Buz Sawyer Joins the RVAH Navy
The RA-5C in on the comics page
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Buz Sawyer was a popular comic strip in the '40s, '50's and '60s, drawn by Roy Crane. Sawyer was a senior naval aviator known for his daring flying explits. In this series, he was ordered to an RA-5C squadron flying combat missions over North Vietnam. His first mission (depicted below) was to gather intelligence on the SA-2 missile system. Later, he would lead a team to capture and remove a system for expoitation.
This portion of this story was published in the Pensacola News Journal in 1966, while I was attending Basic Naval Aviation Observer School. I don't think this played a part in my decision to fly RA-5C's. Not a big part anyway...
"Flight Officer" in referring to the NFO was not common usage in the RVAH community. "B/N" or "RAN" more common
Never heard of this, but not a bad idea!
I doubt that Buz hadn't been informed about the loss of of his predecessor previously. But the casual attitude of the group to his loss is realistic. Loss of a Navy aircraft near Hanoi would be unusual since the AF flew most of those strikes
We were never called "mates" by a plane captain. And by the positioning it appears Buz would be using the same ladder as Jensen. Not the case; two rather tall ladders were required. Buz's ladder from this view would be on the right.
"CAG" was a more typical appleation for the Commander of the Air "Group"
There is no altitude below SAM effectiveness and above small arms range--they overlap. In any case, AAA was a major threat not mentioned. See Violent Skies presentation.
Regulations required use of oxygen from engine start up to shutdown. While this was sometimes violated (the cabin was pressurized after all), masks were always used in combat.
Depiction of the SA-2 missile is accurate; the Fan Song missile radar (at right) is not.
In addition to the missing oxygen mask, Buz doesn't have his visor down. This was done for protection during ejecton, mainly. The steely-eyed look is typical, though.
The F-4 escort is a little too close in this depiction. Also, evasive maneuvers typically involve a 120 degree roll into the missile flight path and the aircraft would be nearly inverted at this point. This puts maximum g loading on the missile, leading to stalling of the canard guidance surfaces.
This is definitely too close for comfort. Sanders Associates, the manufacturer of the ALQ-51 countermeasures set, estimated at least a 200' miss distance, and this appears about half of that. Still, could have happened. Not coincidentally, the kill radius of the SA-2 missile was also 200'. Fortunately, the ALQ-51 was designed to defeat missile fuzing, so it had to be detonated manually, leading to additional miss distance. This we why we could evade a lot of missiles during a flight. For us, the best (worst?) engagment was 17 SA-2 missiles launched our way.
Nope. A study of pilot anxiety during combat showed that heartrates were higher during carrier landings compared to combat.
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