Golden Gate Wing Guest Speaker Archive

"Freedom is a rather tremendous word. It’s used sometimes in a nebulous way. But it’s not cheap. It’s paid by the likes of you and me, paid in that red stuff that flows through us all."

"Don’t ever think that the pilots flying airplanes don’t understand that without the support and the backup - - the guys who are out there in the middle of the night working, and the guys who are out in the middle of the sunshine when it’s hot and sticky, working - - don’t think that they don’t realize just how much their flying depends on their support. You just can’t say enough..."

Ralph was the son of a naval aviator, who once took his then-five year old son on an airplane ride in an open cockpit Navy floatplane on Manila Bay in the Philippines. Ralph’s training, late in World War II had been in fighters.

Parr flew P-38s at the very end of World War II, with the 7th Squadron, 49th Fighter Group from the Philippines and Okinawa. He loved flying fighters, and he did his best to keep flying in them as the war came to a close.

"You work hard at anything you like, you can become fairly proficient in it. If you like it to begin with and work hard, you can show progress, you can see the progress. And it really helps to be good when you put your blue chip up there on the line and have at it with someone who is your opponent."

"Early in my career I had the opportunity and privilege to talk with a very well known aviator... and I flew all the way across the States with him, not piloting but riding along and talking. His name was Lindbergh, first name Charles. Lindbergh was very instrumental in showing our young Air Force how to stretch the legs on their missions, to get a little better range and fuel consumption. I had the opportunity where that probably saved me from one hellaciously long swim one day. Because when I landed, on a no go-around approach, I shut the engines down and coasted into the chocks. I had five gallons of gas left and I had just come from Japan and was landing on Okinawa, round trip."

He vividly recalls flying over the Japanese mainland after the atomic bombs were dropped: "I was one of the few who at the end of the war actually flew across Nagasaki and Hiroshima while they were still smoking, both of them. What struck me the most, flying across there, was the total devastation. And yet, on the other hand, you have the realization that had we invaded on the ground we could have very easily have suffered up to a million casualties."

After World War II, Ralph joined the Air Force Reserve and the DC National Guard, and he gained flight experience in P-51s and P-47s.

Korea Calls

Parr was at March Field, California, and had just finished ferrying a plane to Seattle, when word came of war in Southeast Asia.

"On the 7th of July, I walked into my Operations and they said there’s a pilot’s meeting at ten o’clock. Everybody has to be there. So I walk into the pilot’s meeting at ten o’clock with the rest of the squadron and they said there’s a war going on and we’ve just joined it. And they said you, you and you - - they ripped of several names - - are departing tomorrow morning at 11 o’clock. Be prepared to go."

"I wound up being on the first load of aircraft being ferried to Japan to beef up our carrier units we had over there when the Korean War first started."

Even though Parr had been flying the F-86 for several months, he was assigned to fly the F-80 Shooting Star. There were no F-86s yet in Korea, so Parr was told he’d be flying ground support missions as a member of the 7th Squadron, 49th Fighter Group.

"I thought to myself, oddly enough, this is the same squadron I stopped flying combat with in World War II.

"Checkout time came along and they looked at my credentials and said, ‘This is great. You’ve got a lot of experience and we’re short on experience. That’s why we had all these experienced pilots flown in. You’re a flight commander as of now. How much time do you have in the F-80?’ "

When Ralph said he had no time flying the F-80, he was told, ‘That’s all right.’ Then, he was asked how much time he had flying the T-33. When he responded that he had no time in that type either, he was told he’d be set up in a ten mission plan to give him experience - - a transition ride, followed by three flights for formation work, missions on a gunnery range and a ferry flight to a squadron already in combat. All this work would happen in Japan, before being sent to combat in South Korea.

"My Dad used to tell me something all the time. He said, ‘Son, if you ever are a new guy in a new outfit, there’s two things you’ve got to remember. For the first three months keep your mouth shut and you ears open. Pay close attention and don’t volunteer any information unless you’re asked. If you’re asked, it’s okay; if you’re not asked you’re a wise ass for volunteering.’

"So, I didn’t say anything. I went out there, and as I taxied out for takeoff I thought to myself that it just can’t be that they wouldn’t have one of their hotshots up there doing a test hop or transition or whatever - - just waiting for me to takeoff and they’re going to peel me like an onion. And I looked around and pretty soon I spotted him. I got to the end of the runway and took off, and kept my eye on him and pretty soon, down he came.

"After fooling around for maybe five minutes, he was low on fuel and I was still heavy. He went in and landed. When I’d gotten my one hour flying time, I landed, too. And the Ops officer greets me at the door and says,’Your transition stinks. You sure you haven’t flown the F-80 before? Tomorrow morning we’ll just skip the formation, too. Tomorrow morning you’ll go to air-to-ground and our Wing gunnery officer is going to lead the flight so that you’ll get the right pattern squared away and everything you’ll need."

"The next day we took, went over to the range, shot the guns and they all worked. We came back and landed and the Ops officer met me in the doorway and said, ‘You fired on the wrong target.’

"We went through ‘You fired on the wrong target’ for about fifteen minutes and (I’m thinking) ‘It’s his ball game. I’m keeping my mouth shut.’

One of the guys Parr flew over to Japan with walked past the door and overheard the conversation. When he heard that Ralph had allegedly missed the target, he commented he couldn’t figure why Parr would do that, since in the prior month Parr had taken second place in the worldwide gunnery meet!

Parr says that was the last straw. The Ops officer sent him to South Korea.

Preparation for war in Korea proved as sketchy as did Ralph’s transition to the F-80. Flight equipment, outside of the aircraft which had arrived at the airbase at Suwon, was virtually non-existent.

First off, there was no flight helmet. Ralph found a helmet in a salvage yard, one with a crack 2/3 of the way across its top. He patched it up with duct tape and wore it until supplies finally came in. Parr says it was probably a better solution than another pilot in his flight who bought a plastic football helmet in the PX and added some sponge rubber ear protectors made of falsies also bought at the PX.

"I sported a pair of gloves, because I brought them with me. And the same goes for flying suits. Some guys were wearing their khakis, because there weren’t enough flying suits. I had a flying suit, but I brought it with me." Ralph also brought his own flying shoes.

"When the supply lines opened up, believe me, it was raining supplies... they cured the problem and got us pretty well equipped from that point on."

Ralph flew to Suwon, hopped out of his F-80, did his paperwork, then walked over to the operations shack of another squadron which was flying combat. He asked if there was any chance of getting on a mission or two, and was immediately given a slot on an upcoming mission.

"I went out there and took off. The only thing I noticed... was that it was getting very dim outside, the sun had disappeared. I came back, flew another mission the next morning and then they decided, ‘You belong to another squadron. We don’t want to give away too many missions, so you better head on back to ferry your own squadron airplanes down here.’

So, after ferrying an aircraft one-way, and flying two combat missions, Ralph had a grand total of ten hours in the F-80 - - five in combat and two hours of night flying. He thought to himself, "Things are going pretty swift over here."

As the 7th squadron flew its ground attack missions, Ralph says targets were plentiful, because the North Korean Army had charged south on its initial sweep, trying to completely sweep United Nations forces from Korea. In failing to make a clean sweep, the North Koreans lost eighty percent of their armor in the first six weeks of the war. That was mostly due to attacks by the US Air Force.

"We learned how to open up the turret on a T-34 Russian tank using just .50 caliber machine guns. It got a little sporty sometimes.

"But the F-80 didn’t carry too big a load. As a matter of fact when the weather was really hot over there in August, early September, sometimes all of our airplanes didn’t make it on takeoff. They just couldn’t get off the ground and would plow in off the end of the runway. And we’d hope like hell they’d missed the napalm farm we had off the end of the runway.

"We had a little river bed - - it was mostly dried up. And just beyond the river bed there was a little cliff and the ridge line. The ridge line had a little depression in it we called "the saddle" and we would aim for the saddle on takeoff. Sometimes it reached the point where you better make that saddle or you’re not going to get beyond it."

Parr says the F-80 was a pretty rugged little plane, and flying off the pierced steel planking (PSP) was rather hard on the drop tanks. For extended range, an extra section was built into the drop tank to boost the fuel load that could be carried.

"We would run missions up there, trying to destroy any supply line, any targets we could find. If it moved, you shot it. There were times when they were even allowed to shoot back. I guess our biggest boon was catching trucks and trains in the open.

"One month I had 87 trucks. They would drive trucks down south, loaded up with ammunition. They’d drive into a village... down the main street. When they found a house where the thatched front porch roof was at the proper angle, they’d usually take a tank leading the trucks and punch a hole right underneath the front porch roof and then back out. They’d let a truck go in there and sit during the daylight. And in the dark, they’d take it out and drive further south."

Ralph Parr’s memories of the Battle for the Chosin Reservoir are vivid. They are also memories he gained mostly at ground level. Parr says he flew a few aerial missions in support of the Marines desperately trying to hold defensive positions around the reservoir. Ralph was then pressed into service as a Forward Air Controller (FAC) for other aircraft making attacks on enemy troops swarming that area.

"I don’t know if you’ve ever been shot at, or not, in combat. But it does mysterious things to your system. The first thing it does to me is make me wonder if I can run faster. The second one is to actually run a little faster."

Parr and five other 80th FG pilots were in jeeps with radios on the day after Thanksgiving, 1950, when the enemy swept through the American lines.

"When the Chinese came in, we left, and the front line just dissolved. And it was, ‘I can run faster than you can run.’ South we went, three or four miles, maybe five miles from the Marines, on the other side of one ridge. Only two of us survived getting out. I watched two of us not survive.

"It was a very sobering thing to look out and see two people you know get jerked out of a jeep, pushed down on their knees next to a ditch and shot in the back of the head, in about as much time as I’ve just told it. And you remember those things...

Ralph managed to escape the Chinese onslaught, and return to the relative ‘safety’ of the aluminum foxhole that was the F-80. But the experience on the ground told him something about ground warfare that paralleled war in the air.

"You’ll find that the infantryman frequently puts up with the same thing that fliers put up with when they go out there - - ten percent will shoot to kill, ten percent won’t shoot at all, ten percent will have a malfunction and have to go back home, and the rest of them will carry the outfit and accomplish what they’re supposed to. It’s the same on the ground."

In Korea, warriors also had to contend with the weather and disease. It was a hostile environment. Parr was returned to the States after he had a bout with dysentery.

"I came back from a mission sopping wet with sweat, ran over the the mess hall and they had a great big canister of ice water... I poured myself a glass of ice water, and the guys behind me, all lined up, were trying to get this water on the inside as fast as we could. All of a sudden a guy runs out and says ‘Stop! We ran out of water purifier...’ It was too late, I’d already swallowed half a glass and that’s all it took. In eighteen days I went from 162 pounds down to 126. I knew everybody on base, because there was only one (lavatory)."

With his recovery, Ralph started trying to get back to Korea, but this time to fly

F-86s, which he says he wanted to do so bad he could "taste it." Parr ran into an ex-commander of his who promised he’d get him into an F-86, if Ralph could get himself back to Korea. With a certain reluctance, Ralph became a volunteer. The Air Force was seeking pilots to fly F-94Bs, radar night interceptors, as a special program for the Japan Air Defense Command. Accepted for the posting, Ralph again crossed the Pacific and reported for duty. Just as he was preparing for his first new assignment, a phone call from Far Eastern Headquarters indicated there was a note in Ralph’s file for him to report to the 4th Fighter Interceptor Wing.

"Initially, I had a little trouble getting checked out, because they had some more of those rules. I could not fly combat in the F-86F with the straight wing, without the slats, unless I had flown combat before in that type aircraft. And I couldn’t fly combat unless I had dropped tanks, so that I knew how to drop tanks off that airplane. And you couldn’t drop tanks because we had a shortage of them. It was one of those ‘you can’t get there from here’ (situations)."

Parr says he stayed on the ground for a week or so, until the squadron commander asked why he hadn’t yet been checked out in the F-86. After Ralph explained his situation, the commander turned to the Ops officer and told him to get Ralph ‘current.’

Ralph was offered a test hop in a brand new F-86 with drop tanks, ready to roll. Without hesitation, and within a few minutes, Parr had preflighted, cranked it up, flown the fighter out over the ocean, jettisoned drop tanks, landed and told the Ops officer everything had worked okay.

That made Ralph eligible for combat. And the very next day he was flying number four position, wingman to Al Cox, who was the second element leader. Cox, though technically still a 2nd Lieutenant, had 75 missions under his belt, yet was one rank lower than Ralph.

The First MiG-15s - - June 3, 1953

Parr says that Cox recognized his wingman (Ralph) was a Captain with more than twice the flying time in an F-86 than he had total time in the air. Ralph says he was told, "If we see something up there - - or, you see it and I don’t - -you call it out. And if I still don’t see it, I’ll clear you to take the bounce, and I’ll cover you."

Ralph says he thought to himself, "That’s not exactly the way the book reads, but I accept. Sounds like a good deal to me and I’m not about to turn it down. I’ve been waiting for years for this kind of mission."

The mission was a fighter sweep to the Yalu River, with Parr finally flying the fighter he’d dreamed so long of flying. He remembers that they’d no sooner climbed up to 44,000 feet, near the ceiling for the F-86, when along came the enemy: "A flight of four MiGs, ninety degrees to us. Not tracking or anything, just flying straight through, and all four of them are firing. What they’re hoping is we’re going to fly through their cannon fire and get hit.

"So I called the flight . The call sign happened to be Shark . I said, ‘Shark, break left. We’ve got MiGs close in, firing.’

"My flight leader, lo and behold, had put his damn watch on the wrong wrist that morning. Did he break left? Nooo, he broke right. So we all broke right. I turned around, followed my element leader around and everybody’s gone. Everybody’s taken a different county. At the speeds we were flying up there, we scattered far and wide."

Air Force rules of engagement of that time called for a withdrawal if flights dropped below a four-plane minimum. Withdrawal is what Ralph’s element leader called for. The F-86s regrouped and flew south along the Yalu River, headed for home.

On the way, Ralph says he happened to look down, and in doing so, caught the impression of something way down below, moving quickly.

"I saw something just ‘flit’. Nothing I could put a finger on, but something moved down there very rapidly. And then I could see nothing. I said, ‘We’ve got a bogey at 2 o’clock, low, low.’ He (Ralph’s leader) tilted his airplane up, came back and said, ‘I don’t have him. You take it. I’ll cover you.’

"I’m on his left side, he’s on my right. So I started a slow roll over... straight down in to where I last saw the movement... and he sees me start this slow roll and he goes up here and stops and waits for me to come and bounce... He had a long wait. I’m going straight down as fast as that little hummer will go. And the next transmission is, ‘Which way did you go?’

Parr says when he started to roll out of the dive, he noticed he’d just passed 10,000 feet altitude. The textbook maximum for pulling out of a high speed dive in an F-86 was 14,500 feet. Ralph put both hands on the stick, pulled back until he red-lined his G-meter (7.3 Gs) and at 9 Gs he saw he was going to make it.

The weather on this day was particularly clear, and Parr unmistakably identified two MiG-15s flying straight and level in front of him. He was down to 300 feet altitude and gaining on the two enemy fighters when he noticed the two MiGs weren’t alone. The original two were accompanied by another pair, and four more MiGs were off to their right.

"I thought, ‘You know, what the hell. The war’s nearly over. This may be the only chance I get.’

"So, closing... still at 300 feet, I came cruising in there, straight and level. I cleared both left and right, I looked out here to the left and there’s eight more damned MiGs! The wingman (Cox) calls, ‘What’s your position?’

"And he tells me I said, because I answered him, ‘Don’t bother me. I’m busy.’

"I tried putting my boards (speed brakes) out to slow down a little bit, so I didn’t overshoot too fast or too soon. If I overshot I’d be in front of him, and I much rather he stayed in front of my guns."

"The only problem was the other eight had picked me up before I got into firing range - - he called me out. The eight immediately in front of me broke in all directions except down. Just like feeding a banana into a high speed fan... they went just like a covey of quail. The other eight aircraft pulled up and went into a CAP (Combat Air Patrol) over the flight. So I stayed down there with what I thought was eight of them.

Parr says he still overshot his quarry (the MiG leader) a little, but not too badly.

"I ran up right alongside of him, and to keep him in sight I had to do a half roll, shot up alongside of him and wound up canopy-to-canopy with him without wingtip clearance. I had picked the leader to make my run on. I figured I pick the chief first, bleed him, and then fight the Indians... because he’s the honcho, he knows what he’s doing. I finally was able to position myself directly behind him. I tried to stay with the leader but I couldn’t hack the turn. I had 9.5 Gs on the bird, and the bird just wasn’t making it. But at 9.5 Gs I also found out that the fuses on the gunsight had blown. So I lost my gunsight then.

"When you get up to eight Gs, the electric motors that feed ammunition to the gun breeches will not carry that load, will not lift the ammo. But you don’t want a gun to jam because then there’s nothing pushing lead into it, so I stopped firing before the guns jammed on me."

Parr says without use of the gunsight he, "put the barrel up against him and pulled the trigger... and he burst into flames. If I’d been about three feet higher I’d have swallowed most of that fire."

Ralph says he immediately broke into another MiG, one of five already shooting at him. They all overshot and as the fifth one went past, Ralph recalls "He made the mistake of overshooting just slightly and I nailed him before he could get away."

Just then, Cox appeared, and the MiGs all took off for home. Parr says he was ready to head home as well, with only 900 pounds of fuel and 200 miles to go. Post-mission, Cox verified Ralph’s victories, and stated, "Parr had an entire squadron of 16 MiG-15s cornered. He had eight other MiGs capping the fight and he was dancing with eight."

Breaking the Siege of Khe Sanh

Among Ralph Parr’s most notable missions, and probably his most dangerous, was one flown over the Marine firebase at Khe Sanh, Vietnam. Ralph had reentered the cockpit for the Vietnam War, this time in the two seat F-4 Phantom II with the 12th Tactical Fighter Wing, based in Thailand.

In 1967, the Marines built a firebase at Khe Sanh, on a plateau surrounded by low mountains. The firebase, featuring an airstrip for resupply, was at the end of a canyon between two mountain ridges. In January of that year about 120,000 North Vietnamese Army (NVA) troops swept into the area and surrounded the camp, starting a siege which was to last three months.

In March, the NVA held the ridges on both sides of the canyon and began raining mortar shells into the base. Protecting their high ground positions, the NVA had dug in multi-barrelled antiaircraft emplacements - - 12.7 mm and 14.5 mm guns.

Ralph recalls, "The Marines were running out of ammunition, they were running out of food, they were running out of everything except guts. And they had plenty of that."

On March 16, 1968 Ralph Parr’s original mission for the day was to fly escort for a C-130 paradrop on the besieged Khe Sanh Marines. Sharkbait was Parr’s codename, and his F-4 was loaded with napalm canisters and 20 mm cannon pods.

"This Marine comes on the radio and he’s in a little L-1 - - looks like a Piper Cub, painted O.D. (olive drab). He’s flying around with an extremely urgent voice. He’s saying, ‘We need help. We’ve got two mortar positions and they’re actively dropping mortars on my buddies, right now! I need somebody to help me.’

Parr says he was fortunate, as a full Colonel, that he could change his mission. Asking the Forward Air Controller if he could be of help, Ralph got an instant plea to hurry. He found out the mortars were only about 50 meters from the lead Marine positions, too close for Parr’s wingman to use his 500 pound bombs on the enemy position.

"I had to work under a 3500 feet ceiling. It was the time of the year when they burned all their rice crop stubble. They had a broken layer of clouds and it trapped all this smoke underneath so you really couldn’t see very far."

"I made my first pass and I said, ‘I don’t see your mortars. ‘ And he (the FAC) said, ‘I’ll put a smoke on it.’ And that young Marine had intestinal fortitude he could throw away. He went down there with his little observation plane and he opened the bloody door, popped a can of smoke and tossed it right into the pit. And he hit it, which amazed me, too. And he said,’ That’s where the first one is.’ "

"I asked, ‘Where’s the second one... because before I blow smoke all over the place, I want to know where the second one is, so I can keep my eye on it and not lose it.’ "

Parr says he radioed for, and received clearance, and he made his first pass, dropping a canister of napalm. The jellied gas rushed from the canister as it hit the approach lip of the mortar pit, washing flames straight through the enemy position.

Ralph says the FAC’s voice cracked with joy as he responded, "You hit it. Thank God, you hit it ! Can you get the other one? Please, make another pass."

Parr’s F-4 roared back around the hills and through the canyon slot again, his napalm taking out the second mortar pit. This time, success brought a radio message that the Marine battalion commander was canceling any more passes, because he felt the Phantom would not survive the ground fire it was taking. An estimated 1000-1200 rounds a second were streaming up from the NVA.

"He didn’t need to tell me because I could see ‘em. And it was not tracer... I said tell your battalion commander I’m refusing his cancellation of the strike. I’m going to make another pass and take the first gun out."

"My back-seater said, ‘Can we do that?’

"I said, ‘We’re doing it.’

"We came back around and the first gun position, it turned out, was a quad 14.5 mm. And that thing can really shovel it when it’s pointed in your direction! We went by and took it out, using a can of napalm."

As Parr started back around for a fourth pass, he again heard from the FAC, who told him the battalion commander was again requesting a cancellation.

"He repeats, ‘You cannot survive the ground fire that you’re taking.’

"I said, ‘Tell your battalion commander that you’re going to clear me in because I’m refusing cancellation. This target priority is too high.’

"And funny, but from that moment on he wasn’t talking to Sharkbait any more, he was talking to Sir. He figured if I could countermand his battalion commander I must be something other than a just a pilot."

Ralph made a total of ten passes over the NVA positions at Khe Sanh - - the two on the mortars, six more, taking out six anti-aircraft gun emplacements, and two more to guide in his wingman, who could now use his 500 pound bombs. He says on at least one of his passes, the canyon slopes looked like they were covered with ants, as prone NVA troops aimed AK-47s at the jet hurtling through to attack the anti-aircraft guns. When Parr and his back-seater, returned to their airbase they counted 27 holes in the Phantom - - ranging from nearly golf ball size to one into which he could just squeeze his shoulders.

Following those determined attacks on NVA positions covering the approach to Khe Sanh airstrip, air transports were cleared to land and successfuly offload badly needed supplies to the Marines.

After 427 combat missions in two tours during the Vietnam War, Ralph served at HQ USAFE and as Chief of Staff in the Military Assistance Advisory Group in Iran. He retired from the Air Force in 1976, a double ace, having flown in three wars, with more than 8,500 hours (over 7,000 in fighter aircraft alone) and 641 combat missions.

(Sidebar - -)

Ralph Parr has been awarded more than 60 major military decorations and more than 60 other awards and citations.

For his actions in the air over Khe Sanh, Ralph was recommended by the Marine Corps for the Medal of Honor. Despite those strong recommendations, Ralph was ultimately awarded the Air Force Cross.

According to the Pentagon, Parr is the only man to have been awarded both the Distinguished Service Cross and the Air Force Cross (both second only to the Congressional Medal of Honor). The other major awards include ten Distinguished Flying Crosses and forty-one Air Medals.

Parr made the most of his opportunities in Korea. After flying the F-80 Shooting Star on ground support missions for his first tour and a half, he transitioned to the F-86 Sabre. Within his first eleven missions, he’d shot down 5 MiGs to become an ace. By the end of his thirty missions in the F-86, Ralph had shot down a total of ten enemy aircraft, including nine MiG-15s - - all in the waning seven weeks of the Korean War. His tenth aerial victory was the final one of the Korean War.