On Wed, 4 Feb 2004 10:54:05 -0500, "Tony Volk"
wrote:

p.s.- wasn't it a well established phenomenon in Vietnam that pilots
generally went "candy-assed" when they got close to the end of their tour?
so much so that they were rotated out of Pack VI for their last five or ten?

YUP !


Arthur Kramer

NOPE! You might want to read When Thunder Rolled for my description of
the last mission of my tour in which two of the seven flying from my
squadron were lost and I recovered back at Korat with ten pounds of
fuel left in the jet.

Statistically the most dangerous missions on a 100 mission tour were
the first ten and the last ten. The first because you were scared and
inexperienced, the last because there was a tendency to get
over-aggressive and feel a bit immortal. Many guys were trying to win
the war on their last couple before they completed and went home.

Lucky Ekman extended beyond his first 100 and got shot down on 132.
Jim Mitchell, my flight commander got shot down his second time on 99.
Karl Richter was shot down on 198 near the end of his 200. Many guys
with 100 North came back for more tours.

The practice of trying to keep guys off of the Pack VI schedule at the
end of the tour was to keep them alive, not because they "went
candy-assed."

I'm biting my tongue to keep from pulling an Art here and asking the
source of your information.



Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
Smithsonian Institution Press
ISBN #1-58834-103-8