Kunsan Airmen pay tribute to triple ace fighter pilot Brig. Gen. Robin Olds WWII & VietNam

Legendary fighter pilot Robin Olds dies
6/15/2007

Retired June 1, 1973.

Died June 14, 2007.

Brigadier General Robin Olds is the director of aerospace safety in the Air Force Inspection and Safety Center, a separate operating agency and an organization of the Office of the Inspector General, Headquarters U.S. Air Force. General Olds has worldwide responsibility for the development and implementation of policies, standards and procedures for programs in safety education, accident investigation and analysis, human factors research, and safety inspection to prevent and reduce accidents in Air Force activities.

General Olds was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, the son of Army Air Corps Maj. Gen. and Mrs. Robert Olds. He spent his boyhood days in the Hampton, Va., area where he attended elementary and high school. He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, N.Y., and was commissioned as second lieutenant in June 1943. A member of the academy football team, he was selected as All-American tackle in 1942. He completed pilot training in 1943.

General Olds is rated a triple ace, having shot down a total of 17 enemy aircraft during World War II and the Vietnam War. He began his combat flying in a P-38 Lightning named "Scat 1" during World War II, and at the end of the war he was flying "Scat VII," a P-51 Mustang, and was credited with 107 combat missions and 24.5 victories, 12 aircraft shot down and 11 1/2 aircraft destroyed on the ground.

During the Vietnam War in October 1966, General Olds entered combat flying in Southeast Asia in "Scat XXVII," an F-4 Phantom II. He completed 152 combat missions, including 105 over North Vietnam. Utilizing air-to-air missiles, he shot down over North Vietnam two Mig-17 and two Mig-21 aircraft, two of these on one mission.

General Olds was wing man on the first jet acrobatic team in the Air Force and won second place in the Thompson Trophy Race (Jet Division) at Cleveland in 1946. He participated in the first one-day, dawn-to-dusk, transcontinental roundtrip flight in June 1946 from March Field, Calif., to Washington, D.C., and return.

His duty assignments in England, Germany, Libya, Thailand and the United States have included positions as squadron, base, group and wing commander; staff assignments in a numbered Air Force, Headquarters U.S. Air Force and the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is a graduate of the National War College, 1963.

In February 1946 General Olds started flying P-80 jets at March Field, Calif., with the first squadron so equipped. In October 1948 he went to England under the U.S. Air Force - Royal Air Force Exchange Program and served as commander of No. 1 Fighter Squadron at Royal Air Force Station Tangmere. The squadron was equipped with the Gloster Meteor jet fighter.

He assumed duties as commander of the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing at Ubon Royal Thai Air Force Base, Thailand, in September 1966. He returned to the United States in December 1967 and served as commandant of cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy through January 1971.

General Olds assumed the position of director of aerospace safety in the Air Force Inspection and Safety Center at Norton Air Force Base, Calif., in February 1971.

His military decorations and awards include the Air Force Cross, Distinguished Service Medal, Silver Star with three oak leaf clusters, Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross with five oak leaf clusters, Air Medal with 39 oak leaf clusters, Air Force Commendation Medal, British Distinguished Flying Cross, French Croix de Guerre, Vietnam Air Force Distinguished Service Order, Vietnam Air Gallantry Medal with Gold Wings, Vietnam Air Service Medal, and the Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal. He is a command pilot.

He was promoted to the temporary grade of brigadier general effective June 1, 1968, with date of rank May 28, 1968.

(Current as of June 15, 1972)

Biograpy Brigadier General Robin Olds

Colonel Robin Olds, CO of the 8th TFW, mastermind behind Operation “Bolo” He was also an outstanding fighter pilot: on the first day of the operation (January 2 1967) he personally shot down one MiG-21 with two AIM-9s while flying an F-4C Phantom. During Vietnam he was credited with 4 kills, only one kill short of becoming a “Double Ace.” He already was a WWII Ace with 12 victories.

Robin Olds

Mastermind of Operation Bolo
16 Aerial Victories in WW2 and Vietnam

By Diego Zampini

This article is dedicated to the American pilots who bravely fought and/or died over South East Asia despite the unpopularity of Vietnam War in their country, and to the Vietnamese pilots who challenged the most powerful nation of the world in defense of their homeland, specially the ones who were killed in the attempt.

During the last months of 1966 the MiG-21s of the VPAF (deployed in the 921st Fighter Regiment) became very active and succesfully intercepting the F-105 formations of the USAF. According to their own claims, the 921st FR shot down nine Thunderchiefs in December 1966; particularly, the MiG-21 pilots claimed two F-105s on December 5, and three more on December 14.

There are no recorded aerial combat losses from USAF on those days, but its records of POW/MIA/KIA show at least one F-105 lost in each December 5 and December 8.

Note: The F-105 downed on December 8 1966 is very interesting, because it is mentioned in several documents sent by VPAF to the Soviet VVS at that time. But it is not officially claimed as a VPAF air-to-air kill in recent sources, including Toperczer’s book.

Additionally, in recent times, the Russian VVS admitted that Soviet advisors in Vietnam were authorized to engage US planes as part of the training process or as temporary replacements for Vietnamese pilots wounded or killed.

One of them, Sr. Lt. Vadim Petrovich Shchbakov, was credited with 6 kills during 1966. Despite the lack of accurate info about his victories, it is likely that the December 8 1966 F-105 kill should be credited to him. His victim was the F-105D BuNo 591820, piloted by Donald Asire (KIA).

Setting aside how many of the VPAF claims are admitted by USAF, certainly the number of American planes lost to the MiGs worried the US, because the Air Force decided to make an important effort to neutralize the MiG threat: the effort known as Operation “Bolo”.

The idea and planning of this operation was the masterpiece of a living legend among the US F-4 pilots in South East Asia: Colonel Robin Olds. He was a P-38/P-51 Ace during WWII, credited with 12 kills against the German Luftwaffe in 1944-45, and now – at 44 years old - he was the CO of the 8th TFW (nicknamed “The Wolf Pack”). He was an “old-fashioned” fighter pilot: impulsive, rough, hard-drinking, but a natural leader and an intuitive tactician.

He realized that the F-105 and F-4 formations used the same approaches time after time, and the SIGINT analysts in Hanoi became expert in identifying the more vulnerable F-105 "Thuds" from the F-4 Phantoms, from their radio frequencies and call signs. So Olds decided to fly a large F-4 formation using the same routes, altitude, and callsigns as the F-105s, hoping that the MiG-21s would be guided towards them, expecting to find Thunderchiefs, and when they realized the truth, it would be too late for them.

“Bolo” begins

The D-Day of “Bolo” was January 2 1967. In the first hours of the evening 14 flights of F-4C Phantom of the 8th TFW (4 aircraft each) took off from Ubon RTAFB in Thailand towards the VPAF airfields around Hanoi, pretending to be F-105s. An eastern force of 366th TFW F-4s covered the possible MiG withdrawal routes. Olds commanded the first flight. The assigned call signs derived from American cars of the period: "Ford," "Rambler," and (inevitably) "Olds," for the CO's flight. Despite his long combat experience, he most likely thought: “Would they take the bait?”.

The doubts soon disapeared, because the of the MiG-21 pilotss seemed paralyzed when they realized that they were not engaging F-105s, but F-4s.

The first kill of that day was scored by “Olds 02” -1st Lt. Ralph Wetterhahn- followed seconds later by Captain Walter Radeker, who claimed another MiG-21. Initially Colonel Olds was not so lucky, as his own account shows:

“The battle started when the MiGs began to get out of the cloud cover. Unfortunately for me, the first one appeared in my ‘six o’clock’. I think it was more a accident than a planned tactic. As a matter of fact, in the next few minutes other many MiGs started to exit from the clouds from different positions.

I was lucky. The flight behind me saw the MiG and tried to divert its attention. I broke to the left, sharply enough to get away of his line of fire, hoping that my wingman would take care of him. Meanwhile another MiG came out of the clouds, turning widely about my ’11 o’clock’ at a distance of 2,000 yards. He went into the clouds again and I tried to follow.”

Olds fired two Sparrows and one Sidewinder at this MiG, but the enemy pilot showed his quality, avoiding all three missiles, entering the clouds, and escaping “Wolf Pack” leader. Until that moment, Luck was not entirely at his side, he was under attack from a MiG-21, and one of his possible victims eluded him. But that would change soon:

A third enemy plane appeared in my ‘10 o’clock’, from the left to the right: in simple words, almost in the opposite direction. The first MiG zoomed away and I engaged the afterburner to get in an attack position against this new enemy. I reared up my aircraft in a 45 degree angle, inside his turn. He was turning to the left, so I pulled the stick and barrel-rolled to the right.

Thanks to this maneuver, I found myself above him, half upside down. I held it until the MiG finished his turn, calculating the time so that, if I could keep on turning behind him, I would get on his tail, with a deflection angle of 20 degrees, at a distance of 1,500 yards. That was exactly what happened. He never saw me. Behind and lower than him, I could clearly see his silhoutte against the sun when I launched two Sidewinders. One of them impacted and tore apart his right wing.”

In a few minutes, the pilots of the “Olds” flight claimed to have shot down three MiG-21s without suffering any losses of their own. As they started to withdraw from the aerial battlefield, the first round ended with a clear American victory, and the second one would begin soon...

Continues at Ace Pilot Robin Olds Mastermind of Operation BOLO

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Kunsan Airmen pay tribute to triple ace fighter pilot

Honoring the memory of Gen. Robin Olds

Legendary fighter pilot Robin Olds dies

Legendary fighter pilot Robin Olds dies

Robin Olds Mastermind of Operation Bolo 16 Aerial Victories in WW2 and Vietnam

Robin Olds

Mastermind of Operation Bolo
16 Aerial Victories in WW2 and Vietnam