The February '91 issue of Wings has a cover photo of two camouflaged
F-102s in a revetment, and an article called "Unsheathing the Dagger,"
about the F-102 in Vietnam.

Author Warren Thompson says the 509th FIS at Clark AB got orders to
deploy on the morning of 5 August 1964. Within 2 1/2 hours they had
four planes at Danang, "making the 509th the first fighter squadron to
deploy aircraft to Vietnam following the Gulf of Tonkin incident."

There are some interesting war stories in the article. One describes
hunting VC at night with the IRST. It was "an excellent piece of
equipment," according to a former pilot, able to track a guy smoking a
cigarette from 30,000 feet. They would detect campfires and fire IR
missiles at them, then follow up with radar missiles visually aimed at
the explosions.

Another pilot thought the F-102's dozen 2.75 inch rockets were better
(but not much better) than its AIM-4s, which he called "of little
value against ground targets." However, on one of his missions they
fired AIM-4s unguided and saved a downed aircrew from capture.

Somebody asked about the F-102 accident rate. Statistics for current
and retired USAF aircraft are he
http://afsafety.af.mil/AFSC/RDBMS/Fl...aft_stats.html

(Javascript must be enabled for the page to work.)

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Paul Hirose