"First In, Last Out, The Story of the Wild Weasel"
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- Опубликовано: 15 сен 2024
- The story of the Wild Weasel mission as it evolved from its beginning during Vietnam to counter Soviet SAMs in Vietnam using the F-100F with minimal Radar Homing and Warning (RHAW) electronics to the F-4G, using the APR-38 and armed with the AGM-88 HARM at the time the film was shot, 1984.
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Proud member of the 388th TFW, 388th AMS. 1971-1972, worked the birds of the 6010th, then 17th Wild Weasel Squadron. I worked the APN-131 navigation system. My favorite bird, thef-105 Thud. Amen to those who had the brass nuts to fly the Weasel missions, and to those who never returned.
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
My grandfather, Major Frank B. Brooks, was a proud Weasel and the most humble, magnificent man I’ve ever had the honor of knowing. Rest in Peace
Nickel
I had the honor of being the crew chief on the Fabulous Phantoms for two years. For a time I crewed two planes by myself. Had great crews!
Those Weasels are absolutely hard as steel. I highly recommend the podcast "10percent true." There's probably 20 hours of weasel interviews on there and it's fantastic.
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!😊
My, dad, Lt. Col. Donald L. "Buns" Fraizer, flew 2 combat tours of 3 over Vietnam as a Wild Weasel (F-100 & F-105). My Uncle Larry Jacob was an early F-4 Wild Weasel but didn't see combat as a Weasel before cessation of hostilities.
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.
I got drafted the Monday after high school graduation. Went Air Force and not Army or Marines. The constant travel and the time away from home grew old. I did what was asked, grew old quickly, and held more responsibilities than any civilian my age. Nothing romantic over there, just long days, 12 hrs shifts, and a life with danger around war birds. My parents might have poured the steel , Uncle Sam, a war, they hardened it. Would I do it all over ... in a minute.
This documentary was outstanding..
Truly awesome and important contribution to the historical record. To see these men, heroes who pioneered the Weasel craft, and still relatively young, is a tremendous gift. I've had a lifelong admiration for Leo Thorsness and am so glad to see him here. It's like Karl Richter in "There Is A Way," it about brings a tear to the eye.
Thank you so much for the upload!
Dan Hampton has a great book out on the history of the Weasel's..... very interesting, great read
You’re welcome. I got to hear Leo talk at a Wild Weasel dining in for my squadron. Inspirational. I have to admit thought, that for fun “Billy Sparks” was the best speaker we ever had for a dining in. Fun and funny.
Even back then Trolling 👍
Thank You for your service
I had no idea. Words not enough.❤🙏🙏🙏
Have you heard of Maj. A. F. Britt? He flew to Vietnam in the backseat of the first F105 WW. 1AFC, 2SS, 6BS, 20+ AM and 1 PH. Stationed at Korat he flew back seat until the Engineers got in country, then he transitioned to a purely attack F105. He took out SAM sites and lead attacks on the Bridge into Hanoi. My brother has a patch of Dad's that has a giant Screw in the back seat.
His last mission He planned and selected the target, and lead a flight of 20 F-105s in a raid on the Paul Doumer Bridge. He came over Thud Ridge and put his bombs on target to great effect while under heavy fire. This gave the following pilots a clear target as an aim point. Everyone made it out of Hanoi and headed South heading for Korat. Command Ordered Maj. Britt to divert to Saigon for the presentation of the AFC for this last mission in theater. He could have taken milk runs for his last 3 but that wasn't my Dad. He was bingo fuel on arrival in the middle of an October Storm.
He made one pass and had to come around again. A C123 taxied out just as Dad came around for his final, little or no power. He went under the wing of the C123 Rupturing the wing tanks and passing through the Prop. The F105 rolled down the runway in a ball of fire. The C123 was on fire. One of the Crewmen re-entered the burning craft to pull his crew mates to safety. He died several days later and was awarded the AFC.
3 days later John McCain was shot down over the same target as a point of reference.
Diverting planes after a combat mission became a point of "discussion" because of it. Policy changed.
(this is all to the best of my memory as I don't have the records in front of me. i will deffer to actual records)
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!
GREAT Americn...and the guest speaker at my commissioning in 1983. RIP Colonel Thorsness.
He spoke at a dining in for one of my squadrons.
Nice job, Tuna! (Spike here)
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.
My Dad , helped equip the wild weasels , he was a radar design guy , and I got to go to arms shows with him , he did something with the AWACS too . He was the one who put the kibosh on the Sergeant York, and his colleagues hated him for shooting down ( ha ha ) the project , cause though he figured out the radar didn’t work right
Yeah, the Sgt York was a Frankenstein's Monster of a project, and met the same end as the original.
38:01 No Disrespect, but that Captain Looks like a Thunderbirds Character!!😆 Good to See the POWs Comming Home!! I'll Never Get Sick of Watching the F-4 Phantom W.W.s👍🍻🇺🇸
A true fighting spirit. They where special
Absolute heros the whole lot of them, a bit crazy yes, but heros none the less.
Wild Weasels
F-100
F-105
F-4
Thank you for sharing this film. Incredibly insightful and just amazing what servicemen in the air have gone through and our learning from it and applying it to today.
You are welcome. Most of those men from the original Wild Weasels have passed. It was a real privilege to get to know some of them, and to listen to their stories first hand.
@@Tunafisher69 You a pilot??
@@dr.pastrami5272 Fansom
I really enjoyed this! thank you 1985
You’re welcome
so here at tge end of 2023, the wild weasel mission now integrated with the Navy's VAQ community. Inter service cooperation at its finest
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
R.i.P Mr. Campfield I was very fortunate to meet him along with his wife Kitty Camfield.
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
For enjoyable and informative! Thanks for the video!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Fascinating video thanks for posting this
My pleasure
Absolute badasses
These men had balls. Big f'n balls. They couldn't have come up with a better moto. Ygbsm is spot on. Rip to those we lost, thank you to those that came back and are still around today. Sorry for the shitty state we have allowed this country to turn into.
I worked the TERREC system that went on the RF-4C and could que the F-4G so they knew where the SAM was before the F-4G popped up to launch a HARM. When done right the HARM was on its way before the SAM could ID and launch on the Weasels. RIP Ltc Ed Fansler.
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.
So sad about all the people killed, in a war that no one won.
Rudy, AMMO 35th TFW, 3552nd TFW (P) Desert Storm WW for life!
Eglin AFB: Mecca for my career field; ground-based ECM/ECCM training
(sigh, those were the dayz... zebra stripes getttin' drunk and watching the "fishing trawlers")
Awesome video!!! 👍
Thank you! Cheers!
Furious ferrets? _Doesn't really grab me._
Splenetic stoats? _Nah._
Enraged ermines? _That's even worse!_
Love it. Who knows what they would have been called if you had been there in 1965!
"You gotta be SHITTING me!" 😂😂
YGBSM, still one of my favorite catch phrases!
Oh God what young men
Funny how some of these guys explaining the heavy losses early on.. it was due to ROE.. they are scared to say it
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.
My favorite was the f100 bar none❤
When Sac Airmen flew with jet jocks...became a team
"Spark-vark" retired 1998... This video never gets to Desert Storm
Yep. Its a 1985 era video. It's not supposed to cover anything after it was produced. I kind of like the lower production values vs a slicker product.
ruclips.net/video/Fzj0y6xjBjw/видео.html
Leo Thorsness was young?
As we all were
👍👍👍👍👍
All that work to be destroyed by Dicky Tricky’s Watergate.
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.
how could he see communism from the inside in prison? I understand the horrors of captivity, but the point is not in the political system, but in the fact that it was a war, American pilots fought and killed, the Vietnamese also had this in common, and psychopaths are everywhere
Are you a turtle today?
?