H-Grams – The Easter Offensive—Vietnam 1972

Posted on September 14, 2022 by Ed

War and Remembrance

The actions of Navy aircraft and surface ships in defeating the NVA offensive arguably represent one of the U.S. Navy’s finest hours since World War II. 

Rear Admiral Samuel Cox (USN, Ret), Director of the Naval History and Heritage Command

VA-115 Intruder preparing to launch from USS Midway for a night mission into Vietnam during Linebacker. Painting by 115 pilot Jim Horsely

Remembersky was first posted ten years ago with intent to fill in a perceived gap in Vietnam War stories in regard to USS Midway, Carrier Airwing Five, and in particular  the air-ground missions  in response to the 1972 Easter Offensive. Midway and its airwing had set the record for most days for a carrier on-line in the Gulf of Tonkin and was only one of four carriers to receive the Presidential Unit Citation in that war. And yet, reading multiple books and articles revealed limited stories. There are currently 42 offerings including ten focused on Operation Homecoming and the POW return, the  collection captured in Anthology – RememberedSky Vietnam Air War ’72-’73 Stories.

This site is about the collection of stories and given that 2022 marks the 50th anniversary of the Easter Offensive and Operation Linebacker I &II, it seems appropriate to offer up sea stories of that timeframe on a broader front. Along the way, H-Grams from Naval History and Heritage Command have been a constant source for great stories and history for Rememberedsky.  I highly recommend your reading of  the current H-Grams by Admiral/Director Samuel Cox:

Below are summaries  to these recent H-Grams  in regard to the  anniversary of the North Vietnamese 30 March 1972 large scale invasion of South Vietnam, and the subsequent U.S. Linebacker I and II operations. Continue reading →

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Against All Odds – Killing MiGs in the Korean War with Naval Aviator Royce Williams (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on August 21, 2022 by Ed

Testimony of Pilot #33

Will he finally receive the Medal of Honor?

In San Diego Harbor on the USS Midway, now a museum ship , Capt. Royce Williams (USN, Ret) stands next to  an F9F Panther with the silhouettes of four MiGs  under the cockpit. The aircraft and its markings are there as a tribute to the man who downed at least four Russian MiGs in an extraordinary 35+ minutes on one mission on  Nov. 18, 1952. 

For over half a century his achievement was classified; nobody knew what he did that day over the skies of Korea.  If you don’t know his story please see Part One.

Now retired he is one of the Korean War’s forgotten heroes. Royce Williams’ heroics in the Korean War flew under the radar for more than a half-century. Now,  after his heroic engagement with seven Soviet MiG 15s – kept secret for decades – the 97-year-old retired Navy captain could be in line for the Medal of Honor based  on a movement, sponsored by a U.S. Senator and several Navy flag officers.

Royce Williams accomplished what no other American fighter pilot would ever accomplish: Continue reading →

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Against All Odds – Killing MiGs in the Korean War with Naval Aviator Royce Williams (Part 1 of 2)

Posted on August 16, 2022 by Ed

Testimony of Pilot #32

On Nov. 18, 1952, Royce Williams became the top-scoring carrier-based naval aviator and the top-scoring naval aviator in a Navy jet of the Korean War.

A signed print by prominent military aviation artist Stan Stokes displayed on a wall in the home of the veteran Royce Williams depicts a U.S. Navy F9F-5 Panther fighter jet, which was the plane Williams flew in a dogfight against seven Soviet MiG-15 fighters. (Charlie Neuman/For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

On Nov. 18, 1952, during the Korean War, Navy Lt. Royce Williams, along with three other pilots from his fighter squadron, VF-781, launched from the USS Oriskany into the stormy skies over the Sea of Japan. There were more than 250,000 sorties flown by the Navy during that conflict, but the ensuing engagement would end in one of the great feats of aerial combat, yet it was covered up for decades due to the tense political environment of the Cold War. Continue reading →

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Flight Into Remembered Sky

Posted on October 13, 2021 by Ed

Testimony of Pilot #31

Once at a dinner party I was asked by a woman what on earth I had ever seen in military life. I couldn’t answer her, of course.

I couldn’t summon it all, the distant places, the comradeship, the idealism, the youth. I couldn’t tell about flying over the islands long ago, seeing them rise in the blue distance wreathed in legend, the ring of white surf around them… I couldn’t tell about Mahurin being shot down and not a soul seeing him go… I couldn’t tell her about brilliant group commanders or flying with men who later became famous, the days and days of boredom and moments of pure ecstasy, of walking out to the parked planes in the early morning or coming in at dusk when the wind had died to make the last landing of the day …

To fly with the thirty-year-old veterans and finally earn the right to lead yourself, flights, squadrons, a few times the entire group. The great days of youth when you are mispronouncing foreign words and trading dreams.

 Money meant nothing and in a way neither did fame. I couldn’t tell any of that or of the roads along the sea in Honolulu, the dances, the last drinks at the bar, or who Harry Thyng was, or Kasler, or the captain’s wife. James Salter, Burning the Day

Collected years ago, probably from a Sunday Magazine …

Flight Into Remembered Sky

By Thomas French Norton

He didn’t look like the ordinary street bum.

Perhaps it was his eyes, which were clear and blue and focused on some distant horizon. Or his stance. He carried his head up and his shoulders squared. He needed a shave, but he wore a white military mustache thar had seen recent trimming.

Our eyes met for a moment and some kind of recognition passed between us.”Could you spare something for an old B-24 pilot?” he asked.

He had been a tall skinny kid of 20 when he joined the Army Air Corps in 1943. He was sent to Texas, where he went through flight school. It was hard work, he said, but it was exciting and it gave his his first real purpose. He loved every minute in the air. Continue reading →

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TAILHOOK…A Gift

Posted on September 21, 2021 by Ed

Testimony of Pilot # 30

The organization of carrier aviation – Tailhook – held its annual convention in Reno Nevada 9-11 Sept. As indicated above, this year’s focus was on the Vietnam war. The  comments below – indeed the  moving testimony of a Vietnam era Naval Aviator’s son –  are,  I submit, well worth a read!

Tailhook -21 – My debrief by Rodd Karp
I was given the gift to attend Tailhook this year by Richard ‘Smokey’ Powell.
I didn’t know what to expect, and as we’ve heard described by those with much more experience than ourselves, regarding Junior Officers and strangers alike, “You don’t know what you don’t know.”
I certainly looked on the incipient week as something of an enigma. Perhaps I would be enlightened, perhaps I would hear a story or two, maybe my world would change?
Little did I know.

Continue reading →

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Phantoms to WartHogs

Posted on May 12, 2021 by Ed

Testimony of Pilot # 29

‘Dogfighting makes movies. Close air support wins wars,’

Colonel Steve Ladd (USAF, Ret) recently published From F-4 Phantom to A-10 Warthog; Memoirs of a Cold War Fighter Pilot, and has graciously provided RememberedSky with a key excerpt  particularly pertinent to RS’s major thread of air-ground or attack missions recently catalogued and highlighted in the post Anthology – RememberedSky Vietnam Airwar ’72-73 Stories.

Note that definitive of US Air Force usage, despite half of Steve’s  4000+ hour career in the A-10 attack aircraft, he refers to himself as a fighter pilot, and indeed in both the F-4 and A-10 aircraft his squadrons were Tactical Fighter Squadrons.

The Air Force and the aviation branch of the U.S. Navy have similar roles and missions but have distinct differences, mostly (but not all) of course driven and centered around the aircraft carrier.

Historically, through WWII navy squadron designation indicated their mission – VB, dive bombers, VT-torpedo bombers, VS, scouting and dive bombers, and VF, fighter or air-air. In the 50s the VB/VS/VT consolidated under the nomenclature “VA” for attack, air-ground missions. This remained until the replacement of both F-4s and A-7s by the F/A-18 Hornet with squadron designation becoming “VFA,” strike fighter squadrons, tasked to do both air-air and air-ground. From the Air Corps/Air Force perspective in the 30s the decision was made to not design, purchase, or designate “A” attack a/c. They  did violate their rules with the A-1 Skyraider, A-7D, and the A-10, and thus they had Tactical Air Command fighters and Strategic Air Command bombers (strategic bombing tasking – B-17, B-29, B-52, etc).

And so, considering first the air-ground mission and then differences in the two services, and terminology, Col Ladd’s  career experiences are of great interest  in regard to the  focus of RememberedSky  and so…

OBTW, really well written and highly recommended!!!

PHANTOM TO WARTHOG – The Transition

Continue reading →

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Anthology – RememberedSky Vietnam Air War ’72-’73 Stories

Posted on May 5, 2021 by Ed

Testimony of Pilot # 28

“Those of us who came home will never forget those who could not ”           Red River Valley Fighter Pilots Association

My return to Schoolboy from first combat mission, 28 April, 1972. Photo by Keith ‘Floo’ LaFlair

Rememberedsky was begun so as to tell stories from the ’72-73 Vietnam War beginning with response to the North Vietnamese 30 March Easter Offensive, on into Linebacker I & II operations by the USS Midway Carrier Airwing Five (CAG 5) and inclusive fighter and attack squadrons – VF-151, VF-161, VFP-63, VA-56, VA-93, and VA-115. Perspective was from my A-7B squadron, the VA-56 Champs, and then later from Dave Snako Kelly of the VA-115 A-6 squadron. An additional focal point was from the air-ground attack mission more than the air-air missions of the VF F-4 Phantom fighter squadrons – blowing stuff up, providing close airsupport to ground troops rather than hunting and killing MiGs.

USS Midway (Schoolboy) CAG Five fighter and attack squadrons: VF-151 Switchboxes, VA-56 Champs, VFP-63 Baby Giants, VA-115 A-rabs, VF-161 Rockrivers, VA-93 Ravens.

Most of that writing was done between 2012 and 2013, but stories still arise as by example the Missmus Bismus Christmas stories this last Christmas time of 2020. The expectation is there will be more on occasion, but this post provides a catalog of those stories  and links currently on line. As we go into the 49th anniversary of Linebacker I operations, some readers may find this listing of 43 TINS useful.

Continue reading →

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Of tin gods and STEEL MAGNOLIAS

Posted on April 27, 2021 by Ed

Testimony of Pilot #27

There are much safer and more bountiful ways to proceed successfully through life than jumping into a “tin” fast mover, looking  for fun and adventure playing with the clouds or screaming down some riverbed at 100 feet with your rear end on fire. This is strikingly and soberingly true when you are called to do for real what you’ve been  trained for, war from the air.

This post is for the wives who wait… sometimes in vain… for the return of their tin gods from that charge into the fire.

These women most assuredly were and are Steel Magnolias.

Prelude – A Chapel and a Bridge

11 March 1972, Point Mugu Chapel one really beautiful woman and if I do say so myself, a rather dashing swash buckling Naval Aviator attack pilot type join in marriage. No time for a honeymoon we head back to Lemoore to continue training to go out for carrier qualification in the A-7 including first ever night landings. Little did we know that a month later, I’d be on my way to Yankee Station and the sky’s of North Vietnam on Linebacker missions as the result of the NVN invasion of the South on 30 March – the Easter Offensive. My squadron had a shoot down, POW within a month.
Left crying on the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge as USS Midway sails beneath – one really crappy way for a brand new bride to start a new life. But here we are 49 years later. She’s still beautiful, a great artist, and I can still use my hands –“there I was at 100 ft…” – to tell some TINS ( “this is no s..t” ) flyboy stories.

Here’s to you my love
Words from a recent read: “Burning the days”

Training Unavailable

On the morning of 11 March this year, FaceBook offered up for me one of my“most liked posts of 2016” – the picture above of my wife and I on our wedding day in 1972. The prelude was my posted reply.

Continue reading →

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The Flying Circus Toy Shop: Recommendations

Posted on March 7, 2021 by Ed

The Flying Circus

Hey Mom, when I grow up I wanna be a fighter pilot …………… Son, I’m sorry, but you can’t do both

… of flight jackets, patches, aircraft pictures, models, books, watches, coffee mugs, ‘I luv me walls’ and old toys and … of  history, memories, and of the  friends

The “Remembered Sky” Enterprise [ 😉 ] includes this site, a Facebook page of the same name, a collection of flight jackets, coffee mugs, ball caps, old flight suits, model airplanes, pictures, and the museum-ish office/library/computer center referred to as the Toy shop or Pilot Lounge. I have collected a lot of aviation stuff since obtaining wings of gold in 1969 and some cleaning up and putting some away in boxes is periodically required. Many of my friends relate that their wives have relegated ALL to the garage, but for me I’m lucky to have had my third car garage converted to an office by the previous owner and my wife lets it be mine -all mine!!!

Working Remembered Sky I’ve made lots of new friends, collected a lot of stories to come out in the future and done business with some great folks. My five aviation best are now represented as “highly recommended” (no financial connections other than out of my wallet) on the right side of the web page. You can read about them on their sites, but below are my stories of why  the links are there.

RS Recommended Aviation Business Links Continue reading →

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Missmus Bismus #4: Epilogue

Posted on December 24, 2020 by Ed

Testimony of Pilot# 26

I never would have made it if I could not have laughed. It lifted me momentarily out of this horrible situation, just enough to make it livable. — Viktor Frankl

All I claim to know is that laughter is the most reliable gauge of human nature. — Feodor Dostoyevsky

At the ‘Prom’ – Mike ‘Manny’ Bader, Kent Bader, Ed ‘Boris’ Beakley, Paulette Beakley

The four part Missbus Bismus series is based on memories brought on by the Christmas season and particularly those of 1972 during the Vietnam War. I’ve tried very hard to center the writing on either people or laughter.

As the historical story has been told, the end of the war in Vietnam is considered mainly the result of the Christmas bombing operations of Linebacker II –the eleven days of Christmas.

I’ve used the convention of memories as ornaments and gifts and so I’ll end this “Christmas Stories” series discussing what I choose to refer to as the extended in time gifts of Christmas 1972 – memories beyond price. There are seven story gifts, all but one (the picture above in context) in the link below and summarized here: Continue reading →

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