Wars are fought on all fronts but it takes plenty of soldiers, Marines, airmen and seamen behind the front lines to keep everything moving along efficiently.
Inverness native Ken Johnson was one of those seamen during the Vietnam War. The Navy man served from 1967 to 1971 after training at the Great Lakes Naval Station. Johnson had left Inverness High School after his sophomore year and started working at Bell Manufacturing. Then he got drafted.
“I got my papers and I said, ‘man, I don’t want to go in the Army.’ I had even had my physical down in Jackson. So, as soon as I got home, I ran over to Greenwood and told that Navy recruiter, ‘I want to go in the Navy,’” Johnson said.
Johnson’s career after training was first being stationed in Hawaii where he spent two years and was designated as an Airman and not regular Navy.
“They told us when we got there that if you didn’t want to be assigned to a ship then hit the books and get you a stripe,” he said. “That’s what I did. I wound up two years there in ground support loading airplanes. We manned some targets for them as they came through. We actually built a target for the New Jersey and they were going to fire on it from 16 miles away. I was a little nervous because it was a small island. But they ended up calling the ship home and didn’t have the target practice.”
He then was stationed in Mountain View, California, at Moffet Field in northern California. He went through training and was in a BP squadron – an anti-submarine unit.
“We flew the big Lockheed P3 Orion with four big turbo props. We went through 13 weeks training, and then six weeks before coming back to home base I was sent to Alaska,” he said.
After eight months of training in Alaska, his unit was sent to Japan for six months and were deployed to Guam, the Philippines and other spots.
“Our job was to track all submarines – Russian submarines. We were given an area of 800 square miles and tell us there was one there. We would find it and track it until it got out of our range. There was a station in the ocean and they knew when a Russian sub left there. We absolutely tracked them from there and knew where they were.”
Flying around on the P3, Johnson and his staff could tell “if it was diesel or nuclear – how many tons it weighed and how fast it was going. We’d take that information up to the captain and he’d pull out his top secret book and tell you who was driving it. And this was 1970 technology.”
After his six-month stint, he was due to get out of the Navy and had wanted to stay in but the California woman he had married convinced him to get out.
“But I loved it. It was the best job I ever had in my life. We had some close calls. I never saw any actual combat, God took care of me. I had met a bunch of Marines on base there while in Hawaii and they would tell me all about it. Those guys had it bad. I kind of felt bad. I spent four years in and didn’t see combat. But I finally figured out, they put me where they needed me and I’m proud. Now I got treated kind of ugly when I got out. They spit on me and called us baby killers and we weren’t very popular and it took a long time to get that all behind me. But buddy, right now, I bleed red, white and blue.”
Johnson reflected that he wouldn’t have joined had he not gotten drafted and had worked himself up to an E5 which he explained was the highest rank attainable after four years.
“In 1971, they offered me $8,500 to sign for another six years. That’s no money now but in 1971 that was a piece of money. But I didn’t do it and I regret it,” he said.
In his four years there were some troubling times out on patrol. One particular stint included being hundreds of miles out at sea and losing all electronics.
“We would fly four hours out, then patrol for eight hours and fly four hours back,” Johnson said. “I was on electronics and was listening to the pilot when he asked how much fuel was left. They answered there was just enough to get back so the pilot said, ‘Let’s go.’ And right when he started to bank the turn home, everything in there went off. And they did everything they could. The navigator said, ‘Don’t sweat it,’ and got out his sextant and got up in the top of the plane to see the stars and everything. I said, ‘I sure hope you were paying attention in class.’”
Just as they got to within “smelling distance” of Japan, everything came back on.
“And we were dead on course.”
He also recalled that while flying out of Alaska, jet fighters from Russia would “come by and flip us off.”
Johnson also worked as a photographer as well as cook while on board.
“I got to know them all. There were 13 people on the plane. We became a real tight group,” he said.
“On one particular mission, I put on my life jacket – my Mae West – and my parachute because I was scared that day. But if you went in the water, you weren’t going to survive the water it was so cold,” he said.
He also recalled that after cleaning up from a target practice shoot in Hawaii, his crew found an unexploded 500 pound bomb.
“There is a fuse in the end of it and a fan and once it rotates so many times it lights that fuse and boom. We called EOD and they came in and blew it. We were two miles away when it blew. The plate on that bomb could blow two miles. When he said duck, we ducked.”
On another mission he recalled, the higher ups instructed the crew to “only bring your Geneva Convention card and your dog tags. We made the flight and came back and then found out we had made the same flight the Super Connie (Lockheed Constellation) had made that was shot down over the coast of Korea. And I couldn’t swim worth a crap when I went in (laughing). But they finally got me straightened out on that.”
He does regret that he didn’t serve on a ship.
“On an aircraft carrier they could have five or six thousand people on there,” he said.
Looking back on his time in the Navy, he’s very appreciative.
“I had a good time. I enjoyed it. I had quit high school but got a good general education out of it and got to see the world,” he said.
After living in California after his service, Johnson decided it was time to get back home.
“I woke up one morning and said, ‘I’m going home.’ And when I saw that iron bridge over the Mississippi River, I started crying. And I’ve been here ever since,” he said.
He took a job as a policeman in Greenville for six years and then ran a truck stop in Indianola for 15 years and then got into trucking. He then worked at a catfish farm for a decade and retired.
These days his big garden and keeping up with his two adult sons keep him busy. He’s also a member of American Legion Post #2 in Indianola. He’s found some of his former Navy buddies and has kept up with them over the years.
Serving America during the Vietnam War and keeping us all free, Veteran Ken Johnson.
