The Wild Weasels of Vietnam

            The War in Vietnam was a very difficult time for the United States; it is one of the most failed military endeavors in our history, with over 58,000 U.S. soldiers dying, but with little to no result in the country. Until July of 1965, however, this did not ring true for the Air Force the same way it did for the other branches of the military. Until this point, the North Vietnamese army didn’t have any defense against attacks from the air, as most of the North Vietnamese fighters were poor peasants. For this reason, they couldn’t afford any air defense. However, around 1965, the U.S. declared total war against Vietnam (total war is war in which the rules of warfare are disregarded. Anything or anyone (military or civilian) is a viable target during total warfare). When the U.S. did so, the communist nations of China and the Soviet Union began supplying advisors and weapons to the North Vietnamese Army. Among these weapons were antiaircraft missiles, the most well-known of which were called Surface-to-air missiles (SAMs).
 On July 24, 1965, a United States F-4 was shot down by a SAM, marking the end of the absolute U.S. dominance in the skies of Vietnam. The SAM program provided to the NVA was radar-guided (by the FAN SONG radar system), and was designed to be medium range and medium altitude. The most frustrating thing about the introduction of these missiles was that the U.S. knew full well that they were being built, and even knew where they were being built, but was powerless to do anything about it. Since the Soviets were supplying the missiles to the North Vietnamese, it was suspected by President Lyndon B. Johnson that there were Soviet advisors at the sites, and destroying the camps would kill the Soviet advisors. This, President Johnson reasoned, would infuriate the Soviet Union, which is something the U.S. wanted to avoid at all costs. Thus, nothing was done, and the NVA built the SAMs. After the introduction of the SAMs, U.S. pilot and aircraft loses began mounting at an alarming rate, so the U.S. decided that it needed to do something about it. The Air Force’s solution was to dedicate a specific aircraft to be an anti-SAM aircraft. Its single purpose would be to locate SAM launching stations and to destroy them. This project was named “Project Weasel,” and the aircrafts designed to take part in this project were dubbed “Wild Weasels.” Radar homing and warning sets were installed in F-100F super-sabre aircraft to make these “Wild Weasels,” which allowed the pilots of the aircraft to get a bearing on SAMs when the SAM activated its radar. It also had a launch warning detector, which alerted the aircrew when the SAM was launched.

Wild Weasels always had two people in them, the pilot, and the electronic warfare operator. It was the job of the electronic warfare operator to monitor the radar and to locate SAM launch sites. They would relay this information to the pilot.

            The job of Wild Weasel operators was extremely dangerous. Due to the fact that North Vietnam was covered in dense forest, there was no way to know exact locations of SAM launching stations. Thus, what SAM pilots had to do was fly into enemy territory near suspected SAM locations. Two Weasels would fly together on a mission, one a certain distance behind the other. The front Weasel was the bait; they would wait for a SAM to be shot at them, so they could locate the exact location of the launching station. Once a SAM started coming at them, they would fly in whatever manner was necessary to avoid the SAM and cause it to detonate somewhere other than in the side of their plane. Oftentimes this meant diving toward the ground and abruptly pulling up again in order to cause the SAM to hit the ground and detonate. This was obviously an extremely dangerous maneuver, and many Weasel pilots died, not only by diving into the ground, but sometimes also by not being fast enough to avoid the SAM.

A "Wild Weasel" on a mission.

            While the first plane present attempted to avoid the SAM, the second would destroy the SAM launching station which had just been fired from. Despite a high casualty rate (and multiple changes in Weasel design and attack tactic), the Air Force considered the Wild Weasel Project a success, and it continued in Vietnam for a majority of the war.