He was zooming along at 450 miles an hour, less than 1,000 feet above a Laotian mountain range, when his radar screen began to flash a warning.

Startled, he eyeballed the flickering instrument panel.

Not good.

A Russian-made S-2 antiaircraft missile had just “locked onto” his F-4D Phantom fighter jet - and it was closing in rapidly for the kill.

Suddenly, Claude M. Bolton, Jr., '69, was engaged in a survival struggle that would test his fighter-pilot skills to the limit.

It happened back in the spring of 1972, as the UNL Air Force ROTC graduate flew a combat mission over the Ho Chi Minh Trail at the height of the Vietnam War. Strapped into the tiny cockpit of his F-4, Bolton had been directing a squadron of five Phantoms in an effort to spot enemy troops moving on the ground and then destroy them.

But now the enemy was hoping to destroy him.

With growing alarm, the former UNL electrical engineering major watched the surface-launched missile close the gap on his flashing radar screen. No matter how hard he tried to shake the green-blinking, electronic dot, it kept moving closer - a killer-weapon that would destroy his airplane in a blinding flash, if he couldn't find a way to evade it within the next few seconds.

This was life or death, and the struggling pilot knew it.

“I was running out of time and I finally realized that I'd have to try a last-ditch maneuver,” the 60-year-old Bolton recalled, while sitting in the office that he currently occupies as assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology. “At that point, I knew I had only a few seconds left - so I decided to gamble everything on a maneuver we call the ‘Split-S.'”

Performed at a flying speed of around 500 miles an hour, the Split-S maneuver calls for the pilot to “apply full left or right stick,” according to the U.S. Air Force training manual for combat pilots. The manual then notes that “pulling hard on the stick” will cause the plane to “roll to one side,” until it's flying upside down.

Next step: “Pull back on the (main) stick and hold until the horizon comes up.”

(Translation for civilians: While flying upside down, the pilot yanks back on the main control stick, which will rapidly elevate the nose of the jet - causing an enormous surge of power that flings the plane into a 180-degree turn, while simultaneously righting its wings so that it's no longer flying upside down.)

Make no mistake: The Split-S - also known as the “Descending Half-Loop” - is a potentially hazardous flying maneuver under the best of conditions. But Lt. Bolton, then only 25 years old, knew that he would also have to perform the feat in nighttime darkness, and above a mountainous landscape full of projecting fingers of rock (geologically known as “limestone karsts”) that were hundreds of feet high.

Of course, he also understood that he was at that moment flying less than 700 feet above the rugged Laotian terrain - and that the Split-S would plunge him into a steep dive for several hundred feet, before the aircraft finally righted itself.

But Bolton knew he had no choice. So he took a deep breath. He put his hand on the left stick. For an instant, he closed his eyes. Ask him to recall that moment, 35 years later, and he does not hesitate.

“As I rolled the aircraft and inverted it, I had a flashback to my wife and baby daughter in Lincoln,” he says quietly. “And I said: I love you. And I pulled (the main stick) as hard as I could (to elevate the nose for the Split-S).

“I looked down at the ground, and the moon was shining and there was a haze. The trees of the jungle canopy were probably only 200 to 300 feet below me. And so I rolled down into the haze and tried to put a mountain peak between me and the missile.”

During the next two or three seconds, the young lieutenant from the “Nite Owls” squadron of the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing - headquartered at Ubon Air Force Base in nearby Thailand - held his breath and waited for the blinding explosion that would tell him the maneuver had failed to shake off the closing S-2.

But the explosion didn't take place.

“As I flew along a few moments later, I said to myself: Okay, we're still in one piece,” the Army assistant secretary told Nebraska Magazine with a quiet smile, as he described how “the training kicked back in” and he rejoined his combat squadron and resumed their mission. “I think I survived because of the terrific training I had received earlier, as a brand-new Air Force fighter-pilot fresh out of college.”

More than three decades after his life-and-death struggle above the Ho Chi Minh Trail, Claude M. Bolton - the son of an African-American farmer who'd grown up in the segregated world of rural Mississippi - can look back on a distinguished, 30-year military career in which he rose to the rank of major general and was then appointed assistant secretary (in 2002) of the Army by President George W. Bush.

Ask him why he's still working 12 hours a day at the Pentagon - and another 45 outside the headquarters of the Department of Defense - in his new role as chief weapons-supply officer and research-and-development director for the U.S. Military, and Bolton will tell you that his Vietnam battle experience (he flew more than 230 combat missions) actually played a key role in shaping his decision to accept the White House appointment and take over the critical task of supervising weapons development and delivery for the U.S. Army.

“When I went to Vietnam as a pilot, we had the best leaders and the best training,” says Bolton, who once worked as a freshman busboy in the Selleck Quadrangle cafeteria at UNL. “But we did not have the best aircraft. Partially as a result of that (equipment shortfall), I lost seven (pilots) in my outfit, including my boss, and several of my colleagues wound up in the ‘Hilton' (the notorious “Hanoi Hilton” prisoner-of-war camp for captured American combat pilots) during the last few years of the war. After returning from the Vietnam War, I spent most of my Air Force career doing whatever I could to ensure America's airmen had the best aircraft and equipment.

“And so, when I was asked to take on this job as assistant secretary for acquisition, logistics, and technology, I thought about it and I said to myself: ‘If I can help do the job of getting the very best equipment we have out there to the soldiers who are fighting for us in the U.S. Army, then that's a job I really want to do.'

“My assignment is to do my level best at trying to make sure those soldiers have everything they need. They're risking their lives for this country, day in and day out, and that's the very least they deserve!”
SHOULD HE TAKE PE . . . OR ROTC?

The first time Claude Bolton ever “climbed into an airplane cockpit” - at UNL, while taking Air Force ROTC in the late 1960s - he experienced a marvelous awakening, along with the sudden realization that he wanted to spend the rest of his life piloting jet planes around the sky.

“I loved sitting in that cockpit, I absolutely loved it,” says the retired Air Force major general, while describing how he was introduced to the joys of aerial navigation in Lincoln. “For me, flying airplanes just seemed to come naturally. From the very first day, it was as if I'd been doing it forever.”

Bolton's military record shows that he isn't exaggerating, when he talks about his natural talent for flying. During a distinguished career of 33 years, he served as a combat pilot, as a flight instructor, as a cutting-edge test pilot who flew a dozen different types of newly developed aircraft over the years, as the deputy program director for the B-2 Bomber System Program - and also as the director of the Air Force's critically important Advanced Cruise Missile System Program Office.

By the end of that career, shortly before his retirement in 2002, he was holding down one of the most demanding jobs in the entire Air Force - as director of the global supply system for the Air Force Materiel Command, where, among other responsibilities, he managed $90 billion in weapons sales to 80 foreign countries.

It was a remarkable professional odyssey . . . especially when you consider the fact that George W. Bush's current assistant secretary of the Army grew up as an African-American youngster in South Sioux City during an era (the 1950s) when most black men could expect to spend their working lives as janitors or short-order cooks, if they were lucky enough to find jobs at all.

Ask Bolton to account for his against-the-odds success as one of America's top military executives and this tenacious long-distance runner (he has run the Boston Marathon in just over four hours) will respond with a salute to his father, Claude, Sr. “My dad grew up on a farm in Pickens, Miss.,” he explains, “and while he was serving in the Army during World War II, he happened to spend some time in Sioux City, Iowa. He was there long enough to get a look at the public school system, and he liked what he saw.

“He'd had a very good education, but it was a segregated education, and he realized that raising children in the south in the 1940s wouldn't work. He knew they wouldn't get the education he thought they should have. And he also knew from his travels that Sioux City had only one school system - so he moved the entire family there to take advantage of it. His idea was that it wasn't the color of your skin that mattered; it's what's between your ears and in your heart that counts.

“Because of his and my mother's attitude, nobody ever told me I wasn't supposed to fly airplanes, or go swimming at the local swimming pool, or attend college. My father was a strong, courageous man with a great deal of integrity, and he demanded respect from everyone. And he wasn't afraid to break out the switch, either, if any of us made the mistake of stepping out of line.

“But he was also extremely kind, and very generous. I've never forgotten the day he dropped me off at the Selleck Quad (at UNL), and said goodbye. He shook my hand, and hugged me, and stepped away. And then he turned back and handed me a $10 bill. This was 1964, remember, and he didn't have much money at all. That $10 meant a lot to him - but he gave it to me without a second thought.”

As the oldest (“and the smallest”) of six scrappy kids, Claude Bolton would be the first member of his clan to ever attend college. (He wound up at UNL because his family moved to South Sioux City, in Nebraska, soon after their migration to Iowa.)

He says the decision to sign up for Air Force ROTC was easy to make. “As soon as I got to campus, they explained to me that several courses would be required,” he recalls with a chuckle of nostalgia. “UNL was a land-grant university, so you were required to either take physical education or ROTC; you had to do one or the other.

“Well, it didn't take me long to figure out that you can't fly planes in PE! And so I told myself: ‘Okay, Air Force equals airplanes; therefore, I will take Air Force ROTC. I signed on as a ROTC cadet, and I never looked back.”

Soon after enrolling at UNL, Bolton would also join the University Flying Club (“I'm still a member!”), where he would spend a lot of weekends buzzing through the Nebraska skies - often accompanied by “the lady who would later become my wife.

“Linda (Linda Roll, '68, from Alma, Neb.) was a dental hygiene student, and she also loved flying,” he recalls. “We got married not long before my graduation, and when I received my wings as an Air Force second-lieutenant, on the second deck of the Student Union (in 1969), she helped my mother (Annie Lee) pin them on my collar. We got married 38 years ago, and we've raised two wonderful daughters together - Cindy and Jennifer - and from beginning to end, Linda has been my absolute best friend, as well as my wife.”

BENEFITING FROM ‘MARTIN'S STRENGTH'

Stroll into Claude Bolton's expansive Pentagon office on a typical weekday morning, these days, and the first thing that will strike your eye is a giant-sized, signed photograph of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Prominently displayed, the photo looms beneath a headline in large, boldface type: MARTIN'S STRENGTH.

Whenever the retired major general talks about the photo, his eyes light up. “Without what he and many others accomplished (for civil rights), I wouldn't be here on this job,” he says thoughtfully. “I mean, let's face it: There aren't a whole lot of folks (black Americans) who grew up in the '50s and '60s who wound up flying airplanes for a living, or who became engineers, or who even managed to attend a university.

“I know I benefited from ‘Martin's strength,' and also from the strength of my own father, and I want to honor that legacy in every way I can - by doing my job as well as possible, and by putting everything I have into the task of providing our troops with the very best weapons and equipment that can be found in the world today.”

Tapped by President Bush in late 2001 to become the assistant Army secretary responsible for all acquisitions and procurement (a post that also includes a major military role as science and technology adviser to the Army), Bolton drew extensive praise from the White House, which noted that he had “served in the Air Force since 1969, and that his duties have included squadron and wing safety officer, instructor pilot, wing standardization and evaluation and flight examiner, scheduler, test pilot and acquisition professional.”

A meticulous professional with a reputation for paying close attention to details, Bolton was nominated to be the Army's acquisitions chief by former U.S. Secretary of the Air Force Dr. James G. Roche. “I found Claude to be a keenly intelligent and level-headed military officer,” says Roche, “and he certainly understood the technology involved in directing acquisitions.

“But Claude understood people, too, and he never let all the power he commanded go to his head. He treated everyone with the utmost courtesy and was a very good leader, in my experience. I think he's done a terrific job as acquisitions chief. He's a great guy - and I'd love to serve with him again!”

Adds Dr. Jose Bolton, the secretary's younger brother, a retired Air Force colonel who served with Claude at various times in the Pentagon: “I've always been extremely proud of my brother and the way he chased his dreams. He's incredibly dedicated to any task he takes on. When we were kids together in Nebraska, we used to lie on the front porch at night look at the stars and talk about what we wanted to become in life.

“All Claude ever talked about was flying - and he made it happen through endless dedication and endless hard work. I remember going to the public library with him, as a kid. The rest of us would be checking out books on sports or adventure - but Claude would bring home these two-inch-thick books on electronics! He's always been extremely focused on what he wanted to achieve, and with truly outstanding results.”

While working 12 hours a day and traveling constantly, Bolton says he's been “thriving on the challenge” of guiding the U.S. Army through one of the most ambitious transformations it has ever undertaken. Starting four years ago, the Army brass decided to create what Pentagon officials have often described as a “lighter, more strategically responsive force” that can move its soldiers and their equipment anywhere in the world within a few days.

Listening to this once-upon-a-time “Top Gun” of the Air Force as he outlines his plans for improving the Army's weapons-development and procurement program, it's easy to see why he has drawn rave reviews from most U.S. military observers since taking command of Army acquisitions. “People often ask me why I took on this job, when I could have settled into retirement,” Bolton says with a smile, when asked to describe his vision for the U.S. military in the new millennium. “The way I usually respond is to tell them about the first few months I spent here at the Pentagon, back in 2002, right after I signed on as assistant secretary.

“As I walked the corridors here, I found myself occasionally looking into the eyes of the soldiers who serve with me. And that was a pretty powerful experience. You'd look into their eyes and think to yourself: ‘That is someone's father, or someone's mother, or son or daughter. And they're doing their level best to get the job done, get the mission accomplished.'

“You know, I just came back from nine days in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Kosovo and Germany, where I was visiting the troops. And we spent a lot of time asking ourselves: What can we do better? How can we best help our soldiers out there in the field? Because the kids in the service today are really doing a fine job. Last November, after I spent several days in Iraq, I sent a note up to my bosses saying that we ought to consider ourselves blessed in this country to have men and women who are doing a fantastic job fighting the war on terror, all around the world.”

He pauses for a moment, in order to choose his words carefully.

“Our soldiers are the very best in the world,” says Claude Bolton, “and I figure the least we can do is make sure they've also got the best equipment in the world!”

Courtesy: Nebraska Alumni Association