Salute!
Well,
Count..... and others. Hope you are all enjoying the tutorial. It is relevant because the Hawg dropped and shot that way for 20 years after entering service. USAF had sold it to Congress with the claim that if you dropped or shot close enough, you didn't need no steeenkeeeng computers. And all the Hawg drivers could easily navigate by dead reackoning and holding their wet finger up to determine wind. Hell, even the A-37 had a low freq ADF besides TACAN.
USAF had to keep a straight face, as it could have easily paid a little extra to have a basic A-7D system right outta the box. Face it, the SLUF was gold-plated what with super duper projected map, cosmic radar that had both terrain follwing and terrain avaoidance, a new INS that the F-4 guys were jealous of and then the extra doppler nav system. A basic system for the Hawg would have been an INS, radar altimiter and nav/weapon delivery computer, as the Hawg already had a HUD. In "then year" $$$, that would have been well under $1 million, but that wasn't the point. The point would have been an embarrassed bunch of USAF generals and others.
And the Count is right. It's hard to imagine us hitting anything!!
The "manual" method, or as we called it "TLBR" (That Looks 'bout Right) required hitting a specific dive angle, airspeed and altitude with the pipper at the correct aimpoint all at the same time. Rottsa ruck. So we learned to "adjust". Fast? release early, shallow? late, and so forth. But we got good. Real good. The Combat Dragon test phase was 6 months and we were rated at 20 meters by the FAC's. This went down to 15 meters as folks got better and we got used to the jet and flew a few hundred missions ( most guys got 400 + in their one year tour).
Spaz also brings out a problem with the low angle stuff. No biggie with nape or RX, but many of us picked up frags or even mud from the guy in front, heh heh. Worst thing was a bad fuze that armed below the set safe altitude and you dropped low! You could blow yourself up.
Finally,
Spaz. I am sure that an Aussie Canberra outfit operated in IV Corps during my ;67 to '68 tour. Then we had Sidewinder FAC's up near us at Bien Hoa. Yep, it was the No 2 Squadron. Flew from Phan Rang with USAF B-57's.
The first low level day missions started in September 1967, with forward air controllers marking the targets with smoke. Most sorties were in support of the Australian Task Force in the IV Corps area. Flying at about 3000 feet (915 metres) above ground level (AGL) to avoid ground fire, the crews achieved accuracies of about 45 metres. On a number of occasions, aircraft released their bombs from as low as 800 ft (245 metres), followed by a rapid pull-up to a height outside the fragmentation envelope. However, a number of aircraft were damaged by bomb fragments (shrapnel) and some navigators suffered minor injuries as a result.
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