FPP217 - Shot Down, Not Out: Col. Richard "Dog" Brenneman on Service and Survival

Dog, uh, it is just so great to have you here.

I really look forward to getting your story out to our listeners.

I'd love if you just wanna start with, you know, kinda where you started from, and then kinda get into the story of flying and, and then take us to those skies of Vietnam.

Well, I grew up in Northern Indiana, a little town called Mishawaka.

A great little place.

And always interested in aviation.

But then a movie, John Wayne made a movie called Jet Pilot.

I wanna say it was late '50s, somethin' like that.

And he flew jets and got all the pretty girls, so I knew exactly where I wanted to go in my career.

So I went to, uh, Indiana University on campus, 'cause they had Air Force ROTC.

Went through the whole ROTC thing.

Did my FIP training, they call it, uh, the Air Force paid.

I flew a Piper Colt with a Narco Super Homer, made before you were born.

[laughs] Graduated, and they sent me to Laughlin Air Force Base for pilot training.

I did well, graduated number two overall in training command.

And came time to choose an airplane, and so I chose the F-4.

And I volunteered to go to Southeast Asia, because, you know, every fighter pilot has to go actually gain their baptismal fire.

And the joke was, "You gotta get over there and get your medals before the war is over." Well, that didn't quite happen.

So I went to Tucson for nine months for training.

And back then, the Air Force, we had a few navigators, but they put two pilots in the F-4, because four eyes were better than two.

So yeah, in the, after Tucson, went to Ubon, Thailand, and flew with a couple famous guys called Robin Olds and Chappie James.

Once did barrel rolls in four-ship around Robin Olds, and I'm sure that's a court martial event nowadays.

And you have to start out in the backseat, fly about 50 missions, then you move to the front seat and you get a new FNG.

'Cause they found out early on if you put two FNGs in the airplane, they didn't come back.

Send them out and they didn't come back.