Most time in your own slip stream !!.    -  Chuck Anderson

During the Vietnam conflict, while operating off the Ranger in late '64 in an RF8A with VFP 63 Det Mike.. I was assigned to photo a road junction west of Dong Hoy.. I launched with 2 F4 escorts. The junction crossed a river and made a right angle turn and wandered off into the jungle.. I started my photo run at 6000 feet and soon realized that i could not make a wings level right angle turn and keep the road in the view finder.. So I made a 270 degree turn to the right.. As I was doing this the F4 escorts said "We are taking some small arms fire !!! As I rolled out of my turn there was a god awful thump/bang.. There was no doubt in my mind that the tail of the aircraft had been blown off.. I went into full burner and pulled up in an 80 degree climb .. Told the escort that I had been hit !!!. I leveled out at about 45000 doing Mach 1.2 heading for the beach !!!. I soon realized that the F8 seemed to be flying just fine.. The escort was trying to catch me and asking where I’d been hit. I came out of burner looked in the rear view mirrors and the tail seemed to be still attached to the aircraft... It was then it dawned on me that for the first time since I had left flight training I had flown a perfect 270 turn and crossed my own slip stream. Needless to say I took some ribbing.. But the pictures were spectacular showing the jungle floor then the horizon and then the coast all in about 10 frames of pictures.

Chuck Anderson

LCDR USN (Ret)