F-105 Thunderchief
KE 26687 – ¾ front view of Air Force F-105
Thunderchief at Korat Air Base, Thailand. April 1967.
U.S. AIR FORCE PHOTO
This F-105 has the standard ordnance load of six
750-lb General Purpose Bombs (Mark 117s) on the centerline rack.
This was the configuration we normally saw on the F-105s that came into
Steel Tiger in 1967. Seems like sometimes they carried a 2,000 pounder and I
remember working some with 1,000-lb bombs with variable-time (VT) fuses.
I assume that the larger bombs came in on diverts that had had a
primary target in North Vietnam, but couldn’t get in because of weather.
During the winter when the Northwest Monsoon brought heavy rains off the Gulf
of Tonkin into North Vietnam, many fragged missions could not visually deliver
bombs into North Vietnam.
