Anyone else think the F-105 was a bad ass war machine?  

I always wondered why it never had a post war career?  How was it in the air to air role?  It got quite a few kills with sidewinders and guns.  Could it have been made into a multirole fighter before the F-4 came around?  It seemed to be decent in the air to air, and had a redundant bomb bay that you could use as a weapons bad (F-102, F106) or as space for avionics and a better radar.

F-105 and F-8 have to be the two of my favorite nam era a/c.

The Thud was a tough machine.  A friend's Dad was a backseater in Weasels.  What a mission.  Get them to shoot at you so you can shoot back.

It was a big, heavy plane for a single engine.  It had a slick appearance with all surfaces swept back.  I wonder what a two-engine configuration would have performed like? (Yeah, for you engineering types out there I know it's not that simple, but what a concept! ).

Always liked that bird.

We had a Lead Sled on base we always crawled on.  It was an impressive machine close up.  

There is a good article on the Thud in Vietnam here:

www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj98/spr98/werrell.html

The Vietnam war pretty well exhausted the supply of F-105 airframes. A boatload of them were lost over the north.

The Thud carried the air war to the north for the first years of the Vietnam war, 6 bombs at a time. So many Thuds flew so many missions and dropped so many bombs that once the B-52 "big belly" entered the war with it's payload of 108 500 pounders, it still took YEARS for the B-52 bomb tonnage to match that dropped by the Thud.

One of my instructors in tech school was a retired Master Sergeant who had served in Thailand when the F-111 came online, the first time. He was an F-105 maintenance troop and had to endure a lot of BS from the F-111 folks who said their jet was going to win the war in a few weeks.

After 2 F-111s were lost in the first 5 days in SE Asia, the F-105 was called in to bomb the remnants of the F-111s so the communists wouldn't get any of our technology from the crash site. A month later a 3rd F-111 was lost and the entire 111 program went home.

I don't know how accurate that story is, but that's how it was relayed to me.

Thread is useless  without pics.

Quoted:

How was it in the air to air role?  It got quite a few kills with sidewinders and guns.  Could it have been made into a multirole fighter before the F-4 came around?

straight from my uncle's mouth, who flew thuds in Vietnam and F-4's post war...."amazing for putting bombs on target, tough and fast, but turned with all the speed of a dumptruck climbing a mountain"

you know where the name "thud" came from right?

Kinda plain looking

While fiction check out Tom Wilson's books Termite Hill, Lucky's Bridge, and Tango Uniform. They are a good look at the Thud's role in Nam.

Wasnt "thud" the nickname it was given due to the sound it'd make after bouncing off the ground unharmed?

Any plane flown by the weasels has to be something special.

Kharn

It also contained an overly complex inlet system required for it to go supersonic. It was rarely maintained as their missions rarely required it.

A dogfighter it wasn't.

It was a great fighter-bomber for the late 50s and early 60s, but time had passed it by by the late 60s. Aircraft like the A-6 were much better bombers. And the F-4 was better as a fighter and could deliver the mail about as well as the 105.

I love the Thud.  One of my all time favorites.  

I was a curator at an aircraft musuem here for awhile and worked a lot on the restoration of the 105D we have there. Too bad someone painted over the camo on it with ADC grey (yuk). Then Clintoon decided that all musuem displays should be stripped of any panels using slightly radioactive alloys, and of course the radium IP gauges. Asshats. They really made a mess of that bird.

Thud trivia:

Largest single engine fighter produced by the USA

Internal bomb bay carried a nuke especially made for the Thud, which was initially concieved as a low and fast nuclear FB. Later on a specially made fuel cell was put in the bay instead of the nuke.

Second loudest fighter made by the USA (allegedly). The F101B was the loudest.

Quoted: One of my instructors in tech school was a retired Master Sergeant who had served in Thailand when the F-111 came online, the first time. He was an F-105 maintenance troop and had to endure a lot of BS from the F-111 folks who said their jet was going to win the war in a few weeks. After 2 F-111s were lost in the first 5 days in SE Asia, the F-105 was called in to bomb the remnants of the F-111s so the communists wouldn't get any of our technology from the crash site. A month later a 3rd F-111 was lost and the entire 111 program went home. I don't know how accurate that story is, but that's how it was relayed to me.

BS I was stationed at Tahkli as a former F100 AND F 4 crew chief when the 111's came on line where I was transfered to the AR (crash recovery and flight control maint) shop.  The F-111's were exactly that "F" models, they were not the FB's.  The first two 111's went down at night while utilizing the new TFR (terrain following radar) not because of hostile ground to air fire.  The 105's were long gone in 1970 as you correctly stated due to their enormously high attrition rate.  The F4 effectly replaced the thud in all roles in 1968 with exception to the Wild Weasal role.

Oh well, it was his story. It was a good story, and I'm not convinced it wasn't at least partly true.

The F-15 was my jet, and we went thru tech school with other classes learning the F-111. They were damn jealous of us who were going to work on F-15s. Can you blame them?

The last Thuds left Korat Thailand in November of 1974.  I know, because I was with them.  At the time, there were still two squadrons of F-111A models at Korat.  We went TDY with the Thuds to Anderson on Guam, then returned to Thailand until the fall of Saigon in May of 1975.  When I left, there were still two squadrons of F-4's, two squadrons of A-7's, two squadrons of F-111A's and two squadrons of C-130 gunships.

F-105 gun kill of Mig17

Quoted: F-105 gun kill of Mig17 img.photobucket.com/albums/v668/scott1959/m17_f105.jpg

He shoots.

HE SCORES!

From skunkworks.free.fr/warbirds.doc

This was not the end of the F-111 controversy, however. In early 1967 a six-aircraft detachment of F-111As was rushed to Southeast Asia to carry out an evaluation of the design under operational conditions and within two months three aircraft had been lost during combat missions. In view of the fact that the F-111 had yet to complete its full test program and also that the aircraft incorporated much new and untried technology, these losses are not surprising. Yet they inevitably aroused a storm of controversy and it was not until September 1972 that the aircraft was considered truly combat ready.

More at: http://www.f-111.net/F-111A/F-111A-in-SEA.htm

Someone needs to get me an mp3 of the song they play (I think part of the lyrics are "until 100 missions I myself have flown") on the Thud Wings episode.

I am a Thud pilot,
I love my plane.
It is my body,
I am its brain.
My Thunderchief loves me,
And I love her too.
But I get the creeps,
With only one seat,
And one engine, too.

The 105 is a cool plane , another Fav. is the 101 Voodoo thats a big wicked looking bastard . And big too .

Ive heard the issue in a nutshell was the crews didnt trust the new radar and would switch it off . Then they tried to fly it manualy at low level .....

No clue if it's true or not .

I always wondered if that Mig would have got away if he had droped his wing tanks earlier ?