Lucky F-4

The Unofficial U.S. Air Force HH-43B/F "PEDRO" Crash Rescue - Air Rescue Web Site

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
Det. #3, 38th ARRSq.

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."
Tripper

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"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."

"Pan to Jay S., still waiting for clearance to take off. After a certain period had passed, Jay called the tower to inquire as to where the incoming traffic had gone. Suddenly the dots were connected, and the tower realized
the problem. They launched Jay to sort out the situation. As soon as he got airborne and crested the hill off the departure end he got Lonnie's beacon. Jay began to deploy his flares to locate the downed aircraft. Lonnie later
commented that he had survived a crash landing in an F-4 and did not want to die as a result of his rescuers 1,000,000 candle power flares. Lonnie and ? were rescued, Jay went on, and a great party resulted due to the safe return of
Lonnie and ?"

Ron

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This page updated March 26, 2008