Uncle Sam
Ain’t Released Me Yet
Memoirs of a REMF
Copyright©
2016 by Robert B. Martin, IV
All
Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy,
recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without express
written permission from the copyright owner, except for the use of brief
quotations in a book review or scholarly journal. I have attempted to recreate
events, locales, and conversations from my memories of them.
------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter
35
The “Mad Minute”
“Peace through superior firepower.” .......John Ringo
We were allowed to
take our M-16’s out to the bunker line for target practice almost anytime we
wished. I went out occasionally with some buddies and did a little “plinking”
with my M-16. We would usually toss a few beer cans out in front of the bunker
line and try to make them “dance” by hitting them multiple times. I didn’t
always make them dance very long but it was a lot of fun.
A “Mad Minute” was much, much more than just a
few guys plinking at cans with M-16’s. A “Mad Minute” was a term that referred
to the intense rate of fire that all available weapons could produce from the
perimeter bunker line toward every possible target for a period of one minute. The
ground in front of the bunker line was termed a “free-fire zone” and anyone out
there was in the wrong place at the wrong time. “Mad Minutes” almost always took place
at night and were quite a spectacle. It was the Fourth of July and New Year’s’
Eve many times over. The intent of this concentrated firing of all perimeter
defensive weapons was meant to discourage any enemy troop movement near the
camp. It was also a lot of fun and a good way to blow off a little steam in
addition to some of the real estate. Each man took his M-16 and as many
magazines as he thought he could shoot during the assigned minute.
In addition to the
personal M-16s, there were M-60 machine guns, M-79 grenade launchers, 105mm and
155mm howitzers (if available), dusters (a tank chassis with two 40mm guns in an
open turret), and quad 50s (four mounted .50 caliber machine guns that fired
simultaneously). The dusters and quad 50s were designed as anti-aircraft weapons
but used in Vietnam as anti-personnel weapons.
Claymore mines and
fugas (aka, foogas or phoogas) drums were also detonated during the “Mad Minute.”
Claymores were small directional anti-personnel mines containing C-4 explosive
that fired about 700 small (1/8” diameter) steel balls in a sixty-degree arc out
to a little over one hundred yards in front of the mine. It could be detonated
either remotely or by trip wire. The words “Front Toward Enemy” were embossed
on the front of the mine to prevent it from being pointed in the wrong
direction. There were two pairs of scissor-legs attached to the bottom to help support
and aim the mine.
Fugas was extremely
wicked stuff. It was a concoction of gasoline and some type of thickener that
combined to create a flammable, jelly-like substance, very much like “homemade”
napalm. Fifty-five gallon drums of this mixture with explosive charges to serve
as detonators were placed at intervals out in front of the bunker line and,
like the claymore, could be detonated remotely or by trip wire. The explosive
charge would spread the flaming substance, which would stick to whatever it
contacted. Fugas had a limited “shelf life,” and upon reaching its “expiration
date”, it would be detonated and replaced with a fresh batch. It was something
to see.
Mad Minutes sometimes
included an AC-47 (the military version of the DC-3) gunship known as “Spooky”
or “Puff the Magic Dragon.” This was a flying gun platform with three 7.62mm
General Electric mini-guns and sometimes a 105mm howitzer mounted to the
fuselage and pointed out the left-hand side (pilot side) of the aircraft. The
rate of fire from each mini-gun was six thousand rounds per minute, or one
hundred rounds per second. The three mini-guns together fired eighteen thousand
rounds per minute, or three hundred rounds per second!
The pilot only had to
bank the aircraft to the left and fly a fairly tight circle around the target
at a specific altitude in order to place all of that combined hell on the
target.
Every fifth round was
a tracer, which burned brightly, making the bullet visible. Six thousand rounds
per minute with every fifth one a tracer meant that twelve tracers per second
were fired from each of the three guns. The aircraft itself was generally unseen.
All we saw from the ground were three solid red lines, one from each gun,
reaching from the aircraft to the ground. It was like watching a laser light
show, had we known what a laser was back then.
All of that weaponry
firing as fast as possible for one solid minute was both beautiful and
frightening, not to mention very loud.
Continued in Chapter 36, Payback is a Bitch…
No comments :
Post a Comment