| Date: 11 February 1965 |
| Aircraft type: F-8D Crusader |
| Serial Number: 148633 |
| Military Unit: VF-154 |
| Service: USN |
| Home Base: USS Coral Sea |
| Name(s): |
| Lt Cdr Robert Harper Shumaker (POW) |
| Aircraft type: A-4C Skyhawk |
| Serial Number: 149572 |
| Military Unit: VA-153 |
| Service: USN |
| Home Base: USS Coral Sea |
| Name(s): |
| Lt William Tyree Majors (Survived) |
| The Flaming Dart 1 mission of 7 February did not appear to have the salutary effect on the North Vietnamese that Washington had hoped for. On 10 February the Viet Cong struck at an American camp at Qui Nhon causing serious casualties. The immediate response to this was Flaming Dart 2, flown the following day. A more far-reaching response was a plan agreed to by President Johnson to send four tactical squadrons to Southeast Asia and 30 B-52 strategic bombers to Andersen AFB, Guam. On 13 February the President authorised the start of operation Rolling Thunder, a sustained bombing campaign against military targets in North Vietnam, the first mission being flown on 2 March.
For Flaming Dart 2 a total of 99 naval aircraft from the Coral Sea, Hancock, and Ranger were sent against NVA barracks at Chanh Hoa near Dong Hoi. The target was attacked in poor visibility with low clouds, and the Coral Sea suffered two aircraft and one pilot lost on this raid. The first to be brought down was Lt Cdr Shumaker’s Crusader (call sign City Desk 403) which was hit in the tail (possibly by debris from his own rockets) when he was pulling out from an attack on an anti-aircraft gun position. The aircraft’s afterburner blew out, and the hydraulic system must have been damaged as the F-8 soon became uncontrollable, forcing Shumaker to eject over land, although his aircraft crashed a few miles offshore from Dong Hoi. Shumaker’s parachute opened about 30 feet above the ground, and he broke his back on landing for which he received no medical treatment. Shumaker became the second naval aviator to be taken prisoner in North Vietnam and spent the next eight years in various POW camps including the infamous Hoa Lo prison dubbed the Hanoi Hilton by Shumaker as one of its first inmates. Robert Shumaker continued his naval career following his release from North Vietnam on 12 February 1973 and retired as a Rear Admiral. A few minutes after Lt Cdr Shumaker’s Crusader was shot down another wave of aircraft hit the Chanh Hoa barracks and another aircraft was lost. Lt Majors was also attacking enemy AAA, using CBU-24 cluster bombs. After delivering his bombs he climbed the Skyhawk (call sign Power House) to 4,000 feet and set course for the carrier. However, his engine suddenly seized and could not be relit. Faced with no alternative, Majors ejected over the sea but was picked up almost immediately by a USAF rescue helicopter. It could not be known for sure whether the engine seized due to battle damage or a technical malfunction. Bomb damage assessments at Chanh Hoa showed that 23 of the 76 buildings in the camp were either damaged or destroyed during the raid but the loss of two aircraft (and almost a third as another Skyhawk flown by Lt Edwin Gordon Hiebert of VA-155 was badly damaged when it made a wheels up landing at Da Nang with hung ordnance) was a high cost to pay. |
You may return to your search results, go to the Search Form, or go back to the Home Page.