the record. Apparently the balloons count. I don't. I don't know, probably not. Yeah, it's probably easy target, probably training targets for them. So the there's interesting things here about Colonel tomb though, one of which is that there were two images of his

aircraft that were circulated among US forces. The images, Just to be clear, they were taken by other pilots, right. I believe one of them was actually on the ground, like somebody like somebody snapped a picture while it was sitting on the ground. But I'm not I'm not a positive because I couldn't find these images. I could find images that were similar, but I couldn't find the same ones with the same at least I don't think I saw them with the same plane numbers, because the planes

had identifier numbers on him, as all aircraft do. And the MiG seventeen had the number three zero two zero on the nose, uh, and it had six stars on the nose. And for people who aren't familiar with this, the number of stars on the nose means the number of kills. And then there was another image that was a big twenty one that had the number four three to six on the nose along with thirteen stars. So that's a lot of kills. But they're very two different aircraft.

And that's part of the confusion in this story because that's not typically the way a pilot would operate. They would fly a plane. They wouldn't fly multiple kinds of planes. No, not usually, not not unless you know all the big seventeens went away and then that it's time to move Colonel tomb up to it's kind of desperate scenario, and it and it represents the number of the aircraft took down on the pilot right the stars. Typically that's not the case. It's how many the pilot took down. Typically

it's the number that's pilot takes. So I mean, really, what we're saying here is later this awesome pilot may have been flying a better plane, right, it's possible. Yeah, I wonder how that works. I assume that, like, say, if you if you did fly, I got six kills with you mixed you make seventeen and they were like, and then you graduate to one? Do they transfer the the sex skills over? Yeah? I have a feeling that I know the answer, but I'm gonna save that till later.

It seems just don't dry out the suspense. Seems like it's only fair to transform over. You know, it seems like that to me too. But but and then if not, like maybe he did have the you know, twenty kills to nineteen kills, yeah, six and yeah, let's jump back

to the official narrative here. By the way, what I've been trying to run through is is kind of the generally agreed upon official narrative of these things that are in the story, and then when we get into theories will parse into bits and pieces of it more deeply, as year tend to do. But officially, Tom's career would come to an end, and that date would officially be

May tenth, ninety two. On that day, Randy Duke Cunningham and his co pilot Willie Irish Driscoll, who were both U. S. Navy pilots, and they had recently just graduated from the then newly formed top gun program. Again Tom Cruise to the Dangers own. Well, yeah, so these guys had graduated with the program. They're now in the air. It's made ten oh. And people may recognize the name Randy Cunningham

because he was a U. S. Congressman. Uh and in two thousand and five he was not so happily for him, convicted of taking millions in ribes and sentenced to eight years in prison. So if he was your congressman, I'm sorry, Yeah, it's too bad for him, right, So I guess he would have gotten out by now. I have not heard anything about Randy Cunningham, to keep it that way. Yeah, that's not surprising that we haven't heard anything from him. Well, I hope it was smart enough to squirrel away some

of those millions of bribes. I have a feeling anyway, pre bribe. Cunningham and Irish Driskell, we're both in a F four Phantom on that day and they were in a mission which was near Hannoi when they encountered several Vietnamese People's Air Force aircraft, and it was a group of it makes seventeens. As you can guess, a dog fights ensued. All but one of the MiGs were taken out, and then this fight takes out that takes place between the remaining MiG and Cunningham and drisk All. Now Cunningham's

F four Phantom. It had aired air missiles by the other thing. But of course it's faster, but it can't do well at slow speeds. Makes seventeens are better at slow speeds, but it has no missiles. All it's got is thirty seven caliber and another I can't remember. The other lighter caliber gun is something like that. It's got candy, so it's it's shooting guns, and I don't remember. I don't think the f R Fantom had a cannon, didn't. I don't believe it had any guns. I don't remember

that when I was reading. I think that it relied a lot on its missiles, because a lot is made out about the fact that in the early years of the conflict, the Phantom was plagued with tons and tons of issues of faulty air to air missiles, either not launching or just launching and not tracking their targets there was. It was a giant fiasco for the Defense Department. So I feel like it had the missiles, but I don't remember off the top of my head, so I don't

want to commit to that because they're probably wrong. Yeah, I think it had like it was a fighter bomber. I think essentially drop bombs and fire missiles, but I don't think the head of cannon. But if we're wrong, somebody will let us here. Yeah, if one of those guys that flew one of those things will send us and up yep. So what happens here though, is, of course, the fight goes back and forth. The MiGs tries to

slow the fight down so we can do better. Cunningham has to hit the afterburner or not the after We had to hit the gas, so we go fast. So this goes back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, until he's eventually able to lock on with a sidewinder missile and take out this final MiG seventeen, which he says he watched burst apart in flames and fall to the ground. The ground, I'll just say the canopy, and that wasn't right now, but it fell to earth below him.

He and his co pilot, though, wouldn't escape unscathed. Very shortly after that, in that same flight, actually they would be hit by a surface to air missile. They would fly out over the South China Sea, where they would bail out and then eventually be rescued. Of course, because that's what happens to the hero who is taking out the scourge of the North Vietnamese skies. Colonel too, if you're lucky, that's what happens. Yeah, usually not actually yeah, no,

there's sharks and stuff. Well, Cunningham t tells US intelligence that he saw the number three zero two zero painted on that big seventeen and so military and US military intelligence says, yes, you took out Colonel tomb Good job, buddy. Not only did you just get upgraded to a status because that was your your kill, but you took out this bad guy. Yea, and Jo disappears from the war. Yeah, so there you go. So yeah, my sort of doubt his story about seeing that number on the nose of

the plane. But then if Tom did suddenly you know, not show up anymore, I guess you got him, took his toys and left. Basically years later, there is a Hungarian man named I'm gonna I hate, I hate pronouncing this guy's name, Dr ist von topp er Sev, and he would be he would go to Vietnam to research the pilots of the Vietnamese People's Air Force, supposedly, And we'll get into the supposedly later. And I assume about years later. You mean what Hungary it was still under

basically Soviet domination. It was still a communist state, I believe while they were still a communist state. This appears to from the reading that I've done, been before people from the West were let into Vietnam, because people from the West were held out of the country for many,

many decades. But eventually they are historians would be allowed in and they would come in and ask the same question as the Hungarian doctor, which is, hey, um, so, who was Colonel tomb to which they would all get the same answer of yeah, who are you talking about? There's no record of this guy. You don't know what you're what you're saying. And for a guy who is supposedly as good of a pilot and as good at taking down enemy, it seems really weird that he dropped

out of the records completely and entirely. You know, maybe they said him on a super secret mission and they had to erase his name from the whole record. Maybe save that for theories, Okay, Okay, So yeah, so this flying ace, this war hero, and and believe me, the Vietnamese loved to celebrate their war heroes. He disappears. So it brings up what is our mystery, which is a why is he not in the record? And be if he was a real person, who was he? So was

he so super secret? Because yeah, if war hero, you think they'd be celebrating them and have statues of them in all kinds of stuff. All right, So that's our mystery. So let's get into the theories. Okay, but first let's take a quick break. Support for today's show comes from Grove Grobe is an e commerce company that I like because if they make it easy for me to find the best natural products, take care of myself, my home, my cats, and to make sure I never run out

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regret it and we're back. Yeah. So theory number one, Yeah, that's there's a theory. There's well, actually believe it or not. I've got what four or five in here. Never mind your ghost theory, secret agent theory, don't forget that secret agent theory. Yeah. Actually, this, this one is actually all over the internet, especially on like aviation sites and Vietnam Veteran system particular theory. No, this particular mystery. Yeah, I

got a lot of good information. There's a ton of ton of information out there, although a lot of a lot of the same information, but had a lot of arguing because that's what forums are all about. Okay, So theory number one is that Colonel tomb was in fact a myth created accidentally by the US Signals Intelligence Group. They got their signals crossed. Not good, not good for SI to get their six crossed. So basically what it is is that the theories that he never never actually existed,

and they made him up by accident. And there's a couple of different ways that this could happen. Now, of course, as we talked about earlier, to be a flaw, and this is all backstory. I think we've covered some of this,

but sometimes people miss these bits. So I just want to recover a little bit of territory, which is you have to take down at least five enemy aircraft to become a ACE, and the Vietnamese had dozen, over a dozen aces, like we talked about, whereas the Americans only had one ACE that was Randy cunning Am, an Irish driscal. I really feel bad what Willie? That was his name?

Willie keep calling him Irish? I feel racist? Um, but it's fun his name, not racism, but no, no. But so the thing is is that it was the reason that there were so many aces is for a US pilot, you did a year of duty. That was your tour. Was you spent a year in country and then you would rotate back home and you would do training and you'd be stationed somewhere by the way in that year. You would not do three missions. No, no, nowhere, No,

not at all. But the thing was is that you guys could ask to come to be stationed back in Vietnam, and occasionally that happened, but the vast majority of them did not. So it seems like it was pretty miserable over there. For the most it was not. Well, nobody really enjoys war. A few weirdos do, but you know they're they're thankfully the minority. But the thing is is that these guys is so they get about a year to to try and rack up, you know, five kills.

Of course, for the North Vietnamese pilots their homes, they're there for the whole war, so they have a lot of flights and a lot of time to rack up all these kills. So that's the reason that there's kind of that imbalance in terms of the number of aces from one side to the other. Another reason that there would and this is a factor as to why there's so many North Vietnamese aces, is ground based radar. Remember

that planes at that time. Today we're all used to the fancy modern fighter craft we see in the movies, and they've got radar built and they've got every kind of device built in that they can to see around them much farther than the pilot can just see with

the naked eye. Well, plus we've also got airborne radars beyond there's kinds of things, but that is not so much the case in the late sixties, in early seventies and MiG seventeens didn't have anything built in, so they were reliant upon what the naked eye could see as well as ground based radar. And the US we knew about the ground based radar. But the U. S forces never actually went after those ground based radar installations as in to take them out and handicap those MiG seventeens

because there were other nations helping. We talked about the Soviets were there because they were helping with training and equipment, and they were coming and they were going to those radar installations and helping out. The Chinese were doing the same thing because again Soviets and the Chinese are both under communist governance, and the North Vietnamese they wanted to unify their country and communism was the system they agreed upon was the right one. So there together for human

it is. But this means that you help your buddy out. Well, of course, but and that's why that one and that's what they're trying to do all kinds of countries all around the world, you know, helped them to become comedies. And but yeah, and of course they didn't want to bomb the radar stations because they might kill they might kill Ivan, or they might kill the adviser, and that just opens up all another can of worms of conflict. Well, this has been this has been like you know, a

big bone of contention about Vietnam forever. Is that is that our side was way too reticent about stuff like that. I mean, we should have bombed those stations, taken out those radars, you know. Yeah, I understand what you're saying from the standpoint of to quote unquote when the war. I understand that. Yeah, I mean, yeah, we should have done that, you know. And as if their Soviet squawky just say, I'm sorry, you guys were in a war zone.

What did you expect? You know? Yeah? But of course, I mean, and this is just you know, the old saying goes, generals always fight the last war. And then the previous war corps had been Korea. Remember what happened there? You know, I was acting initially getting knocked on our heels. We came back big time, invaded, and we're all really

on the verge of triumph in North Korea. And then the Chinese invaded, and suddenly we're talking about the war got a lot bigger, and so, like I said, that, that colored all the thinking about Vietnam, and it's it's really a shame too, because you know, we could have probably had a better outcome in Vietnam if we hadn't had that sort of that tip for tat mentality and that reticence about about attacking the North that they, by

the way, didn't feel towards us, They just didn't like us. Yeah, so so okay, so so this is this is going on, and this is one of the factors why the MiG seven the MiGs were the effective, because they had that other form of detection out there. Uh, there's some things that also lean into the theory of this guy didn't exist. The next on is that the name tune or tune and by the way, the spelling on these is t o mb toumb like a cryptotune or tuned to again

as in cartoon. Neither of those names are Vietnamese names. They're not in the lexicon at all. There were there were at least one or two pilots named Plon. But let's tu a n transliteration plan which which maybe over the rate it could come out sending kind of like tune, you know. And so, but I don't think any of those guys scored anywhere near thirteen kills, not that I'm aware of. There's a there's a big list. You can actually go on the internet and find this giant list.

I mean I remember Devin and I were talking about the different the names and how similar they were as you dropped down the list, but none of them really seem to fit the moniker of this guy. Uh. Now, there are people that believe that this is what happened, is that U S. Signals Intelligence is listening and they hear chatter of North Vietnamese pilots, and they hear a name that they don't know, and they're not sure how

to interpret or write it down. How has it spelled something like that, And so what they do is they do their best and they write down the equivalent of what they think it is, which is wrong. And this happens several times, and suddenly this pilot named Tomb or Tune is born out of a badly transcribed set of conversations by ground control or by listening intelligence, the radio intelligence guys. So it's it's a complete screw up that

just happened to line up. The other way is that it could have happened, and we'll explain some I'll give me a second here. And there's some examples of this. Is there are times where they are trying to figure out who's in the air and whoever it is just isn't giving a name that they can use to assign to them. And so what signals intelligence has been known to do is to assign them a name, just make one up out a whole cloth right there and say

that's Timmy. And then that operator that signed a name like like you know, ends this tour goes back overseas. Somebody looks at his log books later and doesn't realize this right right, yeah, and doesn't realize that he just assigned the name to him. Correct. He doesn't realize that Timmy isn't a real pilot. Timmy is a moniker for a made up name of somebody who doesn't They just don't know who it is. And there are historical accountings

of this having happened in the past. If we look back at World War two U S forces in Guadalcanal, they started, um, they started calling, oh God, what is it? What is it? What is what it? It was Japanese pilots who would start running night night missions, and they of course didn't know who they were, and they started nickname aiming those pilots washer Machine Charlie. And that was because they were flying two engine planes and those engines

were slightly out of sync. So if you think about if you've ever been on a two prop plane, exactly a two prop plane, it's just it's very consistent. But when they're not, they do make kind of that bum bum bum bum bum boo boom back and forth, rocking washer machine noise, so that they nicknamed him washing machine Charlie.

In the European theater, there was bed check Charlie, who was German pilots who were known to go out just before, just before or just after dusk and run night runs as well, and the name was was given because it was just after lights out these guys would show up, and these guys were they the U S Forces hated them because if you knew that bed Check Charlie or washer Machine Charlie were coming, you just had to lay

there all night long. You didn't know if the bombs were going to get you or if they were just going to explode around or near or because they their accuracy was crap, but it was it really struck a

note of fear in those men's on the ground. Yeah, but that does seem like a better way to name people that you don't know, instead of making up a you know, colonel name like, yeah, I mean it sounds a little made up, right, um, and if it's Colonel Tune then it makes even more more Even somebody was being funny, yeah that it was like a play on

cartoon or whatever. But you know, assigning some name that nobody could ever think, oh yeah, that's the real name of that pilot, like washing machine Charlie, Like nobody's ever gonna look at a record and be like, wow, yeah it was a weird made washing machine Charlie's did the did the Japanese have I didn't know washing machines were in use? Yeah, so that just I mean, you know,

for me, that doesn't really follow. But yeah, yeah, it's like and I don't think that if his name actually, if they have signed a name tomb t O m B, I wouldn't see them. I couldn't see them quite as signing that to another pilot because you're kind of you're kind of giving him, you know, you're signing this name that sounds pretty badass, yeah, you know, yeah, and we're

not going to us Yeah, pretty bad ass. So you know, just like you know, you're not going to name some other you know, Colonel Deaths or arg Yeah, you know, or anything like that. You're you're not gonna be like, oh, his this unknown guy the punisher, Yeah, exactly, you're not gonna do that. You're gonna call him something, you know, you're gonna do ride him. You're gotta something exactly, Colonel Choopy or Colonel Sideways or something like that or not

that one that's pretty badass when actually it's pretty hokey. Yeah, okay, I've met that colonel. I see what I'm saying it. But at the same time, of course it's over the radio. He's speaking foreign language, and you know, so Tomb could have sounded like Tomb maybe I don't know. Yeah, no, I mean, there's a lot of ways that you can you can try and enunciate that to make it make sense,

but it doesn't make sense. That's so it's too close to the real thing for us West, you know, English speakers to just ascribe that to a name from another language that we don't quite understand. The other problem with this theory is the fact that, and we talked about this a little bit earlier, pilots didn't train and fly

a lot in different aircraft. If you were a big seventeen pilot, the program, was you flew the MiG seventeen to be the most proficient MiG seventeen pilot you could be, not you flew a MiG seventeen, and oh, by the way, we're also going to train you on a MiG twenty one and maybe something else, and you'll just be kind of an okay pilot overall, but not really good in all any one of them. That that wasn't the way

it works. That's really true. It's like, because yeah, I mean, it takes a long time to get really good at an aircraft, and it's like, if you switch to the twenty one, you're throwing away a lot of good experience. I mean, you're taking some of with you obviously, but you're throwing a lot away too, So you know, I mean, no,

I mean, I totally agree with that. I think in kind of theory, for the sake of argument, you could say, you know, this guy's wracked up six seven kills in this kind of crappy graduate and maybe and you know, who knows, maybe he one day was like, oh yeah, let me take that other one out for a spin, and was equally good, and they were like, you can have this awesome one if you think you can kill more. It could have been I guess suppose in that case, let me take it up to see if I can

kill a few American pilots. That he did, so okay, I guess you get it, get on. But typically that was not in the Soviets. I think we're running their air force and Soviet doctrine at all. And if you if you remember keep in mind though, it's it's the controls. You're not going to be the same from one model to the next. It's like getting into I'm just gonna

pick on Chevy. You get into the little itty bitty Chevy card a little two seater that is a pregnant roller skate, and then you jump up into their giant s u V. The general basics are the same, but things you're not exactly the same, and they're in different places, and it's all gonna be a little different, and you're gonna be really not that good in the big one when you just got out of the pregnant roller skate

one at yeah. Well, and and that's why I mean, I'm just saying, for the sake of Argiament, it's I

guess it's technically feasible, but highly unlikely. Ye though, I guess I could see the kind of accidental They just assigned that call name to any pilot they don't know that kills somebody, you know, And then that would make sense that it was kind of it was either plane they didn't they oftentimes didn't know the call sign of the pilots that were actually, you know, striking their aircraft and they're just That would also explain why it was

tomb right, because they were like, oh craft, this unnamed to you know, the tomb guy came again and took down one of our air craft. Well but you know, but you you you understand what I'm saying. I get it, I get it. So that could be an alternate on

this that it was an accidental creation. It's a moniker given to a pilot who scores a kill, but we don't know who that pilot is, and it gets repeated over and over, and as the beginning of the theory said, then becomes when somebody else finds the log book a year later, holy cow, this guy is a badass. Or you know, actually, this is another theory that's out there in the same hole. It was a myth thing and I found this theory on twenty one century Socialism dot Com.

Yeah I did, for real. Yeah, I don't make this stuff. That theory is that the Colonel Tuone was actually was actually a creation of the U. S. Navy whose fancies were and they created Colonel Tomb and created this big legend and then had him killed as a big morale booster. It's like that this legendary pilot and we killed him off. Yeah,

I I can see that. I can understand it. It seems pretty weak, and it seems kind of hard to mean, that's that would take a long time to build up, especially when you consider how often guys are cycling in and out of their tours of duty. I mean, you would have to you'd have to let that run for at least a year, if not too before you pull the final lever and kill him off. Yeah, I know. That's that's that's kind of the whole thing about about it.

I think I think twenty one century Socialism dot Com would be point was that you know, here it is here, here's the perfidious you know us once again, you know, coming up with this big lie you know about Yeah, I kinda I kind of suspect they probably made it up or some commy made it up. I don't know who knows. Yeah, that was a perfect lead into the next theory, because the next theory is that actually Colonel tomb was a piece of propaganda, but he was a

piece of propaganda created by the vietname the North Vietnamese. Yeah, kind of like carrots. Yeah, carrots, carrots. Well, I don't remember during which war it was, but it was right when the US had come up with night vision technology,

radar technology. But they when people they just started doing this propaganda thing in America where they were like, carrots will give you great vision, and that's not like really actually true, but they they were trying to cover up the fact that they had this advanced technology and that's why they were being successful overseas during the war. So they just kind of went with it. And now it's like part of the guys have great vision because they

all eat carrots. Yeah, I remember talking about I remember that when I was a kid. That was that was kind of like, you know, the accepted wisdom is that carrots were good for your eyes. Yeah they're not. They're not bad for your eyes. Carrots are not going to hurt you, actually give you like supervision, and you won't go blind if you don't eat them, so you might depends on how else are eating. Okay, don't don't listen

to that, poison girls. The theory is. The theory is that indeed the North Vietnamese made this particular pilot up, as Joe would say, out of whole cloth. And they did so because, as we've already established, we were listening to them, and they knew we were listening to them, so they said, hey, why don't we go ahead and make some crap up because nothing screws up the enemy then a giant stinking pile of bold that we make up out of nowhere. Well, and it's not wouldn't be

that hard. So on all these different runs, you know you send us, one of the pilots is just named Colonel Tomb, you know, just that simple. Yeah, it looks like Colonel Tomb is just everywhere. Well, and the other thing that that they can do is they can and what would be easy to help leverage this is that there was always a commander of the squadron, and that commander didn't always go up. But let's say that they made the gag that if the commander is not actually

in the air physically. You say he's in the air, and you call him something that then is badly interpreted. And that's again we're going back to this, you know, this interpretation of a name that is given. And maybe they had a half dozen different names that they use and Tomb just happened to be the one that stuck for the US. Because it turns out Colonel Pinky wasn't all that scary of a name. You know, it could have been an inadvertent thing on the part of the

North Vietnamese. It might turn out the Colonel Tomb is kind of you know, Vietnamese military slang for venereal disease set for example. So the pilots are out in their bombing around or whatever, and you know, they're killing a little time in their way there, and one him says, yeah, it's like I'm getting another visit from got another visit from Colonel Tomb, So you know, and so maybe that's it. Maybe that's all it was. And that is the dirtiest answer I have founded this story yet, and I like

it a lot. I was gonna say, maybe it was something they were competing for, Like whoever on that rum gets most kills gets to be called Colonel tomb for the next run. That's true, and then that helps also explain how they racked up so many kills under that moniker.

It's possible. I do have to say, though, there is a gigantic problem with this theory, and that is that the North Vietnamese government, or the Vietnamese government in general, because they're a unified country now, does not let any opportunity to promote the deeds of its patriots to pass them by. And if this guy were as proficient and good as the records in the stories say, then he

should have had as Joe said, earlier statues erected. And I and we've talked about this on another episode, and you two know, is that I just got back from Vietnam. I was in the North, I was in the South, and I saw plaqueards and billboards accounting to the deeds of everyday people during this conflict. And granted it was the fifty year memorials or anniversary, so they were putting out more of this, but very I mean, what we've been considered little acts of heroism were made giant scale.

So this guy that is now on a giant scale of heroism of beating back the Americans. There should have been a lot of stuff. They wouldn't just pass the opportunity by to to tout, to to trot him out and say, look at our great pilot. Um. I don't I'm sorry. I don't understand how that follows this theory, because isn't this theory that he was total boogeyman made

up by the Vietnamese. It is, But if if he was made, it doesn't make sense that they would have made him because they want They would gravitate, and they would grab, and they would they would elevate anybody who was doing good on their side. So it seems weird that the architect of the scheme would at least get a note something to that effect. Ye, the other body

would have got recognition. The other problem I have with this series too, is that you make that this this big scary boogeyman to scare the pants off the American pilots and stuff. You don't kill him off, right, and they killed them off? Why would they do that? Well,

I mean, they may not have killed them off. It may have actually just gotten to a point where they found out through their moles in the U. S. Intelligence that the US thought they had actually gotten Colonel too, because they had because he shot down the right number, because that was one of the planes that was identified as him. And they thought, all right, let's just let us let them. This is too much, this has gotten

out of hand. Let's just let them. Maybe well, and there's some pilots that are that were believed to be too, and this is we're kind of going off script here, and that's fine because we do this all the time. There was so at least one, if not two other pilots that for a long time were believed to have been tomb and those guys were actually retired from the pilot seat. They were taken out of the air by the Vietnamese arm or military and said, listen, you were

too valuable to us. You have to train the next generation of pilots. And so then they became a trainer. And these guys there's I mean, if you look through the records, you can find you know, this guy retired after the war to hear and did this, and this one did that. But again he we know where those guys were, and they're talked about. They didn't just disappear, so it just it seems weird that they would just

invent him and then let him go. And I guess my problem with it is that if they did invent him and then they let him die, what a better way to stick a finger in the bad guy's eye to then to say later on, oh, hey, by the way, you know, Colonel Tomb, he was total crap. We made him up, and we're gonna now celebrate the fact that we fooled you with this giant campaign of crap Sam Uncle Sam. Yeah, yeah, but well Uncle Sam must be used to it by now. Um. Yeah. So I'm not

buying this, Sari. And for the reason that they wouldn't kill him off, Yeah, I just don't buy it, all right, So it's it's a it's a bad TV plot line. Yeah, anything else on this particular one devon cool? Okay, Well, let's go on to theory number three, which is that Colonel Tomb was in fact real, but he was not a Vietnamese pilot. In matter of fact, he was one of their allies pilots. As we talked about earlier, both the Chinese and the Soviets were in country and helping

the North Vietnamese. And I mean, as with equipment and advisors. And we do know that in at least one other war, which was the Korean War, there were Soviet pilots fighting in that in the air. And we do know also that in the Vietnam conflict there were Soviet um Soviet guys running different battle stations and battalions on the ground. So it's it's probable that this guy would have been and you know, from another country who was a neighbor

country that was an ally country. Of course, nobody's ever come forward. Now, the Soviets, they're pretty big on coming forward and taken um credit for what they've done, so it seems funny that they didn't do it. The Chinese are a little less so, at least in the past. I assume that they were communicating air to air in Vietnamese correct. Yeah, as far as I'm aware it was, there was no there was no Slavic language in there, or no traditional Chinese or Mandarin in there, So as

far as I'm aware, it was all in Vietnamese. So I and so I don't know. I mean, I'm assuming that Chinese, a Chinese person would have an easier time learning Vietnamese in a Russian, But I don't know, or at least speaking it without a heavy accent. But yeah,

I think that it is a similar foundation. Um. Actually, I know they're a similar foundation because vietname, the Vietnamese language, and the Chinese language do a threadback like five hundred plus years ago before they split apart, and then Vietnamese do have Chinese characters as kind of decorative symbols to represent things, although from what I understand, they can't read them because they read their language, not the Chinese language.

So yeah, it is possible. It's possibly, what you're saying, more likely Chinese than Soviet. Yeah. But but just because somebody's Soviet doesn't mean they can't learn to fluently eco language other than their own. I'm just talking about I'm just talking about speaking it so well with so little accents that the guy, the guy listening to the other hand, can't tell that you're a foreigner. You know. I would just think the Chinese would have a better chance of

getting away with that than I don't know. But but the thing is is, again, nobody has ever come forward and made a claim you would I mean, unless they did indeed die in the conflict, But even then, you would think their government would say, oh, hey, uncle Sam, we pumped you. I mean, unless it was you know, Russia and they were, you know, coming out of this thing, they were like, oh, well, maybe it doesn't really behoove us for relations to admit that this guy who killed

a bunch of their people was actually our guy. Maybe it actually politically makes more sense for us to just keep that under wraps and not really you know, talk about it, and that that would explain why both countries would then kind of sweeping under Vietnamese don't want to say, oh, yeah, their best guy, he wasn't our guy, and like you're saying, the Soviets really don't want to bring light to China.

I mean, you know, the politics are a thing that we have, but I mean, you know, that's just the diplomacy is a thing that we have to take into consideration here as well, because you know, it's it's certainly possible that at that time in the history that they just thought no. I think that especially from the Soviet point of view there, their long term plan has always been about you know, bringing American basically bringing American opinions of themselves as low as possible, and it's been a

long term project, and so a reality TV they're doing their job. Oh they're there. And look at our universities there is working well and so the U. And so the thing about it is is, from that point of view, what is it better to have the American public believe they got their butts kicked by a combination of the Soviets, Chinese and Vietnamese or they got their butts kicked by just the Vietnamese. What what serves your purposes better? Yeah, definitely,

just depends a long term plan. You're absolutely right. Yeah, okay, Oak, Let's go on to what is actually our last theory and the Yeah, we raced through the beginning and then we drug out through this. So the last theory is that Colonel Tomb was not a pilot, not a single pilot anyway, but instead multiple pilots, several different pilots. Yeah,

wrong script. So there there are quite a few, as we talked about before, viet North Vietnamese pilots who had been considered aces or scored records to be aces, and I have three of them listed here because these are kind of the top three contenders who may have been mishmashed together to create Colonel Tomb. So there's Wind van Cock who has nine kills, there's Wind van Bay with

seven kills, and Wind Doc Sat with six kills. So these three guys right here, or that is uh sixteen twenty two kills between three pilots right there, and they flew different planes, but it's possible that they may have been melded and mashed together. And the reason that some of that is is if you remember those photos of the airplanes that I told you before had been circulated.

So there's the the MiG seventeen number three zero two zero with the six stars, and then make the MiG twenty one with number four three two six that had thirteen stars on its nose. Well, I held this little fact back when we talked about it in the beginning. But in a traditional sense, at least the way I think about it, I think most Westerners do, and especially

because we watch movies and TV. The number of stars on the nose of a plane denotes the number of kills, and those number of kills are to the soul pilot or like copilot team that fly that particular bird. Because yeah, in our military, the pilot or the or the team get the same plane always, that's their plane. Well that that's not the way that it worked in the Vietnam conflict, because the Vietnamese People's air force a lot of planes

and a glut of pilots. So and this is kind of makes sense from a communist state of you of you know, because we share everything, so it's everybody's and

that means that everybody gets the victory. And so instead of a single plane having a single pilot with X number of kills, you had a single plane with X number of kills, so three or four different pilots, three or four or five, six different pilots, so each guy could have taken down one enemy aircraft and that plane looks like it's flown by one seriously skilled pilot, and

that's the their system worked. So suddenly you can see where the confusion of looking at the numbers on the actual nose cone and how that could be recorded to the Western I this happens. So, yeah, we're hearing a lot about this Colonel tomb but we don't actually know how many kills he's got. And then somebody up but he seems to be the most deadliest of them of the ball, and then somebody spots us thing somewhere in a photograph or wherever their teen stars, and thinks that

must be the famous Colonel Tune. Yeah, me, whichever one it is, You're you're not wrong in saying Tune or two must be the infamous tomb because oh my god, look at all those stars. Yeah. Is there a possibility that their code name, their call signs were actually assigned to their planes, not the pilots themselves. I do not know the answer to that, to be quite honest, I

had not thought of that particular angle. I had had the idea that it was possible, and this may not be right, but I'd had the idea that maybe when a plane went down, they reassigned the number to another plane, and then that plane continued on with you know, new

with a new set of stars. But of course, if you see this makes seventeen thirty with six stars, and then you see it with four stars, and then you see it again with five, three stars, whatever, you could start to think that the numbers are stacking up and something's confusing. But I don't know. This is it's, by

the way, total speculation. Well I guess guess, yeah, I mean I guess it just a little bit would The reason that I would suggest that is, you know, they only had so many planes, but they also had like a bunch of teams that went out in different planes. And I almost wonder if they just always wrote, okay there, all right. You know these two pilots, this pilot and co pilot team are assigned to this call sign airplane, which makes it harder to track the actual pilots because

they knew that other people were listening. So it's they're just tracking the planes at that point. And then you just are never saying who everybody who's on that mission, and everybody who's on the ground, you know, knows who's in what plane. I don't know anything. This is total speculation.

I was gonna say, I like the idea, except that I have read accounting that talk about the fact that sometimes pilots would melt down in the seat when another pilot would go down, and they would they would break their their communications cycle and suddenly start using the proper names and so but but that's still but but what I what I'm getting at, though, is that I think that they started out using whatever they're assigned call sign was,

and then using you know, your actual names. So but not man, but that would still follow if Iceman was the plane and people are freaking out because ice Man's going down, and then suddenly they're talking about, oh my god, John's dead. Still follows right, because they're still freaking out out, they break character or break whatever protocol, and they're just talking about the person that was in that thing. That actually the call sign was assigned to thee not necessarily

that pilot. I don't know, don't I don't know I would do it. If I had an air force, I would definitely just assigned call signs airplanes. I'm sure we'll get a lot of really angry emails about why that doesn't work. And Kim, Yeah, that's Kilmer. It's just that just is how I would do it if it were me. Because no track the planes, not the pilot. You know, it makes it harder for them to keep these sort of logs of Okay, well you know Iceman is really

crappy at this thing. Well actually, matter of fact, it turns out Iceman is just the plane. So yeah, and and and it's possible, Like I said, though, is that it maybe that it's it's that it's just these couple of guys that their numbers or their kills recorded by the North Vietnamese. You know, it's nine, seven and six. He's particular gentleman that I just listed out. But of course on the U S side, those were all erroneously assigned over the Colonel Tomb, and so in the US

books these guys are not as good. But then Tomb is taken, and I don't know, I really don't know. Yeah, it is really hard to say. I do have to say, though, there is one hitch that I came across in this entire story. By the way, this is kind of stepping outside of the theory section and onto Steve soapbox section, which I try not to do, but this one really made me mad, is I? In the In the telling of the story, we talked about the Hungarian doctor ist

von top Sev. God, I'm butchering his name every time, and I apologize it, like, okay, anyway, the doctor is Stavan Well in everything that I had been reading for a long time, it talked about how the Hungarian doctor had gone and done the initial research and then followed by other people. But as we want to do, I said, well, I want to I want to learn some more about this guy. And I want to maybe read some of

his stuff and check him out. And I started following the path of him, and at first I started coming across these sites that were reviews of his books, and I got the feeling that maybe he curated them, because normally, when you get into a review site and you see other authors on there, they say, oh, doctor, the Hungarian Doctor is a great guy, blah blah blah, or the Hungarian Doctor is full of crap and here is why,

and I've proved it. But instead these reviews said something like, uh, the Hungarian Doctor has got everything right in his book, and I got it all wrong in my book, and I am a horrible author and researcher and a giant pile of pooh as an author. Doctor, Well that's why I thought, that's really funny. I think he's kind of curating this stuff. And he's also hugely prolific. I found at least a dozen books. It looks like he's putting out a book a year on a different kind of aircraft.

Is apparently a pleasurist, right, Well, it appears that way because as I got onto stuff, I started reading, and there's one review that I found, uh, and it's on Amazon, which is great, and it's his book about the Vietnam conflict. And in there's the ones that we sided as talking about Colonel tomb And basically what it said is that he had taken and copied almost word for word, including the front and rear covers of a book which in English is History of the People's Air Force of Vietnam.

I can't pronounce it in the local dialect as I tried, and I just cut it out because it was really bad on my part. But basically he just straight up copied it and put it in English, and somehow that inserted him into the story. Sadly, it appears more and more these days. This is a common thing, the plagiarism. Um, have you what is the book? There's that book of out there called The Art of Not Giving An F. Have you guys seen this book? Okay, well, this book

is out there. Well, I was at home talking to my wife, is like, oh my god, I can't believe I found this blatant thing of plagiarism. She's like, oh, dude, go on, look for that book, The Art of Not Giving an F and look for it on Amazon, and you'll find another version that hells almost an identical copy,

almost an identical cover, and it's five bucks cheaper. So it appears that this is happening more and more and more, and somehow this guy ten twenty years ago did it and has become just he's just been swept up in the copy paste phenomena that is the Internet talking about stories like this. So I say that because pois and girls, you need to check your sources, because I almost was like and doctor the Hungarian doctors said, and then I found out my source was complete crap and it was

not a good thing. Yeah, the Hungarian doctor might not have been wrong about any of this stuff. It's just that he just he never did the research copied at all, so you can't really take credit. But ala Atlica is hopefully not leading astray. Yeah. Well, appears that others have gone and asked the same questions, so that it is still a valid mystery. The original author, yes, as well as Western historians have since followed and asked the question and tried to figure it out, So it is still

truly we don't know. It is a puzzle, and yeah, people still are speculating about it. It's uh, I guess said Donna web pages that most people tended to look at. Yea. So at this point I want to know what the favorite theory for each of you. Well, Devin, you want to go first. Yeah, it was the airplanes favorite theory. The second to that would be that it's a it's a number of different pilots that just got lumped in together. I don't think there was the airplane because I don't

think you'd want to name your plane Tomb. I don't think that's that's not conducive to good morale. But so I'm gonna go with it was just a myth, the product of confusion among the second guys, and would maybe ate it along with it by the North Vietnamese A little bit too, could have been that it could have been one of those things where there was a little confusion and they're scratching their heads early on and going, wow,

this is this Colonel Tomb. And of course there are sources, you know, because I'm sure there were agents, uh you know, I mean most of the guys doing the translating will probably Vietnamese, probably at least a few of them been formed to the North and they said, hey, there's just there's this scary guy named Colonel Tomb and then North is like, oh really, then he doesn't exist, but what the hell, We'll have a little fun with this. And

it could have been a combination of those things. And I I really feel I kind of agree with you. I think that it is some combination of a myth, both on the part of the US and apart on the North Vietnamese. They don't know where it where it ends in that mix, but that's that's kind of where

I think it's at. All. Right, Well, we're we're done with a fly over there, so we should probably get into the important details that I know everybody listens to the last couple of minutes to try and get a hold of, because this is what you love to hear from us, which is all of the how to find us stuff. Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely, So how does somebody

send us an email? Steve? Well, I'll tell you about that, but I'm gonna save that to the end, Joe, because that's the order is written on a piece of paper in front of me. I know, I'm I'm If it's not in order, I can't do it. So we of course are going to have links for this particular the story as well as all stories that we talked about on our website, and on that website you're gonna be able to download and stream the episode or any episode

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I'm afraid to fly. So I'm just gonna I'm gonna go to John Madden Way and I'm going to get on an amtrack. So we are all going to get out of here in our various forms of transport, and we will talk to you all next week to