Dan 
Phil ’Toro’ Colson was an F-8 Crusader pilot of VF-111 Fighting Checkmates aboard USS Hancock (CVA-19) during the 1972 WESTPAC cruise. He assembled these outstanding scrapbooks of photos and memories from that consequential deployment, which began in early February. This was the short-lived calm before the storm for on 30 March, during the carrier’s second line period, North Vietnam launched the Easter Offensive, resulting in US combat aircraft returning to the skies over North Vietnam after a four-year absence. The operations that would follow, Linebacker I (Easter Bombings) and Linebacker II (Christmas Bombings), would see the end of the Vietnam War for America, and set the stage for the disastrous Fall of Saigon nearly three years later.
-Webmaster Dan
