They had probably the most dangerous missions in the USAF and were the first into an air
attack and the last out and had a greater number of losses during the early part of
the Vietnam war for their squadron size than any others.
But they developed a technique to destroy the biggest threat to airborne attacks namely
radar-guided surface to air missiles and anti-aircraft fire.
This is the story of the men and machines that made up the Wild Weasels and the deadly
game of cat and mouse they fought with the missile ground crews and how nearly 60 years
on they still have an invaluable role in modern warfare.
This video is sponsored by Brilliant. The story of the Wild Weasels starts in 1965
with Operation Rolling Thunder. This was America's attempt to persuade the North Vietnamese to
stop supporting the communist Viet Cong in the South by introducing a sustained aerial
bombing campaign against North Vietnam, targeting it’s industry, transport, and air defences.
This was built on the existing bombing raids on the Ho Chi Min trail, a network of trails
and paths which North Vietnam used to supply the Viet Cong insurgency in the south.
Operation Rolling Thunder was meant to last for 8 weeks but ended up running for over
three and a half years and while North Vietnam had only a small airforce of MiGs supplied
by the Soviets, it made up for this by creating one of the toughest air defence systems in
the world. At the beginning of the operation, the north
had 1500 anti-aircraft guns but within a year this had increased to over 5000 which ranged
from rapid-fire 23mm upto 100mm radar-guided artillery.
These had a range of over 15,000ft and were positioned across the country and close to
the border with Laos, a neighbouring country which the US overflew on route from their
bases in Thailand to North Vietnam. But the weapon that made the biggest impact
was the Soviet S-75 known in the west as the SA-2 Guideline Surface to Air Missile or SAM
and the Fan Song, the NATO name for the SA-2’s fire control and tracking radar. Although
they could only track one target at a time they could guide up to three SA-2 missiles
at once to it. This was the same as the one used to shoot
down the US pilot Gary Powers in a U2 spy plane over Russia in 1960 at a height of 60,000
feet. In the beginning, the USAF used tactics more
akin to fighting a nuclear war with the Soviets than a conventional war with the Vietnamese
by flying high and out of the range anti-aircraft guns.
However, when SAM’s were deployed from July 1965 the situation changed when one SA-2 exploded
in the middle of a Phantom F-4 strike force bring down one aircraft and damaging the rest,
US bombers were forced to fly at below 10,000 ft and under the SAM’s operational height.
This became a deadly trap because if they flew high they were the target of SAM’s
and if they flew low, they were susceptible to anti-aircraft fire.
The North soon had about 25 SAM Battalions with six launchers each which moved between
about 150 sites around the country and the Soviets also supplied an early warning radar
system which was deployed at over 200 sites. Losses to SAM attacks increased and something
had to be done to neutralize them. Trouble was, no one had attempted anything like this
before, so the tactics were more or less created as they went along. This would as become be
the first time where electronic detection was used to actively go and look for radar
and missile sites during the mission rather than attacking predetermined targets, something
that today is known as SEAD or the Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses.
In 1965 a highly classified volunteer squadron called the Wild Weasels was formed, this used
the two-seat version of the F-100 Super Sabre aircraft which was outfitted with specialist
electronic equipment to detect the direction of a radar signal so they could be located.
Normally this would require a large receiver dish, too big for a fighter. Instead, they
used four small dishes to pick up when a radar was activated and the direction it was coming
from. The name, the Wild Weasels refers to an animal
that goes into the lair of its prey to kill it and the YGBSM initials on the patch is
the abbreviated version of the comment of an experienced B-52 Electronic warfare officer
Jack Donovan when he was told what the missions entailed, the full version you can see here
but the shortened version is “You Gota Be Shittin Me” which became part of their patch.
In the front of the F-100 was a seasoned pilot and in the rear was the EWO or Electronic
Warfare Officer whose job was to operate the radar detection and tracking equipment.
The usual weasel formation would be to have one F-100 as the lead detection aircraft with
four F-105 Thunderchiefs which were faster and carried a greater munitions load or rocket,
bombs or both and some were outfitted with a Gatling gun capable of 6000 rounds per minute.
The F-100 weasel would fly ahead using the hills and valleys to aggressively bait the
heavily camouflaged mobile SAM sites into targeting them with their radar. Once the
radar switched on its approximate direction could be determined but they didn’t know
the distance so they would fly high and wait for a missile to launch which they would then
have to dodge but the missile's smoke trail would show the site's exact location.
The F-100s not only found the SAM sites, they would attack them with cannon, rockets and
initially napalm though that was later discontinued, they would also often face heavy anti-aircraft
fire and sometimes MiG attacks and the more heavily armed F-105’s would follow to attack
the rest of the site. Doing this they would attempt to clear the
area of air defenses so that other aircraft could proceed to and from their targets unimpeded,
so the weasels would be the first in and last out to ensure their safe return.
Within the first two weeks of their operation, the results were poor with 1 plane lost but
once they got their teamwork together and their first SAM kill, their confidence grew,
and more kills followed. The program which was on the edge of cancellation was continued
and enhanced. However, these were one of the most dangerous
types of missions in the airforce and after six weeks just one F-100’s remained along
with 4 crew killed, 2 captured, three wounded and two quit.
The problem with the F-100 was that they didn’t have the performance of the F-105 that accompanied
them and were often caught by anti-aircraft guns as they attacked the site. They also
had to outfly sometimes multiple missiles travelling at Mach 3, so if they couldn’t
make a snap turn in time, the missile would get them.
But their actions did affect the SAM operators because they knew that once they turned on
their radar they could have a weasel flying down the beam.
After talks with the Pentagon about the F-100’s lack of performance, the weasels were upgraded
with twelve two-seat versions of the F-105 which were also given the AGM-45 Shrike anti-radiation
missile, which was designed to home in on the radar signals.
But for the crews, they were still trying to determine the best techniques to use and
six weeks after the first F-105s reached airbases in Thailand just one aircraft was left.
Poor weather and cloud cover in the rainy season which lasted up to 8 months of the
year also made it difficult to see the missiles launch until it was too late which brought
down several of the new weasels. This learning curve applied to both sides,
the North Vietnamese started launching coordinated missile attacks from two or three different
sites at once making it difficult for the weasels to avoid all the missiles that were
suddenly converging on them. The Soviets modified the SAMs to lock on the
jamming signal which US bombers used to blind the SAM radar and home in on the source of
the jammer itself. This also allowed the tracking radar to be
turned off so the Shrike missiles could not home in on them. Another technique was to
point the radar off to one side and then turn it off, the shrike would then lose the signal
and crash away from the site. Faking a missile launch by activating the
missile guidance signal but without actually firing one could trick a weasel into thinking
a missile was being launched at them and getting them to pull up or drop their bombs early
to make the aircraft lighter to dodge the non-existent missile.
Once the sites had fired their missiles they would immediately move to a new location to
avoid follow-up bombing. According to Soviet advisers, the average SAM unit would destroy
5 to 6 US aircraft before being put out of action
Now whilst the Shike missile could home in on the SAM’s radar, their range was about
half that of the SAM missile. The weasels discovered that if they launched their Shrike’s
upwards at about 45 degrees towards the target, the ballistic path would give them the extra
range and keep them out of the range of the SAMs.
The Americans also modified the weasel's electronics to get not only the get distance to the radar
but also to know if an individual aircraft was the target of the tracking radar and if
so to take the appropriate action. In 1967 the weasels got the new AGM-78 anti-radiation
missiles with a longer range and bigger warhead and better guidance, this allowed them to
fire from a standoff distance up to 30 miles away. It also included a simple memory circuit
so even if the radar was switched off, it would continue to the target.
Now the number of kills went up as the losses went down and by 1969 the weasels had destroyed
97 SAM sites. As the war dragged on, In 1972, operation
Linebacker created the largest aerial attacks since world war 2 with over 350 aircraft in
the air during missions including B-52 bombers, tankers, fighters and weasels.
But by then the F-105s were getting old and a newer aircraft, the F-4G Phantom was added
to the weasel units. The North Vietnamese had also developed new
tricks to combat them. They changed the frequency of the radar so the weasel's equipment could
no longer pick them up and they also started launching their missiles in the general direction
of the target, usually the B-52s, then they turned on the radar at the last moment to
get a target lock giving the weasels very little time to find the missile sites. This
proved very effective as there was little the weasels could do about it.
But soon a change of tactic saw the B-52s intensively target the SAM sites and with
better Electronic Counter Measures the North Vietnamese started to run out of missiles
to fire against them which brought them to the negotiating table and an eventual cease-fire.
According to the Vietnamese, approximately 6,800 SA-2’s were fired during the Vietnam
war accounting for 31% of US losses but the Fan Song radar-guided triple-A fire is thought
to have accounted for 60% of US losses and 9% to MiG fighters.
The weasels had shown that SAM’s could be countered and even defeated but that more
work would be needed to match the increasing capabilities of the new Soviet missile systems.
By the mid-1970s, the Phantom F-4G Wild Weasels were fitted with the APR-38, a new digital
radar warning & homing system. Now new threats like changes in radar frequency could be dealt
with by a software update rather than a major hardware change.
The APR-38 was the most complex system ever to go into a fighter at the time but it was
far from perfect and took a lot of time and money to get right but it was eventually used
in the Yom Kipor war between Israel and Egypt. The wild weasels along with the upgraded AN/APR-47
Phantom F-4G’s went on to see action in operation “desert storm” in 1991 with
great success and the loss of only one aircraft which was caused by the hang firing of an
ARM-88 missile. The weasel's role is now assigned to the F-16
Fighting Falcon through the F-35 Lightning II with its much greater stealth capabilities
and ability to take even larger weapons internally than the F-22 is slated to take the role as
the F-16s are phased out. SEAD or the Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses
is now an essential component in modern warfare and can account for upto 30% of all missile
attacks in the first week of a campaign. But without the bravery of the Weasle crews
to fly in the face of death in the first place non of this would have been possible.
In many ways the battle between the weasels and the radar crews was also a technical battle
between the Soviet engineers that created the radar and SAMs and US engineers that created
the weasel's detection and ARM missiles with each iteration trying to leap ahead of the
other. Now our sponsors for this video, Brilliant
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