As Joseph Bancroft Hall noted on a posting of mine from last night, even histories of the Vietnam War from seemingly unimpeachable sources can, and do, contain errors. My personal favorite that is repeated in numerous books regards air tactics of the USMC aviators that were aboard Coral Sea in 72, flying A-6 attack aircraft against targets in North Vietnam. They were a gung-ho bunch, being young Marines, and often came home (many did not return) with damage, They did after all fly low altitude attacks. A shipmate from those times, the Chief Master at Arms and I were discussing the shot-up A-6s recently in a Facebook conversation and he mentioned seeing A-6s on the hangar bay with gravel damage on leading edges of wings from wing men sticking a little to close to their flight leaders, but was described as battle damage from small arms fire. I see references to such frequently in the books I read regarding those days and have to shake my head. That brought to mind a particular plane that Chief Satchell remembered as well, one Id seen after an attack on the rail yards at Haiphong, where every forward surface on the plane was riddled with holes from small arms fire. Canopy, radome, wings, everything was Swiss cheese! I reached in to a large hole in the radome and pulled out a handful of pea-stone. I assumed that the pilot had target-fixated and flown through his own bomb blast. In the exchange, I quipped to the Chief that while I was aware that the North Vietnamese were running low on ammo, I was unaware that theyd resorted to throwing rocks!
Posted on: Fri, 14 Nov 2014 14:19:10 +0000
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