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@@hpmc1975 It’s hard to appreciate just how deadly aerial combat was just a few years before I started flying. With the advent of the HARM and the ability to stand off from the target area, my biggest concern in combat wasn’t being shot down; it was failing to do my job properly (due to either a system/weapons failure, or my own fault) and getting a strike aircraft shot down. Thankfully no one was shot down in the missions I covered, and my systems/HARMs worked great. The Vietnam era Weasels had cajones of steel.

Shhhhhh! They might hear you.

@@edfisher1401 I was trying to do something similar and they let me upload it. But it’s “blocked”

Yep, you are a member of the FB page for the 90th that I administer...a "top contributor"!

Yes, that is a great podcast. I’ve watched the Weasel interviews. Those guys were in the squadron with me, and what they say is better than 50% true!😊

Yeah, we always tried to coordinate with the EA-6Bs and EF-111s back in the day. Mostly in mission planning, but no data link to share information during the mission, other than voicecom

Meh, all I did was digitize an old video I had from my time in the 563rd. But yeah, they did a great job when they shot this video.

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Older F-4 days, or F-16s?

You’re welcome

Hate to rain on your parade, but F-4Gs used their own location system, the APR-47, to locate SAMS. We had no datalink system and did not interface with RF-4Cs during our missions. Whether or not the RFs gathered photo intelligence data used to plan for missions is a different matter.

@@Tunafisher69 ALQ-125 TEREC was an ESM system which could stand off and pass geolocation, type and freq via radio (this was before high-speed data links), This allowed the F-4G to preset the APR-47 so when they popped up the -47 would refine the targeting data and allow quick shots with the HARMs. This mode was not normal for the F-4G but was a capability for difficult threat systems. I am not sure when TEREC was removed from the RF-4Cs. I left the program in 1981/2. We only bought 16 shipsets for four squadrons of four aircraft. The system was mounted in the SLAR bays. It looks like after I left the program USAF bought more systems and pod mounted them but did it very badly causing aircraft handling problems and were likely retired by 1990.

@@karlstreed3698 Sounds interesting, but of course anything passed by radio would have been pretty clunky in its implementation. I flew in the G from 1986 to 1996 and this was not a capability in our bag of tricks, so it must have been eliminated before I started flying the jet. Thanks for sharing.

@@Tunafisher69 It was tested as a way to keep the F-4Gs having to spend time DFing the target. TEREC was to stand off at high altitude out of engagement range so the Weasel would have minimum threat exposure. As the Viet Nam vets left a lot of experience was lost and many less used techniques were stopped to save training funds. An example of this was the BLU-82 daisy cutter used in Viet Nam. When Dessert Shield started they had a hard time finding the procedures to drop one because none had been used for 16 years. They had to talk to some old Air Commandos to fill in some missing information they found in old archives.

Actually, opposition to the Vietnam War and Watergate are two separate political events, both with profound impacts. And all that work wasn't for nothing, since the technology was adapted to create the F-4G Wild Weasel, which went on to perform brillantly during Desert Storm.

87th EWAS was tasked to keep them trained and fighting the RW threats of the time. So, political events of the early 70's had zero effect for us operators in the 90's, in both Shield, Storm and Red Flag ops.

Yeah, the Sgt York was a Frankenstein's Monster of a project, and met the same end as the original.

Yep, that was the mission. Roll into Korea with a load of HARMs and start swacking SAMs.

Nickel

David L. OAKES lt. Commander 67th (i believe) '71-72. is my great uncle would you or anyone in your crew cross paths?

Yeah, at $300 a ticket. The better seats were out of my price range!

Glad you enjoyed it!

Thank you! Cheers!

Very cool. Are they still living, and can you get them to tell “war stories”?

@@Tunafisher69 my dad passed away 5 years ago but my Uncle is still going strong.

@@gmfraizer73 It’s sad, we are starting to lose the Vietnam vets like your uncle now. Make sure you pester your dad to tell his “war” stories. I’m sure many interesting things happened in his time in the F-4. I was reluctant to talk about my stories when I was younger, but find age has loosened my tongue.

David L. OAKES lt. Commander 67th (i believe) '71-72. is my great uncle would you or anyone in your crew cross paths? He flew F4s and 105s.

Partly yes. But also due to unimaginative tactics, outdated equipment, insufficient training, and facing advanced weapons (SAMS) provided to North Vietnam by the Russians. Ironically, this is pretty much the situation Russia is facing in their battle against Ukraine right now. Even ROE (and the reality of a strong NATO ready to kick their butts) keeps them from properly attriting the logistics flow of new weapons from the West into Ukraine.

​@@Tunafisher69I've always thought the conventional wisdom was that unimaginative thinking and excessive caution is what resulted in the rules of engagement being very restrictive. But I forget where I read it but it blew my mind. Someone said that we did not launch massive airstrikes against North Vietnamese Air bases because if we had wiped out which we could have done in 2 days the North Vietnamese air fleet, the red Air Force would have came into plug the gap and we would have been facing whole squadrons of Soviet fighters

@@decimated550 There are doubtlessly many reasons why we fought Vietnam in a limited fashion. Part of that was the presence of Soviet advisors on the ground, and maybe in the air. We didn’t want to antagonize the Soviet Union unduly. They had nukes and a large army in Eastern Europe. But the question of why we were in Vietnam and why we supported a corrupt South Vietnamese regime was never wholly answered. It can be analyzed to death. I like to blame the French myself, for screwing up the country/region in the first place.

Love it. Who knows what they would have been called if you had been there in 1965!

YGBSM, still one of my favorite catch phrases!

As we all were

Those were the days when men were men, they didn't complain they did the job that was asked of them. Many years later I served and fought in the Gulf War (1991) we had what I'd call weenie whiners, always complaining about the heat, the food, the sand and so on.... I will say I did fight alongside some warriors as well.

I heard zero complaints during Desert Storm. I imagine there was a lot of complaining while the crews sat and waited for combat operations to begin (I didn't have to sit and wait...we arrived from Clark Airbase after the war had begun and left soon after it was over, unlike the crews from California and Germany). I guarantee you there was complaining by the crews in Vietnam (about the heat, the humidity, the target restrictions, etc) because that is the nature of the military. We bitch about everything except actually fighting.

Lol kitty. What a very classic 1960s era. Name for a fighter pilot's or astronauts wife

He spoke at a dining in for one of my squadrons.

Good men. Bad war. Big waste. Never forget. Oops.

James, I got there as quick as I could-enlisted at 17. Arrived at the 388th in Sept '73. I actually got married (to a WAF at Korat!) in Apr 1974. Then Major Jim Boyd, an F-105G Weasal driver was my head Usher at my wedding. He flew the last G model into the boneyard at D-M. He also flew the last F-105G mission of the war, with Kim Pepperell as his Bear. I'd like to know where Jim is today...Hammer

@@markhamersly1664 my last time on the flight line at Korat, May 1972, before being shipped home for some leg surgery, I helped a dear friend crew chief launch a 105. I left a day or two later, got back to Travis and found on the cover of Life magazine, pictures of the crew we launched, captured after being shot down over North Vietnam. When the POW bracelets came out, I found one of them and wore that bracelet until their return.

@@markhamersly1664 Boyd strikes a memory for me, as a crew member I've worked on his bird or something.

I was 388th OMS 1972

No I haven't. I'm a 1980s-1990s Weasel EWO, so other than those mentioned in the video, some of whom I met, and my own era, I'm as ignorant as the average Joe.

Mr Britt, thank you for sharing that story. To get an inside look at the bravery and smarts needed to pull off those missions is amazing. Hearing these Wild Weasel stories is really inspiring, and men like that are truly the best our country has to offer in my opinion. Your father is an absolute hero, including his family!

David L. OAKES lt. Commander 67th (i believe) '71-72. is my great uncle would you know or anyone in your crew cross paths? He nevee talked much about it despite being career. trying to find his memory out here.