It may be hard to imagine today, but when I was a lad an entire generation of naval aviators had grown up to fill middle and even upper leadership roles in line squadrons without ever having “seen the wolf.” The long peace between Vietnam and Desert Storm meant that nearly 20 years had gone by with little more than the occasional drive by shooting.
My first CO was a Vietnam vet, as was his XO. After that were a long succession of folks who’d never been in actual combat. It was all too possible in that environment to get a “blue bomb” mentality.
A blue bomb is a MK76 (low drag) or a BDU-48 (high drag). These were twenty-five pound practice bombs with phosphorous marker cartridges in their nose. Their ballistic profile was very similar to that of a general purpose bomb like the 500 pound MK82, but they were vastly cheaper to expend in training and there was next to no danger in doing so – the marker charge sent up a lovely little column of smoke but had no “frag envelope” to avoid.
In the days before precision guided ordnance became the norm, hitting small targets like tanks, arty tubes and trucks often meant getting down low and groveling with them. It’s great fun in training, but hard work in combat – being in gun range works both ways. But, it’s hard to hit what you can’t see, so we trained extensively in the low altitude environment.
We always trained to fight in two-ship pairs (at a minimum) for mutual support – it was good to have someone to watch your six for AAA or SAMs when you were on government time in the final attack. To make a low altitude simultaneous attack on a target required that both strikers be off target within 5 seconds of each other, or else the trailing attacker would end up flying through the frag pattern of his leader’s bombs. That could lead to dash 2 taking engine or airframe damage and potentially going for a walk in the proximity of some fairly agitated bad guys. Alternate deconfliction schemes were also devised to put greater than 30 seconds of time (and a multi-axis attack) between detonations using relatively simple spacing patterns.
Practicing these drills at low altitude was great fun, but it wasn’t until you’d tried them carrying live ordnance that the real importance of flawless execution became apparent. You simply haven’t lived until you’ve been in a 15 degree dive on final attack at 1500 feet or so above the ground in a low altitude run and realized suddenly that the timing had gotten gooned and lead’s bombs – heading towards the same target you were approaching at 500 knots – hadn’t gone off yet.
It’s very exciting.
Another example of the benefits of experience and the blue bombing mentality was driven home for me when a new change came out to our weapons computer software in the late 80′s. Someone had spent good government money to enable a “hot gun” capability during ground attack with bombs.
Now, the 20mm cannon on the FA-18 is, when selected as the primary ground attack weapon, an incredibly accurate and lethal weapon. Relatively simple ballistics and short times of flight combined with accurate air-to-ground radar ranging meant that the bullets would go exactly where the aiming dot was placed. The hot gun cross had none of that however – it was necessarily austere, since most of the processing power of the weapons computer in a dive bombing attack was dedicated towards displaying either a release point or an impact point. The hot gun cross was little more than a selectable option on the weapons display and a static cross hair drawn on the HUD.
“This software change is useless,” I told my CO one day in the ready room at sea. “You’ll never hit anything with a static gun cross, and anyway your attention will be focused on the bomb run. Why on earth did we pay good money for this software change?”
The CO, a compact, taciturn man with extensive combat experience on Yankee Station, gave one of the longest speeches I ever heard him make: “You’re not supposed to hit anything with it. You just use it to hose the target area down when you’re on the wire. Fire a long burst and rudder her around a little bit. Gives the bad guys something else to think about besides tracking you in their gunsights.”
“Oh,” I replied. Feeling – not for the last time – simultaneously better educated and a great deal more stupid.
hthttp://www.neptunuslex.com/2007/04/11/on-the-wire/tp://
Cap’n, you might want to get rid of the extra “ht” in that link for “on the wire.”
All fixed, thanks Jeff.
Heh,
For real entertainment value, there was nothing like firing Bullpups from a P-3 Orion. Or the Zuni pod, for that matter….
Many was the wag who would offer (and place) bets upon how far in front of the aircraft the Bullpup would get before detonating.
The Bullpup sight was nothing fancy. A metal shrouded ring with a fixed cross hair bolted to the pilots dash. It was folded down and out of the way when not in use. When needed, it folded up, the missile was armed, and the plane pointed at the target. the pilot would place the crosshairs upon the target, and, provided that airspeed, angle to target and range were within the parameters, the missile was launched.
Then the fun began… would it arm? Would it reach the target BEFORE it went off? Would it go off? Lots of fun for the pilot and his cockpit crew.. not so much for the other 7 or 8 GIB’s along for the ride
Respects,
“Oh,” I replied. Feeling – not for the last time – simultaneously better educated and a great deal more stupid.
I have many, many more of these particular tee shirts than I’m willing to own up to…in public. It’s the corollary to “there are no stupid questions” theorem.
Thank God we’ve gone to “smart bombs” since…nyuk-nyuk!
b2
Many might be surprised to learn that smart bomb technology is hardly a recent development.
In WW-II the Germans developed and used radio-guided bombs – The Fritz X and the Henschel Hs293. Although limited in use, both were used successfully as anti-shipping precision guided bombs. The Allies developed but never used the WW-II developed GB serious of bombs which included the various uses of TV, infrared, or light-contrast for bomb guidance. But the VB-1 Azon – which was an azimuth-only guided bomb – was used in both WW-II and Korea.
Smart bombs or precision-guided-munitions (PGM’s) saw extensive use in the later Vietnam years. Their use was only limited by the lack of enough appropriate targets to justify their use. The Air force used the laser-guided Paveway system and an electro-optically guided bomb. The Navy made widespread use of the TV-guided Walleye. Even Navy F-4′s working in tandem used a then classified but very effective system for manual laser target designating and the dropping of laser-guided bombs. And it was 4 LGB’s that finally finished the notorious Thanh Hoa bridge, after losing many crews there for seven years in prior attempts .
But bullets are still bullets and despite jamming or decoy, just go mostly and nicely where pointed.
Yeah, but for the ultimate in precision airborne delivery, nothing beat the War Hummer with the grease pencil mark on the windscreen and the ACO hanging out of the aft ditching hatch w/blue bomb (and being held by the CICO. Scored a few bullseye s in our time thataway and got credit (or blame, if you were with the VA outfit) for sinking the target barge during the airwing sinkex.
-SJS
SteelJaw,
Heh. Reminds me of many a pleasant day spent at the mining range on the coast of Maine, between Sabino and Small Point.
There was a tower at each location, with an air-to-ground radio set up, and a transit. The P-3 on the mining run would swing by, and the tower crews would set the transit sights on the tail of the aircraft. As the TACCO called the drops, the assistant in the tower would read off the coordinate from the transit. By comparing the two bearing lines, you could easily plot each drop on the map.
Some enterprising TACCO’s discovered that the accuracy of their drops could be much improved by delivering certain comestibles of the beef & hops-derived beverage group to the tower crews before they departed for the range, along with, of course, the CORRECT bearing lines to be transmitted to the aircraft. In the clear. So everyone could hear.
Lovely days, those, with the surf crashing upon the rocky shore, the aroma of sizzling steaks on a charcoal grill mingling with the salt spray of the breakers, and the throaty roar of allison turboprops in the close-by overhead.
Life, sometimes, could be awfully good.
SJS,
the Hummer guys won every sinkex I’ve seen. Last one, the “bombardier”, a guy about 6’5 and about 120# whom we called SKELETOR had bruises all over his body for about a week from the feat. But oh so proud.
Nothing like the wisdom of an old salt. His point and tactic he taught you was pretty good on it’s face.
“Victory is gained not by the number killed, but by the number frightened.” – Arab Proverb.