Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire AC-119 Stinger

I’m way too young to know much about this stuff but my Uncle flew an AC-119K in Vietnam. He has a few remarkable stories about hitting trucks at night on the HoChiMin trail. Watching tracers barely miss the cockpit and stacking one of these planes up in a rice paddy as a result of a faulty fuel gauge indicating he had plenty of fuel as he ran out.

Rocky, speaking of “Naked Fanny” remember this ? SE of Pleiku.

"Little Cat" Mountain? Never got over it, but yes.

My hats off to you boys who flew those missions over there....never tire of hearing of the stories that you gents experienced...
I don't think the air crews ever get enough credit for the ways they put their asses on the line, and how many American lives they saved flying over our troops who were in a tight spot.

StepDad didn't fly gun ships over there, he flew 130s on those black bird missions...CIA stuff he won't talk about much to this day.. being 87 this year. He did set down a 130 in flames at Khe Sahn... crew got out..plane was mortared on the flight line ..
cargo was kind of explosive.... nothing left for spare parts...

Times you guys speak of, I was still stateside wrapping up high school and enjoying being safe and out of harms way, worry when my draft number was going to come around....

God Bless the boys who made the noise....

When the old man was stationed at Pope in 66-68, before heading to Nam... I use to watch the 130s, that had rotated over to Vietnam on TDY, after they came home.... 90 to 120 days...they were so patched up, parts from other 130s...you couldn't tell what the camo colors were suppose to be....the things got shot up so much and repaired over there....

Unit on base was the 464th TCW... old man was assigned to the Tactical Airlift Center...
while there, he was attached to the folks developing the HC 130Hs....for pilot retrieval in the jungles...

as close as I got, but certainly enough of a spectator to know what you guys went thru....
hence my immense respect to each of you....

Tripped across this video after reading this thread...

a walk down memory lane for you Air Crew Types... and plane lovers like me....

a Little Davis Monthan Tour...

It's a funny thing, Seafire. The scaredest I ever got was on the drive to the airport on my way to Vietnam. I was just wet from the fear that I'd get killed.

Once there and actually doing the job, it was just...the job. I was well trained (although what they taught me stateside turned out to be almost opposite of the real combat learning) and I re-learned fast. Getting shot at was exciting at first, but after the first few hundred thousand rounds it was just a tame fireworks show. The twinkling white stars of muzzle flash, the arc of red and green tracers, the trail of rocket smoke...it all became sort of detached from the fact that all those gomers down there were actually trying to kill me. It became a game of that professional against this one.

Fortunately, I won. 300 to 0.

John, I enjoyed the video. When we hauled for the St. Louis ANG unit I would look at their F-4Es. Several had at least one red star on the vari-ram ahead of the intake. It is one time a plane can tell you a story.

There was always the unexpected just waiting around the corner. This one is kinda special. A ZSU23-2 captured by one of the B/2/17th Cav Scouts. It never got off the first shot, nor did the ground crew. What you see here is the gun sans carraige, set in concrete in front of the 2/17th Cav HQ Operations Center. 1970 in the A Shau Valley.

Oh, THOSE were nasty. Their tracers were a deep yellow, and the four-gun ZSU-23 radar-aimed ones put out such a heavy stream of fire we called them "The Golden Hose." Truly terrifying to go up against.

#Respect#

Rocky, my recollection has it the twin and quad 23s brought down more of our boys than any other air defense system the north had. The one in the pic was not equipped with radar but I think most of the quads up north were. Late in the Spring '72 Offensuve timeline I was working with 1st Cav leftovers up in I Corps (MR1) and had occasion to play with a twin captured intact near Quang Tri. It was sobering to witness the speed of traverse and the ease required. I was told then they could follow a target flying directly overhead at 500' and 500 knots. Have no doubt that was true.

It was during that operational period that I quit worrying about small arms and all of our tactics revolved around defeating the threat of AAA and SA7 missiles.

DD

John the guys that got all the accolades were the fast mover drivers in my timeline..Not that they didn't deserve it however it was rather sickening at times to see the staged photo sessions out on the flight line with stateside and or Stars and Stripes journalist falling all over themselves beside an F-4...I never saw an article about a single crew member during my tour..If you weren't wearing a go to hell hat and sporting a handle bar stash you were chopped liver I guess.. One of my pilots an ANG LTC had been reactivated as he flew C-47's in Korea since the AF was short of experienced pilots for the gunship program...He wasn't a spring chicken like the rest of us, had logged many hours flying air drops around the Pusan area during the war yet here he was Spooky pilot on his second deployment in SEA.. He was a great AC [aircraft commander] and friend to all of the crew with the prime directive to get all of us home in one piece which he did time after time....What a damn shame not to tell his story still pisses me off to this day ! Rant over

Dan, I never had to duel with one, but the FACs who flew the Trail at night in O-2s did. (The OV-10 couldn't work at night because of its canopy design. Too long to explain that here)

Anyway, the night FACs say they'd MUCH rather deal with 37mm guns than the Zsu-23. The 37 had heavier punch and could reach a lot higher, but both were moot if they couldn't hit ya. And with their much slower rate of fire and optical (guesswork) tracking at night, their red tennis balls were just a light show.

But they had to really jink and jive if a Golden Hose opened up.

I may have had one of the first encounters with a SA-7 Strella IR manpad. The idiot fired it at me when I was only about 100 feet above him, fortunately. It went by me between my wingtip and the cockpit, but had not had nearly enough time to acquire me and arm up. If the one-level gunner who fired it had just counted to 20 before he pulled the trigger, I'd be lying in Cambodia right now. I'd bet he was used to firing RPGs. The Intel guy in my debrief that day got real bug-eyed when I described the launch. We called it "getting a Strella suppository."

Lost some good friends to Strellas, they were a daunting challenge. Had occasion to witness this one and by odd chance the crew survived, against all odds I might add. The painting is relatively accurate, but the snake was in about a 90^ left bank when struck. I was on the ground in the backdrop with 12 other Hueys dumping off troops. Watched it from launch to impact.



One of the lighter tales that came from them was a Spectre up west of Hue on a night mission, using the IR vision equipment. They got to watch a Strella launch and track directly into the camera which was apparently mounted in very close proximity to the search light. Flew it home and presumably washed their shorts afterwards.

So did that snake crew!

The rest of the story re: Blue Max. After getting hit they began a vertical autorotation with the fuselage slowly turning counter clockwise. The hit occurred at about 3,000' as I recall and just SE of Con Thon east of QL9. The pilot tried to jettison the pods but that didn't work, likely due to tripped breakers etc. The battery for the Snake was in the tailboom right about where the separation occurred. Recollection has it that he shut the engine down, but I'm not certain of that. The bird was about half way down when the flight of slicks I was with departed for RTB and per protocol the last bird in the formation was assigned recovery duties. They broke off the formation headed toward the falling bird w/o gun cover initially and due to proximity were not far away at all when the snake crashed into sparse single canopy scrub. The slick driver landed a short distance away and tried to get the dink infantry they had picked up to off load but they refused, so after one of those WTF moments he picked up and hovered over to the crash site to find both pilots waiting for pickup. The CP had a broken ankle and dead trees blocked an on site landing, so they chopped the trees down with the main rotor and got low enough so the gunner and crew chief could get them on board.

They were dropped off at the EVAC hospital at Bien Hoa and the A/C was released shortly thereafter. CP was treated and released, but by the time he got back to his unit, the A/C who was regular army (Cpt) had crafted and handed in his request to separate from the service. I was, uh, jealous?

A few days later I got a call from Brigade HQ wanting to know where the preliminary accident report was for the damaged Huey. One of my collateral duties in the unit was safety officer and I'd had precious little reason to consider that affair up to that point. Main rotor strikes that caused even minor dents or incursion to the rotor blade skin was considered a major accident due to collateral damage likely to occur to the drive train and power plant. I was somewhat stunned by the tone of the major's voice and pondered briefly before saying, "Sir, it wasn't an accident. They did it on purpose when they snatched the crew of the downed Blue Max snake." Long pause........."Mister, I like the way you think!" No paper work was generated from that affair.

End of tale.

Dan, Dave, Woody, and Rocky....

enjoyed reading your posts... and want to thank each one of you for your service, and your service in S. Vietnam...

came close to being sent over there, but I guess the Good Lord Figured he needed me around a while longer... so I got diverted elsewhere...the only one out of 200 guys...

I heard about 60 of them never came back alive...

Always thought I'd have been one of them if the Good Lord didn't intervene...

Just want to let you gentlemen know, its a real personal honor to me to consider you each as on line friends..
and especially to Dave and Woody, who I have been blessed with the honor of being a guest in their homes and
treated like I was someone real important...( which I ain't )...

Just thank you gentlemen for your service to your nation... and a salute of respect for your service in Nam and for coming home and living a good life...

May the Good Lord watch over and bless each of you boys...

Appreciate your thoughts, but you realize we were being paid while having all that fun, right? Tax free............about $600/month at the start. Damn few places to spend it as well, so I saved a bundle.

Plus that magnanimous extra $60 a month combat pay! Two bucks a day to get hammered each evening - drinks were 35 cents at the bar.

No thanks necessary. It was a duty and an honor to serve, even when it wasn't a pleasure.

Tthanks John you know you are welcome here anytime you pass through...Yes $60 extra went along way in those days, like Dan I managed to save, send some home and still have some for pitchers of swill with my crew. Wouldn't trade my experience for all the tea in China just some regrets this late in life that I didn't stay for 20. I miss the flying but not being an airborne 10 ring ..