Thud Aircraft

Thud Aircraft - The Thud's ordnance was carried on underwing and belly pylons and hardpoints, while the internal bomb bay housed a 390-gallon gas tank. The all-weather F-105D was the world's first black-box fighter, as much electronic as it was mechanical.

One-third of its total cost went into electronics, and they initially made it the only Air Force jet capable of penetrating North Vietnam's Soviet-sourced defenses. Ninety-six F-105s remain relatively intact in museums, on display at various Air Force bases or awaiting destruction at the Davis-Monthan boneyard in Arizona.

Thud Aircraft

Not a one is flyable. In 2010 the Collings Foundation did its best to buy an F-105 that it could restore to flight, but the Air Force refused to provide one, citing liability concerns. Flyable Vietnam-era airplanes such as Collings' F-4 have all been acquired from foreign sources, but no Thud ever flew under a foreign flag.

Whether It Was The Sound Of Pounds Of Metal Uncontrollably Impacting The Earth Or The Light-Hearted Shortening Of The Name Howdy Doody’s Indian Rival Chief Thunderthud The F- Became Known Affectionately As The “Thud” By Those Who Flew And Maintained It

Those were uncertain times. No one knew if U.S. involvement in Vietnam would trigger Chinese or Soviet intervention. “We were doing all sorts of lines [nuclear missions] on all sorts of maps for all sorts of targets,” says Cooper.

Nobody knows for sure where the nickname comes from. Some claim it can be traced back to the Howdy Doody character Chief Thunderthud, but that's unlikely. The generally accepted explanation is that it's the sound the airplane made when it hit the ground, as it too often did.

In January 1952, the U.S. Air Force was seeking such an aircraft, one that could penetrate enemy territory and take out military bases with both conventional and atomic weapons. At Republic Aviation's Farmingdale, Long Island, plans such an airplane was already taking form as Advanced Project 63 under legendary Russian émigré designer Alexander Kartveli.

Republic Aviation was awarded the contract, and the YF-105A first flew on October 22, 1955. The F and follow-on G model found their calling, however, in an entirely unexpected arena: as “Wild Weasels,” the two-seaters that would seek out SAM site targeting-radar signals and then destroy the site.

The original Wild Weasels were F-100F Super Saber hunters accompanied by bomb- and rocket-loaded F-105Ds to do the killing, but the Huns couldn't keep up with their 105 partners. The F-105s would then head into North Vietnam, flying at 18,000 to 20,000 feet.

Going into PAK VI, the pilots followed two main approaches. One took them out over the Gulf of Tonkin, where they then turned to the attack. The other took them along a mile-high branch of the Day Truong Son (Long Chain of Mountains).

Paralleled on the south by the Red River, this narrow complex of karsts and dense-canopy forest points southeast toward Hanoi. Americans called it Thud Ridge, after the men who were lost there and the F-105 detritus littering its rough slopes.

Several pilots were victims of the “99th mission” syndrome, being shot down on their penultimate operation and, in some cases, killed in action. On Apr 23, 1966 Capt Robert Dyczkowski became one of that number. As “Oak 2”

in F-105D 61-0157, nicknamed Shirley Ann, he was hit by AAA as he pulled up from the target and was not heard from again. His fellow 421st TFS pilot Maj Bernard Goss, leading a later light, which also hit near the target and ejected

from F-105D 61-0048. He was presumed to have been killed after landing on a steep hillside. There's a myth that the Thud "would always get you home," and every pilot who made it back to base with a shot-up F-105 put another notch in that reputation.

The airplane's sheer bulk and presumed strength made it seem obvious that the Thud was a survivor. The Air Force, however, did a study and found that in fact few badly damaged 105s successfully returned to base.

Luckily, although air-to-air combat was not considered a likely scenario for the Thud, many of the pilots who joined the first deployments to Southeast Asia had gained that experience during previous fighter tours. As Col Broughton explained, 'Most of us 'old heads' in the 'Thud' business had a good grasp on aerial combat.

I don't think air-to-air was ever considered irrelevant in training, at least not at our level. We didn't have many trainees join us during my time in Southeast Asia. We needed experienced guys to go North, and if we got a new guy we taught him all we could on-scene.”

Thud pilot Vic Vizcarra called it “the Cadillac of the air. Huge, comfortable cockpit. I had all the confidence in the world in that airplane. It had terrain-avoidance radar, not terrain-following. You had to manually fly it.

I remember one training mission I flew entirely under the [radar] bag. My instructor said, 'Hey Vic, look where you are.' I was in a tiny valley, huge mountains on each side. It proved to me I'll be able to do this mission in real weather."

Coming off the target, the F-105s stayed together and headed for the tankers. They took enough fuel to get back to base, where, some four hours after their takeoff, the afternoon shift was preparing the next charge against the Russian guns.

The classic PAK VI mission, says Rasimus, was "always a package, 30, 40, 50 airplanes," including a Douglas EB-66 electronic countermeasures aircraft, F-4 Phantoms to fight off MiGs, and Wild Weasels, two-seat F -105F or -G models used to counterpunch anti-aircraft defenses.

Another constant problem was overheating in the afterburner (AB) area of ​​the fuselage. This issue was addressed by adding two additional air intakes on either side of the aft fuselage to provide more cooling from outside air.

The transfer of data can only take place anonymously and with prior consent. The form of anonymization is no longer acceptable. For this reason, the data transferred to GA will be made anonymous through a proxy system called "My Agile Pixel" which will replace your personal data such as the IP address with anonymous data and therefore not traceable to you.

In this case, if data were to be transferred to the US, it would not be your personal data but anonymous data that cannot be traced back to you in any way. Does Collings plan to try again?

"There's very little chance it would be an option for us or anybody else," a Collings representative said. "There are very few that could be returned to flight, and most of those, they cut the tails off to make sure they would never fly again."

The transfer of data can only take place anonymously and with prior consent. The form of anonymization is no longer acceptable. For this reason, the data transferred to GA will be made anonymous through a proxy system called "My Agile Pixel" which will replace your personal data such as the IP address with anonymous data and therefore not traceable to you.

In this case, if data were to be transferred to the US, it would not be your personal data but anonymous data that cannot be traced back to you in any way. Once airborne, the four-thud formations headed for a herd of Boeing KC-135 tankers flying 30-mile-long racetrack orbits over Thailand.

“Each [formation] had their own tanker,” says Rasimus. "They'd fill everybody up. Tanker would head north, take us up over Laos, about halfway to the target. We'd quickly cycle through again and drop off with full fuel.

It took about helping our gas to get up there,” says Brazelton. "But once refueled, we could fly a long way, a thousand miles." The aircraft acquired the usual derisive nicknames. Where Republic's P-47 had been the Jug, the F-105 became the Thud.

The origin is unclear. Some said “Thud” echoed the sound of an F-105 crashing into the jungle. Some attributed it to Chief Thunderthud on the “Howdy Doody Show.” As with many such sobriquets, Thud quickly became a term of endearment.

The -105 might be a bear to maintain, but the pilots loved its power, speed, and resilience. Thuds came home with large bites taken out of them by missiles and flak. The pilots prided themselves on doing the work of a five-man bomber crew at or beyond the speed of sound, 100 feet above the jungle, flak and missiles and MiGs everywhere.

Enthusiasts then had a chance to go trolling for things to punish with the Gatling gun. It took a while for everyone to see the folly of risking a multimillion-dollar airplane to whack a 10,000-ruble truck, or pitting the 20-mm Gatling against 57-mm artillery, or looking for dogfights.

"A lot of people were lost who shouldn't have been screwing around with a MiG-17," says Cooper. "We could depart from it faster than a missile could track, separating at the speed of light." Whether the 3½-year bombing campaign, called Rolling Thunder, was worth the effort will forever be debated.

There was little of value to hit in North Vietnam—no big factories or sprawling oil refineries, only small power plants, ordinary buildings, a few minor military installations and MiG airfields that were out of bounds according to the restrictive rules of engagement.

"There wasn't a target in Vietnam worth a -105," wrote Victor Vizcarra. "'One pass and haul ass,' we used to say." The 105's main fuel tanks were mounted atop the big, hot J75 engine, like saddlebags, since there was no room for fuel in the thin wings.

A piece of SAM shrapnel (SAMs were proximity-fuzed and didn't have to score a direct hit) could easily hole a tank and create a fireball. The word among Thud pilots was that by their 66th mission they would have been shot down twice and picked up once.

Put another way, they had about a 60 percent chance of completing the 100 missions north they were required to fly. (Their frequent sorties into Laos didn't count.) For pilots on permanent assignments, 100 flights took about six months to accrue.

For those rotating in from Japan, the requirement could take a couple of years. When SAMs were launched at a Wild Weasel, it was the backseater's job to track them on a tiny, two-square-inch cathode-ray tube and call out maneuvering measures to the pilot.

The usual SAM-avoidance maneuver was to wait until the missile was danger close—about a mile—and then perform a 4G pitchout that broke its radar lock. Some of the admiration probably wasn't deserved. After all, the Thud was the only aircraft in Air Force history that had to be withdrawn from combat because nearly half the fleet had been shot down or crashed, leaving too few to be tactically useful.

It also quickly failed as a Thunderbird team aircraft, when one broke in half during practice for only its seventh show. And the airplane's design and gestation was a tortuous, troubled and controversial process. Novelist and award-winning science writer Carl A. Posey was the author of seven published novels, a number of non-fiction books, and dozens of magazine articles.

He was a licensed pilot and an Air & Space magazine contributor for more than 30 years, beginning with its second issue in 1986. Posey died on February 9, 2018. That 1940s was apparently hadn't left enough bombs, however.

There was a bomb shortage, though the government denied it. Thuds sometimes launched carrying only two or three bombs, sent into peril simply to keep up the sortie count. Those prototypes were entirely inadequate airplanes, barely able to bust the Mach, thanks to slab-sided fuselages and ordinary air intakes.

Convair's experience with the un-area-ruled F-102 pushed Republic to ask for help from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. NACA's Langley lab naturally recommended area ruling (the classic Coke bottle–shaped fuselage), which Republic design chief Alexander Kartveli resisted.

He loved an airplane with smooth lines and had even protested the switch to a bubble canopy on the P-47D Thunderbolt, griping that it “looked like a pickle” atop the fuselage. Both bases adopted Australian bush hats and kept their missions tallied on the rims.

Pilots tend to be superstitious. That bush couldn't be left on the bed or on the dresser. Crickets in the wash room were not to be smushed. At Korat, a mustache rendered the pilot bulletproof; shaving it off was tantamount to suicide.

That blazing speed made the Thud difficult to protect, says Brazelton. “One time they were thinking of sending F-4s on MiG escort. As we approached the target, we went a little faster, then a little faster.

Pretty soon they couldn't keep up with us. We were happier when the escorts stayed away. If there were any MiGs up there, there were plenty of -105 pilots eager to pull the trigger.” Although their nuclear expertise attack would have little application in Vietnam, USAFE pilots found that their experience of persistently bad weather in Europe was good preparation for Southeast Asian monsoon visibility.

Capt Ben Fuller, with the 7th TFS at Spangdahlem, recalled, “Our normal training consisted of flying radar low-level navigation and simulated bombing of targets throughout France and West Germany. The mission profile was low-level to the target and then climb out to altitude for an instrument approach and landing using GCA [ground-controlled approach] assistance.

Due to European weather, almost all landings were under instrument conditions.” Like its predecessor the P-47, the F-105D was a monster. Not only did the airplane carry a bigger bombload than a Boeing B-17, its fuselage was only 10 feet shorter than that of a Flying Fortress, and the cockpit was so far off the ground that the boarding ladder was tall enough for suburban gutter-

cleaning. At 53,000 pounds max size, it was the heaviest single-seat, single-engine airplane in the world until the advent of the 70,000-pound Lockheed Martin F-35. Eventually as told by Spitzmiller, while the name Thunderchief was appealing to Republic and its PR department, those who flew this heaviest fighter of its time, with a wing loading that guaranteed a high descent rate when the engine faltered… applied another name.

Whether it was the sound of 50,000 pounds of metal uncontrollably impacting the earth, or the light-hearted shortening of the name Howdy Doody's Indian rival, Chief Thunderthud, the F-105 became known affectionately as the “Thud” by those who flew and maintained

it. The Nellis degrees were sent off to the frontlines separating East and West. Some went to bases at Bitburg and Spangdahlem, West Germany, others were assigned to Yokota Air Base in Japan. From the bases in Germany and at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa and Osan, South Korea, the pilots began standing alerts, nuclear weapons tucked into their airplanes' bomb bays or hanging from wing pylons, waiting for the terrible moment to arrive.

By February 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson had approved Operation Rolling Thunder, a bombing campaign by the Air Force and the U.S. Navy intended to crack the North Vietnamese spirit. Because the two services did not play well together, planners divided North Vietnam into six route packages, or PAKs, later splitting the sixth into VI-A and VI-B.

PAKs I, V, and VI-A belonged to the Air Force, and II, III, IV, and VI-B were the Navy's. Da Nang-based Marines would share PAK I with the Air Force.

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