Don’t pay it no nevermind, as we used to say...
It don’t mean a thing, not a god damned thing.
Everyone’s nam experience was not the same but
parts were alike.
I wasn’t in the boonies, as an A-4 mechanic I was
mostly slave labor working to keep those flight hours
up. Of course Luke lobbed mortars and 122 rockets at us
from time to time and Tet was pretty exciting.
Didn’t burn any hooches, but bombed the shit out of
some folks though.
We had a radio link to the cockpits in our line shack
and could hear our pilots talk about their work, that
lasted until one caught a golden BB and flamed in, he
screamed all the way down. They took out the com link
after that, bad for morale.
Welcome home Bro.
Something else, the F-4 was a huge bird and
sounded like nothing else. Our A-4s were small
in comparison. As a mech I learned how to start
them up and run them up for testing when they
came out of check. I always thought I could probably
get one off the deck but landing is the tricky part.
Taking off not so easy either as we had a pilot get
confused and try to take off from the taxi way and
not clear the small hill at the end, not a pretty sight
when you see someone with their face and hands burned off.
The first year 66 the run way was Marston matting and
rather uneven, the A-4s wobbled a little but didn’t have
much trouble, the Phantoms weighed twice as much and looked
like a galloping horse going by, many times they lost bombs
and whole bomb racks once they lifted off, most were not fuzed by falling clear of the arming wire but every once
in a while... used to have a piece of #500lb that missed
my head by inches.
Yikes. Watched part of Apocalypse Now the other night.
It was never that crazy for me but the sights and sounds
were! Didn’t get a pair of jungle boots till 67 and had to
trade a bunch of stuff to get them, too small but wear them
wet long enough and they stretch. Didn’t go home till after
tet.
Welcome home Buddy.
Always loved the “Scooters”. The best, most accurate support we could ask for.
Thanks for all you did to keep them coming for us.
You going to write up some of your stories for us?
Semper Fi