CDR Jack Feldhaus, USN, KIA 8 October 1966 - Memorial Web Site

LTJG Rick Adams Rescue

	LT John A. (Jack) Feldhaus had been on Dixie Station off South Vietnam for 8 days and had flown several missions into South Vietnam when the USS Oriskany moved north to Yankee Station off North Vietnam and began launching missions into North Vietnam on July 8. Three days later, Jack was involved in his first rescue effort of a downed Navy airman.  He was one of four pilots launched on July 13 on a mission to travel further north into Vietnam than any other attempted rescue.  As his commanding officer and his wingman flew above, Jack as wingman of LCDR Eric Shade, accompanied the helicopter to the downed pilot, LTJG Rick Adams, and fought off attacking forces and avoided AAA while guiding the helicopter out of the country. I've pulled together four different accounts of this rescue below.  As usual, everyone knew who the downed pilot or pilots were and the personnel of the rescue helicopter, but seldom were the names of the pilots known who provided the firepower and cover for the rescue to take place.

LTJG Rick Adams returns from being rescued.  LTJG Rick Adams returns from being rescued after being shot down on 5 October 1965.  He is greeted by his squadron mates, including his skipper, Cdr Dick Bellinger, who hold replicas of the SA-2 SAM that got him.  Lt Cdr Butch Verich holds a model of a gun-prophetic, because ten months later Adams would again be shot down, this time by communist ground fire, on 12 July 1966.

While Bellinger kept calling his number two, pleading with him to eject, Adams doggedly headed for the water.  Like most American crews, he did not want to punch out over land, where he would probably be cap­tured. The young pilot remembered having passed some destroyers on the way in, and now he hoped he could find them before ejecting.

Finally, the Crusader gave up the ghost and exploded. Adams ejected through the fireball, and he somersaulted through the air still attached to his seat. After a few seconds, the small drogue 'chute opened, then the larger, primary 'chute followed. Adams separated from his seat and began the descent toward the water. As he hit the sea, Adams released his harness and raft.  Paddling over to his one-man raft, he looked up.  'Belly One' flew by waggling his wings in encouragement.  He was so low that Adams could see into his skipper's cockpit!

The downed pilot hauled himself into the raft and began sorting out his situation, arranging his survival gear around him in the small, rubber, container.  By now, Bellinger had alerted the rescue forces and was circling over Adams for the incoming helicopters. He was also worried about any enemy attempt to retrieve the downed aviator.

When a helo arrived, Adams rolled out of his raft into the water. How­ever, he hadn't noticed how badly his hands were burned. Immersing them in the salt water made him cry out in surprised pain. The swimmer from the helicopter jumped in to help Adams get into the rescue sling, and before long the bedraggled aviator was on board the cruiser USS Galveston (CLG-3), where he received a preliminary examination and first aid for his burns.  Returning to Oriskany the next day, Adams was greeted by his squadron-mates, who formed a gauntlet, complete with models of SAMs and flak guns. ‘Belly One', meanwhile, smacked his wing an on the rear with a paper missile.

'How's it feel to be a hero, ‘Bulb' one of his friends asked.  It was a facetious question. but Rick Adams was glad to be around to hear it.

Four months later, Rick Adams flew a mission that gained him the Dis­tinguished Flying Cross.  Again, he was dicing with SAMs, a battery of eight rocketing toward his flight, but he maintained his station through the intense defenses.  But the enemy was not through with him.

By July 1966, Adams was on his second tour with VF-162, one of only half a dozen members of the 1965 cruise to go on the second combat deployment. On 12 July he launched on a TARCAP mission in F-8E 150902 (AH 203), his target that day being near Haiphong, one of the most heavily defended areas in the north. 

When his Crusader was apparently hit by small-arms fire, Adams faced another ejection. Fire spread from the tail to the forward fuselage as the F­8 rolled to the right.

`See you in a year', Adams called — he'd meant to say, 'ten years' — and he punched out at 2500 ft and 400 knots. As his Crusader plunged into a mountain. he landed near a village. Now, he was involved in a classic escape-and-evasion run for his life. The 'bad guys' were already looking for him, and he could hear them. He also knew that his friends had already called for the search-and-rescue (SAR) forces, and the helicopter was probably inbound. It was a question of who got to him first.

Four Skyraiders arrived escorting the H-3 helo, trying to keep the 'chopper' clear of enemy fire coming from all directions. The helo crew spotted Adams in the underbrush and sent the sling down for him.  Strap­ping himself in, the F-8 pilot 'rode' the sling up through the trees, finally tumbling into the shuddering H-3 as more groundfire reached out.

As the two enlisted crewmen manned their machine guns, the battered, but thrilled Adams stared through a cabin window as the helo turned for home, escorted again by the protecting `Spads', whose pilots fired their remaining ordnance at the gun positions on the ground.

Lt Bill Waechter, the H-3 co-pilot, was on his first mission into North Vietnam. 'Is it always this rough?', he asked Adams, unaware that this had been his passenger's second rescue in eight months.

`Seldom as rough as this', Adams replied, perhaps tongue-in-cheek. Four hours after launching from Oriskany, a bedraggled Rick Adams was back on board, to be greeted once more by a line-up of squadron pilots. 'No one gets shot down twice', they hooted. They were wrong.

Rick Adams' second shoot down elicited a full-page article in Time magazine for 29 July 1966. Determined by the Navy to be 'combat lim­ited', Adams was sent home. He flew with the Blue Angels in 1968 and eventually retired as a Commander in 1982.

After surviving being shot down and rescued the previous October, Lt(jg) Rick Adams had become something of a lucky charm amongst the pilots of VF-162 due to the tale of his cool demeanor under extreme duress. On this strike, Adams was flying the TARCAP to protect the main strike force from MiGs. Multiple SAM warnings had forced the strike package to evade, trading precious altitude in the process. Eventually the flight ended up low enough to be in small arms range. Flying low, Adams took hits in his tailpipe which quickly caught fire.

Once again Adams turned his burning Crusader for the safety of the gulf. He cleared one ridge line before the Crusader began an uncontrollable death roll to the right. Adams’ wingman on this flight was Lt Cdr Butch Verich, who began calling on the radio for Adams to eject. A terse exchange followed with Adams finally commenting, cool as ice, “Sorry about that. See you next year!” before he ejected.i He had really meant to say, “See you in ten years.” Adams landed in rugged jungle near a village, less than twenty miles from Hanoi and the plethora of defenses surrounding the city. Any rescue attempt was certain to be hotly contested.

Fortunately, Lt Cdr Verich followed Adams’ chute and marked his location, thus giving the CSAR forces the information they needed to attempt a rescue so far inland.ii A flight of four VA-152 Skyraiders orbited nearby as the RESCAP. Cdr Gordon Homer Smith, VA-152’s Commanding Officer left two Skyraiders with the rescue helicopter, while he and his wingman flew ahead to begin the rescue. Lt Cdr Verich and Lt Dick Wyman talked the Skyraiders onto Adams’ parachute, which was hanging from a tree. Cdr Smith assumed on-scene command of the rescue and called for the CSAR helicopter, a Sea King from HS-6, to proceed to Adams’ location. Smith began coordinating the replacement of the fuel limited jets orbiting overhead, while his wingman reported areas of enemy fire. At the higher altitude, Smith’s wingman acted as a communications relay to the inbound rescue forces.

Lt Cdr Eric Schade and his wingman, Lt Jack Feldhaus, escorted the helicopter towards Adams.

The pair avoided areas of heavy ground fire where possible, though they made repeated runs on several gun positions in order to draw fire away from the helicopter. Despite hits to Schade’s Skyraider, they suppressed 37-mm. AAA fire long enough for Lt Bill Waechter’s Sea King to reach Adams. While the helicopter hovered overhead its crew lowered a jungle penetrator, (essentially a heavy weight with folding seats capable of being lowered through the dense jungle foliage) and pulled Adams to safety. As Adams arrived in the cabin of the SH-3, ground fire erupted.

Lt Waechter was on his first mission over North Vietnam. “Is it always this rough?” he asked, not knowing that this was Adams’ second shoot down in less than nine months.

Less than four hours later, Adams was back aboard the Oriskany. The rest of the strike landed much earlier and they all crowded around him to welcome him home. Fellow squadron members, each carrying mock missiles and guns lined up around him as he walked their gauntlet. “No one gets shot down twice,” they hollered. As the war ground on, they would be proven wrong on more than one occasion.

Adams mused over the events, “The carrier isn’t much, but it beats being paraded around Hanoi with a rope around your neck.”

The navy declared that after ejecting twice, Adams could not fly over North Vietnam anymore. He was transferred back to the U.S. where he became a member of the navy’s aerial demonstration team, The Blue Angels.