By Phil Rowe
"Okay, Bill. We're there," I advised my RF-4C pilot seated up front. "Let's set up our shallow-bank orbit."
We were positioned a few miles from the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between north and south Vietnam. At 30,000 feet in clear skies on a cool morning, we orbited to await the flying objects it was our mission to monitor.
What were those objects? Just projectiles fired from the U.S.S. New Jersey, munitions fired by those huge 16" guns.
And what were we doing? Well, we were artillery spotting for the gunnery crews of the New Jersey and reporting on their hits or misses. We were expected to advise them if they were short or long, left or right of the target coordinates down below.
It was a very unusual sort of mission for RF-4C's, a task more typically assigned to other airplanes, like the F-100's from down at Phu Cat or even Marine airplanes from Danang. But this day the duty fell onto us, for reasons I still do not know. We must have been available.
It surprised me to learn that we could actually see and watch those arcing cannon shells. They looked like trash cans from our position down range of the apogee. But that's where we had to be to spot impact points and make advisory calls on the radio to let the New Jersey gunners adjust their aim.
After their mission was completed, defined either by the Navy deciding they'd fired enough or by our getting low on gas, we'd normally head back down to Saigon. I said normally, for on one or two occasions we took a small detour, much to the chagrin of our bell-bottomed comrades.
With our belly-mounted, downward-looking recon cameras clicking away, it was great sport to buzz the New Jersey and bring home pictures of that magnificent battle ship.
Some of the Navy brass didn't take kindly to our low level passes. Soon our headquarters put out the loud and clear message that crews were to cease buzzing the New Jersey.
Party poopers.