The original was Spooky (C-47) used mostly with troops-in-contact. There was a later use of this scheme with the C-119 (the old "flying boxcar), the call sign is not anywhere near the tip of my tongue.
As time went by, I believe fast-movers took over Spook's role. It was strongly believed in some circles that the 7th AF commander in 66/67 era (Gen Momyer) (sp) was obsessive about getting slow-movers out of the picture. I think he believed airpower would win the day once he got rid of old airplanes and replaced them with F-4s and such.
In 66 I was with a detachment involved in test and eval. of the rebuilt A-26 aircraft in a primary interdiction role. Although we were killing far more trucks than anyone else in our area, 7th AF kept delaying a decision on whether to bring us on full time.
IN the fall of 66, I was present at a drop-dead type meeting of the 7th AF brass (27 stars in all) in our one-room ops building. After getting hammered worse than the Bush lawyers by Ginsburg, another figure in the room weighed in (sorry, secret war type shit) and said, in effect, "Hold on there boys, these guys are the best I've got and I'm keeping 'em. End of meeting. No pleasantries or warm beers followed. "Skip' and his guys went back to Saigon.
Anyway, when the side firing concept moved on with the introduction of AC-130 gunships (Spectre) it was primarily to kill trucks. Although it still had minis, you had to get very low to make these useful. The mainstay was the 20MM and it worked. As of 1971, the single ship, single sortie truck record was 56. The low-light-level TV tapes from these missions are awesome (this was a dusk to dawn gig). This system was commonly referred to as a million dollar airplane with 10 million dollars worth of mod's.
Sorry to go on so long. The temptation to comment on something other than pols and courts was strong. |
