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A Cobra I was flying took a tracer in the LEFT inboard rocket pod. My lead said we were taking fire and as I banked left I saw what looked like a softball go by--it was a tracer. He said I was on fire so I tried to jettison the pods--NO LUCK so we had to land and we were picked up by the C&C ship. and flown back to Phu Bai .
Later I was asked to go retrieve the ship --so I was dropped off next to the ship--hopped in- started it up -and lifted off. I was concerned about booby traps. Anyway I followed the Huey and I landed on some strip. I remember shutting down and getting out to look at the damage, Part of the inboard pod had burned and also the armor plating on the left side of the Cobra had been distorted by the heat,
I think I flew it back to base after that and maybe that was the ship that was dumped by the Chinook.
Related Comments:
Rick Kline: The only Cobra that I recall that got slung out in all of 72 after the move was 100, don't recall the full numbers. It was damaged during a mission when it took a tracer in the right, inboard rocket pod. The tracer hit one or more rocket motors and it started the rockets cooking off. Since the motors were damaged, the rocket(s) froze in the tubes and that started cooking off more rockets. The pilot and front seat had to land until the incident was over. The front seat, co-pilot had to climb out of the aircraft while the rockets were cooking off and beginning to slide out of the tubes. Luckily, the rockets finally burned out and the aircraft was damaged but still intact. The pilot and front seat flew the aircraft back to Phu Bai and landed it. The heat damage weakened the right-side stress panel, and the aircraft had to sandbagged or jacked but the right rear side skid support, so it didn’t collapse. A Chinook was brought in a few days later and lifted it out. I was crewing 100 at the time and have a video, if I can lay my hands on it.
LIn Riniker: I just read Ken Hundt's account of the explosion and fire in his inboard pod. Very nasty and he was lucky. As a result of that jettison failure we replaced the cartridges in the ejection racks and found some were corroded and had never been checked or replaced based on having to use a cheater bar on the wrench in order to remove them. This was supposed to be done as part of every PE. I believe Greg Spung began checking out the racks after he was assigned to rear maintenance in DaNang. Most blown tubes came from sand infiltration and the outboard pods were most susceptible to this due to not being used in the same frequency as the inboards. We also started a periodic cleaning program of the outboards by downloading the rockets and brushing out the tubes. This greatly helped reduce hung rockets. I believe Babysan Joe DeMaio frequently got that duty.