Charles “Chuck” Jackson has little memory of the crushing sound of metal as his F-4 Phantom II broke apart.
What he does remember most is the split second before ejecting.
A heat-seeking missile, about 6 to 8 feet long, fired by a pursuing North Vietnamese MIG-21 went right up the two-seater’s jet exhaust while he and pilot Lt. James McCarty were on their return trip home from a bombing mission north of Hanoi.