JAMES MYERS The Laramie Boomerang | Posted: Sunday, August 1, 2004 12:00 am
LARAMIE (AP) - While flying at 500 miles per hour at altitudes under 400 feet, trees, structures, vehicles and people stop looking like dots and start looking like streaks.
Then again, at 500 miles per hour, an F-4 has a lot better chance of not getting hit by ground fire.
Born in St. Catherine, Miss., Don Ewing, director of the state Veterans Commission, went to Missouri State University and earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics.
After college he worked as an engineer for John Deere, when in 1966, his uncle encouraged him to join the Air Force since he would likely get drafted anyway.
Ewing scored well on his pilot training test due to the fact that a large portion of the test was math, and he awaited his assignments.
"After a few months the military finally caught up with me and said, 'Report to be drafted,"' he said. "So I immediately ran down to my Air Force recruiter and said, 'Take care of these people, they're after me!"'
Ewing's mixup was cleared up and he attended officers' training school in San Antonio, Texas, in October of 1966. He finished training in January of 1967 and then went to Oklahoma for pilot's training.
After a considerable amount of training, Ewing was deployed in March of 1969. He was transferred to South Korea while en route to Vietnam but his bags remained on a C-130 destined for the South China Sea, so he got to spend a few months nearly freezing solid because he didn't have any gear.
While in South Korea, Ewing and his fellow pilots played little war games with the Koreans.
"We'd take off and they'd take off but we'd never cross the border," Ewing said. "We'd run strait at the border and then duck out."
After a couple months Ewing was sent to Denang Air Force Base and began flying combat missions in Vietnam. The F-4 had two 20-mm Gattling guns mounted on either wing and one internally, each firing 100 rounds per second.
Between the three guns, Ewing said, one could level some serious acreage.
Part of the challenge of flying the F-4 was keeping enough fuel in it. The plane couldn't fly more than 13 minutes with full afterburners on.
Granted, Ewing said, they didn't fly with full afterburners on all the time, but they did have to find ways to get the planes as far as they could and still have enough fuel to get home.
"If you get in a fight somewhere, you use afterburners when you have to," he said.
When taking off, coming in for a strike or leaving a strike, the afterburners ran.
Ewing flew 143 combat missions with somewhere between 200 and 300 hours of flight time, he said.
After his tour of Vietnam, the war ended and he went to Germany and eventually came back to the states. He married his wife, Alison, in 1967 after meeting her in college.
They have two sons, Chris and Shawn, but no grandchildren.
Ewing now serves as the state director for the Wyoming Veterans Commission.
In his experience, he was honored with the 100 missions patch for his services in the 421st Tactical Fighter Squadron, the Black Widows and attained the rank of captain.
Vietnam is a war that still sticks with him.
"It's the only war that we won every battle and still lost the war," he said. "We have to talk about it because it was such a misunderstood war."
Ewing stays around Laramie for the cool summers and the cold winters while serving veterans interests around the state for the Wyoming Veterans Commission.