Warbird Information Exchange

Proud Deep Alpha, a five day campaign 26-30 Dec1971,
saw the greatest level of strikes since Rolling Thunder had been
called to a halt on 31 October 1968. Targets for the five days
were suspected munitions sites to the North of the DMZ.

These strikes coincided with a period of serve bad weather, which
saw solid cloud cover over the target areas from 500ft up to 10000 ft.
On the last day of Proud Deep Alpha, December 30, 1971, an A6
from VA-165 flown by Lt Cdr Fred Holmes, with Lt C W Burton as B/N
lead two A-7 Corsairs, and two F4 Phantoms from the USS Constellation
on a radar guided bomb run. Their aircraft was observed to take a direct
hit from a surface to air missile. Lieutenant Burton was wounded, blown
clear of the aircraft and his parachute deployed successfully. Another
aircraft on the scene reported seeing two good chutes deploy, but this
report was later viewed as not confirmed. A search and rescue
aircraft then reported both pilots in sight and in the water off Hon Nieu
Island. Lieutenant Burton was rescued by U.S. forces. SAR forces
located a pilot's ejection seat and life raft possibly belonging to
Lieutenant Commander Holmes but were unable to locate either him or his
chute in an area with a large number of North Vietnamese sampans.

A Radio Hanoi broadcast referenced this incident, one of several
U.S. aircraft losses on the same date in the southern part of North
Vietnam. While some pilots were reported captured alive,
Lieutenant Commander Holmes' name was not identified among those
captured. One returning POW recognized Lieutenant Commander
Holmes' name but no returning POWs ever reported him alive in the
northern Vietnamese prison system.

In April 1975 Lieutenant Commander Holmes case was submitted for a
casualty review at the request of his next of kin. He was declared
dead/body not recovered.

Gents hi

Fresh off the easel.

"Into the Storm"

All thoughts and critique welcome



Pete

Enough of this a-6 stuff, When are goning to see some A-7 stuff?