Join Up Coming Home

by Phil Rowe

In a previous article I mentioned the inexplicable practice of regular and predictable launches of our RF-4C sorties from Tan Son Nhut air base near Saigon. If there ever was a way to make it easier for enemy gunners and rocketeers to shoot us down, I don't think we could have planned it. Dozens of our planes launched at pre-set times and intervals for targets to the north, many remaining "in-country" whilst others rendezvous-ed with tankers and continued up into North Vietnam or Laos. The enemy knew our schedules and when we'd be over their territory.

Each of our RF-4's flew as single aircraft, heading into danger "Alone, Unarmed and Unafraid?" as the motto proclaimed. A single launch of perhaps eight to ten planes meant that many separate target areas would be "hit", photographed, and most often at very low altitudes. Those targets could be along the famous supply route, the "Ho Chi Minh Trail", or surface-to-air missile (SAM) installations north of the demilitarized zone (DMZ), or as obscure as a remote jungle campsite. Some targets were really tough to find, while others were familiar and oft-repeated. Many were "area coverage" targets consisting of a set of closely separated parallel lines some five to ten miles long. Others were pinpoint objectives which could be framed by a single photo.

Daytime missions tended to be the most dangerous, largely because enemy gunners could see us as we zipped past barely a few hundred feet above them. Most of the gunfire we drew was from small caliber anti-aircraft artillery (AAA), augmented by small arms including rifles and machine guns. But the most deadly and feared, yes feared, were the SAM's. Even though we carried radar warning receivers to alert us when we were the object of their attention, and radar jamming devices designed to thwart their aim, we always worried when flying through such dangerous areas. And the greater the threat we faced, the faster we flew into and out of the target area, limiting exposure time to the briefest possible interval.

Our flights, even with the added fuel from aerial tankers, seldom lasted more then three to three and a half hours. And it seemed that several of us returned to the Saigon area, at a safe altitude of around 25,000 feet, at about the same time. Though we scattered as single ships, our pilots couldn't resist the chance to join up in informal formations with one another for the last 100 miles or so. It was occasions like that which kept my personal 35mm camera at the ready. Here, for example, is a shot of one of our squadron-mates joining up with us.

Even though we took photographs as a serious business, gathering intelligence information for several "customers" which included the army ground troops, pre- or post-strike pictures for the bombers and fighters, or general photo-mapping area coverages for the headquarters "weenies", some of our best were of each other on those coming back home formations.