Any of you guys remember F-100 Super Sabres?

[Ace-Garageguy]

 

[Bugatti Fan]

I know of them but never seen one living in the UK.

The USAF Thunderbirds formation team used them at one time I believe. Nice looking aeroplane !

[Engine 51]

Sure do…amazing how loud that aircraft was with only one engine.

[ksnow]

That's my dad's favorite fighter jet. Really cool looking aircraft.

[stavanzer]

Oh Heck, Yeah. One of my Favorite Century Series Fighters.

I served in the USAF with a former F-100 Crew Chief. He had some stories to tell about them.

Thanks for sharing this!

[LDO]

Cool plane, but I never saw them fly. I’m a plumber and I go into several houses a day. If I see anything that would indicate the homeowner was a military pilot, I’ll chat them up. One guy flew F-100 Wild Weasel missions over Vietnam. He said one time they went back to base with some rifle caliber bullet holes in the airframe. They had been flying at treetop level. They weren’t supposed to fly that low, but it was the only way they could listen to the football game on AFN radio. 

I met a guy who flew P-47s in WWII. A double ace. These guys have fascinating stories. 

If you’re not familiar with “Wild Weasel”, it was a plane that would fly ahead of fighters or bombers. If enemy ground radar locked on to the plane, they would follow the signal to its location and bomb/strafe it, so the other planes would not get shot down. It was such a dangerous mission that they only took volunteers. 

[Old Buckaroo]

My most favorite Allied jet to build as models.  They were such "bad bootys" 😄 - Thanks for the link!!

[stavanzer]

The Wild Weasel Patch. The Initials stand for the phrase "Ya Gotta Be SH+++n Me". Spoken by the first pilot to be a 'backseater' for the first missions. The SEAD planes often carry this patch on the tail, even today, and many pilots proudly wear it.

WILD WEASEL

Wild Weasel is a code name given by the United States Armed Forces, specifically the US Air Force, to an aircraft, of any type, equipped with radar-seeking missiles and tasked with destroying the radars and SAM installations of enemy air defense systems. “The first Wild Weasel success came soon after the first Wild Weasel mission 20 December 1965 when Captains Al Lamb and Jack Donovan took out a site during a Rolling Thunder strike on the railyard at Yen Bai, some 75 miles northwest of Hanoi.”

The Wild Weasel concept was developed by the United States Air Force in 1965, after the introduction of Soviet SAM missiles and their downing of U.S. strike aircraft over the skies of North Vietnam. The program was headed by General Kenneth Dempster.

Wild Weasel tactics and techniques began their development in 1965 following the commencement of Operation Rolling Thunder during the Vietnam War, and were later adapted by other nations during following conflicts, as well as being integrated into the Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD), a plan used by U.S. air forces to establish immediate air supremacy prior to possible full-scale conflict. Initially known by the operational code “Iron Hand” when first authorized on 12 August 1965, the term “Wild Weasel” derives from Project Wild Weasel, the USAF development program for a dedicated SAM-detection and suppression aircraft. (The technique {or a specific part} was also called an “Iron Hand” mission, though technically the Iron Hand part refers only to a suppression attack that paves the way for the main strike. Originally named “Project Ferret”, denoting a predatory animal that goes into its prey’s den to kill it (hence: “to ferret out”), the name was changed to differentiate it from the code-name “Ferret” that had been used during World War II for radar counter-measures bombers.

In brief, the task of a Wild Weasel aircraft is to bait enemy anti-aircraft defenses into targeting it with their radars, whereupon the radar waves are traced back to their source, allowing the Weasel or its teammates to precisely target it for destruction. A simple analogy is playing the game of “flashlight tag” in the dark; a flashlight is usually the only reliable means of identifying someone in order to “tag” (destroy) them, but the light immediately renders the bearer able to be identified and attacked as well. The result is a hectic game of cat-and-mouse in which the radar “flashlights” are rapidly cycled on and off in an attempt to identify and kill the target before the target is able to home in on the emitted radar “light” and destroy the site.

The modern term used in the U.S. Armed Forces for this mission profile is “Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses”, or SEAD.

[Tim W. SoCal]

When I was a little kid, the local Air National Guard had a squadron of F-100s that my Dad used to drive us out to near their base to watch them practice areal combat.

[John M.]

I do. It's one the "Century Series" fighters of the 50s and early 60s.