Bob Pardo, Daring Rescue pilot in the Vietnam War, dies at age 89

Bob Pardo, a fighter pilot who held a wingman’s damaged plane aloft during the Vietnam War in a daring feat of aviation that became known as the Pardo Push, died Dec. 5 at a hospital near his home in College Station, Texas. He was 89.

His wife, Kathryn Pardo, said the cause was lung cancer.

In March 1967, Captain Pardo was on a mission over North Vietnam in an F-4 Phantom when anti-aircraft fire hit his aircraft, causing damage, while even worse ripping into the fuel tank of another fighter in the strike force. Both jets took off to go home. But the second plane had lost too much fuel to reach safety. Captain Pardo realized that the two-man crew would be forced to eject over enemy territory and be captured or worse.

Captain Pardo flew underneath the compromised plane and told the pilot, Captain Earl Aman, to lower his tailhook – a metal pole on the back of a fighter jet used to stop the landing. At a speed of 300 miles per hour, Captain Pardo pushed the glass windshield of his plane against the tip of the pole. He pushed the other plane for nearly 90 miles as both planes leaked fuel until they crossed the border into Laos. Both crews ejected by parachute and all four men were rescued.

As they returned to their airfield, the Ubon Royal Thai Air Force Base in Thailand, Captain Pardo was criticized for the highly unorthodox maneuver, which may have saved the lives of Captain Aman and his weapons officer, First Lieutenant Robert Houghton. cost of Captain Pardo’s plane.

“When we got back to Ubon, they didn’t know whether to court-martial or pin a medal on my chest,” he recalls. an interview with an Air Force publication in 1996. “Some people thought I should have let Earl and Bob eject and take their chances so I could land my plane safely.”

“Pardo’s Push” became an Air Force legend, an extraordinary act of aerial ballet, but one that would never be prescribed in pilot manuals or flight simulators. Only once before, during the Korean War, had a similar rescue maneuver ever been performed.

The military has not honored Mr. Pardo for decades. In 1989 he received a Silver Star for gallantry. The citation described him pushing Captain Aman’s plane to safety. “The attempt was successful and allowed the crew to avoid becoming prisoners of war,” it said.

In a subsequent interview, Mr. Pardo said he thought about the words his father told him when he made the decision — a risky decision because the windshield could have cracked.

“My father taught me that if your friend needs help, you help too.” he said. ‘I couldn’t have come home and told him I hadn’t even tried anything. Because that’s exactly what he would have asked me. He would have said, “Have you tried it?” So I had to be able to answer yes to that.”

John Robert Pardo was born on March 10, 1934, in Lacy Lakeview, a suburb of Waco, Texas, to William Roland Pardo, who installed pipelines for a gas company, and Lucille (Williamson) Pardo, a homemaker. He graduated from high school in nearby Hearne, Texas, in 1952 and enrolled at the University of Houston. He quit to work briefly for his father before joining the Air Force in 1954. The following year he received his pilot’s wings at Bryan Air Force Base in Texas. He was stationed at bases in Louisiana, Florida, Alabama, Missouri and Maine before his combat tour in Vietnam in 1966-67.

After a twenty-year career in uniform, he retired in 1974 as a lieutenant colonel and worked in corporate aviation, including as a pilot for the Adolph Coors Company in Golden, Colorado.

His first marriage, to Barbara Pardo, ended in divorce. Along with his wife, whom he married in 1992, Mr. Pardo is survived by a sister, Stella Gordon; a son, John Robert Pardo Jr.; a daughter, Angela Fresh; two stepsons, Scott Arnold and Kevin Arnold; 10 grandchildren; and 11 great-grandchildren.

In Southeast Asia, Mr. Pardo was assigned to the 433rd Tactical Fighter Squadron when his strike force took off from Thailand on March 10, 1967, to bomb a steel mill 30 miles north of Hanoi, the capital of then-North Vietnam.

With the support of China and Russia, North Vietnam fought against South Vietnam, which was supported by the US. The Vietnam War was a major Cold War conflict. It killed more than 58,000 American soldiers and an estimated 1 to 3 million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians.

Between 1965 and 1968, the US Air Force and Navy conducted an intensive bombing campaign against the North, known as Operation Rolling Thunder, to destroy its infrastructure. The tonnage of American bombs dropped exceeded the American bombing campaign in the Pacific in World War II. North Vietnam’s defense included Russian-made anti-aircraft batteries, missiles and MiG fighter jets.

Both Captain Pardo and Captain Aman’s F-4 fighter-bombers were hit about 40 miles from the steel mill, Captain Pardo recalled in a 2019 report. interview with The San Antonio Express-News. Captain Aman started climbing after coming under fire.

“I knew something was wrong because of his fuel level, so I started climbing with him,” Captain Pardo recalled. “When we got to 30,000 feet, it hit level ground and was pouring fuel.”

Captain Pardo knew that Captain Aman’s plane would not be able to leave North Vietnam to rendezvous with a flying tanker. He initially tried to push Captain Aman’s plane by sticking the nose of his own jet into an inland port, but there was too much turbulence. He then tried to maneuver directly under the other plane and take it for a spin, which also failed.

Then he came up with the idea of ​​pushing Captain Aman’s tail hook. A tailhook post was used by the Navy version of the F-4 Phantom to land on aircraft carriers. The Air Force used it for emergency landings on runways, where the hook catches on a cable stretched across the tarmac.

Captain Pardo told his wingman to shut down his engines and carefully made contact with the tailhook using the windshield of his own aircraft.

“If he even hit the windshield he would have had that tailhook in the face,” said Mr. Houghton, who was sitting in the back seat of the injured plane. remembered in a 1996 interview. “We’re talking about glass here. It was phenomenal flying, nothing less.”

Mr. Pardo recalled, “I can’t remember how many times the tail hook slipped off the windshield, and I had to fight to get it back in place.”

After one of Captain Pardo’s own engines caught fire and he shut it down, the two planes began to lose altitude rapidly, at a speed of 600 meters per minute. They crossed the border into Laos at an altitude of just 6,000 feet, leaving them with just two minutes of flying time. Both crews bailed out shortly afterwards and parachuted into the jungle. They were rescued by American helicopters.