VIDEO HERE (23:39 minutes)
Friday, February 24, 2023
With AC-130 Gunships over the Ho Chi Minh Trail, 1971
William Van der Ven was a photographer with the U.S. Air Force based in Thailand in 1971. He documented a wide variety of missions, combat and otherwise. In this excerpt, he shares memories of twelve missions over the Ho Chi Minh Trail aboard AC-130 gunships.
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Always happy to see Puff arrive.
ReplyDeleteThat’s not Puff. The original Puff was a converted C-47. The AC-130 was nicknamed Spooky. Back in the day I was afforded the opportunity to call fire in on targets at Eglin AFB. Totally awesome weapons platform .
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DeleteOn December 2, 1964, the first AC-47s arrived in Vietnam and were assigned to the 1st Air Commando Squadron. The ground troops affectionately called the AC-47 “Puff – the Magic Dragon”. It was noted that the Viet Cong never seeing such an attack from the sky, thought it to be a fire breathing dragon.
I meant to add I stand corrected. If they only operated at night I reckon I never saw one. I was a ground pounder. W'd hear a big rumble and wavy red line coming down from the sky, it was Puff.
DeleteIn Vietnam the Marine grunts called the fixed-wing gunships "Spooky", the Army grunts called them "Puff the Magic Dragon".
DeleteHey Anon, me too! As I recall, in 1977 when we were playing ‘aggressor detail’ for the Ranger class third phase, we were able to get some training in. While on a night training patrol, we called in in a fire mission from an orbiting AC-130, on ourselves, with her floodlight. It took maybe two seconds for that floodlight to find and focus on us, from their orbit at 10,000 ft. It occurred to me right then they just as quickly could have fired us up with any of their guns just as quick. Makes you feel kinda small. We used some sort of targeting device about the size of a transistor radio. You just pointed the antenna at the the target, input data such as range and target description via push buttons with pictographic display. Heard tell, the Montagnards called it ‘the ghost in the box’. C Co. 2nd Bn. 325th Abn Inf.
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