THE place to share your war stories and other True
THE place to share your war stories and other True
From Jerry "McGoo" McGauley:
Mike Lanning was my roommate at Korat and flew the most
famous mission of the 13TFS, up to that time. The mission where
Darel Leetun was shot down and killed near Kep Airfield, Mike was hit
by 85mm AAA and attempted to get to the Gulf in case his Thud began
to come apart. His Nav systems were affected by the hit he took and
he began jinking up the Northeast Railroad until he entered China.
The Chinese scrambled Mig-19s on him. After determining their
adversary was American the Farmer jocks dropped behind Mike's Thud
and opened up on him. Mike saw the tracers and kicked in the burner.
At about 1.1 Mach the tracers stopped. He kept going at 1.3+ Mach
until his depleting fuel supply began to unnerve him. When he came
out of burner and allowed the airspeed to go subsonic, the tracers
began flying over his canopy again, so back into burner for the
remaining trip to a tanker. Mike never received an award for this
mission, because of the embarrassment of having a US fighter stray into
Chinese airspace.
Another "War Story" about the Thud: Mike Thomas asked me over about our 5th beer if I thought a Thud could do a military loop from the deck at 300 knots. He confirmed the Thud was at traffic pattern weight and that any external stores be empty. I told him I didn't think it could. About 2 weeks later I'm on his right wing in preparation for a left echelon turn to initial for Kadena's runway 23 when Mike begins a 4+ "G" pull-up. Of course, I pulled with him, but was frantically looking over the nose to see what hazard he was trying to avoid. At about 70 nose high pitch, our drunken conversation of two-weeks earlier came to mind and I realized he was going to prove to me that the Thud could indeed do a military loop from only 300 knots airspeed. We topped out with a zero indicated airspeed at 6,500 feet. Even though the airspeed indicator was at zero there was enough airflow for me to keep in wing position using aileron, rudder and slab. It was a very uncomfortable feeling to have the nose slash to straight down with virtually no airspeed and only 6,000 feet to the ocean below.
But, our flight recovered back to 1,500 feet and 300 knots, just like we
began the maneuver. I still was a little peeved at Mike for not including his
stunt in our briefing, but I still appreciated the lesson in the capability of
the aircraft I would soon rely on in combat.
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