A New Guy Tries Gun Hunting
submitted by: Alva Leon Matheson
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A few came to me and said they wanted to fly with me on a FAC mission to learn the trade. Virtually every time, after only one flight, the results were the same...a complete loss of interest. I never could figure out why they came to me; there were several FACs who hit lots of guns and did it a lot smarter. Just a few of the names that come to mind, each of whom had 60+ gun kills as a FAC, are Dan Ratledge, Ted Stuckey and Dick Hall.
Anyway, one fine young fellow, apparently under the influence of several barley pops at the time, told me in our hooch bar, The Nail Hole, that he was accompanying me on my next flight and that I was to instruct him on how to find and hit AAA guns.
Notice I didn’t say he asked.
I thought that might be a good trait in a young fellow, a showing of great confidence in himself, so, I agreed readily that that would be a grand idea.
He showed up the next day for my late afternoon mission, which was to end at night-fall when the mysterious black O-2s took over the FAC mission over the Trail and did whatever that weird night-time stuff was that they did. These guys only flew at night and were rarely seen in the daylight. Come to think of it, I never saw anybody beat an O-2 pilot at Bat Hanging in the bar.
We flew into our assigned area over Laos and I began to show him gun pits, how to pick out camouflage, how the trails ran up to the gun pits for resupply, how some 37 mm guns were in triangular formation, some 23 mm were scattered, etc. I talked ad nauseum about how much time it took for the tracers to reach you once the gun fired, how to roll in without being seen by the gunners for your marking pass, when to fly high and when to fly in the trees, etc. All this seemed to be unimpressive to him, but he did ask some interesting questions like,
“How do you know there’s a gun in that little splotch of green?” or “Where’s all this ground fire we’re supposed to be seeing?”
I explained gun barrels and the other things as completely as I could and thought, “This is great, a kid who wants to see some action. This might be what we need around here!”
Then, when the sun began setting, I headed up to Harley’s Valley (Ban Karai Pass) where the Ho Chi Minh Trail crossed the border from North Vietnam into Laos. At sundown, the supply trucks would line up in North Vietnam for their journey into Laos right out in the open, because they knew we could not strike in North Vietnam without special authorization from Hillsboro (our ABCCC). After dark they would come across the border under the protection of a MASSIVE amount of A A A in Harley’s Valley. The problem I had in that valley was that on a level of 1 to 9, 9 being the highest, the camouflage experts in Harley’s Valley were at least a 12. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t pick out very many of their gun pits unless I just got lucky, got the sun at the right angle, saw a pith helmet disappear into a pit or a combination of all of them.
When we got to the valley, I told the back seater I was going to find some guns by locating muzzle flashes and for him to do the same thing. Now, the smart thing to do would have been to fly off to one side of the valley and make the guns come up at me, but is that what I did? Of course not. Old dummy flew right up the center of Harley’s Valley and started memorizing muzzle flashes at their specific points on the ground. One thing I didn’t count on was every single one of over 100 guns in that valley opening up on us at the same time. Being the sole only plane (target) over the valley right then, our lives got terribly interesting real fast.
There’s one thing about tracers coming up at you; if they are steady on the canopy, which means you’re gonna get hit and its time to change something. No need for huge, gigantic yanks and banks, just enough to make the tracers start moving a little on the canopy; a few degrees of heading or a little vertical velocity normally suffices. That works great when only a few tracers are involved, but when the entire valley is lit up with muzzle flashes, red and white balls of fire, and air bursts, we’ve done saddled a different horse!
I was trying to pinpoint muzzle flashes and crosscheck tracer movement at the same time, but every time I made one set of tracers move, another set that had been moving would stand still. It was like playing a giant computer game, and I was horrible at that. This went on for about 30 minutes, and I had become totally involved in trying to locate muzzle flashes and not get shot down. Finally, I wound up about 60 degrees nose high, out of airspeed and ideas, with a set of tracers coming directly up at us from underneath. I had nowhere to go, so I stomped the right rudder to try to hammerhead my OV-10, knowing full well that I had not performed that maneuver with any great degree of success in the past.
I knew we had protective steel plating on the seat backs and under our butts, so my sole objective was to try my best to keep the bottom of the plane towards those tracers which were surely going to hit us. I flipped the intercom switch and told the pitter, “Scrunch up, we’re gonna be hit.” I don’t think he knew what “scrunch” meant, because, when I glanced in the rear view mirror, all I saw was his flight helmet moving extremely rapidly from side to side, canopy to canopy. Two tracers passed equidistant, seemingly just inches, on either side of the cockpit and two others passed off either wing tip. All air burst above us. If I had stomped left rudder, instead of right, I might not be writing this now, as that would have arced us into one of the upcoming AAA rounds. They say the good Lord protects fools and drunks, so I reckon I must have had double indemnity in those days. What appeared off the nose right then was the biggest black hole of space it has ever been my distinct pleasure to see! I dove for it with scads of tracers passing by us and air bursting all around us.
Once we were out of the valley, I noticed my mouth was pretty dry, so I took a swig from the water flask I had in my flight suit and asked the pitter how he was doing. The only answer I got was total silence. Oh well, I figured he was just plotting his guns.
On the way back to NKP, I plotted the muzzle flashes I had memorized on my terrain charts and went over them again in my mind to make sure I wouldn’t forget any. When I tallied them up, I was surprised that I only had 13 sure positions, but, by gum, for acting so damn rudely and unfairly to me, I determined they’d pay for their sins the next day when I could make the odds a bit more even! When we landed at NKP and got out of the plane, my promising young lieutenant, who had not spoken a word all the way back home, said,
“If that’s gun hunting, by God, you can have it! You’re the craziest son of a bitch I’ve ever seen, and I’ll NEVER fly with you again!”
That really hurt my feelings when he said that and went stomping off after all I had done for him. On top of that, he hadn’t plotted a single A A A site. I did notice with some curiosity that when he left, he carried his helmet in one hand and his helmet bag stretched out in the other.
The next day, I had the noon flight. Seldom did I get mad during combat, but I truly felt I had a big score to settle in Harley’s Valley that day. I called for Pave Way laser guided bombs as soon as I lifted off from NKP. Hillsboro actually asked me wasn’t I just off the ground and didn’t I want to get to the area first before ordering ordinance? I told them to let me worry about the targets and to just get the F-4s airborne. They arrived in the area when I did.
Then started one of the more intense gun kill sorties I ever flew. It seemed as if the gunners knew I’d be coming back because the airbursts began as soon as I entered the airspace over the valley. Hillsboro began ordering as many Pave Way’s as were available and we started. I marked pit after pit with white phosphorus rockets. Each time the gun in it was actively firing at me. I kept twisting and turning and talking to the fighters to get their eyes on the gun pits I had marked. Then, when they would drop a standoff laser guided bomb and it would explode in the pit, tracers from stored ammo would arc up through the air, ignite and air burst just above the ground, like a big fireworks display.
When one 2,000 pound bomb went off in a gun pit and made the land barren for several hundred meters around it, a pit that had just been firing was uncovered by the blast. Six men came out of a hole in the ground nearby and ran over to it. Five of them jumped in and began to clear off the debris and throw the dead bodies of the gunners out of the pit in an attempt to re-man the gun. The sixth man stood beside the pit the whole time just looking; I assume he was in shock because he never moved a muscle. I had directed the fighters onto that one next because they could see it without a marking pass from me. The bomb went directly into the pit and everything and everybody in and around it instantly vaporized. The little fellow never heard it go off.
Every so often, I’d see tracers zip past the cockpit. It was a bright sunny day, and, to see tracers then, they had to be very close to the canopy. Several times the AAA shells would air burst right beside or under my plane, causing the little OV-10 to shake and buck. More than once, they detonated just yards in front of the nose and I’d immediately fly through the airburst cloud before I could even blink. At the end of what seemed like only a few minutes (we’d been at it for a couple of hours), Dan Ratledge (Rat) called on the radio to say he was coming out to replace me and that he’d be overhead soon. I told him to stay clear of the area as long as he could.
A little later, I heard him yelling over the radio,
“Chicken! Are you OK?” Chicken, talk to me! ”When I got a moment, I told him I was OK. I finally left the area and handed what was left of the guns over to him. On the way home, I monitored Rat’s work on the radio. He was really kicking the hell out of what guns were left. I tallied up the gun kills that I could confirm during my portion of the mission and it came out to eight. Every one was either firing when the bomb hit, or had been firing just before. About that same number had been silenced with their crews killed and/or their pits uncovered by the force of a nearby laser bomb blast either in an adjacent pit or a near miss. Score settled.
That evening I was lounging around in the Nail Hole, telling lies (war stories), when I saw Rat walk in. He came over to me and had a funny look on his face. I asked him what was the matter and why was he yelling at me on the radio. He said,
“You had worked your way down to a lower altitude than you should have when I came overhead. I was looking down on you and every gun in that valley was firing directly at you. The airbursts were so thick, that I actually lost sight of your aircraft for a moment underneath their cloud. I just knew you were hit.”
I suppose there are times when it’s best to be ignorant of the goings on around you. I still don’t believe it, but I didn’t have a single shrapnel hole in my plane that day. On several other days, though, I wasn’t so lucky.