The Amazing Military Aviation Life of F-4 Wild Weasel Al Palmer

His Army Air Corps grandfather received his pilot license from Orville Wright and knew aviation legends like Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart. His father served in the Air Force and in Korea. And third generation aviator Al Palmer flew fighter jets in the Air Force--including the famed F-4 "Wild Weasel" missions during the Vietnam War--then later changed to becoming a naval aviator in the Navy flying the new F-14 Tomcats off of aircraft carriers.

We're turning the tables on this episode of STARRS and Stripes and interviewing the host himself, CDR Al Palmer, US Navy ret to learn about his incredible family military aviation legacy, his own combat service as an aviator, and later creating and running aviation museums. There he helped preserve important aviation history that he and his family lived through, serving from World War I to the Cold War. 

Al recounts his hair-raising F-4 Phantom Wild Weasel missions flown during the Vietnam War including Operation Linebacker where their mission was to draw out the enemy's missiles so they couldn't be used against the bombers. He discusses firsthand accounts of tactical maneuvers, the dangers of air combat, and the brotherhood among pilots. From the psychological challenges to the tactical brilliance required to outsmart enemy defenses, his stories give a vivid picture of bravery and camaraderie in the face of overwhelming odds.

When the war ended, Al did something most people didn't do at the time: a lateral move from the Air Force to the Navy. There he flew the iconic F-14 Tomcat--brand new at the time--off of carriers. After his service, he recounts his contributions to preserving military aviation history running the San Diego Aviation Museum, creating from scratch the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum, securing rare artifacts, his interactions with historic aviation and space figures, and his job running the National Atomic Testing Museum. Al has an amazing military aviation heritage and story.

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Episode Transcript

Col. Ron Scott, USAF re (00:13):
Welcome to another Sars and Stripes
podcast.
Today we're going to dosomething a little different.
I'm Ron Scott, President andCEO of STARS, and today we're
going to introduce you to ourhost, Al Palmer.
Al's got a remarkable historyand really brings the type of
credentials and been thereexperiences that makes him a

(00:34):
very powerful host for ourseries of podcasts.
So today we're going to startoff with a slideshow and Al is
going to walk us through that togive us a feel for his
background, and we'll have aconversation in between Al.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret (00:52):
Well, on , thank you for the introduction
and let me tell our audiencehere how delighted I am to be
here with Colonel Scott today.
It's great to be in company ofheroes and people who know
what's going on with ourmilitary these days, and it's
good to be the host of thispodcast.
We're off to a good start, Ithink so, just as background for

(01:14):
those who are going to befaithfully listening to this
episode of one person's journeythrough life in the military.
I grew up in a family that wasmilitary.
Journey through life in themilitary.
I grew up in a family that wasmilitary.
My grandfather was an early ArmyAir Corps aviator, joined the
National Guard in 2006, I'msorry, 1906 in San Francisco,

(01:37):
when they had the earthquake.
He joined the Army Reserves atthe time and then later went
full-time into the army in 1917,at the end of World War I.
He was an aviator, got hispilot's license signed by
Orville Wright and then flew andinstructed pilots on the west

(01:58):
coast in World War I and did thesame thing in World War II and
then spent a little bit of timeon the front in Italy and at
North Africa at the end of WorldWar II.
But one of the things that wasremarkable about him was he was
a squadron commander of apursuit squadron at Crissy Field

(02:18):
, which was in San Francisco.
The time was the early 20s.
In those days there were airracers that were coming into San
Francisco, flying in and out ofSan Francisco across the ocean
to Hawaii in adult air races.
But it was also a time whenCharles Lindbergh completed his

(02:39):
flight across the Atlantic andcame in too, and his squadron
would host people like Lindberghas he toured around the country
and then the people who were inthe air races he helped take
care of their aircraft too,because Crissy Field was the
only aviation installation forthe Army on the west coast at

(03:00):
the time.
He also established the firstArmy Reserve Unit in the Army
there at Crissy Field.
Well, one of the occasions hehad was when Amelia Earhart came
to town and she was doing oneof her jaunts across the ocean
in 1927.
And actually she flew acrossthe Atlantic also in 1927.

(03:23):
Actually she flew across theAtlantic also in 1927.
Just before she did that, mygrandfather had her out one
night when they had her aircraftthere.
They were taken care of, wentto a hotel in San Francisco and
made her an honorary major inthe Air Corps and also pinned
wings on her.
They bought her a brand newnice outfit to wear and that's

(03:47):
the slide number five, cindy, ifyou've got that.
So they had dinner and theymade her an honorary major in
the Air Corps and pinned wingson her and she was delighted
about that.
But then she went off andacross the Atlantic and so that
was an episode that there was atelegram.

(04:08):
She wrote back and told thesquadron about that and they
commended her for being thecommander of their squadron and
doing a great thing like flyingacross the ocean.
Problem with that was thatphotograph that you're looking
at now got out into the press.
It made its way to the frontpages of the san francisco
examiner and that was thenpicked up by a, an author who

(04:33):
was writing a book about amelia,and he said aha, smoking gun,
that's amelia erhart beingsigned up to go spy on the
Japanese in 1937.
Well, I knew it wasn't in 1937.
It was actually in 1928.
And that made the papers and wefinally got it straightened out
for the longest time.

(04:54):
Some of that's still around.
This was part of the conspiracyof the United States to get
Amelia to go spy on the Japanese, that didn't work out so well,
amelia to go spy on the Japanese.
That didn't work out so well.
The next slide Now, if I canask you.
You know you look at that imagethere and Amelia is surrounded

(05:15):
by four aviators four maleaviators and when you look at
the facial expressions and thebody language, there is a
tremendous expression of respectfor a woman who was a pioneer
in aviation and I think it saysa lot about, even in those days,

(05:35):
an appreciation for merit overother things that tend to take
our concentration away frommerit these days.
So anyway, I just want to makethat observation.
Oh, absolutely.
And in fact they were sodelighted to have her they
bought this outfit for her.
She came in a dress.
They gave her this outfit,dressed her up and then they

(05:55):
pinned the wings and the major'sleaves on her to make an
honorary major out of her.
So you're right, that's howthey treated things in those
days.
They liked people who wereadventurous, heroic and also had
great merit, as these womenparticularly were flying
aircraft in those days, standingup on the ground out there.

(06:27):
He was one of the judges for theDole air races that they
initiated to really extendaviation at the time, and this
was in 1927.
And you can see this Navylieutenant up there who looks
rather old for a lieutenant, butanyway, he was one of the
officials there conducting theair races.
So the next slide is a pictureof my dad.

(06:48):
Now my dad was a flyingsergeant in his father's pursuit
squadron there at Crissy Field.
So my grandfather taught myfather how to fly in a Jenny and
he did that and got throughflight training but had an
accident.
And he did that and got throughflight training but had an
accident, got some oyster shellsin his eye from doing a ground

(07:08):
loop right there at Crissy Field.
So he became a maintenanceofficer for the rest of his
career.
But he was in Korea with F-86sand F-80s, later went into the
missile business and became oneof the first tactical missileers
in the Air Force.
So he retired.

(07:29):
Both of them retired ascolonels.
Then there was me.
I was the third one in line.
They expected me, I think, toprobably get into the services
right away, but I was not reallyready for that.
After was after I graduatedfrom college, I was headed off
to medical school.
I thought.
Unfortunately, the draft caughtup with me and I got a draft

(07:54):
physical was being drafted andso I got my uncle, who was a
lieutenant colonel in thePentagon, to get me into the Air
Force real quickly so I couldget into officer training school
, which I did.
Finished officer training school, figured I'd successfully
dodged the draft and I didn'thave much to worry about.
Well, after getting out ofofficer training school, in this

(08:17):
next slide I was headed off topilot training, I thought, and
was going to be out and flyingheavy someplace and not having
to go to war.
Instead I found myself goingthrough navigator training and
becoming an electronic warfareofficer and then heading right
off to the war.
So instead of dodging bulletsin a foxhole, here I am dodging

(08:41):
surface-to-air missiles andaircraft fire and flying over
bad guy territory a single shipwhich turned out to be quite an
adventure.
But along the way I found abeautiful girl that I met in
officer training school.
We fell in love right away, gotmarried and she became the
partner here for the rest of thetime and she still is to to

(09:04):
this day.
My beautiful bride, susan,you've done good, yeah well,
that's what she says you, youdid well.
So, uh, and people didn't thinkit was gonna last.
I mean, we only knew each otherprobably for a month or so, uh,
and had, when she was printingup all the invitations, she
wasn't sure how to spell my nameright.
So that shows you how quicklythat all happened.

(09:26):
But that next slide shows nowI'm off to war.
I hadn't really expected it.
A young guy in his 20s, brandnew second lieutenant, and I'm
heading off to Vietnam, inThailand.
This artwork here, this was apainting done by one of our

(09:47):
pilots and it shows you a littlebit about what we were thinking
at the time.
Here's family, there's duty,honor and country.
You know you're always TDY, ontemporary duty someplace or
leave, and there's always thepresence of war at your back, if

(10:07):
not in front of you, and sothis kind of portrays that a
little bit.
Next slide so here I am.
You know there's a great littlehero photo that I used to take
these things all the time justto impress everybody back home.
So this was an official photo Itook, young Lieutenant standing
in front of his airplane withparachute and all that.

(10:27):
So that was the beginning ofthat.

Col. Ron Scott, USAF ret (10:32):
What kind of an airplane was that and
what was its function?

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret (10:36):
So this was an EB-66.
It was a medium bomber that wasdeveloped during the Cold War.
It was a tactical bomber thathad a nuclear mission.
Most of them were stationed inEurope and at the end of the 50s
and 60s they put them in theboneyard in Arizona Davis-Motham

(10:58):
Air Force Base where theystayed for many years.
As Vietnam started heating upand we got busy.
In the mid-60s they broughtthem out, reconfigured those as
electronic warfare aircraft.
We had two kinds.
One was a reconnaissanceaircraft.
We'd go out and find thesignals and find out where the
bad guys were, where the radarswere.

(11:19):
The other part of it was we hadactive jammers that were very
powerful and we'd take those andaccompany the strike forces and
kind of shield them from theradar sites on the ground, and
we carried some prettysophisticated equipment.

Col. Ron Scott, USAF ret (11:35):
So anyway, for a hundred minutes
and for our viewers, real quick.
Al, when you talked about goingout and picking up signals
talked about going out andpicking up signals you could
tell by the sound in the headsetthe type of radar that was
looking at you and, given thetype of radar, the type of
weapon system that it wasassociated with, and so that was

(11:57):
kind of a way of processing andunderstanding the environment
that you were flying up against.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret (12:04):
Oh, yes, absolutely, and in the
reconnaissance mode, we'd bringthat back, and the guys in the
intelligence shops would put allthat together and they could
triangulate the signals andfigure out where they were and,
as you say, ron, what kind ofradars they were.
The ones we were looking formost of the time, though, were

(12:26):
the anti-aircraft sites, andalso the surface-to-air missile,
the SAM sites, and those arethe ones that were doing the
most damage to us, so our jobwas to either find them and then
jam them and put them out ofaction, if we could.
So the slide number 12, cindy,that's the end of the tour.
That was 100 missions.
At the end of that, you taxiback in one day and they bring

(12:48):
the fire trucks out and hose youdown and you get to go home.
100 missions was the standardat the time.
In the early days of Vietnam,they changed it to a year time.
I was there, so I got 100missions, but I did it about a
month before the year was upanyway, so it didn't make much
difference, but that's what weusually did in those days.

(13:08):
So then, from there it was fromeb-66 medium bombers in a
jamming stuff to f-4 fighters.
The next slide in Japan and thisis kind of a gratuitous photo
of F-4s flying in front of Fujiand it's nice and clear.

(13:29):
It didn't usually look that wayMost of the time, as Ron knows,
because he was the commander inYokota Air Base, where this was
most days.
You couldn't see Mount Fujifrom Japan, from the Tokyo area,
because there was too muchpollution in the air.
But I kind of like this photobecause it's a line right past
Japan.

(13:49):
But the next slide showssomething that's a part of this
adventure.
So, being in fighters now, wehad the primary role of
defending things in the Pacific.
We were the tip of the spear,so to speak, with conventional
as well as nuclear emissions inJapan and the Pacific.

(14:10):
So we were on temporary dutyall the time.
Everywhere Korea, taiwan,philippines, any place else that
they had a problem we wouldshow up with our F-4s.
And here's a picture of meleaving on another one of my
trips with my B4 bag, as my wifekind of watched and wondered

(14:32):
what was going to happen when Iwas going to come home again.
And that's a tough thing onfamilies.
We had a real issue with thatbecause we were just gone all
the time and, worse than that,that in a shooting war or when
you're doing nuclear weaponswork, you know that's a bit more
of a challenge.
So we stayed there for about ayear and a half and that was

(14:54):
again a long time away from homeand stuff.
But uh, there was a period injapan when the the air force and
the navy were making more noisearound Tokyo with their jets
and the worst part about thatwas the Navy put a couple of
jets, the F-4s, into apartmentbuildings there which didn't go

(15:16):
over real big with the localpopulace.
So they kind of politelyinvited us to leave Japan and we
did One morning.
Morning we all went out and gotin our jets.
The boss, the one-star general,saluted us and said take off
and go down to Okinawa, which wedid.
So this is a picture of usarriving in Okinawa.

(15:37):
So while I was there I was inthree squadrons the 35th
Tactical Fighter Squadron, 36th,the 80th, which was a Wild
Weasel Squadron, and then weleft there and went down to
Okinawa and regenerated as the67th Tactical Fighter Squadron
and that was the squadron thatwas very active in F-105s in

(15:59):
Southeast Asia.
So we kind of took over theirrole and did that.

Col. Ron Scott, USAF ret (16:05):
And what year approximately is this
Al?

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret (16:17):
This is 1971 when we left Japan, you
know, and at that time you know,the F-4s were still relatively
new airplane.
The earlier ones we flew weremade in 1963.
So it wasn't getting to be anold clunker, but they were
starting to age a little bit.
The aircraft had to bemaintained.
Well, some of these have beenin Vietnam and re configured to
a wide-wheels aircraft with someextra gear, but they still were

(16:39):
exposed to all the humidity andthe activity of flying in
Southeast Asia.
So they sometimes had littleproblems with them.
It wasn't unusual to take offand maybe your tanks would drop
off at the end of the runway anda small fireball would erupt
and the local population wouldsay were they bombing us?

(17:00):
No, it's just an electricalproblem.
But that was life, uh, back inokinawa.
So, so for there.
We were there for about a year,uh, and again gone all the time
.
Most at the end, in 1972, theAir Force then sent us off as a

(17:26):
Wild Weasel detachment to KaratAir Force Base in Thailand, and
the idea was that they wererunning out of Wild Weasel
aircraft, the F-105s that werethere.
They'd suffered some pretty badlosses.
In fact the wild weasels as awhole suffered about 50% loss

(17:47):
rates in the war and they lostalmost all of the first wild
weasels that went over there.
So our job was-.

Col. Ron Scott, USAF ret (17:56):
Now, when you say a loss, we're
talking where they were actuallyshot down, right.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret (18:01):
Yes, so a fifth person, a fifth person,
yeah, and not many of them wereactually captured in that first
group.
It was kind of a stunning loss,but it showed how effective the
surface-to-air missiles thatthey got from Russia actually
were the surface-to-air missilesthat they got from Russia
actually were.
So the next slide Once we gotinto country, we were working

(18:29):
daily and we were chasing sitesdown, shooting SAM sites when we
found them.
We did quite a few of those.
But as the end of 1972 startedto approach, approach the peace
talks in Paris started to fail.
The administration thought theycould be rational with the
North Vietnamese, get them tocome to the table, free our POWs

(18:52):
and gracefully get out of thewar with us.
Didn't work that way and so atthe end, when President Nixon
was elected, they finallydecided Nixon did to go in and
end it forcefully and decisively, which we did in Operation
Linebacker 2, which is alsoknown as the Christmas bombing

(19:13):
campaign, so that was 11.

Col. Ron Scott, USAF ret (19:17):
Yeah, let me you know.
What you're describing issomething that a lot of people
don't understand War, asClausewitz said, is politics by
other means, and so those werepolitical decisions.
Number one they got us intoVietnam, and it was a political
decision.
They got us out.
Political decision that got usout.

(19:42):
Now, in between all thosethings, as you're in theater and
you're aware that you're in amission that is suffering huge
attrition rates, what was itthat motivated you to strap on
that jet for the next mission?

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret (19:56):
Well, it was the people back home I mean
our families, but not ourfamilies, just people back in
America that had to come to aconclusion on this, and we were,
frankly, fighting communism.
It wasn't just the NorthVietnamese, it was a little
larger than that, because theSoviets were supplying missiles

(20:17):
to them and ammunition andequipment.
So too were the Chinese, and Ithink the administration was
afraid that they would get intoa much larger conflict if they
didn't do something aboutVietnam.
So the pressure was there onthe end just to end it get out
of there and away.
We'd go that.
Next slide 17, cindy.

(20:39):
Well, this is my partner incrime On the left, tom Floyd.
He and I were crewed as wildweasels throughout the war and
we did some pretty good work upthere.
But this was after our veryfirst wild weasel mission in
Vietnam in the F4s.

(21:00):
And so, coming back, you know,our crew chief met us with a
couple of beers and wecongratulated ourselves and said
, hey, okay, maybe it's time togo home now, but the hard work
was just starting.
Next slide so this was ourtrusty F-474 that our crew

(21:25):
chiefs came out one day andnamed for them with some nose
art.
They called it brain damage,which I thought was pretty
appropriate Because we wereactually trying to do that and
putting the surface-to-airmissile radar sites out of
business.
We were trying to put theirbrain out of business so that
they couldn't do anything.
So we thought that was prettygood.

(21:48):
But the other part of this storywas in November of 72, right
before Operation Linebacker 2started.
We were coming back from anight mission over Hanoi.
Four aircraft and eight guys.
We debriefed with themaintenance guys and then we
headed back to our quarters onbase there.
But it was like 1.30 in themorning, so it was dark out and

(22:12):
no one else was around, and sowe all had bicycles.
We were riding our bikes backover to our hoochies where we
stayed, all had bicycles, ridingour bikes back over to our
hoochies where we stayed, and,uh, unbeknownst to us, there was
a uh, an nco who was taking hisgirlfriend back to the base.
He'd had a little bit too muchto drink because he was running
the nco club on the base.
So he came screaming down thisroad without his lights on and

(22:35):
ran right through the middle ofa line of ducks going across the
road.
And guess who he hit, yourstruly, and I went about 20 feet
up in the air and landed in apile on the concrete.
They thought I was dead becauseI wasn't moving too much and so
I probably had a concussionalthough the flight surgeon

(22:55):
never would want anybody to knowthat.
But they had to stitch me up,send me back to Okinawa for a
little recovery work with Susan.
She got me back into shape, andabout five days later I'm back
in country again, all patched up.
But one of the problems was Ihad about 30 stitches in the
back of my right thigh, and so Iended up flying all those

(23:17):
nights of linebacker withstitches that would come unglued
because we were pulling a lotof Gs up there too.
And we'd come back after amission and my crew chief would
sit there and rag on me a littlebit about dirtying up his
airplane with blood, you know,and he had to go change the seat
cushions in the airplane thatway.

(23:38):
But that just shows you back toyour question, ron.
Why do you do it?
How do you do it?
That's how you do it.
There's nobody else to do it.
You have a job to do.
You've been trained to do it,you're dedicated to do it, and
all of our guys went up there.
Nobody fussed, nobody had areal problem.

(23:58):
The next slide.
So this is one of the paintingsthat somebody did about the
B-52s during Linebacker II, andyou can see there's a bunch of
fighters going down the bottomhere F-4s and 105s.
That was us.
We were trying to get inbetween them and the
surface-to-air missiles thatwere coming up so that we could

(24:20):
shoot them, or, if nothing else,maybe they'd shoot at us
instead of them because we weremore maneuverable, so we could
defeat the missiles where theB-52s really couldn't.
I mean, they were sitting ducks, even though they had a lot of
jamming that they could use toconceal themselves.
It wasn't enough when theystarted shooting off missiles.

(24:41):
And this particular night Ithink this was done the first
night we had 165 surface-to-airmissiles in the air at one time
while they were doing theirstrikes at their target times.

Col. Ron Scott, USAF ret (24:55):
Wow, and now the B-52s were.
At what altitude?
Roughly.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret (25:01):
They were up around 35,000 to 40,000
feet.
So what happened, ron, was theyall took off from Guam and also
from Thailand at Utapau AirBase and then they formed up on
the way in.
There were three aircraft to acell and these cells would all

(25:22):
come through at the samealtitude about a mile, and trail
as depicted in this painting,and then they drop their bombs
and then turn and go back in thesame direction out.
Well, you could have put afour-year-old on the ground with
a stopwatch and figured outwhen the next one was going to
come through and what altitudethey were at and what headings

(25:45):
they were going to come in onand then go back out on.
So they lost quite a fewairplanes that way.
So on the third night of the 11nights, I was up there with Tom
and we came in early off thetanker.
We always came in early.
Actually, we were the firstones in and the last ones out

(26:08):
when they were doing the bombingup there.
So we came in and as we did,the MiGs came down out of
Phookian Airfield, which wasjust north of Hanoi.
We didn't know that right away,but as we came down there was a

(26:31):
chaff flight that was droppingmetal chaff that was designed to
act like tinsel on a Christmastree.
It gets in the way of the radarsignals, breaks them up and
it's like a big blanket and itcovers the radar, the sites, so
theoretically they can't seepeople.
That's why they were droppingit.
The problem was they had windsthat were over 100 miles an hour
at altitude and the winds wereblowing the chaff right out.

(26:53):
But these guys didn't.
They weren't too worried aboutthat.
The f-4s were, were seeding.
This chap came through nearlysupersonic, and they were going.
They were moving fast, goingacross the migs, came down from
the north and they missed, theyovershot them.
And guess who was right therewhen they overshot us?
One airplane and five migs, uh,within a five-mile range of us,

(27:20):
and so we ended up actuallygetting on the tails of two of
the MiGs at different times.
The first time we got a MiG-21right at 12 o'clock, fired a
missile at him.
The missile didn't tune and itwent right by him, but it went
right by his cockpit.

(27:40):
He must have seen it because itwas still lit and so he boogied
out, went back home.
Next guy came up behind us.
We've got him as well.
The next missile that we hadthe last one we had air-to-air
missile wouldn't fire and itjust was on the aircraft.
It didn't work.
So we thought real hard aboutshooting one of our other

(28:02):
missiles.
That was one of the SAM guidedmissiles.
But that was not going to helpus in what we were trying to do
that night.
So we just gave up and he wenthome and we went on our way and
did our job that night.

Col. Ron Scott, USAF ret (28:16):
So you find five MiGs and you're in a
one single ship formation.
Yeah, it was one V5.
And you didn't turn away andrun.
We've got ammunition, we'regoing after these guys.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret (28:31):
Well, one of the mistakes that was
made, we were blacked out.
We were smart enough to knowthat when we got into bad guy
territory we weren't going tohave lights on and we also
weren't in the afterburner.
But the MiGs, in their effortsto catch up with these F-4s that
were dropping the chaff, goingsupersonic, they went into
afterburner and as soon as theydid we saw them and just pulled

(28:53):
up behind them.
It's like a big spotlight.

Col. Ron Scott, USAF ret (29:00):
And we caught that and just zeroed in
on it.
So Al the Weasel missions weresingle ship missions.
You didn't go out in two shipformations.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret (29:08):
We went out in two ship and four ship
when we took off, but as soon aswe got off the tanker we'd
split because we all hadindividual targets.
We had other times, during thedaytime day, vfr.
Sometimes we'd fly two shipstogether, but during linebacker
we didn't.
It was just you were all thereby yourself.

(29:28):
You were between thesurface-to-air missile sites
many of them and the bad guysand Cindy, if you'll go down to
slide 20.
So this was our office, thiswas our plane 474 on a tanker,

(29:52):
and this is how we wereconfigured.
We had external tanks, threebags of gas on the airplane and
the only other stations thatwere open were the wing stations
in Borden, and we carried theShrike missiles there.
The AGM-45 Shrikes weredesigned to home in on radar
signals.
So whether it was asurface-to-air missile site or

(30:14):
whether it was a AAA site, anaircraft site, we could shoot
them with these missiles andthen head away and go home Next
slide.
So the painting that you sawearlier, this is what it looked
like on a map.
The red dots are allsurface-to-air missile sites,

(30:40):
the blue dots are airfields andthis is what we had to cope with
.
The circle is around Hanoi,which we called Bullseye and we
used that as a reference pointso that we would know, when they
were calling out the targets,at least the airborne targets,
where they were.
But this just gives you an ideaof the landscape.
The next slide will show you…Before you move off that slide,
at least airborne targets wherethey were.
But this just to give you anidea of the landscape.

Col. Ron Scott, USAF ret (30:59):
The next slide will show you Now, al
, before you move off that slide.
Now, for our viewers, hanoi waspretty far north than the North
Vietnam it was, and how closeon that map are we to the
Chinese border.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret (31:18):
The very top of that map is the Chinese
border.
In fact, if you look on theupper right hand corner, there
you can see the brown line.
That's the border with China.
So it wasn't very far.
And we had a night where one ofour guys was being shot at up
there by a triple A site went upthere, put it out of business
and flew right over the border.

(31:39):
The word got back fromWashington that they wanted to
see that crew and find out whythey were attacking the Chinese.
Well turns out we didn't knowthey were Chinese or not.
Someone was shooting at us andwe're gonna shoot back at them.
Thank you very much.
So wisdom prevailed in that andthe way we went.
But what I wanna show you hereis the red dots being

(32:02):
surface-to-air missile sites.
They each had a range of about20 to 25 miles, but this is what
the coverage looked like overthe target area.
That was solid.
There was no place you couldhide from a surface-to-air
missile site that night, andthat's kind of what it looked
like.
You can hide from a surface airmissile site that night, and
that's kind of what it lookedlike.
So if you go back down to thenext slide, these were a little

(32:27):
out of order.
These were some of the MiGsthat we were against working
with up there.
This was the MiG-21, prettycapable airplane, hard to see,
but it also had some limitationsof its own.
One of them, you can see, isthere's not a lot of rear
visibility in it, but they're apretty awesome adversary.

Col. Ron Scott, USAF ret (32:50):
And for our viewers, just to give
them a feel for the type ofthinking that has to go into
maneuvering against an aircraftlike that.
The American air crews wouldstudy diagrams and they would
understand do we engage them inthe vertical or the horizontal?
And so the vertical you've gotG-forces that can sharpen your

(33:14):
turn when you're pulling downfrom above, or if it's
horizontal.
A lot of that was reallydependent upon how quickly you
could accelerate or decelerateand maintain turns inside the
other aircraft, and so I'm justgiving you a sample for the type
of information processing thatthese crews were having to

(33:35):
process while they're up thereengaged in these types of
missions, that these crews werehaving to process while they're
up there engaged in these typesof missions.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret (33:41):
So we're talking too, ron, about day and
night.
The North Vietnamese, theirpilots, were pretty good during
the daytime.
They trained during the day.
They didn't do much training intheir Soviet instruction at
night.
They didn't like to fly atnight and we didn't fly much at
night, so that was kind of aneven thing.

(34:01):
So when we were up there nearLinebacker at night, these guys
were probably terrified becausehere's all these missiles coming
past them and it's nighttime,what do I do?
I can't see anybody.
So they just bugged out andwent on home that way.
So that was pretty much the endof it for us.
We worked through the end ofLinebacker 2, which ended in

(34:24):
December.
Oh, by the way, we gave duringthat 11-day timeframe around
Christmas.
We gave the North VietnameseChristmas off.
We stopped flying on the 23rdand didn't resume again until
the 25th, after Christmas.
You know well they didn'treally like Christmas that much

(34:45):
anyway, and why we ever gavethat off to them.
I think that was for the folksback home.
So we didn't look like we wereogres bombing them during
Christmas.
But what that did was it allowedthem to rearm.
We almost ran them out ofmissiles and anti-aircraft
ammunition.
We gave them a couple of daysto get it back, which they did,

(35:05):
and then we went back again.
They're shooting at us one moretime, next slide.
So this is the bloodshed that Icarried.
This was a polite way to saywhen you were shot down.
Hey, I need a little help here.
If you'll help me out, ourgovernment will be generous to
you and give you rewards fortaking care of us or letting us

(35:27):
go to places where we can getout of trouble.
Thankfully, we never had to usethat Next slide, so this was
our plain brain damage.
474.
It had the distinction ofengaging the only MIGs that we
ever saw up there in F-4s on twodifferent occasions.

(35:48):
One was Tom and I, and then BobTidwell and Denny Haney on
another night, in a very similarway.
So this aircraft actually endedup having four silver stars to
its credit.

Col. Ron Scott, USAF ret (36:04):
Before you depart from the slide, tell
us about the medals in theupper left-hand corner.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret (36:11):
Well, those are silver stars.
That's the third highest medalthat you can get for.
That's the third highest medalthat you can get for hero,
heroism, gallantry, next to amedal of honor.
Medal of honor, the servicecrosses and then silver stars.
So that's usually reserved forpeople who are taking care of

(36:32):
airplanes, which we did.
Although we didn't get kills,we got them to all go home and I
guess somebody figured that wasa relatively equivalent outcome
.

Col. Ron Scott, USAF ret (36:42):
The patches here on the right.
Yeah, go ahead.
I was just gonna ask you aboutit.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret (36:48):
Yeah, so the patches here in the white
is our wild weasel patches.
It's the weasel, but he's, youknow, his hair is all standing
up because he's scared to death.
And the terminology on thebottom.
There's a little short storythat goes with that.
The first guys that they putinto the Wild Weasel aircraft
was an F-100 pilot and anelectronic warfare officer who
had been flying B-47 bombers inSAC.

(37:10):
So they took these guys out tothe aircraft for the first time
in Southern California in secret.
They had the secretary of theAir Force there and all the
bigwigs were there to introducethem to their new airplane.
The Hun pilot was pretty goodwith it because it was a F-100.
But the UO wasn't so sure andsomebody asked him what he

(37:34):
thought about and he says wait aminute, you want to do what?
You want to put me in the backseat of a fighter with a crazy
fighter pilot.
You know, and you're going tohave us do what?
Go troll for surface airmissiles so we can what?
Shoot them.
You know, you got to be kiddingme, sort of.
That's the unclassified versionof the YGBSM.

(37:57):
I think our viewers might beable to figure that out, but
that became our motto.
We actually came up withanother one, which was WTIAFB,
which was a little bit moresophisticated, and that was one
of our guys who had his eyeswatered when I came back and he

(38:21):
says what the blank am I doingin this business?
And that became a subsequentversion of that.
So, anyway, so that was thewild, weasel business.
We all got back home but, uh we, they gave us about two weeks
off after we got back to Okinawato our wives and families.
And then, uh, bob Titus and wehave a series on him.
We did a podcast on Earthquake.

(38:42):
Our boss sent us off to Taiwanand there we took over for the
Republic of Taiwan because theyhad lost their F-5 fighters to
the South Vietnamese at the endof the war.
They loaned them their fightersso they could win the war.
They didn't, and the NorthVietnamese then got the aircraft
.
Well, what that did to Taiwanwas it put them at a really

(39:06):
disadvantage with the mainlandChinese.
They couldn't defend themselvesvery well.
They had F-104 fighters, butthat's okay, but they didn't do
very well in dogfights.
So they sent us over there tobe that supplement to them and
we would set air defense alertwith them and watch for the
Chinese to do something, and itwasn't unusual for the klaxons

(39:30):
to go off.
Everybody goes out to theirairplanes.
The guys in the F-104s wouldtake off, come back a couple
hours later without any missileson them, wow, and we'd just sit
there and look pretty and doour job.
The point there is, we weretaking care of Taiwan at a time
when they really needed it and Ithink we kind of years later we

(39:53):
had 5,000 people at the base wewere at and aircraft and
munitions of all kinds,especially some special weapons,
but we were there to defendthem on their territory and we
kind of abandoned them, which Iwish we hadn't done, anyway.
So after that it was time for meto go back to the United States

(40:15):
.
Unfortunately, the Air Force,in its its wisdom at the end of
the war, decided they needed toput anybody that was coming
along into B-52s because theylost all their people.
They all quit after the end ofthe war too.
So that was my orders was to goto B-52s, which launched me

(40:36):
into a big campaign not to dothat.
I fought it as much as I couldthroughout.
The Air Force didn't succeed.
So the Air Force sent me up tothe far north, up to a beautiful
KI Sawyer Air Force Base onLake Superior and it took me
about a year to get out.
I finally got a directinter-service transfer with a

(40:58):
lot of work to go to the Navy.
So next slide.
So I'm saying goodbye to theAir Force, shaking hands on my
way out, and now it's off to theUnited States Navy.
And the deal was at the strokeof midnight.
I was sworn out of the AirForce as an Air Force captain
and into the Navy as a Navylieutenant an Air Force captain

(41:19):
and into the Navy as a Navylieutenant.
And then I got eight days oftravel time to go to fighter
town in California and San Diegoand start training in Navy
aircraft there, in F-4s.
And this picture, number 27, isme in my new uniform.
And that was kind of funbecause the Navy had all kinds
of fun uniforms.

(41:40):
You know the Air Force only hadbasically about two or three
uniforms.
You know the Navy had a wholeslew of them, but they all look
pretty good and this is one ofthem here.
So this is getting used to that.
Next slide.
But what I had to do was getused to my new airfield, which
had a little less room on itthan what I was used to on long

(42:02):
you know, 10,000, 20,000 footrunways.
The aircraft carrier turned outto be a real challenge and an
avia was, in a way, because thejargon was different,
terminology was different andyou had to learn a whole new set
of things about working off anaircraft carrier at sea.
And one of the more dauntingthings was once you took off and

(42:25):
got out a little ways.
There ain't nothing else around, there's no landmarks, there's
no other airfield.
You're all by yourself out inthis great, big, huge ocean and
after a while you can't see aship.
You don't know where you are.
You do have instruments whichwill tell you electronically
where the ship might be, butthat doesn't always work in far

(42:47):
out distances.
So that became a challenge.
That was something to get usedto.
Next slide hey Al, did we haveGPS?

Col. Ron Scott, USAF ret (42:55):
at that time.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret (42:57):
No, that was the problem.
We had TACANs TACANs, was it?
And before you would take offin a carrier, the ship would
give you its projected positionwhen you were going to be coming
back.
They had a planned route.
So they kind of give you aprojected position and you put

(43:17):
that in your navigation systemand that's where you presumably
were going to be.
Didn't always work out that way.
If you had to get more gasbecause you're running low now
you're going to be miles off andagain, you know your distance.
You know isn't that great andit wasn't unusual for people to
be kind of looking around for anaircraft carrier to land on.

Col. Ron Scott, USAF ret (43:39):
Well, and then also the intensity.
I mean, you're not justlaunching one airplane, you're
launching multiple airplanes andthen recovering multiple
airplanes.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret (43:49):
You are.
The teamwork on the deck had tobe pretty tight.
Oh it was, and honestly, ron,it was like watching a symphony,
play music, watching all thepeople and what they were doing
on a flight deck, coordinatingthat and making sure everything

(44:09):
worked.
It's something really to behold.
This is what we were doing itin.
This is our trusty Tomcat F-14,like you probably might remember
from Top Gun.
This was a brand-new aircraft,by the way, when Top Gun was
filmed, and so I was in one ofthe first squadrons that went
out to sea Next slide.
And this is it.

(44:30):
This was Fighter Squadron 24,which I was in.
This was the first F-14squadron to be deployed with the
Constellation.
Now, if you look at this verycarefully, I'm right down.
If you look where the star ison the airplane, I'm right down
at the bottom there in the firstrow, but right above me two

(44:51):
guys right above me, right wherethe star is on this aircraft,
is a guy named Bob Willard.
Bob Willard was a lieutenant,junior grade, like a first
Lieutenant in the Air Force,brand new guy out of flight
training.
He'd been to the Naval Academy,played football, but he went on
to be a four-star Admiral incharge of the Pacific Command

(45:18):
and ended up being a prettyprominent guy in naval aviation.
But his other claim to fame washe was in charge of all the
filming of the Top Guns, all theaircraft in the movie Top Gun,
and so he's in the credits forthat.
If you ever see it, his namewill show up.
His call sign was Rat, ratWillard.

Col. Ron Scott, USAF ret (45:41):
So there you go.
I have to tell you, even thoughI was proud and honored to be
an Air Force aviator when TopGun came out, it's still one of
my favorite movies.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret (45:54):
Well, I can't tell you how popular that
was, ron, to get recruiting up.
I mean, it was a huge spike andeverybody wanted to do that.
I remember I was in San Diegoafter this exercise in F-14s,
after the movie came out in the80s, and we had dinner one night

(46:16):
at the officer's club there atMiramar, where Fighter Town was
where they filmed the movie.
They had a line of women at thefront gate which was probably
half a mile long waiting to getin so they could go find their
Top Gun guy at the officer'sclub, or maybe Tom Cruise if
they got lucky.
So that was something to behold.

(46:37):
So, anyway, so the next slide.
Well, this is.
This is again is a picture infront of the Tomcat, one of my
favorites, but that was it.
That was my last flight.
The next slide is me going offinto the sunset.

Col. Ron Scott, USAF ret (46:56):
Now I got to tell you that the Navy
was a lot more tolerant of goodmustaches in those days.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret (47:02):
Oh they were.
Oh yeah, they had a good numberin the Air Force.
In fact, I started mine when wegot to Vietnam.
I had it since then, probablybecause it was a lucky charm at
the time.
Yeah, you're right, ron, therewas a little bit of that going
around.
This is the Tomcat inAfterburner at sunset.

(47:27):
Fun picture, next one.
Well, this is on my I Love Mewall.
This is a little bit of thejourney, and I like to talk to
younger folks this way.
You know, ron, and we raise ourhands, all of us, when we do it
and we swear to defend theConstitution and defend the
country.
We don't know where we're goingexactly.

(47:48):
You know, some people might beauto mechanics, some people
might be, you know, adminofficers or fighter pilots, or
you know any number of differentpositions in the military.
But my point is we don't knowwhere we're going exactly and we
don't know exactly how we'regoing to work out, even if we

(48:14):
may not get out of it.

Col. Ron Scott, USAF ret (48:15):
So I keep this in mind a little bit.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret (48:22):
And how many hours did you end up
logging by the time you retired?
About 27, 2800 I guess.
Uh, almost all of it infighters, with the exception of
the b66s, and a lot and 500 plushours of combat time and 165
combat missions.
So this was the result of it.
And there's the medals and rankand all that stuff.

(48:42):
This is just to kind of remindmyself that I'm a split
personality half Air Force, halfNavy.
My family called me, you know,schizophrenic, but that's
another issue.
So after that it was retirementat 20 years.
My wife didn't want me to stickaround any longer than that.

(49:03):
She said you've got the first20, I've got the rest of it.
So we did that and I figured,well, I got to do something
other than sit around and playgolf all the time.
So I I ended up getting intothe museum business and we're,
we're we retired in haw, hawaii.
So they had an army museumthere in downtown Honolulu and I

(49:24):
became the executive directorof that, but then quickly got
hired away after a couple ofyears to go to the San Diego Air
and Space Museum in San Diego,which is one of the top five
aviation and space museums inthe country.
Pretty big operation.
And so while I was there, youcan see, on the right over here

(49:47):
is an SR-71 Blackbird.
On the left is the Delta Dart,which was a seaplane that the
Navy developed.
It was a jet seaplane, whichwas a seaplane that the Navy
developed.
It was a jet seaplane.
It didn't work out all thatwell, had a few issues, but you
can see that the SR-71, theBlackbird is a big airplane.

(50:07):
So when we thought about puttingthis out there on a stick, we
went to the city and the cityasked us for a diagram where
this was going to be, becauseit's in Balboa Park, which is a
big community park of museumsthere in San Diego.
So they asked for a diagram ofhow this was going to look.
We gave them a model, actually,but it was like a small model.

(50:31):
It didn't go out very far, itdidn't go out beyond where you
see the grass here, and so theygave us permission to put it
there.
Well, we finally got it in fromPalmdale where the aircraft
factory was, put it out there,and then they came by.
The mayor came by one day.
Holy smokes, that thing is hugeand it's sticking out way over

(50:52):
the parking lot.
You didn't tell us about thatdid you so anyway, but this is
the next slide is a bit of apicture of the inside of the
museum.
This, probably we put these bigairplanes up in there.
Let's go back real quick, cindy,to the previous picture, the

(51:20):
outside of the museum, the wallsthere, because this was part of
the 1938 Pan Americanexposition in Balboa Park.
This was the Ford building.
Ford Motor Company built thisto reveal their first V8
automobiles that year, but thewalls on the outside of this

(51:43):
enclosure are about 75, 80 feettall.
And then back again to the nextslide, so you can see inside
there's lots of room in this bigcourtyard inside.
What we had to do, though, wascrane the aircraft over the
outside wall and down into theinside, and then be able to put

(52:06):
them on posts that wepre-positioned, so that the
aircraft fit on their theirpillars.
It turned out to be a much moredifficult job than we thought,
especially when you get a littlebit of wind that comes into it
with a crane, but we, we did it,and the upper part.

Col. Ron Scott, USAF ret (52:24):
So did they bring it in from above.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret (52:27):
Yes, we had a great big crane and when
we did this some of that we hadan F4 over here, but on the
right hand side there's a Fordtri-motmotor which is a huge
airplane.
It's not all that heavy but butit's.
It's difficult just to get upin the air and over a wall and

(52:52):
then down back inside and havethe fitting on the bottom of the
airplane fit on right, exactlyon the post that it's going into
.
There are a couple of anxiousmoments on that and we had some
TV crews out there filming allthat, which made the museum
director breathe a little hardertoo.
But you can just barely seeunderneath this PBY, in the

(53:15):
courtyard there, there's afountain, and the fountain you
can just kind of basically see.
It's made out like a V8 symbolon the v8 automobile and that
was done by ford motor company,so it's still there to this day.
Well, I'll tell you that is amagnificent setting oh yeah, it
is well.
we used to have big events outhere.

(53:36):
Um, I had an event here in inthe courtyard event here in the
courtyard with about five or sixhundred people one night.
It was right after 9-11.
It was the first part ofOctober, first week in October
after the attacks, and it wasGeneral Paul Tibbetts, the
commander of the Enola Gay, whodropped the atomic bomb on

(54:00):
Hiroshima.
I'd set him up well ahead oftime to be a lecturer and he was
kind enough to come out yearslater after 9-11.
But you can imagine theenvironment there, with people
having an attack on the UnitedStates, and then here comes
Tibbetts in, flying in, so andhe gave a great speech.

(54:21):
But afterwards one of thereporters said sir, you were
coming in over the city here,did you think about maybe, how
that would be bombing somethinglike this here?
And he didn't miss a beat.
He said no, he said thatwouldn't bother me a bit, but it
was interesting that the moodof the country then had changed.

(54:41):
Notably, and where we usuallyhad 100 people or so, there was
a full house crowd here just tosee him that night.
Wow, next, next slide.
So so here's the.
The fun part about the museumbusiness was you get to meet
some pretty interesting people.
We had a big dinner for theApollo-Soyuz crew to commemorate

(55:06):
their mission in space thefirst time that the Americans
and the Soviets had conducted aspace mission together.
And the guy on the left-handside of this photo is Major
General Alexei Leonov, who wasthe Russian cosmonaut.
He was the first Russian, firsthuman to walk in space.

(55:28):
Then there's me, and then thenext guy over is Eric Lindbergh,
who's the grandson of CharlesLindbergh, and then the guy on
the right-hand side was a chiefpilot for American Airlines.
We were all just having somedrinks outside this dinner when
Eric Lindbergh walked by,recognized me and he came in and

(55:51):
says hey, what are you guysdoing here?
And I explained it to him andall of a sudden, the cosmonaut
Alexi.
We didn't speak a lot ofEnglish, but he did pretty well,
alexei, we didn't speak a lotof English but he did pretty
well.
He says Lindbergh, lindbergh,and he just his eyes got big and

(56:13):
he almost fell down and he wasso astounded to be in the
presence of Lindbergh's grandson.
Wow, he said.
He said that's how I learnedhow to fly.
He was my hero in the SovietUnion.
So you never know when peoplelike that show up, but it was
really something.
And I think, ron, as we talkedabout the problem that Alexei
Leonov had, was the first guy inspace.

(56:35):
He was also the first guy inspace to have his flight, his
spacesuit fill up like a balloonfull of air and he couldn't get
back in the spaceship oh my godand they had to figure out how
to get them back in, which theydid by letting out a lot of the
oxygen that he had and he almostdidn't make it back in and this
wasn't a reversal.

Col. Ron Scott, USAF ret (56:55):
I mean , this is in space and trying to
figure it out for the firsttime, uh, yeah, and there's no
crew.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret (57:03):
So we talk a lot about merit, and that
existed on their side too.
I mean, these guys were reallygood at what they were doing,
but between the two of them theyfigured out how to get him back
in, and even when he did that,he wasn't able to move very well
.
So Valery Kubasov, his co-pilot, grabbed him by the feet and

(57:24):
drug him back into thespacecraft.
Then they closed it off andthey both survived.
Otherwise, neither one of themwould have made it back again.
And I think is there a movieabout it.
Yes, there is, and it's aRussian.
It was made by the Russians.
It's all got English voiceoveron it, but it's so well done

(57:48):
because the graphics are perfect.
The story is amazing and I'dencourage anybody to do that.
To go find it.
I think it's called SpaceWalker, but we can post that on
a website here.
So after that it was then on tomy next job.
They hired me away from SanDiego to build a new museum at

(58:11):
Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
The Air Force at the timePacific Air Forces was the
commander.
There was General Dick Myers,who was a guy that I flew wild
weasels with there.
At the end in Vietnam we flewtogether a lot Great guy, and so

(58:33):
he eventually became chairmanof the Joint Chiefs of Staff
right, he did, and in fact Italked to him the other day.
We're going to hopefully havehim on our podcast here in a
future event, so stay tuned forthat.
But when Dick was PACAFcommander, his idea was there's

(58:53):
nothing out here that says allthe great things that have
happened through Korea, throughWorld War II and Vietnam to talk
about air power in the Pacific,world War II and Vietnam to
talk about air power in thePacific.
He wanted to put up a museum tofocus on that.
So he brought me out from SanDiego and they hired me as a
contractor to develop a plan todo that at Hickam Air Force Base

(59:14):
.
Well, it didn't work out verywell, because the Air Force was
not happy about having a lot ofpeople on their Air Force Base.
So the Navy, though, happenedto be trying to figure out what
to do with old hangars on FortIsland, which was the island in
the middle of Pearl Harbor whereall the aircraft, all the ships

(59:34):
were anchored the morning ofthe attack on Pearl Harbor, and
this is the control tower thatthey used for the field.
There was a runway there,hangars.
This tower was actually wherethey broadcast the message
attack on Pearl Harbor.
This is no drill.
So there's a lot of historyhere with this particular spot.

(59:55):
It's where the war started.
So they brought me out to dothis and we finally ended up
selecting this site on PearlHarbor to do it.
This is one of the hangarsthere that we built and
reconstructed and made it themuseum.
And if you look at slide number39, cindy.

(01:00:18):
So it took me about two yearsto convince the Navy to let us
have the property there, thehangers and all that to develop
into a museum.
By the time we finally did, wehad to do some fundraising and
get some money together to dothat, which we did Next slide.

(01:00:39):
So this is what the hangerslooked like when we got finished
demoing the inside of it.
We had to take out what was agym inside and some other things
.
So what we ended up with nextslide was pretty much an empty
hanger once we were able to getthe debris cleared out of this.

(01:01:03):
And then we had to get thedebris cleared out of this, and
then we had to convince the Navythat we were sane enough to be
able to build a museum here tomake it work.
So we ended up with a 65 yearlease on the property on Fort
Island and now we're on slide 41.

(01:01:23):
So this is the big hangar prettymuch in the center here with
checkered covering on theoutside.
There is where we built amuseum in the first of the
hangars that were there.
This hangar was one of the onesthat got shot up.
There are two other hangarsthat went with it that we had to
also rebuild, but some of themstill had bullet holes in the

(01:01:46):
glass that was on the doors ofthe hangars.
We preserved that, kept allthat where it was.
The tower over here.
This picture has just beentaken in the not-too-distant
past.
We reconditioned it, restoredit, made that into a library
where the hangar operations wereon the shorter part of the

(01:02:10):
structure.
But it turned out to be quite aprocess.
But it took us 90 days from thetime that we started demolition
till we were finished with themuseum.
Next slide Wow that's amazing.
Well, I mean, even if we wellthe other, the part that was
difficult about it was this wasa World War II structure that

(01:02:36):
didn't really have much in there, just a place that they could
put the aircraft and work on it.
There was no operatingelectricity to it.
There was no operating water orsewage.
There wasn't a grease facilityto capture all the grease if
we're going to put a restaurantinto it, a grease trap.
So we had to do those kinds ofthings.

(01:02:57):
Plus, we had to redo the roofon it and the siding and
everything else.
So what we had was thestructure of four walls and a
roof and that was it.
So now I had to go out and findsome airplanes.
So we did that, Went out andbegged the Air Force for a few,
the Navy for a few got somestuff.
But I was also able to find aguy who did some replicas which

(01:03:20):
were able to hang is good, butthis was one of our better finds
.
This was a japanese zero, an a6m20 the very same kind that
actually attacked pearl harbor.
This one could have actuallybeen part of that.
Uh, we're not sure about that,because this aircraft was found

(01:03:41):
by a guy who was an aircraftrecovery expert.
He went to Bougainville andthey found three zeros there.
He was able to get the partsall back and make it into one
aircraft, which we've got here,and anybody who's kind of
eagle-eyed may notice if theyknow what a real zero looks like

(01:04:01):
.
The engine is a bigger engine.
It's actually out of a T-6Texan.
It's a cyclone engine that'sAmerican.
But they couldn't find theoriginal Sirki engines so they
put that into it.
This airplane flew for theConfederate Air Force for years
until one day they discovered acrack in the wings bar and that

(01:04:23):
ended its flying career.
But just as I'm getting readyto open, to get ready to finish
opening the museum, we did adeal with these guys to buy the
airplane and then it came and webuilt a recreation of the
aircraft carrier Hiryu, whichthis aircraft was probably on,
and did a sort of a dioramaexhibit for it, which was kind

(01:04:47):
of cool.
Next slide.
But we needed some other things.
So here you can see, at the topthere's a B-25 bomber.
This is a Doolittle Raider thatwe rebuilt from a standard
B-25J.
I did a deal with somebody fora B-25 we had at Hickam Air

(01:05:10):
Force Base that we owned, but itwas so corroded by the time we
got it into the museum wecouldn't use it.
So I traded it with a guy whohad some extra parts.
He wanted it for a movie so hecould blow it up.
So we just traded, even forthis other other b25 back here,
which actually turned out to bepretty, pretty cool airplane.
But this, uh, this aircraft inthe front is an uh, an f4f

(01:05:34):
wildcat.
It's a straight wing wildcat.
That made it in two versions,one of them for the marines it
was straight, the other one forthe navy, which had folding
wings for the aircraft carriers.
This, this aircraft wasrecovered from Lake Michigan.
It was lost during a trainingaccident training new pilot and
it sunk to the bottom of LakeMichigan where it was nice and

(01:05:55):
cold and anaerobic, meaningthere were no bacteria there and
organisms that could get ontoit and de-rate it.
So the Navy hauled it up.
A guy bought it from them,restored it into flying
condition and that's where Idiscovered it at the Museum of
Flight up in Seattle and I did adeal with the owner to buy the

(01:06:18):
airplane, met him in arestaurant at the Museum of
Flight Museum where it was ontemporary display, and I said so
how much do you want for thisthing?
He says I'll sell it to you,but it's going to cost you a
million dollars.

Col. Ron Scott, USAF ret (01:06:33):
Oh my gosh.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret (01:06:35):
And I kind of gulped real hard and I
thought I'm just a poor museumdirector here, I can't dip into
my bank account and do that.
But fortunately we had somemoney in the museum's account.
So I wrote out a check for amillion dollars, sitting at a
table in a restaurant, andthat's how we got the airplane.
And then we had to transport itby, you know, surface

(01:06:56):
transportation to get it toHawaii, as we did, by the way,
with all these other airplanes,and that was a pretty large task
.
But we're running out of time.
We had to open a museum byPearl Harbor Day in 2006.
And I only had like a month ortwo to do all this.

(01:07:16):
Next slide.

Col. Ron Scott, USAF ret (01:07:19):
So we put it in another diagram.
What kind of a staff did youhave?
Did you have a team of folksthat were also on?
I did.
I had a couple of great.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret (01:07:30):
I had about five or six people
initially and we expanded thatright before we opened.
But I had a great curator.
His name was Mike Wilson.
He was a former airline pilot.
I had actually had him as anemployee, as a curator, in San
Diego at the Aerospace Museum.
So he came out.

(01:07:50):
I talked about it coming out.
He was a surfer, so he didn'tmind going to Hawaii at all and
he's still there doing that.
But you'll remember, back tothe zero we talked about.
This is let's go, cindy.
First is slide number 45.
So this is a zero that crashedon the island of Nihi Hau right

(01:08:14):
after during the attack on PearlHarbor.
It was a zero.
He got shot up and was leakingfuel and attempted to land on
the island, not realizing thatthe guys the two brothers that
owned the island had plowed theflat areas on lake beds that
were dry up with furrows on them, two and three foot deep

(01:08:36):
furrows.
So the Japanese thought theycould use this island as an
alternate airfield, if you will,for the attack.
Anybody got shot up, ran out ofgas, would land here.
They parked a submarine off theedge of the island so that they
could get the guys and get themback home again.
Well, unfortunately this guyrealized he couldn't do that.
He couldn't land there,attempted to land on this kind

(01:08:58):
of sloping hill but it didn'twork and he ran into a whole
bunch of very thick brush,crashed the airplane and this is
what it looked like when hefinished with it.
But he got out.
So this aircraft sat on theisland all those years.
Unfortunately, when at the endof the attack on Pearl Harbor,

(01:09:20):
on this island, which wastotally remote, it only had
native Hawaiians and these twobrothers that were the owners of
the island living there.
So when the attacks were allover, the Army sent a team of
sailors and soldiers out torecover what they could from
this wreck so we could analyzeit.

(01:09:40):
They picked up a few things andspent about a day there, but on
the way out this younglieutenant wags his finger at
the guys on the island and saysyou can't talk about this with
anybody.
This is national securitysecrets, it's top secret, it's
state secrets.
You can't ever talk about thisand anything that you've got

(01:10:01):
that you might have picked up isgovernment property and it's
top secret.
You can't do anything with thisand anything that you've got
that you might have picked up isgovernment property.
It's top secret, you can't doanything with it and, of course,
they're local Hawaiian natives.
So, okay, you know, away theywent.
So years later, when I was doingthe museum, I got wind of this
from the owners there.
I went over, looked at it.
What was left of it wasn't much, but what we decided to do was

(01:10:25):
bring it back over to the museum, along with the tractor that
they used to plow up all thefurrows and everything, and make
this a story about the firstsuccessful battle of Niihau,
because the rest of the story isthe pilot who survived was
captured.
He was put in a barn and lockedup, but there was a pair of

(01:10:48):
Japanese expatriates who werealso there working for the
brothers.
They actually freed him becausethey could communicate with him
.
He ended up getting a shotgun,went back to the Zero, got the
machine guns out of the Zero andcaptured the whole damn town,
held them hostage for about fouror five days and they were

(01:11:08):
terrified.
It was just through the actionsof one great big Hawaiian guy
there and his wife that theywere able to get this guy and
they threw him up against thelava rock wall and killed him,
and that was the end of it.
So that was the first battlethat we won during World War II.
How did you get access to?

Col. Ron Scott, USAF ret (01:11:32):
that story.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret (01:11:36):
Well, the story was known.
But there was somebody I knewon Oahu, where we were in
Honolulu, that knew the brotherswell and he said hey, look,
I'll introduce you to them.
And so we went over there.
And nobody went over there.
I mean, there's no roads there,there's no airport, there's no
TV, no radio.

(01:11:57):
It's a really isolated place.
Only way you can get in thereis on helicopter.
And so we got them to use theirhelicopter, went over, took a
look at it and I realized therewas a real good story in this
and it was also a good way tocapture the Hawaiian audience,
because you know they weresaying, hey, there's airplane
museums anywhere we can go lookat airplanes.

(01:12:18):
Well, here's something that youcan't find anywhere else and
it's about Hawaii.
So we went over there andrecovered the remains of the
aircraft that the kids used toplay on on the island all the
time.
Go back, cindy, now to slide 44.
So went over there, tookpictures of where the remains

(01:12:40):
were and this is what it lookedlike.
Uh, we came back and just redidthe whole thing, with the
backdrop and everything, justbefore we found it on the island
as if it was still in the reddirt with the shrubs and stuff
in the background.
This was what was left of thezero.
Uh, not much, but, but we putit right next to the restored

(01:13:04):
zero that was on the flight deckwhich this represented.
So here's the real remains,along with the real zero, parts
of which may have actually beenpart of another zero that did
the attack.
So we thought that worked outpretty well.
Wow, so we finished the museum.
Wow, so we finished the museum.

Col. Ron Scott, USAF ret (01:13:22):
I have a trivial question, but when
you say the pilot got out ofthat airplane, did he climb out
of the aircraft or did heparachute out?

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret (01:13:32):
Oh no, no, he climbed out, he crash
landed on it, he collapsed thegear and came down and he
crushed the whole bottomundercarriage of the aircraft
because he was landing heressentially on lava rock which
is very jagged and very rough sohe destroyed the airplane
pretty much and and it caught onfire so he was able to get out.

(01:13:54):
But but anyway, that's aninteresting story.
So so we opened in on PearlHarbor Day of 2006.
We had a whole bunch of reallygreat people there for it.
We had Tom Brokaw, chuck Yeager, wally Schirra, the astronaut,

(01:14:15):
who were all on our board, andGeneral Tibbetts.
We also had a whole bunch ofJapanese pilots who were flying
Zeros and Zeke bombers whodecided to show up too.
That was a little awkward forthe Pearl.
Harbor survivors.
But it ended up working outokay.
So from there, next slide 40,yes, museum.

(01:14:43):
So I retired from that forabout the third time.
I decided that was enoughmuseum work.
Unfortunately, when I moved backto Texas they found me about a
month later not too long andhired me off to be the head of
the Atomic Testing Museum in LasVegas, nevada, and they needed

(01:15:04):
somebody who knew how to expandthe museum and also how to make
it a little bit more visible.
So that's why they brought mein.
It wasn't a big place but itwas kind of a nice, kind of
retirement museum, if you will.
But their story was abouttesting nuclear weapons in the
desert north of Las Vegas, whichin itself was a kind of a neat

(01:15:26):
American story.
People would go to Las Vegas togamble, then they'd go out
there in the diving boards nearthe swimming pool and watch the
bombs go off in the distance.
So it was kind of a culturalkind of thing.
So that was kind of fun.
But while I was there, the CIAdeclassified most of the

(01:15:46):
information about Area 51.
And why is that important?
Well, because Area 51 wasimmediately adjacent to the
north part of the Nevada testrange where they were doing all
the bomb testing.
You could literally go fromgate to gate, you know, right
into the one or the other.
So we figured, well, that mightbe an interesting story to

(01:16:09):
include in this museum.
So as I started talking to mycurators about the great
technology that was done outthere stealth all of the spy
aircraft, including the SR-71,the A-12 at the time, which
turned into the SR-71.
But those were so advanced thatthe technology run was so

(01:16:31):
amazing with those aircraft andwhat we were doing for stealth
technology, plus a lot of otherstuff that happened later with,
you know, the YF-117 Nighthawksand all too.
But so I said, look, guys, wecan put this story together.
We'll tell about all thesegreat things we can do now,
right, and they said, yeah, boss, but what are we going to do

(01:16:51):
about the UFOs and the aliens?
And I said, excuse me, well,people are going to ask where
are they?
Because there's a big rumorthat there's aliens and UFOs out
there and they're hiding infront of American people and
keeping it from us.
And I said, stop, stop, stop, Idon't want to hear that.
But they said, no, that's okay,and we have some things and

(01:17:14):
some people we know who can helpyou with that, and they have
artifacts and things like that.
So I said, all right, we'll dothis on one condition.
We're going to tell this is atwo-part story.
One story is about how wereally did things and how
amazing that was and still is tothis day, and how it's worked
out for us, and then the secondstory can be about UFOs and

(01:17:37):
aliens and rumors that go withit.
And so that's what we did.
But the next slide is what wecall this exhibit, area 51 myth
or reality, and, and you'llnotice, ron, the, the shape of
this ufo that's there.
That's actually the, thehead-on view of the sr71 or the

(01:17:58):
a12 it's just a head-on profileuh, you know, profile.
So that's why we were doing thiskind of double entendre thing
with is it real or is it notreal.
So that got me into the alienbusiness and here's one of the

(01:18:19):
exhibits we did in the museum mehanging out with one of the
UFOs here.
Sorry, the aliens and UFOs, butalong the way next slide we
were doing a lot of advertisingfor this locally in the media
there to get people to come outand see it, and it was hugely
successful.
I even had a Smithsonianconference there that talked

(01:18:43):
about UFOs and things and I hadto convince the Smithsonian
Institution that we could dothat, because they said, hey,
we're not into UFOs and aliens,we don't do that at Smithsonian.
And I said, yes, you do.
And they said, no, we don't.
Yes, we do.
Because I had a guy who was areporter I was working with who
had actually been a part of aconference they did back there

(01:19:05):
in the 70s talking about aliensand UFOs at the Smithsonian.
So we convinced him that thatwas an okay thing to do as a
Smithsonian affiliate.
But this advertisement we weredoing we did it on this one
radio station.
It was a CBS radio station inLas Vegas, and so I was doing a
lot of advertising.
When they called me up one day,the manager did and he says,

(01:19:27):
look, how'd you like to be onthe radio every Saturday night
and you can talk about this withpeople and you can talk about
things that go bump in the nightand aliens and all that might
be interesting advertising foryour exhibit?
I said, yeah, I could probablydo that.
I've done some of that before.

Col. Ron Scott, USAF ret (01:19:44):
Yeah, so what year was this?

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret (01:19:48):
This was 2013.
And so so they were doing thisevery night for a night and I
did it for a month or so andfinally, just in casual
conversation one day, I said,look, this is.
And I said why did?
Why did you pick me?
He says, well, we neededsomebody to fill a slot.
And you're kind of a personableguy.

(01:20:10):
The guy we had here wasn't.
He was kind of a cynic, and notonly that, he was very
conservative and he was kind ofa nutcase, and so his ratings
weren't good and we just firedhim.
We said sorry, can't work hereanymore.
This was CBS radio.
And I said, well, that'sinteresting.
Well, can you tell me who thatwas?

(01:20:31):
And he said, yeah, his name wasMark Levin.
And that's what I said.
I said, really.
So.
So I filled in for Mark Levin.
Thereafter, I even used alittle bit, a little bit of his
shtick, you know, about being ina nuclear hard bunker
underneath the ground and wejust had a lot of fun with it
and we'd get some reallyinteresting people that we had
on the show and we'd talk tothem about alien abductions and,

(01:20:56):
you know, ufos underground atArea 51 and big caverns and all
that.
So that's me.

Col. Ron Scott, USAF ret (01:21:05):
Have you met Mark and had a chance to
commiserate with him?

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret (01:21:08):
No, I haven't actually, but I'm
working on that.
That's one of my projects, sir.
I think I'll have to get to himbecause he's into this, as you
know, ron, as we are from theMarxist standpoint and from the
abuses of government and he's asmart guy, so, yeah, he'd be
good to have on a podcast.

(01:21:28):
But what that taught me wasbeing able to work with people
and take differing views onthings.
I mean, I had a lady one day.
She called me up and she says Iwant to talk to you about
chemtrails.
I says what the heck is that?
She says those things in theair, you know those big white

(01:21:51):
lines in the sky.
There are airplanes up therespreading chemicals and they're
trying to kill us all.
And I said how do you know that?
Oh, I know FEMA's been buyingbody bags and no one will talk
to us about what's in thosefumes that they're putting out
up there.
And I said, lady, do you haveany idea how much liquid you'd
have to take up there to spreadaround for that?
And the aircraft, first of all,wouldn't be able to get off the

(01:22:11):
ground.
But if you're putting it out ofthe engines, the engines would
fail and wouldn't work.
Oh, I didn't think about that.
So we had some very interestingdiscussions with people, but it
was a good way for me to gain alittle bit of skills in what
we're doing here now.
So that led to the last slide,which is our Stars and Stripes

(01:22:33):
podcast.

Col. Ron Scott, USAF ret (01:22:37):
Well, al, I'll tell you what.
What a great story.
And you know, as I listened andwatched, uh, you know the.
The thing that really standsout to me is number one.
You made history in yourearlier flying days and, and now
you're into preserving history.

(01:22:59):
You've done it through themuseums and now you're doing it
through these stars and stripespodcasts, where you're doing it
through the Stars and Stripespodcast, where you're
interviewing people that havebeen there.
They've done that and a chanceto reflect on what it's all
about.
So I'll tell you what Stars isso blessed to have you in that
seat narrating these podcasts,and I thank you for that.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret (01:23:21):
Well, Colonel, thank you so much.
It's a pleasure to be here withyou and for our listeners out
there.
We'll have more of these kindof things to talk about,
hopefully, and if you have anyquestions, if you're interested,
go to our website, starsus, andyou can see what Colonel Scott
and the rest of our brilliantfolks here are doing.