I heard Tullo's story a few years ago when he was an airline captain and I was negotiating the sale of radios to his airline. I flew 122 missions in F-4E Phantom IIs, also out of Korat but at a later time in the war. Many of my friends had been shot down over there, and a lot were never heard from again. Twenty pilots were down, our line crews were beat, and the Pentagon was jerking us around. Something had to change.
Some pilots seem born for combat.
They thrive on a steady dose of danger. Robin Olds was one of those. Olds was the commander of the U.S. Air Force 8th Tactical Fighter Wing during the second year of an air campaign called Rolling Thunder, the first sustained U.S. air assault on North Vietnam. I remember him as a disciplined, professional officer, but he was also a fierce fighter who bristled at, and frequently outmaneuvered, the political constraints that kept his wing from doing damage to the enemy. Olds retired as a brigadier general in 1973.