Our Air Cavalry Troop had arrived at the airfield near Ca Mau in IV Corps. Way down in the Delta and in the U Minh Forest.
    After the morning briefing the Air Mission Commander comes over to me and says, ”Chicken, I've got something special for you today”. I immediately thought, “Oh goody. Another day of flying little circles and watching Rome plows blow up booby traps and mines”. But he says, ”I got good news and I got bad news. The good news is you're flying with the Navy. They are a couple of Broncos from the Light Attack Squadron Four or VAL-4 out of Binh Thuy. Good guys and they are familiar with the AO. You've heard of the Black Ponies". He started sounding like a used car salesman as the started with the bad news. "You and your trail are going alone, BUT you'll have the Navy to fly cover for you. They've found some shit, there aren't any ground troopies available and they asked for the Army to check it out. More good news is, your gonna get to go blow stuff up. Those boys are supposed to be carrying five inch rockets”. "Besides, you big bad-assed War Wagons have got each other. It'll be a piece of cake. Trust me”.
    So my wingman, called “trail”, and I were assigned a mission to work with a team of US Navy OV10 “Bronco” airplanes. I was given a VHF radio frequency and some grid coordinates to meet them at.
    The rest of the Troop was supporting a Giant RF so we were supposed to “Scout” for the Navy and see what they had turned up.
    We were flying a pair of OH6A light observation helicopters. No one in recent memory had done this sort of mission so it was going to be kind of interesting to experiment, learn and make up stuff as we went along.
    I plotted the coordinates and found that the meetin-up spot was about 15 miles off to the west of Ca Mau.
     Like I said, Ca Mau was in the U Minh Forest and that Forest was really Chuck’s home turf, hell, even though there was a lot of defoliated areas it was a regular playground for him. That made it a particularly nasty place to work. A French Parachute Battalion went in there back in the fifties and ain't been seen since.
    I was a little apprehensive (read scared shitless) for not having the usual entourage of helicopters following me around while I hunted NVA. But the good ol AMC assured me that I could “flight follow” with them and they'd come running if I needed them.
    Normally a pair of Crusader Cobras flying at about fifteen hundred feet above the ground would cover my team of two Loaches. C&C would be above us at a thousand feet and there would be four UH1H Long Knife Slicks on strip alert. Lastly, there would be another pair of Loaches and another pair of Cobras re-arming and re-fueling. They could easily be pressed into emergency service. They were all guys we knew. All proven and true. Guys we knew we could trust and count on when the shit started flying.
    Today it would be strangers. Today it would be Squids.
    The only really good thing about this mission was that each of the Broncos could carry twelve 5 inch Zuni rockets. Originally made for anti-submarine warfare, the Zunis used proximity fuses and were shot “straight down” at the targets. I was briefed that they were also carrying the usual 2.75 inch rockets and 7.62 mm. in minigun pods and that they could shoot straight.
    I started looking forward to really blowing up some stuff with that kind of firepower at my disposal. Through the haze of anxiety, I was planning to lay waste to some badguys.
    War Wagon 13 was my trail and as we headed for the rendezvous point I told him to keep an eye out for the Broncos.
     As we got closer I began calling on the radio. Their callsign was “Black Pony”. I don't remember the particular number that went with the Black Pony part.
    “Black Pony, War Wagon one four”.
    “Go ahead War Wagon”.
    “Were about a klick east of the rendezvous point and were ready for some fun and games”.
    “Roger War Wagon. About a klick southwest of those numbers you'll find some big bunkers that have been hit by airstrike”.
    I turn a little left and we come up on a complex containing some of the biggest bunkers I’d ever seen. These were big, above ground earthen bunkers. Each was probably fifteen feet wide and maybe thirty feet long. There were fighting bunkers nearby in the low scrub and defoliated trees that surrounded the partially cleared, poorly camouflaged area. There were three or four of the huge bunkers. A couple had some obvious damage.
    “See those bunkers War Wagon”?
    “Roger that shit”, as I blew through the complex. We drew some harassing fire. It was then that I realized why C&C sent me on this trip. I had a reputation for flying a little faster than the other guys. And I was living up to the reputation now.
    “Hey Pony, what are the rules of engagement”?
    “Province chief says shoot it up. We just want you to get a close up look at what we hit War Wagon".
    I thought the badguys were probably getting ready for a party. They were thinking, “Here's two LGBs (little green bastards) with no gun cover in sight”. We're gonna “cakka dau” these capitalist dogs. “Sing loi boys”.
    But I was hatching a plan too. I had big guns waiting upstairs. I was gonna devastate this place.
    “Black Pony, one four. I'm drawing light fire from the complex. We're gonna make a fast firing pass from 090 to 270 and mark a couple of undamaged bunkers with smoke. You guys come in on the same heading right behind us. I’ll be holding just a little to the south and I’ll be back in as soon as your wingman breaks. Just make one pass cuz I'm going right back in there after you beat’em up".
    “Roge”
    Feeling like the Cobra jock I always wanted to be, I called, “Inbound”!
    One three and I went screaming through that complex. The gunners were blazing away with their M60 machine guns, Ed and I kept squeezing the triggers on the miniguns. Each gunner tossed out a yellow smoke. I hooked the team around to the left held and at a near hover just a few hundred meters south of the Bronco’s anticipated path. We waited for the ground in front of us to erupt in giant black clouds of exploding shrapnel, vegetation and debris. The grin I had started to disappear when nothing happened after a few minutes.
    “Hey, Black Pony. Where you guys at”?
A pause.
    “Uhh, could you guys use Willie Pete (white phosphorus)? We couldn't see your smoke”.
    “What! We popped two yellow smokes. They were shooting the crap out of us with small arms. Where the heck are you guys”?
    “Well, we're pretty high. We have to start our rocket runs so as to break at five thousand. So could you drop some Willie Pete”?
    I looked at Scott. The gunner shrugged, “This is gonna suck, but what the hell”. We had to impress these Navy guys.
    I carried five Willie Pete grenades under the right side of my seat's armor. One three had some too. The worst part was yet to come.
    Badguys are now probably wondering what we hoped to accomplish by shooting wildly and throwing yellow smoke grenades at them. Then they think, “Here come those fools again. We have you this time, stupid imperialist swine”.
    “OK Black Pony, were gonna blow through there again. This time from 340 to 160 but we ain't sticking around. The guys in there are getting smarter by the minute. Expect to draw fire. If they see you”.
    One of the most dangerous aspects of scouting is to return to an area you just marked as a target and had gunships beat up. We always tried to get in right after the wingman’s break to take advantage of the confusion of battle caused during the attack. Also there were many times when the enemy would survive an attack then jump up and run for better cover immediately following a gun run.
    Just about the worse scenario is for the scout to mark a target. Then badguys hunker down, hide, or maybe even get ready to shoot back at the attackers. But the airstrike run doesn't come. Nothing! Zip! They were scared shitless for nothing. Now they're getting pissed and maybe even brave to the point of brazen. A second “dry” run borders on suicidal, especially if there are no friendly lives at risk.
    My left arm with the collective pitch sucked in a hundred pounds of torque . Scott started firing his M60. Our fully loaded Loach would barely make a hundred knots.
    One three and I really blasted towards the area this time. At two hundred meters we could see the muzzle flashes. One hundred meters, fifty meters, another look from the gunner and I knew what we were doing was stupid. I yelled to Scott to toss the WP then led both ships around to the left and we "dee dee’ed" the area.
    “Willie Peter's out Pony, let'em rip”!
    Heading away from the complex we waited for the big powerful “crumps” of the exploding Zunis.
    None Came.
    “Where are ya”? Do ya guys see the WP”?
    “Ahh, yeah, but we gotta go get fuel and we have another mission. We'd sure like together with you guys and maybe swap seats some time”.
    We returned to Ca Mau.
    Later we found out from C&C that the guys in the Broncos never saw our Loaches once during the half hour we were out there.
    We had felt pretty secure because they were up their watching us. They were our “gun cover”.

    Never buy a used car from an Air Mission Commander.