Vietnam Veteran Tours Country Searching For Planes He Worked On During War

After Tom Mervin heard the Veterans Memorial Museum in Chehalis acquired Desert Fox — the Republic F-105 Thunderchief that served during the Vietnam War — he pulled out his old photo albums and waited for the museum to open.

“I spent all last night back in the damn war,” Mervin said.

Mervin was a crew chief in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War. He was in South Korea during the Pueblo crisis in 1968, which was the same time Desert Fox was flying combat missions. When he realized he may have worked on Desert Fox, Mervin headed to the museum.

“If it was there, I worked on it,” Mervin said. “We worked on all the other planes because we were on alert and we helped everybody. That’s why I came in here.”

Mervin explained that each plane has a number on its tail. He was the crew chief for plane 425 and performed maintenance on the plane with his crew. Desert Fox is number 299, a detail that wasn’t obvious until the plane had its tail on. 

“When you’re not busy, your airplane’s flying, you go help these guys,” Mervin said. “So you work with a lot of different ones, but I was in charge of just one at a time or I was an assistant to that guy.”

He believes that he performed maintenance on Desert Fox.

Mervin brought an album of planes he worked on during the war and planned to search for 299 at the museum. He sat with a few other veterans on Friday afternoon, who told stories and discussed flashbacks as well as information they readily shared versus what they kept to themselves.

“I have them all the time,” said Mervin of the flashbacks. “I can’t get rid of them. It was a great experience ... But I’ve never forgotten this. It’s just like these fellows here. It doesn’t go away — you live with it.”

Mervin joined the military when he was 19. He turned 20 at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, 21 in Thailand and 22 in South Korea.

Mervin said he goes to museums around the country and looks for the F-105s, especially ones he may have worked on.

As he reviewed the anatomy of the museum’s newest item, he pointed out a particularly low-hanging metal piece on Desert Fox. He laughed and said that he had to get three stitches in his head after crawling out from under the plane.

“When I came up, I bled like a stuck pig,” he said.

During a 30-minute crash course in the anatomy of the Republic F-105 Thunderchief, Mervin pointed out its idiosyncrasies, downfalls and qualities. When asked if he remembered how to perform maintenance on the plane, he answered without hesitation.

“Oh yeah,” he said, before returning to his discussion on F-105 mechanics. “I could do everything right now. I could launch this guy.”

Although Mervin was only 19 when he entered the military, he left at 22 and as a crew chief.

“I learned the right way,” he said. “We went to a lot of schools to learn everything on this airplane. Even though I was just the flightline mechanic, we had specialists for this, that and (the other) ... you only have so many minutes to get this going.”

After basic training, Mervin went through several months of training for a general airplane. When he went to Nellis Air Force Base, he worked for a staff sergeant who was the crew chief.

“He taught me everything that he knew about this airplane,” Mervin said. “Then I went to schools to learn about that part or this part. Once I got a bit more rank, I ended up as sargent and I had my own assistants. It was always retraining somebody else because everybody is coming and going.” 

Mervin hasn’t found 425 yet, the plane was a crew chief for, but he has a picture of it from his time in the war and is still searching.

“This is a two-seater,” he said, while looking at the picture. “They used them for the Wild Weasel missions. The Wild Weasel missions is where they sent in these guys first.”

The United States Armed Forces uses the code name “Wild Weasel” for an aircraft that is equipped with radar-seeking missiles. These aircraft are supposed to destroy radars of enemy air defense systems.

While Mervin’s plane was part of the Wild Weasel missions, he explained that Desert Fox was more of a bomber plane.

“These things were originally designed to put a nuclear weapon in that bomb bay, fly into Russia, drop it, and get the hell out of there,” Mervin said. “So when we used it in Vietnam, we were carrying hard bombs, iron bombs, and it was not designed for that. But this is what they used it for.”

Mervin noted that many of the F-105s didn’t make it and the Air Force began using F-4s. They provided cover for the F-105s because they could maneuver well.

“The F-4 was there with us,” he said. “On the Wild Weasels...they went in first and then after time went on, they were running out of these guys (the F-105s). So they said ‘let’s put them in the F-4s.’ They put the Wild Weasels’ stuff into the F-4s.”

Mervin said his crew had a saying when they sent pilots off: This is my airplane. I’m just loaning it to the pilot.

“Our job was to get the pilot in here, get him off the ground and hopefully back,” Mervin said. “We lost a lot of pilots over there. They were the greatest guys in the world. Our job was to make sure they had a good airplane.”