Robin Olds The Epitome Of Fighter Pilots

Robin Olds started his piloting career in a P-38 Lightning in the European theater. His first kills were a pair of Focke Wulf 190s. Late he and a wingman engaged a formation of 40 BF-109s and he came out with 5 kills one of which occurred while his engine was off due to fuel starvation. He became the first ace of the 479th fighter group. When the 479th converted to P-51s he had a total of 8 kills in the 38. In the P-51 he topped off his kill count with 4 more air to air kills and 11 destroyed while on runways. In Vietnam he took to the sky again and killed 4 more enemy aircraft. 2 of these were scored in operation Bolo. Bolo was an attempt to bring enemy MIGs out to fight. MIGs avoided fighters and instead went for slow vulnerable attack aircraft  like the F-105 Thunderchief. Olds fitted 105 jammer pods to the F-4s and used their callsigns in order to make the MIGs think they were bombers. at the end of the day the Vietnamese lost 7 of their remaining 16 aircraft in the inventory. This was the most successful aircraft operation of the war. Olds would fly his last flight on September 23, 1967. He retired with the rank of Brigadier General and 16 kills to his name.

  "There are pilots and there are pilots; with the good ones, it is inborn. You can't teach it. If you are a fighter pilot, you have to be willing to take risks." Robin Olds

Comments

  1. AnonymousMay 4, 2018 at 12:55 PM

    That´s cool and thanks to Robin Olds for his duty. your facts are cool.

    ReplyDelete

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