Word: rb
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...through thunderstorms and flak, alone, unarmed, and always looking for Charlie. It is the toughest flying in the world, as its pilots-all veterans of proven skill-know all too well. In the past two years the "Recce" wing has lost 27 crews, including the six men aboard an RB-66 that was shot down last week northeast of Hanoi. But, says Captain Gale Hearn, 34, a onetime flying instructor who specializes in night runs, "we're more scared of those mountains than we are of the Viet Cong. You learn to trust your radar out here. When...
...three Phantoms were flying northwest, into the evening sun, escorting a slow, radar-laden RB-66 reconnaissance bomber close to the Red Chinese border. To Major Wilbur R. Dudley, 34, of Alamogordo, N. Mex., the first hint of trouble was the wink of cannon fire beneath his Phantom fighter. It came from four "silver, swept-wing and well-kept aircraft"-Communist MIG-17s, presumably Chinese. "I broke to the right," recalled Dudley after last week's action, "and pickled [dropped] my fuel tanks, and then I came up on this MIG just as it was making a firing pass...
Thus-if Peking could be believed-began the first tangle between American and Chinese airplanes since Korea. The outcome was predictable. "He seemed to be a pretty good pilot," said Dudley of his adversary, "but he apparently had a case of tunnel vision when he bore in on the RB-66 and never knew we were behind him. And one mistake is all you get." Dudley dropped the MIG with a heat-seeking missile up the tail pipe...
Myopic SAM. To Peking's claim that the dogfight took place over Chinese territory, the U.S. replied that the RB-66 was at least 50 miles south of China. And it was there for a reason: last week U.S. aircraft mounted a record 135 missions in one day over North Viet Nam, plastering targets from Dienbien-phu to Vinh and striking to within ten miles of the strategic port of Haiphong. The RB-66s help far-flying U.S. fighter-bombers to find their targets over the jungle-masked rivers and roads of North Viet Nam. They also aid them...
...fact, though damaged by the MIG gunfire, the RB-47 limped safely to Yokota Airbase in Japan, with none of its six crewmen injured. It was the eighth air attack on U.S. aircraft by North Koreans since the armistice of 1953. Washington's retort was blunt and potent: the presentation to the South Korean air force of 20 new F-5 fighter planes packing twice the punch at twice the speed of the marauding...