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"Would You Believe It?" From the urgent chop-chop of a loudspeaker in a nearby village, Adams could tell that his landing had been spotted and that a search party was being organized. Then an SH-3 helicopter homed in on the pilot's voiced directions from his pocket radio and scooped him to safety. No other American has been rescued so close to North Viet Nam's main population center. Four and a half hours after takeoff, Adams—fondly nicknamed "Bulb" because of his prematurely receding hairline—was back aboard the Oriskany. Squadron 162 greeted him with pistols raised in mock salute—and two ounces of Napoleon brandy. To Minneapolis, Adams wired: "Would you believe it? I did it again."
A former philosophy major at the University of Minnesota, Adams got hooked on flying in 1961, when a Navy pilot friend came home on leave and showed off his jet. At the end of his Navy hitch next year, Reservist Adams thinks he will have had enough of the war, plans to go back to college. The Navy, already convinced that he has done quite enough, has ordered him to fly no more missions over North Viet Nam. Why did he take such extraordinary risks to avoid capture? "This carrier isn't much," he shrugged last week, "but it beats being paraded through Hanoi with a rope around your neck."