The Vietnam Air War by Col. Dennis Ridnouer

Author:Col. Dennis Ridnouer
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Published: 2016-10-29T23:00:00+00:00

I was never sure whether we had permission to go into RP-2, but we checked in with Moonbeam and pressed on to the area we were going to check out. We made low passes with varying angles and offsets, and were pretty sure we saw supplies, including POL pipes along the road. At first we drew no reaction from the North Vietnamese. So the flare bird dropped a string across the road—holy s––t—there was s––t everywhere! I vaguely remember that one of our Phantoms had CBU-2 on this sortie, but maybe I am mistaken. In any case, we dropped everything we had on several passes, and the fires we started were massive. So was the AAA in response. Winchester, we climbed out and checked back to see blazes at least a couple of hundred feet high, secondaries, and lots of visual AAA. We called Moonbeam and informed them that there were some real lucrative targets and gave coordinates. There was a pause to check the coordinates of the location (“set Elizabeth over Richard”) on the location again—it was maybe, just maybe, somewhere we should not have been. Regardless, ’Beam diverted the night’s action to where we had just departed, and they kept the pot stirred for the day go, which continued to pound the area with great success for another twelve hours or so. Checking out with Bruce on Moonbeam, he congratulated us on “good work.” (If you’d have flown in Laos in ’68–’69 you’d know who Bruce was—a distinctive and familiar voice for the night fighters). It was good work—and we were proud of Hal for being the best intel/targeteer we knew, and happy the A-4s from the carriers left us a sweet spot for that one night. Beer at 22:30, chili cheese omelets in the Club dining room, in the rack by 0130 and out till the next afternoon and another trip to the Sewer.

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