Gen. Rudi Peksens, “and that’s where reconnaissance comes in.” Before satellites and remotely piloted aircraft, aircrews put their lives in danger to collect information. Here is a translation of some of the jargon used by the aircrews and Red Crown: These pictures are from Joe Lee Burns collection. The aircraft remained in service with the USMC until 1992 when the last airframe was replaced by the F/A-18 Hornet. Later that day, 14 F-Ds departed Kunsan Air Base for Clark Air Base, Philippines. ... + $3.00 shipping . (Courtesy Brig. Tom said that his research showed that most fighter pilots were white Anglo Saxon protestants who were first born sons. Kenny stayed atop the trees in his parachute harness all night. CREATIVE. Listen to the actual combat missions to hear Bob and Roger talking intra-cockpit and the radio transmissions made by other aircrews in the strike force and Red Crown, the Navy airborne warning ship in the Gulf of Tonkin. The non-weapons status of the RF-4C came in handy at times during a Cold War crisis. So many RF-4Cs retired during the 1980s that there was a recce shortfall in Desert Storm. Richard Pirrello, a mechanic at Udorn, said RF-4Cs shot one million feet of film each month in 1969 for PPIF processing. Kenny landed in high trees in Laos. I’m in the back row 6th guy from the left. During an August 1965 inspection, a general told Ransom’s squadron “how bad we were.” On October 27, 16th TRS pilots ferried nine airplanes to South­east Asia. Every two weeks, a flight of photo Phantoms from Japan’s Kadena Air Base deployed to Osan Air Base in South Korea to fly Peacetime Aerial Reconnaissance Program (PARPRO) missions along the DMZ. Free shipping . I felt at the time I was saving his life and I intended to eject after he did. When they made their kills, all of the aircrews were flying the F-4E with the internal 20MM six-barrel gatling gun. Click on the first photo to enlarge it. I called for help for Kenny and headed back for Thailand where we were stationed. “We got spurious inputs; the pilot wouldn’t command anything and there would be a little bit of a roll, and I’d say, ‘Hey, what are you doing up there?’ The pilot would say, ‘Nothing. 2nd row standing:  Bill Mikkelson, Jack Caputo, 2nd row sitting:  Don Vogt, Mike Nelson, Jim Pinckley, Jim Sumner, Back row from the left:  Sol Ratner, Gary Retterbush, Charlie Cox, Jeff Pritchard, Dan Silvas, Biff Strom, Ray “Howie” Howington, Jeff Musfeldt, Phil Lehman, Dave Lowder, Phil Winkler, Carl Scheidegg, Jack Storck, Cliff Young. Find the perfect F4 Phantom Photos stock photos and editorial news pictures from Getty Images. “When I flew [combat missions] from Incirlik Air Base [in Turkey]…for the first week or so…we didn’t know if we were successful or not because we had no reconnaissance. Both Ross and his backseater ejected and were picked up. Pictures per page: Image ID: 372912 McDonnell Douglas F-4G Phantom. F-4 Phantom 100 Missions Vietnam Patch Full Color. Click on this link to see me, 1Lt. Ray Battle, the aircraft commander, thought the airplane was going to crash so he told Kenny to eject. by SEBASTIEN ROBLIN The McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II is a legendary aircraft — an icon of the Vietnam War and the archetype of the third-generation jet fighter designs that entered service in the 1960s. Opens image gallery. Instinctively, I took the stick and throttles in hand and to my amazement, the aircraft as flyable. Air Force F-4 Phantom 400 Missions Vietnam Patch Full Color. I thought you [bumped the stick] with your knee.’” The aircraft were also aging rapidly; ground aborts became common and Thompson’s unit departed Bergstrom with 20 airplanes to ensure 12 of them stayed airborne long enough to reach Aviano Air Base in Italy. While the aircrew debriefed operations and maintenance personnel, photo lab technicians developed the film in a darkroom. The aircraft carried a telephoto camera in a monstrous “Bench Box” pod that hung so low under the fuselage it could snag arresting cables at the end of the runway. If the MiGs got too close to the F-4 bombers, the bombers would be forced to jettison their bombs and take evasive action to avoid being shot down. WSO Paul Thompson, who flew RF-4Cs during the late 1980s at Bergstrom AFB in Texas, said the TEREC-equipped aircraft had a reputation for poor stability and fatal accidents, since the pod moved the Phantom’s center of gravity dangerously close to the aft limit. TheWorldAirForce: Photo Post anything (from anywhere! I pulled the power off just as I touched down and the aircraft settled onto the wire cutting it. Gen. Steve Richie’s story of the rescue read “Roger Locher Describes Shooting Down a MiG, Getting Shot Down by a MiG-19, Ejecting & Evading Capture on the Ground in North Vietnam for 23 Days.”. On this day Bob Lodge and Capt. In the hierarchy of flying, the jet fighter is the pinnacle, but aerial combat is the fighter pilot’s ultimate experience. Some of the 35th TFS Guys Pose for a Group Photo in front of the Squadron Building Just Prior to Departing Kunsan AB, Korea, for Southeast Asia. Major Lodge had told people that he would never become a prisoner of war. John Grieve, who flew the Phantom in the 1970s, described the worst nightmare: a circuit breaker box underneath the rear ejection seat. A few weeks later, I was wasting time in the library. These are Richard Keyt’s pictures  taken while he was a member of the 35th Tactical Fighter Squadron while TYD from Kunsan Air Base, Korea, to Korat Air Base, Thailand in 1972. X. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 5,000 articles originally published in our various magazines. Aug 16, 2020 - Explore James Lee's board "F-4 Phantom", followed by 150 people on Pinterest. Official USAF Records Credit the 35 TFS with 6 MiG  Kills. At the altitudes F-4s flew over North Vietnam, the missile had a kill radius of approximately 65 meters, but anything within 100-120 meters of the detonation would be severely damaged. It's December 1966, and a U.S. pilot is leading a squadron of six F-4 Phantoms on a dangerous bombing mission over North Vietnam. “I had SAMs flying at me, I had anti-aircraft flying at me…the first SAM went above me and exploded, the second SAM was too low and it exploded and didn’t bother me and the third SAM was close enough that when it exploded [the shrapnel] started my airplane on fire.”. Major Lodge elected not to eject because on that day Intel briefed the aircrews that their mission would take them deep into North Vietnam into an area where helicopter rescue was not possible. This Phantom is operated by the 82d Aerial Targets Squadron (82 ATRS). I approached him from behind and waited for a chance to get his attention. Tom spoke about a chapter he wrote for the book, but his editor didn’t let him put in the final version because it didn’t have anything to do with the rest of the book. $6.99. | U.S. Air Force photo “We thought maybe we had had a midair.” It wasn’t a midair: The trailing F-14 pilot had inadvertently launched an AIM-9 Side­winder air-to-air missile. These pictures were taken by members of the 35th Tactical Fighter Squadron while TYD from Kunsan Air Base, Korea, to DaNang Air Base, South Vietnam, and Korat Air Base, Thailand in 1972. Fighter Squadron VF-142 Ghost Rders Patch Full Color. Image 1 of 20. $5.95. The shadow from Rudi Peksens’ RF-4C is visible in a bomb damage assessment image he took over North Vietnam. Recce crews also found that the RF-4C could outrun many threats. Ask Joe Lee Burns or Gary Rettebush Why 8 Air to  Air MiG Kills  are Listed Although pilots initially manned the rear cockpit, it didn’t take long for the Air Force to realize that weapon system officer (WSO) training cost about one-third that of pilots, and WSOs supplanted PSOs. On May 11, 1972, General Vogt, Commander of the 7th Air Force, cancelled all strike missions into North Vietnam and dedicated over 150 aircraft and USAF resources to rescuing one American. WSO Ken Butler said his unit lost several RF-4Cs at night and “never knew what happened to them—the jungle just swallows them up.” For night missions, crews dropped photoflash cartridges to light up a target with 260 million (later one billion) candlepower for taking pictures. The U.S. Air Force initially funneled inexperienced pilots like Ransom into the rear cockpit as pilot systems operators, abbreviated PSO and pronounced “pay-so.” Training was not optimal: Poor rear-seat visibility disoriented many PSOs and made them airsick, and radar training took place on an ancient Boeing B-47 system, since early aircraft were delivered without full equipment. F-4 Phantom II TD-622. Read Gary Retterbush’s article on his MiG kills called “Gary Retterbush 2 – North Vietnamese Air Force 0.”. Photos taken by Richard Kruse, at Oshkosh in 2010. After an RF-4C landed, the mission continued with technicians taking the film cassette to the Photographic Processing and Interpretation Facility (PPIF), a mobile 25-shelter self-contained system with its own generators, fuel and water bladders. In the years that followed the Vietnam War, the Phantom was upgraded several times. 35th Tactical Fighter Squadron, DaNang Air Base, South Vietnam, May 1972, First Row from the left excluding Lt. Biff Strom in the intake:  Capt.. John Huwe, Lt. Carl Scheidegg (2nd), Lt. Ray Seymour (3rd), Major Bill Kyle (4th), Capt. The job of the strike escorts was to engage and destroy MiGs that threatened the strike force. The RF-4C photo Phantom collected valuable intelligence over Vietnam’s battlefields and beyond, flying “alone, unarmed and unafraid”, For me, the McDonnell RF-4C was just one model of aging Phantoms I flew as a backseat flight test engineer during the 1980s at Edwards Air Force Base. After attending Undergraduate Pilot Training at Reese Air Force Base, Lubbock, Texas, F-4 Replacement Training, Air Force Survival Training and Jungle Survival Training, he was assigned to the 497th Tactical Fighter Squadron ‘Night Owls’, 8th Tactical Fighter Wing ‘Wolfpack’, Ubon Royal Thai Air Force Base, Thailand in 1968 as a Weapons System Operator (WSO) aka Guy In Back (GIB) flying the F-4D, Phantom II. Ivan III (the Great), grand prince of Russia. Wolfe,” but he did not turn around. By chance I came across “Jousting with Sam and Charlie, the Truest Sport.”  Excellent story. “The last 300 feet was pure luck,” he said. He had recently finished his FAC tour and returned to the U.S. Although many risked their lives that day the USAF did not suffer a single loss. After taking off from Udorn Air Base in Thailand, pilots bled down the centerline tank until it ran dry around the Plain of Jars in Laos, which Edwards said “must be chock full of centerline tanks because we punched them all off there.”, Captain Rudi Peksens points to shrapnel damage on his RF-4C in September 1970. About three miles from the target, the front seat pilot yanked into a 75-degree bank turn and then rolled out, held it for 15 seconds, then did another rapid turn and roll out, and then turned on the radar for one second to make the North Vietnamese think the aircraft was headed someplace else. The strike escort F-4s were the second line of defense if enemy MiGs got past the MiG CAP (combat air patrol) F-4s. 64-1004 after one such failure: “The pilot snagged the [arresting gear], but he was still at full throttle and the chain lifted him off the ground and punched a strut through a wing and crippled the other [after hitting the ground again]. Designed to overcome the RF-101’s shortcomings, the RF-4C was a major overhaul from earlier F-4 models. Download for free on all your devices - Computer, Smartphone, or Tablet. The 35th TFS soon consolidated the squadron and moved all of its men and F-4Ds to Korat Royal Thai Air Base, Thailand, where I joined it. We were at 4,000 feet and Kenny was flying the airplane when I heard an explosion, the aircraft shuddered and the front windscreen was covered in what turned out to be hydraulic fluid. If you flew the F-4 in the Vietnam War in any branch of the service please become an author on this site and tell your stories. Prior to the RF-4C, the McDonnell RF-101 Voodoo ruled the low-level reconnaissance skies, but that aircraft’s less sophisticated cameras limited it to daylight-only operations. We both survived the incident for which I am grateful.”. While cruising northbound at 34,000 feet, crews passed bright lights on mountains that indicated someone had forwarded their position via telephone to gunners lying in wait. Wolfe spent a lot of time researching “The Right Stuff” by hanging out with fighter pilots on Air Force and Navy bases. After refueling, the RF-4C crew spotted the carrier USS Saratoga in the Mediterranean Sea and began descending to positively identify the ship. New airplanes arrived at Shaw almost every day, and Ransom picked up seven jets from the St. Louis factory, even signing for one because his higher-ranking instructor, an Australian exchange pilot, couldn’t. Lance Peter Sijan was a United States Air Force officer and F-4 fighter pilot. 08 Jul 2013 | Posted by Flanker41. Nov 26, 1968 - A US Navy’s F-4 Phantom II from VF-142 (Fighter Squadron 142) on the deck of American aircraft carrier 'Constellation' (CVA-64) in the Gulf of Tonkin, Vietnam. 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