Yeah, and you fellas had a wicked sense of humor. 😁
Mentioned this in my “book” but WTH...got shot at one day along the east rim of the A Shau Valley...entire battalion opened up in me. Guess they missed their coffee, it was kinda early. About the time I cleared the hot zone a Bilk FACCER called and asked if we needed help. Snake lead was agreeable. Bilk told us he had a flight of 4 F4’s doing RTB from some place he couldn’t talk about, with a full load. Weather had socked in their target and they were low on fuel.
No way in hell was I going to mark the target but we passed along verbal description of the target site which was easy to see in the tall mountains. He said he would mark the target and told us to move well south of the target. His marking shot was good and about 10 seconds after confirming that the flight dropped in with a Thunderbirds style diamond formation. Never had seen that before, nor had I seen an F4 drop ALL of its bombs at the same time; certainly not 4 of them in close formation. Sooooo, about 48-50 thousand pounds of bombs hit the target at one time. Pretty much looked like a nuke detonation.
Lead asked if I wanted to check it out...”Oh yeah!” Did not receive a single round of fire, and it was impossible to count the number of NVA killed. You see, all their parts and pieces were mostly hanging on nearby tree limbs. One leg still had a boot on its little foot.
Death was our business, and on that day business was good.
