The Brutal Reality of Flying the F-4 Phantom

[Music] [Music] [Applause] Army aircraft plays an essential role on today's Battlefield in close support of our fighting men but aircraft is of course vulnerable to enemy ground fire aircraft is of course vulnerable to enemy ground fire to enemy ground fire I was in the hospital 6 months he was in 13 so just that second and a half was about seven or eight months in the hospital so that's how close we were to not making it if there's a hell it was that was that was 45 minutes of hell right there this and Other Stories on today's program of your army report you might be wondering how do we recreate these missions with such detail and the answer is simple using the sponsor of this video War Thunder but instead of me telling you about them I'm going to let the star of this story tell you himself F4 Phantom pilot Carl parlor I've been been on War Thunder for oh I don't know five or five and a half years straight uh every day I get on the game and I play it and I thoroughly enjoy it I just don't know how they do it the graphics are incredible I hate to say but I'm an arcade kind of guy I'll get on the computer late at night after dinner and it just makes me feel really good and it it I live my youth vicariously through War Thunder so if you want to join Carl and 70 million other players in the most comprehensive vehicle combat game ever made use the link below and download War Thunder totally free it's available on P PC PlayStation and Xbox and right now all new players can get a massive Bonus Pack using my link below so don't wait take command of more than 25 200 tanks planes helicopters and ships for more than 10 different nations and if you're lucky you might even end up dog fighting against Carl yourself use the link below and come join us today thanks again to War Thunder and now enjoy as far back as I can remember I always wanted to fly I have no reason I have no idea why I wanted to do that but I wanted to fly I got my pilot's license when I was 17 the interesting part about that was that I lived in Nashville County and you couldn't get your driver's license until you were 18 so my mom had to drive me to the airport so I could go fly so I couldn't drive a car but I could fly an airplane but Carl wasn't satisfied with civilian aircraft he wanted to go faster and feel the thrill of aerial combat I wanted to fly Fighters and the only way I could do that was by joining the military so I said okay I'll join the military but that was my dream is always fly Fighters with the United States recently entering the conflict in Vietnam this meant that his timing would be perfect to join the fry and here he would be assigned to his dream aircraft the premier fighter jet of the US armed forces the F4 Phantom my first impressions of the F4 was wow that is a big airplane can this thing actually fly and had those two big j79 uh I think their 17s back there that put out 19,000 lbs of thrust in full burner and she could get up and go and um it was a magnificent airplane and I was totally enthralled with being able to fly in the airplane the training was was incredible we had a good year and a half of training before we went to combat we had survival training we had jungle training we had sea survival we had because I was in the back seat I had the radar which I had to control so we had intens of sixe course in radar uh training and then we had 6 months of flying the F4 after about a year and a half of training which was quite intense I was assigned to go to Vietnam to uh Cameron Bay and be assigned to the uh 391st Tac Fighter Squadron where I flew f4s in combat for the first time fortunately though Carl and the other new pilots were not thrown straight to the Wolves at least not yet now the first missions were uh easy missions and um what we had a term that was tiic troops in contact but the first couple of missions were TI's trees in contact which would go on there were milk runs really you know knock down some trees and just to make sure that you had a feel for what was going on so the really the the really the heady missions the really tough ones didn't occur until you had about five or six missions under your belt where you felt that you knew the systems you knew pretty much the local procedures what they expected of you and how to handle it now it is important to note here that when Carl was assigned to Vietnam during his first tour he would not be the front seat pilot but the backseater in charge of the radar radio and other tasks yeah the front seat and back seat set up in the F4 was primarily the front seater was flying the airplanes he was he had the control stick although I had one in the back with throttles uh but he was able he was the commander you know he was the last word he we did what he did uh he flew the airplane he uh was the one who had the weapons controls and all that stuff my job primarily in the back seat was control the radar work the radios so I took as much burden off him as I possibly could so he could concentrate on flying the airplane in combat which took an incredible amount of intensity and focus and anything I could take off his shoulders made his job a lot easier which kept him alive and also kept me alive so that's what I did in the back seat and also I also looked around to make sure that uh you know if there's somebody was shooting at us I could see it and and a number of times I was able to see stuff coming at us that the front seat wasn't aware of simply because he was concentrating out here and I was looking over my uh 93 to make sure that something wasn't coming up and trying to nip us as Carl began his tour he was expectedly nervous but he soon realized that he was not in the thick of things just yet and would be able to get comfortable as a combat pilot one of the first missions I had was uh we uh I was in the backseat and the first couple of missions it's kind of like they're they don't throw you right into the Briar's patch you get out and take a kind of like a a tree busting exercise or something like that and one mission was to go up to North Vietnam and I was you know that's going to be a tough one so we went up there into root pack one which was the southern part of North Vietnam and I was looking over my shoulder to see if there was Sam tripa migs or anything like none of that showed up then I looked down and there was an ov1 down there and he was doing fact work and very low and I said it can't be all that bad because this guy's down there and in the weeds and I'm up here in this fighter doing 400 knots so uh that was the first like recollection of combat as he and the rest of his Squadron began to put missions under their belts and prove El as formidable combat Pilots the mission style began to shift much of what they would be doing in the near future was low-level support dropping ordinance on pinpoint military Targets in support of American troops on the ground most of the stuff was the 30° dive bomb where you you'd come in at a 30 Dee angle drop it off at, 1500 ft pull out and then we had the low stuff which was when the the guys on the ground really needed support you would have Hy drags Napal Rockets where you would get down to uh 500 ft 450 knots 500 kns sometimes if it was pretty hot and then you could really I mean you could put a mark a mark 82 highy drag which is a a 500 lb bomb with these big metal fins that come out on the back and they would almost stop and come straight down and you could put it right into almost a bucket they were so accurate but you'd have to get down in the weeds to do it and that's where the the bad guys could really uh make your day let's say put a put a Bad spin on your day one of the first missions that car remembers in this style was with a seasoned front seater and it was a baptism by fire that set a key role model for the young Carl paror the first mission that I had I was flying with a guy by the name of uh Harley Hughes at the time he was a major but he retired as a three star probably one of the better Pilots have a flu with we were scrambled off the alert pit we were on alert and we went out and uh this particular Target that I was flying with with uh uh Harley at the time was uh quad 50s in a valley and we had H drags on I couldn't imagine my gosh this is going to be really intense and Harley was cool and calm and I was a little nervous cuz I'm sitting there you know he's flying the airplane so he's got it controlling and he knows what he's doing I'm I'm sitting there just you know 3 ft behind him and we roll in and there's lead flying all over the place there was some of the stuff that you know the humidity in the air was so thick that sometimes as the stuff came close you could see something streaking by the canopy well he took out the guns we came back and I'll tell you what I was just wow if I ever get to the front seat I want to fly like this guy we landed and we debriefed and that was that was the mission as Carl continued his tour he went on many missions just like this learning the ropes and dropping Napal and drag bombs onto North Vietnamese targets across the jungle covered Countryside but from the air it was sometimes difficult to see just how much this support really meant to the soldiers below there was a time when there was this young we call them grunts I love the grunts those are the guys that carry rifles and they saw the really ugly part of the war they would come to Cameron Bay for RNR that's how safe the place was and this one kid he couldn't have been and now I didn't see this but somebody told me this he must have been he wasn't 20 years old and he was dis shoveled his uniform was dirty and he asked to go out on the flight line okay we'll take you out and see you and show you enough for it and the way I was told is that this young man he you could see he was looking for something special and he walked the flight line then F and then saw an airplane that had a name on it and he went over and hugged the airplane and they asked him why he did that was because that he was in really serious trouble and this one airplane came in and came in so low to take out the bad guys that he could actually read the name on the airplane I I found that a very touching story by this time in late 1968 Carl was a seasoned pilot he had more than 50 combat missions under his belt and knew the ins and outs of flying low-level support missions over Vietnam but no amount of combat experience could have prepared him for the events that would take place on September 3rd of 1968 I was flying with Major Tom asone who is my assigned uh AC aircraft commander and we were on alert and um we were boxer five and six now boxer one and two had been scrambled that morning cuz we'd go on I think for from 88 to 6:00 or something like that and they got scrambled right off the bat they took off went to this particular uh in Three core a special forces Camp named Kenan and the the Special Forces Camp was under siege and the c7s we call them caribo would come in and they would get the living heck shot out of them and they couldn't resupply these guys so there was this Gunner who was really good and boxer of one and two came in and took a round through the canopy so when he came back he was white as a sheet and said this guy's pretty good so we got scrambled later in the afternoon to go back to the same Target and I'm telling Tom this guy is the Gunner we need to really be careful we take off takes us about 20 minutes to get down there from where camon was we orbit the the uh fact says okay guys we got the Special Forces camp on one side we got a tree line on the other and I I have to restrict your running heading because I don't want you flying over the good guys so we're going to drop Hydra eggs on a gun on a restricted run and heading dropping it at low altitude I'm sitting back there and saying I don't this this do sound real good to me and number two had napom and a gun we had Hy drgs and I said I told my front seat I said let's see if the facult letter has drop the uh number two first so the dropped an Aon put fire we didn't know where the gun was we had a general idea but we didn't know where it we dropped an Aon we could put smoke in and we could hide behind the smoke and then we would be able to get this guy he said no the fact wants uh wants us to come in first to blow the trees away so we could see okay you know yes sir well we had just rolled in and we were on our first pass the fact had told us to restrict our running heading between this tree line and the the Special Forces camp as we rolled in I'm concentrating on uh the altitudes calling off altitudes for the front seater and telling him when to pull or this is just kind of a back of information to give him an idea of when he really had to get rid of the bombs before he hit the ground so he doesn't he doesn't crash so as we you can boom bo you could feel those bombs coming off the airplane he started about a 45g pull up and at that point Boom the airplane takes a hit and the the first thing in your mind is what's that well you know what that was and the airplane immediately goes into a violent roll and I could tell it was rolling because the sun was here and as the airplane rolls you get bright light in the cockpit and then you don't get any light at all so it's it's Shadow and then sun shadow sun shadow and I'm thrown forward cuz the airplane is doing one of these pitches and the sand uh we were at Cameron Bay and there was a lot of sand there now our maintenance troops are really good but they could keep all the sand out of the airplanes so the sand just hit me in the face so we had some negative G's on it at that time and somewhere in here Tom screaming eject eject eject and boom so I go down for my handle and I look up and the canopy goes boom out I go without even me touching the handle why because on the F4 when the front seater pulled the eal handle you go first you always go first why well because if he goes first and then you go there's going to be a collision also he's got Rocket motors on the back on the bottom of the seat if he goes on the top of you he's going to fry you so the backseater always went first so when he pulled the handle boom out I went I was just about because I'm left-handed I'm going to read for the handle with my left hand although they say you're supposed to do it in your right hand I'm left so I grab down here boom out I go canopy goes here I go boom I helmet blows off my gloves blow off I had a great watch a glycine air speci with my name on it boom it comes off it's probably in somebody's safe right now as a war moment because it had my name on it the the slip screen takes my arm wraps it around the chair breaks my arm now it's dislocated I get out I'm tumbling Boom the shoot opens up boom boom into I go into the trees I'm what the heck is going on and as I came through the trees I the branches just cut the living heck out of my face in a time frame of less than 30 seconds Carl parlor and Tom asalone have gone from a low-level attack run to ejecting and touching down in hostile territory their F4 Phantom right at the moment of pulling up from their attacking dive was struck by an enemy anti-aircraft round immediately their F4 went into a spin and miraculously in mere seconds both Pilots were able to eject before their aircraft struck the ground and exploded but now injured alone and surrounded by the enemy their fight was far from over so I wind up in this tree which is a pretty big tree it's one of those Vietnamese trees that maybe are 100 feet tall or something like that as luck would happen the dear Lord didn't want me to die that day I had landed on the edge of this this crater that had been made by a 2000 P had to be a big gun because it's huge crater and I'm hanging on the top of this tree from my shoot I got my arm is all busted up my leg is a little screwed up because it hit the tree and I'm sitting there and I'm whoa what's going on you know cuz it just happened boom boom boom that quick and here boom boom boom there's noise stuff going on I'm sweating there's blood in my face it's I'm not very H not a happy camper at this point then all of a sudden he what the heck is that and there's this little Branch get shut off crazy thing and this little leaf goes Falling Leaf right next to me some guy across the shade he had an AK and he was popping at me now I don't know is he trying to scare me or not but if he was trying to scare me he didn't have to cuz I was already scared and he shoots his Branch away and and I don't he maybe was trying to get me to sucker some other guys in so I couldn't move this arm so I had arc 10 radios there the emergency radios so I get the uh one I had two of them one here and one here I pull this one out I said you know this is boxer five bravo bravo the backseater alpha the front seater I'm hurt I'm in a tree I need some help I never knew I made that call because I don't remember it but the the our wingman heard me distinctly say that on the radio I till this day I don't remember making a call so I wait a little bit and here and here comes a UI a uh1 army God bless those guys and he comes in he lands in the crater and he's now in a crater there's stuff there's that is blown around dirt in my face and so these two Gunners come running out we'll get you out we'll get you out okay okay yeah so they run up and they try to get me out of the tree but they can't because the coke releases they they call Coke release on the on the uh harness that's holding me up they they don't know how to operate it I'm you know I'm I can't help it because my shoulder's like this so I said okay we'll do it so he puts a he puts a a belt around my leg and cuts the Rises so I go Quack and I fall down now I'm hanging upside down and my legs all it's up pretty good and I'm I guess I'm using some really flowery language this guy says get me out of this cuz it really hurts so he says okay so he takes his knife goes cuts the belt and boom I fall about 8 feet on the back of my head I get another dueling score back here so I could care less I just want to get the heck out of this thing so they grabb me by the back of the neck dragg me across the floor this crat to the chopper just as they're about to throw me into this yui boom he gets hit so he falls off and I and I have a picture of this too by the way some HH 53 out of benw came up and took a picture after I had been rescued so i' I still have that picture the UI falls off to the to the to the right now if he had fallen off to the left I wouldn't be here today because You' been Landing right on top of me because I was sitting there right they were about to throw me into the Hui he crashes and all hell break slopes they leads flying back and forth so the the co-pilot of this U guy by name Ian Dawson I found this guy after 40 years he comes out he's got his AK-47 in his hands he comes out of the crater and he drags a muzzle of the AK across my face I talked to this guy 40 years after this happened he said he still felt bad about doing that cuz what I did is I took the muzzle and kind of pushed it away I told I told Ian I said don't don't feel bad about it I don't remember if that ever happening so after another couple of minutes go by here comes a Loach an HH 58 comes in and he comes and like he was on a Sunday flight he could care and this guy was he had no brains that he had a real set of nads he comes in lands they take me cuz I'm the guy that's hurt the worst they take me and they put me in the back of the chopper now I aach has got this little part in the front where the pilot and the co-pilot sit then there's the transom that runs up to the uh the helicopter blades where the engine is and then they just got the space back here well they take me and they throw me back there because they're afraid I'm going to fall out of the helicopter Ian Dawson gets in there with me holds me so I don't fall out and we take off and head back towards T in the 45th surgical which was the nearest hospital I can still remember this I remember my head was on the floor of the helicopter and I could see the trees go flying by it's crazy what you can't what you remember fortunately for Carl after finding himself injured and hanging from a tree help arrived in the form of an army Huey helicopter however this rescue would not go as planned after cutting down Carl and then nearly loading him onto the Huey again the chopper took a direct hit from enemy fire rolling over into a crash at this point both Carl and his Rescuers were now in need of rescue but luckily the US Army and Air Force answered their distress call and immediately began pouring Firepower onto every enemy position in the area suppressing their fire so that a second rescue attempt could be made this would come shortly thereafter in the form of a small Lo heli and thankfully this one would be a success but once again Carl was still critically injured and in major need of medical attention we get to the 45th Surgical and I'm busted up pretty good uh there was one orthopedic specialist on duty that day or in in Three core and he was on leave but because he had nothing to do he decided to come to work thank God he did CU he comes in they say hey this this Lieutenant is really busted up bad he looks at my leg my my right leg and it's it's bent the foot's bent that way so he feels for a pulse in the bottom of my foot he couldn't get one he said look I'm I'm 23 years old at the time two hours before I was in perfect health now I'm pretty well busted up he says I'm GNA have to I'm G to have to set your leg and if I get a pulse it'll be okay but if I don't I'm gonna have to take your leg that's not good information you want to hear he said but I don't have time to give you anesthesia I'm going to have to set it okay so he grabs it pops it back in that did not feel good and then my shoulder was all screwed up and he says okay I'll put you out and I'm going to sit the shoulder I wake up in in a Mash unit as God is my witness I can still close my eyes and see that I wake up and I you know before you uh wake up in the morning and you're u a little drowsy and you know but you're still cognizant but you know you're asleeping and I said to myself and I still remember this to this day Carl you're dead I said I have no idea why I said that because I had no recollection of what went on my mind had just shut down so I wake up and it's I'm in a room like in it's Dante's Inferno there's these 23y old excuse me I'm the 23 there's the 17 18 year old kids that are all busted up found that later they were in an APC they got a mind blown out underneath them they were just chopped up and there was blood there moaning and and I look around and there's this guy next to me that looks very familiar who the hell I realize that's Tom Asom and these are my exact words because I remember distinctly what I said I said Tom what are you doing here and he looks at me and he said whatat am I doing here look at yourself and then I realized what had happened to me holy mackel man then I did an inventory of all my part to see if I was still in one piece thank God I was except for a couple Broken Bats just located shoulder stuff like that so then the doc comes in he says uh I want to take some more X-rays of you okay yeah yeah fine so these two young cormen come in they're 17 and 18 I don't think they were they I don't even know if they shaved or not they they came in they put me on like I was porcelain they put me on this gurnie they will me off to the X-ray room they lay me on the X-ray table just then vom we get rocketed and these mass units are these big buildings that are canvased with air bladders to keep it a support they strael coming through the top of this thing so these two kids and I mean kids they take me off the gurnie they lay me on the ground one guy lays down over the top of me covers his my chest with his body the other guy lays down and covers my legs with his body during the whole attack they were sacrificing their bodies to save me I will never forget that as long as I live eventually Carl parlor made a full recovery and after a short time home had his mind fully made up that he was going back to once again fly F4 Phantoms over Vietnam she comes right over and looks me in the eye and she says Carl you going back I said Ma you know the answer to that of course I have to he said you do that I'm going to break your other leg my father couldn't look at me then I recuperated and uh then I went back and on flying status and I went for another couple of Tours I want to say this from the bottom of my heart support tj3 history and War Thunder you're really going to enjoy it join Carl today and download War Thunder totally free at the link below to help us save more stories like this one please consider joining my patreon at the link below thanks for watching and I'll see you next time

Channel: TJ3 History

Views: 386,933

Keywords: Huey Helicopter, F-4, F-4 Phantom, Vietnam War, F-4 Vietnam, Phantoms Vietnam, F-4 Shot Down, F-4 Phantom Shot Down, Vietnam Dogfights, Vietnam Pilot, Carl Parlatore, F-4 Phantom Documentary, Flight Sim, World War II Flight Sim, War Thunder, History Channel Dogfights, Historic, Documentary, Mark Felton, Yarnhub, TJ3 Gaming, Dark Skies, WW2 Air Combat, B-17, B17, Flying Fortress, Masters of the Air, WWII Bombers, WW2 Bombers, F-4 Phantom Flight Sim, F-4 Phantom War Thunder

Id: I1FiS5LhFjM

Length: 28min 12sec (1692 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 01 2024