Night Tactics Over the Trail

submitted by: Alva Leon Matheson

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Having flown 134 missions over the trail, most of them at night, I would like to make a few observations. Even on a completely moonless night the starlight scope would pick up the shielded headlights of trucks moving on the road. They would look like faint small triangles of light. If we were over a part of the road that had trees on one or both sides of the road, simply popping a flare would usually be ineffective because the trucks would run under the trees. In these cases, we would sometimes drop a log that would produce a small intense light, hopefully not visible to the trucks but very visible from the air. Strikes could then be directed using the log’s intense light as a reference. The log was a wood pyrotechnic device, square in cross section and about 2 feet long with a fuse and arming wire.
On dark, moonless nights only the guy with the starlight scope could see the target. In these cases, I would brief the strike aircraft on the target and set up a “traffic pattern” for the strike aircraft. The idea was for us to fly over the target, drop the flare and clear the strike aircraft in on “final” so that they were rolling in on the target just as the flare popped. The timing was critical because of the time delay between the time the flare was dropped and the time it actually illuminated the trucks. When this procedure worked, the results were often spectacular. The road would light up almost like daylight and the strike aircraft would drop their ordinance before the trucks could react.
If we found the trucks on a part of the road that had no trees, directing the attack was much simpler. After briefing the strike aircraft, we would drop a flare and clear the strike aircraft in.
On nights with clear skies and a moon, the target could be marked with a “Willie Pete” rocket.