F-35 WILD WEASEL YGBSM Shaker pint glass

You Gotta Be Shittin' Me.

That's what an Electronics Warfare Officer reportedly said when he heard the Wild Weasel mission explained for the first time. And honestly? Fair. The job of a Wild Weasel pilot is to bait enemy air defenses into locking onto their aircraft with radar — then trace those radar emissions back to the source and destroy the site before it destroys them. You can't shoot until they shoot first. You go in ahead of the strike package. You are the last one out. 

The concept was born in 1965, when Soviet SAMs began tearing apart American strike aircraft over North Vietnam during Operation Rolling Thunder. The Air Force needed someone willing to fly directly into the threat. They found them. The first Wild Weasel success came on December 20, 1965, when Captains Al Lamb and Jack Donovan took out a SAM site 75 miles northwest of Hanoi. The mission has never stopped.

From F-100s over Hanoi to F-4Gs over Baghdad, the F-35 Lightning II is now slated to carry the Wild Weasel mission forward — with fifth-generation stealth, sensor fusion, and electronic warfare capabilities that would have seemed like science fiction to the men who flew the first Weasel missions over North Vietnam.

The mission evolved. The motto didn't.

This pint glass is for the people who know what YGBSM means — and exactly why it had to be said. Every time you pour a cold one, you're raising a glass to sixty years of pilots who flew first into the most dangerous airspace in the world so the rest of the package could make it home.

This is part of our aviation tribute glassware collection. If you're collecting pieces that honor the aircraft and aviators who wrote history, this belongs on your shelf next to the Lt. Col. Lamb, Lt. Col. Stewart, and Memphis Belle glasses.

16 oz shaker pint glass. Hand-wash only, not microwave safe. Each glass is handmade, so slight variations in the glass are part of the craft.