When a U.S. Navy Vietnam veteran hears a mention of the Vought F-8 Crusader, he usually thinks of “the Last of the Gunfighters,” a reference to the plane’s four 20 mm cannons supplementing its four Colt Mk. 12 AIM-9B Sidewinder air-to-air missiles. In “Eyes of the Fleet Over Vietnam: RF-8, Crusader Combat Photo-Reconnaissance,” however, Kenneth V. Jack focuses on the relatively overlooked achievements of the Crusader’s light photo and electronic reconnaissance variant, the RF-8.
Armed with nothing but cameras and its supersonic speed, the RF-8 sought out targets and followed up with photos for battle-damage assessment, which increased the pilot’s risk of facing the anti-aircraft weaponry of a fully aroused enemy.
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First to discover the addition of Soviet-made SA-2 surface-to-air missiles to North Vietnam’s air defense system and occasionally encountering MiG fighters, the RF-8 usually evaded both hazards by speeding along at low altitude, but that tactic made it t more vulnerable to anti-aircraft artillery and ground fire, which accounted for the vast majority of North’s 31 shoot-downs of photo Crusaders.
“My favorite approach, again weather permitting, was to descend from high altitude, say, 20,000 feet, to pass over the target at supersonic speed,” said Capt. Len Johnson, who survived 100 missions with Light Photographic Squadron VFP-63. “Unfortunately, I had to fly over the target at between 3,000 and 4,000 feet, which the North Vietnamese gunners knew. They simply filled the sky with lead, and I had to fly through it.”
Besides compiling technical descriptions, recently declassified information and personal vignettes, including the fates of the lost airmen, Jack draws from his personal experience as a photographic-electronic technician with Light Photographic Squadron VFP-62 aboard the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. He uses all of that knowledge to produce a unit history of VFP-63, nicknamed “Eyes of the Fleet,” supplemented with the Vietnam deployments of VFP-62 and the carrier-based Marine Composite Reconnaissance Squadron 1.
All in all, “Eyes of the Fleet Over Vietnam” combines individual detail and big-picture context to present a comprehensive account of a lesser-known but important aspect of the air war over the North.
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