Honoring our Thunderchief drivers

[Bill in Oregon]

Man, this brings up a lot of stuff, good and bad. Some great Americans here who deserved better from higher up.

http://cademartin.com/overwar/

[Old No7]

That was great; very insightful and interesting quotes from those guys...

Darn shame about "Sharing the target list with the enemy..." though............ Geez..........

Old No7

[jeepnik]

One comment stood out regarding the Thud. That was that it was a cadillac in the air. That may be true, but it was a pig on the ground and on take off. It landed so hot that sometimes there just wasn't enough runway. Bang them up and it got much worse. And lastly, being a single engine it was all or nothing.

That last is where the Phantom shined. Twin engined and generally speaking more robust. But it was also, relatively, a new aircraft.

I worked with Thuds in Thailand and California. While the heat did effect their take off characteristic overseas, the humidity helped to off set that. In the hot dry air of the California desert it was a different story. Several tried to abort take offs too late and ended up scooting across the desert landscape.

The Wild Wiesel squadron commander mandated that if they weren't airbore by a certain point they would abort. The pilots did, and the desert forays ended. All but one. That last one was pilote (or ridden in this case) by the, you guessed it, the squadron commander.

I met that commander many years later. He was retired and had opened a gunsmithing shop. One day I noticed a photo of a younger man in front of a Thud. It had the distinctive WW tail letters. I knew it was taken at George AFB. Talk and stories ensued, I ask him about his last "ride" and he said he just knew he could make it. Then said that he was sure all of the ones who rode the beast across the desert thought the same.

On a small world and sad note, we discovered that we had spend a couple of hours talking, eagles and a two striper, as they worked to free his deputy squadron commander from his wrecked pickup. Neither remembered what was said, but both knew it was what was needed at the time.

[piller]

There were a huge number of heroes in that "war", despite our President, Pentagon, and press forcing us to lose. Never a lost battle, but the leadership declared the war lost.

I hadn't paid much attention to the F105s, but one Marine pilot survived over 600 combat flights in Vietnam. His book is titled "Phantom over Vietnam". He flew the F4.

It is puzzling to me how our Pentagon kept looking for certain design features which would fight the next war, and they seemed to be totally avoiding the features needed at the moment. The F15 was to me the first aircraft to be designed for now and the next several years.

[earlmck]

I thought I knew about the stupidity of the "Rolling Thunder" strategy -- all the "off limits" targets, the multiple days returning to the same heavily protected target -- but I hadn't known about sharing the target info with the enemy . Hanging would have been too easy on that McNamara bunch.

[BigSky56]

NATO was advised of the flight plans of any birds that crossed the DMZ, France was/is a member and France was buddies with the NVA the AA guns @ Sam's were waiting. When I crossed the Cambodian border the flights were handled by macvsog and not NATO. F4 smokers did a good job but A6 intruders carried a lot of bombs. When I worked BDA after a arclight or intruder run on a pink team cover was a snake and top cover was a flight of A1 sandys. Loved those sandys. danny