North American F-100

The Forgotten Pioneer Air Force jet.

I was contacted by Grady who made the statement that,

"If you even do a print of a F-100, I would be interested in one."

I asked him why?

He said he flew one.

I said when?

He said "Viet Nam".

I asked him how the fighter he flew was painted up.

I specifically asked if his fighter was in the tri-color camo top with a light gray bottom?

The story is below. Enjoy, I did!

Ernie,

You are correct; the F-100's were painted the olive green, dark green, and tan with the gray paint on the underside. I never was one to take many pictures or keep journals, and, I am several wives down the road, with whatever pictures I had staying behind in family photo albums. I have only a few pictures, somewhere, and none very representative.

The story of that first combat mission is one that I tell my grandchildren. I'll relate it to you and you can decide how interesting it is.

The time frame is early 1965, February or March as I recall. My squadron, the 615th TFS, a member squadron of the 401st TFW based at England AFB, LA was tasked in November 1964 to man the  Sawbuck deployment, an eight man / eight plane detachment based at Takhli , Thailand .  Sawbuck was a SEATO treaty detachment sent to Thailand in support of the ripening insurgency actions in SEA.  At Takhli, there was also a squadron from the 428th TFS, then based out of Cannon AFB, Clovis , NM . We were sent over the first of December, 1964, supposedly for a one month tour, to be replaced by someone else. The replacement never happened and things began to heat up in SEA. Ultimately, President Johnson decided to make a retaliatory raid on the Quang Khe torpedo boat base in North Vietnam; the base from which supposedly the boats came that were involved in the Tonkin Gulf incident, the attacks on the USS Turner Joy and the USS Maddox destroyers.

The strike was in the process for some time, at least 10 days. Every day we would get a new warning order that was datelined the "White House",  NOT the JCS or 7th Air Force or PacAF or anything like that, the White House; an order that, among other things, specified the load on each plane.  Every day the order changed; changing both the load and the date of the attack. Clearly the attack was being micro-managed by President Johnson.  Finally, we had a date certain.  The 428th TFS would make the initial strike and the Sawbuck detachment was tasked for providing the four ship fighter escort for the post-strike BDA (bomb damage assessment) RF-101. I was assigned, as a very junior pilot, to be the wingman for the four ship flight lead. The plan was to escort the RF-101 to provide AAA suppressing ordnance (BDU bomblets) just prior to the RF-101's run.  The plan was that we were to precede the photo-recce bird by 10 seconds or so, with half he flight going down the north side of the inlet and half going down the south side of the inlet, stringing out the BDU's with the idea that the bomblets going off would be a distraction to the gunners, if not actually taking them out of action. That night we studied photos of the strike site and picked out way in, which would be off the gulf at VERY low altitude. It being my first combat mission I had the flight surgeon give me some sleeping pills so I could get to sleep, I was afraid I would be too hyped up to sleep much without them.

The strike force took off, and after a 30 minute delay, our four ship BDA escort took off; I was flying 56-1780, a bird that I particularly like because the flight controls were tuned to perfection.  We were to rendezvous with KC-135 tankers over Laos , and when finished topping off, rendezvous and join up on the RF-101 who would navigate to the target. That all went uneventfully except that Panther 4, the element lead's wingman, had radio failure on the tanker.   Lead directed Panther three to break off and escort Panther four and RTB Takhli; we would proceed with just a two ship escort.

After joining up with the photo-recce, he led us, way south of the target area, across Laos and North Vietnam .  Once over the Tonkin Gulf he went out to sea about 15 miles, dropped down to low altitude to get under the enemy radar, and turned north  to get to the Quang Khe run-in line.  Turning in on the run-in line, easy to spot because of the smoke columns rising from the strike, we were skipping along over the waves at about 30' - 50' and everyone had the throttle cobbed to the wall.  The RF-101, contrary to the plan, ended up leading the flight rather than lagging.  With his two engines, he was a couple of knots faster than we were. My flight lead was on the southern shore of the inlet and I was going to go down the right side. Just before we coasted in, we popped up to 300', the minimum release altitude for the BDU's.   At coast-in, we started punching the release button at half second intervals.  The BDU's pods mounted under the wing, had quite a few tubes, which could be activated, I think in groups of three tubes, which would then string out and spread along the shore.  I think the pods held something like four or five hundred bomblets per and we carried one pod under each wing.

As we ran in, it seemed like time stood still.  Soon after passing the coast, I sensed something which seemed at the time like little attention getters, like someone snapping their fingers all over the place but when you looked, you saw nothing. A short time later, probably less than a second, the snapping fingers turned into very short streaks of red, going straight across. A moment later still, those short streaks of red turned into long streaks of red and as I was pumping the pickle button I realized they were tracers. The next moment after that, we were far enough down stream that the sky was full of tracers. I saw them everywhere and going all different directions: passing left to right; down to up; from my right rear quarter across my nose and behind the RF-101 and in front of lead; etc. Then I thought, "Holy crap, only every 5th round is a tracer - there are five times as many rounds as I can see." That was a really scary thought and I hunkered down in the cockpit in an attempt to make myself smaller, as if that would do any good ! ! !  The next thing that happened was that a tracer hit my plane with a really loud THWAK and ricocheted upwards. I thought it had hit the canopy bow but later found out it had glanced off about two inches behind the nose intake.  Just then my flight lead declared he had been hit and directed us to jettison our now empty pods and climb out of the fire zone. Fortunately there was a thin cloud layer at 700' and we popped through that really quickly and thereby, out of sight of the gunners. We had been briefed to turn back to sea so I immediately started a right turn while climbing out and got headed east again. Meanwhile, lead had turned left and the photo-recce had turned right. No one had anyone else in sight. We were on the radio trying to coordinate a join up and lead was checking out his bird. He had hydraulic failure on one of his flight control systems and a hit on his rudder system. He had the bird under control but it was shaky. Once over water, lead turned south and headed for DaNang for an emergency landing. As he was going he was calling out radial and DME off the DaNang tacan and soon the RF-101 got a tally on him. I still had no one in sight but knew I was closing in the right direction. Once the RF-101 joined up on lead, lead directed me to RTB Takhli so I headed west and got on the tanker frequency.

Once over Laos the tanker vectored me into him for a fuel top-off, I had burned up a quite a bit of fuel on the run-in and exit and needed a top-off to get back to Takhli with decent minimums. I was somewhat nervous after the mission and needed 6 or 7 attempts at getting hooked up. I apologized to the boom operator and thanked him for being patient.  After topping off, I headed home, still quite excited.  Then I remembered that the base commander had previously authorized high speed low altitude passes over the field if you had been on a hot mission so I called the command post seeking authorization. They granted permission so I knew I was going to do something, but had had no plan figured out. I started my descent and when I got about 15 miles out I still had 16,000 feet to lose.  Well, I just pointed it down and left the throttle in, finally getting down to about 50' about two miles out, going 475 KIAS. I was smokin'. I crossed the field boundary, shoved the throttle outboard to light the afterburner and paused the second it needed to ignite.  Once the AB lit, I was now about mid-field and pulled up into about a 50 degree climb and then just laid the stick over to the left side of the cockpit and began a climbing roll.   Well, with the afterburner going, and starting at 475 KIAS, I had a huge amount of energy to dispose of.  To the guys on the ground I went out of sight doing rolls. I finally decided I had better stop, I was a bit over 25,000' altitude  (five miles vertically above the ground and 7 miles slant angle distance from the viewers. I know I was out of their sight.)   When I got to 25,000' I pulled it out of afterburner but now I was disoriented as to what was up and what was down - very confused despite that the sky was blue and the earth was green. I stopped the roll, decided I was upside down, rolled another 180 degrees and then decided again that I was upside down and finally rolled wings level with the blue on the top, and then relaxed.   OOPS !!  I was still trimmed for 475 KIAS but I was now flying at 230 KIAS.  Once I relaxed, the trim system pitched the nose down at about 1.5 negative g's and I was hanging in the shoulder straps, scrunched up into the canopy and I could barely reach the trip button with my extended middle finger. I hit the nose up trip and slowly settled into my seat as the trim adjusted to the airspeed.

By now, I was 15 miles down wind so I turned back and began my descent for the pattern. I planned on making a tactical pitchup approach so I needed 300 KIAS and needed to roll out on initial at least 3 miles out. By now, it had been 4-5 minutes since anyone had seen or heard from me so tower called up and inquired whether I was OK. Confirming my presence to them I called rolling on initial at three miles. A tactical pitchup is the fastest way to get a bird on the ground.  You approach the field at very low altitude and when crossing the boundary you delay a half second then make a 60 degree bank climbing left turn to 1,500', while retarding the throttle to idle and dissipating the airspeed in the climb. Rolling out on downwind, you reset the power at normal downwind power settings, throw out the gear and flaps, and just continue the turn on around to base and final, usually rolling out for a very short final before touching down. The maneuver is designed to get you on the ground the fastest, with the least chance of getting shot down if you or the base is under attack; however, it isn't easy to do perfectly. This time though the gods were with me; I executed it perfectly. I mean I couldn't possibly have done it any better if I practiced a thousand times.

As I pulled off the runway, I dropped my drag chute in the drop area, got de-armed, and taxied in.  I was still so excited that I didn't even raise the canopy like you would do normally, and, it was a hot day on top of it. When I taxied in, there was quite a crowd waiting for me. By now everyone had heard that lead took some damage so they were all out to get the report. My crew chief couldn't have been prouder. As he signaled me into the parking spot he almost burst his buttons, he was so proud. So full of it in fact that he failed to notice a ground power cart in the way. When he did notice he frantically gave the crossed arms motion to stop, which I did while they moved the cart out of the way. After he motioned me in and I chopped the throttle I raised the canopy.  It wasn't up 8 inches when the ladder hooked over the lip and by the time it was up two feet a hand with an ice cold beer came in over the side followed by the crew chief screaming at me: "Best damn show all day Sir !!!"

It was pretty heady and exciting stuff for a young first lieutenant who didn't have 300 hours in the bird.

Regards,

Grady

Was that a great story or what?

I love my job. I would definitely like to publish a print of the F-100 in the near future.

I will add to this page in the future and do research on the F-100 and post it here with some more of Grady's stories.

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2-12-08