Tom et al.~
EXCELLENT thread!! A few weeks too late to make it into the “From the Forums” column in the November issue (drat! wouldn’t that have been an election-year coup?), but I have a good mind to sneak this into the December issue, just to show off the sheer creativity of the people here. [:D][8D]
I was a crew chief on the F-102A in '62-'65 at Soesterberg AB, Netherlands and '65-'67 at Tyndall AFB FL. The missile bay doors could hold a total of twenty four 2.75 FFAR’s. The rocket tubes were three each for the four center doors, each double loaded. Some aircraft had the AIM-26 mod, so the outboard doors did not have the rocket capability as they were much thinner, due to the size of the AIM-26. At Soesterberg we flew with the AIM-26 so all of our aircraft were modified.
I have to disagree with sharkskin about the F-102 being a disappointment. The old gal performed better than was thought. Once the bugs were ironed out on the area rule concept, the 102 was by far the best interceptor flying in the early to mid 60’s. If the DOD had stayed out of it, the F-102 would have had better capability, but they were in a hurry to get it in production before most of its systems could be perfected. As it was, it took less man hours per flight hours to keep the 102 in the air than it did the 106.
The F-106 could only be flown in the USA or Canada and could not be deployed overseas. The reason for this was its radar and fire control system could only operate under SAGE control. Without SAGE, it would be like hunting a gnat some where over Texas. Its in commission rate was the worst in the Air Force untill the F-111 came along. The “Stable Table”, which coupled its radar, fire control and auto pilot system to the SAGE controler, was very un reliable. It wasn’t untill the mid 80’s that a new system was installed which improved its intercept capability. Later on it was equiped with a data link system simular to what the F-14 uses.
The F-102 operated in many countries under USAFE and PACAF as well as Alaska and Iceland. During a hot scramble you could have one break ground in around two and a half minutes. We set a record at Soesterberg. We were having a hot discussion with the pilots in the alert hanger. To prove our point, we had the pilots in the cockpit with power on when the horn went off. All they had to do was start the engine, strap in and taxi for take off. Unknown to us, a USAFE team was timing us to see how fast we could get the alert birds airborn. The first one broke ground seventy seconds after the scramble horn went off. The second aircraft was four seconds behind him. The previous record had been set by a state side Air Force unit, with a time of one minute and thirty five seconds. It would take a F-15 that long to get both engines started.
Oh, and the AIM-9 is called Sidewinder, not Sparrow. The rollerons on the AIM-9 are to keep the missile from wobbeling. The forward fins control the missile in flight.
I’ll be certain to keep my eyes peeled Lawrence[tup].
So you were with the 32 FIS at Camp New Amsterdam huh? [8D] That unit helped defend Dutch airspace against the Russki’s for 40 odd years. Forty years of foreign deployment to the same airbase, that’s a pretty impressive record. Let me take this opportunity to thank you for doing your bit. Too bad I was too late to see your Daggers in the air because of the transition to Phantoms in '69. I did see one of the 102’s on its homeground though, because the Soesterberg Airforce Museum now has a Dagger on display in the appropriate colors [8D]. By the way they also have an F-100 and F-15 in Wolfhounds markings parked outside. I do wish they would move them inside though: these are real gems. I assume the funds aren’t available at the time… Here, have a look:
hear/here ChemMan…brilliant contribution to a most incredible thread !
I was with the 32 FIS for three wonderful years. My first wife (who died in 1993 of breast cancer) was from the small town of DeBuilt, not far from the airbase. I still have several of the “Slobbering Wolf” patches in my collection.
In '64, we started sharing the alert hanger with the Dutch Hawker Hunter. I can still smell the fumes from the starter of the Hawker Hunter.
I was a young kid (18 years old) when I first got to CNA and enjoyed every minute of it. I last visited there in 1985. A lot had changed.
Thank you for allowing me to visit your beautiful country and being a part of its history.
Tom, I have pics of the F106 that landed in the snopwbank. I also remember seeing a website with it in it but I cannot find it now.
There was also another incident where a F106 hit a grain elevator during a demonstration. A newspaper photograher took a series of photographs that show it before, during, and after. Again, I thought I saw these on the web, but now I can’t find them.
Scott
"The F-106 could only be flown in the USA or Canada and could not be deployed overseas. " – Berny13
I have to disagree with you there, Bernie, because during the Pueblo incident in 1968 or '69, the F-106s were sent to South Korea to stand alert. There is a hilarious photo of a Six Pack, which had been spiffed up for an inspection by a Lt. General, fitted with a triple ejector rack under each wing on the fuel tank hardpoints. And from each station of the TER hung a 500-lb. bomb, six in all. For those who might not know, the F-106 was a pure interceptor, and not designed to carry bombs, and was not capable of bombing, but the gesture was meant to tell the General that this squadron was prepared to do anything for king and country, or rather, Uncle Sam.
But also, Bernie, thank’s for illuminating this stuff as one with firsthand knowledge, which I don’t have nearly as much of as you – mine’s all from sources on the Century Series and friends who flew them, except the one CF-104D which I knew intimately and got to fly in several times. And I don’t mind at all being brought to account when I’m outright wrong, as I was, and I went back and fixed some of the things Bernie pointed out. I have to apologize to you and all the others for not serving history or journalism well by calling the F-102 a disappointment. I was just parroting that same old “conventional wisdom” about the Deuce without doing my homework, and fact checking that blanket statement of mine would have been easy, since I have two close friends who flew them (with our pres, GWB) in the 111th FIS, TANG. From memory, I recall my friends saying the Deuce was underpowered (what jet, except the F-104, from that generation wasn’t underpowered?) but otherwise they remembered it fondly, moreso than the F-101. Without that “disappointing” Deuce, we would not have had the B-58, the F-106, possibly the XB-70, which, though cancelled, provided invaluable high performance research data that is used to this day, and, the greatest contribution of all, the area rule, which allowed subsonic aircraft, just by pinching the fuselage at the waist, to suddenly become supersonic aircraft.
And since this thread has become one about Century Series jets in general, here’s another couple of F-101 Voodoo stories that, I think, I’ve told on this site, but maybe they bear repeating – or, maybe not. But here they are anyway:
When the Canadians flew the F-101B as their front-line interceptor, they used to do exchange programs between themselves and U.S. F-101B units, which by then were all Air Guard squadrons. Two of my friends spent time in Canada with the RCAF squadrons, and even to this day the Canadian pilots are not only known for their great skill, but for their, um…love of fun, yeah, that’s it…as well as their sense of humor, dark though it may be (They were the ones who named the F-104 “The Aluminum Death Tube.”)
But they exposed my friends Bob and Dan, both 101 pilots, to a trick they liked to play on the civilians on the ground at night. The F-101B model had a blinding searchlight built into the left side just underneath the canopy area. It was for identifying aircraft at night, and apparently wasn’t a very good idea, because I’ve never seen it on any other interceptor in modern times. But this light was as bright as the sun. So the Canadians would take two jets at high enough altitude that their engines could not be heard down below, then light the afterburners of one as well as the searchlight. The two airplanes, one dark, the other lit, would approach each other head on at just under Mach one. At the exact instant they met, the lit-up plane would turn off the light and go out of burner, while simultaneously the dark plane would turn on both his searchlight and the afterburner. It gave the effect on the ground of a very fast UFO making an instantaneous reversal of his course, an impossibility given our primitive Earthling technology. It used to drive NORAD crazy because of the phone calls, and when the secret got out, the Canadians got a good reaming out. But wouldn’t you have loved to have witnessed one of those “UFO” sightings?
AND:
As most of you know, the early ejection seats were not only user unfriendly, they were downright dangerous, and many pilots died because they preferred trying to ride a stricken plane down than risk an almost certain career-ending back injury from an ejection (and that was one of the less gruesome ejection-related injuries that occured quite often in those days).
My friend Dan, who had just transitioned from the F-102 to the F-101B in the Guard, had strapped in and was in the process of bringing the engines up with the aid of the huffer. The 101 had a bad penchant for catching fire, as well as for blowing up in midair (it was a problem connected with fuel pooling under the engines in the fuselage, and was later corrected by the addition of two simple holes in the lower rear fuselage, I believe).
But to the point, Dan suddenly got a fire warning light and the crew chief frantically signaled to Dan and his WSO to get out. Ground egress with these old seats was a multi-step process, and you could burn up before you got everything unstrapped and unhooked. Well, Dan pulled the lever that severed the necessary things that attached him to the seat. He unbuckled and deftly leaped overboard, a pretty good jump from that big jet, but given the alternative…
Anyway, Dan, who is short and wirey, had forgotten to unhook one thing: the hose to his oxygen mask, which on that aircraft plugged into the left console. So as soon as Dan was over the side, he found himself dangling helplessly by the oxygen hose, which might have broken his neck had it been less flexible. The alert crew chief ran up, reached to the snaps on Dan’s chin strap, and flicked it off, causing Dan’s helmet to come off and he collapsed in a heap on the tarmac. The aircraft was a writeoff, and thank the lord it was unarmed, because Dan would have been written off, too.
Tom
I seem to recall something about the F-106 in Vietnam early on and that it had a camo paint job. Can anyone else confirm this??
Perhaps the aircraft I was thinking of was a 102?
I can confirm the camouflaged F-102’s in Vietnam, Lee. Apparently they even used those for ground support firing rockets. Since this thread, I know how! I’d like to share some more and dig up a pic for ya, but I have to run.
Krax out.
Thanks Filibert, I will agree that they would have been pretty decent in the ground attack mode. I seem to recall that even F-104s were used in Vietnam at one time.
Sharkskin, The CF-18 has the spotlight I believe.
Krax & subfixer, several years ago there was an article in Wings magazine about the Duece. One of the stories in this article was about how the pilots would launch the occasional AIM-4 at VC campfires with spectacular results. This was eventually prohibited by the brass as being to expensive. Imagine sitting around that campfire!!
The F-102 was sent to Vietnam in the late 1960s in what, from what I consider to be excellent first-hand sources, was not one of the prouder deployments of that confused war. The Deuces went to Vietnam and sat “alert” near Saigon (I’m not sure on the base or if the Deuces were TDY in Thailand as well). Now, by this point in the war, no one was under any illusion that hoardes of NVAF bombers were going to attack Saigon, or even send a MiG south of the DMZ. The real reason the Deuces were there were twofold: first, they did ceremonial flyovers and escorted VIP flights as politicians and Bob Hope flew in and out of the country. The other reason was one that many veterans believe to be the true reason the F-102 went to Southeast Asia. It was a chance for older, or younger but not so bold, fighter pilots in ANG status to get “combat duty” in their career folders, so they would be considered combat veterans when promotions came up, giving them an advantage. They did not fly in harm’s way, but this statement I give you for you own use, to decide whether it is true or not, because I got that from a couple of real combat veterans – one, an F-4 WSO who won a Silver Star (legitimately), and the other a veteran Thud pilot who most certainly went in harm’s way on a regular basis. The F-102 deployment was designated “Palace Guard” or “Palace Alert” – I’m not sure which was which.
The one story I have picked up about the Deuces in Vietnam may be apocryphal, because there’s no way to confirm it, but it’s funny anyway.
It seems that one of these ANG hard-chargers flying Deuces in Vietnam got so bored and eager for a fight, that he actually acquired an enemy campfire on his infrared seeker, and shot a Falcon missile right into the midst of a bunch of dining NVA troops.
BTW, does anyone out there have any information about the instance where an F-104C pilot, flying a close air support mission (now that was a ridiculous idea, using the old Starfighter to bomb and strafe), got lost and strayed all the way north over Chinese Hainan Island, where he was, I believe, shot down and ejected safely. Does that ring a bell with anyone?
As for the camouflage on the F-102, a number of stateside ANG units flying the Deuce acquired the Southeast Asia Camouflage pattern, as did some F-86H units. There was also an SEA pattern designed, but never used, for the F-106. It can be seen in an older copy of the TO 1-1-0 (Do I have the number of the tech order correct? I’ve lost my copies). Also, Berny’s explanation of the difficulty of deploying the F-106 overseas would explain why it was the only one of the Century Series that never went to Vietnam.
Tom
PS Time to change that signature. I didn’t think anyone would pay attention to it, but apparently, they do and it’s distracting. I like the old one better.
Sharkskin, you are correct about the F-106 being deployed to Korea. It was there as a show of force only and would have been almost useless if it had to make an intercept without SAGE guidance.
The tech order you are refering to is TO 1-1-4. I have several copies and would not part with any of them for any amount of money.
I remember in Nam when a BGen flew one of our RF-4C’s on a mission north. He took off with three tanks, flew at high altitude, and when he got to the target area, he punched all three tanks. There he was flying at high altitude, at the speed of heat. He went so high and fast the pictures he took could not be read. But, he had a combat mission over North Vietnam. The backseater had to hook up with the tanker going north and south because the BGen couldn’t do it.
Good anecdote Berny, and if you’ve studied the sad history of that air war, the bravery, the waste of so many good men, and the sheer insanity of how it was run, well, it’s an old subject. But for younger readers, as Berny knows, Air Force regs (I assume that the Navy has similar regulations for admirals) require that all General Officers must be accompanied by a qualified “co-pilot” when they fly. And some of the most harrowing stories you will hear come from some poor capt. or major, who may have some of the best hands in the Air Force, nearly being killed by a general who hasn’t flown 20 hours in the last five years, refusing to take common sense advice from an underling. I learned about the Palace Guard/Alert scams with the 102s many years ago, as a reporter, when I learned that an officer who was unfit for the job, became elevated to commander of a certain ANG fighter group, partly on the strength of his having that questionable “combat experience” in Vietnam in the F-102. This commander was later cashiered for being incompetent, as well as less than honest. This is not a political opinion. It is in the public record. However, let me say, I have also heard that there were some fine pilots who happened to be in the Guard, and who voluteered to take their Deuces to Vietnam, because they truly wanted to make a contribution to the effort, and they didn’t know the real truth behind that revolving deployment.
And please, don’t anyone conofuse these F-102’s with the, in my opinion, courageous citizen soldiers from the Colorado Air National Guard who took their F-100s over there and most certainly flew in harm’s way every day giving close air support to our troops on the ground. I don’t know why the ANG contribution in Vietnam is so overlooked. Maybe because the F-102 deployment is considered an embarrassment to old Guardsmen.
Tom
Cpt. Phillip Smith was flying a CAP in poor weather on Sept. 20th, 1965, when his navigation system failed. He strayed over Hainan island and was shot down by two MIG-19’s and became a POW in the hands of the Chinese.
By the way, F-102’s first arrived in Southeast Asia in August, 1961, when four of them from the 509th FIS were deployed to Thailand. They were finally pulled from the area in 1971, and by that time 14 aircraft had been lost–one to a MIG.
The above information is from the book, “Vietnam Air Losses,” It almost reads like a dictionary but is very interesting and informative.
I am lucky to live close to McClellan Air Museum in Sacramento, CA, which-since they recently obtained a F-106-has an example of each of the production “Century Series.”
Mark
OK, now I got bagged by using my memory and writing these posts like I was telling dirty stories in a smoky bar. That’s what you get, and there’s no excuse. However, I can’t remember ever hearing of Dueces flying north of the DMZ, and they weren’t being flown by the guard yet in 1961, so that’s why I had that little voice telling me “Thailand” in the an earlier Post. I’d like to get a history of that type’s deployment, if there is one that is reasonably objective, or if one exists at all. If anyone sees such a thing, pls pass on the info to me. thnx.
Tom
The first F-102’s left Clark Air Base, Philippines, for deployment to Viet Nam in March 1962. They were attatched to Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Vietnam. Their primary job was to stand alert against the posibility of NVAF IL-28 light bombers crossing the DMZ and heading south. Using a six week rotation of aircraft and crews the Deuce remained at TSN for a year. In March 1963, no notice deployments kept the Deuce at Tan Son Nhut and Da Nang Air Base. By 1966 twelve aircraft were assigned to Vietnam for air defence of South Vietnam. They were evenly split between Da Nang and Bien Hoa. Ten were stationed in Thailand, six at Udorn and four at Don Muang. The last F-102 was pulled out of SEA in December 1969.
They were all used for air defence alert and some even escorted B-52’s on Arc LIght missions. All escort missions were south of the DMZ and the F-102 never penetrated North Vietnam air space. Some were used as combat air patrols for incoming VIP flights. None were lost in air to air combat and none had any intercepts. They were not used in the air to ground roll, only air defence, escort, or CAP missions.
Six were destroyed in Vietnam and Thailand during rocket attacks or crashes. Four in one night, from a rocket attack, at Bien Hoa. One crashed at Tan Son Nhut on landing when it suffered a blown tire. One at Udorn with an engine fire after take off. One TF-102A crashed at Clark AB on landing after returning from a deployment from Vietnam. Cause was unknown.
Hi Berny,
Thanks for all the information! What better source than a crew chief on the F-102.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, I was reguritating information from a book, which I rapidly scanned through in hopes of getting some facts regarding dates and losses. I might easily have misread parts in my haste, so I don’t want anyone automatically assuming that the book’s author was incorrect. The book’s of interest to me mainly because it briefly discusses my father’s C-123 crash.
Anyway you cut it, I agree with you that the F-102 was a great plane. A lot of that credit has to go to you and the other crew chiefs who kept them flying.
I might just have to go to McClellan soon and take another, closer look at the F-102 there to admire it more closely[:)].
Mark