21 Nov 2018, 16:58
Salute!
Thanks, Finn. The SEA environment was drastically more difficult than 'Raqi I for CAS.
- terrain was varied, and IV Corps was basically a delta and almost level until the very southwest tip on the Cambodian border - the Seven Sisters area. II Corps and I Corps resembled the U.S. Arkansas and western Carolinas terrain. Just different kinda trees.
Take Google Earth and fly from Pleiku along the Laotian border via the Trail - my old haunts during the armed recce and night interdiction test phase of the Dragonfly. There were 4,000 and 5,000 foot mountains and we would drop down to the 1,000 foot valleys and use nape and CBU on the trucks. At night!!!
- close proximity is an accurate term, Finn. Our motto on our calling cards was , "Closest AIr Support. When you care enough to expend the very best, call for Raps or Dragons". Besides US Army and USMC, we supported ARVN. Also supported the SOG folks who were not supposed to be across the border, and if they needed emergency extraction under fire we would drop within spittin' distance. One of our flights even dropped right on one team and all they asked was to let them know a few seconds before release so they could hunker down.
As far as seeing the enemy, I only saw little dots on a few missions, and they were running to a grove or other vegetation, maybe a bunker. So the grunts would use flares or even fire tracer to mark the bad guys and themselves. 'course, we could see enemy tracers depending on their guns, but most times it was "hit the smoke" or hit 50 meters north and so forth. For the spring invasion in 1972, there were finally tanks and vehicles and artty attacking the friendlies at An Loc. The guys there had no problems finding the enemy They even hit tanks using dumb bombs of the 250 and 500 pound variety.
- Training all the time for the sand box is risky, IMHO. Weather in SEA was challenging for half the year when monsoon rain and clouds built up in and against the mountains. Down south it was mainly low ceilings, so we learned to drop fairly accurately using low angle deliveries. I would imagine that the European and Korean environment would be similar.
Many times we had to fly down in valleys with hills on each side. That was when the A-1's and A-37's earned their keep. The A-7 could drop very accurately, but had to climb back up, find the way back in and so forth versus turning to keep the fight in sight. The Hawg would have been a great asset there.
Not taking anything away from the Storm folks, but it was different WRT terrain, weather and the ground fire. Horner pulled the Hawgs outta the low and slow fray quickly and they flew mostly at night or for CSAR. During 'raqi II and in the 'stan, they seemed to fly more of the conventional CAS profiles we always think of.
Gums comments....
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Gums
Viper pilot '79
"God in your guts, good men at your back, wings that stay on - and Tally Ho!"