OT a little Bad JuJu for snake driver

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BigSky56
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OT a little Bad JuJu for snake driver

Post by BigSky56 »

After the last couple of topics about AD it brought to mind a incident that happened at firebase mace a 1/9 cav snake had been out on pink team mission came back in to reload, all the ammo handlers were busy so the PP jumped out and stuffed a rocket in the pod it fired and went thru him didnt detonate, PP had left the launcher hot from the last launch and forgot you dont stand in front of the tube when loading. Guy just wanted to get back in the fight and forgot the rules.
1/9 lost a blue lift slick crew and 9 grunts due to a frag detonation, not blues but 1 cav reactionary force, going to a firefight they didnt have rucks just web gear loaded with ordnance for the fight. Some of the grunts had got into the bad habit of removing the safety clip on the frags and then hanging the frag by the spoon thru the web gear if the pin comes out you got grief, there is a good reason to remove the clips once you get to the fight but not beforehand, and as everyone used red spoon frags you dont have 5 seconds to get rid of them. danny
Last edited by BigSky56 on Wed Apr 27, 2011 6:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: OT a little Bad JuJu for snake driver

Post by Jarhead »

:(
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Re: OT a little Bad JuJu for snake driver

Post by txpete »

it would be a safe bet that
1. the acft wasn't grounded.it only takes .9VDC to set off a rocket
2.the gunner in the front had his GACP in the armed position.
3.we always loaded FAAR 2.75 inch rockets from the front.on the AH-1Gs 158 and 200 hog pods you had to unlock the the detents first and you always loaded from the outside of the pod and worked back AFTER you did a stray voltage check first.
in 20+ years(AH-1G to the AH-64A) I never seen a rocket malfunction coming out of the tube.

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Re: OT a little Bad JuJu for snake driver

Post by J Miller »

BigSky56 wrote:After the last couple of topics about AD it brought to mind a incident that happened at firebase mace a 1/9 cav snake had been out on pink team mission came back in to reload, all the ammo handlers were busy so the PP jumped out and stuffed a rocket in the pod it fired and went thru him didnt detonate, PP had left the launcher hot from the last launch and forgot you dont stand in front of the tube when loading. Guy just wanted to get back in the fight and forgot the rules.
1/9 lost a blue lift slick crew and 9 grunts due to a frag detonation, not blues but 1 cav reactionary force, going to a firefight they didnt have rucks just web gear loaded with ordnance for the fight. Some of the grunts had got into the bad habit of removing the safety clip on the frags and then hanging the frag by the spoon thru the web gear if the pin comes out you got grief, there is a good reason to remove the clips once you get to the fight but not beforehand, and as everyone used red spoon frags you dont have 5 seconds to get rid of them. danny
For those of us not having been in the military, could you please translate or elaborate on those lines marked in blue? I'd appreciate it. I'm pretty sure what some of this means, but not all of it.

Joe
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Re: OT a little Bad JuJu for snake driver

Post by jeepnik »

J Miller wrote:
BigSky56 wrote:After the last couple of topics about AD it brought to mind a incident that happened at firebase mace a 1/9 cav snake had been out on pink team mission came back in to reload, all the ammo handlers were busy so the PP jumped out and stuffed a rocket in the pod it fired and went thru him didnt detonate, PP had left the launcher hot from the last launch and forgot you dont stand in front of the tube when loading. Guy just wanted to get back in the fight and forgot the rules.
1/9 lost a blue lift slick crew and 9 grunts due to a frag detonation, not blues but 1 cav reactionary force, going to a firefight they didnt have rucks just web gear loaded with ordnance for the fight. Some of the grunts had got into the bad habit of removing the safety clip on the frags and then hanging the frag by the spoon thru the web gear if the pin comes out you got grief, there is a good reason to remove the clips once you get to the fight but not beforehand, and as everyone used red spoon frags you dont have 5 seconds to get rid of them. danny
For those of us not having been in the military, could you please translate or elaborate on those lines marked in blue? I'd appreciate it. I'm pretty sure what some of this means, but not all of it.

Joe
Blue is the universal color for practice ordinance.

By the way, one night a Phantom had a 2.75 leave the launcher in the middle of the night. No one was hurt, but it left a buring patch out thru the scrub. The ordinance (and no offense meant here, it's just a bit of intra-service rivalry) monkeys wanted us to go retrieve it. Yea, right, dark night, live ordinance. We checked the runways and taxiways and left recovery for the AM.
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Re: OT a little Bad JuJu for snake driver

Post by txpete »

J Miller wrote:
BigSky56 wrote:After the last couple of topics about AD it brought to mind a incident that happened at firebase mace a 1/9 cav snake had been out on pink team mission came back in to reload, all the ammo handlers were busy so the PP jumped out and stuffed a rocket in the pod it fired and went thru him didnt detonate, PP had left the launcher hot from the last launch and forgot you dont stand in front of the tube when loading. Guy just wanted to get back in the fight and forgot the rules.
1/9 lost a blue lift slick crew and 9 grunts due to a frag detonation, not blues but 1 cav reactionary force, going to a firefight they didnt have rucks just web gear loaded with ordnance for the fight. Some of the grunts had got into the bad habit of removing the safety clip on the frags and then hanging the frag by the spoon thru the web gear if the pin comes out you got grief, there is a good reason to remove the clips once you get to the fight but not beforehand, and as everyone used red spoon frags you dont have 5 seconds to get rid of them. danny
For those of us not having been in the military, could you please translate or elaborate on those lines marked in blue? I'd appreciate it. I'm pretty sure what some of this means, but not all of it.

Joe
joe I can help a bit.


a 1/9 cav snake.what he is talking about here is 1/9 cav 1st cav div.the snake is a AH-1G attack helicopter.sometimes better know as the head hunters.Image

PP should be PIC or pilot in command

1/9 lost a blue lift slick crew and 9 grunts due to a frag detonation[/color], not blues but 1 cav reactionary force

blue lift crew.blues were the grunts or 11B's.slicks is a non gunship huey.huey gunships were UH-1B,C and M's or mikes which we out fitted with flex guns,rockets and sometimes mini-guns.the hueys with just the M60's were called slicks troop transport.each troop had a blues platoon and if a bird went down they would be the security for the rescue/recovery mission.they did away with the blues in about 73-74.several of my friends were 11B and door gunners on hueys and were later converted over to a huey crew chief.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1KWLRK4 ... re=related

all the blues were hard stripe and we were SP/4 and SP/5's in a avn mos.

SP/5
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Re: OT a little Bad JuJu for snake driver

Post by txpete »

joe here is a army film that will explain alot for you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMH1zgQp ... re=related
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Re: OT a little Bad JuJu for snake driver

Post by Ben_Rumson »

Talking about ordnance mishaps.. here’s one to lighten things up a bit... I was in Artillery back during the WW Nam, and there’s a thing in ARTY that happens every so often that’s called a muzzle burst.. That’s when a High Explosive round goes off as soon as it leaves the tube...Not a healthy thing for nearby plants, animals and other living things...Anyway the front end of our motor pool was positioned about 75 yds or so in front of a Platoon of 8 inch and 175mm self propelled guns, which fired infrequently 24/7 over the motor pool... Mostly at Nui Ba Din.. the only mountain in III Corps.. One night a 175mm H.E. round exploded as soon as it left the tube...No one was hurt...but the nearbys sleeping in the hooch closest to the gun later drew an extra ration of underwear and nervous pills... Especially the luckiest guy I ever saw... He was the short timer sleeping in that hooch on a GI issue metal bed that he’d somehow managed to scrounge up (which we all envied at the time) the kind with a wire lattice suspended from springs attached to the frame... Most guys had a folding cot with a cotton filled standard striped GI mattress on it...or worse yet, an air mattress on a cot... Anyway... that night, “Old Lucky”, hangin’ low in his Cadillac bunk, had a red hot saucer sized ¾ inch thick piece of that 175s muzzle burst shrapnel nearly take a, BIG... BIG ... WET... BITE outta his low hangin’ BE-Hind!!....The chunk had ricocheted off the ground.. angled up under his hooch ... milled its’ way through the 1x6 floor boards, grazed through some of the wire lattice of the prized bunk.. and tore up a bit of the mattress he was asleep on!... then it planed on out through the hooch door frame of doubled 2x4s, traveled about 20ft, went through both closed doors of a Deuce and a Half (windows down), on through the Wrecker parked next to it...ricocheted off its’ out rigger, changing direction nearly 90* and traveled about 50yds, to go through the1x4 wall of a hooch, and finally come to rest, INSIDE a GI field safe whose sides were, IIRC, a sandwich of two 1/8th inch thick steel plates with an inch or so of concrete between....
A couple of days later, after he heard about the mattress incident, the Motor Sgt whose safe got violated gave Sleepless the battered chunk as a “lucky charm”...Them boys that slept in that hooch got a quick OK to get a Caterpillar in there to dig them a long requested hole for a bunker big enough for a dozen people to sleep in with room to spare... If you ever saw the movie Platoon, then you know what that bunker wound up looking like in the end...
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Re: OT a little Bad JuJu for snake driver

Post by Mescalero »

Blue Sky 56,
Be more careful, working on those ships brings back memories that are perhaps................ not so good.
But thanks for the story.
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Re: OT a little Bad JuJu for snake driver

Post by BigSky56 »

Joe, Troop F 1st squadron 9th air cavalry attached to 1 Cav division. In a air cav troop there is a guns platoon (red) cobras, scout plt (white) OH-6 loachs, Blue lift plt (blue for infantry) UH-1 slicks and infantry platoon attached to the slicks. A pink team is a cobra and a loach red & white that worked hunter killer missions the loach would fly 5 to 50 ft off the deck and hunt and draw fire the snakes would be at 5,000 ft when the loach made contact the snake would come in. A PP(peter pilot) is the copilot on loachs or slicks and the weapons officer on cobras the AC is the aircraft commander. rucks are the packs with all gear when you hit the field, web gear is for ordnance canteen etc . The grunts lost were from a regular infantry company not blues grunts. On frags you have a safety clip that goes around the spoon where the fuse screws into the body of the frag you use your thumb to roll it off the pin is a round ring with a cotter pin that goes thru the spoon and is folded over. A red spoon frag is a impact fuse frag when the spoon is released if you drop it goes bang it also has a 5 second time limit like a regular frag its used in jungle fighting for air burst on foliage and also to keep charlie from picking it up and throwing it back generally they were the lemon shape not the baseball frag. a regular 5 second frag was killing alot of grunts cause they would release the spoon then let the frag cook off a couple seconds then throw so charlie couldnt pick it up and toss it back, if you were getting hammered you could lose track of time . The reason for grunts removing the safety clip was many forgot to in the heat of battle they jerked the pin then tossed it if the clip was still on no joy. danny
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Re: OT a little Bad JuJu for snake driver

Post by Mescalero »

Converted a bunch of " D " model Cobras to TOW firing tank killers.
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Re: OT a little Bad JuJu for snake driver

Post by BigSky56 »

Ben Ive been to the black virgin mtn theres a radio relay base right on top with a psp landing pad on stilts just big enough for a bird been to Nui ba ra to its something to watch those SP cannons fire I spent a night at Tay Ninh came in late when it was dark found a comfy spot next to a sand bag wall middle of the night a 175 goes off over me guess they had a fire mission I chose my napping spots a little more careful after that. danny
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Re: OT a little Bad JuJu for snake driver

Post by txpete »

Mescalero wrote:Converted a bunch of " D " model Cobras to TOW firing tank killers.
moc-up (trainer) of the mods for the TOW missle system.TSU,SCA,MCA,and EPS.




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Re: OT a little Bad JuJu for snake driver

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How did you get that?
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Re: OT a little Bad JuJu for snake driver

Post by Old Ironsights »

Ben_Rumson wrote:Talking about ordnance mishaps.. here’s one to lighten things up a bit... I was in Artillery back during the WW Nam, and there’s a thing in ARTY that happens every so often that’s called a muzzle burst.. That’s when a High Explosive round goes off as soon as it leaves the tube...Not a healthy thing for nearby plants, animals and other living things...Anyway the front end of our motor pool was positioned about 75 yds or so in front of a Platoon of 8 inch and 175mm self propelled guns, which fired infrequently 24/7 over the motor pool... Mostly at Nui Ba Din.. the only mountain in III Corps.. One night a 175mm H.E. round exploded as soon as it left the tube...No one was hurt...but the nearbys sleeping in the hooch closest to the gun later drew an extra ration of underwear and nervous pills... Especially the luckiest guy I ever saw... He was the short timer sleeping in that hooch on a GI issue metal bed that he’d somehow managed to scrounge up (which we all envied at the time) the kind with a wire lattice suspended from springs attached to the frame... Most guys had a folding cot with a cotton filled standard striped GI mattress on it...or worse yet, an air mattress on a cot... Anyway... that night, “Old Lucky”, hangin’ low in his Cadillac bunk, had a red hot saucer sized ¾ inch thick piece of that 175s muzzle burst shrapnel nearly take a, BIG... BIG ... WET... BITE outta his low hangin’ BE-Hind!!....The chunk had ricocheted off the ground.. angled up under his hooch ... milled its’ way through the 1x6 floor boards, grazed through some of the wire lattice of the prized bunk.. and tore up a bit of the mattress he was asleep on!... then it planed on out through the hooch door frame of doubled 2x4s, traveled about 20ft, went through both closed doors of a Deuce and a Half (windows down), on through the Wrecker parked next to it...ricocheted off its’ out rigger, changing direction nearly 90* and traveled about 50yds, to go through the1x4 wall of a hooch, and finally come to rest, INSIDE a GI field safe whose sides were, IIRC, a sandwich of two 1/8th inch thick steel plates with an inch or so of concrete between....
A couple of days later, after he heard about the mattress incident, the Motor Sgt whose safe got violated gave Sleepless the battered chunk as a “lucky charm”...Them boys that slept in that hooch got a quick OK to get a Caterpillar in there to dig them a long requested hole for a bunker big enough for a dozen people to sleep in with room to spare... If you ever saw the movie Platoon, then you know what that bunker wound up looking like in the end...
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Re: OT a little Bad JuJu for snake driver

Post by txpete »

Mescalero wrote:How did you get that?
:D who did you work for?.
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Re: OT a little Bad JuJu for snake driver

Post by awp101 »

Tangental to the subject, but about 10 years ago I read a couple of great books about those HK teams. They were both written from the perspective of Little Bird drivers but the pink team work is detailed as well.

Low Level Hell and Easy Target are the names of the books. The really interesting part is one was written by someone who volunteered for service and wanted to be in the thick of things. The other was written by someone who was drafted (or volunteered to get out of trouble, I don't recall which offhand) and thought flying helos would be an easy gig.
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Re: OT a little Bad JuJu for snake driver

Post by BigSky56 »

Pete I watched the techs mount a vulcan 20 mm pod from a damaged F4 on a 1/9 cobra there was so much torque the AC ran out of pedal trying to keep it on target if it could be mounted center line under the belly it would work, we coundnt get 70 mm heat rounds they were brand new and went to F battery 79 ARA Blue Max unit they lost 8 of 32 pilots in snakes against the tanks trying to get thru 51's radar controlled 23, 37 & 57 mm AAA and the new sam7. We were use to the old B40 rockets but those sam7's could track down a cigarette. danny
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Re: OT a little Bad JuJu for snake driver

Post by txpete »

danny did it look like this

Image

when they put the 20MM on the wing store everytime they shot it they would have to go back and retorque darn near everything.the was enough recoil and torque on the M35 they had to beef up the structural panels as the stock ones would warp.

they later did this mod to the AH-1 MOD S when I was up on the east german border.the MOD S snake was a G that was mod'ed for tow missles.all our cobras were nam birds with upgrades.

Image

they also installed APR-39's so you would know if you had lock on.on the pilots console there was a small screen indicator that would strobe in the direction of the lock on.

on the ECAS & AH-1F the 20mm (M-197) was a 3 barrel and the best weapon they ever put on a snake IMHO.

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the ammo box held 750 rd but if you were slick you could get another 40 in the chute :D

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Re: OT a little Bad JuJu for snake driver

Post by BigSky56 »

Pete that looks like the same rig not sure where it was bolted on the wing stub the ammo magazine was a big thing like 6' long & 2-21/2' deep and I didnt see which wing stub they mounted it under, but for weight balance I would guess the opposite wing. danny
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Re: OT a little Bad JuJu for snake driver

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