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       Bob Pardo, Pilot in Daring Rescue in Vietnam War, Dies at 89

       In an extraordinary act of aerial ballet, he helped a fellow pilot whose plane had become compromised until they could be safely rescued.

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       Bob Pardo in 2015. The maneuver he used to save his comrades came to be known as the Pardo Push. Credit...SrA David Cooper/U.S. Air Force

       By Trip Gabriel

       Dec. 21, 2023

       Bob Pardo, a fighter pilot who during the Vietnam War kept a wingman’s damaged plane aloft in a daring feat of aviation that became known as the Pardo Push, died on Dec. 5 in a hospital near his home in College Station, Texas. He was 89.

       His wife, Kathryn Pardo, said the cause was lung cancer.

       In March 1967, Captain Pardo was on a mission over North Vietnam in an F-4 Phantom when antiaircraft fire hit his plane, inflicting damage, while more badly ripping into the fuel tank of another fighter in the strike force. Both jets pulled away to head home. But the second plane had lost too much fuel to make it to safety. Captain Pardo realized that its two-man crew would be forced to eject over enemy territory and face capture or worse.

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       Trip Gabriel is a national correspondent. He covered the past two presidential campaigns and has served as the Mid-Atlantic bureau chief and a national education reporter. He formerly edited the Styles sections. He joined The Times in 1994. More about Trip Gabriel

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