Ran across a very cool article on the A-37...
Excerpts:
Low-level missions presented certain hazards, of course. "I was always cleaning out grass and tree limbs from underneath the A-37s," said Charlie Kraesig, a maintenance officer. "These guys would get target fixation because they were always coming in so low and concentrating on the target and they just didn't realize how close to the ground they were."
Bob Chappelear can verify that observation, especially the part about tree limbs. As an Air Force captain, barreling north in Cambodia, he saw too late a particularly tall tree in his path. "I sheared off the top 15 feet," he said. The 400 mph impact made his A-37 yaw radically. The entire leading edge of one wing was crushed. Napalm was spraying all over the airplane. "I told myself, if I'm still alive ten seconds from now, I'd better raise the ejection handles and squeeze the triggers," Chappelear said. "But then I thought, I'm not very far from a bunch of guys I just bombed, so that might not be a smart idea." The A-37 strained away from highway-dusting height with its left wing bent back 25 degrees and drop tanks dangling. Both GE jet engines faithfully delivered thrust as Chappelear ran a controllability check. "Everything was fine," he said, still sounding grateful nearly 40 years later. "It was like ‘Fly it home and land it.' Besides, it was getting dark and I did not want to spend the night in that jungle."
Before deployment to Vietnam, Major Richard Martel made one request of the Air Force: "I really don't want to kill people." He applied for an unarmed reconnaissance aircraft. But Martel was a computer specialist who flew a T-33 trainer weekly just to keep his skills sharp. Another candidate for Lou Weber's 604th. At the reunion banquet, the staff was stacking chairs and yanking tablecloths from under our drinks when Martel told me about the ironic path from his request to a Silver Star.
On November 29, 1967, he found himself far from his first-choice assignment, piloting one of two heavily armed A-37s circling atop a stack of Super Sabres at midnight. On the ground 16,000 feet below, in a place called Bu Dop, a special forces air base was under siege by Viet Cong hunkered down in thick jungle. The F-100s rolled in, bombing and strafing, then left the area. Despite the pounding, an anxious forward air controller alerted Martel to a multitude of Viet Cong massing for a final assault. Only the two A-37s remained above the target, both carrying 250- and 500-pound bombs plus six tubes of CBUs—anti-personnel cluster bomb units. Martel radioed the other Dragonfly pilot to extinguish his navigation lights and rotating beacon, then flipped his CBU switches to "HOT."
"We're going down now, lights out, " he told the FAC.
"We're gliding down from altitude completely dark with our throttles pulled all the way back to idle," he recalled. "It's pitch black. The VC think everybody's gone home. They can't see us. They can't even hear us. I dove the last 6,000 to the deck and leveled out at 100 feet. But that's nothing in an A-37."
Tracers from Russian-made 12.7-mm guns swarmed him as he methodically dispersed cluster bombs from rock-throwing altitude. He laid them in a swath 300 meters long. Flying a racetrack pattern, his wingman followed, also strewing the bomb units.
The ambivalent combatant, whose one request was duty in a non-lethal aircraft, paused for an instant four decades later. "We killed them all," he continued quietly. "We killed over 200 of them on one run." Both A-37s climbed away, then returned to take out gun emplacements with hard bombs. "The base was saved," Martel said, regaining his all-in-a-day's-work tone.
Legends of Vietnam: Super Tweet | Military Aviation | Air & Space Magazine