Out there somewhere in the ethereal and eldritch strands of the Internet, there's a photo of a young George W. Bush around the cockpit of a Convair F-102A Delta Dagger. From what I understand, young George was training to fly these things in the Texas Air National Guard.

Much has been made over John Kerry's Vietnam service, and much has been said about George W. Bush not being in Vietnam. The bottom line there is that I don't care. If Bush did his job, then yay for him. If he didn't, I'm still stuck voting for him because I'd rather frog-march someone over broken glass than vote for Kerry.

However, not much has been said about the F-102, one of my more favorite Century Series (Whaddya mean? You like them all. --Ed.) aircraft. Anyways, here's a couple of tidbits about the "Deuce", as it was called by her crews.

1. The Delta Dagger was an all-weather interceptor, remarkably unsuited for tactical air missions (i.e. light bombing and close-air support). It was armed solely with missiles of two sorts and rockets. The missiles were usually a mix of Hughes AIM-4A/AIM-4E Falcon semi-active radar homing missiles and AIM-4C/AIM-4F infra-red homing missiles, and the rockets were 2.75 inch Folding Fin Aircraft Rockets.

2. The vast majority of the 875 Daggers built served in the USAF's Air Defense Command, which kept on the lookout for Soviet bombers. Thus, they served at bases within the United States for the most part, but several squadrons were sent to places like Keflavik in Iceland, Bitburg in West Germany (wow, haven't written that in a long time) and a couple other European countries.

3. Daggers saw service in Vietnam, with several PACAF units being deployed to Thailand and the Republic of Vietnam from 1962 until withdrawal in 1969. They were tasked to prevent the North Vietnamese air force from doing something stupid, but also rode shotgun on B-52 raids up North. In this capacity, the two-seat trainer variant, the TF-102A, was also employed.

4. The 509th FIS reportedly lost one to a MiG-21 on 3 February 1968, somewhere in Route Pack IV, the only known air-to-air engagement by the F-102A.

5. Despite being a pure interceptor, the USAF managed to get some air-to-ground use out of them, courtesy of Project STOVEPIPE. Aircraft would fly over the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the RVN and use their IR-guided missiles to hunt for campfires. If they found a heat source, they fired. Not really a tremendous threat, but Charlie's evening bowl of rice and his bong would be upset by the arrival of a missile. Given that the Falcon's IR seeker had a very short operational life once started on the launch rail, I'm not entirely sure how effective a tactic this was. I'm also told that the pilots would use their radar to try and find targets; if they could lock a target up, they'd fire off a SARH Falcon.

Later efforts saw them using the 2.75-in. FFARs in daylight attacks, which had to be amusing.

6. Many F-102As were expended as drones to support USAF live fire missile drills in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s.

Obligatory Bush content: If W's TANG unit was equipped with Delta Daggers, then it's extremely unlikely that he would have gone to Vietnam, and so therefore hush about him potentially ducking the call.

Much credit to Joe Baugher for his entry on the F-102.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 12:28 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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