Warbird Information Exchange

After much praying and laying on of hands, including some from our CAF brethen across the hangar, oh and a lot of grunting, the engine was finally aligned on all six bolt holes. This took a lot more effort than expected and almost interfered with lunch time! But they got the job done! JR

And wa-la, here it is all shiny and in place again. The rest of the day was spent hooking up hoses and wires. Hopefully we will get a break on the temp next Saturday to hang the prop and finish the left aileron. More milestones in the making!!

Here's to the team! JR

We painted the bottom half of anything that wasn't already painted flat olive drab or subdued in some way. That means we painted all the napalm bombs, CBU containers, or anything that could in any way make it easy for the bad guys to see our aircraft from below.

Every load crew had one gallon cans of flat black or olive drab paint. We used brushes that were about 6" or 8" wide... they would just barely fit into the opening of the can. We just dipped the brush into the can and then slathered paint on... and just let it drip. I suspect a lot of you have seen pictures of bombs from an Easter mission... all painted up like Easter eggs. We had to have a little diversion sometimes. We also painted extra messages for "Uncle Ho" during Christmas and the like. Since this is a family site, I can't print the messages we painted on... but you don't have to have much imagination to know what they were.

You could always tell the new guys... they had paint all over them... paint in their hair... paint on their skin... paint on their fatigue pants... and paint on their combat boots. We never wore shirts on the flightline so it was quite a site. After a while you got to be an expert at slathering it on the bombs quickly without getting it all over yourself. Just the same, for years I still had jungle boots and jungle fatigue pants that still had paint on them. You couldn't get completely away from it.

_________________
Bob
Memories of Naked Fanny
More Memories of Naked Fanny (Nov 2013)
609th Nimrod, Bomb loader, Gun Plumber, '68 - '69

On Monday, our second assistant crew chief delivered the spare carburetor we obtained from our friends at Dixie Air Parts in San Antonio. He is pushing a 77 lb box back to K's area of the hangar. Not bad for a kid who just turned four, eh? He has been helping since he was two. I'm afraid he will have no choice but to grow up right and become a pilot or a mechanic or both. Wait, before you make any remarks about having to choose between becoming a pilot and growing up, I have to exclude "fighter" pilot from those choices so that does not become a mutually exclusive dilemma. OK? JR

Hey Bob, thanks for the "paint" stories. Just what I was needing. Were they still using parachute flare dispensers when you were there? If so, did they have to be painted also? What color were they before painting? I'm talking about the three tube triangular type that I have seen in pictures, but not well enough to build some replicas. I have heard that the A26's quit carrying them at one point and let other aircraft drop them so they could stay away or above the light to make the ordnance drops. This made them less vulnerable to being spotted by the AAA gunners.Thanks, JR

=======So Randy, of those three different types of explosives, what were some of the differences? Was one any more "touchy" to handle? Do you remember anything about the flare dispensers that looked like three tubes stuck together in a triangular sort of affair?
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Of the three explosive types, Comp B was the most sensitive, or so they told us. Most of those were left over from WWII. Tritonal and TNT were really stable.
The flare dispensers we used were I believe the MER-63's. Each one held 6 flares. I think the flares were the Mk 25 type. The tube was about 3ft. long and about 4 or 5" n diameter. The front end had a recess in it with a dial timer and a steel cable lanyard that attached to the rack. The timers could be set for how much delay you wanted between release and ejection of the flare. I seem to remember that they burned for several minutes. I saw them in action at a range at Eglin and they would light up a pretty good area.

_________________
Randy Ryman
Project Big Eagle
NKP Thailand 1966
http://www.coastcomp.com/av/florence/florandy.htm

Randy, thanks for that info. I'll start researching the flare dispensers now that I have the number and flare type. That will be a good start. JR

I'm sure everyone has had the experience of the boss walking up and saying something like " ...you know you guys did so well on that last dirty job I gave you that I have another one just like it!" Well, we got a big surprise yesterday. Anderson Aeromotive called and said they were coming to Texas to deliver and pick up engines/parts and would we like for them to stop by to pick up the right engine from K. Holy Cow, what a great opportunity! I called JR and gave him the news. He has made the "all hands" call to see if we can get the right engine pulled in time for the pick up next week. The other side took several weeks, but we don't have that long to git er dun. We have to pull the prop and move it over to the left engine for openers. We would have preferred to have made up all new hoses etc. and mark everything so we may have to scramble to get as much of that done as possible. If anyone would like to contribute to the engine overhaul cost, the matching campaign is still on at the A-26 Legacy Foundation's website. http://www.a-26legacy.org/ or the same link can be found on our new website: http://www.thormeyer.net. We now have a dedicated Facebook page as well if you have not discovered it. Thanks for any help you can give. The other JR

The dispenser you are asking about... the triangle thingy... was not a flare dispenser; it was a CBU (Cluster Bomb Unit). Those tubes were filled with bomblets (BLUs... prounounced "bluies"). The dispenser was a SUU-14 (and variants) and the CBU was numbered according to what bomblets were in it. (I.E. CBU-14A) One version we flew had bomblets shaped like a baseball with giant seams to act as fins and cause it to spin... the other had bomblets that looked kinda like a giant badminton shuttlecock. Here's a link to more than you probably wanted to know:
http://www.designation-systems.net/usmi ... tml#_SUU14

The tubes were a bright, shiny metal with a gold tinge... so we always painted the bottoms. These were used as anti-personnel (or very light armor) weapons. So we did not load them much for use against "The Trail". We did use them more when we were "fragged" to go up north into Barrel Roll (Barrel Roll was in the northern portion of Laos around the "Plane of Jars") in support of Royal Laotian Troops. We did not fly to Barrel Roll very often... only when the Royal Laotions were in dire straights or during rainy season when "The Trail" was weathered-in.

Of note... the A-1s used thousands of CBU-14s for SARs (Search And Rescues). It was part of the standard "SAR alert birds" (Sandys) load. When a SAR got "hot" we would load them by hand since they were light enough. (A-1s only... the A-26s were not Sandys when I was there.) We never painted the bottoms since the SARs were only daytime missions. (I only participated "full force" with the A-1s in only one SAR after the Nimrods were dis-banded... the Boxer-22 SAR, 5-7 Dec '69.

The dispenser (SUU-14) was designed to be brought back and re-used. In my memory, I don't think any of them ever came back. Perhaps one of our pilot types can tell us what they "bombed" with them.(Sorta like the "Beer-Bottle Bomber", Joe Kittinger I suspect). During and after the war... and still ongoing, there has been a huge scrap metal business in Laos. There were millions of bluies dropped in Laos with lots of UXOs as a result. Every year they find more UXOs... some the hard way.

One final note... it's interesting that Randy and I are kinda book-ends. He started the Nimrod's time at NKP with "Big Eagle"... near the end of my year, I closed it down (*sad face*). The tactics and munitions really did change from his time to mine. All of the missions during his time carried their own flares... none during my time carried them. Our missions all used mostly C-123 "Candlesticks" and some C-130 "Blind Bats" for "lighting up" the world.

_________________
Bob
Memories of Naked Fanny
More Memories of Naked Fanny (Nov 2013)
609th Nimrod, Bomb loader, Gun Plumber, '68 - '69

The CBU dispenser is on the outboard pylon of the Spad. 6 tubes, 19 bomblets in each tube. If I remember correctly, they started having us bring back the dispensers because they thought they could be used to make rocket launchers or mortar tubes.

_________________
Randy Ryman
Project Big Eagle
NKP Thailand 1966
http://www.coastcomp.com/av/florence/florandy.htm

This is one of the bomblets that was in the dispensers. Don't specifically know the number of this one. This is one of my collection. Nasty looking little sucker.A cast body with what appears to be little ball bearings embedded into it. I think the curved vanes were to spin it up and centrifugal force would do the arming.

_________________
Randy Ryman
Project Big Eagle
NKP Thailand 1966
http://www.coastcomp.com/av/florence/florandy.htm

Interesting posts by Bob and Randy, got me to looking back into some of the data I have about our missions. Following is a list of the munitions the Nimrods used during the period 1 April 1968 to 30 June 1968. This was on a total of 713 sorties.
MK 81(250lb Gp Bomb 366 , MK82(500lb Gp Bomb 409 , M117(750lb Gp Bomb 108, M1A4 Fragmentation Bomb Cluster 1,724, M28A Fragmentation Cluster 415,
BLU-10 (250lb Unfinned Fire Bomb 152, BLU-1/B (750lb Finned Fire Bomb 64, BLU-23 (750lb Finned Fire Bomb) 464, BLU-27 (750lb Finned Fire Bomb) 561
Blu-32(750lb Finned Fire Bomb 480, M31 & M32 (500lb Incendiary Bomb Cluster) 1,261, CBU 14/A( Cluster Bomb Unit) 1,938, CBU 25 (Cluster Bomb Unit,Foliage Penetrating) 10, CBU-29 (750lb Cluster Bomb Unit, Delay Fused) 18, CBU 24 (Cluster Bomb Unit, Impact Fused) 132, LAU 54 (2.75" HE/WP Rocket Pod 1,
50 Cal. Armor Piercing Incendiary Ammunition 157,835 rounds.

Frank Nelson

Frank, I have to agree, all of ya'll's posts are great info. I'll keep that for the sandwich boards we want to do that will show the history of the airplane in SEA times. Randy, the individual launch tubes from Bob's info say they were about two and three quarters in diameter. Is that about the size of your bomblet? The A-26 model that David Horn built for us has these launchers and they would look good on our outboard pylons if we can find some or build them ourselves. I'm sure Ray could fabricate some excellent replicas given the time. I forwarded Bob's website reference to him to get his opinion. Thank you all for coming up with these things. BTW, our revamped website is now at http://www.thormeyer.net and we have a new FB link on it as well. You do not have to be a FB member to look at it. We have linked to some other great organizations in Special Ops, the CAF A-26 in our hangar and the MidAmerica Flight Museum. All great stuff. Drop by for a looksee! Regards, JR

Sometimes we just need to look back and see how far we have come. This was the instrument panel before and if you look back a page or two on this thread, you can see the new difference. Again, have to thank all the guys who have worked so hard on this piece of the puzzle. Larry has devoted countless hours to organizing and installing the wiring harness and radios. Stan and Rand have been right there by his side the whole time with their parts of the big chore. Ray has made the sheet metal parts look like new again and meticulously hand labeled all of the placards on the top annunciator panel. He also fabricated many of the new antenna mounts or repaired the old ones. Jim S has been painting many of the small parts and trim. Many others have pitched in when needed. But, we are getting so close to finishing this up. Wow, almost time to get excited. Thanks guys!! JR

Not exactly sure where this picture came from, but it was sent to me. If credit is due, just let me know and I would be more than happy to give it. Anyway, so how in the heck did a Duck arrive on the scene with the CB dispensers we have been talking about, huh?? Ray looked at the info Bob sent and said he could indeed make a set. He was sorta concerned that the Duck Drivin Lady would want a pair, too, but that's a different story. Now where was I? Oh yes, Ray said he could make these for us and they would look sweet on the outboard pylons. NOW, the question is.... maybe Frank can answer it.... in what way were they used? Altitude to drop? Diving or level passes? Was there much effect from the wind on the drop? Were these effective against trucks or mostly against the bad guys? As I understand it, the ROE said that the truck had to burn to be considered destroyed. So if you blew it to pieces, that didn't count. Was that the way it was for all of the Nimrods? Silly Generals and their bean countin McNamara ways....who thought an all jet AF was the only way to go. Doh! JR