Jet Pilots Face Heavy Red Fire In Napalm Runs
(EDITOR’S NOTE: The following dispatch by Charles Black, Enquirer military writer, was filed from Bien Hoa April 8 and was the first report of an existing shortage of bombs for air strikes against the Viet Cong. Monday, the bomb shortage was confirmed by the Defense Dept.)
By CHARLES BLACK
Enquirer Military Writer
BIEN HOA - A shortage of 500-pound bombs is causing F100 pilots flying from this huge base to use tactics which have allowed a heavily supplied Viet Cong to double their small-arms hits on the big jets during the past 30 days.
The hits are coming from .30
caliber-type automatic rifles which intelligence sources believe are
being used
by the Viet Cong with greater accuracy and with greater ammunition
expenditures
than ever before.
They believe the ammunition,
which came down supply routes from North Viet Nam during the 38-day
bombing
halt, reached the hard-core Viet Cong battalions in the Mekong Delta in
time
for them to start delivering a hail of fire at aircraft during late
February.
The increase in ammunition
stock for the Communists coincided with a sudden shortage of 500-pound
bombs
for the F100s, forcing the big jet to rely once more on napalm attacks.
As of April 7, in fact, the
planes began flying exclusively with napalm loads because the
500-pounders had
been expended the previous day, and a hand-to-mouth ordinance supply
has not
been more than two days ahead of delivery demands since November.
Pilots do not downgrade
napalm, believing it is the most feared weapon in their arsenal. The problem caused by the 500-pound bomb
shortage is one of tactics. (The
750-pounders are practically nonexistent here since the B52 strikes
began
consuming them, and the available stocks get only as far as Guam now.)
A napalm run has to be made
in a straight pass at low level. A
500-pound bomb can be delivered from a steep dive and the pilot can
pull out
quickly The pilots mix up the runs
so
the Viet Cong gunners cannot predict when the easier target given by
the napalm
run will come and get set for it.
They can’t mix their tactics
now, and the amount of bullets hitting F100s because of the lack of
variation
and the constant low-level attacks forced on them have gone up
accordingly -
double in March the number that was recorded in February for planes
based here,
in fact.
Nobody here is sure why the
500-pound bomb shortage came about.
Some officers say the manufacturers haven’t been able to catch
up with
the demand, and some think Cam Ranh Bay may alleviate the problem when
the huge
port is available. However, they all
put their finger on the bomb shortage as a major factor in the number
of
increased bullet holes in their aircraft.
I saw Maj. Tommy Thompson of
the 3rd Tactical Wing’s command operations center after he had flown a
mission
south of Saigon to support a Marine operation along the river. He offered chilling evidence of what the
pilots
had been talking about.
A small-caliber bullet had
hit the plexiglass canopy of his F100 as he rolled to the left to make
a napalm
run, sending a spray of splinters into the cockpit and smashing through
the
opposite side of the canopy, missing his head by inches.
“That thing hit and all of
those splinters flew,” he said. “My
sunglasses must have saved my eyes, I guess.
I said ‘I’m hit - I’m hit.’ Then
I saw I was still flying and I said ‘Well, I think I’m hit.’ It was a very awkward time to take a hit in
the canopy, too, rolling into the run.”
The major was jubilant, and
he had gone ahead and dropped his napalm and made his strafing run,
with the
shattered canopy cutting his vision to almost nothing, but it was close
as an
F100 pilot could get to a bullet and not be hit. A
crowd of pilots kept eddying around his plane, looking at the
bullet hole and then looking at the major with a certain awe.
That kind of thing has been
happening twice as often as before. The
severity of the damage from all hits, in fact, has increased as the
bullets hit
more vital spots on the aircraft.
Maintenance hours have gone up to keep the planes repaired.
Pilots and others say the
Viet Cong units in the Mekong Delta are shooting more ammunition at
them,
including tracers not noted before the booming lull, and are more
effective.
“There have been reports of
specially trained units - units trained to use automatic rifles for
antiaircraft fire, coming from North Viet Nam,” one pilot told me.
He said it is very possible
that some of these units are down in the delta now, protecting areas
important
to the Viet Cong, and that it is possible that the Viet Cong there have
been
getting new training.
“They also are shooting a
lot of ammunition - something they haven’t done before - and a lot of
it is
tracer, which they didn’t use very much before,” the pilot said. “They got a lot of ammunition down from
North Viet Nam when we quit bombing up there and they are making us pay
the
price now.”
It would seem implausible
that the primitive Viet Cong supply line had come up with some kind of
logistical edge over the massive U.S. structure, but in an odd way it
has
apparently happened.
Our flyers don’t have the
weapons mix needed to keep the Viet Cong honest during their strafing
and napalm
runs, and the Viet Cong have come up with a lot of the kind of
ammunition they
need to make it hard on the pilots.
Nobody at Bien Hoa had any guess on how soon it would be before the situation would change.
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