in short burst, two fell and two made it to a ditch. A chopper hit the two in the ditch.'
Friday 16 November 1962:
'Fri flew strike in Delta. Was giving close air support to ground operation when five hidden boats were found. Got three. Couldn't hit my butt. Everyone else busy so even though I have duty officer, Charlie and I pull alert. Got scrambled at 2300. Fort under attack at Can Tho. Covered it for two hours. Appeared to be good mission. Fort called flareship and told them to thank us. Had been up since 0600 Friday morning. Finally got to bed at 0330 Sat morning.'
Saturday 17 to Monday 19 November 1962:
'Slept most of Sat. Duty officer Sunday. Poker Sun night. Lost $12. Flew mission # 100 Monday. Made a total of 25 passes on a large target area. Hit boats, houches and personnel. Word came in on Friday night's fort defense mission. 18 VC confirmed KIA.'
Tuesday 20 November 1962:
'Zip today. Yesterday's mission. 6 structures, 14 boats and 25 VC confirmed KIA. They certainly were everywhere. Dave...told me about one of their missions. The FAC directed them at VCs under trees. Just before they dropped Dave saw women under a tree. They didn't drop and pulled off. We agreed that it sometimes gets to be a gut call. The FAC, who is Vietnamese, is in a position to see and he directs the fire, still it's pretty bad sometimes. Some time I'm going to add up the total KIAs and destruction and then again it would probably be better if I didn't.'
There were two B 26 losses during the autumn. The first of these was RB 26C 44 35813, seriously damaged at Bien Hoa on 10 October. 'My camera crew was uploading photo flash cartridges for a night photo mission,' Colonel (then Captain) Jimmy Ifland recalls. 'Although properly grounded, all cartridges ejected from their dispenser during camera preflight and exploded four seconds later on the ramp beneath the aircraft. As you can imagine, there was quite an explosion - eye witnesses claimed that the aircraft was lifted off the ground four to six feet (I find that hard to believe). Fortunately, there was no fire, although the aircraft had just been fully fuelled. My two Camera Repairmen, who were both in the cockpit running the preflight, frantically climbed out of the aircraft and ran to the tip of the wings and then leaped to the ground - both suffering broken ankles, wrists, etc, and needless to say having the s--- scared out of them.' The reason for the accident was never fully established, but was thought to be stray voltage across the flare firing pins due to a nearby thunderstorm. The Invader was eventually patched up sufficiently for a one-time, gear-down flight to the depot at Tan Son Nhut, where it was given further work and then flown to Clark Field for refurbishing. It was subsequently returned to service, but only after very extensive repairs.
The other loss was a B 26B shot down in the Mekong Delta on an outpost air support mission during the night of 4 5 November. The night sorties formed an important part of the Farm Gate mission in South Vietnam. The VNAF had no night time strike capability at this point, and consequently the Farm Gate B 26s and T 28s were the only aircraft available for air support between sunset and dawn.
Most of the night sorties flown were in support of outposts, and this was a very demanding type of mission. Flares were dropped over the target by Farm Gate C 47s, or by VNAF C 47s with American co pilots (a total of thirty USAF C 47 pilots, known as the 'Dirty Thirty,' were on loan to the VNAF), and the B 26 worked under the flares, placing ordnance under the direction of a ground controller inside the outpost. Sometimes the B 26 had direct radio contact with the ground forces, and sometimes the instructions had to be relayed by the C 47. In some cases there was no radio contact at all, and the drops were made by observing the flashes from the ground fire, or in the direction the outpost's 'flaming arrow' was pointing: most outposts were equipped with one of these arrows, consisting of flare pots or electric lights on a large platform which could be rota