From a recent conversation with Capt. Paulson, he recalls “the 19 shot pods were all Willy Pete (white phosphorus) for marking and the seven shot pods were HE (high explosive) to keep their heads down. The M60s in the gun sponsons added much to the noisy mix.”
Keep watching the OV-10 Squadron News for a DVD Capt. Paulson “should have back early next week.” We’re quite excited to watch!
We’ll be publishing Capt. Paulson’s videos here at OV10 Squadron.
Do you have any video files we can share with OV-10 fans?
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Hostage BILL/HANDS, wonder how he got the second call sign? Read Moriarty’s book, Ground Attack Vietnam.
I carried HE in the big pods and WP in the 7 shot ones (’69). More usefull mix.
Hostage Oscar May be correct as to the load mix in the photo. As I recall our standard load was four seven shot pods with an equal mix of WP and HE and full guns. No center line tanks. Which gave us about 2.5 hours station time. Low fuel lights were not uncommon. According to my diary I shut down with 100 pounds one time. Yikes!!
My recollection is that we carried WP and HE in seven shot pods. The 19 shot pods, in my experience, were WP in “unscarffed” rockets that were used for smoke screens, not target marking. I am sure normal target marking WP and HE could be carried in the 19 shot pods. I remember taking off one day in the summer of 1970 with four 19 shot pods with which to use on call from Hostage Dragon, David Huffman, for a smoke screen. I used up most of the 10k runway at DaNang and slowly climbed to 10 thousand feet until I was called upon to lay down a smoke screen. The unscarffed rockets looked like they were doing barrel rolls but went in generally the right direction. Rockets with fins were much more stable and flew in a more direct path to the target.
Hostage Lima