on, each nose gun had 350 rounds of .50 ammunition, giving a total ordnance load of about 4,000 pounds. Other alternative loads included six napalm bombs under the wings and twelve frag clusters in the bomb bay. Or two rocket pods and four 500 lb GP bombs under the wings, and six more in the bomb bay.
The minimum release altitude for bombs was usually 1,600 feet, with a pull out altitude of 1,000 feet to avoid bomb blast damage. Bombs were normally delivered in steep dives, and conventional straight and level bombing missions were rarely if ever flown. Rockets and guns were fired at considerably lower altitudes, while napalm was dropped as low as 50 200 feet.
A major problem was the two G load limitation imposed on seven of the Farm Gate B 26s after it had been discovered that the original waist gun optic sight mount, replaced by a plywood floor during previous IRANs, had been part of the load bearing structure of the fuselage. Most of the ordnance delivered by these aircraft therefore had to be released at a fairly high altitude, to permit a gentle recovery.
The rehabilitation status of the B 26s improved during 1963, with aircraft being rotated to Air Asia on Taiwan, or to Clark Air Base for IRANs. Some of the in country maintenance work was also contracted out to Air Vietnam. But there was still reason to agree with the report claiming that, 'to term the present B 26 an unsophisticated aircraft is to pay it an unwarranted compliment,' and the type was still seen as temporary equipment only, pending more suitable equipment, such as the Skyraider or the B 26K then under development.
During 1962, most B 26 missions had been carried out by single aircraft, while the T 28s usually flew in pairs. But with the loss of two Invaders to ground fire in February 1963, and the near doubling of the number of available aircraft, it became common to use pairs of B 26s instead of single aircraft, so that one Invader could suppress the ground fire while the other one carried out the actual strike. Similarly, T 28 missions were often increased from two to four aircraft.
In February 1963, General LeMay argued that it was now well known that Farm Gate was a purely American unit and that it was time to stop pretending otherwise: to continue to run it as a classified operation was just an administrative burden. The classification was dropped during the spring of 1963 and on 8 July that year the unit was reformed as the 1st Air Commando Squadron (Composite) of the 34th Tactical Group: a regular and official USAF combat squadron, dropping the pretense that they were in any way controlled by the VNAF. The Farm Gate aircraft were at this point officially assigned to 2nd Air Division Headquarters. This organizational change made little difference to the rôle of the unit, and missions continued to be carried out much in the same way as before. However, the two RB 26Ls and two RB 26Cs now operated under the direction of Detachment 1 of the 33rd Tactical Group at Tan Son Nhut. Now that Farm Gate was no longer classified, some attempts were made to drop the code name, but it had become so well known throughout the USAF that it was finally decided to keep it.
Around this time, the national insignia on most of the aircraft were also repainted to resemble USAF markings. But it appears that not too much effort was put into this change, and the result was often a mix between USAF and VNAF insignia. As before, they were usually only applied to the fuselage sides. The only other markings normally carried by the Farm Gate Invaders was the black serial number on the fin. Most of their early aircraft had a natural metal finish with anti glare panels and engine nacelles in black. Later aircraft, which had been through the IRAN program at Hill, were overall grey (FS 595a 36373) rather than natural metal. A few Invaders, those received from CIA stocks at Tainan, were overall black and had their serials painted in red.
The unit personnel received some official, albeit indirect recognition in November 1963, when the 4400th CCTS was awarded the Air Force Outstandin