VA-163 went through 3 A-4 Skyahwk CAG jets on the ’67 cruise… 150132 was lost on Aug. 20, and 149959 went down over Hanoi, on Oct. 26. 152003 took the barrier in November.
Lt Cdr John S. McCain, a VA-163 Saints pilot, was shot down while flying A-4E BuNo 149959 on October 26, 1967. He started diving toward a thermal power station close to Hanoi. He was promptly targeted by a SAM battery, and its missile tore off the majority of his Skyhawk’s right-wing, as described by Peter Mersky in his book US Navy and Marine Corps A-4 Skyhawk Units of the Vietnam War. He couldn’t do much to maintain control, so he ejected directly into the middle of the city. When evasion proved impossible, McCain began his five years of cruel imprisonment and suffering. From a dirty jail cell in the Hanoi Hilton to the halls of Congress, it would be a very long voyage.
In a previous post, we mentioned how six days before McCain’s flight, LT JG Denny Earl had to employ the arresting barricade to return to land on the Oriskany, which was flying BuNo 149959, despite having both of his legs shattered by North Vietnamese anti-aircraft fire.
But, as aviation expert Scott Brown noted, ‘the jet McCain was downed in… wasn’t the one Denny Earl took the barrier in…. Earl’s barrier crash was NOV. 20, not OCT 20…
‘I found this shot…. you can see the BuNo…. 152003.
‘Oriskany has 3 CAG jets that cruise, McCain went down in the 2nd….the replacement was the one Earl was wounded in….
‘VA-163 went through 3 CAG jets on the ’67 cruise… 150132 was lost Aug. 20, 149959 went down over Hanoi, Oct. 26. Earl was wounded and took the barrier in 152003 in November… Later in the cruise, they put Earl’s name on it, although he had already been evacuated off the ship.
‘Every database on A-4s has this wrong… it’s weird…’
Brown went on;
‘Very interesting story about this… I’ve been a Firefighter / Paramedic for almost 30 years…very early in my career, we used to carry a piece of equipment called a PASG…Pneumatic Anti Shock Garment. It was basically a G-suit, had inflatable rubber bladders on the legs and abdomen that you’d inflate in the hope that it would force blood out of the legs…like a G-suit. The PASG was a terrible idea, didn’t work at all, but it was useful for either stopping major bleeding or splinting a whole leg. Dr. Adeeb, VA-163’s flight doc, was also a pilot. They didn’t let him go over the beach, but they did let him fly local and tanker hops. He was aloft when Denny came back, it was his idea to have him inflate his G-suit and keep it inflated to try and stop the bleeding. It worked and absolutely saved his life.’
According to Peter Fey, who backs up this assertion in his book Bloody 16, ‘When Adeeb landed following his tanker mission, he climbed down from the flight deck and proceeded to help operate on Earl. The ship’s general surgeon began preparing for surgery as Adeeb swapped his flight suit for surgical scrubs. With Adeeb’s assistance, they repaired Earl’s leg with several pins. With his leg repaired, Earl was evacuated arriving in Pensacola, Florida, less than thirty-six hours after being wounded.’
Brown concluded: ‘So that Adeeb landed and immediately went into surgery, was amazing!’
Photo by U.S. Navy