G2G: Would you like to help with Wild Weasels?

Question

I decided to take on a personal project to commemorate Memorial Day this year.  I just finished a space page for the Wild Weasels and no, I'm not going to explain what they are - you'll have to see the page to find out!

I listed the 584 Wild Weasels I know of who are no longer living. One of them - my husband - is linked to his profile.  I will be working on this, but can use all the help I can get to:

1. Look up the names to see if they already have profiles here.
   a. If so, put the link to the profile on the space page, add [[Category: Wild Weasels]] to the profile, and try to improve the profile.
   
   b. if not, find sources, add the profile (with the category), and put the link to it on the space page.

To coordinate, if you're going to help please post here and indicate a group of profiles (like "pilots with names starting with A") in an answer here so that we don't step on each other.

THANX to everyone who joins me in working on this.

EDITED TO ADD:
I have just extracted as much information as I could from the Wild Weasels Society database to help finding information for them.  It is in a file that I uploaded to the Wild Weasels space page (the one linked in this question).

Answer 1

A great project Gaile. Having just a name makes this a tough mission. Even the less common names have multiple people that might be a match.  I searched for a few before committing to help and finally found one that seems to be a match.   Christine Picchi Lerseth, so will create a profile for her and try to add family profiles and connect her.   

Comments

Thank you so much Patricia!

I realize that only the name isn't much to go on, but we do know that all were born after 1930 and before 1985 and none are still living.  Even when there are multiple people with the same name, if you find one with military connections (either a military record that includes some time between 1965 and 2005 or burial in a national cemetery), that's likely to be the right one.

So far, I have added profiles for two and written to managers of two unlisted profiles that might be matches for others.

Edited to Add:  I just added the link to Christine's profile on the Wild Weasels space page.

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That date window will help to ID some of them.   

Going down the list of Pilots I see Christine's husband Roger listed with his nick name of "Zipper" Lerseth.  Will do a profile for him, also. He was a POW so will need some help with Categories and proper stickers when I get the rest of the profile done.

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I may be able to add more info to at least some of the names.  I have the database of the Wild Weasel Society because I'm helping them get their data mess organized, but have to go through it to extract whatever birth/death dates and obituary links they have and will make a separate working area on the space page to add that when I have it.  Also, there is a lot of info about those who were POWs and KIAs at https://wildweasels.org/We-Remember.

It looks like Christine really wasn't a Wild Weasel - that would have been her husband, although you found that she did serve in Vietnam as a Navy nurse.  The Wild Weasel Society has a category for family members (I'm one of these) so that's how she got on the pilot list there - it's an example of the data mess they have, where family members were assigned the same data as the main member.

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Well the mix up on her listing helped ID her husband who certainly was a heroic Weasel. Still working on sourcing his story.

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I just finished extracting more info from the database that will help find sources.  See it at right on Wild Weasels free space page.  There are known service dates (although not actual start/end dates of their service), any known birth/death dates and some locations where they are known to have served, a few notes that may be relevant, plus links to online obituaries (many of which are broken, though).

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I connected one - or he will be after updates  

Answer 2

 I also searched a few before I was able to find a match that there were actually sources for.  I just created a profile for Merlyn Dethlefsen and will flesh out the biography with more sources later.

Comments

Also created a profile for Gary Cecchett, https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Cecchett-1

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Wow, Sharon, you are wonderful!!!  I just added a spreadsheet with data that I extracted from the Wild Weasels Society database that has more clues to help finding information and sources for them.  I uploaded it to the Wild Weasels space page.

Answer 3

Nice project. I've been cleaning up Vietnam vets lately and it's TOUGH to find many records, since that was is still so genealogically recent. I find what I can find and that's all I can do. I have not been able to connect many of them so far (some are already connected, so that's a good thing.) Also, I found at least one Navy person in this pdf, so you can't really stick the category under Air Force Groups (that's actually for numbered groups anyway).

Comments

THANX ever so much, Natalie.  This project should help bump up the number of Vietnam vet profiles significantly.   My list was compiled from the database of The Wild Weasel Society, who try to track all personnel who were ever in the program.  I have access to this data because right now I'm working on re-architecting their database, which is currently a colossal mess.  

The Wild Weasels started during the Vietnam War as the brainchild of a Colonel who was desperate to find a way to defeat the SAMs, so the earliest Wild Weasels will be Vietnam vets.  Although the program took root and is a mainstay of the Air Force today (my husband's grandson is now a Wild Weasel stationed in Japan), the 495 Wild Weasels listed on the space page are, of course, all deceased (there are over 4,000 in the full database).  These are almost all Vietnam vets, since the later ones are much more likely to still be living, both because they are younger and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars hardly had any air casualties.

There were a very small number of Navy and Marine pilots and EWOs who were assigned as "Exchange Members" of Wild Weasel squadrons in Vietnam on occasions when aircrews were desperately needed.  It is DEFINITELY an Air Force program, although I will leave it in your capable hands to figure out where to place the category.

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Ok, thanks for that info. I'm going to place it under USAF, Vietnam War.

I'll have a look at that gigantic list of units you posted in the other g2g post, but probably not until tomorrow. It's been a long day.

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I think I may have found the Navy guy you were referring to.  I found one on that list that doesn't belong there - he was not a Wild Weasel.  His wife is also on that list in error and they both now have WikiTree profiles.  Both were in the Navy and are veterans of Vietnam, so I'm not going to remove the Wild Weasel category so you can easily capture them as Navy Vietnam Vets.  They are Roger Leserth and Christine (Picchi) Leserth.  The way they would have gotten on the Wild Weasels list was a data error - the Wild Weasel Society has a small number of members who are "honorary" and a larger number who are family members (like me).  My filter should have excluded these, because military data is only supposed to be kept for Weasels - it was an error that this Navy couple had military records there, which allowed them to make it to my list.  I can't guarantee that they are the only ones, though, but I'll check them carefully when their profiles are made to be sure they belong in the Weasels.