The Team House - The Combat History of the AC-130 Gunship from Vietnam to Iraq | William Walter | Ep. 159

Episode Date: August 20, 2022

The AC-130 Gunship was quickly developed in 1968 to provide fire support for ground forces in Vietnam. Twenty-eight C-130 cargo aircraft were converted into AC-130s for night attack operations. The AC-130 was crude, ugly, ad hoc, and detested by many within the USAF…but it worked, and it worked well. Likewise, AC-130 crews were deemed unruly “biker gangs,” but performed magnificently in every major US military operation from 1976 to 1995. Most of these combat operations were cloaked in secrecy, but records once classified for up to twenty years have now been opened. Based on this newly declassified information and hundreds of interviews with SOF veterans, Ghostriders 1976-1995 is the first authoritative historical account of the AC-130 operations, written by an AC-130 Aerial Gunner who participated in every AC-130 combat operation from 1980 through 1994. Grab Bill's books here: https://www.amazon.com/William-Walter/e/B09CZJW9F3/ref=aufs_dp_fta_dsk To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -2 bonus episodes per month -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests -Ad Free audio feed Subscribe to our Patreon! 👇 https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media: The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links): https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample Want to sponsor the show? Email: 👇 [e-mail] #ac130gunshipBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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The Team House. With your hosts, Jack Murphy. to David Park. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Team House. This is episode 159. I am David Park, my co-host, Jack Murphy. Tonight we have a great guest with us,

Bill Walter, who's written two books about the AC130 and its service, you know, in our history. He's also a former AC-130 gunner. And Bill, you are put into the so-com. Commando Hall of Honor and also the Air Commando Hall of Fame. So I guess you know a little bit about the AC 130. I guess that's safe to say. That's awesome.

So one of the things that we always like to start out with on this show is what is your origin story. How did you, what led you to the military? What led you to AC130s? All right. Yeah. You know, I grew up in a small town in Minnesota. It's a farming town.

I can't even imagine with the population, around 1,200 or so population, really small town out there. And there wasn't, it was the 70s, the mid-70s, 76, as a matter of fact, post-Vietnam had been over for about a year by that time. It wasn't really a popular choice going into military. But there was a high school counselor we had there named Mr. Erickson that was really a patriotic sort of fellow. and he says, hey, guys, don't discount going into military. You can get an education, you can serve your country, and think about it. So four of us did join the Air Force, all four of us. And I was the only one that stuck with it.

But that's how I started out. Two weeks after I graduated from my school, I was at Blackland Air Force Base in basic training. Really? Were your parents supportive of that? Were they, I mean, what did they think? about it. Yeah, my dad was a former Navy. He served in the Cs back in the 50s. And he was very supportive. A lot of people were supportive, but I could say there were some people that questioned my judgment from my high school class and from, well, I'll put it this way. There was this girl on the bus. My dad was a school bus driver.

and I was riding on a route with him because I had nothing else to do at the time. And my dad says, hey, Bill's going in the Air Force next week. And she looked at me like, well, let's just smell the fart or something. And what is on your mind? What are you doing this for? I said, well, that's what I want to do. And I tell you, it's probably the best decision I ever made. And how did you end up with AC130s?

Well, I went in my first assignment, I went to technical training for weapons loading, and I got assigned to Hawn Air Base Germany loading bombs on F-4s. And that included everything from cluster bombs up to nukes. We had nukes there, too. And I can tell you, I have a lot of respect for our maintenance people, because I was one myself and they worked their ass off. let me tell you. And that's what I did for two years.

I stuffed bombs on F-4s and loaded the guns. And I got this notification just before I was getting ready to go PCS, permanent change of station back to the states. I got a notification saying, hey, they're looking for volunteers to go fly on the AC130 gunship. And I had already known some about the AC-130, but I didn't know that much. And I said, that sounds like a really cool job. Let me volunteer for it.

for that. So I did. I volunteered for it. And about this time, 44 years ago, I got the notification that don't go to KISR, your Michigan, where you're supposed to go, go to Florida to go for AC130 Gunner training. And that's what I showed up just around Thanksgiving time in 1978. Now, you've written two books. They are, sorry, I don't have them right in front of me. And I read, So I read your book on Kendall because that's how I read a ton of stuff. Yeah, can you please show the book? Yes. So this is the first one.

This is the second one. Right. So Ghost Writers, the first one is Ghost Writers and it covers Vietnam, the ACU and Vietnam. Yes, 1968 through 19. I'm trying to figure this thing out here. Yeah. In 1975. Right.

And the second one is 1976 through 1995. Right. And I want to ask you about your career, and we also want to talk about the books. But I know for the second book, you flew in almost every one of those operations that are in the second book, even though it's not written in a biographical way. Right. I actually, yeah, I did. I was involved in every one of those operations. But like I tell people, this is a wee book.

It's not a me book. I made probably deliberate effort to write myself out of some. of the stories because I just felt it was kind of self-serving to do so. You know, gunship crews are teams. That's all we ever do is we work as a team. And we're only, you know, it sounds kind of cliche, you're only as good as your weakest member of the team. You guys, Rangers, you know exactly what I'm talking about. So yeah, I was. I tell you, I thought because of that, because I was involved in all those ops in one way or not. I thought, oh, this is going to be easy for me to write because, hey, I know it all.

That was probably wishful thinking because I found out as I started doing the research and interviews over a seven-year process, by the way, I found out just how much I didn't know. Maybe I knew 20% that was really pertinent. Maybe I knew some stuff that was factual, and I knew a whole lot of stuff that was hearsay, rumor, just incorrect all the way. And it was quite a process to validate all these stories because I had to use, once I got going, I said I need three different independent sources minimum. And independent meaning I will coordinate either interview or official records,

which I had access to all the official records. It only goes so far. So I had to, as many original or witness statements or data sources that I could, to validate a specific story. And that was, that's why it took so long to write. Well, I read the second book, and it has something that will appeal to everybody. Because you go over the technical specifications of the gunships and how they evolved. For the operations, you talk about the history of that area to give people a ground understanding of what was going on in that area and how the U.S. got involved.

you covered the planning of it. And then the actual operation and not just the AC130 operation, but everything was going on and then how the AC130s fit into that. It's a phenomenal book. I really enjoyed it. Thank you, David. Yeah, you know, and that's what, as you know, you guys are soft guys too. We never do anything alone.

And that's why I said, I just can't write a book just about the AC130s because we always support someone else. I can tell you rarely do we ever go out and do a mission that just like an interdiction mission and shoot something up. We're almost always supporting Rangers, SF, D-boys. And, you know, I still say that D-boys. I mean, it's just ingrained in my brain and the seals. So, I mean, that's what our job is. And I'd say we take it very seriously. And I think we all do.

So that's just kind of the way of a way of a lot. life for a gunship crew. I say crewman, but actually back when I flew, we only had male crewmen. Now we have both female and male, and they're doing phenomenal downrange now, even today. Right. So tell us a little bit, because again, your story is really the story in this book. So let's talk about you and sort of how the training went, how you were introduced to the AC-1-3rd. Actually, if you don't mind, let me rewind that. Can you tell you? everybody about the AC-130 for those of our viewers who might not be military, what it is, what its mission is, and how it came about in the first place? Certainly, yes. If we step back

all the way back to the early 60s with the AC-47, they had a dilemma in Vietnam. What they needed was airplane or a strike system that could stay airborne for extended periods of flight time, mostly at night and that had sufficient firepower to deal with the North Vietnamese infiltrators who like to operate at night. So the AC 47 came about and they had about eight hours of loiter time depending on what their fuel load and ammo load was and about 23,000 rounds of 762 and three mini guns. And they actually could stay overhead a friendly encampment for the entire period of darkness, so we're pretty close to it and provide cover fire for them. It was really nothing else could do that. The only way you could reach that capability is to

actually modify a cargo airplane that had both the legs, as we call it, and the ability to carry the weight for all that firepower and have the ability to see at night. First, they use flares, Then the AC 130 came along in 1967, was developed 68 and hit the trail. Now, much bigger airplane, higher altitude, heavier armament, and mostly hunting trucks on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. They still did do some of the support for ground forces, but mostly hunting trucks in the Ho Chi Men Trail. And you'll see that in the first book, that they were scored. in about a five-year period, 10,000 worth Vietnamese trucks. They're credited with killing.

Didn't close down a trail, but it sure slowed it down. And we could talk about that all night. It's really not my intent to do so. But very interesting history on that. Now, what kind of crazy people would take a cargo airplane, put a bunch of guns and sensors on it, and call that a attack system? We did, because it worked.

It doesn't matter what it is. It's what it does. And that is kind of our, I won't say our saying, but that's really kind of what the tenant of the gunship is. It is able to stay airborne for long periods of time, heavy firepower, lots of it, and it has the sensors to see in the dark and target in the dark with precision. So it's really what the gunship's all about. It's just, other than that, it's just a regular C-130, and it actually,

like a C-130, but it's an attack C-130. And it was interesting because, and this is a fact I didn't know, is even with the success of the AC-130, and around 1975-76, it was, they planned on scrapping it. Yeah, absolutely. That was one of the things that came out, and this is not our first rodeo with that kind of action, because they, you know, whenever people want to build. up the forces and react to the threat at hand. Well, post-Vietnam, 75, Vietnam was all over. And actually, the gunships stopped shooting in 73 when they had all the different ceasefire. So they stayed over

there until late 75 and came back to the States, the saying, and we're hearing it now. Today, well, we're never going to fight or another war like that ever. So let's get rid of the gunships because they're really kind of ad hoc and they're kind of, kind of nobody really likes them in the fighter world, which is true. I mean, they have, they have no love for the gunship. It's not a jet. That's right. You know, it's just, it's a, in, back in Vietnam, our gunship, uh, crewman called it

the four engine fighter just to piss off the fighter guys. Now, I'd say they, they got along pretty good with the fighter guys over there because they, uh, support and by and large we get along okay with them but it's just two different worlds and so yeah when i got when i signed on to hurlbert in 78 i went to the uh the base personnel office to sign in and they said don't plan on staying here long because the gunships are going away they're going to be retired and this base is closing this is hurlbert field well uh yeah you know what happened in November 4th, 1979 changed all that. And we're still here 44 years later.

So what happened in 1979 is fascinating. And it saved the AC130. Yes. And not just the AC 130, pretty much all the special operations elements, because back then there was only two Ranger bats. And they didn't bring up the third until after Grenada. but pretty much everybody was on the chopping block back then because the focus by the Joint Chiefs was the war against Russia, the Cold War. They really didn't give much of a hoot about what was going on in the third world.

The things that we are accustomed to dealing with, they had really no desire to continue that capability. They didn't think it was important. Well, not until the Iranian hostage situation. happened when they were taken hostage on the 4th of July 79. And we, the U.S. had absolutely no capability to go rescue those hostages. And that's kind of where it all started with the modern special operations and what came out of that mission. So can you tell us both from a personal level, like what was going on with you at the time? And then we can go into the history of Rice Bowl and everything.

Yeah, sure. It was, you know, it was kind of like what people were calling prior to that, the Herbert Field Flying Club, because it really was flying around a flagpole, going shooting on the local ranges. It was really kind of a, kind of a sleepy place, I guess, because we were going TDI to training exercises and stuff. It wasn't, everybody was kind of getting ready to be canceled. I guess that's a good way of putting it. So here comes, the news, everybody's watching the news, and within a day or so, we were alerted. Of course, you know, you think everybody's alerted for that, and Herbert was a little bit different. So they called us, and they said, all right, you guys are deploying to Guam. Really? Guam. Wow. Why are we going to Guam? Shut up and do it. And I can tell you, I didn't find out some of this stuff that really happened for more than 30 years. That's how classified the operation was and how close old it was. General Vought was in charge of the overall operation Army, two-star at the time,

and he was old school SF. I mean, he was locking down everything. He says, only share information with those who absolutely need to do it. Well, that doesn't include a three-stripe airman or whatever like I was at the time. Okay. All right. So shut up in color, don't talk because if you start talking or speculate and we're taking you off the mission and you're going home. Well, everybody wanted to be on whatever was happening.

We didn't really know what it was, but hey, I want to be a part of it. So here it is years later, I find out that when we deployed about. the 10th of November, I think, or it was 10 days afterwards, I think after the haunts were taken, we deployed to Guam and we're doing all these wacky training things that we'd never done before, low-level infiltration, firing at a pop-up. And I tell you, nobody should use the word pop when you're talking about a C-130, because it just kind of slowly drags up, especially at a heavy gunship. about 130,000 pounds white. And so we did that training for a while.

Well, what we were training for, and I didn't know, we were training to actually fire on the cracking towers, the petroleum processing plant at Abidon in Iran. That was their main source of income. They said, we want you guys to shut down their petroleum production. it'll affect their their monetary income. And well, whoever was on that targeting cell must not really understood what our ordinance does. Because I tell you, if we would have hit those cracking towers, it would have been a fourth of July.

The whole plant would have been destroyed. I'd say that with a high degree of confidence. So we came back and here, the next thing within, oh, I think maybe a week, the mission, that mission was scrubbed. And we got put on another mission again that we didn't know about. But they said, I want you to go out to Range 52 here on Eggwin and build this wall, this dimension, this wide, this high. And we're going to have the gunship shoot over that wall and practice and see what they could do. So I went out there and Bill Patterson, who has recently passed away, one of our old IOs. We went out there with a bunch of other guys and built this wall.

And we're like, what are we doing here? Okay, well, gunship came up there, practiced, shot over the wall, didn't hit it very many times. The wall was actually just two by fours and target cloth. And just to put up a barrier. And they did manage to splash those projectiles into the, it was a hardened shelter out there with the F100 fighter in there, just shredded it. It says, okay, we can do it. Okay, good. Went back and reported the General Vought.

And that time, Colonel Jim Kyle came on board. Jim Kyle was one of our operations officers over in Vietnam. Real smart guy. He knew all about gunships. And there was a dilemma because at the time, the D-boys were practicing for the actual rescue. We weren't part of that plan. So Colonel Beckwith, he's like, hey, what are we going to do for air cover? Well, we got the carrier nivots out there, but they got really, they've got this giant ordinance on there.

They don't have a whole lot of legs. How are we going to target people or targets within a city at night and then have the ability to stay there long enough to affect anything? So Jim Kyle just looks up and says, well, he says to General Vaught, why don't you bring in the AC 130 and VOT was somewhat familiar with that and he says okay I'll brief the chairman but only the people that need to know and that's where we got tied in on the rescue so continued training and here it is it's it's early April in 1980 already and I just coming into work like normal duty day and Steve Foster's there who was the the second in command of the gunner section and he pulls over says Walter get in here and he took us in there in a

briefing room one at a time he says go home pack a bag for warm weather for two weeks shut the F up don't say anything don't tell anybody you're leaving and just come in tomorrow morning at this time okay well I was single then it didn't matter left some rent money on the bed for my room dogs and took off so nobody even knew I was gone and that's what they wanted. So we get over there in theater and we finally got briefed on what we're going to do and we met the DeBoys and we met up with Colonel Bart Burris, who was our fires guy. And he's told me, he says, hey, he's the Vietnam vernacular or the abbreviation. He says, I was a forward air guide. And I started spelling that out in the book, F-A-G. And I said, you know, sir, I don't think that's

going to work. And he says, oh, you know, I never really thought of that. So I said, if you don't mind, every time I use your reference, I'll spell it out, forward air guide. He goes, okay, good idea, Bill. So anyway, it was really wild because this is the first time we met the D-boys. And they were in a hangar not too far from us. A hard rock Charlie was right next door to us from Savannah. And we went over to the D-Boy hangar, and here these guys are all in civilian clothes with long hair, dyed black field jacks.

They looked like, well, like Beck was said, a bunch of really dangerous vagrants. That's kind of what it came across as. And they had a whole, like two sheets of plywood kind of size model of downtown Tehran and said, here's this, and Bucky took us through all the different targets and so forth, says, here's what you're going to do. Well, there was four gunships involved in that mission. And to this day, most people have no idea that there were AC130s involved in what some people call Desert One. That was just a fuel stop, an Eagle Claw. So there was

four, Pappy Gallagher was crew one. He was supporting the actual rescue at the embassy compound after the Debois broke or actually climbed over the walls with ladders. And then we had Colonel Kagle, at that time, Captain. He was covering the airport at Maribod. And then we had Bubber Youngblood covering the extraction airfield, which is about 30 miles out. And that would have been the very first Ranger airfield seizure because the whole Hard Rock Charlie was taken down that airfield and securing it so the helicopters could bring the hostages over to from the soccer stadium out to the to the extraction airfield. They're going on 141s. We're going to abandon helicopters there and we're supposed to shoot the helicopters before we left. So the mission was

very complicated. You know, people talk about it. now in general saying, well, there was only eight helicopters in 6C130s and about 120 D-boys on their handful of rangers. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. There was well over a thousand people on that mission. And if you want to talk about some real tactical deception, I tell you, General Vought, very, very clever. most people that were involved in the mission prior to the briefing the day or two days before we're going to launch had no idea they were involved in the mission. I mean, how much better security can you get the net? Yeah.

Okay. There was people on Wadi Kina, which was our main operating base, we called Location Alpha. There was people there, like mostly to support Red Horse and so forth, the people that were take care of the base. They thought they were there for exercise. Flint Lock 80, which was being run out of Germany. As a matter of fact, that was the cover story, and there was people that were flying in supplies out of Germany, the 7th SOS. They're flying in our ammo. They're flying in all these supplies. And they just thought they were part of the exercise. They had no idea that they were actually supporting the rescue mission. Again, they didn't have the

need to know, so it's a chance of a leak. And Vought was so. concerned about a leak and and I got to say he was right because had there been a leak it would have been all over with so the element of surprise was so important to keep so then in the final act of cleverness they also had the first sOS running up and down the waterway next to the border of iran creating this pattern of life the same route that the rescue force would take going in there so it was very, very deceptive in the day that the MC 130s and the EC 130s arrived from Herbert to land at Wadikina about a couple hours prior to that they sent the eight or the first S or excuse me the seventh SOS guys back up to Germany. So they took off and here a couple hours later the landing or the

rescue force came in and nobody had any idea that those were different airplanes. They all looked the same. So very, very good operational security in my opinion. And I think later on now, many years later, some people will say that it was too much, that there was people that really need to know something that they did not have the access to. And that was a hurdle. Maybe not a cause for failure, but it was definitely a hurdle to the whole operation. So I don't know if you want to go into what was supposed to happen on night two. That's pretty much it. I would like to ask you, Bill.

You know, if people are interested to hear the Delta perspective, we did an interview with Sergeant Major Mike Vining in an episode of a couple years ago now that people can go back and check out. Actually, I'd like to ask you the same question I asked Mike. If they did not lose a couple helicopters coming into Desert One, you know, they at that point, were below men force, they couldn't get all of their, all their personnel to Desert 2. Had that not happened, are you confident? Do you think that you could have successfully executed the operation as you understood it? Yeah, you know, that's a really good question. And I tell you,

I've talked to Mike about it too in the past. We've taught a lot of the other D-boys, too. And it's pure speculation. But I can say that had we made it tonight, too, that we had a pretty good chance of successfully pulling it off as long as the element of surprise was maintained. And we had major Dick Meadows at that time, GS-13, and Freddie, who just had a birthday the other day, by the way. They were the internal force there to take the vehicles. I think they had like 10 or 12 drivers there

that were going to pick up the D-boys at the hide site from the 53s and then transport them down the hide site and then pull the mission the next night. So I think that if we wanted to assign a percentage to it in Bill's reasonable guess, I think we had about a 70% chance of pulling it off. I think that's reasonable. Mike was pretty confident to that if they could have gotten the operators to the target area, that they could have successfully executed the mission. And maybe that's one of the big things that we've learned in special operations over the last,

you know, what, 30, 40 years since then. You know, you can have these like super badass operators that can blow down doors and kill everyone inside. But if we don't have the transportation and we've talked to some 160th guys about this, if you don't have the strategic airlift, if you don't have the tactical rotary wing aircraft and your part, the AC130, if you don't have the air support, then it doesn't really matter how great the operators are, right? Yeah. And, you know, one of the more rewarding parts of actually doing the research and writing the book, like I say, I thought I knew it all when I started out. I said, this is going to be easy. It was very difficult. And when I linked up with the Marine Corps helicopter crewmen, I tell you, I learned a lot. And they, a couple of those guys, they said they learned a lot from my research as well. It's all this level of communications and misunderstandings. I had a lot of really hyphenated cuss word type conversations with some of the AARS guys, the rescue guys in the Air Force, friends of mine, and they said, well, they should have used us,

and they should have done this, and it would, well, you know, should or would have could, it doesn't get you anything. Once I started to explain why it was the way it was and why OPSEC needed to be. maintained and that's why the Navy helicopters are chosen. And I can tell you, in all the Marines I've talked to, you know, they come out on the bad end of the stick on that because of the two airplanes that, you know, they were down to six. Well, they don't deserve that, in my opinion. I mean, none of those guys just gave up and just said, screw it. They all had good reasons. You know, I can tell you, Jim Kyle was not too kind to Colonel Pittman.

who was on the airplane that turned back and went to the carrier. But, you know, they had a reason for it too. So, I mean, and I'm sure you guys have been there before when the blamed, when something goes great, everybody wants the credit for it. When something goes bad, they're pointing their finger at somebody else. The blame throwers come out. And it's not just that you had to worry about a leak. Interesting thing, too, is I don't know if you came across this in your research.

I mean, you guys had KGB, the Soviets looking, looking, at you guys and watching. And that's another whole thing you have to content with when you're when you're executing a mission like this. Yeah, absolutely. As a matter of fact, we had to, when we're at Wadikina, we had to put camel netting over our guns. So it looked like regular 1 30s. But, you know, Ray Charles could see that they were not regular 130s. Right. To my guys. I mean, humps and bumps and sticky things. But we weren't so worried about that because we could still camouflage it in with part of the exercise, Flint Lock 80. What they could not camouflage was a bunch of CH-47s or helicopters on the deck of the Nimitz that couldn't go below deck. I mean,

that would be let the cat out of the bag right away because the Soviets were watching and they said, hey, there's a bunch of army helicopters on top of the deck or Air Force helicopters on the Nimitz. Something's going on. So it made a lot more sense to use. a mind-sweeping helicopter that would be not unusual on an aircraft carrier. And, you know, there are some maintenance issues that they have with the helicopters, too. But, you know, that's just part of the overall plan. But another thing that I found out, too, is, you know, we had one Air Force helicopter pilot on the helicopter detachment, Rakeup at that time of captain.

I think he volunteered for it. there was Navy pilots, there was Navy crewmen, and there was Marine crewmen. People get the idea that they kicked all the Navy guys off and all the Marines took over. Not exactly true. I mean, there was representation. One thing that I've heard over and over and over again is that Ronald Reagan, or not Ronald Reagan, he's later on. Yeah, President Carter, Jimmy Carter, the reason why they had the mixed bag. was because he wanted all the services to get their hand in an operation.

I can say that I found no evidence of that. As a matter of fact, Jimmy Carter didn't even know about the details of the plan until like a week before we launched. He knew we were working on something, but he had no real play in it. As a matter of fact, they were hiding it from him, but he didn't want Cyrus Vance, who wanted no part of any military operation. Cyrus Vance actually resigned when he found out that the go-ahead was given. Yeah. I'm sorry, but you mentioned you were talking about offset and you mentioned your book how one of the reasons for the operational security was because of Vance,

because he was so dead set against military action. Oh, yeah, absolutely. He said diplomacy is the only answer that, and like I say, he was so so P-Oed when he found out that Carter gave the, go ahead that he actually resigned in protest before the accident, by the way. He resigned, but it was to take effective after the mission was complete. So a lot of infighting there. But I can tell you what is true is that President Carter, and I can say this, I'm not a fan of President Carter, but it doesn't really matter. He really didn't play into the picture on that, that he did not really get involved in it.

Who really did get involved was all the Joint Chiefs, all the different service branch generals. They all wanted a piece of the pie, and they were all bickering to each other as to who was going to take control and who was going to do this and that. And that's where it really was. And this is because we had no central control over special operations forces like we do now.

So it was a command. in control was was not what it could have been. Now, I will say that I, high marks for for Beckwith, you know, he was he was a leader. Now, uh, meet and Charlie Beckwith was a real treat. Let me tell you. Uh, I think that guy's volume knob was stuck on 11 all the time. I mean, uh, it's like his, his actually, one of his granddaughters, uh, was, was one of our guys. on a you mom no kidding uh and she's all house daughter right yeah paul's done was also on the show um what year and a half ago yeah paul paul's good guy yeah yeah and mary is too she's uh she's out right now but uh yeah you know it's it goes back into what i said it earlier all us soft people are all

inbred everybody knows everybody it's the same community all the time so uh yeah anyway Charlie was the way he was, and you know, you got to respect that. I think we owe a lot to him, but boy, I tell you, there was just no negotiating with that guy. Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five, with free support services to help them on their parenting journey.

Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today.

Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. You know, it's interesting because I've always known, you know, we've talked about it on the show before, about how Desert One and Eagle Claw affected special operations like Socom, the 160 and things like this, that, but you were, the whole full.

thing was innovative. You talked about when you guys were going to Guam for your training, first off, you're flying an AC130s, which are not pressurized. So you have to fly at low altitude, like 10,000. They had just had the refuelers put on them.

And a lot, the pilots, some of the pilots didn't even know how to do aerial refueling. And the trainers are like, we can teach them on the way. Yeah, that's absolutely true. My pilot was, I was actually a crew four guy, by the way. And my pilot was captain then, Jim Lawrence. And he's the one that got hit with the lightning

bolt on the way off there while he was on the tanker. It's like, I tell you, you know, oh, don't worry about learning this stuff. We'll teach you on the way over. Over the North Atlantic, we're going to, we're going to teach you or, you know, over the Pacific, we're going to teach you on the way, how to refuel. What happens if something happens when we're learning and we can break something? Well, I guess you're just hosed. So, yeah, it's, I don't think we could get away with some of that stuff nowadays. As a matter of fact, the follow-on train up after the mission aborted called Operation Honey Badger, or exercise Honey Badger, depending on who you talk to.

We did a lot of things, and that's when TFs 160 really kind of came to be, actually 158th, you know, turned into 160th after a while. But these are some really gung-ho guys. My God, I mean, we were out there in the western U.S. somewhere at Dougway. We were at this place called Orogronde Range Camp and flying out of Condren Army Airfield on Wismer, White Sands Missile Range.

And, man, I tell you, some of that stuff, I'm just surprised we didn't lose more airplanes because there was no rules at all. Just make this stuff. off as you go. And I remember one time we were flying this low-level route, and Don Boudreau was our sensor operator, and he's since passed away too. But I'm standing in the booth watching, and we're on the nav leg, and there's this mountain in front of us. And he's looking forward with the IR. And he's looking at it, and he scans all the way up until he hits the puslage, can't see the top of the

mountain. And finally, he keys his mic says, hey, Nav, there's a mountain ahead of us. Yeah, Yeah, there is. Well, are we going to hit it? No, we're not. And we cleared it by a couple hundred feet. I'm like, wow, man, we're really, this is C-130. It's not made for this kind of action. And the same thing with the helicopters.

I mean, by that time, it was all Air Force helicopters and Army helicopters. They had completely taken the Navy Marine detachment out of it. So it was a wild time, but you know what? And as part of that, in the top of all the wild ideas, was Credible Sport. Now, Project Credible Sport, I don't know if you've seen that video. It's up on YouTube, as a matter of fact, if you want to look at it. It's the DC130 with the, I think it was like 20 rocket motors on it, missile motors, actually, Azrock Motors, that they wanted to land in the

soccer stadium there right next to the embassy and they were rigging that airplane up and they built three of them actually one was a just like test model and then two were flyers and uh they crashed one right out here on field one i know exactly where it's buried you know like the old saying where the bodies are buried yeah i can take you to it but uh everybody survived and uh you know it's it's just one of those things i mean if somebody came out that idea right now They have a padded cell for it somewhere, I'm sure. And they're definitely a piss test. So it's just, you know, there's desperate times.

But, you know, the problem was even though they didn't do or I wouldn't say perfect, they didn't really, they did have some successful take off some landings. I'll give it that. They just had that one that wasn't. And so they canceled that program. And well, we weren't going to be able. able to go back a second time anyway because the cat was out of the bag they had taken all the hostages and moved and i've talked to a couple of them since then they moved them to different

prisons throughout iran so there's no way that we're going to go back and and get get all of in one night it was just impossible so i also thought of an interesting tidbit was carter wanting to for wanting the aces to use uh c s gas yes That was something that Bucky made a lot of a lot of haywood. And so did our operations officer, Pappy Gallagher, saying, well, okay, we've got, in anybody that's familiar with 105, Artie, knows that you got about a 30-pound projectile. And with these three CS canisters in there, the CS canisters maybe weigh five pounds, tops. well, it's like three CS grenades pretty much.

A little bit bigger than that. But yeah, you're going to have a lot of potential for ricochet and damage and everything else. But see, President Carter didn't understand that. So Bucky had worked it out, but it was a order from the president, actually, right to the D-Boys. And so Bucky had worked out of plan saying,

okay, and he worked us out with Pappy Gallagher. It says, all right, if I get in a pinch, I'll throw one of the grenades out, and then I want you to shoot a grenade with 40 millimeter. Okay, solve the problem right there.

So that was like the how can I say the variable use of force. Okay, the grenade didn't work, so we had to go to the next step. And we were, would have been firing Mish Metal, which is a zirconium liner inside of, the early ones were actual mesh metal. The same metal it's in

Ronson's cigarette lighter flint. And when the projectile explodes, there's a ball of sparks, and you guys might have seen this downrange. It's about 30 feet high and about 30 feet around, and it just scares the bejesus out of everybody. And that was our objective. We didn't want to kill a bunch of Iranians. We just wanted to leave us alone. So the objective was suppressive fire, what we call reason suppression, where the rational mind says, okay, I'm staying away from that. And those closer to the impact, it's unreasoned suppression where they're like panicking, fear, things like that. So our objective was to keep the throbes or the people away from our rescuers and the hostages. That was in result.

That's fascinating. I want to jump over to Grenada? Yeah, yeah, because we go through 86. Yeah, can we go into urgent fury then? Because you talk about a few of the other operations, Bill Kirk and Blue Flame. But if you don't mind, can we kind of go to Grenada? Certainly. I think that's a good choice because, I mean, Grenada is one of those operations that really took a bad hit publicly. And granted, it did result in eventually the formation of Socom, which was. all know real well, that Grenada was part our fault, part not our fault. It was mostly,

I will give credit to all the snuffies in the field and the flyers and the Marines and the sailors for making that mission happen because it sure as hell wasn't happening from the command and control element. And a good friend of mine too, General Patterson was the air boss for the for the airlift forces. And we've talked a great deal about this. I mean, Grenada is such a wild ride for most people. And what people don't understand are why we went there. Why we went there to begin with was because there was a communist overthrow, a blood coup,

where Bishop was assassinated by Cord, one of his cabinet members. All right. Well, we had over a thousand medical students there and two campuses. At first, they didn't even know how many there was there. And so says, we got to get these people out of there because Cord had them on house arrest and locked down on the campuses. And one of the parts of doing my research in the book was I actually located a medical professor that was there named Robert Jordan, great guy.

And one of the students that was there, too, who's a doctor now too, Hank Collins. And I got their first hand impression of what was going on. There was really quite an eye opener, I'll put it that way. But plus the fact that we only had about nine days of planning time and to execute the mission. And there was no intel worth of crap. Nobody really has really caught the U.S. by surprise. So what are we going to do now? Well, now they had the Navy Carrier Task Force, the Independence Carrier Group that was diverted.

They were on their way to Bay Route. They diverted them down there to Grenada and said, you're going to do with this Neo, non-combat and evacuation operation for the civilians that are not familiar with our acronyms. Anyway, it was way too big of an operation for the Marines only in the Marines' only in the Marines the Navy to do. So they added on Task Force 123, which was the just SOTIF. This was really the first big airfield seizure done by the Rangers. And it was big. It was huge. But what was really wild about it is nobody knew ahead of time what kind of resistance we're going to, we're going to take. the initial idea was well they're not really going to do anything we're going to land on points leans airport and we're going to open up and gather up our our medical students we're going to fly out of there

well that was a mistake because they had they meaning court and general austin who was in charge of of the Grenadian forces there, that he had all kinds of anti-aircraft guns, all kinds of arms. It turns out later on that there was like enough weapons on that island to give everybody on the whole island a gun and then so. So it was heavily armed island and standard intel did not detect the anti-aircraft guns.

They said, we suspect there's some here, but they're covered with tarps. We're not really sure what they are. All right, well, we'll air land and go do it. Contingent arrangers, they had C-130 formation, fly down there. Very first airplane comes overhead, has nav problems, pulls off target, says it went back and restacked. And by the time they had restacked, the sun was already coming up. And Hobson was the pilot, and then he was a lieutenant. the colonel the eighth commander says all right it was born in there and uh gets about just prior to uh over

the threshold of runway gets a spotlight put on them and all of a sudden they start opening it up at a aircraft guns 23 millimeter z u 232s and just started hosing down the other airplanes and formation broke a lot of formation said holy cow well trouble is hobson was already committed because the doors were open and troopers are already actually actually exiting the airplane. Right. And as you guys know, that's not exactly a time when you want your pilot to do maneuvers. So he stuck with it, ran through the minute, the last trooper exited the airplane.

He dove down to the deck and out over the water. And the very next thing there says, call in the gunships. Well, we had two gunships overhead at that time. It was Cuvion, was the first one who actually came overhead. at 3 o'clock in the morning and call out the runway being blocked. So they, that's when we changed from air land to air drop. We weren't really ready for air drop, but say it had to re-rig in flight to make it that way, which also slowed things down. So they brought in the gunships and Clem Twyford was the other crew Lima 5-7, oh, 5-8, excuse me, Lima 5-8 came in and for 40 minutes

they started shooting these guns one by one. There were some 50 cows done on the airfield. They started there. And they really started firing before they had clearance to fire. And Jim Roper, who retired as a colonel, was the Air Liaison officer there. And Big Ike, Eisenbar, you guys might know Big Ike. He was the Ranger FSO. And guess what happened?

That first airplane that dropped, who did they drop? The headquarters element. Yeah. That's it. One, I think one squad of Rangers, and that was it. The rest of them were all the headquarters guys. Now, here they are out in the open airfield, taking fire from the hills, from this trench line up north.

It's like all hell's breaking loose. So about the same time that that clearance was given to fire, Clem Twiford was already firing on the guns. And they just went for about 40 minutes, just gone after, gun after gun. They had a malfunction, they had to pull off. Then Cuvion came on after that, started firing at the guns. And that's where Hank's, Hank Collins, Dr. Collins comes in. He lived in one of those houses right next to the airport. And he sent me the audio that he took that morning of the 40. And I could tell just by my experience here in gunfire from the

gunship on the ground. They were just coming right at them. And there was some that were coming right over the top of his head next to his house. He said, yeah, the gun was like really close to me. And the gun ship was firing on the gun. And you can actually hear the sonic crack of the project dolls coming over the top of his house before they're hitting. He says, those guys hit the skids. The ones that weren't taken out on the guns just hauled ass and got out of there over the ridge line. So about 40 minutes later, that they resumed the airdrop when they were satisfied, the majority of the guns, they and aircraft guns were suppressed. And then they continued the airdrop and then into air land a little bit later, brought in the gun sheets and so forth. Standard ranger stuff as far as airfield seizures go.

And that's when Alfa Company started making their run up, a gold hill, what they called it, and taken, the resistance out all the way up into the Cuban camp. Later on that evening or that afternoon, the 82nd Ready Brigade showed up, and the 82nd got in on it too, and they were a big part of the operation after that. But my crew, a personal story, we were in Panama, actually, when day one occurred.

And we got alerted, we're getting ready to fly mission over El Salvador. And they said, you guys aren't flying El Salvador tonight? We want you to go to Grenada. Where the hell is Grenada? Never even heard of it before. And I think that I can share that with just about everybody. He says, Grenada, it's completely off the map.

It's so far out there, like 50 hundred miles from Key West. Okay, where's Grenada? All right. Well, why are we going there? Well, because, you know, they're doing its military operation there, blah, blah, blah. You know, back then all we had was AFN down there in Panama. So really, other than Intel, that's all we knew. So, all right, well, great.

So my aircraft commander is a captain named Tarpley, and he says, okay, load it up, let's go. So crew chiefs go out there, get the airplane ready. Well, guess what? Our INS is broke, internal navigation system, or inertial navigation system. It's broke. He was not going to miss this one for nothing. He says, I don't care, nav, shoot Celestial all the way up there.

So we did. celestial nav. I won't say to NAV's name, but he was later a pilot, but just for privacy reasons, he's a good guy. But, okay, we're shooting Celestial Nav from Panama to Grenada. In the middle of the night, we roll in about midnight or so, something like that. And what's really wild about it is we're orbiting an island, and it's dark down there. And he says, where the NAM says, we're on target right now, and we can hear on the radio because all the secure comms were down, we're broadcasting in the clear. And so we're talking to the controlling agency, the talk over at Point Salines, but we're 23 miles away in this island called Caracou.

And we're orbiting that, and they're talking to the airplane that's over the seals that were under siege at governor's mansion. And they think we're them and them us. So now we're being directed to you can fire on any vehicle that's approaching the mansion. We're like, there ain't nothing here. So finally, here's this vehicle rolling down the roads like a station wagon. Tarpley says, oh, there's a vehicle. Okay, arm the guns. We're not really sure about this. And finally, the Foco says, no, we're not firing. He pulls down the inhibits, says, something ain't right here. He says, Nav, where are we at?

Well, I think we're in the right place, but I'm not really sure. All right. Then all of a sudden, the right scanner pops up, and he says, hey, guys, I don't know about this place, but there's a lot of shit going on on that island next door. Oh, safe the guns. I was on the 40s. I'm unloading the gun and everything else. We had bicycles all in the back.

It was like a tourist, like a, like a gypsy wagon, because we had all of our personal goods from Panama. So, like, this is just a bizarre situation. We landed. It was okay. All right. That was it for our first mission there. We didn't fly again until the next night.

And when we did, the Rangers had just finished the Grand Edd's campus rescue. And that's where, believe it or not, Norman Schwarzkopf was there. He was like second of command under Metcalf. A lot of people are not aware of that. Storm and Norman was ingraneda. And so he directed the Navy and the Marine Corps to deliver Rangers, if you can believe that, and made it work. So Rangers were delivered to the Grand Ant campus, which is on the other side of the island by the Navy, CH 46 and 53s. 53's pull them out, 46 has put them in.

So while they were landing, 46, one of them, it was very narrow landings only. They landed right on the beach. The tail, 46, actually hit palm tree with his rear rotor. That's a Gallagher. A good guy, he's since passed away, but I had some good conversations with him. He says, yeah, we hit the tree. We had to abandon the airplane. they left it on the beach, the rangers that were there that were still there when the other

forces were extracted along with the students. They got the life raft out of the helicopter, start paddling out to sea. And that's about the time when we're called to show up and destroy that helicopter. All right. Got to destroy the helicopter. That's what they said. So we go rolling up there and mind you, our gun was malfunctioning. Our one- That's what we're going to shoot a helicopter with, the 105. And the firing soleno's broke. It was broke the day prior, but that's what we had to go with. So we had rigged up a lanyard to pull. So not exactly the most accurate method of fire, because now we get the pilot who's actually aiming the gun,

and the gun is being tracked or the target's being tracked by the sensor operator. So the gun's moving. And then the gunner is firing it manually. So you've got three guys that all got to do things in unison here. in order to get a hit. So what we didn't know, and I didn't find out for over 30 years, and I found out on the actually the Grenada Facebook page where Dr. Robert Jordan says, here's the helicopter I was on when spooky tried to kill me. What? So I said, could you please explain? He says, yeah, me and some local grenadians

and this lady were all on the airplane along with this pregnant dog. You can't make this shit up. You really can't. And we were on there looking at it because everything was quiet by that point. And we were looking at the helicopter and all of a sudden we heard this loud boom. And then we got off the helicopter real quick and went into the Spice Island end and hid in the walking cooler. Well, I said, wow, this is amazing because, you know, I was on that crew and I can tell you the first round, we missed it by like 50 meters. And we hit this beach shack and just blew it the pieces. 105 H.E. And, and I said, yeah, we missed it. And as a matter of fact, we didn't hit that helicopter

with a 105 or a 40 one single time. We did hit it directly with 20mm later on, but it looked like Swiss cheese and we were done. And there's a picture of it up on the internet. And I said, wow, if that fire control system would have been up and running properly, we would have hit that helicopter with the first round of 105 and everybody in there would have been a casualty. And I told them, you know, I've had a couple of Zoom calls with them and everything or at least one and talked to him online. I said, you know, I was kind of joking with him. I said, you know, Dr. Jordan, I'm sure glad we didn't kill you that night because you're really a nice guy. And he says, yeah, I agree with that. But, you know, if there was ever any one time that having a

defective weapon came to our advantage. That would have been it because just a bizarre story. And I would have never known that had I not been doing the research. Was that the 105 that was rigged with the shoestring? That was Ron Broils in the first crew. We actually took one of the seat cables. Okay. Because they had a little T-handle on and we rigged it with that.

But yeah, it was pretty much the same way old school, arty kind of application, pull the lanyer. but wow, it's just like pretty, pretty wild. It was, but really, you know, my crew after that, you know, we had a couple of calls prior with 82nd, like on day three, but by day four, so things were pretty much, pretty much done. But in the whole airfield was controlled by the Rangers at that time, the extraction airfield of point salines or salinas, depends on how you pronounce it.

Well, yeah, Grenada was one of those successes that, like I said earlier, the only reason why it's the success is because of the grunts, the airmen, the squids, you know, everybody on the ground because command and control really didn't do it. I would say General Schulte's did okay with one, two, three, but major, or I mean, General or Admiral Metcalfe, it was way beyond my opinion. It was way beyond his capabilities as controlling that operation. There was a lot of urinary Olympics of all pissing contests with the command and control. Yeah, you mentioned when you were first leading into it how bad the tactical planning was, not how bad it was, but how, you know, everybody is trying, nobody's passing along the plans. People, planners would have to go off base to use pay phones because they didn't have enough. like secure lines. Was it like the story that like the only map they had for Grenada was like, you know,

a like tourist map or something like that from a gas station? That's that's partially true. Yes. Not really absolutely true because a couple of our crews had these giant maps that were one kilometer off on their like the whole island was not that big to begin with, but they had this giant map like like wallpaper. for the north half and then the southern half was another sheet. So it's like, wow, how are you going to use that in the airplane?

So there's a couple guys that had that and, you know, when Big I, Eisenbar, the FSO for 175, he says he was calling the north half, the blue half and the south half, the gray half, get it. But it really didn't match up all that well. So, but by and large, all the people on the ground had tourist maps or really these old British maps. Because remember, Grenada was a British colony. And these maps, not a single one of them showed the point Salinas airfield, not a single one. And some of them even had a pencil drawing. Like, here's your objective.

What? This pencil drawing right here? You sure? Is that the scale? So, yeah. Like a little arrow pointing north. Yeah. Yeah, this is north.

So, yeah, it was, and, you know, part of that is because nobody ever took that part of the world seriously as far as a military operation goes. But some of the things that the folklore that's come out of Grenada, and part of it is because the media was not trusted at that time. I got to remember, we just finished Vietnam, and we had guys like Walter Cronkite and all that stuff that were always constantly sniping. the military. So Reagan says, now I don't want the media there because they're in danger. In reality, I think nobody wanted them there because they didn't want them to be sniping at us on the news media. So whatever the case, I can't say, but I knew they weren't there. So a lot of that stuff, the media never really covered anything. So that made it folklore city. So one of the items of folklore that a friend of mine who's a Marine Gunnery,

Sergeant named Joe Mucciah. One of the best military historians you will ever find. Joe is like, it's his life. It really is, and he's good at it. We talked about the phone call. Now, they made a couple of really cheesy, or at least one really cheesy movie about Grenada Operation, Heartbreak Ridge.

It might be a really good entertainment movie, but it's so far off from what really happened. It's laughable. So there's a scene in there where, They make a phone call out to their headquarters, and it brings in helicopter, gunship, and so forth. And people ask me that there's also on the internet, there's some stories about, hey, they are supposed to be legitimate, like, oh, well, the Army Rangers were pinned down, and they called back to Fort Bragg and had an AC130 sent for fire support on a phone credit card. Well, okay, that in itself is false. Was there a phone call made?

Yes, there was a phone call made. But it was not with a credit card and it wasn't back to the headquarters. I'm 99.9% certain of this, but the guys that actually did it, they're not talking. And if you know, Duke Leonard, you'll know Duke don't talk. He was the seal that was in charge at the governor's mansion. Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting.

Visit child and family resource network.org today. How this all happened is, and I'll truncate it down, the seals are supposed to take the governor's mansion and secure the governor general who is actually being held prisoner along with his staff there. All right. So they're doing their infill, and when they did only the one helicopter that infield did it back on the tennis courts. Okay, they're okay. But Captain Gormley, who was in charge of that platoon, he was, his helicopter got all shot up. So they had to withdraw. Well, seals that were deployed forgot the radio on the airplane. which is bad, you know, it was secure calm, but they left the radio on the airplane. So the only thing they had was their intra-team radios. All right.

Gormley goes back out to the aircraft or to the USS Guam, I believe, lands, hitches a ride back to the talk where Big Ike is and everything down in the airport. And the only way he could talk to his guys up there at the governor's mansion under siege, was on those interteam radios. So he gets up on high ground back behind the airport. He's trying to talk to Duke and these guys and Danny Chalker was there too. Trying to talk to him really kind of low, low key, couldn't hear too well. So that's where they communicated and said, hey, call the airport, this number right here.

Or I don't know which way it went, like if they called or normally called. But they made connection with the Grenadian phone. system, not a credit card call back to Bragg and all this other stuff. And that's when they send in Dave Sims, Lima 5-7. Dave Sims had got there a little bit late because the first time he took off his airplane caught on fire. And most people think that's a bad thing. So they landed, took another airplane. So they were about two hours late getting to the island, which actually kind of worked out well for him because now they supported the C.S. that were under siege and fired on the PRA troops that were advancing, keeping them away.

And from that point on, every crew, and that's about the time I described earlier, we were showing up. I think it was, I can't remember which crew was on at that time, but guys continually had coverage over the house or over the governor's mansion while the seals were there. and the next morning is actually when the Marines rolled in there with armor and broke the siege, pulled the seals out. So it's kind of a really neat folklore story. But like I say, it's turned into something that it wasn't. Truth is strange with infection too, isn't it? Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Bill, you're... But that's... Oh, please, go ahead. Oh, that's something that Joel and I have been fighting for years. As a matter of fact, I had to talk, like I said, Duke Wellington there, or Duke Leonard, Wellington is his first name. He don't talk. But a buddy of mine that I worked with, it was an SD6 guy too, and I said, hey, can you ask him? He goes, well, I'll talk to him.

So he did. He called him. And he calls me next day says, yeah, Duke can't talk. And that's fair because Duke comes from the old school seals. you know, I signed this piece of paper saying I won't talk about it and I won't talk about it. And that's fair. So, but like I say, I think I'm 99.9% positive that there was no call made with a credit card to brag. That doesn't make any sense. Bill, you're kind of downplaying it a little bit. But, you know, when we talk about the success of the ground forces in Grenada, like most of that would not have happened if the ACs. 1 30s had not been there. I mean, you guys really turned the tide. Those, you know, the, the

jumpers on the airfield or at least the second and third stick, uh, the governor's, I mean, all these places, cheers. All these places like AC showed up and completely shifted the, the, the battle. Yeah. And I appreciate that, David. I agree with you. And we've talked about that, especially with uh clum twyford's crew uh most of his crew are still around a cland passed way a few years ago but had it not been for him in cubion had there been no gunships there let's just say that uh that it was just like anticipated to be a air land load them up and go out they would have been decimated had they had they not had air support now granted they did have the navy there with a sevens and that was

that was not the right airplane for that mission. As a matter of fact, a friend of mine who, I hate to keep on saying it since passed away too, Harry Shaw lost both of his legs when the A7s bombed the 82nd talk in Harry died last year of COVID, believe it or not. But yeah, it was, I think that the gunships played a key role in that, that. The Marine Corps helicopters did too, not to the same level the AC130 did, but it was, I agree, it was definitely a part of the operation that would have been a lot more difficult

without the airplane. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, when you talk about the A7, like a fast mover, it just, it can do a lot. And they're very specific, you know, there's certain circumstances where it's great, but it can't do that. same type of troop suppression that that the AC can do yeah because you know the big thing is like i like i pointed out earlier on about the the tenants of the gunship uh the ability to stay overhead surveil pick and choose fire at the right time that's something that no fighter can do because their nose on uh what we call the pointy nose they go and they fire and then they're gone or reacquiring fire uh and reacquire where uh you know the helicopter

and then later on, of course, they had Arty support too, which a whole different thing. I'm talking about the AC130s and their criticality in the opening hours of that operation. That was really the key. I think the operation wouldn't have went the way it did without that gunship support right from the get-go. Yeah. It reminds me of a quote that you had in your book that said, when you don't need a gunship, anything will do. when you do need a gunship, only a gunship works.

Yeah, that's right. And we've used that quite plenty of time. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So after urgent fury, were things changing with the AC 130 with like the production? Because you guys had a lot of weapons malfunctions during Grenada. Like there were a lot of issues.

Was there, were there efforts to modernize the, uh, the, the, uh, the, AC130? Yeah, we did start with, it's a little bit after Grenada, 85, 86 time frame. About the time that Socom stood up in 87 with what we call the Special Operations Improvement, S-Safai, Gunship, which we updated because, you know, we had a lot of computer problems, because everything that we had for the Grenada op was Vietnam-era vintage. There was nothing, really no upgrades. We took extra computers along sometimes, and they just never really worked right. So it was old school pilots were essentially Kentucky Windage. You know, our altitudes back then were typically 6,000 feet, 5,000 feet, you know, in that realm. So you could really kind of fudge it.

And then the CEP of the guns of 20 millimeters were rather large anyway. So you could make up for some of it. But as our altitudes kept on climbing up to 10, which become our base altitude after a while, my God, I mean, you couldn't, you had a lot of difficulty hitting targets. So upgraded the computer, somewhat of the ammunition, which I worked some of those programs, but the guns stayed relatively the same. but the avionics did improve. Really, our last Vietnam era gunship wasn't upgraded because it was shot down in 91, but all the other ones, the very first one that was upgraded, was actually upgraded and delivered in 1990, 568.

So after that, there was a lot of improvements, but it was just a, I wouldn't say, a bloodletting session. It was just a hard road to hope. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you talk about flying at 7,000 feet. You're a slow-moving aircraft that's orbiting the target. It puts the fear of God in the enemy for sure. But you guys are also a target at that kind of low altitude and at the speed you move, right? Like, it's a dangerous position to be in a lot of times. Yeah, it can be. You know, we have, we've trained our guys for defensive tactics. And thankfully, The Vietnam era guys really played in on that. And that's optical AAA was really not even a challenge at that point.

What we really had to worry about is manned portable air defense missiles, SA7s, you know, the higher elements of 14, 16, and so forth. And the aircraft were modified with flare decoy systems and some level of chaff. But you don't want to take an AC 130 or anything. C-130 for that matter into a radar threat environment because that's just like begging to get shot down. And that did happen a little bit later in Desert Storm, which is a different talk. But generally, yeah, you're right. I mean, I don't think it's really, I never really looked at it at that as that hazardous. I always looked at the helicopter guys for needing a wheelbarrow carry

their balls, especially those 160 guys, because these guys are right down there in it. of course, we lost, we lost some guys, some 160 guy. Their Keith in Grenada took a direct hit when they're doing the Deboi raid on the Richmond Hill Prison. And I think almost all those 160 helicopters got shot like Swiss cheese in that raid was supported. So the AC130 at 7,000 feet, 5,000 to 7.7.000. 7,000, we'll say in that range, that pretty hard to hit for optical AAA, but pretty easy to hit with a IR-guided missile. And we've got a defensive suite on board, too, that we can tell if somebody's tracking us at radar, but you'll be leaving with a seat cushion stuck to your butt after that. So after urgent fury, in the book you talk about elaborate maze, Nimrod dancer, Blue Spoon,

which are all, I mean, it's all fascinating. Like I did not know how much the AC 130 had been used almost on a consistent basis during those years. Can we sort of jump ahead of just cause? Yeah, certainly. Yeah, and just to caveat on what you're saying there, too, what people don't realize, they say, well, I've had guys say to me before, like, oh, just cause, that was a quick in and out for you guys, right? No, we were there from 1983 on to 1990. And it was like a home way from all. I've been TDIWI, temporary duty, to Panama 25 times in that time span, because we're flying at mission to El Salvador from Howard. So, you know, People down there were asking me like, hey, man, where are you been? I said, I was back at my home station. Oh, we thought you were stationed here.

So, no. There was a lot of stuff that occurred prior to Just Cause that was Noriega like tweaking our earlobes saying, yeah, yeah, you know, incursions in the Air Hon tank farm, Rodman, ASPs. We're all down there pulling that security mission from about 80s, late 87, early 88 on through, Just Cause. So Just Cause was by and large, I mean, the largest operation I was ever involved in. We had nine AC130s, seven H models and two reserve A models that that had specific missions down there. I mean, people say to this day, well, how come Just Cause went so well? Well, we had plenty of practice. That's for sure. We, the gunships were there. We, we're in the country, in the target country, training up all the time. We're facing the PDF,

the Panama Defense Force on a regular basis. And they were all this, they were playing chess and we were playing checkers. And we're punching them in the face every chance we got. And we had our technology, but technology only goes so far. So finally, you know, and you get people that are interested in all that pre just cause stuff certainly can read that in the story it's fascinating to me and made a lot of really good connections with people that were involved in it as well from other services including the army s f well just cause was really kind of one of these things that fell into our lap if if there was a 1980s i really effed up award it should go to noriega because here it was we had just finished the mod four exercise and the mod four exercise was a full-scale

dress rehearsal for what was called blue spoon which is a wacky name they gave it prior to the changes of just cause blue spoon okay uh because then red spoon it would have been dairy queen right blue spoon so uh so anyway here we are we had just finish up that exercise in early December, like I think around a 10th or 11, something like that. Anyway, in that exercise, we did a full scale, all the targets we're going to take down, everything. The whole plan was rung out real time. We had the DeBoys do the train up for the Kurt News Rescue. We built an entire top floor or two floors of the Modelo prison out on Field 7 here on Eglin. And the D-boys is Kelly, Vennon, gave me a lot of really good information. You guys probably know Kelly, one of the most solid guys you're ever going to run into.

They did that over and over and over again. I found cut off padlocks in there and everything else. I mean, they were trained real well for that rescue. But even they didn't think it was going to happen until it did. So the whole exercise was complete. It was on the shelf, ready to go. And we thought, well, okay, we're taking Christmas. leave, we'll probably do another one of these next spring.

And lo and behold, Noriega's, some of his, some of his goons down there shot that lieutenant and captured Navy, I think it was Navy and his wife in prison and tortured him and, you know, really some bad stuff that they shouldn't be doing. And that's when when President Bush says, all right, go. Oh, shit. And they changed the name at that point to just cause instead of blue spoon because it just sounded better. Yes. And I would tend to agree.

So we then my crew, we had two crews down there already and the reserve A models that were flying the security missions. The two crews, the H-Modd crews were there to support the D-Boys on the Muse rescue. They were like SCI, clamp tight. you know, they didn't even let us know they were going, that kind of thing. And then we, my objective was Rio Hado Airfield, support 1-175, yeah, 175 and one, I think, one part of 375. They went north. So anyway, oh, wait, 275. I said 175.

Yeah, the guys from Washington. That's who we supported. Okay. Sorry, Air Force guy talking. So anyway, we flew down there, five-ship formation, straight out of Herobber, went right into combat ops. Air fuel all the way down there. We hit the tanker. We're fat as hell, too.

One of our airplanes took off at over 180,000 pounds, and you need a waiver over 155. So it gives you an idea how fat we were. And my airplane was like about a 173 or something like that. we took off slow six-hour mission down there six-hour time all timed out reached all of our airplanes through a great deal of pain especially with weather made it down there to our whole points and we all executed at the same exact time on h-hour and you know since i will relate to the uh real hado mission that was really important for us because we're going to have 500 rangers jump in there three minutes after we started doing prep fire.

Yeah. And three minutes just wasn't enough. And we knew that, but that's what the plan said. So, and they were, they put way too much confidence in my estimation in the 117s dropping those two, two thousand pounders. And of course, you know, there's a lot of controversy about the, the 17s. Well, we were supposed to miss. I'm like, okay, all right.

Yeah. Just, just go with that, guys. Okay, whatever. But they really didn't change anything because there they had the Macho de Monte, which was Panamanian Special Forces, and those are the badass guys. They had the six mechanized infantry there, which was their mechanized infantry. They had V-150s and V-300s, Cadillac gauge, you know, stuff that we sold them. So those guys, the six guys, a lot of those just hauled ass the minute we started shooting.

But the Macho de Monte, they stuck around all night, and we had some pretty ugly engagements that, since we're on the public here, I'm not going to really go into that. But there were some pretty severe activity after that. If they, and they were obstacles to the Rangers and they stayed on board. They could have just well left as well. but we had one last danger close with Dave Hate at that time. He and if, you know, Dave, he was a lieutenant at the time and called us in on a guy on a gun behind the Macho de Monte barracks. And that was, I walked that area in March doing a BDA assessment. I still found bone fragments.

It was pretty, pretty ugly engagement. So in any case, the Rangers. were able to move in. They took a few casualties. Lou Alarro was one of them that was shot in a head. And you know Lou's story, which goes beyond that. But he did survive. And later on, something else happened to him.

But in any case, it was a success. We stayed there until about 5 a.m. or so supporting the Rangers. and then we went, we finally landed. I think it was 17 and a half hour of mission for us. Wow. We landed in the morning. And what was really the worst part about it was is we didn't take enough water along. So about the last five hours, you know, I think I was pissing orange.

I think everybody was because we're all dehydrated when we landed. And because we're working hard up there, you know, the gunners on the AC130 are the manual labor. You're up there. you're already in even though we're at 5,500 feet, which I wouldn't, I'm still classified at as thick air. It's still you're up at altitude and it's, you dry out pretty quick. But generally, you know, I've been out to Rio Hado like four times since then. The most recent one, one of the most rewarding experiences I had was going down there for the 30th anniversary and meeting about 100 of those ranges. we supported that night, including Dave Hate, Spicy Nick, if you're watching, Hey, Spicy Nick.

You know, all these guys, you know, Spicy Nick and I got so damn drunk that I think we were, took us two days and sober up. But, you know, that's, that's, that's the way we roll, as they say. So, but it was really great because we were down there. And what's not known is that entire base was bulldoze out. And it was, there's a resort there now, the Royal de Cameron. So what do I do as a as a gunship guy? I go and try and find all the targets being engaged. And I think we engaged 13 targets that night. And so I'm finding, and I found the majority of them. And there was one. It was a, when I went there and initially, I was there right in December, right after Rangers left. And then I was there again in February

and March of 1990. And doing my assessment. and I saw this big tree. It was like a giant tree, like maybe 50, 60 year old tree. And it was right next to a gun that we engaged. And there was a little memorial for the guy that was on the gun at one time. And the tree was just riddled with fragments. I mean, because we probably shot about 7 or 8105 H.E rounds at that gun. And frag goes everywhere. And that tree was just peppered with frag spray. And I remembered seeing that. So here it is, 30 years later, I'm going down there and I'm saying, I wonder if that tree is still there because I will be able to identify where that target was just by seeing that.

You know, I actually picked up a cartridge case that was fired at us that was laying there on the ground when I was there back in early in 1990, picked up a piece of 105 frag and a bullet that was knocked off a case. I'm like, how often does a guy have a fragment from a shell you shot at a time? Target and a shell that somebody shot at you. That's kind of cool. Yeah. A neat collector's item. So, you know, maybe only amuses for me, but anyway.

So I'm looking all over this compound where this resort now looking for this tree. Where's this tree? Because that's my landmark. And I had found some of the other places already. I said, I searched all the way up and down there, road, couldn't find a tree at all. shit it must it must have died it must have fell over so i saw a couple of rangers and their wives that were sitting in this bar in lobby number three of the royal cameron i said well i'll go join those guys because i can't find this tree i go walking in the lobby as soon as i cleared into

the lobby by the desk there's that tree right there oh they built around it they built around it and there was like these uh like metal uh geckos up in a tree and everything like decorations it was Christmas time so they had this tree uh that you know some really ugly stuff happened by this tree 30 years prior to that but it's it was almost surreal because they had Christmas decorations on it and everything else there was a there was a little girl rolling around on the floor in front of the lobby desk exactly where that gun was where that guy lost his life and I'm like this is just way too yeah too weird for me yeah you know I thought it was It was just like, wow, man.

But anyway, that was my trip to Rio Hado at the 30-year point. It was definitely worth going. You know, and I can say, you know, people say, well, hey, you know, it's kind of cruel what you guys did. No, they were doing their job, the PDF, we're doing ours. Right. I think everybody can understand that. And I know you guys have probably been in the same position before. You can't feel bad about doing that.

You really can't. It's just the job. Yeah. It's consensual, right? Everybody's out there because they're out there. I mean, they're all the third to kill the other person. For our viewers who don't know, can you tell us, though, like the difference between what a 105, a 40 millimeter, like what the weapon systems are on an AC 130? Yeah, certainly.

We'll start with the 20 millimeters first, and they stayed on the airplane until about 97. And that was the same gun that was on the fighter aircraft or rotary cannon. Gatlin gun, if you will. And on the gunship, they fired at a rate of 2,500 shots per minute. So not as fast as the fighters, but putting out a lot of bullets. And we carried 1,500 rounds per gun. So a lot of noise, a lot of flash. We fired only high explosive incendiary projectiles. And they made a lot of noise. They made a lot of flash. Then, but that was more for course engagements, you know, wider areas because there was about a 6 miller radian spread where the 40 millimeter was about a 1 miller radian gun and it fired a 2 pound projectile it's the same one that you see in the

war war two movies uh essentially i mean it's the same round uh the 40 millimeter gun that you see in all the movie rails and uh it fired a 1.96 pound projectile not to be too exact but uh of hie i typically high explosive incineries, what we fired. We carried at that time 256 rounds in the magazine. And then the 105 is an adapted army artillery piece that it's an M102 in the army. We use the 137 recoil mechanism. We carry 100 rounds and we can fire at that time we fired either white phosphorus or high explosive. And typically high explosive, the white phosphorus was just like for marking and for specific effects. We did use them in Panama, but really not too much after that.

And we could, the guns, like I say, the gunners, that's her job is to feed those guns. And the projectile or the 105 round weighs about 42 pounds roughly, excuse me. Yeah, about 42 pounds roughly. It depended on what fuse. So we'd just say 40 pounds. and the 40, or the 40mm, or the 40mm, is a two-pound projectile, 1.96, and it weighs about five pounds per round.

So, and the 20-millimeter belted. So it's nothing magic about our guns. It's all repurposed from other applications. That's kind of really smart business in my mind, because if you make something that only you have, it's a lot more difficult to support. Right. Now, was the 105, was that an auto loader?

Did you guys have to load each round? Oh, each round, yeah. Oh, my gosh. There's no, you know, at altitude, when we eventually started going above 10,000, AGL, that the air gets a lot thinner up there. We're on the oxygen on nose hose. And, man, it really becomes burdensome and tiring to be firing those guns at altitude. But there's something you get used to.

You get used to it like anything. But yeah, it's it's the manual labor. A lot of physical labor for the guns, especially the 105. That's wild. The 40 is loaded in in four round clips. And you can hold up to nine of the gun. You're cheating one and sticking above the top. But two clips, four rounds per clip.

And you just feed them as the gun fires, just continually feed them, just like you see in the World War II real. So when you said that, I believe you said it was your last mission, but when your mission was danger close, what is like the danger close for 105? What is the danger close for 40 millimeter? It depends on the target and what you got in between, but generally, danger close for the 105 in most cases is 100 meters. So, you know, 100 to 150. We had when Dave Haight called us in, at least it was at that time. The numbers have changed since then.

But when Dave called us in and his FSO called us in or is actually an FSO, but his fires guy called us in, we had a building between us. So they were pretty much covered from that. We're very careful as to fire our sensor operator fired into his open field, making sure that he was firing on the other side of the building. And so the building absorbed the frag. They were only maybe 100 meters from us at the time, maybe a little bit less. They were at the front gate of the Macho de Monte compound, and they were taking fire from inside the barracks. And that's when we fired behind the barracks because that's where they were coming from. They're using the barracks as sort of a defalade.

But everything kind of stopped after that and as we wanted. Yeah. And for those of you might be civilians to not know, like Danger Close is when a unit is calling that in, that means the rounds are are very close to the unit calling in and then it's like, we don't care. Right, right. It's like, you know, in the, there's a JTCG calculation that we have. Anything outside of one, or anything inside a 10% chance of being incapacitated, killed,

or injured gravely, that's danger close. Anything 10%. So what we call zero one PI, probability of, you know, incapacitation. So it's it's really wild because our navigators are always checking the distance and we need permission to fire danger close from the ground force. Right. And they they had no issue with it at all. And you see a lot of like in your your time in Afghanistan, I know there's a lot of a lot of danger close calls in Afghanistan. And AC 130 is the crews are well trained in that area.

No, it is. I mean, you know, there are times when you, when that's the only option. Want to jump on to Iraq, Gulf War? Well, actually, yeah. Actually, can we talk a little bit about Somalia? Yeah, sure. Because ACs were there under the UN, right? Can you tell us a little bit about that?

And then what happened during the operation? Yeah, I will say personally, Somalia was a huge disappointment for us, for most of us, I'll put it that way, is initially we were sent over there. And this is the UN. If you give them a chance, they'll screw up anything. That's just my opinion. I think I find a lot of people that would agree with that. So we were called up in June of 1993 because of Butro's Bootro's Ghaly, who's still fucking up my spell checker today when I was writing that book. But in any case, they wanted us to come over there and shoot ID's infrastructure.

In other words, his weapons caches, his depot, his tank yard, and so forth. So we sent four airplanes over there and a contingent of maintainers and a contingent of aircrews. And they did in a matter of days, about a week and a half actually, shot up ID's infrastructure. The radio station, some of his storage depots, the cigarette factory, which is where his main bivouac was for his troops, or if you want to call them troops. And that was it, sent us back to the state saying, all right, well, IDD is going to give up now because that was the idea that Butro Zagli had was like, well, hey, ID is going to suffer this and he's going to give up. Oh, come on. This guy's been at war for their entire lives. They're not giving up for nothing.

So ID went underground and just continued like nothing ever happened. Okay. So that's when the idea came up to send a capture mission over there. And what everybody knows now is Gothic Serpent, Task Force Ranger. We trained up with Task Force Ranger before it was called at. The exercise, if I remember right, it was called Crafty Kaper. Wow. Okay.

So we trained up part of the JTF package like we always do. 160th was there. The D-boys were there, and Third Bat Rangers were there. All right. Everything went fine. The plan was in the can, ready to go. And we get

back over here, and now when General H.O.A.R. That he was the Sancom commander. And he says, I don't want the AC-130s to go because we're trying to de-escalate. And after all they did in June of screwing up that town. I don't want him to go back because we're going to

escalate this. That was his mindset. Well, a lot of people would disagree with that for the point that the gunship is there to support the ground force, not to just tear everything up. And that was the idea they had. So through a series of conversations, we sent Doug Mick, Mickna from DOS and Dionne Skagli, the captain, up to Bragg. And they briefed General Garrison, General Garrison agreed, says, you know what, we got to have the gunship there. She goes down to General Hoare and says, got to have the gunship there. And I talked, you know, briefly, but I did communicate with General Garrison. And he just kind of threw up his hands on it.

And he says, well, I really had no choice. They said, either you don't take the gunships. or you don't go. And they even offered us, say, well, if you want the gunships there, they're going to have to operate out of Mogadishu. Well, that's just like, you might as well plan on losing a couple because then they're mortar them right away. So we were left out. My crew was then deployed to Bosnia. And in September, and I'm over there flying that crazy-ass mission, deny flight, which is something, in my opinion, gunships, we had little to offer, but we were there.

And it was early October, October 3rd, we're getting ready to fly that night. And Wally Cujah, one of our sensor operators, comes out of the command center, says, pack it up, guys, we're going, we're leaving, we're going to Somalia tomorrow, go back in a crew rest. What? What's going on to Somalia? Well, the Rangers have some trouble.

So we then got redeployed down to Kenya because the closest we could get wasn't really a good idea to land in the MoG at that point. So we're in Kenya. The next night we flew our first mission up there, met up with the task force. They briefed us on what was going on. We landed, refueled, and took off and did overhead surveillance, just kind of like, hey, we're back. the very next night we flew another mission and two of our crews and it was I don't know who came up to the idea or the concept I think it was Garrison but I can't be sure just I want you guys to go up there and show a force because I want them to know that you're back and we went up there my crew fired on a road intersection if you know George Han Geo I know you guys know that Geo was there too he says yeah you know when you guys started firing These guys are diving out of the windows of the cigarette factory because we're firing right on this intersection, not too far from the cigarette factory. And we wanted to know we're back.

And our instructions were fire up to 25% of your combat load in five minutes. Oh, we're having a great time. We're just pounding them out. You mean, just counting them out. And we went to check fire or ceasefire at that point. And lo and behold, and another crew, did it down by radio Mogadish, same night. And I think I can't remember which crew that was.

But in any case, two crews fired the very next morning, ID's calling for a ceasefire. Yeah, because, you know, he was smart enough to know that, hey, these guys damaged me last time. They're going to damage me again. And after that, it was, how can I say? It was boring, very boring. We turned a lot of jet fuel into noise. It wasn't really, it was a, you almost, almost needed an act of Congress in order to get cleared to fire, but it was the UN.

And the UN, like I said, they're so lethargic. We had one crew that ran out of fuel and they never even got, and they had like three hours of fuel on board waiting for clearance of fire that never happened. Even though they had an identified target, it was a technical. vehicle, which is, you know, we know how that got its name, but they had chased them all the way into a building. They had seen them fire. They had it on tape because everything we do is video recorded. Chased them in there, asked him for clearance of fire. Denied, denied, denied. That was the end of the story. They landed, never shot him. It was by the time, the end of that mission, my crew came back right for Christmas. My wife was pretty happy about that. And the crew, crews that came over to replace us where they're supposed to be there riding it out until the end of March. And things got so crazy, I guess is a good way of putting it. So we didn't really feel like we're offering much anymore. Just you're there. Rangers are already home. The task force was

gone completely. Tenth Mountain was there. Tenth Mountain says we like the sound of that gunship overhead. We feel secure. There's valid validity to that. But, I mean, I mean, it really, it really was taxing on our, on our unit. And we wound up losing an airplane and eight guys on the 14th of March in an accident. Because things just got so fast and loose that the wheels came off. Well, that's a good way of putting them. Them bringing you guys in there, though, was sort of a day late and a dollar short, right, in the sense of, you know, the idea that you're operating like a B2 bomber where, you know, it's, I don't want to say B2 is in a but obviously it's you know it doesn't have the type of position you guys have that you are

you are a close air support function yeah and you know i've used that exact term or the exact statement a daylight dollar short i've used that in describing that now the question comes up and i i talked to dan schilling who was one of the combat controllers i think he actually wrote a book on it too on somalia saying yeah as a matter of fact he's quoted in in my book too, is would the gunship made a big difference in Somalia for in supportive task force ranger? And I guess we'll never know for absolute sure. Right. But what I can tell you, from what I know from tactical events in the past, I can't see how it wouldn't have been at least a factor that would have, especially when we're talking about the lost convoys,

We're looked down and see and we're following. We're tracking. We can guide people in. We can see roadblocks. Not necessarily is everything the gunship going to do or the advantage firing guns. There's a lot of other things we do as well. But again, we'll never know that because it didn't happen. Now, Bill, I sort of want to put the focus back on you for a moment because you, I don't want to get this wrong.

You were inducted into the Socom Commando Hall of Honor into the Air Commando Hall of Fame. If I can talk about you basically reinventing the 105, do you want to talk about how did you do that? Well, I was one of the guys. I'll put it that way. you know, the 40 millimeter too. I mean, we did all kinds of wacky stuff. Like, for example, what I said earlier about, well, when you only get, you're the only ones using something.

It gets hard to support. I'll just use the 40 millimeter for example. Here it is. We're running low on 40 millimeter guns and parts. This is post 9-11, for example. They said, hey, the Air Force gave us four C-130 H models. So build these in the gunships or slicks or just cargo airplanes. We don't have the guns to do it.

We don't have the equipment to do it. So we had to go out there and he said, we need five guns. But these guns were made in World War II and up into the 50s. You know, I was made in the 50s, so I know how old that is. So my parents should have bought that extended the warranty plan, though, but they didn't. Damn it. So anyway, this is a general web was in the seat then, actually. If you remember, he's the guy that's in the bin Laden killing picture.

He's, he's the guy, the three star, or two star at that point. But he is my old boss. So I go to him and I says, hey, I got, I found a source for about $13 million for the 40 millimeter parts over there in Greece, the country, not the lubricant. And I said, all right, I can go get these. They're free to us because they're part of the Marshall Plan. We gave them to them. All we have to do is pay for the shipping.

He goes, well, get your passport, go over there and get them. So, you know, that took good leadership there saying, well, let's let somebody else take it. Now, I'm going to send my guy that knows what he's doing over there and secure these parts and mark them, and we got him back. I was just one of the guys that was playing on that, but I was the guy to go. So another thing, well, we needed gun breach casings. So guys knew out at Nellus. They had all these target vehicles out there because the M42 dusters is where our guns came from originally, Army and aircraft system. So guys that are going out there on these exercises, hey, there's a whole bunch of these on the Nellis range.

They look like they're in pretty good shape. They just got bad barrels. I said, shit, I got like 120 brand new barrels from Greece. I don't need barrels. I need gun casings. So me and Rick Smith and I went out there and got all kinds of clearances. Some of these guns came off the area near area 52, is it? Whatever it is.

51. There you go. Yeah. For some reason, I thought it was 52 too. Yeah. 51, 52, whatever it takes. And so, yeah. So we pull these guns off.

And then there's a one of the technicians that probably did more for us than anybody that I can recall, his name was, he was a former EOD bomb tech named Mack McClinahan, who was civil service, a technician at Egglin, gun technician. This guy was a genius when it comes down to getting stuff done. And we brought those breach casings back and he put them over to the machine shop and Robert Hammock and all these guys. Those guys worked them to the original plans. and we converted all these guns that were supposed to cost $8 million. We did the whole project for $60,000. Wow. And we were done. We complete NDI, X-ray, brand-new barrels, everything. And we did that in six months time.

So that's the kind of stuff that, you know, everybody does the combat stuff in the gunship world. I mean, I don't think that was really any. big play in as far as getting either one of those awards. It's all the other stuff. Like say, I was one of the point men on the Moab, the manufacturer, the design of the Moab, because when I worked in weapons and tactics, I was the weapons and tactics superintendent.

So I'm the one that started the whole thing with Egwin and got the Moab going. And of course, like I say, I was just a bit player. I'm the guy that started. I'm not the guy that finished it. There was 200 or 250 people that worked on the Moad project. But you've got to start somewhere. So that's where that recognition, and I didn't even know I was being submitted for it, to be honest with you.

I just know that the historian's office, who, I guess that's one way of knowing, you're old when the historian's office is looking for it for advice. Historian office calls me up, says, hey, Bill, I need your package. basically my career accomplishments, you know, that you use on your EPRs, OERs, you know, your performance reports. I said, okay, what do you need for? I can't tell you. So, okay, whatever. So I sent it to them and here about two, three weeks later, I get a call from Admiral Olson

saying, hey, Chief Walter, I want to let you know that you're being inducted in the Hall of Honor. I didn't even know what it was. But it was cool. And what's cool about it is it's, I represent all the other guys that did all the work. You know, like I say, it's not a, it's not a me thing. It's a we thing. And I actually, I'm not saying that just to say it. I actually believe that. It's always a team effort, not just me.

Well, we appreciate you and everybody else on these birds. The AC130 is You know, when one of those shows up on station and you really need them, it's like the hand of God reaching down and slapping the bad guy and going, uh-uh. You guys, I mean, really, you guys are just heroes to everybody who's been on the ground. When your squad-sized formation gets lit up by the IR-Light on AC-130, it's just a big square coming down on you.

Exactly. what's about to happen. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Yeah. Even when you're trying to find out which house is the right one and they like pointed out for you, you're like, hey, thanks.

Yeah. You know, that's, thanks for the compliments, guys. And I'm sure there will be other people because I know there's a lot of other gunship people on, on, that are going to see this podcast. And, and, yeah, you know, I've worked with opt for two. I know exactly the feeling is like, they're calling in, uh, we abbreviate to a five line typically. You know, we don't even run the whole nine line because we don't need it.

But when when the sensor operator, the low light level television hits you with the glint, that beam you're talking about right away, as you're calling in, you start sucking up a seat cushion right away. It's like, this is not, this is not the target. Oh, no, we're offsetting. Okay, well, that makes you a little bit nervous too, saying you're offsetting your idea in because, you know, our typical engagement is we always ID the friendly position first, lock it down. We have one sensor looking at the friendly force, locking them down, then they're measuring the distance to find out where we are, and then we're applying our no fire heading.

It's actually quite technical. And then before we fire, but if you don't know that, and you say, this big ass light is on you, and they're saying they're getting ready to fire, are they going to shoot at me? Yeah. And they did have a few incidents in Vietnam where they had the early offset system where they actually accidentally fired on the friendlies. And thankfully they missed. But, you know, anything technology can go south on you at any time. It's one of the things I always liked about the H model gunship, which is the one I typically flew on. Everything was a manual backup. We talked about the lanyard point. in the 105 before. Well, were we really 100% capable?

No, but were we capable to a certain extent? Yes. Nowadays, everything is computer-based. I mean, you can't just shut it off and turn it back on again and make it work. So there's pros and cons, but then again, too, the systems of today are absolutely unbelievably accurate. Yeah. It's like way more than we ever dreamed about being back then.

So, you know, it's a double-edged sword, I guess you can say. It's, we're going to get cut either way. Well, I'm pretty sure AC130s are like the prime suppliers have killed TV, too, when you're back in the junk. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. To start wrapping up here, I'd really like to kind of hear, because I know you still have your hand in this world. What do you think about how the AC130 as a platform has evolved since 9-11 and through the war on terror. What has it been like to see that evolution? What have you seen? What have you

noted in some of the changes? Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, and I am still involved in the process now 44 years. And I can tell you, almost like I just said, it's like night and day compared to the airplane that I flew on and the airplane that we're building now and putting out of the field. It's like, absolutely, I feel nothing but intense sense of pride when I go to work and say, you know, these young kids that are flying, and I say kids, because I'm in my 60s, they don't know how good they got it sometimes. It's like, wow, man, this. Oh, how do we lose, Bill? We lost audio on you, Bill. We lost audio on you. Bill. We lost audio on you. There we go. Okay. This false speakers change in headphones. So I,

I think maybe the batteries in these went out. But if you can hear me, okay, I'll go ahead and grab up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're these guys that are in us. It's men and women, both crewmen. We've reduced the crew size a lot.

They're doing absolutely phenomenal work down range right now. Much of that never gets released to the public for security reasons. One day it will. And I keep on getting ping from them because I know most of them. They say, book about that. And I said, do you really think that I'm able to write your name into a book about all these people that you smoked over in Afghanistan? I don't think we're ready for that yet. And Dobser is not going to let me publish that. This is, if I cannot do a good comprehensive history,

I'm going to have to wait until the time that I can. Because it's not doing them any justice if you do a half-ass job and because of classification reasons. So the evolution of the system, well, I'll put it this way. When I first started out in 78, like I said, when we opened up this, this episode, they told me, don't plan on staying here long because the gunship's going away. That was 44 years ago. We're still here and we're just building brand new models right now. Matter of fact, I got three of them coming out of

the barn the last three here within the next three months. So are we here to stay? I don't know. I can't make that decision. But are we still effective in combat? Yes, absolutely. Depends on a lot of things. But the capabilities of the airplane now are absolutely phenomenal. I'm not saying that just because I work those programs. I'm saying, I know the difference. it's like wow man this is just just unbelievable i wish i could set my clock back and be a young guy again and go fly in the airplane but i can't do that you know it's interesting because in an age where technology smart bombs and these things are you know constantly in development as a person on the ground you can't think of anything better than an ac130 or an a 10

coming to your rescue oh yeah absolutely we're we're right there with the 810 too. I mean, they're, of course, the other red-headed stepchilds of the Air Force, too. We're accustomed to that. I mean, we're always treated that way. But you know what? Duck off a water's back. Doesn't bother me one lick because we work for the desotive. That's what we do. Yeah. Bill, can you throw up your books again, show them to our audience again. And people can go and pick them up on Amazon right now. So we got their links are down in the description if people want to check it out. Ghost Riders, 1968 to 1970.

and the second volume, Ghost Riders, 1976 to up 1995. Yeah, and I can speak to the second book. Like, even if you're not kind of an aircraft person or think that it's going to be technical, it's a great book that tells the breadth of the story and, you know, of each individual event and really just how the AC130s fit into that event. It's a great primer on the history of all these events, though. Yeah, thank you.

Thank you. It worked a lot, a lot of work and I worked real hard to get it right. And it is. I mean, I've had nothing but positive comments, not a single negative comment that I've received. There's probably about 1,500 copies out and it's only released four months ago. So it's really picking up a lot of interest. Well, hopefully we'll double that for you. Come on, guys.

Hook a brother up. Hook him brother up. And one thing I want to say before we go here, too, guys, I appreciate your service, too. I mean, we have nothing but respect for Rangers, SF as well, and especially the D-boys. I mean, of all the people I like to work with, they were tops. And, of course, I've got to give our obligatory shout out to the seals. Yeah, got to do that. Yeah.

Thank you, Bill. One team, one, five. Yeah, we feel you. We feel you. Because you were a diver, too, right? I was a diver. I was a diver. We got two, we got a couple of questions real quick. KT. Jack, please elaborate on KGB infiltration of Euclaw and ask the guest if he noticed or heard anything like that. Infiltration of Eagle Claw. I mean, go, go read Ron Lenehan's book, Crippled Eagle or Charlie Beckwith's memoir called Delta Force. Check out either of those. Yeah. Yeah, I have no knowledge of that. And I can say there's another one, too. Keith Nightgale has one out, too, on the background of that, to Phoenix Rising.

All right. And then, Izzy, thank you very much. We really appreciate it. I've been supported. Oh, I've been supported by AC130. Great insight. I thought AC meant air conditioning. Just kidding.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, it could be depending on how many holes you put in them. Right. Right. Dad, Joke Friday.

I cannot imagine, though, you guys flying. It's a slow-moving aircraft. You know, it's a prop, like, what it must have been like for you guys to fly to all these conflicts in an AC-130. a non I can't even imagine what that was like for you guys you know I I thought about that often when I was flying the line doing the mission I just thought that's a normal way of life I mean this is all I knew I mean since I was I got in was 21 years old and just just kept on going and I don't I didn't realize to way after when I had retired and everything how special that job really was and how impactful it was I just thought I well hey you know this is what we do and uh it is unique i mean who else would put a bunch of damn guns on a c-130 go out there shagging ass and shooting shit i mean come on uh it's not a normal thing but to me it was yeah it's amazing hey guys please uh buy the book you will love it i guarantee it fantastic and check out uh the links down the description if you guys want to support

the uh channel make sure you subscribe to it and like the show if you haven't already. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, all that good stuff. And we'll see you guys next Friday.