There Ain't No Way

Neal Croz found this over at Ed Rasimus's site.  I don't think I had seen it in near on forty years.  It is a half-hour video of Thud (F-105) operations out of Korat RTAFB, Thailand, in 1966.  It is the 388th Tactical Fighter Wing.

I know (knew) a couple of these chaps.  One of them is Ed Rasimus, who returned to Korat in 1972-3, flying the F-4E, which is where I met him.  We were in the 34th Tactical Fighter Squadron together.

Another was Karl Richter, who I first met in the back row of the bottom EE Section first semester of our senior year at the Air Force Academy.  We were assigned to Class Sections, and Class seating based upon our academic ranking in that particular class.  As I recall, there was someone seated to our right, otherwise we would have had the lowest scores for that EE Course for the whole Class of 1964.  I then ran into Karl again at Pilot Training, Craig Field, outside Selma, Alabama.  Karl made 200 missions over North Viet-nam, but the last one cost him his life.

The theme song running through the video is Red River Valley and most F-105 operations (both Korat and Takhli (pronounced Ko rot and Tak lee)) were flown into the Red River Valley of North Viet-nam.

I found it very interesting, forty years on.

Regards  —  Cliff