Bear Taylor 
“VIETNAM: AIR LOSSES”…Page 65… Two birds bagged…
(1) LCDR WILLIAM J. ISENHOUR was flying an A-4C of the VA-216 Black Diamonds embarked in USS Hancock on a restrike mission of the POL storage facilities. During the low level approach to the target LCDR ISENHOUR’s Skyhawk was hit by ground fire in the cockpit and engine. He was able ot coax the aircraft back to feet wet and continue southeast until about 25 miles southeast of Haiphong, safely eject and be rescued by a Navy helicopter to fight another day…
(2) CAPTAIN JACK HARVEY TOMES was flying an F-105D of the 354th TFS and 355th TFW out of Takhli was shot down while executing a strike on the railroad bridge 10 miles north of Yen Bai. CAPTAIN TOMES was hit by 85mm AAA at the target and ejected nearby. He was quickly captured and was a POW until Released on 12 February 1973… On this day fifty years ago CAPTAIN TOMES had a day he will never forget… RTR joins him in remembering a little of his adventure… and I wish him the best wherever he is… he and his family earned every bit of “the best.”
Webmaster note: LTC Jack Harvey Tomes passed away 29 December 1984 aged 51 years.
RIPPLE SALVO… #129… PARADING PILOTS… In July of 1966 I was completing my A-4 RAG Instructor tour in VA-125 at NAS Lemoore, California and had orders to join the VA-113 Stingers on Enterprise in August… Up to this point I had been on the outside of the war and looking in and was eager to get going. In fact, I was worried that the war would end before I got my turn… not to worry… plenty of war to go around for everybody, and then some… As I waited my turn I devoured every day of the history that was being made in Rolling Thunder. So when the North Vietnamese started parading captured Air Force and Navy aviators through the streets of North Vietnam, I was looking for old squadron mates and faces I knew from my year and a half instructing young Ensigns and JGs how to employ the A-4 Skyhawk in a shooting war. I was also able to use the TV news reports of the parades to explain to my wife that it wasn’t all bad news if I would some day show up in the parade. The good news, you ask?… True, everybody in the parade was having a miserable time, but what a subdued joy the marchers had knowing that their faces were being seen on international TV or, for example, on page 3 of the 7 July 1966 New York Times, where seven recognizable faces are being paraded against all the rules. Yes, you were a POW and being abused, but beyond that, every one of those captured aviators was relieved to know that his family and friends back home now knew that he was still ALIVE and walking (with a snarl). There were hundreds of POWs that never looked a TV or movie camera in the eye and were therefore “still missing.” (and hundreds still are) A picture of a warrior in prison garb was worth ten thousand words, and a modicum of relief on the home front. Of course, parading POWs is a no-no and the North Vietnamese were no different than any of our adversaries in their non-adherence to the Geneva Conventions that govern the care and feeding of Prisoners of War…North Vietnam was very successful in their disregard of the conventions. They called and considered the POWs to be “criminals” who broke the laws of their land and were eligible to be tried by the courts of their land… For the next few days Rolling Thunder Remembered will be reporting and highlighting a particularly active period when the treatment and disposition of American aviator POWs was headline news around the world.
Lest we forget…. Bear ………. –30– ……….
