Quote:
Originally Posted by Robert Delk
I think most of my platoon was in awe of the F4 pilots who escorted the choppers that inserted and extracted us. On rare occasions,I was a radio operator,I had direct contact with the pilots when we had something the artillery couldn't handle.Why anyone in their right mind would attempt to f--- with a fighter plane when they are on the ground in plain sight I cannot imagine,but some of the vc tried.Not wise.I would give anything to get that feeling back when that F4 rolls up out of the valley and comes screaming in 10 feet over your head looking for the bad guys.Awesome doesn't describe it.I can only imagine what it must be like to actually be flying one of those things.
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Flying the fighter/bombers, everything happened very quickly. Early in the war we flew at 450 kts, (a mile in 6 or 7 seconds)and then picked it up to 500 when the enemy came out with a faster shoulder held (strella)missile. We usually dropped on smoke and seldom saw much of the target. We were truck'n. We often rolled in from 15000 feet maybe 18000 (it has been a while). We were always careful to run in parallel to friendlies. We never ran in toward our troops. The enemy often ran around shooting straight up with their AK's and SKS's. All it took was one round in the wing, which was our fuel tank, to bring us down. Especially with the F-4. My little A-4 could take a lot of hits. I took a few. "doink" sounded like someone hit your bird with a ballpeen hammer.
We were concerned about the guys on the deck. We were marines, so we'd all been through grunt training and many of us served a tour with the grunts as FAC's. I was a FAC airborne for a time.
The chopper guys took the hits. They flew low and slow and had little or no armor. We had some. We were move'n, those guys were doing 130 knots. Zu 23's were hard on choppers.
Well, it's over and now we've had several more wars and ours has pretty much been forgotten. We are old men. I'm just sorry that a lot of my buddies couldn't be old men too.
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