Very nice. With the Douglas reference I thought it was going to pertain to the A-3's or the B-66. From what I was able to obtain, it did some referencing to a few of the early recon aircraft as if they first started out on the standoff type aircraft RB-57 and those of the same mission.
Another question. Early on, did the Wild Weasels have this type of epuipment, F-100F,s F-105's? And if at all, did any of the FAC's posses this epuipment later down the road as the conflict evolved?
Thanks
I really don't know if
Project Shoehorn was a USN/USMC only program or whether it included all the services and all the aircraft operating in Vietnam in high threat areas. They all needed protection so it quite likely was a joint services project encompassing many airframe types.
Until the very end, those aircraft operating south of the DMZ were never really threatened by enemy radar guided weapons systems so they probably had the lowest(if any) priority for ECM/ECCM gear.
Re: the Wild Weasels. That was the USAF name for 2 seat aircraft performing the mission the Navy performed using single seat A-7 Corsair IIs under the name
Iron Hand. IIRC, they started out using the
Shrike anti-radiation ASM and later using the
Standard ARM ASM. Those very brave men would go dueling with SAM sites and the tactics and counter tactics evolved almost daily. I don't think they had anything much more sophisticated than the rest of us for defensive EW gear(i.e.-RHAW, chaff, low power spot jammers, range gate stealers and angle gate stealers.) RHAW and chaff came first. The others evolved with the threats.
Re. equipment the FACs carried. I was privileged to do a short exchange tour with the FACs at Nakon Phanom(NKP), Thailand. They were great guys and great hosts, by the way. (A little pampered though with 2 man air conditioned rooms, O Club and squadron bars:beer: , restaurants with excellent food, LBFMs
imp: in town, maid service, van rides to the flight line, etc.)
Anyway, I digress.
I flew a couple of missions with the
Nail FACs in the OV-10 and the
Covey FACs in the O-2 on the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos and up in the Mu Gia Pass. They had basic RHAW. The O-2 guy I flew with had been shot down some months before over the trail by an SA-2 SAM they had snuck in. He didn't have any ECM gear at the time. He said one minute he was flying along "fat, dumb and happy" and the next minute he was falling out of the O-2 after the missile ripped the right side of the aircraft away. They started adding RHAW gear to the FACs operating along the trail in Laos after that.