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TOWing IS NOT ABOUT CARS

In the world of an Infantryman, using high explosives is considered to be great fun. Using them creatively is even better and if you can rub someone’s nose in their own inadequacies, that’s just about as good as it gets.

Late fall of 1985, in what was probably our last field drill for the year, my Guard company was coordinated with the local Air National Guard security unit for training. We wanted to conduct urban training and they had some old defunct weapons storage bunkers that could work for (feeble) house clearing exercises. (If all the houses were only one room).

They wanted to practice defending the base from attacking terrorists. Since they consider Army types to be little better than savages anyway, we’d make presentable terrorists. Since we weren’t particular who we were clearing out of the urban area, any enemy would do, even a feeble force like AF security.

Our plans meshed very nicely. We went into the attack with a force to hold their attention on the main gate of the bunker complex while another force flanked and got over the fence with minimal casualties. We cleaned up the security force, then commenced clearing the bunkers. Which got boring pretty rapidly, since every one was like the last one.

We had swirling snow before we actually made the assault and it was coming down heavy by the time we were halfway done.

The only ‘high explosives’ we had available were training devices for our TOW heavy anti-tank missile launchers, which weren’t of much use to us in the assault we were conducting. I had that section parked off the end of the main runway doing crew drills. They had some contingency instructions, of course…..

After the action, we were invited to hold our After Action Review in the Air Base NCO club. They were kind enough to let us go first, so we thoroughly discussed the assault from our point of view.

Then they took over and provided discussion from their point of view, complete with video. At one point, the rifleman beside the camera man ‘shot’ one of our guys; who immediately collapsed like a boneless bag. Turned out that he’d tripped on something at the opportune moment, but nearly gave the ‘shooter’ heart failure.

The AF security Master Sergeant concluded their brief with, “Our overall goal is to defend the base long enough for the aircraft to get airborne and out of danger. We feel we accomplished this. Even though we didn’t actually launch, because of the snow, notionally, we got the aircraft away.”

We’re always told that little things can make big differences but we don’t usually get the chance to see it happen, or to actually make the difference ourselves. Even if we see a difference made, it might not be because of us at all. I’m perfectly willing to take any possible credit, though.

“I’m afraid they didn’t get off, actually.” I told the group. “My TOW anti tank section was parked at the end of runway 36. Their range is just under 4000 meters and they pack enough punch to stop any tank in the world. The way I figure it, your aircraft couldn’t get off the ground before they were well inside my missiles range.” And then, sensitive to possible hurt feelings, “You lose.”
The Master Sergeant looked like he had just bitten into concentrated lemon mixed with lye but all he said was, “We’ll have to look into that.”

Years later, watching news footage of F-16s taking off in Kuwait, I was surprised to see them rotate off the deck and kick in afterburners to go nearly straight up before their landing gear was fully retracted. Definitely an extreme move but maybe… had someone been paying attention to an obscure After Action Report from a podunk little Air Guard base out on the West Coast?

I like to think they were.

We made further use of our ‘anti air’ TOWs the next year at Annual Training. Once again training against the 7th Infantry Division, we encountered LOTS of helicopters. There were no tanks to shoot at, so of course my AT guys got bored. Then they started paying attention to the Kiowa Scouts that would flit from one place to another, hover awhile looking for the bad guys (us) and flit again. They collared an old Master Sergeant who was assigned to us as an observer/controller and put the question to him. “Can we kill enemy helicopters?” He scratched his head and said he’d find out.

The next day, he had an answer for them.

“You can shoot and get credit for enemy helicopters IF the helicopter is in range. You MUST use the blast simulator (the previously mentioned ‘high explosive’ is the size of an M80 and blows up enough dust to show a missile has launched.) I MUST personally be standing next to the weapon doing the firing and the helicopter target MUST NOT MOVE during the estimated time of flight for the missile to reach it. If any of these conditions is not met, you don’t get any credit.”

In the next two days my two crews shot down twenty seven enemy helicopters, both Kiowas and the Cobra gunships that followed the Kiowas around.

We never heard the full results of these ‘kills’ but the old Master Sergeant came back from several of his briefings absolutely beaming.

“Those fly boys don’t want to admit that you’re shooting them down,” he told us. “But when I told them what rules of engagement we were using, and told them that I had personally verified each shot, they just kind of ground their teeth and shut up.”

Since I really haven’t been around Army Aviation much since that time, I don’t know if there was any effect on the way they did business. I’m not sure they could change a lot because their missions pretty much keep them close to the ground anyway.

One out of two isn’t bad, though.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 at 6:20 pm and is filed under TINS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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