Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 22, 2025
The atmosphere around the Duluth Municipal Airport was closely akin to Santa Anita the instant the starting gates open. I've been around when jet interceptors scramble and you can twang the tension with your finger. As the people on the ground watched they could first see the flame of the jet's afterburner disappear into the night.
The turn was too tight for a jet, and at the speed the target was traveling it would have to be a jet if it were an airplane. Now the target was heading back north. The F-94 pilot gave the engine full power and cut in the afterburner to give chase. The radar operator in the back seat got a good radar lock-on. Later he said, "It was just as solid a lock-on as you get from a B-36."
But the "Tally-ho" had no more been given than the big blob of light on the target began to pull away from the fighters and was soon off the scope. The pilots kept visual contact, though, and the radio provided the details of the chase to the now blind crew in the radar room. The two jets bored north, with afterburner on, and the needles on their machmeters passed the "1.0" mark.
The pilot saw a light right where the ARTC radar said a target was located; he cut in the F-94's afterburner and went after it, but just like the light that the F-94 had chased near Langley AFB, this one also disappeared. All during the chase the radar operator in the F-94 was trying to get the target on his set but he had no luck.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking