DECLASSIFIED: Gen Chuck Yeager assigned to Clark AFB re Vietnam 1966

Recently declassified from General Chuck Yeager’s copyrighted USAF oral history – assigned to Clark AFB re Vietnam

Yeager: I finished up my tour there with the school at Edwards and got a new assignment ot Clark Airbase in the Philippines as Commander of the 405th Fighter Wing.

I reckon you would call it a multitype airplane wing. It was directly under Thirteenth Air Force at Clark.

I had two squadrons of B-57s, one of F-100 squadron, and two squadrons of F-102s. We were pretty well scattered around the South Pacific.

When I initially got there, they were just moving the B-57s out of Da Nang down to Phan Rang and set up a 10,000-foot mat, AM-2 Mat runway, at Phan Rang. We moved a -57 detachment down there.

What I used to do was keep one squadron of B-57s overseas. I had 35 B-57s in the squadron. It was a big outfit.

Q: That was wing size?

Yeager: Well, yes, but two squadron size normally. I would keep one squadron of B-57s over there for 59 days and then rotate the other squadron in, airplanes and all. Then keep the other squadron back at Clark. That way we could get 2 years of combat out of the guys and have good continuity.

The F-102s, I kept a detachment at Da Nang. They were strictly air defense.

A detachment of eight airplanes at Bien Hoa, one detachment at Udorn, Thailand, and one at Bangkok, Thailand.

c. GCYI