#f 105d

Thuds on the Takeoff run with Drop Tanks and a Practice munition. Air National Guard

F-105D-6-RE "Thunderchief" (60-0424 & MSN: D112) of the 13th TFS, 388th TFW, based on the Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base, Thailand (1967).

Here you can see the "60-0424" it assembled with six 750-pound bombs and "Sidewinder" AIM-9B missiles. On 10 July 1967, "60-0424" was hit by AAA over the target, between Yen Bai and Thai Nguyen, pilot, Maj Maurice E Seaver, forced to eject and back to the base.

F-105D Kadena AB 1970

Thud!

F-105 designed to carry single nuclear weapon internally at high speed low altitude. It became largest single-engine combat aircraft ever to enter production. First flight: 22 Oct 1955

Entered service: 1958 (USAF)

Primary role: Nuclear strike → later conventional strike

Republic F-105 Thunderchief (“Thud”) was a USAF supersonic fighter-bomber built during Cold War. one of largest single-engine combat aircraft ever flown and became USAF’s primary strike aircraft in early years of Vietnam War.

Sixty years ago today American jets finally went after the one target the generals had been begging to hit for a year, and bombed the doorstep of Hanoi itself for the first time.

For months the men running the air war had been frustrated out of their minds. They could see North Vietnam's fuel, the gas and oil and lubricants that kept every truck on the Ho Chi Minh Trail rolling, sitting in big storage tanks right outside Hanoi and the port of Haiphong. But Washington wouldn't let them touch it. The tanks were too close to the cities, too close to civilians, too close to the Soviet ships in the harbor, and President Johnson was terrified of dragging Russia or China into the war. So the fuel just sat there, untouched, while the war ground on.

On June 29, 1966, the leash finally came off. Air Force planes hit the fuel depots around Hanoi while Navy jets off the carriers smashed the ones at Haiphong. Huge columns of black smoke went up thousands of feet over both cities. In a single day they wiped out a massive chunk of the North's fuel storage, and within a month they'd destroyed something like 70 percent of it.

And it barely mattered. The North had seen this coming for a year. They'd already spread their fuel out into thousands of little drums hidden in villages and buried underground, so blowing up the big tanks hurt a lot less than anyone hoped. It was the whole air war in one day. A huge blow that looked decisive on paper, landing just a little too late to actually win anything.

F-105D piloted by Major Ralph Kuster Jr of the 469th/13th Tactical Fighter Squadron, 388th Tactical Figther Wing shooting down a VPAF MiG-17 on the 3rd of June 1967.

"The underside of the MIG’s left wing exploded two-thirds of the way between the fuselage and the external underslung fuel tank. Kuster relaxed back stick pressure as the fire and debris from the MIG engulfed the F-105. It passed about 25 feet below the MIG, as the MIG rolled inverted and crashed"

@joe_Blilllib4090 via X

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F-105D-31-RE "Thunderchief" (62-4301/HI & MSN: D500) of the 465th TFS, 507th TFG, stationed at Hill Air Force Base, Utah (USAFR) in July 1980. In 1983 was withdrawn from use. Currently preserved at McClellan AFB, CA.