Wikipedia ac 130 spectre gunship12/13/2023 “I thought maybe you’d like to have Schuiten track targets for a while,” I said. Looking into his eyes, I saw nothing but flaming trucks. “No,” he said, “I’m fine.” Tightening his grip on the TV joystick, he hunched his shoulders like a dog guarding a bone. I shrugged, and then suggested to Coogan, “Maybe you ought to take a break.” The infrared sensor (IR) operator, Captain Lee Schuiten, looked back at me and started to speak, but sucked on a tooth instead. He jerked the TV’s electronic crosshairs toward a truck and called out, “TV tracking!” The sight of so many untouched trucks keyed Coogan to an even higher pitch. We were on our way to chalking up our highest one-night score of the 1970-71 dry season. With an hour of on-target fuel and a couple hundred 40mm rounds remaining, we broke into laughter when Major Jim Ballsmith used the electronic magic of his Black Crow sensor to lead us to 16 more vehicles. Waiting for nightfall in their revetments at Ubon AB Thailand, these AC-130As pack a suprise for enemy movement along the Ho Chi Minh trail. Having the time of his life, he grinned and shouted, “Is it always like this?” I nodded, thinking to myself, soon he’d learn there was no Santa Claus. On his first mission, Coogan excitedly guided the attack, practically tripping over targets and setting fire to most of what he found. He had no other place to learn the trade the dozen Spectre gunships flying out of Ubon Royal Thai Air Base were the only ones in the world. I ran the low-light-level TV sensor on most missions, but that night I was giving on-the-job combat training to Major Ed Coogan. ![]() Inside a booth in the gunship’s belly, we sensor operators felt as if we had been given free passes to a shooting gallery. In less than three hours we destroyed 21 and wrecked 15. As that night’s first AC-130 Spectre gunship into Laos, we found trucks everywhere. ![]() It looked like curtains for the crew of the lumbering Spectre gunship as the surface-to-air missiles closed in for the kill.
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