The Unofficial U.S. Air Force HH-43B/F "PEDRO" Crash Rescue - Air Rescue Web Site
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The Unofficial U.S. Air Force HH-43B/F "PEDRO" Crash Rescue - Air Rescue Web Site
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Photo submitted by and remains the property of Bill Junkins
"This picture is of an F-4 that crash landed off of the end of the runway at Ubon. As near as I can remember this incident occurred in the Spring of 1972. Luckily, the crew survived. I cannot remember anything else regarding this incident."
Bill Junkins Recollections of F-4 Pilots of stationed at Ubon at the time of the Incident. These comments are made 34 yrs. later.
"If that is the one I'm thinking of, it was a 435 TFS crew that landed
in the water and just climbed out. They thought they had hit turbulence until
one of them noticed the airspeed was zero but the altimeter was 1500' or some
such number as that." ----------------------------
"I know the story well. Lonnie P. and CRS the back seater
(but can see his face) were returning from a night strike somewhere.
TS in the area, but it was SEA. They were shooting the GCA into Ubon
with Jay S. waiting at the other end to TO on a night flare mission.
(Ubon landed one way and took off the other.) They vectored around a
TS and as they were approaching descended too low. We later learned
that the Air Date Computer had a fault. It would check OK in the
aircraft and at the base level maintenance, but would drive the altimeter
to a false attitude. The crew thought they were at a safe altitude
for the approach, but in fact were 700? feet lower then the altimeter
showed. (The altimeter in the F-4 was not a direct read instrument,
it was corrected by the air date computer.) When the Thai controller
could not find them after they vectored around the TS he did not sound the
alarm but decided he had pressing business elsewhere. Now the story
gets complicated as Jay is waiting the inbound, and Lonnie and ? are
waiting for the final controller to give those well known instructions re
glideslope and course. Lonnie described what happened to him when I
visited him in the base hospital that night after he was picked up. He
was sitting up in his hospital bed with his hands still positioned where
then would have been on final. Just no stick or throttles. He
said that he and his back seater were cruising along waiting for the
controller to start them down (did I mention that this was the typical DS
weather we saw at Ubon a lot of the year) when he heard/felt a
rumble. His AS rolled off to zero. He was still flying, but
had zero airspeed. Imagine sitting in your Phantom, confidently
flying your GCA but having zero airspeed and your control imputs having no
effect. It dawned on both cockpits simultaneously that they had
crashed. They did the egress drill (inside, outside, topside, over
the side) and jumped into waist high rice paddy water. (I suspect
that the average rice paddy would not meet EPA standards for, among other
things, coliform content.) Spying a tree, they waded to it and
deployed their rescue radios. You will recall that they were
activated by pulling out the antenna. As Lonnie related,
"pulling out" did not really mean "pulling them
completely out." Lonnie pulled the first one loose from the
radio. It was on, but merely acted as a jammer for the other one which
he deployed properly." This page updated March 26, 2008 Copyright © 1998 through 2004 The Unofficial USAF
HH-43 "Pedro" Crash Rescue - Air
Rescue Web Site. All rights reserved.
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Copyright © 1998 through 2010 The Unofficial USAF HH-43 "Pedro" Crash Rescue - Air Rescue Web Site . All rights reserved.
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