For combat awards, the Air Medal stands below the DFC, but above the Air Force Commendation Medal, which is usually given for excellence in job performance to company-grade officers. Though it isn’t really a major award, at the time the Air Medal was highly respected. Since the last war was Korea, by 1965 very few medals had been handed out since the early 1950s.

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This was not always the case. When he returned to Korat in 1967, Horner served under an old-time fighter commander, Colonel, later Brigadier General, Bill Chairasell. Chairasell used his most experienced squadron commanders to lead, no matter what their rank—a practice of which Chuck Horner seriously approved.

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Horner himself stayed on at Korat beyond 100 sorties, because he enjoyed combat. Others stayed on beyond 100 sorties because they wanted to help the unit out. But by 1967, he wasn’t aware of anyone who felt they were going to win this war. When I asked him what we could possibly have done to set up an acceptable end state, this was his answer: “Our overall strategic aim, as far as I can make out, was to devastate the North so badly that they would surrender any hopes of interfering in the South. Naïve. If we had really wanted to show the North Vietnamese we were serious, we probably should have shut down Haiphong and Hanoi, invaded below Haiphong, and cut the country in half lower down. In fact (though we didn’t know it then), as it turned out, all we really had to do was befriend Ho. Seems he wasn’t part of a monolithic Communist plot, and hated the Chinese more than anyone else. Since as it turns out we really didn’t have any loyalty to the South Vietnamese people anyway, perhaps we could have brokered a deal after the French pulled out. But that is twenty-twenty hindsight on my part.”

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The Wild Weasels amassed more medals per aircrew (pilot or his EWO) than any other unit in the war.

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Later, White Fang was shot down over North Vietnam and stoned to death by villagers. He and his EWO, Sam Fantle, were picked up by the Army and told to run for it across a field. If they were fast enough, the Army would protect them from the villagers. Fantle was fast enough to make it across the field. But White Fang was older than the rest of the Weasels (he had been a flight officer at the end of World War II) and didn’t make it. He had a wife and son. His wife died years later from cancer.

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