| Date: 23 July 1968 |
| Aircraft type: RF-4C Phantom |
| Serial Number: 65-0895 |
| Military Unit: 460 TRW |
| Service: USAF |
| Home Base: Tan Son Nhut |
| Name(s): |
| Maj Gen Robert Franklin Worley (KIA) |
| Maj Robert F Brodman (Survived) |
| It was not uncommon in Southeast Asia for senior officers to fly operational missions. Squadron and wing commanders regularly flew combat missions and often led strikes into North Vietnam. Occasionally a higher-ranking officer would fly operationally, both for personal reasons and to experience what he was sending his men to do on a daily basis. Maj Gen Worley was the vice-commander of the Seventh Air Force. On the 23rd he and Maj Brodman took off from Tan Son Nhut in their RF-4C, call sign Strobe 1, for a photographic reconnaissance mission in the Military Region I area. As the aircraft was flying near the coast, about 10 miles northwest of Hué, it was hit in the forward fuselage by ground fire. The Phantom headed towards Da Nang for an emergency landing and was intercepted by a Misty FAC F-100 which flew alongside the Phantom. The F-100 pilot reported to the Phantom crew that their aircraft had a small fire in the belly to which the Phantom navigator replied that they would eject. Apparently the pilot, General Worley, did not want to eject but told the backseater that he should go which, after some discussion, he did so reluctantly. The Misty pilot then saw that the nose and cockpits of the Phantom were a ball of flame but the pilot did not eject as the aircraft crashed. Maj Brodman was rescued by a HH-3E from the 37th ARRS. This incident prompted an investigation into the Phantom’s ejection system, focussing on the canopy separation. It was discovered that under certain conditions the front canopy would fail to separate following the firing of the rear seat. Several previous incidents where Phantom front-seaters had failed to survive an ejection were probably due to this phenomenon. A modification programme was quickly introduced to add extra gas-operated pistons to the canopy rails, which seemed to solve the problem. Similar problems had also been encountered with US Navy and Marine Corps Phantoms and a number of pilots had been lost when their canopies failed to separate. Another result of this incident was an order from Gen Momyer banning very senior officers from flying combat missions in Southeast Asia. The pilot of the Misty F-100 was Dick Rutan who later became an aircraft designer and world record breaker flying his Voyager aircraft around the world non-stop in December 1986.
Gen Worley had joined the Air Corps in October 1940 and flew 120 combat missions in P-40s and P-47s in the Mediterannean and Far East during the Second World War. He was shot down on his very first combat mission while flying close air support for American troops in North Africa and had to evade through enemy lines to return to his unit. Post-war he commanded the USAF’s first jet training school at Williams AFB and later served in a number of senior appointments including Director of Operations for the USAF in Europe. |
You may return to your search results, go to the Search Form, or go back to the Home Page.