OV-10A Bronco Firefight Audio

Excerpted from Backtracking in Brown Water, by Rolland E. Kidder

A U.S. Navy Rockwell OV-10A Bronco of light attack squadron VAL-4 Black Ponies attacking a 

target with a 12.7 cm (5 in) "Zuni" rocket in the Mekong Delta, South Vietnam, ca. 1969/70. 

00:15  /  The first part of this tape is a re-recording of an OV-10 Bronco air strike on the Vinh Te Canal.  I am listening to and recording the events of a previous night when a PBR boat captain had recorded the sounds of this air strike.   He and I are laughing and commenting on what occurred.   At one point, a siren goes off, the signal to stop firing.  Then a Vietnamese sailor yells at a local outpost for them to cease firing.  The outpost had been firing mortars into an area where these Navy strike aircraft (with the call sign “Black Pony”) were flying.   From the tape, you can hear metal falling on the deck of the PBR as the machine guns are fired.   Tracers from PBR machine guns were often used to support air strikes by marking the location of enemy positions.  The sound of the twin engine OV-10’s can be heard as they fly low over the boat on their strafing runs toward the target.

04:15 / On October 26, 1969, I tape-recorded the radio traffic during an enemy attack against our heavy River Assault Group boats.  The position of our PBR was about a mile from the encounter.  We could see the firefight in the distance.  The call sign for the RAG boat commander was “Brass Rail”, and individual boats under attack are designated by various letters of the phonetic alphabet.  U.S. Navy Seawolf helicopters and fixed wing Black Pony attack aircraft can also be heard calling in.  A RAG boat radio sometimes remains keyed in the “on” position and you can hear yelling and firing in the background. The tape accurately describes the chaos, anxiety and fear experienced in a firefight.  


AUTHOR'S NOTE:
Since publishing Backtracking in Brown Water, I continue to receive inquiries about this firefight audio link found on page 130.  The QR code provides readers with a direct link to audio files I submitted to the Internet Archive, a non-profit digital library dedicated to preserving artifacts of culture & heritage.

The recording itself came from a tape recorder that I had taken on one of the multi-day patrols on the Vinh Te Canal. (It was one of those small, cassette tape recorders that I had purchased in a Navy PX someplace.) While in Vietnam, I periodically sent tapes home to friends and family instead of writing a letter. On this occasion, I used it to actually record some of the "goings on" on the Vinh Te Canal. The first vignette includes some background discussion between myself and a boat captain of an airstrike he had recorded a prior night. The second occurs on another night when I turned the recorder on during a firefight between the enemy and the RAG boats.  

Fortunately, when I got back to the YRBM 20 after this patrol, I made some copies of the tape. One of them got to an Admiral who queried Mike Connolly about it (see page 125). 

EDITORIAL: Politics on the Margins

One of the sad developments this year in national politics is that, at least in early primary elections and caucuses, discussion has been polarized at the margins of political discourse.

On the Republican side, you have one candidate after another trying to out "anti-immigrant" the other. Who can build the biggest fence along the Mexican border? And how about this "I will get the Mexican government to pay for it!" 

On the Democratic side, you have a candidate promising tuition-free college for everyone, yet nothing is said about how this would be paid for. "Medicare for all" he says, but, again, nothing realistic is proposed as to how the nation would pay for that. "Taxing the rich" is not an answer since we all would have to pay more to meet these new financial obligations. 

In the middle of all of this sits the American public consisting mostly of common sense people who aren't asking for much other than that the country be sensibly governed by a leader who can balance the various interests of the Nation (and the world) and try to keep us out of war. 

Maybe this polarization will end with conclusion of the primaries, but I doubt it. The Republican leader of the U.S. Senate has vowed not to confirm any Supreme Court Justice proposed by the President before the election. Apparently, he wouldn't even consider a qualified Republican should the President submit such a name for appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. It appears that fulfilling the constitutional obligation of appointing judges will have to wait until the craziness of this Presidential election is over. 

The rest of the world must be scratching its head. "What has happened to the Americans?" This is a country of immigrants, and is the nation that rebuilt its enemies after World War II. It is a country that prides itself on the rule of law and of finding solutions to common problems. It now seems to be a nation "on the brink" whose politics are running on fear, venal personal attacks and profane one-liners.

"Our concerns used to be ameliorated by the understanding that, in the end, common sense would prevail; and that there were adults in the room who would finally be elected to lead the country."

I suppose that we should keep our cool and not be alarmed, but something has invaded our political discourse. We don't talk with each other but at each other. We don't seem to be seeking ways to find common ground, but to accentuate differences based often upon the absence of truth. Our concerns used to be ameliorated by the understanding that, in the end, common sense would prevail; and that there were adults in the room who would finally be elected to lead the country. 

This year something different is going on with our politics, and it is not healthy.

Rolland E. Kidder

This editorial originally appeared in the Jamestown Post-Journal on February 21, 2016