Key Aero’s Dino Carrara interviewed Colonel Steve Ladd (ret.) about his time flying the A-10A Thunderbolt II (‘Warthog’) with the 81st Tactical Fighter Wing, which was housed at the twin bases of RAF Bentwaters and Woodbridge
Q. Please detail your flying career in the USAF, in particular your time assigned to the A-10.
I went through pilot training and graduated in 1968. I was sent to F-4 upgrade training and then over to Southeast Asia, where I spent a year at Ubon Royal Thai Air Force Base. I flew 204 combat missions over North and South Vietnam, Laos as well as Cambodia from time-to-time. I stayed in the F-4 for a total of about 12 years and towards the end of that period in 1977 I was sent to RAF Bentwaters in the UK. I flew the F-4 there for about a year-and-a half.
At that point the 81st TFW [Tactical Fighter Wing] at Bentwaters transitioned to the A-10 ‘Warthog’. I was in the first group to upgrade to the A-10 in late-1978 and we brought the 92nd TFS [Tactical Fighter Squadron] over en masse from the States in January 1979. When I first got back to Bentwaters I was the chief of weapons and tactics for a little less than a year. Then they started opening up forward operating locations [FOLs] in Germany and I was selecte…
