And, flew CAS like bombers, delivering ordnance from greater than 5-10k AGL feet it appeared. I suspect they had orders not to go below a floor.
Our Marine pilots scared the shiite out of me, how low they would come in. The A-4 guys were the worst.
Col Jack Broughton, author of Thud Ridge and Going Downtown, was court-martialed by the Bomber Generals after destroying gun camera film from some fighters he directed to fire on some Soviet ships unloading SAMs in Hiphong harbor. These ships were firing on the f-105s with 40MM anti-aircraft guns! Yet the actual orders were to not shoot back so we wouldn’t have a war with the Soviets. Gawd...
It was wrong, but understandable. Anyway, he writes about his court-martial in Going Downtown. His friend Chuck Yeager served as the judge in the court-martial that found him guilty. Yeager later wrote it was a hard job to convict him, because he actually agreed with him. Broughton had his conviction overturned and expunged by Pres. Reagan years later.
Anyway Col Jack wrote that the Air Force PACAF commander, Gen “Three-fingered” Jack Ryan, scolded the USAF pilots in Vietnam, calling them pussies for not “just flying thru the SAMs like we did flak in WWII.” He advised them further to just fly higher on their “bomb runs”, just like WWII.