- 6/9/2025
For educational purposes
The Republic F-105 Thunderchief is an American fighter-bomber that served with the United States Air Force from 1958 to 1984.
Capable of Mach 2, it conducted the majority of strike bombing missions during the early years of the Vietnam War.
It was originally designed as a single-seat, nuclear-attack aircraft; a two-seat Wild Weasel version was later developed for the specialized Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) role against surface-to-air missile sites.
The F-105 was commonly known as the "Thud" by its crews, it is the only American aircraft to have been removed from combat due to high loss rates.
The Republic F-105 Thunderchief is an American fighter-bomber that served with the United States Air Force from 1958 to 1984.
Capable of Mach 2, it conducted the majority of strike bombing missions during the early years of the Vietnam War.
It was originally designed as a single-seat, nuclear-attack aircraft; a two-seat Wild Weasel version was later developed for the specialized Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) role against surface-to-air missile sites.
The F-105 was commonly known as the "Thud" by its crews, it is the only American aircraft to have been removed from combat due to high loss rates.
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01:591,000 Republic F-105 Thunder Chiefs built.
02:05Few remember its story, or the sacrifice of the men who flew her.
02:10But in the 1960s, in the air war over North Vietnam,
02:15the Dollar Nickel flew more missions and suffered more losses than any other American plane.
02:24108 pilots died in Thunder Chief cockpits over Hanoi.
02:29Many were sent down in flames by Soviet-built SA-2 surface-to-air missiles, or SAMs.
02:51When these missiles first appeared in the skies over North Vietnam,
02:54it sent the United States Air Force into a tailspin.
03:01It was a big deal.
03:03Remember, a SAM is what got Gary Powers in the U-2.
03:07The missile was effective. It could reach you at most altitude you flew at.
03:14And they were hoping that all they had to deal with in Vietnam was AAA, anti-aircraft artillery.
03:20And here we have a surface-to-air missile that can reach up to you.
03:27Summer, 1965.
03:30In an age when military fighters have just begun to go supersonic,
03:35the SAM can travel two and one half times the speed of sound,
03:41and reach heights of up to 60,000 feet.
03:48In July, when an American F-4 Phantom is destroyed by one of the enemy missiles,
03:54commanders are forced to mount a counter-strike.
03:57Back in Washington, in a move that still infuriates those who flew the mission,
04:06Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara details American strike plans
04:11one full week before the raid is launched.
04:17I hear yours, too.
04:19Everybody wear your black belts today, guys.
04:21Within days, Thunder Chief pilots stationed at Korat Air Force Base, Thailand,
04:28are chosen for the mission.
04:30One of these men is 30-year-old Ray Moss.
04:39By the summer of 65, Moss has already put in 11 years service
04:44and plans a long career in the Air Force.
04:46At that time, there were eight operational SAM sites in North Vietnam,
04:52but Mr. McNamara told the North Vietnamese we were going to specifically attack that one site
04:57and destroy it within one week.
05:00I flew over about 2,000 to 3,000 anti-aircraft guns that were shooting at everybody that came in.
05:08I felt that probably the North Vietnamese had moved every anti-aircraft gun they had in that area.
05:12Going out, I flew over about a 10-mile area through the rice paddies that were dry,
05:24where the anti-aircraft guns were just set out, about one per acre.
05:28They were not camouflaged, they were not bunkered,
05:31and they were just shooting the devil out of everybody.
05:33Probably 30 or 40 airplanes hit the target.
05:40I was one of the later airplanes to get to the target.
05:44At 43, Larry Guarino is one of the oldest Thunder Chief drivers flying.
05:49Even a novice in a duck blind, if enough ducks fly by, sooner or later he's going to hit one.
06:06And I was the unlucky duck that came by after the gunners had had a lot of practice shooting at airplanes.
06:11Most of the POWs were 105 pilots.
06:18Most of the losses were 105s.
06:21The F-105 had the highest loss rate of any aircraft in the first part of the Vietnam War.
06:28It was a slaughter.
06:30Mayday, mayday.
06:31They were shot down, some ahead of me and some behind me.
06:39And I heard the calls, I heard the guys going in.
06:42You're all on the same radio frequency and you're hearing everything that's going on.
06:46Where is everybody?
06:49Ironically, the missile sites are not even there.
06:52The enemy has moved them, set up wooden decoys, and brought in hundreds of AAA guns to await the American attack.
07:01We're getting flashed out of the target border, watch it.
07:07A lot of flashed out of that middle side.
07:12There was no missile equipment anywhere in the area.
07:14The North Vietnamese had taken telephone poles, painted them white and propped them up with pine trees that they cut down
07:21to make it look like a missile site.
07:24In reality, Vietnamese cunning has little to do with the tragedy.
07:30Nearly 24 hours prior to the mission, American reconnaissance planes had taken photos revealing the trap.
07:38But leaders in Washington are unwilling to call off the strike after making it such a public affair.
07:45We had those photos. Those photos were in Washington.
07:48They were annotated as that was our target, and they were nothing but telephone poles.
07:53And 64 airplanes were sent in to annihilate those telephone poles.
07:58And we felt very disheartened to think we were going into a target where there wasn't even anything left with telephone poles to kill.
08:07And we lost six 105s on that mission.
08:09Oh, the roar of the jets off the runway
08:23Is the sound that the ridge may well be
08:28As we climb and head for the valley
08:33Keeping close on the trail of Dinkley
08:36It was just the beginning of what would, for American pilots, be one of the most divisive episodes in history.
08:47Flying high downtown in the valley
08:51The Thunder Chief's combat legacy begins months earlier.
08:54In March 1965, President Lyndon Baines Johnson launches an American bombing campaign over North Vietnam.
09:05The strikes are meant to pressure North Vietnamese leaders to cut off aid to Viet Cong guerrillas fighting in the south.
09:12Pentagon commanders codenamed the air assault, Rolling Thunder, and expect it to last no more than a few weeks.
09:22Instead, it becomes a deadly carrot and stick game that will last nearly four years and claim the lives of almost 1,000 American flying men and over 50,000 Vietnamese civilians.
09:47From the start, Rolling Thunder is marked by a series of bombing escalations and halts imposed by the President.
10:03Johnson's inner circle is certain that this slow squeeze will bring Hanoi to the bargaining table.
10:09To an air force that left Hitler's Germany a smoldering ruin, the idea of a limited war is hard to comprehend.
10:18All involved know that with a phone call from the President, Hanoi can be leveled in a single afternoon.
10:26Why, then, did American leaders show such restraint?
10:32Ask McNamara.
10:35Ask Johnson.
10:36Of course, he's dead now.
10:38I think it's been accurately quoted that Lyndon Johnson made the statement that them boys over there can't bomb an outhouse without I say so.
10:50In some ways, Rolling Thunder serves leaders of the North well.
11:01Not all who live here are enthusiastic about sending their sons to die in the South.
11:05The American planes turn an unseen and distant enemy into a very real one.
11:13In Hanoi, they take the threat seriously.
11:17Of the city's one million inhabitants, half are sent to the countryside to escape the expected onslaught.
11:24But Armageddon never really comes to pass.
11:32Instead, Thunder Chief pilots fly under strict rules of engagement.
11:37For the next three years, White House officials will immerse themselves in the details of strike planning.
11:44Often down to the type of ordnance, fuses, and even paths of attack.
11:49The Joint Chiefs of Staff requested the Air Force to come up with a target priority list.
11:58We did 270-some-odd targets.
12:02Order of priority one through 270.
12:06When they finally were approved, they started at the bottom of the list and worked up to the most important over a two-year period.
12:14Targets that are approved by the White House often seem of dubious military value.
12:31Captain Tony Cushenberry started flying 105s out of Thailand in 1965.
12:36He remembers his first mission north.
12:39We were there, my friend, to destroy the coal yard.
12:44Now, other than burning, how in the hell do you destroy a coal?
12:48You might have scared it around a lot, but you...
12:56It is just three years since the Cuban Missile Crisis brought America and the world to the brink.
13:02Memories of Chinese troops swarming across the North Korean border also linger.
13:13In the mid-1960s, the Cold War is still wound very tightly, and LBJ has no intention of being remembered as the president who started World War III.
13:25In many ways, the Thunder Chief, too, is a product of Cold War fears.
13:37The jet is built to fly low and fast.
13:41Its coke bottle fuselage, small wings, and huge J-75 engine combine to create a machine that looks more like a dart than a plane.
13:54But like a dart, the Republic machine will never be able to twist and turn as a great fighter plane should.
14:01A shortcoming that will haunt Thunder Chief pilots in the years to come.
14:09Short wings on a long body do not make for a nimble machine.
14:13And the 105 is long, as long as the B-17 of World War II.
14:18But the Flying Fortress was flown by a crew of ten.
14:22This Thunder Chief seats only one.
14:24You gotta remember, for a lieutenant coming right out of flight training and going to something like the F-105, I mean, that makes one heck of an impression on a guy.
14:32The thing was just huge.
14:35And you couldn't even touch the wing, it was so big.
14:38There was a reason for its size.
14:44In reality, it was a bomber.
14:46Designed with an internal bomb bay to carry a nuclear weapon deep into Eastern Europe.
14:56And vaporize the smaller industrial cities of the region.
15:03The F-105 was developed to fight a nuclear war.
15:07Tactical Air Command at the time had very little money.
15:09And the only way they could keep a piece of the budget was to participate in nuclear strategic weapon delivery.
15:20What they did is developed a large fighter that had an internal bomb bay that would carry basically a single nuclear shape.
15:27They developed it so that it would go very, very fast at low level.
15:32Possibly even supersonic, although that's very tough at low level.
15:34And the idea was to go in undetected, below the radar, open the bomb bay, deliver this nuclear weapon and get back out as fast as you could.
15:55I had never dropped a conventional iron bomb in my life until I was in combat.
16:01I had dropped some 25-pound practice bombs, but never a 750-pound boomer.
16:11The first time I did was on the Tan Wa Bridge in North Vietnam.
16:15We were really unprepared for that.
16:21You don't have to get too close with an atomic bomb.
16:23Five miles will do.
16:25You've got to get pretty close with a 500-pound bomb.
16:31One hundred missions to be flown.
16:38A hundred targets still unknown.
16:45But it's my belief that my thunder chief strikes a telling blow to help G.I. Joe.
16:56The first time I was on the ground.
16:59Easy choice there, let's get out of here to the southwest.
17:03Till a hundred missions I myself have flown.
17:09By 1966, the tour of duty for American pilots expands to one hundred missions over the north.
17:26For America's most patriotic sons, it represents a rite of passage in a profession where a combat record is crucial.
17:33At the time, Dave Waldrop was a young lieutenant and new to Vietnam.
17:43I wanted to get a hundred missions in the 105.
17:46That meant a lot to me personally as a goal.
17:48I wanted to be able to wear that patch, and there's a patch that, you know, it says a hundred missions in the F-105.
17:53That was something I wanted, because I was proud of that.
17:57When you were among your peers of fighter pilots, when you had that patch on, you were special.
18:03Now, it wasn't that I was on an Eagle trip and I wanted to be something special to everybody, but it's something that was respected among your own people.
18:11Throughout 1966, an average of 400 bomb-laden American planes strike North Vietnam every day.
18:26The resources needed to maintain this cycle of destruction are enormous.
18:32Under full afterburner, the 105 can deplete its entire fuel supply in less than four minutes.
18:59Missions from Thailand to Hanoi and back can take nearly four hours.
19:07It required tremendously expensive tanker support to get anything done.
19:12We had fleets and fleets of KC-135s over Southeast Asia practically 24 hours a day offloading fuel.
19:22It used to mystify me how in the world they were getting that much fuel over there.
19:27Only five of every hundred missions are against fixed targets.
19:34The rest are interdiction strikes against the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a series of jungle paths leading from Hanoi to the south.
19:41The Vietnamese build countless secondary routes so that if one road is blocked, traffic can be diverted around the destruction.
19:55For many, the trip south takes nearly four months.
20:02Thousands die of malaria and dysentery along the way.
20:06One young soldier writes his parents,
20:09I am crying while writing this letter to you. Our surrounding areas are mountains and we cannot find anything to eat. Consider me dead.
20:19We take a $20 million fighter and launch it against a $4 bicycle and get shot down doing it. That's pretty insane.
20:32And that shows you a lot of what the 105 and the other airplanes were up against. It's hard. You can't win that kind of war.
20:38Because you're not going to win a guerrilla war with technology. You're going to win it with guerrilla tactics. But we didn't do that.
20:45In Washington, Johnson and McNamara cling to the belief that the flow of supplies can be stemmed by the bombing campaign.
20:57When CIA officials protest that the bombing cannot succeed, McNamara shields LBJ from their dissent.
21:04These were not heavy modern military divisions. They certainly didn't have PXs and all those things that our troops have.
21:17So the amount of actual supplies necessary were not too much.
21:22Not all of these men have been infiltrated from the north, but an important number have been.
21:27McNamara was enthusiastic about numbers, that's for sure.
21:30But the CIA, a friend of mine went to see him one time and said,
21:35You know, Mr. Secretary, in war is something more important than numbers. It's the spirit.
21:40He didn't understand.
21:43These were people who had been at war for generations.
21:47And many knew nothing but war.
21:49So the art of evading or destroying or harassing an enemy was a fine art to the North Vietnamese.
21:56So here we come with our technology. We're going to just bomb them back to the Stone Age, right?
21:59I remember General Japp saying, we were in the Stone Age. What were we going to bomb us back to?
22:06Over 600,000 northerners work in labor brigades to rebuild what American bombs destroy.
22:14One of the most infamous points on the trail is the Mugai Pass,
22:18a crucial funnel through the mountains where tons of Chinese supplies are routed south.
22:25It is seen as a choke point.
22:28In one strike, 30 planes drop over 600 tons of ordnance on the Twisting Mountain Road.
22:36The raid costs U.S. taxpayers 21 million dollars.
22:47Almost before the smoke clears, 150,000 workers descend on the pass.
22:53Two days later, the Vietnamese reopen the road.
22:57Soon, the intensity of the air campaign brings about a new problem.
23:05We ran out of bombs in a matter of two months.
23:09In the latter part of 1965, early 66.
23:13The industrial base that generates bombs had been shut down because the Department of Defense was not procuring anymore.
23:23They didn't need to. They had some stockpile, they figured.
23:27And, oh, by the way, we're never going to fight a conventional war, so we don't need any of those.
23:31So let's sell them to Germany.
23:32The Pentagon had sold thousands of bomb casings to West Germany as scrap metal.
23:41The Germans pay $1.70 per casing and offer to sell them back at $21 apiece.
23:53There were days that we had eight airplanes and every plane flew with only one bomb because that's all we had.
23:59The F-105 would have carried eight bombs each airplane, but we didn't have enough to load every airplane,
24:05so they put one bomb on each airplane and exposed eight guys to the enemy fire to get eight sorties and for a sortie count.
24:18Under Secretary McNamara's leadership, statistics take on absurd gravity.
24:24In support of this operation, there were 27 sorties flown yesterday.
24:27In the south, ground commanders quest for ever-increasing body counts.
24:33But for air commanders, the grail of choice is the sortie.
24:3723 sorties scheduled, and they will be flown early in the morning while the weather's good.
24:44Success and promotion rely heavily on each officer's ability to get more planes over the north than his peers.
24:52The region around Hanoi and Taifong is called Route Pak 6. It is a feared destination.
25:01Here, pilots are 15 times more likely to lose their lives than anywhere else in Vietnam.
25:18Hanoi is an armed porcupine, bristling with guns.
25:25Thousands are given rifles and encouraged to use them every time the air raid siren is sounded.
25:35It is as much a psychological tool as a military one, giving the people of the north a sense of empowerment and the ability to fight back.
25:45There were so many meatballs, as you call them, coming at you from the anti-aircraft guns.
25:53And I instinctively ducked behind the shield in the cockpit.
25:57Of course, I was at a very low altitude at the time.
26:00And I said, hey, dummy, you can't fly the airplane with your head down here.
26:04Get it back up. And I stick it back up, and you're still shooting at me.
26:06And I ducked a second time, and I said, no, no, I got to look out.
26:11And I steeled myself and stuck my head back up and flew right into the guns to attack him.
26:18By the end of 1966, nearly one of every five Thunder Chiefs built have been blown to bits in the skies above North Vietnam.
26:27Pilots of other aircraft soon nicknamed the 105, the Thud.
26:34It is a sick joke.
26:36The noise that the jet supposedly makes as it crashes into the Vietnamese countryside.
26:47Later, the term is sanitized to mean the sound made when the heavy plane touches down.
26:53Tensions make for some pretty painful hangovers.
26:57Oh, tonight and so far they'll be singing
27:03In the states it had always been fun
27:08And we'll tell the tales of the mission
27:13And we'll dream to old kings number one
27:20We flew hard, we played hard, and we lived hard at that point.
27:24Not trying to be anything, any kind of image or something like that.
27:29It just, it just worked that way.
27:31You know, you release a lot of attention by doing that.
27:34And we'd, we'd do all sorts of stuff.
27:38I can remember one time getting the big brawl, three lieutenants took on this big major
27:42And we just, just goofing off.
27:44And we cleaned the whole bar out.
27:45I mean, we broke chairs, tables and everything.
27:47And the CO's just sitting there watching the whole thing.
27:49And when it was all over with, there was beer and glass and broken tables.
27:54And, and he just sort of folded his arms, looked down.
27:57And he said, lieutenants, y'all having a good time?
27:59We looked up, we didn't even know he was there.
28:01And we said, yes, sir.
28:03And he said, good.
28:05I'll be back in about 20 minutes.
28:06Just make sure this place is all cleaned up and you pay the damages.
28:09That's all he said.
28:10One hundred missions to be flown.
28:17A hundred bridges to be blown.
28:24On my left and right, the rest of my flight
28:29Have keep me alive in my 105
28:32Till a hundred missions I myself have flown.
28:42Roger Ingvelson is almost finished with his tour
28:45When his 105 goes thud.
28:48I had 87 takeoffs and 86 landings.
28:52I was probably around 50 feet strafing with a 20mm cannon in the F-105.
29:02The trucks.
29:04And I felt this explosion.
29:06So I knew I was hit.
29:07My cockpit filled with smoke.
29:09I pulled up.
29:11I blew the canopy off so I could see.
29:13And pulled up in a steep climb.
29:15My control cables had burned out and I lost control of the aircraft.
29:18I was starting to roll and I started to roll back down.
29:23And figure around 700 feet I had to do something fast.
29:26And all the training we had for ejection seat training and ejections.
29:33You don't even think about that.
29:36I got a hold of that hand and squeezed that trigger and out I went.
29:43An emergency beeper goes off and we pick it up.
29:46It's on a special frequency and you can hear it and it hits it.
29:49Don't get out here baby.
29:51That was a real hit for me.
29:53I mean it really hit me what the reality of all this was about.
29:57Because you couldn't help them.
29:59You couldn't do a thing.
30:00It was so close to Noi.
30:01All the North Vietnamese of course were all over the place.
30:04And so you couldn't go in.
30:06So we just had to leave our buddies behind.
30:08That was tough.
30:09I was knocked out by the wind blast.
30:15And I came to just before I hit the ground.
30:18And I expected to be all broken up.
30:21I didn't have a bruise.
30:23Not a bruise.
30:24I pulled out my portable radio to call my wingman who was circling overhead.
30:29Just to tell him that I was okay.
30:31But I just started to transmit.
30:34I heard his rifle shot go off from behind.
30:37And here was this little kid probably ten years old with a rifle.
30:40As a very confident fire pilot who figured you were on top of the world.
30:50You've lost that and you're on the bottom.
30:53And you're in a situation where you're scared.
30:58The adrenaline is pumping.
31:00And you just try to think about survival.
31:03You've lost that.
31:08For downed airmen, the most dangerous time is immediately after capture.
31:17Not all those taken prisoner make it to prison camp.
31:20And one of my earlier missions, one of the pilots was shot down.
31:35And he bailed out right in the area.
31:37And on a flyby, the pilots saw him get out and he had a good shoot.
31:55And he landed in a rice paddy.
31:57Upon landing, the pilots flying over him at that time could see the villagers run out to him.
32:03And he was taken.
32:07And then the next day, Hanoi radio announced that the angry villagers had run out and killed the pilot.
32:14That they were so mad that they, with their pitchforks and shovels and sighs and all,
32:19they beat the man and punctured him and killed him.
32:26The Vietnamese have good reason for anger.
32:28The Pentagon itself admits that 1,200 civilians are dying every month in Rolling Thunder raids.
32:38I didn't have to look at them.
32:40I didn't have to get close enough to get their blood on me and see them in the eyes when I was shooting and things like that.
32:46It was very impersonal.
32:48I mean, it was...
32:50I knew there were people down there.
32:52And I knew that there were people trying to kill me.
32:54And I knew that they were killing the hell out of American citizens.
33:00I was shot down about 250 miles from Hanoi, the center of the prison system.
33:06And it took them 28 days to get me that around 250 miles.
33:13And, uh, the beatings on the way, the lack of food, the lack of water.
33:23You start thinking of your family.
33:26I had a wife who was crippled.
33:28She had multiple sclerosis.
33:29I had one son.
33:30And the thoughts of your loved ones goes through your mind.
33:34What's going to happen?
33:35Am I going to live?
33:37Uh, am I going to be in prison?
33:44Most downed 105 pilots are taken to the Wa Lo prison, also known as the Hanoi Hilton.
33:51I went there first.
33:54I think everybody did.
33:55And, uh, I spent my first 20 months in strict solitary confinement.
34:00I didn't have any contact with anyone.
34:05Two years before Ingvelson's arrival,
34:09POW Larry Guarino begins a sporadic 24-month period of solitary confinement.
34:14Two years, chained alone in a six-by-six-foot cell.
34:22These are sketches from Guarino's private collection.
34:28Ranking officers are repeatedly beaten and interrogated.
34:32The Vietnamese hope they will make public statements against the bombing
34:37or provide them details of American tactics.
34:40When they got you down and you can't take any more torture or punishment,
34:44they like to use the word,
34:45have you surrendered?
34:46You say, yeah, I've surrendered, I've surrendered.
34:49That's the time to start lying, you see?
34:51That's the time to start really bullshitting them really heavily
34:54because they don't know the difference.
34:56Sticking to name, rank, and serial number in the long run doesn't really work.
35:01So what you have to do is you have to invent a story.
35:04I would manage to screw the tapes up pretty good.
35:06Like, uh, they said, uh, how did you get shot down?
35:09And I said, I didn't really get shot down.
35:10I said, I was just a replacement pilot, wasn't qualified to fly combat.
35:15And, uh, they got a hold of me and wanted me to, uh, fly this airplane
35:19because they were short of pilots.
35:21And I followed some captain up there because they couldn't see very well
35:23and I couldn't hear because I'm the oldest guy up there, you see.
35:27And so when I got near the target, the engine just crapped out
35:29and had to jump out of the airplane.
35:30I made up a story like that.
35:32But by 1967, Guarino's wild claims are frighteningly close to reality.
35:42105 drivers become so scarce that KC-135 tanker pilots
35:47are soon funneled into Thunder Chief cockpits.
35:50There's a certain body of things we call experience
35:56that you just gotta have been there and you gotta have done it enough,
36:00even in a peacetime about, just to the range.
36:03You need to go to the gunning range enough times to feel the airplane
36:07and to feel what you're doing.
36:09You can't come out of a tanker
36:12and in five months be trained to be an F-105 pilot
36:18to replace somebody that's been flying fighters for eight, nine years.
36:23You don't wanna go.
36:25I mean, you're asking for disaster.
36:27There ain't no way, huh?
36:29There ain't no way.
36:31Many Thunder Chief pilots figure it's statistically impossible
36:35to reach the 100 mission mark.
36:38I lost two.
36:39Two, they didn't know where he was for often.
36:42And then they saw a long deal.
36:4445, 44.
36:46As disillusionment grows, the 100 mission mark turns
36:49from a matter of pride to one of survival.
36:52One for the months.
36:54Ninety-nine hard ones to go.
36:56It became too important.
36:58I didn't have a hat where each time I flew a mission
37:01I'd make a mark on the brim of that hat.
37:04It wasn't something I was doing out of patriotism
37:07or desire to save these people or do this, that and other.
37:11I mean, I might have had some different feelings about it before I went over
37:15but once I got there and I saw what was going on,
37:18yeah, I began to say, well, I need to get this old Georgia boy's ass back to his family
37:24in as close to one piece as I can.
37:26I'm not going to do my job any less.
37:30It's just that I'm not over here, over here.
37:35I'm not over here until we win the war and we go home like any other continent
37:40because we weren't at war.
37:42We were at politic.
37:43President Johnson and Mr. McNamara, they were using bombers to send messages.
37:50I mean, please, dear God, if you want to send a message put it in an envelope,
37:54don't use a bomber.
37:56If you use a bomber, use it to bomb.
37:59That's what it's for.
38:01America is in need of heroes.
38:04And just halfway through his tour, Lieutenant Dave Waldrop steps up.
38:08Gee whiz, I hear you got two MiGs. How did you do that, sir?
38:12I guess I was pretty lucky.
38:14Came off the target, broke the right, which was pre-brief, to join up the flight.
38:19And then after coming around the right, I looked over and I saw a 105 with two MiGs on his tail.
38:29The lead MiG is so close that he almost looked like he was in close trail formation.
38:34And he's shooting at the 105. I mean, the fire's coming out of the MiGs' nose.
38:38And I knew this guy was within seconds of being knocked down.
38:45And I'm looking at the picture, trying to decide what to do.
38:47Well, I had a side-wire, which is our version of the heat-seeker.
38:50Well, the missile sees a heat source and it starts growling.
38:54And it's letting me know, I'm looking at something.
38:56I can go, if you want to turn me loose, I'll go and I'll get one of these airplanes.
38:59But that plane MiGs was so close to the 105, with that big old J75 engine putting out all this thrust,
39:08that I was afraid that the Sidewinder might be looking at the 105.
39:12So I just, I couldn't live with the possibility of that happening.
39:16So I just reached over, turned the volume off on the Sidewinder so I wouldn't have to listen to it.
39:21And I started shooting.
39:23Then I realized how fast I'm going and how slow they're going.
39:27Because I shot by them so fast it'd make your head spin around.
39:31I'm just sailing through this thing.
39:33I go popping through this overcast.
39:35I roll upside down.
39:36I'm sitting up there, hanging from the strap.
39:38And I'm cussing myself.
39:40Here you are, Lieutenant.
39:41You got one shot at a MiG in your life and you blew it.
39:43By that time, out from underneath this overcast, here comes a MiG 17.
39:49He's got his afterburner going.
39:52And the other guys didn't have their afterburners going when I passed them.
39:55And so, I just pulled the nose down real slow, rolled out.
40:00And when I fired, that cannon that we have, it fired 6,000 rounds a minute, 20mm.
40:09It went right through the air.
40:11In fact, it went through the cockpit.
40:14Unbeknownst to me, it was so intense up there.
40:17And this sort of gives you a little bit of an idea of how things work in combat.
40:20When I'm sitting there, pulling my trigger, I'm hitting the MiG.
40:24The flashes, I mean, you can see every bullet hitting the MiG.
40:29A 105 went right between me and the MiG.
40:36I never saw it.
40:42In all, nearly 1,400 Americans are killed or go missing in the bombing campaign over North Vietnam.
40:48One third of the aircraft downed are F-105 Thunder Chiefs.
40:55The losses yield little.
40:57By the end of 1968, Hanoi is no closer to compromise than it was three years earlier.
41:11To many, it is clear that the American hammer has been useless against the Vietnamese flea.
41:16Back in the U.S., Secretary of Defense McNamara turns against the bombing campaign he once so strongly advocated.
41:29Johnson replaces him with Clark Clifford, who the President thinks hawkish on the war,
41:34but Clifford, too, recommends an end to the air campaign.
41:38Rolling Thunder closes on November 1, 1968.
41:41Too late for third pilots like J.C. Hartney.
41:46When my best friend was killed, that was one of the things that prompted me to go ahead and leave the Air Force with 12 years of service in.
41:53And I felt that there was no point in dying for a country that didn't care.
41:58And that had no intention of ever winning a war.
42:01I was there because I was a soldier and I was sent.
42:04That's the simple, easy answer and the easy way out.
42:08I have other feelings about it, but that's why I was there.
42:12Whether we should have been there or not, as a citizen of the United States, hell no.
42:15In Hanoi, the bombs cease to rain down and the Americans in captivity languish.
42:26Valuable bargaining chips during the three-year bombing halt that will follow.
42:30Most POWs derive strength from thoughts of family and home, but for Roger Ingleson they serve only as a source of pain when he is told that his wife Jackie, afflicted with multiple sclerosis, has died.
42:46They told me 20 days after it happened.
42:50Normally they wouldn't tell us any good news.
42:53Any time the news we get was bad news.
42:56And so I sort of believed them.
42:59It was a tough time.
43:01It was a tough time.
43:05The fact that they were killed in action or were POWs was sort of like a sideline of what we put ourselves into.
43:12Nobody else really put us in there, other politicians that go over there and do this job, yes.
43:17But we knew that when we got into it.
43:19That was a possibility that always exists.
43:24Despite their bitterness, many Thunder Chief pilots flying in Southeast Asia request a second tour of duty.
43:31Tony Cushenberry was one of the first to complete 100 missions over North Vietnam.
43:44Now you'd say how stupid I am when I said that I had volunteered to go back for a second tour.
43:50Yeah.
43:52And I had done that because I still was a soldier and I felt that if they're going to keep on doing this, they need somebody with my experience and my kind of background, at least somewhere in the mix over there.
44:09You know, I can put me in and I may make a difference to somebody, not to the effort.
44:15Nobody was going to make a difference to the effort because there was no effort.
44:19There wasn't any until we started trying to get us out of there and getting our POWs out.
44:24That became our mission then.
44:26That became our purpose for being there, was getting the hell out of there.
44:28One hundred missions to be flown.
44:35It's good to know you're not alone.
44:39Two weeks before Christmas, Dave Waldrop reaches the magic number.
44:44His tour of duty is over.
44:47One flyer's story.
44:52One hundred missions out of nearly a quarter million flown by Thunder Chief pilots during the Rolling Thunder campaign.
45:00To have survived, gotten out without getting shot down, without getting hurt, I was very, very satisfied with having to reach that plateau.
45:09I mean, if I go to war, I'm going to want to fly an airplane that's durable.
45:15We would have lost far more people, dead or captured, if they hadn't been flying 105s those first several years of the war.
45:23If it had been some other jet, it would have been a different story.
45:25The Thunder Chief flew 75% of the missions over North Vietnam.
45:37Two who flew the plane earned the Medal of Honor.
45:41He is a brave man.
45:43Come to claim the honor that his courage has earned.
45:48Forgotten warriors from a struggle that grows dimmer in the American memory with each passing year.
45:55I can sit here and try to describe to you all day long what it's like to be cruising along at about 600 knots and all of a sudden you want to go straight up and just pull the stick back and all of a sudden you're just gone.
46:09You're out of there.
46:11It's special.
46:12These men got to do that.
46:16I'm a foot pilot.
46:18Where are you going from?
46:20I love my plane.
46:21It is my body.
46:22I am its brain.
46:23She's packed with transistors.
46:24Black boxes, diodes.
46:25But stay alert, cause you might get hurt when she explodes.
46:26Ugh, I'm a foot pilot.
46:27And he is this lady is old in the back of 9…
46:28A thumbs up as a headboat.
46:29I'm a foot pilot.
46:31She's the best labour, France, sist each undertow in the back of 9.
46:32Packed with transistors, black boxes, diodes, but stay alert because you might get hurt when she explodes.
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