Any info on "Project Shoehorn" back in Vietnam?

[LR25]

I aquired a flight crew patch with Project Shoehorn and Cubi Point Phillipines on it. It shows a lightning bolt going through some telephone wires with Doulgas "Doulgas Aircraft Corp" on it as well.

From what I can gather on the net, it deals with epuiping Naval A/C with ECM I believe for SAM or radar disguising for enemy aircraft.

It also refers to the Firebee drones including DC-130's, RB-47's, and RB-57's.

Thanks for any info.

 

[FL420]

I aquired a flight crew patch with Project Shoehorn and Cubi Point Phillipines on it. It shows a lightning bolt going through some telephone wires with Doulgas "Doulgas Aircraft Corp" on it as well.

From what I can gather on the net, it deals with epuiping Naval A/C with ECM I believe for SAM or radar disguising for enemy aircraft.

It also refers to the Firebee drones including DC-130's, RB-47's, and RB-57's.

Thanks for any info.

Well. it's been a long time and I don't have any technical info but I can shed a little light.

During the Vietnam War the Navy began losing a bunch of aircraft to the SA-2 Guideline SAM with it's Fan Song radar and to 85mm AAA gun with its Firecan radar that the North Vietnamese obtained from the Soviets, it became obvious that Navy pilots needed some way to detect and counter these radar threats.

A crash program was instituted to develop ECM and ECCM gear for Navy aircraft. The APR-25 was an early Radar Homing & Warning(RHAW) receiver which covered several frequency bands. Coded strobes displayed relative bearing of various threat emitters. Length of the strobe line indicated signal strength which indirectly indicated range of the threat emitter. Crews were trained to interpret these visual signals and also interpret the raw audio sound of the emitters such as pulse frequency and pulse repetition rate. From this info. you could determine what type of threat(SAM radar, AAA radar or air-to-air radar) and what operating mode the threat was in(search, detection, lock-on, track, track-while-scan and the presence of missile guidance commands .) As time went on and the threats evolved, a lot of gear was developed to not only detect but to counteract the threats.

A place(or several places) had to be found in each aircraft to put all this very necessary electronic gear which was never anticipated and therefore never provided for when the aircraft were designed and built. The gear had to be "shoehorned" into each aircraft in every little nook and cranny available. Hence the name, "Project Shoehorn."

When McDonnell Aircraft was designing the F-4 they left some room in the fuselage for future growth. I think they were thinking of adding extra fuel at a later date. The largest empty space was just behind the RIO's cockpit on top of the #1 fuel cell, accessible by removing a bunch of screw fasteners on a panel on top of the fuselage. That's where the F-4B's newly acquired EW gear was shoehorned.

The Douglas A-4 was a much smaller airframe with much less available expansion space. I didn't fly the A-4 in combat so I don't know much about the A-4 version of Project Shoehorn. I do know that eventually they had to add a big humpback on the A-4 in the E, F and M(and perhaps other) models to house all the electronic gear modern warfare required.

I know nothing about Project Shoehorn for the Douglas A-3 Skyraider, Chance Vought F-8 Crusader or the Grumman A-6 Intruder. I also don't know anything about the BQM's or the large airframes.

I hope this helps.

 

[LR25]

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

 

[NJA bound]

Interesting stuff, I was an ECM tech in the Marine Corps, trained on the ALQ-126 A/B radar jammer and ALR-67 radar warning receiver, they never talked about the history of ECM though.

 

[FL420]

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.

 

[LR25]

I got a little O-2 time in an ex Vietnam veteran, still had all the gear in the back after sitting in the desert all those years.

Kind of off subject, did you ever work with or see the 609th Special Ops Squadron operating B-26K's (A-26 Invaders)?

 

[414Flyer]

O-2 being hit by an SA-2? Yeah I can bet that plane was pretty instantly destroyed, I think he was lucky to survive it. Wasnt Iron Hand A-4s?

COMBAT TREE was quite an interesting program, I think it was secret for quite a while after vietnam

 

[JimNtexas]

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

The F-100F, F-105Gs and F-4Cww airplanes all had special purpose EW gear designed for the Weasel Mission. I don't know what's in the latest black programs, but I do know that the F-4G/APR-38 system exceeds the radar detection capablity of any currently operational airplane, including the F-18 Growler. The F-4G was 30 years ahead of it time.

 

[FL420]

Kind of off subject, did you ever work with or see the 609th Special Ops Squadron operating B-26K's (A-26 Invaders)?

No. I think they were done by the late 60's.

 

[FL420]

Wasnt Iron Hand A-4s?

The A-4 Skyhawk(aka Scooter or Tinkertoy) had the Iron Hand mission aboard the small-deck 27Charlie carriers like the Oriskany and Bonnie Dick. The A-7 had the Iron Hand mission aboard the larger-deck carriers. Some A-6s did some Iron Hand work.

COMBAT TREE was quite an interesting program, I think it was secret for quite a while after vietnam

I didn't know any details about it until after the war.