| Date: 22 November 1966 |
| Aircraft type: F-4C Phantom |
| Serial Number: 64-0755 |
| Military Unit: 480 TFS, 366 TFW |
| Service: USAF |
| Home Base: Da Nang |
| Name(s): |
| 1Lt Gordon Scott Wilson (KIA) |
| 1Lt Joseph Crecca, Jr (POW) |
| Original text:
A strike on a POL storage site (Joe Crecca remembers that the target was billeting for 10,000 NVA soldiers rather than POL) at Ha Gia in North Vietnam saw yet another US aircraft downed by a SAM. One of a flight of F-4s (call sign Dogwood) was hit by an SA-2 while flying at 14,000 feet about 10 miles southwest of Thai Nguyen en route to the target. The rear fuselage caught fire and the crew ejected although the pilot was killed, possibly during the ejection or soon after landing. 1Lt Crecca was captured on his 87th mission and became a POW until his release on 18 February 1973. Joe Crecca later flew F-4Es with the 58th TFS and then flew Boeing 747 freighters for Flying Tigers upon retirement from the Air Force. The POL campaign of 1966 had destroyed most of North Vietnam’s above-ground POL storage and pumping sites but the time wasted in deciding whether to hit the POL targets had been put to good use by the North Vietnamese who had dispersed and buried much of its fuel and oil. The costly campaign had succeeded in destroying targets but the observable targets were no longer crucial to the North. In 1986 the Vietnamese government handed over human remains that were positively identified in October of that year as being those of 1Lt Wilson. The following is an excerpt from an article written by Joe Crecca for Air Facts Journal in 2017. To see the entire article, go to this link: Approaching what should have been Point Alfa on our planned route, I noticed the nav pointer was off to the left when it should have been dead center straight up. I quickly figured out that, because we were going to be late, our flight lead was cutting Alfa out and going directly to Bravo. I confirmed this by dialing in Bravo’s coordinates and the needle pointed straight ahead. I yelled on the intercom, “Deep six check! He’s taking us direct to Bravo and right over Yen Bai!” Without hesitation Scotty rolled smoothly to the left into a near 90 degree bank and applied right (top) rudder and held it for a few seconds while I looked for the SAM that was certainly coming for us. But there was no SAM. So Scotty did the same check with a roll to the right with the same result. Phew! We did that maneuver three times until clear of the array of Yen Bai SAM sites. Just as we were positioning ourselves for the right-hand turn at Bravo, the lead aircraft unexpectedly turned to the left. Scotty compensated nicely and kept us in formation while I was continually “checking six.” During the left, 270 degree turn, the flight leader must have been having problems with his navigation system because he asked if our own nav equipment was operating normally, saying, “Dogwood 2, how’s your inertial?” I’m thinking, “How does anybody know how their INS is doing when they can’t see the ground?” We were at 25,000 feet above a solid, 10,000-foot undercast. While I was thinking how dumb a question that was, Scotty asked me an entirely different one over the intercom: “Do you know where we are?” To me, this is a refreshing change of phraseology, demonstrating a far greater sense of situational awareness. I replied that I still had a positive lock to a radio nav-aid and if he could get us through the clouds I could get us to the target. Scotty then said over the radio to the leader, “Dogwood 2 has a good inertial.” Pilots who have used the AN/ASN-46 nav system (Up to 7 NM per hour error) will know what’s going on here. Flight lead replied, “Dogwood 2, you have the lead.” So that it is crystal clear to the reader, this means that two 1st Lieutenants were leading a flight of Phantoms to a JCS target on the outskirts of Hanoi referred to as “Bullseye” by those of us who flew over the north. The time was 1151. Our TOT (Time Over Target) was scheduled for 1153. We were going to make it. At this point, because of the unexpected turn, our formation was too bunched up; we were too close to each other to be able to provide mutual look-out support. I was too busy inside the cockpit to see it happen but the other two Phantoms banked away sharply to assume the proper lateral spacing. Without any electronic gear onboard to warn us of active SAM sites, there was no way for us to know that at that very moment a Soviet-built SA-2 missile was streaking its way towards our Phantom from directly behind us, “Dead 6 o’clock,” in fighter pilot lingo. Just as the original lead aircraft rolled back to a wings-level position a mile to our left and reacquired us visually, the SAM struck our F-4 too late to shout a warning. We were only two minutes from the target, descending through 14,000 ft. at a speed of 540 knots or about 650 miles per hour. The explosion was ear-splitting and seemed to go on and on. This is known as temporal distortion. Our airplane flew out of the fireball with orange flames and thick, black smoke trailing from the wings, fuselage and tail. We’d had it. The direct hit had felt like we’d had a collision with a fully-loaded cement truck. There was a terrifyingly loud and long explosion followed by staccato metal-to-metal sounds, probably of the J-79 turbine and compressor blades departing for parts unknown. Sayonara, engines! I looked first into the rear-view mirrors and could see only orange flames and inky smoke. I then looked at myself to see if I was in one piece. How about that for a cool presence of mind? I was O.K. The cockpit pressure vessel was intact; incredibly, it had not been penetrated despite a direct hit by a Soviet SA-2 missile traveling at over Mach 2 with a 400 lb., high-explosive warhead! Peering over Scotty’s shoulders into the front seat, I could see we were done for. Both Fire and Overheat lights were illuminated and all the amber and red indicators on the telelight panel by Scotty’s right knee were lit. The aircraft banked sharply to the left, then to the right. Despite our brief conversation enroute to the tanker about pilots who had ejected from their burning airplanes prematurely (their aircraft flew on for long distances before going out of control) what happened next got my attention. Scotty yelled, “GET OUT!” With the “OUT” still echoing in my ears there was a BOOM!, then the air noise of the jettisoned canopy. Scotty had ejected. For the briefest moment I contemplated that a right 60 degree turn would take me via the shortest route out of NVN. Not that northern Laos is a very hospitable place to be, but it would give you a better chance for a rescue by an Air Force chopper. I even remember glancing around the cockpit at the throttles and the control stick. It was another scene of temporal distortion. The control stick was lazily wandering left and right; the throttles were all the way forward in the full afterburner position but there was no thrust coming from the J-79s. There were no J-79s! All this took no more than one second. But survival instincts and thorough ejection training were running the show. Subconsciously I probably realized I was sitting alone in the back seat of a burning airplane. The man who had less than an hour ago cautioned me against premature ejection had ejected. All these thoughts, survival instincts and USAF training synthesized into one, crystal clear and powerful inspiration. While my eyes and my thoughts were on flying out of enemy territory, my hands moved swiftly to the lower ejection handle while my body automatically assumed the correct ejection posture; back straight, legs extended, elbows tucked in close to the body, and BOOM. I’d pulled the lower ejection handle and was away from my burning Phantom. I was falling towards the Earth and still attached to my Martin-Baker (made in England) ejection seat below a four-foot drogue chute to stabilize my rapid descent. At 10,000 ft, the automatic man-seat separation features operated exactly as advertised. The four-foot stabilizing chute was severed, my lap belt was opened and the “butt snapper” straps straightened, “booting” me out of the seat while simultaneously pulling the ripcord that would deploy my parachute. All I was aware of was a short, sharp ringing sound and my white, silk parachute billowing above me. Phew! The baro switch was supposed to open my chute at 10,000 ft. The clouds were reported to be at 10,000 ft. Both were exactly right because the top of my parachute was practically in the bottom of the clouds right above me. The first thing I looked at was the horizon and I could almost hear the words of “The Vanquished” as if they were spoken to me. Looking down past my flying boots lay North Vietnam. For the first few seconds, I was disoriented and didn’t know which way I was facing. I looked to my left and there, on the ground already was the wreckage of my stricken Phantom. Immediately, I looked in the opposite direction and saw Scotty in his chute. Unfortunately, there was more to see in that picture. Scotty’s arms seemed to be at his sides and head slumped forward. I was concentrating on Scotty and my eyes were focused only on him. Then came the shock. Just to the right of Scotty’s lifeless figure was the light-brown and white cloud characteristic of an SA-2 detonation! A second missile had been fired and aimed precisely where our aircraft would have been had we dived straight ahead to avoid the first missile. Although I was only a few thousand feet away, I hadn’t been able to hear the explosion. It must have occurred just before my own chute opened. Scotty was probably hit by shrapnel from the missile. At the very least, he had just been knocked out. At least that’s what I hoped. But, I knew the SA-2 was a powerful weapon; 400 lbs. of high-explosive surrounded by a thousand 1-inch diameter stainless steel balls inside the 6-foot long nose cone. At this point I could only pray he would revive by the time he reached the ground. |
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