Gravel -- Handle with Care
Personnel of the 56th
Munitions Maintenance Squadron remove from a shipping container one of
hundreds of canisters of Gravel carried by NKP-based A-1s beginning in 1968.
One foggy morning in maybe April
1967, a Skyraider pilot from Pleiku showed up at my pre-mission briefing for
the Dawn Patrol. He told me that
he had lost his wingman the previous night on a Gravel-deliver mission
northwest of Foxtrot, and he wanted to go along to try to help find his
friend. We spent the morning
groping around in my Bird Dog in visibility of about a half mile. Fortunately,
someone else found and picked up the downed pilot.
That morning I got an education
about Gravel from a pilot’s view. I
was told that the little bomblets are unarmed in a canister filled with an
inert gas. Upon release, the Gravel deploys out of the rear of the canister
and is armed after a set number of seconds’ exposure to air. The pilot told me that the canisters were linked to a red
light on the instrument panel that would illuminate if the canister were
penetrated, and air entered while the canister was full of Gravel.
The pilot said that if that light illuminated in flight, the emergency
procedure was to punch off the canister within 15 seconds.
The pilot said that the light had illuminated in his wingman’s
aircraft, and the wingman had attempted to jettison.
The canister didn’t jettison, and not long thereafter, blew the wing
off the A-1.
That’s part of why when
speaking, I often say that I obviously saw more American heroes in Southeast
Asia than Oliver Stone did. They
were among us every day.
