On Fri, 19 Sep 2003 23:38:43 GMT, Chad Irby wrote:

In article ,
Ed Rasimus wrote:

ECM pods, on the other hand were light, small, low drag and generally
uncarted. And, if you were being attacked by a MiG with radar, AKA
MiG-21 or -19, you might like to be throwing some electrons his way.

You have to rmember that for at least some of the Vietnam War, some
pilots didn't like ECM pods at *all*. Weren't manly enough, or
something. After they started noticing a somewhat higher survival rate
among pilots with pods, they got the message.

I don't think I ever heard that. When the QRC-160 arrived at Tahkli &
Korat in October '66, the first guys to carry it were sceptical
(naturally) when told that they would fly "rock steady" at mid to high
altitude and that the pod would make stuff miss. When they tried it
and it worked, they became instantaneous believers.

When I returned in '72, we had much better pods and didn't need the
"pod formation" stuff any more. Unfortunately, the noise from the pods
wouldn't let the Hunter/Killer SEAD flights do our job, so we didn't
use them most of the time, although we did try to remember to get them
active in a last ditch situation evading a missile.

But by the early 1980s, a lot of jet jockeys were back to the "pods are
for wimps" sort of attitude. I saw it every time we loaded the 119s
onto F-4s for exercises. And then we had a squadron go to Red Flag, and
suddenly all of the pilots were wanting one every damned day... getting
"shot down" a few times with no recourse tends to do that.

I would say by the '80s, the only crews with that kind of attitude
would be those with no combat experience or those who didn't pay
attention to intel briefings. Certainly by the '80s no one was still
carrying ALQ-119s. I'd bet that by that time it was ALQ-131.