31 January 1968 – On the first full day of the Tet Offensive, Major Joe Bulger (Flight Lead) and 1Lt “Fearless” Fred Abrams were asked to bomb their own base. In the early hours of the day, Vietcong forces had launched an attack on Bien Hoa AB. “The whole east end was hot,” Abrams said.
I flew the F-100A at Nellis. I reported into Willy (Williams AFB, AZ) after completing basic flying school at Webb AFB in Big Springs, Texas. After 3 days at Willy, I was transferred to Nellis as an experimental student to determine if pilots could go directly from T-33 to F-100, bypassing the F-86.
They did the same thing for Luke pilots that were flying the F-84. All told, I think there were about 6 people that went through this program. The F-100F had just entered the inventory, so that was the airplane that we used for transition. After checkout in the F-100F, we flew the F-100A and completed the gunnery program at Nellis.
My next assignment was back to Willy to fly the F-86 and continue the gunnery and transition into that airplane. At the conclusion of that training, we went to operational units and flew the F-100D & F at George. I guess that the experiment worked as future classes went directly from pilot training, T-33, to F-100 at Luke. I think that was the death knell for Willy, as all fighter pilots were vectored to Luke, and Willy closed.
