Salute!
The Buffs had ejection seats and we picked up an entire crew that bailed one day in Laos. The tail gunner may have manually bailed by blowing the canopy doofer and then pulling the chute handle himself, but he made it!. The Commander would not let them bail until well away from Hanoi. Finally punched out when they got down to two engines and still burning a bit. As I said in another post, the EWO was KIA and the main Navigator reached over and ejected his body.
Problem with the buff routes was they were too much alike/predictable for both ingress and egress and altitude. There was a "come to Jesus" conference at 7/13 HQ over Christmas ( we stood down on the 25th) and the Buffs took advice from we lights and varied run in headings, timing and egress tactics and losses went way down.
Our unit lost a plane on Christmas Eve, but pilot was captured and came out three months later.
Gums recalls...
Last edited by gums; 23rd Dec 2022 at 19:33.
Reason: added material