RAMPANT RAIDERS

April 25, 1967, VA-212 tests the A-4 to the limit

- PETER MERSKY

When we put ourselves under a surgeon’s knife, we usually also put ourselves into the trust of someone who knows his craft and can work under pressure, particular when things start to go really bad. For instance, as a patient, it would be reassuring to know that the doctor about to work on me had also been a carrier-based light-attack naval aviator with the Silver Star and the Purple Heart, and that he was the young A-4 pilot in a famous series of photos taken during a mission to the heart of North Vietnam in 1967, right in the middle of the aerial campaign known as Rolling Thunder.

On April 25, 1967, Lt. (j.g.) Al Crebo, of VA- 212, flying from the carrier Bon Homme Richard (CVA-31), took part in a raid on an ammunition depot near Haiphong, the port city for the capital of Hanoi. As Crebo approached the target, climbing to 8,000 feet to begin his delivery dive, an SA-2 exploded nearby. He recalls:

“I was assigned to the afternoon strike. There was considerable consternation in the air group because the morning strike group had sustained significant battle damage, including the loss of an A-4C from VA-76. Our good friend Charlie Stackhouse was shot down [by a MiG-17], and we didn’t know if he had survived the ejection. Fortunately, as we found out later, he was alive but had been taken prisoner.