Description
Officially Licensed US Navy RVAH-12 Speartips Squadron Sticker — We Point the Way
Born to fly the Vigilante, tasked with the missions no one else could take, and home before anyone knew they were there.
Reconnaissance Attack Squadron 12 — the Speartips — was established on 1 July 1965 at NAS Sanford, Florida, making it the first squadron in Navy history specifically commissioned from its inception to operate the RA-5C Vigilante. While other RVAH squadrons had transitioned from the heavy attack mission and the A-3 Skywarrior, RVAH-12 was built from the ground up for supersonic reconnaissance. The squadron’s call sign was ‘Speartip’ and its motto ‘We Point the Way’ — fitting for a unit whose entire purpose was to fly ahead of the strike force, photograph the targets, and bring back the intelligence that guided the bombs. The Speartips arrived on Yankee Station off the coast of North Vietnam on 28 May 1967 aboard USS Constellation, and from then until November they were the only Reconnaissance Attack Squadron operating in the combat zone, pioneering new camera configurations and reconnaissance methods under fire. On 17 August 1967, an RVAH-12 RA-5C was hit by antiaircraft fire over North Vietnam — Commander Laurent Dion and Lieutenant (junior grade) Charles Hom were lost and never recovered. Early in its history, RVAH-12 was also selected to host the highly classified Project Snare, which involved fitting infrared sensors to Vigilantes to collect laser emitter data from Soviet bombers shadowing U.S. carrier battle groups. After Vietnam, the Speartips continued Cold War presence operations across the Mediterranean and Western Pacific aboard carriers like USS Independence, USS Enterprise, and USS Forrestal. On 2 July 1979, after exactly 14 years and one day of active service, RVAH-12 was disestablished at NAS Key West — one of the last squadrons to close out the storied Vigilante era.
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