On Fri, 19 Sep 2003 18:05:09 GMT, Chad Irby wrote:

In article ,
Buzzer wrote:

"Hamfisted" crew from Ubon in early 1967 blew a pod off a pylon over
North Vietnam.

And a pod fell off a pylon on a plane taking off at Ubon shortly after
that. No cause was found. The "hairy-assed" line mechanics that loaded
the pod that day were never talked to or questioned about it.

If you didn't do it just right, the missile well adapter for ECM pods
wouldn't lock. Once it was pinned in, the thing wasn't going to come
out without some sort of serious failure.

Pods were carried for years hanging from pylons and even the bottom
rack on MERs.
Ever see the two "little" hooks in the pylon that hold bombs and pods
to the pylons?
Take into consideration that bombs and center tanks were dropped to
clean an aircraft up so it could maneuver better. But that pod hung in
there way out from the centerline.

After a couple of problems in Vietnam, they made it impossible for
pilots to jettison ECM pods.

One of the pods that was dumped over the north was one of the
problems. They took the catridges out of the pylons and the latches
were safty wired shortly after that happened.

An apocryphal story they used to tell us was that some fighter jock was
trying to kill a boat on a river. He dropped bombs. Missed. He used
up all of his 20mm. Missed. So he went in on a run and jettisoned the
pod. Hit. one $5,000 boat for a million dollar pod...

I suspect if that happened the pilot bought himself a pod.
Our loss was during Bolo or one of the followups. Crew just got a
little excited and cleaned everything off. Of course if anyone talks
to then Col. Olds they might ask what really happened. I'm sure he
remembers. Just don't ask about the time ECM didn't check to see if
there was a control box in a plane when they loaded the pod.G