History during the Vietnam War
In the early 1960s, the United States began to become more and more involved in the ongoing conflict in Vietnam. A detachment of the 45th TRS was sent from Misawa AB, Japan to Don Muang Royal Thai Air Force Base, co-located with Bangkok’s international airport, in Thailand. Most missions were flown over Laos but an increasing number covered targets in northern South Vietnam and (occasionally) Cambodia in a covert programme called French Leave, which often forced pilots at the full extent of their range to divert to Tan Son Nhut for refuelling and processing of their film. The detachment remained in Thailand until May 1962 and it returned to Misawa AB. It would be for long, the 45th TRS returned to Bangkok in November 1962, staying about a month until again returning home.
In December 1962, another detachment was deployed to Tan Son Nhut Air Base, near Saigon, South Vietnam. Its mission was to fly intelligence gathering flights. Squadron aircraft and personnel began rotational temporary duty to Tan Son Nhut, which continued until November 1965. When the squadron began operations in Southeast Asia, the missions were initially medium-altitude single-aircraft flights over South Vietnam, although two-ship missions were allocated to particularly well-defended areas.
The unit was redesignated the 45th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron on 1 January 1967. It operated from Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base, Thailand in 1966, then returned to Tan Son Nhut where it operated until withdrawn in December 1970 and returned to Misawa as part of the withdrawal of United States forces from South Vietnam.The usefulness of the RF-101 to the war effort was, in large part, the reason for the aircraft to remain in the inventory throughout the 1960s.
The RF-101C was fast enough to be easily able to evade interception by North Vietnamese MiG-17s. However, the Mach-2 MiG-21 Fishbed was another story. Following the loss of an RF-101C to a MiG-21 Fishbed in September of 1967, the RF-101C was replaced by the McDonnell RF-4C Phantom II in reconnaissance missions over North Vietnam. After that time, the Voodoo was restricted to missions over Laos and South Vietnam, where the probability of encountering enemy fighters was much smaller. The last 45th TRS RF-101C left Saigon on November 16, 1970, bringing the era of Voodoo participation in the South East Asia War to an end. It was inactivated on 31 May 1971.
45th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron patches
