Posted on 06/26/2018 1:50:07 PM PDT by Eddie01
Muzz slimes and moonbats and mo's better scurry,
When I take them out with my slurry,
When I take them out in with slurry,
From the Buff, I drop.
Daisy Cutter
In mid November 1968, Project Delta redeployed from a Forward Operating Base (FOB) at the An Hoa U.S. Marine Corps Base in I Corps and flew directly to III Corps to establish an FOB beside the runway at the Dong Xoai Special Forces Camp. There had been no stand down between the two deployments, but we were told the Project planned to shut down operations around 20 December, leave a security element to secure the FOB, and the Recon Section, along with some of its support elements, would return to Nha Trang for a Christmas and New Year stand down. However, those who were there must remember the Christmas Stand Down of 1968 never came to pass; Project Delta continued operations through both Christmas and New Year Holidays.
A week before Christmas, just as my Recon Team was preparing to pack up and return to Nha Trang for our promised stand down, we were summoned to the Tactical Operations Center (TOC) for a mission briefing and my Recon Team was assigned a 10 Kilometer by 10 Kilometer square for a Reconnaissance Area of Operation (AO) in the heavily forested area east of An Loc, Binh Long Province where intelligence reports indicated numerous NVA company/battalion sized base camps were located. Later that day, I flew out with our U.S. Air Force Forward Air Controller (FAC), Major Roscoe, in an O-1 Bird dog to take a look at my recon AO and select my infiltration and exfiltration LZs.
Before the advent of the GPS, finding the exact 10K by 10K AO out in an area like that devoid of any prominent terrain features was no easy task, but we finally agreed an area between two small rivers constituted my recon AO, and I commenced to look for an LZ in the area I could use for my infiltration. It wasn’t long before I caught sight of something in the northwest corner of my AO I had never seen before, and I asked the FAC if he knew what it was. When he replied, “That’s a Daisy Cutter crater,” I remembered reading in The Stars and Stripes about the BLU-82B “Daisy Cutter” bomb, but I had no idea they made a crater like the one I saw below.
What I saw was not a hole in the ground crater like bombs usually made, but it was a perfect circular clearing over 200 meters in diameter, filled with white sand, and located in the deep green of a densely forested area. According to the story in The Stars and Stripes, a Daisy Cutter was a huge bomb that exploded several feet above the ground’s surface, left no hole in the ground but exploded laterally completely removing all vegetation and top soil within the blast’s radius and creating an excellent 4 to 5 helicopter LZ. It didn’t take much imagination to see that white disk cut out of the green as a Daisy, thus the BLU-82’s nickname “Daisy Cutter.” I could have picked any of the several small clearings in my AO as an infiltration LZ, but the Daisy Cutter had peaked my curiosity and I just had to have a closer look at that magnificent LZ, so I selected it as my Primary Infiltration LZ, and that was a decision I would soon regret.
When we first saw the Daisy Cutter crater, I asked Major Roscoe if he knew why the U.S. Air Force had dropped the bomb there and he knew nothing about it. He went on to say he had met a C-130 pilot who had dropped several of these Daisy Cutters and these bombs had scared the Hell out of the pilot. The C-130 pilot had said the Daisy Cutter was rolled off the ramp and dropped by parachute at about 6,000 feet AGL so the C-130 could get out of the area in time to escape the blast of the bomb’s 13,000 pounds of High Explosive. If the parachute failed, the bomb would hit the ground while the C-130 was still inside the blast area with deadly consequences for the C-130 crew.
Back at the FOB, I checked with our S-2 and they knew nothing about the crater and had no information about a recent ground operation in the area. I thought that was a bit curious, but bombs were dropped on Vietnam every few seconds and no one could expect S-2 to keep up with all of them. However, as I thought the sole purpose of a Daisy Cutter was to cut an LZ for a ground operation, I did think it was odd that the LZ had been created and there was no record of a following ground operation.
The next afternoon, my recon team packed up, briefed back and we flew out for a last light infiltration. The FAC easily vectored us in and, of course, the UH-1H (Huey) “Hole Bird” had no problem at all setting us down in that “Mother of all LZs.” As soon as the helicopter touched ground, my recon team exited and attempted to run into the wood line, but there was no wood line. We ran into a solid barrier of logs, limbs, brush and debris towering to 50 feet above us.
In the failing light of EENT (End Evening Nautical Twilight) we looked around and across that expanse of sterile white sand and saw the barrier before us completely encircled the crater. The Daisy Cutter had impacted in triple canopy jungle where the trees ranged in size from 200 feet down to 50 feet, and when the bomb exploded, it probably vaporized all the trees in a 50-meter radius from the point of impact; then it cut down trees for the next 50 meters and pushed them out into the trees beyond. For the final 100 meters of the blast radius, this mass of logs uprooted the trees in its path, pushed them outward, and finally deposited the trees in a 50-meter thick wall that was 40-50 feet high and completely encircled the blast area. The blast created by 13,000 pounds of High Explosive had cut a circular clearing, roughly 250 meters in diameter, and had deposited the contents of that clearing along its outer boundary in the form of a 50 foot high wall of logs, limbs, brush, and debris.
My recon team was inside a 50-foot high log corral and the only way we were going to be able to get off the LZ was to climb out. It would soon be too dark to safely climb onto that entanglement so we would have to hurry or we would have to RON (remain over night) on our infiltration LZ, and that was unthinkable. We started moving around the edge of the crater looking for a relatively solid place to climb out until it became too dark to continue the search and we did the unthinkable; we RONed on our Infiltration LZ.
The next morning at sunup we continued our search for a way off the LZ until we came upon our tracks from the night before; we had completely circled the LZ without finding a way out. The problem wasn’t that this was a solid wall of logs. The problem was that this was a haphazardly piled mass of logs and debris that was extremely unstable. We had made attempts in several places to climb out, but our weight would cause the logs to shift, roll and threaten to bury us in its entanglement. A couple of times we had climbed almost to the top only to find that if we were to continue we would have to either climb over logs too unstable to support our weight or we would have to crawl under them, so we would turn around and climb back down into the crater.
By mid-morning, we were still on our infiltration LZ, it was apparent there was no safe way to climb out of the crater, but it was also apparent it was even more dangerous, as exposed as we were, to remain in that crater. The term “Shooting fish in a barrel” came to mind. We were the fish, the crater was the barrel, and the VC would do the shooting if they ever got to the top of that log wall from the outside before we could escape from inside the crater.
Rather than expose the entire six-man recon team on the side of the log and debris wall while hunting for a way out, we searched until we found a fairly solid looking spot and sent the point man to the top, but within seconds of him arriving at the top, he turned around and hurriedly scrambled back down. Our point man reported he had seen an abandoned NVA/VC base camp on the other side of the wall, but he couldn’t be absolutely certain it was abandoned. It was highly unlikely there would still be any NVA/VC in the base camp after such a narrow miss by a Daisy Cutter, but one could never be absolutely certain about those things, so I sent the point man back up to observe the base camp for at least 30 minutes before we put the entire team over the wall. After about 30 minutes, our point man signaled us he had seen no activity, so we climbed over the wall one at a time.
My recon team re-grouped on the other side and proceeded to cautiously examine the remnants of the VC/NVA base camp. The base camp consisted of about 10 bunkers the blast from the Daisy Cutter had collapsed, but we couldn’t tell if any of the enemy had been in the camp when the bomb fell or if any of them had been killed by the blast. There was no fresh sign of enemy activity, and the bunkers appeared to have been abandoned for at least three months.
By the bunkers’ positioning, we could tell they were just part of the outer defenses of a large base camp, and the main part of the camp had been where the crater was now located. Because of this, we believed the Daisy Cutter had not been dropped simply to cut an LZ, but it had been dropped as part of a tactical air strike to take out a large VC/NVA base camp. The team spent that day and the next patrolling the area around the crater and found several other places where the base camp’s outer defenses protruded from the crater. To us, this confirmed a direct hit had been made on a VC/NVA base camp of at least battalion size.
We patrolled our recon AO for the full five days and never found any fresh sign of VC/NVA activity in the area, and we hoped if any VC/NVA were left alive after the Daisy Cutter blast, they were now out looking for Chieu Hoi (surrender) Leaflets they could redeem at any of the local U.S. or ARVN outposts. A Daisy Cutter may have left something to be desired as an LZ cutter, but as a tactical or psychological weapon it was unsurpassed by anything except possibly an Arc Light. As I had crossed over the top of the log barrier around that crater, I had looked back into its wide expanse to admire the destructive power of a Daisy Cutter’s 13,000 pounds of HE, and if I had been either a VC or an NVA soldier, the sight would have been enough to make me find religion then and there.
After we were extracted, had completed our debriefing, and had adjourned to the Beer Tent, Pat Walters, my back up on this patrol chuckled and said, “Someday, we’ll look back on this and laugh.” I had thought then that he was joking because there was absolutely no way anyone could ever look back on what had just happened and laugh, but the other day I did just that. Our last recon mission of 1968 had been a Dry Hole, and we thanked God for the Christmas present, but the gift would have been much better if He had kept the damned Daisy out of it.
In recent years, the BLU-82B (Daisy Cutter) has made the news several times when they were dropped in Iraq and Afghanistan during tactical air strikes. As they report these air strikes, the news anchor or reporter always adds, “… and this BLU-82 bomb, the Daisy Cutter, was used in Vietnam to clear Landing Zones for helicopters.” Whenever I hear this, I cringe and remember the worst LZ I ever selected was a Daisy Cutter LZ. The BLU-82 may be an excellent tactical or psychological weapon, but believe me it makes a sorry LZ.
Enjoyed that. Well told.
*LOUD* even from the far airstrip.
Black smoke from all engines.
I will never forget it.
Those were G models. Water burners. Watching 16 of those B-52G's and KC-135A's perform a Minimum Interval Take Off, MITO, was one of the most awesome and awe-inspiring things I have ever seen in my life.
All that smoke from the water injection would drift over the base for an hour after a MITO and there was no better smell than that of burned JP-4. The best memories ever.
My wife and an older brother were stationed at Wurtsmith AFB. A great place to be stationed.
What a terrific narrative my brother in arms! Very informative, Were you LRRP? Too special to even talk about. I rode out Vietnam half way around the world behind the Iron Curtain in West Berlin. As a side note, later in my career I had the once in a lifetime honor of debriefing a released USAF POW who was an O-1 pilot. He was an NVA “guest” in Cambodia.
Godspeed soldier.
When MOAB was being tested at the nearby AFB, I lived directly across the road from the north perimeter fence. The pictures fell off the walls several times when tests occurred,and I estimate I was at least 8 or 9 miles from the actual test site.
Yes, Project Delta was a LRRP unit during the Vietnam War. A few of us came together a few years ago and recorded some of our experiences on our website. The Daisy Cutter story is part of the Dry Hole series at: http://www.projectdelta.net/dry_hole.htm Other stories can be found at: http://www.projectdelta.net/index.html
Hey! Hahaha...I was there when they had that banner! (I miss the DC chapter folks, great patriots!)
I cannot watch that video without thinking, every single time:
What the hell was going through his mind to pull that maneuver?
That was clearly familiarity breeding contempt there.
“...MOAB like the Daisy Cutter is a pallet loaded, parachute stabilized, fuel air aerosol surface bomb. Very, very big surface bomb....” [Robert A Cook PE, post 25]
Neither the GBU-43/B (MOAB) nor the BLU-82B (”Daisy Cutter”) use fuel-air explosive. GBU-43/B is filled with H-6: a mix of RDX, TNT, powdered aluminum, paraffin wax, and calcium chloride. BLU-82B was filled with GSX, a variant of ammonal: a mix of ammonium nitrate, powdered aluminum, and polystyrene.
Fuel-air munitions of such size are subject to engineering limitations and development in this area was discontinued, because results weren’t predictable enough.
The filler mistake keeps cropping up. This time, we can blame the website posting the initial article.
Thank you for the correction.
But I agree: they are all in the surface blast family. Not a deep penetrator bomb.
“From what I read, the last B-52 was delivered in 1962!!!
Astounding that they haven’t found a good replacement.
If nothing else they should recognize that, like the F-16, 18, 15 and 10, it just was perfectly suited for its task and MAKE SOME MORE.
I am sure someone with more info and less opinion that I will stop by to explain why I am so very, very wrong.” [Freedumb2003, post 3]
Several follow-ons to B-52 have been designed, built and tested; the public didn’t want to pay for them. It keeps on, due to great engineering, solid workmanship, imaginative adaptations, and dumb luck.
Neither the F-16 nor the A-10 are the world-beating super-planes many think they are.
The F-16 can out-G any manned aircraft, but this is of no value in action because no human can stand that much G-force without going unconscious. (At any rate, air combat has not been conducted that way since before 1938). Its range is so short it can barely take off before running out of gas, and it’s so small it cannot haul enough munitions to the target, to make much of a difference.
The A-10 was a workmanlike design for 1970, but becomes more obsolescent every day: the air defenses it will have to encounter have not stood still, and more sophisticated systems are becoming more widespread all the time. Its GAU-8 30mm gun - which aficionados never fail to express their love for - is actually the least-effective, shortest-range system on the airframe. It was designed before both revolutions that have transformed avionics - modular and digital - and cannot be modified to accept newer systems.
“Making some more” is a fool’s errand. Warplanes are not like nuts or bolts, nor even automobiles. No one builds airplanes they way they did 40 (nor 60) years ago: cheaper materials and methods are now universal. And sturdier, longer-lived airframes are the result.
All the original tooling was taken to bits long ago. Re-creating the production machines would cost more than an entirely new system. More critically, no one today knows how to do the job: all the aerospace workers who made these machines are retired. Or they’ve have passed on, in the case of the B-52H.
The public loves national defense, but insists it can be had on the cheap. Not possible.
“The B36 could carry WWII era 26,000 lb Grand Slam bombs. Built by Wallis of dambuster fame. B52 should be able to do the same since early nukes were that heavy. B1 as well - they have a longer bomb bay.” [Robert A Cook PE, post 21]
Initial design of the B-36 dates to 1941. The dimensions of early atomic bombs played no role in design considerations. It proved adaptable because of its very large size, required principally to hold all the fuel required to fly 10,000 miles.
Initial design of the B-52 dates to1947, but many dimensional details were not finalized until the early 1950s. By then, the hydrogen bomb was a reality: the first B-52 flight and the first hydrogen bomb test detonation were both accomplished in 1952. Reduction in weapon case size was already under way; the B-52 did not begin to enter the operational USAF inventory until 1955.
The B-1B is equipped with three stores bays, with a bulkhead between two that is repositionable to a limited extent (allows for different length launchers). Total length is somewhat longer than that single weapons bay of the B-52, but interior space is no greater. Munitions must be configured in a much more closely-packed fashion - far more “dense” than the B-52. Which enables the B-1B to carry a greater total weight.
That moveable internal bomb bay “bulkhead” is why I figure the B1 could carry the MOAB now.
“...I would think it would be easier to take a few feet off the length of the bomb that to re-engineer the wings on a B-52.” [21twelve, post 19]
“Just my thoughts. Three feet shorter and more powerful chemicals.” [Doc91678, post 29]
The reality is exactly the opposite.
There is no extra space inside a bomb’s case: just enough for a specified quantity of the main charge, initiators, fuzing, sometimes guidance components. Even the smallest change affects everything else, sometimes in unforeseen ways.
And changing external dimensions affects a great deal more than the size and weight. It affects the weapon’s center of gravity and aerodynamic characteristics. Munitions are never simply hammered into shape and hung on a warplane: they must be tested in every likely flight regime, at different airspeeds, altitudes, dive (or climb) angles, roll states, and more. The design goal is safe and expeditious separation of munition from aircraft.
Some work can be done in part with wind tunnel tests and scale models, but live flight test is always required before the munition and airframe combination is certified by DoD’s Non-Nuclear Munitions Safety Board. And it must be done for every combination of munition and aircraft that might be used. Certification testing takes weeks and weeks, even when all goes well; sometimes problems are uncovered (like the munition flying back up and hitting the airframe); then the munition - or its mounting and launching systems, or both - must be modified. Then certification starts all over again. Ultimately, entire books filled with graphs and tables are compiled, to enable users to figure out what a munition does and how to use it, in a hurry.
So if one already-certified munition is changed, all the different aircraft for which it had been certified must be re-tested and re-certified.
Only when all the certifications have been completed, can munition performance and effectiveness testing begin. These tests collect the data used by unit weapons officers sortie planners, and campaign planners at higher levels to decide what munition will be employed against what target, and in what manner.
Effects on target are not the only consideration here: extremely critical safety data is collected at the same time, to give the planners and aircrews vital information on how low they can fly and still launch the munition, how fast they must fly to escape fragments or blast from their own munitions, what dive/climb angles are permissible, what fuze delays can be used, how closely other craft in the formation (if any) can follow, etc, etc.
For munitions containing electronics - almost all these days - electromagnetic compatibility and interference tests are conducted at the same time. Aircrews need to know if radar, radio, navigation systems, self-defense systems, etc on the aircraft can be operated without inadvertently triggering the munition. Same information is needed about ground support systems that operate in the vicinity of the warplane or munition: radar, beacons, many others.
Concerning the “power” of the main charge, the term is too vague to permit short, simple answers. Nonnuclear explosives have a great many attributes: are we talking about total heat energy evolved? Brisance? Detonation velocity? Stability? Sensitivity to heat? Shock? There are many others.
It can never be as simple as swapping in a different chemical.
The 20000lb MOAB has been eclipsed by the 33000lb GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP). The B-2 can carry two of them.....
Wow, a munitions expert answers the questions. And here all I expected was a yes.
Then there’s the possibility of modifying the bomb bay to accommodate the MOAB.
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