Posted for John Hafen <j.hafen@comcast.net>:
To
John Schroeder and all you other Thud drivers out there, hats off and
thank you for your service.
In the Feb/Mar issue of
Air & Space, there was a ³Legends of Vietnam² piece
that started:
³At the 1854 Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean
War, British cavalry
were ordered to attack withdrawing Czarist artillery brigades. By the time
the order cascaded down
the chain of command, however, it misdirected the
British horsemen into a hail of fire from Russian guns. The debacle
caused
a furor in England, and inspired Alfred Lord Tennyson, to pen ³Charge of the
Light Brigade,² with its mournful
refrain: Into the valley of Death rode
the six hundred.
Just over a century later, something like that infamous
charge was performed
in modern dress, this time with airplanes, and with the Russian weapons
hidden in the forests of North
Vietnam. And this time the action was not
completed in a single day, but recurred, every morning and afternoon,
weather
and politics permitting, for more than three years. Charge of the
Light Brigade, meet Groundhog Day.
The
Republic F-105 Thunderchief, the main aircraft involved in the drama,
had never been intended to play the role of a strategic bomber. Rather,
it
had been created to make a single, low-level nuclear strike ‹ to use its
potent stinger once, then die, like a
bee.²
Because it¹s an airplane magazine, they go on for pages talking about the
development and aerodynamics of the plane,
(the fighter could make 860 knots
of the deck, well above the speed of sound. "Trouble with going so fast so
low is that
the canopy starts to melt. We had double canopy, with coolant
between the layers...)," but there are a couple of other
interesting
observations.
³Those were uncertain times. No one knew if the U.S. Involvement in
Vietnam
would trigger Chinese or Soviet intervention...²
The article talks about Operation Rolling Thunder being run from
D.C. by
Lindon Johnson and all of the nutty rules of engagement: ³.....targets such
as power plants and airfields were
out of bounds. Nothing in a 30-mile
circle around Hanoi or a 10-mile circle around Haipong could be
hit. The
ships pouring supplies onto the Haipong quays were also off limits. And
heaven help the hapless jock
who strayed into a 20-to 30 mile buffer zone
along the Chinese border...²
³Pilots could defend themselves from attacking
MiG fighters, but could not
hit them on the ground. Surface-to-air missile sites were fair game if they
were active;
while under construction, they were safe. Targets were
selected in Washington, often over a White House lunch, when the
president
and secretary of defense, sometimes aided by the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, mulled over the military¹s
proposed target list, picked
some out, and had them relayed back down the line to Saigon and, eventually
to Korat and
Takhili. Once something became a target, it remained one. If
it wasn¹t wrecked on the first raid, it would be attacked
again and again
until it was.² (Can you spell ³predictable?²)
³Rolling Thunder escalated so gradually that the
North Vietnamese were able
to harden their defenses and hide critical supplies. Their web of
anti-aircraft guns and
Soviet surface-to-air missile sites was soon the most
sophisticated air defense system in the world.²
³The word among Thud
pilots was that by their 66th mission they would have
been shot down twice and picked up once. Put another way, they had about
a
60 percent chance of completing the 100 missions north they were required to
fly. (Their frequent sorties into Laos
didn¹t count.) ³
³...A Thud pilot knew that he was in a knife fight with his good hand tied
behind
him....²
³As pilots and aircraft were lost at the rate of five or six a week,
replacement air crews and aircraft flew in,
the Yokota units to Takhili,
Kadena units to Korat. Thud pilots from Europe also arrived.²
³The Thud experience
was not for everyone. ŒWe had people, when it came to
the point where they had to fly, they¹d quit....One kid got shot down on
his
first mission, got picked up, came in when he got back, and handed in his
wings.²
³The first short course
class of Œuniversally assignable¹ pilots lost 15 out
of 16, all either killed or captured.....For every five pilots that started
the
tour, three would not complete it.²
A huge percentage of POWsin Viet Nam were Thud Drivers.
So the net of it is
that I consider you guys heroes that were radically
unappreciated by the average American.
Thank you. You have
my respect and appreciation.
John Hafen
[I agree with John, thanks to all of you ex-military guys for your
service and protecting the freedoms that allow us all to do what we do. Unfortunately, this thread is taking off in a direction that is
inappropriate given the purpose of the LML. I hate to cut it short, but we do need to stick the Lancair-related issues... thanks for your
cooperation. <Marv> ]
On 10/14/09 7:22 PM, "John Schroeder" <jschroeder@perigee.net>
wrote:
> HI Bill -
>
> Final approach speed with 2x450 gal wing tanks and a fuel tank in the bomb
> bay, we used
180 KCAS plus 2 knots per 1000 pounds of fuel in the F-105.
> It usually quit flying between 155 to 160 knots. This was a fairly good
>
rule of thumb, but the Dash One has a chart for a wider range of
> configurations/gross weights.
>
> Cheers to a FROG
(F ng Really Old Guy) like me :-))
>
> John Schroeder
> LNCE
>
>
>
>
> On
Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:41:18 -0400, Bill Kennedy
> <bill_kennedy_3@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I've got a fair amount of time
flying the F105 and I think we used about
>> 1.2 with it.
>>
>
>
>
>
> --
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