If You’re Gonna Blow Up, move away from me is what an F-100 flight lead told a wingman whose oil pressure kept dropping.
Our guest, Ike, followed his dad into the F-100. Dad flew the Hun out of Okinawa in the 1950s. Ike got the same jet in 1969, after the Air Force Academy and pilot training.
Then he watched a Thunderbirds solo lose its wings at an air show. The pilot was Tony McPeak, later Air Force Chief of Staff. Welcome to your new airplane, Lieutenant.
Ike talks of the Sabre Dance – you only do it once… and here’s a link to see what he means!
The Many Stories in This Episode
Ike flew 195 combat missions from a base built right on the beach. Furthermore, he did it with an iron sight, a pressure altimeter, a TACAN and one UHF radio.
The episode opens on one of the darkest nights he ever saw. A Special Forces camp was being overrun. There were no flares and no moon.
An O-1 FAC talked his bombs onto the wall, calling dry passes until they looked right. And remarkably, no friendlies were killed.
Next comes a bunker at the end of a blind canyon. Ike flew up the draw in a shallow climb and let one fly. The bomb went straight down the hole.
The leftover ordnance went into the enemy’s vegetable garden. Somewhere, a rutabaga never saw it coming.
However, the mission that sticks with him most came in April 1970. Ike was laying smoke for C-7 Caribous resupplying a besieged camp.
He passed right under one at 100 feet and 500 knots. Ground fire shattered a canopy panel and holed a fuel cell. The Caribou went in, and its crew did not survive.
He landed with about 50 pounds of gas left. Consequently, his wing commander greeted him with a few choice words. His point: You should have taken your glove off, hit the canopy, and collected a Purple Heart!
There’s plenty more. Ike set a river in Laos on fire and flew home covered in rice-paddy mud. An intel sergeant insisted an airfield he’d just flown over was “not there.”
Later he flew F-4s and F-111s at Lakenheath. And, Ike was in the tower as supervisor of flying when the Libya raid launched in April 1986. Twenty-four F-111s left without a single radio call.
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#SoThereIWas #AviationPodcast #F100 #SuperSabre #VietnamWar #FighterPilot #CloseAirSupport #USAF #AirForceAcademy #F111 #F4Phantom #LibyaRaid #MistyFAC #CombatAviation #WarStories
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