Originally Posted by
megan
Reverted to using SAS's mates and their Chinooks dropping nets full of 44 gallon drums full of POL which were then lit up by adroit use of weapons.
Megan....please do not remind me of that bit of Command silliness from back in those days of fun and games.
A group of us were ordered to attend a Classified Briefing at our Battalion HQ to discover the "Secret Mission" was to burn down War Zone C using the method you allude to in your post.
My unit was to provide Ten Chinooks all equipped with Drum Rails that normally were used for dropping Drums of Tear Gas but this time it would be mixed drums of Napalm and others with standard POL (diesel and petrol).
Method would be the Chinooks making like Circus Elephants on parade at 300 feet AGL with sufficient spacing that each could come to a hover and roll its load of drums onto a single spot and thus build a pile of about two hundred barrels which would then be ignited by Huey gunships.
Of course the Colonel in the C&C helicopter would garner his Legion of Merit or some other array of Gongs following the destruction of War Zone C.
His Nibbs ignored the fact that a Vietnam Jungle area was not the same as tinder dry forest areas in the Pacific Northwest and there was no chance in hell that we could start such a fire as envisioned.
When we mere Chinook Pilots suggested the last aircraft in line use a free hand M-60 machine-gun shooting all tracer and the door gunners lobbing several White Phosphorus Hand Grenades onto the pile....we were rudely informed that shooting up things was the Gunships meat and taters.
Mind you 300 feet and 60 knots in a long line of Chinooks over some very unfriendly folks is not a way to grow old not make this a very desirable task.
We did the our job...dropped the barrels of petroleum...and the gun ships despite the half dozen smoke grenades we did throw naturally failed to hit the new cache of fuel we nicely airdropped for the NVA/VC despite expending all of their Rockets and 7.62 Ammo..
The Colonel did not allow a Debrief and failed to gather a row of Gongs for his wearing thereof.
Fortunately, the bad guys were probably so in disbelief at what they saw passing over them never fired a shot and missed a wonderful opportunity.
Sadly, about six months later....with a new Battalion Commander we were invited to carry out "How Not To Set Fire To War Zone C 2.0"....which resulted in a near mutiny before the new Colonel elected to save face and called it off.