In April 1943 an American Major General's ashes were scattered from a B-17 Flying Fortress near the Arizona desert.
24 years later his son led one of the most successful aerial ambushes of the Vietnam War.
7 North Vietnamese MiGs shot down in 12 minutes. Zero American losses.
The mission was called Operation Bolo.
This is the story of Robert and Robin Olds..🧵1/7
Robert Olds was born in Hawaii in 1896 when the islands were still an American territory.
He learned to fly in the years when aviation itself was still new. Open cockpits. Cloth wings. Engines that failed without warning.
By the 1920s he was one of the brightest officers in the growing United States Army Air Corps.
He believed future wars would be decided in the sky.
Most generals still believed infantry and battleships would dominate warfare. Robert Olds believed fleets of heavy bombers could destroy an enemy's industry before armies ever reached the battlefield.
He became one of the strongest supporters of strategic bombing in America.
The men around him called him brilliant. Aggressive. Demanding.
His young son Robin remembered something else.
He remembered pilots filling their house almost every night.
Leather jackets hanging by the door.
Stories about men who never came back.
Robin later said he never really chose aviation.
He had grown up inside it.
When the United States entered the Second World War, Robert Olds helped build America's growing air power from inside the United States.
He had pioneered ferry routes that helped move aircraft across the Atlantic and later commanded Second Air Force as it expanded into one of the largest training commands in the country.
Thousands of future bomber and fighter crews passed through the system he helped oversee.
The pressure was enormous.
Long hours. Endless stress. Cigarettes. Coffee. Little sleep.
But illness overtook him in early 1943.
On April 28 1943 Robert Olds died at a military hospital near Tucson, Arizona after suffering a heart attack. He was only 46 years old.
Weeks later fellow airmen carried his ashes aboard a B-17 Flying Fortress and scattered them near Davis-Monthan Field over the Arizona desert he had loved to fly across.
His son Robin was 21 years old.
He was already in flight training.
The war that had consumed his father's life was now becoming his own.
Robin Olds arrived in Europe too late to become one of America's top aces of the Second World War.
But he was still credited with 12 aerial victories flying P-38 Lightnings and P-51 Mustangs against the Luftwaffe.
Tall. Aggressive. Charismatic.
Other pilots admired him because he did not fly cautiously to protect his career. He attacked constantly. Sometimes recklessly.
After the war he stayed in the Air Force while many wartime pilots returned to civilian life.
By the 1960s America was fighting another air war over another jungle half a world away.
Robin Olds was now a colonel commanding the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing flying F-4 Phantom jets from Thailand.
American pilots were frustrated.
North Vietnamese MiGs would attack bomb laden American strike aircraft and disappear before escorts could react.
Robin Olds decided to trap them.
Operation Bolo became one of the most successful aerial ambushes in American military history.
Robin Olds studied the way the North Vietnamese controlled their MiG-21 fighters.
The MiGs usually attacked American F-105 Thunderchief strike aircraft carrying heavy bomb loads. North Vietnamese radar operators recognized the routes, speeds, altitudes, and radio procedures the F-105s used.
Robin Olds decided to copy all of it.
On January 2 1967 American F-4 Phantom squadrons flew the exact routes normally used by the vulnerable F-105s. They copied their radio callsigns. Their timing. Their formations. Some even carried the same electronic jamming pods used by the F-105s.
The MiGs believed another strike package was approaching.
They climbed directly into a trap.
Clouds covered northern Vietnam that morning. Then the F-4s burst through into clear sky above the overcast.
The MiGs appeared almost immediately.
Robin Olds attacked first.
For the next 12 minutes the sky above Hanoi became chaos.
Missiles streaked through the clouds. MiGs exploded in fire. Pilots screamed warnings over the radios.
By the end of the battle 7 North Vietnamese MiG-21 fighters had been shot down.
No American aircraft were lost.
MiG activity over North Vietnam was greatly reduced for several months afterward.
Operation Bolo made Robin Olds one of the most famous fighter pilots of the Vietnam War.
Robin Olds looked nothing like the clean cut image the Air Force preferred during Vietnam.
He grew a huge handlebar mustache that spread across his face like something from another century.
The younger pilots loved it.
The Air Force generals hated it.
The mustache became a symbol.
Not of rebellion against the war itself, but against bureaucracy. Against cautious leadership. Against officers who flew desks instead of combat missions.
Robin Olds believed fighter pilots should lead from the front.
He flew 152 combat missions over Vietnam, including 105 over North Vietnam itself.
Again and again he ignored opportunities to leave combat assignments for safer staff jobs.
The men under his command trusted him because they knew he would never ask them to do something he would not do himself.
Years later many Vietnam pilots still spoke about him with the kind of admiration soldiers usually reserve for wartime commanders from another era.
To them Robin Olds was not simply an officer.
He was the last of the old fighter aces.
Robert Olds died before he could see the air force he helped build dominate the skies over Europe.
He never saw the giant bomber fleets crossing Germany.
He never saw the jet age.
He never saw his son become one of the most famous fighter pilots in American history.
But Robin carried his father's influence for the rest of his life.
One family tied together by American military aviation.
Robin Olds retired in 1973 as a brigadier general after more than 30 years in uniform.
When he died on June 14 2007 at age 84, tributes came from pilots across multiple generations of the United States Air Force.
Many of them had never met Robert Olds.
But they understood what the name meant.
A father helped build the modern American Air Force during the Second World War.
His son became one of its greatest combat leaders over the skies of Vietnam.
I post stories like this every day. Follow so you don't miss the next one.
