A Word From Willie – 2023 – February

1. Tell us a little bit about your early experiences in the Weasel?
     After volunteering for the Wild Weasel program, our group got to Nellis with 6 pilots and 6 EWOs, to form aircraft teams and familiarize ourselves with Weasel tactics. We met together during ground school and after hours at the O-Club to get a feel of how we would work together. The first couple of pilots I homed in on were a Lieutenant Colonel from Bitburg, who I thought should be relatively safe and conservative driver and the other was a hot shot captain IP from ADC. This was Captain Glenn Griffith, whose most recent experience was in F-106’s. The third day I started concentrating on the lieutenant colonel from Bitburg. The best decision I ever made was taking advantage of the opportunity to team up with a superior individual named Jim McInerney. After we became partners everything for the next six months was pure teamwork under the excellent guidance of Lieutenant Colonel Jim McInerney. He helped temper a sometimes over eager Bear. However, until the day he died he thought he selected me to fly with him. If I did not influence his decision, I wasted a gallon of martinis at the Officer’s Club over the next two weeks. I selected Jim McInerney to ask me to go fly with him. He was the one who proposed, “Fred how would you like fly with me and go kill SAMs, and I will keep you alive?” I took him at his word.

2. Your time together in North Vietnam was intense, can you share it with us?
     Jim and I flew together for 75 combat missions over North Vietnam, with approximately 56 in RP-5 and RP-6. We never lost an aircraft on any mission where we supported bomber flights. One of the assignments that I took on in the 6 months I was at KORAT was to develop and maintain a photo library that contained all available photos of all the currently photo-reported occupied SAM sites in North Vietnam. On preflight briefings I briefed the Weasel flight if there were any SAM sites in the general area that we might attack.

     Lieutenant Colonel Mcinerney and I found that if you got close enough to any threat area in North Vietnam you could detect 23MM cannon fire. If it was a SAM site it was fair game. Once we settled in, were cleared to lead in RP-5 and RP-6, and Lieutenant Colonel Jim McInerney became squadron commander, we decided that trolling for SAMs was not the best use of the available Weasel force, even if you could sucker a SAM into firing a missile at you occasionally. Lieutenant Colonel McInerney decided that the available force should be used primarily in support of the bomber force.

     The following is the general pattern that Jim and I used on bomber support missions and, as Squadron Commander this was also Jim’s Squadron policy. We would go into the target area about 10 minutes ahead of the strike force to survey the situation to evaluate the threat. If time and situation permitted, we tried to decrease the threat. We would then return to escort the bomber flight into the target area. After the bomber formation left the target area and if we had enough fuel, we stayed in the area to see if we could find a SAM site to harass. If there were any photo occupied SAM sites near the bomber target area, we went after them. All members of the Weasel flights would have been briefed on them and given photos of the sites. “General Jeb Stuart wagon hunting” was only permitted after the bomber flights had left the area or had aborted. The primary mission of the Weasels was to protect the bomber crews and “wagon hunting” was only “extracurricular” activity.

     Probably the most significant mission for me was the mission when, by all odds, we should have been killed. It was about our 4th or 5th mission after arriving at KORAT. Jim and I were in the lead for the first time since arriving at KORAT. Major H. K. White and Fred J. Bell were the second element lead and were shepherding us through our first RP-5 lead. At about Yen Bay the bomber flight aborted because of weather. Since we had a lot of gas and a full complement of bombs Lieutenant Colonel McInerney decided, with my eager consent, to start down the Red River to see if we could engage a SAM site. It was partially undercast as we got close to the flat area west of Hanoi. Three SAM radars started painting us intermittently from three directions. We started playing with the three signals trying to get a Shrike launch on one of them. Suddenly the LAUNCH light came on and two missiles came up through the clouds, one at 3 o’clock and apparently one at 6 o’clock. I could see the one at 3 o’clock and was calling it out to Jim when there was an explosion directly behind the aircraft. A fire ball completely engulfed our plane. After what seemed like an eternity, probably about 10 seconds, H. K. said, “Hot Rod Lead, Hot Rod Lead are you still in the air?” We were just fine and when we landed we found about a half dozen pellets in one wing. Apparently, what happened was that the radar fuse malfunctioned, or they were using ground control detonation. The missile went off outside of its effective kill zone, and the frag pattern went all around our aircraft. The second missile passed in front of us and exploded some miles past the formation. It passed so close that if it had had “Fred and Jim” painted on the nose, we could have read it.

     Jim and I got back to KORAT, regrouped and never went trolling for SAMs in undercast conditions again. We didn’t get any awards for that flight. They didn’t give out awards for stupidity. I think that mission circumstance was in play on 11 August 1967. The US had been in the Vietnam War for about 4 or 5 years, depending on who is keeping score. All that time there was a 30-mile circle around Hanoi and Haiphong which was off-limits. A mission inside that circle would be significant. On 11 Aug. there was a scramble in ops planning to jockey for positions on the mission to bomb the Paul Doumer Bridge, which was inside the 30-mile limit. This mission could be a significant mission and one that the Weasels could play a major role. I believe that mission importance was a factor on who lead the various formations. On the other hand, I could be wrong, and all the wing commanders were the best fighter pilots available that day to lead this mission.

That day’s task force consisted of:
A. 24 ship flight of F-105Ds from TAKHLI led by Wing commander Colonel Robert White.
B. 8 ship flight of F-4Cs, MIG CAP from UBON Led by Wing commander Colonel Robin Olds.
C. 24 ship flight F-105Ds from KORAT led by 469th TFS commander Lieutenant Colonel Harry Schurr. Probably the reason the wing commander from KORAT did not lead the flight was because Colonel Chairsell had been selected for BG and 7th Air Force did not want their generals
flying over North Vietnam
D. KORAT Weasel flight of 4 F-105s (2 Fs and 2 Ds) led by Lieutenant Colonel Jim McInerney 13th TFS commander and Captain Fred Shannon, Jim’s Bear.

     There were 5 Air Force Crosses awarded on that mission and they were all awarded to the leaders of the formations. Lieutenant Colonel Mcinerney’s squadron policy was that the Weasel Team was a unit and whatever recognition one received went to both. In my 75 missions Jim and I received identical awards.

     The Wild Weasel flight’s approximate sequence of events in the target area was as follows. We went into the target area about 10 minutes ahead of the bomber flight and I noted to Jim that I had never seen so many SAM radars on the air at one time. There were 6 “three ringer-full vector scope” radars tracking our flight (I will comment on my theory on why so many later). If given a choice you would never take a Weasel flight into a threat area where 6 SAM radars were tracking your flight. We, however, did not have a choice. As mentioned earlier, we were there to protect the bombers, and the bombers were going in. Therefore, the Weasel flight must go in. Jim and I discussed the situation and decided to home in and dive on one of the six strobes for a straight-in Shrike launch. When we saw what appeared to be a SAM Radar van, Jim may have switched to guns and strafed the site. This action appeared to cause the rest of the SAM radars to switch from continuous transmission to sporadic, on-off transmission. We proceeded back up Thud Ridge and escorted the KORAT bombers into the bridge. I believe there were 14 missiles “reported” launched that day (there were no hits). After the bomber flight left the area, the Weasel flight headed toward a SAM site at the end of Kep Airfield runway. I recall that this site was photo-occupied most of the time Jim and I were at KORAT. We proceeded to bomb the site. When we came off the target Jim said, “Give me a heading to get us out of here”. I had no
idea where we were. I said, “Turn to a heading of 260o”, which was the shortest route to the tankers. The other option was to turn around back across Hanoi and follow the bombers to Thud Ridge. I thought those folks in Hanoi might be pissed at us by then. We made it across the flat “high threat area” southwest of Hanoi with no interference from the ground.

     Now for the 6 SAM radars in and around Hanoi. Jim and I had been in the Hanoi area about 40 to 50 times and we had not detected more than 1 SAM radar inside the 30-mile ring around Hanoi and that site was the one at the end of Kep runway. We had not received any pre-mission photo of occupied site updates for that area. Our flight of 4 aircraft was painted by 6 SAM radars for more than 5 minutes with no missiles fired!!! My theory is that there was no way and no logical reason that there should have been an additional 5 SAM sites moved in and around Hanoi on the day before this mission unless there were some form of an alert. I think that the Vietnamese were somehow alerted to the attack and quickly drove in with 5 SAM radar vans with limited missiles and hastily set up the operation that fired the reported missiles, resulting in no hits. To get better information on that you will probably need to talk to someone in Vietnam.

     It appears to me that for some reason the North Vietnamese tried to strengthen the Hanoi area defenses with limited resources, making it look stronger than the results indicated that it was. If they really had six active, fully operational SAM sites, these sites did a poor job of defending the bridge. Also, if North Vietnam really had six active SAM sites around Hanoi, you would think that our intelligence service would have given us some warning when the frag was sent out on the 11th of August.

3. Reading the history of how you and Lt Col McInerney checked out as Ryan’s Raiders is fascinating, can you elaborate?

     Lieutenant Colonel McInerney and Captain Shannon flew the first Pilot/EWO Ryan’s Raiders mission. The initial Ryan’s Raiders aircraft team consisted of two F-105D pilots, one in front and one in back to handle the bomb navigation system. Lieutenant Colonel Jim McInerney and I were instrumental in convincing General Momyer that the EWO could handle the bomb navigation system in the back seat and free up one of the pilots to fly the F-105Ds. Since we told General Momyer that we could handle it, Jim thought we should prove it. We were awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross for this mission. While I don’t remember the exact details of the threat, I do remember that we hit a hornet’s nest with radar-controlled guns and missiles in the target area. I kept busy by navigating to maintain our wings between the 10,000-foot-high rocks on either side of the aircraft, and our anti-SAM systems probing the anti-social activity all around us. Like I said before, sometimes heroism is just keeping calm and trying to stay alive while doing the job at hand.

4. What have we missed that you would like our readers to know?

     I would like to add one more mission (our 76th mission). On 13 Sept 1967 Jim & I were scheduled to fly a mission to support the B-52’s bombing in RT-1 in North Vietnam. This was an 8 hr night mission with two night refueling & 8hr of boring holes in the sky over RT-1. We departed KORAT at about 2,000 ft and climbed to 25,000 ft and had contacted the tanker for our first refueling when we had an engine fire. Jim shut down the engine and I grabbed my flashlight and check list and started reading the engine fire checklist to Jim (which I am sure he didn’tneed). Jim restarted the engine and the fire started again. I started calling out the altitude 20,000, 15,000, 10,000 (as you know the F-105 glided like a streamlined brick). Jim restarted the engine a couple more times with a fire each time. At about 4,000ft Jim calmly said “Well Fredrick my boy I think we are going to have to leave—” With that I was out. All this was happening at night in the middle of a thunderstorm. After I ejected, separated from the ejection seat & my chute opened it was pitch dark and I could not see a thing, not even the ground for a proper landing.
When I landed, I hit hard and had severe pain & significant swelling in my left hip. I contacted the tanker & told them that I thought my left hip was broken. They contacted me and reported that a rescue chopper was on the way. About 30 minutes later I reported that I could see flashlights moving around in the area. The tanker replied, “Don’t worry you are in friendly territory”. I replied, “you know they are friendly & I know they are friendly, but do they know they are friendly”. I stayed still and made no attempt to contact the “friendly’s”. About 30 minutes later the tanker stated that they had to leave the area and for me to contact “Looking Glass”. I established contact with Looking Glass and after about an hour on the ground Looking Glass reported that the rescue chopper had an engine fire and aborted but another was on the way. After being on the ground for about one and one-half hour I contacted the second chopper, and they stated that they had Jim’s emergency beacon but could not establish voice communication with him. They reported that they would proceed to rescue Jim. When they got to Jim, he was OK but hanging in a tree and could not shut off his beacon. After being on the ground for about 3 hours I was picked up by a third chopper and the broken hip ended my Vietnam experience. I will never know if the “Friendlies were friendly”.