On Fri, 19 Sep 2003 23:38:43 GMT, Chad Irby wrote:

In article ,
Ed Rasimus wrote:

ECM pods, on the other hand were light, small, low drag and generally
uncarted. And, if you were being attacked by a MiG with radar, AKA
MiG-21 or -19, you might like to be throwing some electrons his way.

You have to rmember that for at least some of the Vietnam War, some
pilots didn't like ECM pods at *all*.

That would be an understatement at Ubon in early 1967. It was usually
a major or above pilot that would start in about pods or rhaw in
maintenance debriefing.

Weren't manly enough, or
something.

As a matter of fact..

After they started noticing a somewhat higher survival rate
among pilots with pods, they got the message.

You might appreciate the little story from Ubon 1967 when the jammer
driver came into the storage building laughing. He had been
transporting a pod and heard someone yelling behind him. He looked
around and here was a crew member running down the ramp after him
yelling I want that pod!

But by the early 1980s, a lot of jet jockeys were back to the "pods are
for wimps" sort of attitude. I saw it every time we loaded the 119s
onto F-4s for exercises. And then we had a squadron go to Red Flag, and
suddenly all of the pilots were wanting one every damned day... getting
"shot down" a few times with no recourse tends to do that.