A coworker of many years was a pilot of the original C-47 (?)Puff the Dragon.
They scared the crap out of me at the same time giving security.
If I had known what he told me back then, I would have frozen solid on the spot forevermore.
They aimed the damn things with a mark on the window and sighting over the end of the wing! Then fly in a fixed turn.NO COMPUTERS, NO RADAR, NO NOTHING!!!
He also said, they experimented with 155mm cannons!
That was difficult for me to believe... Today it is SOP.
“They aimed the damn things with a mark on the window and sighting over the end of the wing! “
Yeah, no IR night vision, relied on dropped parachute flares to see anything at night.
Have an old slide I took sitting on the Chu Lai perimeter watching Puff work over something a ways off. That stream of tracers was amazing.