Page:A Concise History of the U.S. Air Force.djvu/68

 Providers, and C-130 Hercules to move mountains of supplies around South Vietnam. C-141 Starlifters and C-5 Galaxies, augmented by commercial airlines, helped move in personnel and critical supplies from the United States.

Despite the fact that many targets were obscured much of the time by Vietnam's triple canopy jungles, the key to limiting ground casualties was close air support. As in earlier wars, the solution was to drop more bombs to inundate an area. Carpet bombing by B-52 Stratofortresses, each dropping up to 108 500- and 750-pound bombs, was the favored technique. Directed by LORAN, occasionally to within one thousand feet of American units, these ARC LIGHT missions flew at 30,000 feet. Bombs fell without warning. After the war, Vietnamese who survived this deluge described the ARC LIGHT experience as the most terrible they had faced. Another technique involved employing newly-developed gunships, including the AC-47 Spooky (known popularly as Puff the Magic Dragon), AC-119 Shadow, and AC-130 Spectre. The latter carried four 7.62-mm machine guns and four 20-mm cannon, each firing 6,000 rounds per minute, and 40-mm and 105-mm cannon. Orbiting over enemy concentrations at night, they covered the jungle with a rain of projectiles, well-appreciated by American soldiers nearby.

Again, as it had in Korea, the Air Force in Vietnam learned that the most difficult function of air power was interdiction; its major effort involved interdicting the flow of enemy troops and supplies down the Ho Chi Minh trail through Laos and Cambodia into South Vietnam. Many